IMPERISHABLE IS THE SUPREME BRAHMAN — The term Brahman indicates the one changeless and imperishable subjective Essence behind the phenomenal world. It becomes the Self, the Conscious Principle which illumines the body, mind and intellect, during all their pilgrimages from birth to death through the infinite varieties of their vicissitudes.
ITS PRESENCE IN EACH INDIVIDUAL BODY IS CALLED ADHYATMA — Though the Self is formless and subtle, and therefore, all-pervading, Its glory and might, power and grace, are felt, experienced and lived by each physical structure; and this Self, expressing Itself through a given embodiment, as though conditioned by it, is called the Adhyatma. Shankara brings it out very clearly when he explains the term as, “THE PRINCIPLE THAT GRACES ALL BODIES AS THEIR ESSENTIAL SELF.”
Work is not only the turn-over; the turn-over can be ordered and brought about by sheer labour. The term ‘work’ connotes something deeper, subtler, diviner. The creative urge that is behind every active intellect, which ultimately fulfils itself in the creation of things and beings, that subtle spiritual strength is called “karma”; all else is mere sweat and toil, dust and blood, heaving and sobbing, smiling and singing, hoarding and wasting.
THE ADHIBHUTA IS THE PERISHABLE EXISTENCE — As a contrast to the Imperishable (Akshara) is the ‘perishable-equipment’ (Kshara), the world of prakriti, through which the potential dynamism, vigour and glory of the Infinite Self express themselves. Between the Kshara and Akshara, there is as much difference as between a steam-engine and the steam, a running car and the horse-power in the petrol, a singing radio and the electric current that makes it possible for the radio to sing. In short, by the term ‘perishable’ (kshara) the whole world of phenomena of the Universe is indicated. Subjectively, the equipments of cognition, feeling, and perception constitute, in the main, the destructible or the perishable factors in us.
ADHIDAIVA IS THE INDWELLER — The term Indweller (Adhidaiva) is used to indicate the “special faculty” that presides over each apparatus of knowledge and activity in the living creatures (the Purushah). The presiding deities of the sense-organs, of the mind, and of the intellect, are called the Devatas, which are nothing other than the faculty of vision in the eyes, the faculty of audition in the ears, the power of smelling in the nose, and so on.
Adhiyajna, HERE IN THIS BODY, I ALONE AM — We have already seen that the Yajna here means the “act of perception, feeling, or thought.” As in the Yajna, here also oblations — the sense-objects — are poured into the Yajna-altar — the sense-organs — when the Devata — the particular faculty in it — gets propitiated and invoked, and as a blessing from it we gain the “fruit” thereof, viz., the knowledge of the perception. In this Adhiyajna, in the subjective Yajna-act of perception, it is quite evident that the One Vital Factor that dominates the entire activity is the Self, the Principle of Life.
By giving these definitions, the Lord is on the whole suggesting with a subtle under-current of the implications, that the Eternal Self alone is the Real, and that all else are delusory super-impositions upon it. Therefore, to know the Self is to know everything and having known the Eternal as one’s own Real Nature, one is free to act or not to act, and to play or not to play, in any of the fields of the not-Self.
An individual who lives in the Awareness of this Knowledge, ever-conscious of the play of the Self at all levels of his personality — physical, mental and intellectual — such an individual, naturally, comes to experience himself as a Divine Witness, observing the very process of death that clips off layer by layer his self-chosen connections withthe not-Self!
WHAT HAPPENS TO ONE WHO LEAVES THE BODY IN THE AWARENESS OF THE SELF? LISTEN:
