Continuing to paint the picture of the Tree-of-Samsara, we have here the etching in more details. Such mystical representations should not be taken too literally, whether in literature or in art. The very style of the Vedas is couched in mysticism. Taking any convenient object of the world and describing it in such a poetic style so as to express some of the subtler philosophical truths and thereby to convey some deeper religious message, is called mysticism.
Describing the Tree-of-life and adding more details to it, Vyasa says: “UPWARDS AND DOWNWARDS ITS BRANCHES SPREAD” — the flow of life in the individual, as well as in the world, is sometimes towards the higher evolutionary purposes, but more often it tends to cater to the lower animal nature. These two tendencies are significant here when it is said that the branches of the Tree-of-life grow both “upwards and downwards.”
PATTERNED BY THE GUNAS — These urges for living the higher and the lower values are maintained and nourished by the particular type of psychological tendencies gunas available in the individual. In an earlier chapter (XIV) the play of the gunas (moods of the mind) has been exhaustively discussed.
In any tree there are nodular buds which are potential branches that have not yet developed, but are waiting for a chance to burst forth. Corresponding to them, Krishna says, in the Ashwattha-tree, are the sense-objects, the ‘buds.’ It is a fact that in the presence of an ‘object’ our tendencies revolt against all our higher concepts and ideals, and run amuck to gain their gratification: a new “branch.”DOWNWARD THE ROOTS EXTEND — If the main root of the Tree-of-Samsara is lost in the Absolute Reality, High above, the “secondary roots” which spring from it are spread all around, and grow even downward, “IN THE WORLD OF MAN, INITIATING ALL ACTIONS.” Here, secondary roots are thought-channels (vasanas), which are created in us, and which propel each one of us towards his own typical actions and reactions in the world. They are the very causes that promote man’s evil as well as meritorious activities in the world. Just as the main tap-root, while spreading its secondary roots, claws the earth through them and gets the plant well-rooted, so too, these Samskaras, actions and their reactions, both good and evil, bind the individuals fast to the earthy plane of likes and dislikes, of profits and losses, of earning and spending.
THE FOLLOWING TWO STANZAS INDICATE HOW WE CAN ANNIHILATE THE TREE AND THEREBY COME TO EXPERIENCE THE PURE SOURCE OF ALL LIFE’S MANIFESTATIONS, THE INFINITE LIFE:
