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Tat tvam asi 1,2 (THAT you are) The pantheist’s self-description ‘I am
IT’ expresses the experience, thus knowledge of the actual identity of ‘I’
and ‘IT’. ‘I’, indeed ‘I am’, ‘warts and all’,3 represents a,
indeed any and all of the actual universe and ‘IT’ is taken to mean GOD as ground and all of its emergent (i.e.
the actual universe).4,5 Since ‘I am IT’, hence not different
from IT, I do not operate, have no separate identity, hence existence.6
That means that I have (or am) no individual soul, spirit or life; for,
because ‘I am IT’ I am all the former.7 When ‘I
am’ emerges as identifiable
reality, so does GOD (as identifiable
reality). When ‘I am’ dies, so does GOD (as
my ‘I am’).8,9 Nothing remains of my ‘I am’ save my past affects10
(i.e. acting as conditions) upon the Universe ≈ GOD.11 © 2019 by
Victor Langheld |
1. In the Chandogya Upanishad
(VI.8.7 ff) the full context of the tattvamasi statement indicates that the ‘you’
referred to is the ‘you’s’ essence (i.e. its atman as identical with
the universal ATMAN) rather than its whole
existence as ‘You, warts and all.’ There it is stated: “That which
is the subtle essence (i.e. the root of all) this whole world has for a self.
That is the true. That is the self. THAT ART THOU, Svetaketu.”
And so on… Whether or not the essence of the world and the whole world as the
essence’s local elaboration are identical is open to question. The radical
pantheist believes that it is. The Vedantin, like Shankara, can’t admit that it is for he needs a dualist
world to achieve political leverage. For the juvenile Chandogya
tattvamasi operator samsara (i.e. the world) is ≠
atman/Brahman (or the Buddhist nirvana, so Nagarjuna).
The earlier statement: ‘This whole world is Brahman’ (Sanskrit: sarvam khalv idam
brahma) is ambiguous in that it doesn’t specify which Brahman
is being referred to, i.e. the nirguna (unqualified) or the saguna
(qualified) Brahman. 2. Taken out of context the three words tat, tvam, asi, none of which is defined/qualified, are unconditional (albeit fuzz words). Hence, out of context tat equals, is identical with tvam
and therefore appears to support the radical pantheist view. Within their
context they are conditional,
hence not identical, In other words, in context tat
≠ tvam and which supports the
henotheist view. In practice that means for the conditional tatvamasi believer the sacred (or divine or spirit)
and the profane (or secular or body) are different. For the unconditional tatvamasi believer the profane (i.e. the secular)
is identical with the sacred (i.e. the divine). 3. ‘I am THAT, warts and all’ is the unqualified, hence radical pantheist, hence
adult view ‘I am actually God.’ The ‘I am THAT minus the warts and all’ is
the qualified henotheistic, hence
juvenile/adolescent (i.e. Jesus’) view: ‘God or the Kingdom of God is within
(what is not the kingdom i.e. the body)’, whereby ‘warts and all’ is what is
not THAT, and which is experienced as unpleasant, sorrowful. The latter
necessitates flight from the body (as painful, evil sheath) in order to
achieve union with, or return to Brahman/GOD
and which promises eternal delight to some, unconscious non-being to others. 4. This is the early Middle Age Christian radical
pantheist, hence unqualified GOD
view (adapted from Plotin) of God as natura naturans,
first proposed by the Irish monk John Scotus Eriugena
(later excommunicated), later upgraded by Spinoza (threatened with lynching
by both Christians and Jews). 5. God as ‘ground of emergence’, whereby he deemed the
ground as different from its emergents, thus
proposing a qualified theism, was put forward by Meister Eckhart, and for
which he was excommunicated and, possibly, murdered. 6. Every ‘I am’ is not different from, hence identical
with the existence as such (hence the ‘I am’ of the whole (universe). This is
the final, the adult insight and which the Upanishads did not reach, or
reached and then rejected for political reasons. 7. In other words, while ‘I am’ I am the soul (i.e. en-souled), the spirit (i.e. spirited) and life = GOD itself (albeit in situ). 8. Death = demerging happens if and when ‘I am’, that is to say, my identifiable
reality, extinguishes. 9. In other words, as the Buddha discovered, ‘I am’ is
non-abiding, transient because conditionally arisen. That is to say, each and
every ‘I am’ serves as one GOD = Universe condition. 10. Elsewhere called karmic residue. 11. In short, I live and die like a leaf on a tree.
While alive I feed the tree and so am one with the tree. When I fall off the
tree and die the tree continues to exist together with my no longer
identifiable input/affect to its survival. |