Brahman: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.iv.10
Two caveats. One: the commentary is very, very short. To write down all the things I want to say about this citation requires a long paper and not a brief mail. Two: I have not checked either the citation or the reference (Brihadaranyaka upanishad – I.iv.10). I assume that both are accurate.
This (Self) was indeed Brahman in the beginning. It knew itself only as “I am Brahman.” Therefore it became all.
Perhaps, the major stumbling block to understanding this sentence is the word ‘Brahman’. To know that one is ‘Brahman’, one needs to know what the word refers to and what it means. Such knowledge requires a brain (in so far as organic creatures like ourselves are concerned); such a brain should be housed in a body; that body should be within two environments (the Natural and the Social); one of these environments must have taught that body a language (‘Brahman’ is a word in Sanskrit, a natural language) and so on. If all these considerations are taken together, the above three sentence are patently false: such an event could not have occurred in ‘the’ beginning at all. This would be the result of protracted processes, both natural and social, which our Sciences are still studying. Is this Upanishad selling manifest falsehoods as ‘the’ truth?
One could understand these sentences better, if we say: ‘I am I’ and suggest that this is what ‘Self-Consciousness’ is. Self-consciousness means nothing more or less than the ‘I am I’ awareness, the way ‘bachelor’ means nothing more or less than ‘an unmarried person’. This self-consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex system. This self-awareness (or self-consciousness) is not itself either a material or an energetic entity. Thus, the only pre-requisite is the coming-into-existence of a complex system.
There is nothing else that accompanies this emergent ‘I’. This ‘I’, being neither material nor energetic, does not ‘exist’. ‘Therefore’, this is the logical implication that the Upanishad draws, this ‘I’ is ‘all’ or becomes ‘all’. Nothing else is logically possible or permitted.
And whoever among the gods had this enlightenment also became That (Brahman). It is the same with the seers (rishis), the same with men. The seer Vamadeva, having realized This (self) as That, came to know: “I was Manu and the Sun.”
[Whoever] has this ‘enlightenment’ (that is, realizes that the ‘I is I’) becomes the ‘I’. This is true for any creature, whether seers or men. “The ‘I’ is ‘that’”, as Vamadeva realizes.) ‘That’ is a demonstrative pronoun. To the question, ‘Who is the I’? there is one adequate answer: point the ‘I’ out. (‘That’, which you point out, is the ‘I’.) What do you point out? ‘That’, which is the ‘I’. Obvious: you can only point out an elephant when one asks ‘what is the elephant’. You say, ‘that’ (is an elephant) by pointing out the elephant. That seer further knows that the ‘I’ WAS “the Manu and the Sun”, in the sense that it ‘is’ (i.e. that it is an emergence) because of what happened ‘before’, i.e. the coming-into-existence of a sufficiently complex system.
And to this day, whoever in a like manner knows the Self as “I am Brahman”, becomes all this (universe).
Necessarily, this situation does not change over time. Thus, whoever accesses this ‘I am I’ awareness becomes ‘all this’ or ‘nothing’ (the ‘Shunyata’ of the Buddha). Both are meaningful because ‘all this’ cannot be individuated for the simple reason that it is neither matter nor energy. It does not even EXIST as a unique, one-of- a-kind entity IN this universe. Thus, you can say ‘all this Universe’ or ‘nothing’.
Even the gods cannot prevent his becoming this, for he has become their Self.
Nothing that occurs in this universe can prevent such an access to the ‘I’ because the Real is not subject to any causal processes, which occur only in the realm of existence. The intervention of the gods occurs in this universe and is subject to causal processes, even if we cannot say what these causal processes are. Further, we always have partial access to the ‘I’ in the sense that from the minute we are born the ‘I’ is based on the complex organism you also are. The ‘I’, in one sense, emerges from the kind of being you are. In another sense, because the ‘I’ cannot be individuated at all, the ‘I’ that emerges from your birth is IDENTICAL to the ‘I’ that is an emergent property of other complex systems. Thus, this ‘I’ is not ‘born’ with your birth; nor can it disappear after your ‘death’. It knows neither birth nor death because it does not exist in this universe. Thus, this constant (partial) access and its nature as the Real renders the gods incapable of intervening.
