Celibacy, Meditation, and Enlightenment

Notes on these Upanishads for the Brahmacaris and my Brotherhood:

These are two pages from the Taittiriya Upanishad. This is one of the most fascinating Upanishads. It contains much unusual material including esoteric yogic content and fascinating metaphysical schemas. I do not have a lot of material in the handwriting of theses two pages, so I am producing this HTML as an addendum.

I tend to recommend the Katha Upanishad as a first, introductory Up. for a number of reasons. But after you have scanned a while, I highly recommend the Taittiriya for other reasons. One is its very strangeness and incoherent or uneven quality. It will teach you about the Upanishads themselves and what they really are: The truths experienced by particular rishis. This one also has material and viewpoints not found elsewhere.

Yes, it is also a rather bumpy and discontinuous Upanishad, alternating from worldly, moral instructions for external behavior to esoteric content that can only be the fruit of divine realizations, to the particular techniques and metaphysical views of the man who wrote it. Some of it is highly dated and relevant only in his time and can be dispensed with or updated.

This rishi appeared to be a happy, wealthy and philanthropic man who developed a metaphysical world-view as well as yogic techniques related to food This Upanishad could be nicknamed "the food Upanishad." But he appears to be enumerating, compendium-like, the full range of his knowledge or at least touching on many fundamental items. He speaks of Aum, of the inner "place in the heart," of the connection between the sun and Brahman, and touches upon sex. He even makes highly occult references to the breath and to meditation technique. At the same time he is a teacher-for-all-seasons and makes a list of moral admonitions for activities ranging from hospitality to sacrifices.

The text demonstrates well that the scriptures reflect the particular insights and personal yogas (and siddhis) of particular personalities. Like most of the Upanishads, it contains an interesting list of metaphysical inventions -- mind-inventions like all of the external world -- of this particular rishi. This is an aspect of siddhi. ("However the mind conceives 'the order' (niyati) to be, the order becomes.") You can really see this writer's personality in the verses.

As odd as this Upanishad is, the Taittirya Upanishad nevertheless contains some of the richest and most luminous yogic statements known to religion or man, including this one:

"He performed austerity. Having performed austerity, he knew that Brahman was bliss."

All of religion and all of yoga is represented in this phrase.

I stated that "all of religion is represented in" the above phrase, and one might say, "Julian, bhakti is not there." However, by contacting bliss (by trying austerities supported by the smallest smidgen of faith/shraddha) -- one will get bhakti immediately, because touching the Lord's bliss immediately makes him grateful and a God-lover.

A wonderful fact is that this particular phrase -- worded the same way -- is repeated FOUR TIMES in different places. This is a simple, sharp, crystallization of what I have been saying these years: That the blissful God is known by austerities; that the purpose of austerities is to disengage us with the lesser thrills of the body and world so that we can perceive, contact, and experience God's causeless bliss. This simple statement and its repetition tells us that austerities is essential religion, a cornerstone of religion along with brahmacharya and guru-bhakti. These three even stand above scriptural reading which is often extolled in these scriptures and over-extolled by the bison-in-the-Hindu-living-room Sankara. Truly, I believe that all religious fruit (enlightenment, samadhi) could be acquired by those three with book-study left off. Book study is a 2nd tier item. It supports things like confirmation about brahmacharya, development of bhakti, and aids concentration of the mind. Book-study has i's value when it reminds you and assures you: "Oh yes, I should meditate and have faith in meditation, let me meditate again." Or when the book study reminds you: "Yes, brahmacharya is an essential goal. I have no doubt now." Or it makes you think: "Yes, God is a thing I can have faith in and feel some devotion for."

Book-study in fact develops bhakti. I know that after much reading of the writings of my guru Yogananda I felt that I knew his mind, knew his heart, could think of him easily, and began to get an inner relationship with him. Study of any attractive saint -- through books -- helps develop bhakti. (God is the all-attractive.) Book study is for these things. It is a fortifier. Though it becomes akin to it, it is not itself meditation. It is not bhakti itself, and it is not continence. But it fortifies and rekindles those. It is like the "idling engines" or the re-start system of the yogic drive.

