The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads: 2.1 Swami Krishnananda.

 


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Saturday 26 September 2026, 06:15.

Books
Vedanta&Upanishads
The Essence of the Aitare - 1.ya and Taittiriya Upanishads: 1.3
Chapter 2: The Atman
Swami Krishnananda.

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Chapter 2: The Atman

This final substance is constituted of the essence of everything, and it is our very Self. It is called the Atman. It is the Atman because it is the root substance of all things which are in the position of an effect. The Atman is the substance of everyone and everything. It is the Total Substance of all created beings, and so it is called Brahman. The Total Substance is Brahman, and the same thing conceived as the essence of particular beings is known as the Atman. Even as there cannot be a cause behind the final cause, there cannot be an Atman behind the Atman, for the very basic substance is what is called the Atman. The substance should be ultimate, and the Atman is such. The ultimate in us is the Atman. The ultimate in the cosmos is Brahman. There cannot be anything other than this Universal Reality.

The Aitareya Upanishad proclaims that the Atman, in the beginning, was the all; and it has become all this universe. The concept of the universe is also a difficult thing to entertain in the mind unless we analyse the universe into its very components. The universe is manifested out of this Total Substance, Brahman, which is the Atman, or the Self, of the universe. So the total effect came out of the Total Cause. From Brahman came the universe.

Now, something coming from something else is also a difficult thing to understand. What is the procedure of the world coming out of the Ultimate Cause? What is the relationship between the effect and the cause here? There cannot, in fact, be a vital distinction between the effect and the cause. Our aspirations would be meaningless, the search for reality would be baseless, and there would be no function of thought as self-transcendence if we were not vitally connected with the cause. Every activity in the world is the effect moving towards the cause by various degrees of self-transcendence. The very presence of the moral urge to overstep ourselves to a higher cause or purpose is a proof of the fact that there is a living contact of the cause with its effect.

While the effect has come from the cause, it is not disconnected from the cause. This is one principle laid down at the very beginning itself. The universe seems to have descended in such a way that it has not isolated itself from the Absolute vitally. There is no vital disconnection between the effect and the cause. There is some sort of a relation always. There is an inscrutable relationship, 'anirvachaniya sambandha', between the effect and the cause. There is not an absolute identity, because there is a manifestation. It is not an absolute manifestation, because we can see our relationship with the cause. This relationship between God and man, the Creator and the universe, the Absolute and the relative, is unintelligible. This relationship is the beginning of all cosmological questions, the theories of creation and doctrines of every kind. Once creation is admitted as a fact of empirical experience, everything that devolves from it is also accepted. We are only to accept the fact of the creation of the universe, and we are made at once to accept everything else also, automatically. There is a gradual evolution by an increase in the density of manifestation at lower levels. The Absolute never loses hold of the universe.

The Atman alone was. “Atma va idam eka evagra asit, nanyat kin cana misat,” says the Aitareya Upanishad at the very commencement. The Atman existed as the unparalleled Being, and it became the cause of the manifested elements. We have the great division of the elements as ether, air, fire, water and earth, in all their densities or levels of expression. There is a causal condition, a subtle condition and a gross condition. This was manifested. But the Absolute is never disconnected from them at any time; it always maintains a lien over everything that it has created. It enters the great objects of a cosmical nature, and this is what we call the immanence of God.

The Creator does not stand as an extra-cosmic substance unrelated to its creation. The Upanishad rules out totally any coming of a fresh effect from the cause. The immanence of the cause in the effect is admitted. It is the immanence of the cause in the effect that creates an aspiration in us for higher values. When we ask for God, it is God speaking from within. The cause is speaking to itself from the bottom of the effect when there is an aspiration on the part of the effect to move towards the cause. This circumstance of the cause being hiddenly present in every effect is called the immanence of the cause in the effect. Then we say that God is present in the world.

The Creator is not outside the cosmos. He is not fashioning the world as a potter makes a pot or a carpenter makes a table. It is not like that. He is one with the substance of things in immanence, as clay is present in the pot out of which the pot is manufactured, or as wood is present in the table out of which it is made. So we cannot be isolated from the substance of the cause.

Thus, there was an entry of the cosmic substance into this cosmic effect. This is the first act of God—the entry of the Absolute into the relative in its universal fashion. He became the cosmic man, to speak in ordinary terms—the Maha Purusha or Purushottama. The Absolute, unrelated to the created universe, became the cosmic determining factor of the universe. This is the Great Being spoken of in the Purusha Sukta and the Satarudriya of the Veda, and the various scriptures which speak of the all-pervading or omnipresent character of God. We always speak of the omnipresent nature of God, by which we mean the cause is hidden in the effect—immanently present, and not isolated from the effect.


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