The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads: 2. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Sunday 23. Aug 2026, 08:25.
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Vedanta&Upanishads
The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads: 2.
Chapter 1: Introduction -2.
Swami Krishnananda.

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If the aim seems to be an organisational unity—a thing that automatically comes out as a consequence of our ways of thinking—our duties also cannot be of a dissimilar character. If there is a purposive collaboration of the aims of life among mankind tending towards an organic perfection in itself, there cannot be different sets of ideals or duties before mankind, because duties or functions are nothing but activities directed towards the achievement of the purpose of humanity. The duties are as much related one to the other as the segments of the different aspirations of individuals are in respect of the total purpose of mankind.

As there cannot be an effect without a cause, a cause is logically implied behind the manifestation of an effect. This effect that we are speaking of today seems to be so large that the cause should be at least as large as itself. We have a single humanitarian psychology before us—man's mind working in its generality. It is not my mind or your mind that is working, but the mind of mankind as a whole aiming at human perfection, mankind's solidarity, and a peaceful existence. This is the way in which the total mind of mankind works, as an effect of a cause which is prior, naturally, to this effect of the total thinking of mankind.

We may have a doubt in our minds as to whether it is true that we all think alike. Surely, we are not always thinking alike. Each individual has a world under his own hat, as they say, but this is only an apparent diversity that we see. When we are brought deep into the levels of our basic aspirations and likes, we will realise that these differences vanish. I'll give you a concrete example. You are a patriot and lover of your nation, and there are millions of people inhabiting a nation, forming a nation, with each individual having his own or her own ideas, whims and fancies, ideals and ideologies. Suppose a war breaks out and the whole nation is threatened by a disastrous situation. One can imagine how all the individuals join together, gird up their loins, and aim at a single purpose. The isolated whims and fancies disappear at once.

This can be very easily proved by a little bit of deep thinking. When a common purpose is before us, the individual idiosyncrasies recede to the background. The individual whims come to the forefront only when the basic security is granted, not otherwise. If our life itself is going to be threatened, if the whole mankind is to be visited by a catastrophe, one can see how mankind joins together to avert this possibility. There would be no man-woman distinction, there would be no distinction of east, west, north, south, black, white, etc. People would, then, all stand up vigilant, wakeful to face this threat that is endangering mankind as a whole. This has been seen through the course of history, and we can see it at any time under similar conditions. We seem to be isolated only when the basic necessities are supplied to us, not otherwise. If the basic roots are shaken, then our different ideologies on the surface vanish altogether. All this is a little bit of thinking along logical lines for the purpose of coming to a conclusion as to the duties of mankind based on the aims or purposes of life.

Unless there is some kind of a connecting link lying at the background of human thought, the mind would not function in this manner. There cannot be any such thing as international thinking, unless there is a foundation for such a possibility. We know very well that diversities imply a kind of unity. Even two minds cannot communicate with each other unless there is a corresponding medium between the two minds. If one mind is absolutely cut off from another mind due to totally dissimilar characters, the one cannot communicate with the other. There would be no congress between one person and another person.

But we communicate our thoughts; we speak language which can be transmitted to another; we understand each other. The fact that we are able to know one another implies that we can psychologically come together. This, again, implies secondarily that this understanding or thinking or communication of thought between one and the other is an external indication of a basic unity between the two persons. There would be no such thing as the concept of two unless there is the concept of the one already behind them. One cannot imagine that there are two things unless one is able to synthesise these two things in one's consciousness. So, carrying this deduction to the larger dimension of humanity, or mankind as a whole, we seem to be floating on the ocean of a single Mind—the Mind of mankind, the total Mind of humanity, of which the individual minds are, as it were, drops. This Total Mind seems to be urging us forward for the realisation of a purpose.

With this introduction, we may now turn to the message of some of the Upanishads, the great legacy not merely of this country but of mankind as a whole, one should say. The Upanishads are the record of the experiences of superhuman thinkers, those who had risen above the level of ordinary mankind and beyond the limitations of sensory knowledge. It is the Upanishads that will guide us in answering these questions which we raised at the beginning. We cannot independently walk with the strength of our own legs in this arduous task of solving universal questions.

The Upanishads, among which we are to take up here one or two for the purpose of the analysis of the subject, are documents left by people who, by the power of their meditations, soared above the ordinary level of human thinking. They could plumb the depths of this Total Mind, to which we made reference just now. For us, the Total Mind of mankind is only a theory; it is a logically deduced, abstract something. We are inferring that there should be a Total Mind on the grounds that mankind seems to be moving towards the realisation of a common purpose.

But these masters were not merely theoreticians. They were those who thought in terms of that single Mind only. As I think through my mind, you think through your mind and each one thinks through one's mind, these masters were able to think through this Total Mind, so that their thoughts were not individual thoughts; they were thoughts of all people blended together into an amalgam of completeness. These are the Upanishads.

The reason why we feel like taking the aid of these thoughts of the Upanishadic masters in answering our questions is that they have gone to the very roots of the cause of all causes of these effects manifested as this world, this society, mankind, the efforts of mankind, etc. We speak of human life, human duties and human purposes and so on, without properly paying sufficient heed to the conditioning factors that underlie these phenomena behind mankind. Our minds work in a particular fashion, being conditioned by certain factors.

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Continued

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