Certainly concentration of mind (dharana, or meditation) makes it onto my list of five: Continence, bhakti, the guru principle (related to bhakti), austerities, meditation. (In that order.) However, we can divide meditation into a 2nd tier below those three in bold. Because if a man has bhakti he will get concentration of mind from that. This has been pointed out by a number of yogic sages, even Vivekananda. Conversely, the yogin attempting to concentrate his mind will do it better by cultivating bhakti, because we are emotional creatures and the Lord (our father) is a highly emotional being. (Note his wild, profligate, sensational cosmos which is an expression of Saguna Brahman's emotion.) Thus approaching Isvara-Deva with EMOTION we are approaching Him with our whole self and the best part of ourselves, thus the bhakta is the lucky one and will get dharana (yoga) naturally by continuously thinking of The Lord. (Aum).

If we wanted to be further reductionist we could even list only two: Brahmacharya and guru-bhakti. The reason is that austerities will naturally emerge from the perfection of these. Why? Because that guru may have done austerities, then you will start automatically coming into them yourself. (You get what ever is the guru's, by your bhakti.) Further, one can easily become subsumed in samadhi by guru-bhakti. And that is itself the ultimate world-renunciation.

Then if we wanted to reduce down to one, it could be either brahmacharya or guru-bhakti. Why do I say that? The merit of brahmacharya will itself lead you to the guru, religious knowledge, and meditation. Conversely, a little guru-bhakti, entered into even by a fool with lousy karma -- will get the grace of the Lord and he will finally let you know about brahmacharya. That is what happened to me.

This Upanishad could also be nicknamed the bliss Upanishad" for it points to bliss more than most. I have also remembered it as the one that contains "the siddha stomp." This refers to its very last verse (Verse 3:10:5) which is a riotously glorious statement of this writer's state and may serve as a testament of his attainment.

This Upanishad is made more charming my evidences that this rishi was wealthy, fed many, and had disciples. He appeared to be living at the time of a highly ordered Vedic society. He gives a great many Confucius-like instructions for daily living that are very time-stamped and have contrasted to his many esoteric and yogic statements. (The book has it all, you might say.)

The Taittirya Upanishad contains reference to occult yogic things like the kechari mudra (tongue going up to the tonsils and into the nasal cavity). As usual, Sankara and other commentators completely ignore this as if they did not know what the verse is about although it is patent and plain. The Taittiriya also glances on highly esoteric secrets about the nature of our breath. There is one verse related to the breath that probably divulges, very unnoticeably and unobtrusively, a major siddhi technique. Practitioners of the the meditation technique called the First Kriya in my guru lineage will come to understand that verse by instinct. The text also contains a schema of "evolutes."

One interesting fact of the Upanishads is the various "evolutes" systems found in them. This is where the writer propounds a list of things from gross to more subtle, on up to God, as in "this came from this, and then came this." Typically a system of evolutes will start with Nirguna Brahman, then Saguna Brahman with the name Isvara or Brahma, then it often starts to vary. The next evolute might be space (akasa), or in one version, faith is next. Some include Aum or divine sound on the list, sometimes making it synonymous with akasa. Often prana ends up on the list. Often the elements are there, perhaps with air first (from akasa), then fire, then water, then earth. Mind is sometimes there, as well as jiva (the individualized consciousness) which may be equated with mind or not. The varied nature of the Upanishads' listings of "evolutes" is another proof that it is written by varied individuals.

In the Taittiriya Upanishad the rishi appears to present TWO different formulae. The first goes like this:

Bliss > Vijnana > Mind > Prana > Food (also means the body, made of food)

Vijnana is translated in many ways in Hinduism, including as intelligence, understanding, wisdom, or knowledge. Pandit Usharbudh, who has very technically detailed glossaries at the end of his Yoga-Sutra commentaries, defines vijnana as "idea, ideation." But this makes it sound on a par with mind. Vijnana appears to refer to a more refined aspect of mind. I have seen it equated with the term buddhi, which in turn is sometimes called intuition or "discriminative wisdom."

