MAHAVAKYAS.DOC

THE UPANISHAD CODE A CONNECTING “PSYCHOLOGY” OF THE PRIMARY INSIGHTS OF VEDANTA Class lecture delivered at the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Hollywood May 18, 2004 Amended, April 21, 2022 ABSTRACT In this communication I introduce my first public presentation of insights into the great sayings of Vedanta (mahavakyas) as commented on by Swami Vivekananda. In it, I give to a group of interested people in Los Angeles a broad overview of his approach to these key elements of Vedanta and how they seem to interrelate with each other in an apparently coherent manner. This material was intended as an introduction to a later presentation of the actual content of his interpretations on each of the shlokas (verses) Vivekananda had commented on. In this basic plan I also included other shlokas that seemed to share the same purview or “psychology” as the core material and on which Vivekananda had made frequent comments I had identified these materials from 1973 to 1991 and arranged them under the Veda and Upanishad to which they classically belong. This made it possible to discern the interconnections and correspondences between the classical range of insights in Vedanta as well as, of course, the original thinking that Vivekananda brought to interpreting them. Six years later in MacPhail, 2010 I gave an academic interpretation of this overall approach, indicating the content of each shloka with headings from Vivekananda’s compiled commentary. The layout that I developed for that presentation I will utilize here and add to it the “psychology” that seems to underly the whole system. This psychology was developed in full in my doctoral thesis (MacPhail, 2013, 348-369) in connection with the occurrence of samadhi, the classical turning-points in the experiential progression from level to level of consciousness that I perceive as enshrined in the overall array of mahavakyas. Utilizing this recondite material here is intended to give more gravitas to the more general discussion of the subject in the classes in Los Angeles. Since the publication of my overview of Vivekananda’s “take” on the development of Vedanta historically (Gayatriprana, 2020), I have been arriving at the importance of the notion of chatushpad, or four steps of the Atman, in codifying these different levels of consciousness. I first discerned the classical four in the mahavakyas, and beyond them the present emergence of a fifth step that seems to be of major significance in meeting the demands of contemporary human existence. Meeting with considerable resistance to this turn in my thinking, I have recently written what might be called a history of the chatushpad, with the proposed title A History of Consciousness from a Vedantic Point of View: A Belated Response to Max Velmans’s Question: Is the Universe Conscious? A further extension of this enquiry will include a study of the Western point of view that rejects this mode of understanding and also some examples of those who can see value and meaning in it. The Context in Los Angeles: the Upanishad Code In choosing the title The Upanishad Code for this series of classes what I wanted to convey in as few words as possible is that I intend to speak about how Swami Vivekananda has opened out the meaning of the Upanishads for our contemporary world. The sacred Vedantic texts called the Upanishads go as far back as several thousand years BCE and can be almost excruciatingly difficult to understand in places. In trying to make them available to their contemporaries, generations of commentators have extracted meanings from the Upanishads which vary according to the time, place, and circumstances in which they found themselves. Those commentaries have all become scriptures of great guidance to various departments of Vedanta, which is the philosophy which looks on the Upanishads as its first authority. Sri Shankaracharya, Sri Ramanuja and Sri Madhvacharya (Gayatriprana, 2020, xvii-xxi) and many others have all started flourishing schools of thought and ways of life based on their views of the Upanishads, each different from the others—and, unfortunately, often at odds with them. It seems as if the Upanishads are an inexhaustible reservoir from which, as Sri Ramakrishna, 1836-1886 (Swami Vivekananda’s mentor) used to say, all sorts of different people can come and draw the water so central to life and well-being. Like life-giving water, it is also apparent that the Upanishads lend themselves to endlessly different forms, flowing uncomplainingly into all the various philosophies that the Vedantic seers have propounded. All of this makes the Upanishads rather difficult and elusive, not to mention obscured by all the commentaries and various scholarly fights and quibbles which have taken place over their meaning. Nevertheless, they are still considered the key texts for Vedantins and, Swami Vivekananda would uphold, for people in general. The idea is that somehow we have to find their meaning and apply it to our lives. However, anyone who has opened most of the Upanishads at random knows that their archaic language and imagery can be more than off-putting and our attempts to understand them by reading the classical commentaries extremely daunting, to say the least. This is where the word code comes in. We are assured that the Upanishads have much to offer us spiritually, but without some sort of way of approaching them, we are practically in the dark as to their meaning. I just recently read a novel, The Da Vinci Code, in which the mysteries of the old European goddess worship were unraveled step by step by laboriously working through a code devised by a contemporary high priest of her worship in France. This project was, of course, beset with all sorts of skullduggery and foul play—probably the only way to get average people interested in such an arcane theme—but the central idea of working towards a deity shrouded in the mists of antiquity by breaking a code based on the ancient truths about the deity seemed appropriate to what I want to say about our position with the Upanishads. The Clues to Cracking the Code The first clue to this riddle is the basic insight of Vedanta that human beings have the inbuilt potential to “evolve” from what we see as “mere” physical bodies moved by basic urges of self-preservation to a level of perception that transcends all categories of explanation or description and communicates directly with a Reality that includes, permeates, and infuses with tremendous meaning the entire universe, in whatever way we can conceive of it. In the Upanishads this Reality is called variously That, Brahman, or in later texts Sat-chit-ananda (Existence-Knowledge-Bliss). Whatever name is given to it, that Reality is what holds everything together, fills it with meaning and supports all activity, known and unknown. This Reality is not a deity separate from humanity itself. It is discovered in our own being or hearts (Shapiro, 2001) as a living and supporting reality that can be grasped by human consciousness when it is correctly controlled and directed to deeper and deeper levels of experience and understanding. This is the process that the great sayings are concerned with and seek to reveal in the form of words and images arranged in a way that reflects the process of self-transformation. How this process works has been described and lived by generations of spiritual teachers and exemplars who, often through time, have come up with different ways of describing and exemplifying their meaning to meet the needs of their particular age and culture. Swami Vivekananda firmly believed that Sri Ramakrishna was the embodiment of the Upanishads themselves and that everything he said was, basically, Upanishad, expressed in the language of today and speaking to the problems that beset us here and now. His life and teachings were, to Swami Vivekananda, the revelation of the eternal truths of the Upanishads. The next clue to the riddle was that for Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna was not some form of being totally other than us. On the contrary, he was the exemplification of what we all are potentially—Vivekananda’s working definition of what we otherwise call a divine incarnation or avatar. By studying and living his teachings, we can arrive at the understanding he had and live in and exemplify for ourselves the truths of the Upanishads. And Swami Vivekananda did not simply talk about that idea theoretically. He had himself actually gone through the whole process of dialog with Sri Ramakrishna, (MacPhail, 2013), intense work on himself to digest and absorb his truth, and such intense concentration on him as to actually become identified with the truth that Sri Ramakrishna stood for. At the time of Sri Ramakrishna’s death, he and Naren, the young Vivekananda, went into samadhi together (MacPhail, 2013, 587-599) and in that tremendously high state of consciousness, the very essence of Ramakrishna was, as it were, transferred to his disciple to be carried forward into the contemporary world, West as well as East, North and South. Out of such information we could well create a mystical cult or high-flying religion, with a deity or deities and a sacerdotal organization. In some of the later Upanishads we do find Hindu deities and hints of a devotional religion, the purpose of which was to support and inspire the central thrust of all the Upanishads: radical self-transformation from the most material of beings to the divine itself. True to his central conviction that all of humanity were heirs to the teachings of the Upanishads, Swami Vivekananda conveyed all that he had learned from Sri Ramakrishna in a way suited to our democratic and scientific times. Instead of external personalities, deities, or dogmas, he preferred to emphasize the potential of every single person he met and spoke to. Under the tutelage of Sri Ramakrishna he had experienced for himself the unfathomable depths of knowledge within himself and also known that that knowledge—that Upanishad, if you will—is the very essence of all of us. Don’t the Upanishads tell us, You are That, I am Brahman, This Self is Brahman, Brahman is Intelligence—or, to put it all together, All this is verily Brahman? There is not one single atom in the universe which does not contain the template, algorithm or fractal of Brahman, or ultimate, spiritual reality—and there is the possibility for everything, from the atom to the whole universe itself, to become aware of, realize, and fully manifest its true nature. As human beings, we have the capacity to be conscious of all of this and to work systematically towards realizing what we truly are as well as to live in that knowledge, reflecting its brilliance, beauty and transforming love on everything we taste, smell, touch, hear, and see. It is fully possible for us to go into our room and bring out from within us the Upanishads, as the swami exhorted his students at Thousand Island Park to do. Complete Works. 1964, Vol.7: Inspired Talks, Saturday, July 27th, 1895, 71. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama. Hereafter CW. The Message of the Upanishads I would judge that this is the inner secret that the Upanishad code contains. Expressed in that direct way, it can be and often is a bit surprising, even off-putting. Most of us are really not used to thinking in quite such absolute terms and feel bewildered when we are told that we are the divine itself. That, however, is the message of the Upanishads and what Swami Vivekananda learned from his intensive years of training with Sri Ramakrishna. If we crack the Upanishad code, we are presented with—ourselves! Ourselves as we really are, that is. In The Da Vinci Code, the hero goes through all sorts of wild adventures in search of the Divine Feminine, following all sorts of arcane clues, none of them leading anywhere in particular and, after all the cops and robbers, he discovers that She does not live in any particular place, but is rather an indwelling presence of unity and wholeness, healing all the scars and savagery we perpetrate on each other and on Her divine body, the universe. Swami Vivekananda made it clear again and again that we forget and ignore what he called Upanishadic truth at our peril. If we do not seek that truth and strive to live it in every movement of our life, we will be the losers in a big way. He makes it clear over and over that the ideals of the Upanishads are not mere intellectual formulas or dry philosophy, but living realities which, if we seek to know and become one with them, will respond to us, open up our minds and hearts to understand more fully, nourish us from within and shape us up into perfect vehicles to express them in our lives. They are enlivened, as it were, by a Mother heart which seeks us out, supports us and empowers us to prove their truth and express it in supremely gracious and constructive ways. In the Upanishadic line of thought, anyone who comes to know what Reality is actually becomes that Reality itself: Sa yo ha vai tat paramam brahma veda brahmaiva bhavati: He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman (Mundaka Upanishad, 3.2.9), and what we would nowadays call a hologram of that Reality, that is, an expression of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in and through the particular form we have and the circumstances we have been given to live in. In our own very little lives we know beyond all doubt that we are the universe itself, and reach out to embrace it with love. CW, Vol.2 (1971): Practical Vedanta II, 322-333. All of this may sound extremely counterintuitive and even irrational. Nevertheless, we also know the irresistible attraction of beings like Sri Ramakrishna, Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad and Laotse and all the great exemplars of spiritual truth, expansion of consciousness, and the joy that such expansion brings. They draw us to themselves willy-nilly and put us under their spell. Swami Vivekananda’s position is that these great human beings are but holograms of the Truth he is seeking to draw our attention to. It is like Sri Ramakrishna’s parable of the man with the tub containing dye. Whatever color people wanted their cloth to be, the dye would make it that. Many people came and had their clothes dyed and went away, happy, and contented. But there was an observer who understood just what was going on. When the man with the tub asked her, “What color would you like to have?” she replied, “I want the color that is in the tub.” Others were contented with one specific color, say one avatar or prophet, one tradition, one set of ideas—but the woman who had been observing wanted the color that could give all other colors, “that by knowing which all else is known” (Mundaka Upanishad, 1.1.3). That is the kind of “dye” we get from Upanishadic truth. From it we get all other truths, all other colors, all other possibilities, permutations, and combinations. If we can get hold of that Truth, we can relate to all truths, all people, all circumstances. And the beauty of it is, it is not some abstract idea or Lost Ark for which we have to journey to the bowels of the earth or the planets of outer space. It is what we already are. The Need of the Contemporary World for the Upanishads Swami Vivekananda was utterly determined to get this idea across to contemporary humanity. He knew how rapidly expanding our universe is, not only physically, but also emotionally, intellectually, and intuitionally. Even in his day, travel and communications were getting more and more rapid. Railway, ocean travel, telephone and wireless were realities and air flight and television only a heartbeat away. The principles of relativity and quantum mechanics, the theories that would radically change our way of looking at the world, were in the process of being formulated. He was aware of how cultures from the ends of the earth were meeting and interacting and understood that globalization had already begun and was about to take off exponentially. In this radically new world, the old shibboleths and dogmas simply would not do, nor would the more modern creeds of nationalism, empire, and survival of the fittest be a pattern that would make for global harmony. The world was in dire need of a philosophy and religion that could apply to all people, all cultures, all circumstances—and for him that could only be the religion of the Upanishads, based on the vision of humanity as embodied Spirit. Swami Vivekananda could feel within himself the restlessness and fear of the world as all its old boundaries came crashing down. He intuited the World Wars, and all that is probably yet to come in the same line and cried, “The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep? Let us call and call till the sleeping gods awake, till the god within answers to the call.” CW, Vol.7 (1964): Letter to Margaret Noble from London, 498.. His life’s work was to awaken his contemporaries to the age-old truth of their innate divinity and potential to bring it out, so that the hell of modernity could turn from “a land of competition, [into] a land of bliss, where there is perpetual spring, flowers bloom and butterflies flit about. The very world becomes heaven which formerly was hell. To the eyes of the bound it is a tremendous place of torment, but to the eyes of the free it is quite otherwise.” CW, Vol.2 (1971): Practical Vedanta II, 324-325. One might ask how Swami Vivekananda arrived at the idea that his inward-looking philosophy could possibly solve the serious problems facing the West today. To us Westerners solutions must be from the outside and urging us to know who we really are seems a bit remote from the issue. That is the basis on which Vedanta has been and is still being swept under the rug in the West, but Swami Vivekananda had an answer to that objection. The inner Self is not just a remote idea. It is like an atom, which, the deeper you go into it, the more energy you find within and the tremendous connection with all other atoms throughout the universe. If, through following the proper path, you actually become that Self, you automatically become a force in the universe, coexisting and interacting harmoniously with the entire universe. You lose all your little neurotic limitations and agendas, your fears and hatreds, and move freely about, being what you are and making a contribution that no other atom could make, while at the same time knowing you are operating on the exact same plan as all others. Psychologically, you feel, “I am the universe”, “I am eating in millions of mouths, I am working through an infinite number of hands, I am living the life of the whole universe.” CW, Vol.2 (1971): The Atman, 251. . As and when we