Vedic Literature | Ekamsat | Uddhava-Gita | The Atman
2. Some say they are twenty six; and others, twenty five. Still others speak of them variously as seven, nine, six and four; and some others as eleven.
3. There are some which hold that they are seventeen, sixteen and thirteen. It
behoves Thee to tell me why and on what basis sages have expressed such diverse
views about the primordial categories.
5. The reason for the people contending ‘What you say is not right; what I say is right’ lies in the three gunas of which people’s nature is constituted. The different mental constitutions of individuals arising from the gunas of sattva, rajas and tamas make views contrary to a person’s nature incomprehensible to that person.
6. It is from the modifications of sattva, rajas and tamas constituting the nature of men that the differences which cause controversies arise. So it is seen that when pacification of the mind and control of the senses are effected, controversies naturally disappear.
7. As the categories are involved mutually in their conditions as cause and effect, philosophers can enumerate them differently according to their points of view.
8. Whether it is as cause or as effect, it is seen that in each category all other categories are implicit, as is the case with mud and all objects made of it. The three gunas, the common cause of them all, are present in all the categories which, in turn, are involved in the gunas.
9. Whatever the philosophers say about the sequence of these categories and the difference in their numbers, we gladly accept as they are all equally reasonable from the different points of view.
10. Philosophers who accept a fundamental difference between Iswara and Jiva contend that, as the Atman in the Jiva is under the spell of Avidya (Ignorance) from eternity, the Atman can never free Itself from ignorance without the help of another centre of intelligence which is ever free from ignorance. That centre of intelligence is Iswara, and He is different from the Jiva.
11. As against this, some others contend that there is not even the slightest difference between the Jiva and Iswara. As for the Jiva being helped with jnana, jnana is a property of the sattva-guna of Prakrti, and it is, therefore, latent in Prakrti.
12. Prakrti is the state of equilibrium of the gunas - sattva, rajas and tamas. These gunas, therefore, belong to Prakrti and not to the Atman. They are the cause of preservation, creation and dissolution respectively.
13. Accordingly, sattva is identified with intelligence and knowledge, rajas with works, and tamas with inertia and ignorance. Time is the Lord’s power aspect causing agitation in the gunas of Prakrti, and what is called swabhava (Nature) is Mahatattva (the all-inclusive category).
14. I have given out the categories as nine – Purusa, Prakrti, Mahatattva, ahamkara and the five tanmatras.
15. The tattvas I have revealed are eleven. They are the five organs of knowledge like seeing, hearing, etc, the five organs of action, and the mind that supports both.
16. The enumeration of tattvas as five refers to the five gross elements that are the objects of hearing, touch, taste, smell and sight. The five forms of action such as motion, speech, evacuation, regeneration and physical labour are not tattvas or categories, but functions of the organs of action.
17. At the beginning of creation, Prakrti of which the causal state and the manifested state are its constituents becomes activated by its gunas of sattva, rajas and tamas, and evolves into the multitudinous universe. But the Purusa, the Supreme Spirit, immutable, is the witness-consciousness of Prakrti in the form of the manifested universe.
18. The evolutes of Prakrti like Mahatattva rendered potent by the consciousness of Purusa and sustained by Prakrti combine together to manifest the Brahmanda or the Cosmic-Shell.
It is implied that the Brahmanda, being the effect of the categories, has been involved in the said categories.
19. There are some who reckon the categories as seven taking into account the five tanmatras (subtle elements), the Jiva – the individual self and the Atman that is the support of both. From these seven categories are evolved senses, vitality and the like.
20. There is another view that there are only six categories comprising the five gross elements and the Paramatman. According to this view, the Paramatman creates the universe with the five elements that evolve out of Him and then enters into it as the Jiva. In this view, the Jiva is part of the Paramatman.
21. There is a school which holds the categories to be four being fire, water, earth and the Atman, the first three evolving out of the fourth.
22. There is another view that the categories are seventeen consisting of the five gross elements, the five subtle elements (tanmatras), the five senses, the manas (mind) and the atman.
23. Those who hold that the categories are only sixteen accept the above enumeration except that the atman is taken as the mind itself. Some others consider the categories only thirteen consisting of the five elements, the five senses, the mind, the Jiva and the Paramatman.
24. In the view of the categories being eleven are enumerated the five senses, the five elements and the Atman. In this view, the Atman includes the mind and Iswara, too. In the view that holds them to be nine, the root Prakrti, its seven evolutes and the Atman are taken into account.
25. In this way, sages have expressed various views about the number of
categories. The purpose of such enumeration is not so much the identification of
the categories exactly as to distinguish the Purusa from the categories. Each
view has its own justification and reasonableness. Whatever wise men say is
always meaningful.
27. Oh all-knowing One! It behoves Thee to remove this serious doubt of mine by Thy persuasive dialectic.
28. Both the knowledge and ignorance of the Jiva spring from Thy power, Thy
Atman-Maya whose functioning is known only to Thee and to none else.
30. With the help of the three gunas, my Maya generates differences in objects and the ways of their apprehension. All the ever-changing conditions of effects can be brought under the three heads – the Adhyatmika, the Adhidaivika and the Adhibhautika. They relate to the Self, the divinities and the creatures in that order.
31. Take eye-sight as an example. The organ eye is adhyatma; the forms and colours visible are adhibhuta; and the aspect of the deity in the eye is the adhidaiva. Without the power of the deity in the eye, the physical eye cannot see. So, these aspects of eye-sight, namely, organ, object and deity go together, though separate. The same triune division holds good in respect of all the senses like hearing, touch, taste, smell, etc.
