The Upanishad pantheist
The most famous pantheist proposition1
of the Upanishads was ‘tattvamasi’, meaning: ‘Thou art that.’
Nobody knows precisely what ‘tattvamasi’ means since the proposition
is incomplete2 and, moreover, none of the three words used are
defined.3 However, when read together with the
other pantheist propositions found in the Upanishads, such as ‘I am Brahman4’,
‘You too are Brahman’, ‘All is Brahman’ and ‘This whole world is Brahman’,
whereby the notion of Brahman is not cleanly defined,5 ‘tattvamasi’ could
be interpreted to mean that the real-time-form (as) fact is identical with
the unreal-timeless-formless (as) principle, i.e. that ‘All is One’.6 But no sooner had the Upanishad
pantheist spoken his ‘You are IT7’, that is to say, ‘You and IT
are identical’, intuition he began to realise its wholly unacceptable
implications, at least for ordinary folk.8 For he understood not
only that the ‘That’ is fundamentally incomplete9 but that the ‘thou’
actually means ‘warts and all’10,11 and that ‘art’ means
‘merciless survival (and selection) struggle.’12 What ‘tattvamasi’ actually
means in simple everyday terms is: ‘Everything has grown’, i.e. ‘You too are
Brahman!’13 And which proposes in wonder inspiring words14
what everyone already knows via painful experience. Common to the pantheist and the
henotheist, and indeed, to all living systems is the need to achieve
salvation.15 And every ‘growth’ effort is directed towards that
end. Alas, salvation happens via 2 modes15 and sequentially. So
the Upanishad pantheist merely attempts to describe the basic, thus universal
route to both salvations and the most efficient travelling practice.17 © 2018 by
Victor Langheld |
1. The proposition is a fantasy, a fiction, a
speculation, and off-the-cuff guess. 2. It is incomplete because there is no indication as
to whether or not is should be read as: ‘Thou art that in principle’ (or even ideally) or ‘Thou art
that in fact’ (i.e. in everyday practice, reality). This is crucial
since elsewhere in the Upanishads the notion of the nominalized atman, taken to mean: ‘animating breath’, elsewhere
translated and popularised as (universal) self, even soul, is brought into
play in order to separate the (universal, wrongly proposed as ultimate
reality) THAT from the everyday
(wrongly proposed as false reality or Maya) ‘thou-as-that’ to allow for both
a salvation (rescue from Samsara) haven and the politics that decide
compliant (hence good) behaviour leading to that salvation haven to emerge. 3. No details, i.e. specifications are given, hence
they stand as nirguna. 4. Brahman is a nominalization of the Sanskrit verb ‘brh’, meaning: to grow, expand and
so on, in a word, create. 5. From notional propositions offered in later
Upanishads the Brahman is best understood as two-fold, namely as either the
(formless, not yet characterised) principle (or template) of creation, hence
as ‘Creating-device-as-such;’ or as the saguna (i.e. formal) Brahman applying
itself as the nirguna (i.e. formless) Brahman in practice, therefore as
everyday fact. 6. In other words, the (the fully recursive) principle
(of creation) and its application (the created) are fundamentally identical.
Or, since the created emerges as a mere (transient) niche (i.e. differential)
application (or a wholly recursive fractal) of the creating principle, they
are basically identical, though the one appears and the other doesn’t. 7. That is to say, ‘You’ happen as recursive
differential application, hence fractal elaboration, of ‘IT,’ i.e. of the
principle (as template or algorithm) of application. 8. Meaning the not negative (thought often experienced
as negative) but highly complicated implications for attaining salvation. 9. See Brihadaranyakaupanishad 1.4.11: ‘Verily, in the
beginning this (?) was Brahman, one only. That, being one, did not flourish.’
That chapter offers several versions of the creation story. See also Genesis
1 & 2 and 3. 10. He realised that the Brahman, i.e. the IT that
creates, grounds (and so includes) all its local elaborations (i.e. its niche
appearances) and the good (i.e. profitable, i.e. beneficial for survival),
bad (i.e. unprofitable) and indifferent qualities that emerge from them. In
other words, in the nirguna Brahman (i.e. the creation principle or template)
no qualities exist save the potential to create (i.e. grow) the conditions
from which all qualities emerge, the type of quality created depending on
prevailing circumstances or conditions (to wit, the already existing niches). 11. ‘Warts and all’ means that all things-of-the-world
are Brahman, even the most unpleasant. That does indeed force a very
unpleasant rethink about Brahman (indeed of all gods). 12. Meaning: samsara 13. For ‘Brahman’ read: the principle of growth (i.e. of
creation), i.e. ‘THAT’ and ‘the grown (i.e. the created’), i.e. ‘this.’ 14. By so doing the Upanishad pantheist sets up the
salvation (from the horrendous interplay of Brahmans self-applications,
namely samsara) outcome and the route (as means or practice, i.e. Yoga) to
it. 15. . After all, ‘One
can’t tango.’ 16. That is to say, gloss over with fine priestly words. 17. The multiple creation stories (i.e. fantasies) of
the Upanishads describe the basic (mostly) negative human condition (i.e.
samsara) and the means of changing it to a more positive outcome, namely
(self-defeating = Brahman defeating) moksha (or mukti) as release18
from samsara. The descriptions are then universalised (as in a fairy tale or
fable) to serve as templates (i.e. as personal and social behaviour
engineering strategies) for more efficient human behaviour (as in goal
achievement) and survival, the latter being signalled with the various
intensities of happiness. 18. True release, i.e. moksha = freedom happens off the
front edge of the curve (as wave). True slavery happens towards the back of
the curve (as wave). False release, i.e. false moksha, so widely propagated as
the ideal of human achievement by the hereditary, hence closed system perpetuating,
meaning philosophically inbred Brahmins and self-serving Gurus in India,
means ‘merging’ with the fundamentally incomplete One (prior to all). The
goal (or ideal) of ‘merging with the One’, to wit kaivalya, plus the curse of the hereditary caste system that actually
impeded the emergence of creative talent (particularly from the caste of the sudras,
the majority population), and so of change, contributed significantly to the ‘dark
ages’ of India and from which it has only recently emerged, despite fierce
cultural torpor, by intervention from without, that is to say, with the unsolicited
help of non-Indian avatars such as the Moghuls and the English. |