It appears that the mind as it appears in human beings is seen as a grosser aspect of vijnana, and it usually appears (in many texts) as the seat of jiva or is synonymous with jiva. In the mind, "I" appears. Thus we have to consider two "I"s, one being our own (me, Julian or Nick, with this story and these limits), then alternatively, the "I" of the Cosmic Lord at the root of creation: God, Isvara, Brahma. (As that Saguna Brahman is variously termed.) It is not clear in this Upanishad how the rishi intends mind: Whether it applies to a jiva or the Lord. My view is that if it applies to jiva, then prana should be listed above mind. Prana is pure and is far more intelligent than the jiva-mind; more intelligent than Julian, Ronan, and Steve who always make mistakes and muddles. Prana heals, guides, protects, and perfects. The human mind does not reliably guide, protect, heal, and perfect.

If this listing of evolutes intends mind as the mind of Isvara or Saguna Brahman, then perhaps the ordering then makes sense.

The above listing is a delightful formulation. He states that all these five things exist in the form of a human body. In once instance, giving this list, he lists "the body" instead of food and regards the human body as, always, the food of something else. A peculiar feature of this rishi's world view is how he regards all things as a form of food, and as "food within food."

The very same author in the very same Upanishad gives a second evolutes list:

The Self > Akasa > Air > Fire > Water > Earth > Herbs > Food > The Person (the human body)

Other systems of evolutes found in other Upanishads do not contain food, or do not contain vijnana, etc.

It is not clear how the writer of this Upanishad stands vis-a-vis the dualistic I-Thou religion of devotee-God versus Sankara's deplorable NDV approach (non-dualism, in which all perceivables -- even bliss -- should be rejected, one seeks total non-perception and isolation, and one ends up clueless about most of the content of the Upanishads from sad lack of yogic development while posing as the grandiose commentator on those Upanishads). The author of the Taittiriya Up. does not speak in Sankarian language and he also ascribes deity to many worldly things (such as food) that is not a trait of Sankara. On the other hand, he does not speak much of bhakti or the guru principle, though we find him a couple of places praying for disciples. It seems to me that he is a precursor of some non-dualistic views. But at the very end we find him in as a joyful god in an exultant dance I call his "siddha stomp" -- in a perceived world containing others. Whatever may have been his view vis-a-vis non-dualism, his yogic path is a lot more fun than that of the bloodless Sankara who wanted to have no "other" to perceive. Or at least claimed that's what he wanted.

Another splendid verse from the Taittiriya is this one:

"He knew that Brahman is bliss. For truly, beings here are born from bliss, when born, they live by bliss, and into bliss, when departing, they enter." (Radhakrishnan translation)

This verse makes it clear that bliss is an indispensable of human life. This is emphasized in another line that associates akasa with bliss:

"For who, indeed, could live, who could breathe, if there were not this bliss in space." (Radhakrishnan translation)

"Who could breathe, who could breathe forth, if that bliss (Brahman) existed not in the ether (in the heart)?" (Muller translation)

"He who is self-created is bliss. A man experiences happiness by tasting that bliss. Who could breathe, who could live, if that bliss did not exist in his heart?" (Nikhilananda translation)

This Upanishad also confirms that words and the human jiva-mind cannot survive, or at least not abide, when encountering God's full bliss:

"Whence words return along with the mind, not attaining it, he who knows that bliss of Brahman fears not at any time." (Radhakrishnan translation)

Thus the human mind prefers to have God's bliss in dribs and drabs, so it can thus abide in this Day of Brahman.

Religious development involves the development of the causeless bliss of the Lord. All human beings seek bliss. Joy, delight, happiness, and rapture -- these are all just shards of the divine bliss that the yogi and saint seek. One thing our Brotherhood will do is end the dichotomy between "the pleasurable" (as worded in the Katha Up. by Yama) and "the good." In that and other texts "the pleasurable" refers to worldly thrills, bodily pleasures, etc. This is counterpoised against the path of true good, which involves austerities. This is an unfortunate flaw of religion as it is today. In truth, all are seeking bliss, alone. There is no difference between the masses of ordinary pleasure-seeking people and yogis except for their ideas of where the bliss is is best found. That is the only real difference among beings, and their ideas (of where the bliss is best found) are always in flux as they acquire more experience and wisdom. We simply say: "This is a wiser pathway to bliss in the end." Yet all are seeking bliss, thus all are the same. By affirming that bliss is both the central goal of religion PLUS the thing that gives health and prosperity to babies, children, wives, and husbands -- we put ourselves right on the side of the commoner people. We are their well-wishers for bliss. No one can argue very long with such a religion, and all White Europeans will come back to religion and also their churches once this understanding permeates Christianity.