The atman or the ‘I-consciousness’ is the original being in whose consciousness all these sense-combinations function. That atman is independent of all these combinations and the deities. The atman is the self-luminous and self-conscious light in which all other entities are revealed. The atman is thus different from the body and its functions.
32. The cause of all the delusive experience of divisiveness is ahamkara (ego-sense) which, in the three aspects of sattva, rajas and tamas, is evolved from Mahatattva, itself an evolute of Pradhana (Prakrti), by the action of Time which is the principal factor causing the agitation of the gunas and the evolution of the categories.
33. The Atman is the self-conscious effulgence which reveals Itself and all
objects. Still there is a great dispute as to what really exists and what does
not. But all this is relevant only on the acceptance of the reality of
differences. One accepts the reality of differences, though unreal, when one has
turned away from Me, even as one in the state of dreaming accepts the reality of
the objects of the dream while dreaming, though one realizes the falsity of the
dream objects in the state of one’s waking consciousness.
37. The mind of the dying man, swayed by his own actions and their impressions, thinks intensely on experiences he had in life, on what he had seen, heard, and passed through. Consequently he feels, at the time of death, that he is entering a new realm that has manifested by his intense thought, and leaves the old body. On rebirth, with the coming of the consciousness of the new body, there is complete oblivion of the old body and its history in the world.
38. On account of the intensity of attraction felt for the new body for whatever reason, the memory of the old one is completely effaced. Death means this complete forgetfulness of the old body and its affairs by the Jiva.
39. Oh generous one! The acceptance of a new body by the Jiva and its complete identification with it is called birth. How this happens is found in the examples of dreams and reveries.
40. As man does in these states, the Jiva becomes completely oblivious of the old body and gets identified with the new one. The identification is so absolute that the Jiva forgets its pre-existence and comes to believe that it has come into being with the new body alone.
41. By the creative power of the mind, which is the sole support of all faculties like the senses, the threefold divisive experience arises in the atman. This experience consists of the sense of ‘within’ oneself, of the sense of ‘without’ oneself, and of the objects experienced in the ‘without’. This bears analogy to the dream-experience in which the self sees many non-existent objects as the non-self outside of oneself, on account of the creative power of the mind.
42. Oh dear one! Caught up in the imperceptible movement of Time, the bodies of beings constantly come into existence and perish. Ignorant people do not perceive this subtle process.
43. The flames of fire, the flow of water, the fruits of trees, etc are ever subject to change. In the same way, Time subjects the bodies of all to the process of change by way of aging.
44. Though the flame is ever in change, men may say it is the same flame. The flow of water in a river is continuous; yet men may speak of it as the same water. In these cases, resemblance is mistaken for identity. Similarly, ignorant men think and speak of the man of today as the same as of yesterday, though he has long ceased to be.
45. Even in the case of an ignorant man, he (the spirit within -atman) is not really born as the result of the tendencies arising from karma, nor does he die as he (the atman) is immortal by nature. It is just like fire arising by the rubbing together of wooden pieces. Fire is latent ever in the fire-sticks. The rubbing or the separation of its adjuncts, the two pieces of fire-sticks, only helps or hinders its manifestation.
46. Conception, fetus, birth, infancy, childhood, youth, middle-age, old-age and death are the nine stages of the growth and decline of the gross body, and not of the spirit.
47. All these states, high and low, the products of the imaginative faculty, are of the body. But by identification with the body, the Jiva takes them upon itself. Just a few men overcome this identification, by the grace of the Lord.
48. Seeing the death of the father’s body and the birth of the son’s, one can easily infer that one’s own case is similar. The atman which is the knower of the birth and death of the body and which is the one without a second cannot itself be the subject of these processes. The seer can never be the seen.
49. Just as a man who observes the growth of a plant from its seed and its decay is different from the plant, so also is the atman, knower of the body and its transformations.
50. The ignorant man, incapable of distinguishing the atman from the body which is an evolute of Prakrti, identifies himself with the body and gets entangled in the objects of the senses, and consequently in the cycle of birth and death.
51. By the force of tendencies generated by karma, the ignorant Jiva get the bodies of rishis and Devas if the sattva is the binding element, of asuras and men if rajas is the dominant element, and of evil spirits and brute creation if tamas happens to predominate.
52. Just as persons who witness dance or listen to music, dance or sing within their minds in tune with the artistes through identification, so the Jiva, though by nature actionless, is drawn by the intellect (buddhi) to behave like itself by identification.
53. In water that is in ripples, trees reflected in it are seen to bend and be moving. Similarly, to the whirling eyes, all panoramas seem to be whirling.
54. Oh Uddhava! Just as the pleasures experienced in dream and a reverie are only a ‘seeming’, so are such experiences of the Jiva in samsara.
55. Just as for a sleeping person the obsession of dream experiences, which are the products of his continuous brooding, will continue so long as the sleep lasts, so also until one is awakened into Truth, the experience of samsara will continue.
56. Therefore, O Uddhava, never run after treacherous sense enjoyment with abandon. Know that it is the want of awareness of the Atman that is the cause of this delusion of the mind.
57-58. An aspirant for the spiritual summum bonum might be subjected by evil men
to abuse, insult, ridicule and calumny, might be beaten, imprisoned, deprived of
livelihood, spat upon, urinated upon, persecuted for his faith, or might fall
into any dangerous situation. In all such conditions he should, without getting
shaken from his high spiritual elevation, remain calm with the Self as the
support, looking upon all these experiences as brought about by one’s karma.