feel that way, can we hurt others? People with such knowledge are tremendously powerful, not necessarily in any obvious external way, but in their capacity to bring people together and to generate huge, powerful fields of love and cooperation. Clearly, if we make such knowledge our accepted cultural goal, there is likely to be a greater number of such people and therefore a force for good such as we have not encountered for quite a long time. As we wade deeper and deeper into the murky waters of materialism and imperialism it seems likely that a time will indeed come when large numbers of people will have had done with our present “operating system” and be ready to open a new page, as our European forerunners did some five hundred years ago at the time of the Renaissance. Where the Message Is Hidden Having said all this, another question naturally pops up: Where can we find all these ideas in a way we can understand? It is all rather overwhelming and difficult to follow. And, one would add, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda don’t necessarily help too much, on account of their somewhat arbitrary arrangement of the swami’s teachings. Sister Gargi (Marie Louise Burke) did yeoman work in placing Swami Vivekananda’s evangel of the Self in its proper historical and intellectual setting, but that work has not yet been reflected in the usual presentations we get of the swami’s thought. This need has recently been met by the work of Swami Medhananda (2022). Then again, the works of Swami Vivekananda that we have are his spontaneous outpourings in a number of different settings, to each of which he responded differently, according to the needs of his hearers. It can be, therefore, rather difficult to trace a definite line of thought to its conclusion or to relate what one finds in one source to what he said in another. He himself had badly wanted to write a book in which he would spell out systematically his whole message, but unfortunately his early death at thirty-nine deprived us of what would have been a Rosetta stone helping us to decipher his classes and talks as we have them now. I myself felt much frustrated in my attempts to put this whole thing together, and finally hit upon the idea of collecting in one place all his ideas on the mantras of the Upanishads, so I could get an overview and take stock of his whole thinking on the theme. I finished this work in 1981 and was very forcibly struck by how everything held together seamlessly and at the same time very compellingly. Looking at the whole fabric of his commentaries on the Upanishads, I felt that I could discern an overall pattern holding all the mantras together and presenting us with a very comprehensive approach to the inner meaning of the Upanishads. There was a perfect ladder of ascent and descent, with a harmonious relationship between them, as well as a beautiful interweaving of ancient insights with the solutions Swami Vivekananda has to offer for our immediate circumstances and problems. As I mulled all of this over and meditated on it, I began to understand that this pattern could explain a whole lot of my own experience of life and also seemed to fit with many other ways of looking at reality that I was studying, such as the Kabbalah, Jung’s psychology, and quantum mechanics. I tapped into the Vedantic idea, particularly elaborated by Swami Vivekananda himself, that the universes we live in are created by our own minds and I began to realize that what was before me was a rather extensive, deep, and perennial worldview which, as far as I am concerned, is the best I have found yet in helping me understand how everything holds together and can work together for good. Vedanta, like other perennial traditions, accepts that there are several worldviews, each of them valid from the standpoint of the persons holding it. I therefore do not make any claim that what I discovered in Swami Vivekananda’s commentaries on the Upanishads is the one and only way of looking at things, but I do say that it is the most all-encompassing I have found yet. Further study has led me to believe that there is support in the traditional scriptures of India for this contemporary yet very old worldview, while it jibes beautifully with what is known as the New Science and the more serious aspects of the New Age. As far as I personally am concerned, this study has brought me to where I want to be. Now all I have to do is realize it and make it actual in my day-to-day living. A Practical Proposal What I would like to do, if you give me permission, is to present to you as and when opportunity arises, the structure of Swami Vivekananda’s contemporary Vedanta, studying the “code” or “blueprint” and building it up brick by brick, which means going through his commentaries on the most important mantras of the Upanishads and absorbing their message, for our own personal use and also to build up a clearer idea of how everything hangs together as a whole. If I get the opportunity, I would like to work through this plan and build up with you the picture of Vedanta that I see Swami Vivekananda’s work presenting. The second point is that when I say Upanishads, I also include the Vedas and Bhagavadgita. This is in line with what Swami Vivekananda himself did. By Vedas he often meant the Upanishads, which are, of course, the later and more mature parts of the Vedas themselves. Regarding the Bhagavadgita, Swami Vivekananda said on several occasions that the Gita is the best commentary on the Upanishads and deserves to be considered an Upanishad itself, though the orthodox don’t accept that. In addition to compiling his commentaries on the Vedas and Upanishads, I have also compiled his commentaries on the Gita and have found that some of the verses there are the most compelling and even transfixing of all of the commentaries Swami Vivekananda made. My presentation, then, will include materials from the Vedas proper, the Upanishads and also the Bhagavadgita. A further practical remark: Swami Vivekananda did not comment on every single mantra of the Upanishads or Gita, far less the voluminous and abstruse Vedas. As most of his work was extemporaneous, he tended to focus on certain mantras which obviously he considered important for his