Now, to give one more kick to Sankara (who said, suspiciously, that brahmacharya only required avoidance of "intercourse with a woman") -- it has to be remembered that Saguna Brahman -- the Creator with attributes (knowable as both bliss and Aum) -- is certainly the repository of Bliss. If an ordinary person, a puppy dog, and an advanced yogi can all be blissful why would we not expect the Lord of the Universe, who is enlightened, to possess the utmost bliss? We do not need to seek an attributeless Nirguna Brahman to become blissmasters.

We do not seek to end the creation, or be "out of the game." Nirguna Brahman ends the creation in his own lawful time after eons. Meanwhile, we all end it already each night in deep, dreamless sleep but seek to incarnate again each morning and experience the dramas and the "other." We do not seek to end the mind, but rather, to develop the divinized mind to sport better with God and with His creation. What is the point of seeking Sankara's dry path of rejection of all perceivables (even the bliss of God) when it fails to give the yogic development available to humans and which is the very development cited in those scriptures that Sankara tried, uselessly, to comment upon? What good is his path if one never knows Isvara, bliss, siddhi, Aum, or jyoti? Sankara and his type can hurry on to his Void and never even know bliss, Aum, or siddhis such as to be able to even renounce them. I experience the void enough nightly in deep dreamless sleep myself, thank you. (Called prajna and susupti in the Upanishads.) The God who created the Universe does not want "nobody there." He wants his Other, the one he created, to dance with Him, to enjoy Him, and be protected by Him.

It is the jiva that experiences bliss in the way that human beings crave bliss. Without the jiva (the individual and the mind), Brahman cannot even know itself as bliss. Brahman is the light, bliss is the fire, and jiva is the coarse resin on the stick that burns and experiences Brahman as heat and light. It is an individual -- a person, a jiva -- who experienced the joy of the Siddha Stomp at the end of theTaittiriya Upanishad. That last verse goes like this:

"He who knows thus, attains, after desisting from this world, this self made of food. After attaining this self made of food, then, attaining this self made of vital force, then attaining this self made of mind, then attaining this self made of intelligence, then attaining this self made of bliss, and roaming over these worlds with command over food at will and command over all forms at will, he continues singing this sama song: Oho! Oho! Oho! I am the food, I am the food, I am the food; I am the eater, I am the eater, I am the eater; I am the unifier, I am the unifier, I am the unifier; I am (Hiranyagarbha) the first born of this world consisting of the formed and the formeless, I (as Virat) am earlier than the gods. I am the navel of immortality. He who offers me thus (as food), protects me just as I am. I, food as I am, eat him up who eats food without offering. I defeat (i.e. engulf) the entire universe. Our effulgence is like that of the sun. He who know thus (gets such results). This is the Upanishad. (Translation of Swami Gambhirananda)

Whatever to make of it, it's a lot more fun than Sankara's path. Note that this siddha still sees "a world" and enjoys himself in it.

Note the reference to the "sama song." Sama here probably refers to the neutralization (making same) of the breath. In another Upanishad (I believe the Brihadaranyaka) the sama, or a point in the breath, is the top final destination of a long set of evolutes once arrived at it, the sage will say no more.

All references to breath, whether to the samana (aspect of prana) or the "middle breath" receive no intelligent comment from Sankara though he sits astride the Hindu scriptures. One of the ugly aspects of the Sankarian writings, which clutter and befuddle Hindu texts everywhere you look, is how he tells the devotee that he must renounce the divine perceivables that are the fruit of meditation, bhakti, and yoga. While inducing us to be interested in Brahman by telling us it is a "compact of bliss," he tells the aspirants to reject bliss as it becomes known and not enjoy it -- even the bliss of samadhi! When I see his basic cluelessness about Upanishad verses and Yoga-Sutra verses it becomes apparent to me that this Sankara did not get the fruit of yoga. Then why do they resort to him for commentary on yogic verses? Indeed, taking teachings like the rejection of God's bliss he seems more and more like some sort of particularly evil gremlin. The aforementioned instruction is ignorance, because only attention to these inner perceivables can effect steadiness of mind and samadhi. It is the very process of yoga that one gets perceptions that are superior to external pleasures, thus attracting the mind more strongly than the externals and past pleasure-samskaras. The very purpose of these attractive perceivables is to powerfully aid meditation and concentration of mind, that most difficult of all tasks. Sankara thus asks the devotees to ignore and throw away the very fruit of the path, the very things that make the path attractive and workable, and the very things that aid in getting the states of dharana and dhyana he himself purports, here and there, to preach. He asks us to reject not only the finest alambras for the meditation challenge he intermittently presents, plus reject our own creator-God in the form of Aum and bliss! Sankara is hell, Sankara is fake. As far as yoga goes, Sankara was an outsider-looking in and thus he was an inventor.