Now, if a man worships another deity, thinking: “He is one and I am another”, he does not know.
What does he not know? That the ‘I’ does not exist and, therefore, cannot be individuated. That it is logically impossible to distinguish one ‘I’ from the other ‘I’ because there is only one ‘I’. We cannot even say that there is ‘one’ I and not ‘two’ because we are not talking about some unique, one-of-a-kind entity. This ‘I’ or ‘that’ of Vamadeva does not exist. Period. Hence, ‘Advaita’, which means not ‘two’. It is not ‘monism’ as the European savants (and their Indian acolytes) think. It is ‘not two’, which does not mean that it is one or one billion. Self-consciousness cannot be distinguished. One who thinks that it is possible, ‘does not know’.
He is like an animal to the gods. As many animals serve a man, so does each man serve the gods. Even if one animal is taken away, it causes anguish (to the owner); how much more so when many (are taken away)! Therefore it is not pleasing to the gods that men should know this.
Self-clarifying in terms of what is said so far.
We also notice that the Upanishad is also struggling to say what it wants to say. The only way we can talk about the real is by using the language of existence. Our natural languages and our scientific languages try to describe what exists in this Cosmos, using appropriate languages that are meant to describe existence. To use such a language to talk about the real creates huge difficulties, which every Indian tradition has faced. This Upanishad is no exception to this rule.
II
Again, on an entirely different note and in a partially different style, a very short reflection on what I wrote about the Upanishadic citation.
If the ‘I’ cannot be individuated or described, then there is no possible distinction between the ‘I’ and ‘the Brahman’. They are different names for ‘self-awareness’ which pick out the differential access that individuals have to ‘self-awareness’. Hence, the curious distinction that some Indian traditions make. On the one hand, the ‘I’ is alleged to be identical with the ‘Brahman’, on the other, the same traditions distinguish between ‘Atmagyaana’ and ‘Brahmagyaana’. These two ‘gyanaas’ can be two types of knowledge, if, on one reading, they are knowledge about two different objects, namely ‘atman’ and ‘Brahman’. If, however, they are identical, there could be only one knowledge. Second, even that is not possible. We can only have knowledge of something, if that something exists. If Atman or Brahman exist in this Universe, they are also subject to the processes that occur here. One such is decay and disintegration. Therefore, if we think this problem through, there is only one conclusion possible (if we assume that all Indians have not always been imbeciles): the gyaana is about the processes of accessing the real. It is not and cannot be about the real.
This means that the debate within the Indian traditions is not and could not have been about the nature of ‘atman’ or ‘Brahman’. Thus, the idea that is propagated as ‘the’ truth about the alleged conflict between the dvaita and the advaita is spurious and false. There was clearly debates and conflicts. But these cannot be about the nature of the real.
The same is true about the alleged conflict between ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Brahmanism’. Atman and Anatman are not conflicting doctrines about the real at all; they could not be. It is logically impossible that this was the debate between representatives of these traditions, unless we assume that Indians are congenitally incapable of thinking logically,. Those who sell this story, whether in India or abroad, the western savants and their Indian slaves, are the truly perfect imbeciles, which they actually think that Indians are. These idiots are our professors and many guru’s in India and elsewhere.
Thus, we see that Ambedkar and the Ambedkarites (in India and elsewhere today) are total slaves of their western masters. To ‘convert’ from ‘Hinduism’ to ‘Buddhism’, as though they are conflicting religions, is to simply ape the western cretins who have been selling this story for nearly 200 years.
I just want to draw your attention to some of the implications of Adhyatmic realization. It does not teach you good manners and politeness. It does not teach or preach ‘humility’. True, it teaches how to help people move away from ignorance. But it also generates an internal force that aims at shattering a situation where ignorance parades as knowledge.