hearers. It is interesting that those he chose for India were often different from those he chose in the West, suggesting that he understood the difference in requirements of his two “students”. We do, of course, have several classes on the Upanishads and Gita which he gave in the West and in which he translated and commented on most if not all the text, apparently reading from it. These materials serve as a baseline for the other quotes we find so frequently in his off-the-cuff lectures, classes, and discussions. In and through this total database, there are a few mantras which stand out from the others because of the frequency with which Swami Vivekananda quoted them, or the novelty and originality of what he had to say. These mantras include the classical four great sayings: You are That, I am Brahman, this Self is Brahman and Brahman is Intelligence, and also what might be called the great saying of all great sayings, All this is verily Brahman, which includes within it all the other four. Here he was building on the tradition started by Sri Shankaracharya (8th century, CE), the great systematizer and organizer of the Vedantic tradition, including the Vedas and Upanishads. In that capacity he picked out what he considered the key or great saying (mahavakya) of each of the four Vedas: The Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Atharva Veda. This was the traditional sequence of the historical appearance of the Vedas and of their authority and importance. He therefore presented the array of four mahavakyas in the order of their “seniority”. This became the canonical backbone of the major import of all of the Vedas. Vivekananda’s commentaries on all these mahavakyas stand out in his work by virtue of their frequency of appearance and the depth of study he brings to bear on all of them. Judging by the same criteria, I include in the category of mahavakya the statement, All this is verily Brahman, a statement that seems to include all the other four, though originating in one of the very earliest Upanishads, the Chandogya Upanishad, 3.14.1. This quote was not included by Sri Shankaracharya, but the plethora of comments and interpretation by Vivekananda convinced me of its importance in our present age. More recent studies (Long 2013, MacPhail, 2013; Medhananda, 2022) have brought out the content and history of what has been an expansion of understanding about the ability to expand of levels consciousness and the emergence of the “All”, including the physical world, which was such a prominent feature of the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and the thinking of Vivekananda. To my mind, these five mantras form the backbone of Vedanta and certainly all that Swami Vivekananda had to say. Around them cluster another ten mantras to which Swami Vivekananda paid particular attention, and on which, along with the great sayings themselves, I would like to focus as the core curriculum, as you might say, of what I want to present. I propose, therefore, to look at his commentaries on a total of fifteen great Vedantic mantras drawn from the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavadgita, comprising a very comprehensive picture of reality. Now, don’t get the idea that I am going to talk nothing but philosophy. There will be philosophy, of course, but a holistic philosophy that includes all levels of existence, from the atom to the human to the avatar and beyond. Swami Vivekananda has seldom been called a philosopher because his thought is not so easily classifiable. His utterances are like Sri Ramakrishna’s, containing the whole world within them and challenging us to find the universe in a grain of sand (William Blake, 1803?) or, failing that—and better still—within our own hearts. It would be as if we were “printing out” their meaning in our lives in deeper and deeper levels and more and more precise ideas, words, and actions. There will be philosophy, there will be psychology, there will be yoga, there will be a summons to transcend yourself and move into a much larger cosmos than we have thought of as yet. There will, finally, be a summons to know that you are the whole of reality, not in theory but in actual fact. If you find any of that interesting, you will get something out of studying these materials. In and through these materials I will try to indicate the code that is holding it together, at least as I see it. It is not anything new, in a way—as I say, I believe it already exists in several other systems, including the Indian tradition—but it is expressed in very simple, democratic, psychological terms that make it much more accessible to many minds than elaborate pantheons of gods, arcane rituals, difficult myths and hierarchical codes of behavior. An Interior Psychology of the Progressions between the Mahavakyas Before closing this discussion, I would like to present a picture of how I have seen these important commentaries relate to each other. As I have already discussed, the core is created by the five great sayings themselves, four of which were related to each other by Shankara according to the Veda to one of which each mahavakyas belongs. This arrangement met the needs and questions of his contemporaries and is still extant. Nevertheless, in compiling the materials of Swami Vivekananda’s commentary on all of them, a more “psychological” arrangement came to my mind, which might perhaps carry more information about the overall process to present-day readers. I saw that in the defining statements of the five different mahavakyas there was a succession of focus from you to I to Atman, to Brahman itself and finally to Sarvam khalvidam brahma, the more or less contemporary vision of every designation and every fact as a direct expression of Brahman. In terms of relationship with not only Brahman itself, but also our habitual way of perceiving Reality, this is an unfolding progression, from what we perceive as exterior to us (you) and therefore limited , to the more subjective I, and from there the unfolding in our subjective world of the Atman or our perception of Brahman as the Whole within our experienced world, and then to Brahman itself, that which pervades the entire universe and any other universes that might exist. The fifth relationship is that of perceiving Brahman directly even within what we normally consider “external” and responding to it with the same reverence and relationship as we do when we are fortunate enough to have actually intuited the purely impersonal Brahman itself. As I read Vedanta, this progression is enshrined in what is called the chatushpad or four steps of the Atman in the Mandukya Upanishad, verse 2 (Radhakrishnan, 1953, 671). This system was enunciated by Sri Gaudapada in the 6th Century and became the backbone of what we might call “non-dual psychology” up until modern times, when Western materialism with its intolerance of more than one level of consciousness—the material world—seems to be taking over. In due course I hope to post my history of the chatushpad, which goes into the historical and psychological aspects of this whole worldview, including the evidence for the fifth level in the Common Era. The Relationship of You From a logical and experiential point of view the relationship you is one of otherness in all our relationships, not only between oneself and Brahman, but between the person conveying the mantra and the person to whom it is conveyed. In the Upanishad, the actual situation is indeed that: the older, wiser person is telling his young student that he is That and sending him off to investigate and experiment with the idea in several different ways. Here That is the word used, indicating the profound Reality that lies at the core of humanity and indeed all forms of creation. It is also conceived of as a level of consciousness that we can experience for ourselves that, while having no form at all we can ultimately experience as a direct reality, the consequences of which are infinitely vaster and comprehensive than our basic view that we are bodies separate from each other. In my doctoral thesis dealing with the interactions between the young Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna and utilizing the convention of the changing relationship between the exterior object (o) and the interior subject (s) at each level, I begin by attempting to indicate the ramifications of this primary attitude of materialism or total otherness (MacPhail, 2013, 364): Tattvamasi: You are That. Chandogya Upanishad, 6.8.7 YOU: OTHER Materialism/Humanism (Gross): Subject and object completely different and exclusive of each other (Mirroring each other): The vertical lines between the subject, s, and the object, o, indicate an apparently insurmountable barrier between them (p.364). This relationship is so common in our present society that it can be regarded as our default that we totally take for granted. We might call it the entry level basis of the whole structure of consciousness. But in the Upanishad system it is also the entry level into the whole interior exploration. And You are That is the first call into the inner exploration that we are challenged to take up. This is the definitive mantra relating to the relationship of you. In my overall work with these sayings in Vivekananda’s literature I also found two other mantras that relate to you and which received considerable attention from Vivekananda. I therefore related them to Tattvamasi, as they introduce, I feel, two different ways of thinking about the whole first level exercise. These two verses are: Conceptual Mahavakya Experiential Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti: Truth is one, sages call it variously. Rig Veda, 1.164.46 Tattvamasi: You are That. Chandogya Upanishad, 6.8.7 Tvamaham: I am you. Kaushitaki Upanishad, 1.2. I see the Rig Vedic mantra as a kind of conceptual evaluation of the innate duality that permeates even the thinking of sages, or people who have a higher, or deeper knowledge about the nature of things and their interrelationships. Despite the fact that they are sharing the same internal experience of reality, their verbal and conceptual formulations of it are invariably different. I see this as the built-in basis of dualism and as often as not, the mechanism behind the irreconcilable differences between us that we seem to love to use as an excuse to distance ourselves from “the other”, leading to quarrels and misunderstanding. In my paper Vertical hierarchy and the invariance principle in four models of consciousness/spirituality (2017) I demonstrate how it is possible, by focusing on the structure behind any statement, to find commonality despite quite different contexts. As the mantra that “kicks off” the first entry in the array of mantras Vivekananda’s commentary on Truth is one is one of the very longest, exploring all the highways and byways of this fundamental conceptual obstacle to correct vision of reality and how to overcome it through transformation of consciousness. Regarding what I am suggesting as the experiential mantra related to You are That I offer a mantra perhaps less well known than the other two mantras: I am you, from the Kaushitaki Upanishad. In contrast to the other two mantras the commentary is one of the shortest in the whole series, but the emotional intensity of its content that asserts the identity of I and you is quite overwhelming, indicating how ardently Vivekananda sought to resolve all the barriers to human acceptance and oneness right at the very root of the whole progression. The Relationship of I As already indicated, I see I as the step beyond you in the development of one’s relation to Brahman. And the “flagship” quote here is Ahambrahmasmi: I am Brahman, (Brihadaranayaka Upanishad, 1.4.10). This is a forthright statement of relationship with Brahman that implies, according to my doctoral thesis: Ahambrahmasmi: I am Brahman Brihadaranayaka Upanishad, 1.4.10 I: MYSELF Approach to the Interior/Yoga (Subtle): Subject and object seeking and finding common ground (Fulfilling each other): In this symbol, the two “wings” around the subject, s, and the object, o, indicate that the subject and object still retain “fields” of their own, but now intersecting and therefore interacting with each other in a way that shares features of both (p. 364-365). Conceptual Mahavakya Experiential Sarvamaham: I am the universe. Chandogya Upanishad, 7.25 Ahambrahmasmi: I am Brahman. Brihadaranayaka Upanishad, 1.4.10 So’ ham: I am He. Isha Upanishad, 16 The relationship here brings the subject and object into more direct relationship which is, however, not the final statement in Vedantic thinking. As in the “you” level, there are other mantras that throw light on this relationship: Sarvamaham: I am the universe, which suggests a more or less conceptual vision of the relationship, and So’ ham, I am He, that focuses on a more interior and personal approach, a more immediately experiential and personal understanding that helps to flesh out the meaning and impact of the basic mahavakya. III. The Relationship of Atman In Vedanta there are at least two relationships beyond you. This is the stance of Classical Advaita. More recently, a third relationship has been introduced beyond you. I shall present this in due course. Immediately after I comes the inner opening beyond the characteristically human relationships of and you and I—the Atman, which is considered to lie more deeply within the psyche. It is, in fact, Brahman becoming more visible, emerging, as it were, from behind the more overtly humanistic relationships we have been looking at thus far. III: Ayamatma brahma: This Self Is Brahman Mandukya Upanishad, 2 ATMAN: THE UNIVERSAL SELF Beginning Awareness of the Self/Maya (Causal State): Subject and object transcended in the Self (Cognation that unites the subject and object in a common Ground): Here we find the same interconnection between s and o, but now in the context of a circle, symbolizing the complete picture which we are beginning to see dimly, and which gives to the s/o relationship a significantly deeper dimension, particularly a connection to the whole, which is a much greater field or dimension than previously in which the relationship can be worked out (p.365).This is where the Atman is first perceived, when matter and ego are transcended. The material I selected from Vivekananda’s commentaries as cohorts of the third mahavakya relating to the Atman are: Conceptual Mahavakya Experiential Achchhedho’yamadahyo, etc. Uncuttable, not burnable, etc. Gita 2.24 Ayamatma brahma This Self is Brahman Mandukya Upanishad, 2 Sat-chit-ananda Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Nrisimhapurvatapaniya Upanishad, 1.6 * On the left is a passage from the Bhagavadgita that indicates the “non-qualities” of the Atman, the classical apophatic way of distancing oneself from the characteristics we normally think of in relationship to our identity. This is an essential step in accessing this level, because the Atman is by definition that which transcends and is experienced as other than the criteria and qualities we have defined in the previous two levels. On the experiential side I have inserted Existence-knowledge-bliss, which Vivekananda states is the Essence of the Human Soul. CW, Vol.2 (1971): The Cosmos, pp.215-216. This commentary is by far the longest and most detailed in the entire work, as Vivekananda supports his equation of this mantra with those that deal with the Soul, making clear that by soul is meant that which has no direct connection with physical or emotional soul, but lies behind them and “directs” the manifold activity in an integrated and harmonious way. Overall in this collection of materials, the mantra Existence-knowledge-bliss is brought forward far more often than the term Brahman, a fact that stood out for me as I worked my way through the whole collection of materials. IV: The Nature of Brahman Itself At this juncture, the physical and emotional worlds, as well as even the Atman (Brahman as experienced in human life) “stand down” to reveal Brahman itself. Although said to be beyond speech and mind (Chandogya Upanishad, 6.13.12), Vedanta finds words and metaphors to indicate the nature of the experience of Brahman. Prajnanam brahma: Brahman Is Intelligence Aitareya Upanishad, 3.1.3 Here Vivekananda’s translation of prajnanam as intelligence is rather idiosyncratic. The more common translation is consciousness, which he also uses occasionally. The context in which this shloka is found in Vivekananda’s work is almost invariably his exposition of the twinned processes of evolution and involution, which he holds as invariably an interactive unit and related to the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi, the transcendental experience beyond the limiting elements of the previous shlokas. The attainment of the consciousness of Brahman is classically the end point of the whole program of self-transformation, after which all of the previous levels are considered to be either non-existent or not worthy of further attention. But later Advaita had to face the issue of how to live in the “normal” world after reaching this transcendental “acme” of the whole process. As I discuss in A History of Consciousness in Vedanta (in process) this was accomplished over time, as worked out in Advaita as well as related to the Tantric viewpoint of the process Vivekananda himself experienced nirvikalpa samadhi, the pinnacle of the transcendental path as the “evolutionary” (matter to spirit) part which he described thereafter in his poem The Song of Samadhi CW, Vol.4 (1972), 498. and the subsequent involutionary (spirit to matter) part in The Hymn of Creation. CW, Vol.4 (1972), 497. This indicates an evolution in interpretation of this mantra, but does not change the nature of the peak experience itself. IV: THE NATURE OF BRAHMAN ITSELF Full experience of the Self and seeing all as a witness Levels I, II, III as a Holovolution/integrated evolution and involution: Subject and Object in Dynamic Balance (subject and object weaving into each other): What we have here is the extension from Level III. We have the circle, symbolizing the Whole in which this whole process is now (more consciously) taking place; we have s and o, which no longer have their independent “wings”, or areas of function which can create dichotomy of any sort. On the contrary, we see only the central, overlapping area from Level III, which suggests a final harmony of the s-o (subject-object) or any other dichotomy (p. 366). Finding shlokas indicating two related “takes” on the central subject is rather tricky: Conceptual Mahavakya Experiential Purnamadah purnamidam That is full, this is full, and from the full the full is derived. The full being subtracted from the full, the full verily remains. Isha Upanishad Peace Chant Prajnanam brahma Brahman is intelligence Aitareya Upanishad,3.1.3 Ihaiva tairjitah, etc. They have conquered heaven in this life who are firm-fixed in sameness. Bhagavadgita 5.19 The key words here are fullness (purnam) and sameness (sama) both of which are key elements of the nirvikalpa or Turiya (fourth) experience and its aftermath. The highly intuitive fullness element does suggest a more conceptual element (though stood on its head according to ordinary criteria of “conceptual”), while the attainment of sameness or same-sightedness is an experiential process that allows the seer to perceive not simply the part in the whole, but the whole in the part without any sense of conflict or discomfort. On the contrary, this highly advanced vision is a final answer to all notions of conflict and counterintuitivity. Vivekananda dwells at considerable length on this magnificent verse from the Gita. V: EVERYTHING IS BRAHMAN V: Sarvam khalvidam brahma: All this is verily Brahman Chandogya Upanishad, 3.14.1 THE ALL, THE WHOLE Removal of all Forms of Duality/Holism (Turiyatita/Vijnana): Subject and object, the two basic “players” in any situation, are seamlessly interrelated, effortlessly interacting without any notion of conflict or difference (Subject and object embody each other): Subject and object not only flow along with and into each other, but contain an element of each other, and endlessly come up with syntheses and integrations which go beyond anything we can imagine in the previous levels of consciousness. Furthermore, the responses of a person in the fifth level have a tremendous power to illuminate the material world, to enhance and promote creativity, discernment, and the ability to enter the fourth level. Here we are in a “Universal Operating System” that affects and integrates all of the other levels of consciousness, p.366. In connection with the two “exponents” of this worldview, the content and emphasis of Vivekananda’s commentaries led me to the following: Conceptual Mahavakya Experiential Sarvatah panipadam, etc. He works through all hands, sees through all eyes, walks on all feet, breathes through all bodies, lives in all life, speaks through every mouth and thinks through every brain. Bhagavadgita 13.13 Sarvam khalvidam brahma All this is verily Brahman Chandogya Upanishad, 3.14.1 Tvam stri tvam pumanasi, etc. You are the woman, You are the girl, You are the boy. You are the old man tottering on a stick. You are the young man, walking in the pride of his strength. You are all that. Svetashvatara Upanishad, 4.3 It is difficult to assign labels like conceptual or experiential here. I have assigned the materials from the nature of Vivekananda’s commentaries and placed the Gita quote under conceptual because it takes the position of the fifth and applies it to all manner of processes we perceive in daily existence. In the Experiential column we directly perceive all possible forms and understand that they are real and totally interconnected with each other because they are all manifestations/direct perceptions of the same Reality. The message here, from different points of view, is that whatever we see, moving or unmoving, is the ultimate level of consciousness, the whole in every single part. And what we see and how we see it depends on our ability to get beyond limiting adjuncts and interact with a Whole, not the limitations we have allowed to reduce our perception, support resentments and competition and all manner of minimizations and exploitations that endlessly lead to hatred, competition and mass killing. Conclusion I hope that this bringing together of my earlier work on the nature of consciousness as understood in the interaction of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda and the work Vivekananda has done to convey the meaning of the mahavakyas of the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavadgita has served to deepen our understanding of the process that interconnects them. In short, I have relied on the classical four steps (chatushpad) of the Atman put forward by the early non-dualists and in addition a fifth “step” that has been appearing over our conscious horizon during the Common Era. This is a step that opens out a vista of an inclusive, integrated Whole that offers resolution of past exclusions and the ability to readily interconnect all possible levels of conscious and conceptual understanding into a harmonious, workable, universal method of understanding and interdisciplinary communication. Bibliography Blake, William. 1803? Auguries of Innocence. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650 Gayatriprana, Sister. 2020. Swami Vivekananda’s History of Universal Religion and Its Potential for Global Conciliation. Cook Communication, Elgin, IL 60123. Lulu Press. Long, Jeffery D. 2013. “Ultimate Complexity: A Hindu Process Theology.” In Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities, Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher, eds. Dordrecht, etc.: Springer. MacPhail, Jean. 2010. The Great Sayings of Vedanta, Contemporary Style: Vivekananda’s Interpretation of the Mahavakyas. Department of Philosophy, UNM, Albuquerque. https://independent.academia.edu/JeanMacPhail MacPhail. 2013. Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness. Doctoral Thesis, Viadrina University, Frankfurt on Oder, Germany https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-euv/frontdoor/index/index/docId/72 https://independent.academia.edu/JeanMacPhail MacPhail, Jean. 2017. “Vertical hierarchy and the invariance principle in four models of consciousness/spirituality.” In Journal for the Study of Spirituality, 7.2:99-113. http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yjss20/current?nav=tocList https://independent.academia.edu/JeanMacPhail Medhananda Swami. 2022. Swami Vivekânanda’s Vedantic Cosmopolitanism. Oxford University Press. Radhakrishnan, S. trans. 1953. The Principal Upanisads. London et al, Unwin Hyman. Shapiro, James (pen name of MacPhail, Jean). Unfolding Universes New York: Parabola, Vol.26, no.4: Winter, 2001, p.6. https://independent.academia.edu/JeanMacPhail PAGE 11