While clinging to the side of the yoga Cadillac Sankara supplies us, instead of insight into that Upanishadic yoga, his trademark process of ratiocination designed to convince you that the external world actually does not exist. It is as if he hoped that this would produce a kind of Sankarian pratyahara, then samadhi. He gives us a merely negative goal (continually negate the world) instead of any positive goal to attract the mind. Thus all yogins who have attained samadhi have attained it despite him and not because of him.

The truth is, once the yogic perceptions dawn it will be hard enough to keep a world in view. One will have no need whatever for Sankara's rational analysis convincing you "there is no created world." Such a ratiocination apparatus will be utterly unnecessary. It strikes me over and over, as I read the Sankarian scripture-pollution, that he never encountered the yogic things, the very things that the verses speak of in cases after case. This makes me suspect that his path -- the so-called "jnana" path of rational analysis using his formula -- was a fruitless path both from a Upanishadic (yogic) point-of-view, and by Sankara's own standard on non-perception of the world, infinite bliss, and isolation. (If Sankara attained isolation, he may have it. Who wants it!)

Our path is different. We are dualist yogis. Dualism -- the path of God-devotee, I-Thou -- is the warp-and-woof of both Christianity and prime Hinduism/yoga. Recall that one of the "three basic activities of yoga" in Patanjali's Yoga-Sutra is "special devotion to the Lord" or Isvara-pranidhana. Isvara is a dualistic Lord, a "particular purusa." He has feeling, personality, power, history, and possessorship and he created all these worlds and these galaxies in endless space. He was the first being in the Day of Brahman (this long cycle) and he is your true Dad,. He is also enlightened. He knows all about Sankara's sought-after Nirguna Brahman because that is His sleep (as with us) and he has both savikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi just as the greatest guru would!

Saguna Brahman -- the Lord -- is knowable to all as bliss, Aum, and siddhi and you don't need to seek an unknowable, inhuman, or unattractive Lord who ends your mind before your time.

He is of the nature of bliss, satva, and upgrade and is free of suffering. (Yoga-Sutra) Thus by contact with him you also are lifted out of suffering to your original pristine nature. He should not be rejected, as Sankara instructs so many Hindus and westerners like a laughing hyena -- but rather, sought.

By understanding the source of bliss and by understanding how it is that religion is the best bestower of bliss -- we are then qualified as true teachers of religion, the regenerators of our peoples, and their savior-protectors. It is the jiva, the human mind, that experiences bliss in the way that the human being wants to know bliss. Nirguna Brahman does not need us to "become Brahman" because Brahman already is. However, the jivas do not know the condition of God-bliss and overjoy, of siddhi, and world upgrade. To teach them that is what religion is for, what the churches are for, and what our Brotherhood is for.

The proof of religion is bliss and siddhi. The proof of religion is bliss, fearlessness, and prayers answered. The proof of religion is mastery of mind and world-upgrade.

The Brotherhood teaches.

I write this for your certitude, brahmacharya, meditation, bliss, your own teaching power, and your power of blessing your families.

As with Christ and as with the greatest raja-yogis of the past such as my guru Yogananda brahmacharya, God-devotion, and a few austerities -- are the keys to spiritual knowledge (religious knowledge) and the subsidence of sorrows, with brahmacharya indispensable. Whatever I know, wrote, did, or attained -- came from brahmacharya: Doorway into true religion (spiritual knowledge), a decent life, and the return to the Garden states.

Aum.

Julian