“You are what your deep, driving desire is.

As your desire is, so is your will.

As your will is, so is your deed.

As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (IV.4.5)

In this ever-changing world, where there’s an abundance of distraction and instant gratification that may lead us to a feeling of emptiness, we as people may find ourselves searching for deeper meaning and purpose. In our own search, we have gathered a collection of introductory notes on the Upanishads, one of three editions of books in Eknath Easwaran’s Classics of Indian Spirituality series. We hope this may bring some light in your journey and that it may inspire you.

As Lie Alonso, our deepest driving desire is to bring beauty into the world. These words resonate with our practice as our desires drive us into action.

Rather than writing our own dissertation, these are direct highlights of the book, since any interference of our own commentary would not do justice, as Easwaran’s writing is both concise and compelling. We do however include a conclusion of our own at the end. Please enjoy.

The Upanishads (Classic of Indian Spirituality)

BY EKNATH EASWARAN

The Upanishads, while fully at home in the Vedas, offer a very different vision of what religion means. They tell us that there is a Reality underlying life which rituals cannot reach, next to which the things we see and touch in everyday life are shadows. They teach that this Reality is the essence of every created thing, and the same Reality is our real Self, so that each of us is one with the power that created and sustains the universe. And, finally, they testify that this oneness can be realized directly, without the mediation of priests or rituals or any of the structures of organized religion, not after death but in this life, and that this is the purpose for which each of us has been born and the goal toward which evolution moves. They teach, in sum, the basic principles of what Aldous Huxley has called the Perennial Philosophy, which is the wellspring of all religious faith. (pp. 22)

Yet the Upanishads are not philosophy… They are darshana, “something seen,” and the student to whom they were taught was expected not only to listen to the words but to realize them: that is, to make their truths an integral part of character, conduct, and consciousness. (pp. 22-23)

Students were there because they were prepared to devote a good measure of their lives to this unique kind of higher education, where study meant not reading books but a complete, strenuous reordering of one’s life, training the mind and senses with dedication. (pp. 23)

The Upanishads records show a burning desire to know, to find central principles which make sense of the world we live in. (pp. 23)

Only a few even hear these truths; of those who hear, only a few understand, and of those only a handful attain the goal. (pp. 24)

This fervent desire to know is the motivation behind all science. (…) “All science”, Aldous Huxley wrote, “… is the reduction of multiplicities to unities.” (…) The Vedic hymns are steeped in the conviction of rita, an order that pervades creation and is reflected in each part – a oneness to which all diversity can be referred. (pp. 24)

From this conviction follows a highly sophisticated notion: a law of nature must apply uniformly and universally. In renaissance Europe, this realization led to the birth of classical physics. In ancient India it had equally profound consequences. While the rest of Vedic India was studying the natural world, more or less in line with other scientifically precocious civilizations such as Greece and China, the forest civilization of the Upanishads took a turn unparalleled in the history of science. It focused on the medium of knowing: the mind. (pp. 24-25)

The sages of the Upanishads show a unique preoccupation with states of consciousness. (pp. 25)

The significance of this discovery cannot be exaggerated. Since consciousness is the field of all human activity, outward as well as inner – experience, action, imagination, knowledge, love – a science of consciousness holds out the promise of central principles that unify all of life. “By knowing one piece of gold,” the Upanishads observed, “all things made out of gold are known: they differ only in name and form, while the stuff of which all are made is gold.” And they asked, “What is that one by knowing which we can know the nature of everything else?” They found the answer in consciousness. Its study was called brahmavidya, which means both “the supreme science” and “the science of the Supreme.” (pp. 26)

It is important to understand that brahmavidya is not intellectual study. The intellect was given full training in these forest academies, but brahmavidya is not psychology or philosophy. It is, in a sense, a lab science: the mind is both object and laboratory. Attention is trained inward, on itself, through a discipline the Upanishads call nididhyasana: meditation. (pp. 26)

Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. (pp. 26)

[Meditation] is not the same as intuition or imagination. (…) Brahmavidya is not concerned with the insights that come from concentrating on a particular part of life; it is concerned with how concentration yields insight at all. (pp. 27)

Brahmavidya and conventional science both begin when a person finds that the world of sense impressions, so transient and superficial, is not enough in itself to satisfy the desire for meaning. Then one begins to stand back a little from the senses and look below the surface show of life in search for underlying connections. But the sages of the Upanishads wanted more than explanations of the outside world. They sought principles that would unify and explain the whole of human experience: including, at the same times, the world within the mind. If the observer observes through the medium of consciousness, and the world too is observed in consciousness, should not the same laws apply to both? (pp. 28)

This introduction naturally leads to more inquiry than answers. It opens a path to be explored – and yet, one may find different pieces of answers from another, as there is no one linear path.

As the benefits of meditation become increasingly known, studied and proven, we hope that these notes bring some insight in regards to the discipline, which is, in its essence, a practice. It can be an aid to realizing one’s deepest desires, bringing order, meaning, and constructing one’s destiny with purpose.

Amidst all the distractions and transient impressions of life, just as quoted earlier – where realising gold brings realisation of all things made of gold; meditation can be an aid into the deeper fabrics of reality, accomplished by uncovering the depths of stillness.

ॐ नमो गुरु देव् नमो 

Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo

I bow to the Creative Wisdom, I bow to the Divine Teacher within.