kathopanishad-2-3-1-ūrdhvamūlo'vākśākha

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Ūrdhva-mūlo’vāk-śākha eṣo’śvatthas sanātanaḥ, tad eva śukraṁ tad brahma, tad evāmṛtam ucyate. tasmin lokāḥ śritāḥ sarve tad u nātyeti kaś cana: etad vai tat (2.3.1). Ūrdhva-mūlaḥ is a word we have also heard in the Bhagavad Gita: ūrdhvamūlam adhaḥśākham (B.G. 15.1). This is a description of the tree of the universe, which is said to have its roots above and its branches below, contrary to the way in which trees grow on the earth. This tree is called aśvattha. Sanātana: It is there always, permanently. Aśvattha may mean ‘that which is not going to last for a long time’. That which will not last even for tomorrow is aśvattha. Sanātana means ‘always being there’. Two words are used here to designate the character of this tree that is upside down. There are two aspects of this passage. Firstly, the tree is inverted, with the roots above and branches below. The second aspect is that it is called permanently existing, sanātana, and also not lasting for the morrow.

The tree is above in the sense of the reality being above and its manifestations being below. The aboveness and belowness connected with this description of the tree are not to be taken in the sense of a spatial invertedness, as if something is hanging in the sky with roots above and branches below. The tree is not physically visible; it is not visible to the eyes. The Bhagavad Gita says that it is inscrutable in its nature. Where it starts and where it ends, nobody can know. It is not an object of the senses in the ordinary way. It is a power which releases itself by degrees into more and more types of externality, and the more it becomes external, the more also does it become spatialised.

There is an integrated concentration of the tree in the seed. All the ramifications and the diversifications of the tree can be found to be hiddenly present in the seed, though not visible to the eyes. When the tree germinates into a little plant, it shoots forth the energies embedded in the seed, and externalises itself to some extent. There is a total absorption of power within itself in the case of the seed. The externalisation into space and time commences when it becomes a little tendril, and it grows taller and stouter. When this happens, its longing to become other than what it was in the seed becomes more and more pronounced. It becomes more objective in its nature, more externalised in space and time, and more filled with a desire to expand itself into space. Thus is this tree of God and the universe. The root of this tree is God Himself. Because of the transcendence of God, the root of the tree is regarded as something that is above us.

Transcendence is something which is above in a very specialised sense. There are people who are above us in their stature, in their importance, in their genius, in their qualifications, in their wealth. “That man is far above me.” When we say this, we do not mean that the person is physically sitting on our head. It is a conceptual, consciousness-oriented, logical aboveness. That is how we have to understand the transcendence of God: far, far beyond the reach of the logical intellect, not physically distant but conceptually separable as the higher and the lower. When the higher, which is the transcendent, which is beyond the concept of the mind, descends into immanence, it enters into the world. Just as the sap of the tree which was hidden in the seed then permeates through the plant, and then pervades the whole tree through the trunk and the branches, up to the tips of the leaves and the flowers, in a similar manner God’s power, which is the sap of the universe hiddenly present in Himself, manifests itself externally through space and time. Through every object and everything that is visible we find the presence permeating, not only as an immanent presence but also as an externalised force.

This tree is the abode of all the individuals, the jivas—yourself, myself, and everything. According to at least one analogy, we are like birds on this tree, and this tree is full of sweet fruits in the form of delicious objects of sense. Ignorant jivas, individuals who have no consciousness of the source from where they have come, indulging externally in terms of the sense organs, are busy with the eating of the fruit of this tree, and so they are bound by the maddening effect produced by the fruit, something like the fruit of the forbidden tree.

It is also said that this tree is permanent, yet it is not lasting. Sometimes when we walk on the road at dusk and cannot see things properly, we may see a rope coiled up on the path and mistake it for a snake. Now, when did this appearance of the rope as a snake begin? Did it begin yesterday? Did it begin today? It has no beginning. It shall always appear like that. Under given conditions of perception, the rope will always, permanently, appear like a snake. Similarly, therefore, this tree is permanent. There is no beginning and no end for it.

Likewise is this world perception. The world, looking like what it is—or rather, God Himself appearing as this universe—did not have a beginning. We cannot say God created the world some time back. It is like saying the rope started appearing to be a snake on some day. The rope never began to appear as a snake on some day or at some time. The rope never created this snakehood from itself, yet it is there. But it is not permanent because the moment light is splashed on the rope, we will immediately recognise that the snake is not there. The snake was there; always it has to be there on account of the dimness of light and our defective perception—but, at the same time, it is not there. So is this world. It is always there. God did not create this world, but the appearance of God as this manifested universe has to always be there. Eternally we will see the world, and there is no end for that. We cannot prevent God from appearing in this manner of space, time and object. God did not think “Let Me become the tree; let Me become the object and other things” in the same way as the rope does not feel that it should become a snake. There is no beginning and end for creation, and it has never taken place, actually, to tell the fact.

There is another illustration. There is a stone. This stone is made up of molecules, the molecules are made up of little atoms, and the atoms are made up of even more minute particles, called electrons. Through a very powerful microscope which can enable us to see the innermost content of this object as forces gyrating vigorously in the form of electronic energy, we will not see the stone there. Now, somehow or other, this energy that is inside has become the stone. Can we say that one day the energy started thinking “Let me become a stone”? It has never become the stone, and the stone does not exist at all because if the stone were to exist really, the microscope would show it. It does not show it. The inner content has not transformed itself into the outer form. That is to say, the inner energy, which is electromagnetic, has not become the stone. The power of the universe has not transformed itself into the objects of sense. They appear to be like that on account of a defective vision, and if we have a microscopic eye, we may not see the world at all. We will see only a continuum of energy billowing like waves in the sea. The world will vanish in one second, provided we have got X-ray eyes or microscopic eyes. Now we have a dull eye; therefore, we see things which are not here. So this tree which is inverted with roots above and branches below is permanent in one sense, and not permanent in another sense: eṣo’śvatthas sanātanaḥ.

Tad eva śukraṁ tad brahma, tad evāmṛtam ucyate: This world that we see is actually the appearance of the immortal purity, as God Himself is this universe. Tasmin lokāḥ śritāḥ sarve: All the fourteen realms of being are fixed on this consciousness, which is of God Almighty. Tad u nātyeti kaś cana: Nobody can transcend it; there is nothing above it; it is the final one. Etad vai tat: This is the answer finally to the question of Nachiketas: “What is the nature of the soul?”