Vedic Literature | Ekamsat | Uddhava-Gita | The Song of the Swan
2. When sattva becomes powerful in one, it manifests that disposition which generates loving devotion to Me, the Atman. By association with everything that is of the nature of sattva, the disposition of sattva is augmented, and from that, supreme devotion manifests.
3. The dominance of the mode of sattva which is the summit of human evolution will absorb the modes of rajas and tamas, and when these are so absorbed, the sinfulness that they generate (hampering the growth of bhakti) will also disappear.
4. Scripture, water, man, place, time, action, initiation, meditation, mantra, purificatory rites and practices are the ten factors that regulate the growth of the gunas of sattva, rajas and tamas in man.
5. Whatever wise men commend as spiritually beneficial should be understood as sattva in nature. Whatever they condemn should be understood as tamas, and whatever they ignore as rajas.
6. For the development of sattva, man should associate himself with the ten sattva developing entities and substances. From that arise devotion and knowledge, and bondage gets effaced.
The sattva developing entities and substances are considered to be the following – scriptures dealing with renunciation, holy water, men endowed with renunciation, solitude, early morning, the rites ordained by the scriptures, initiation into the knowledge of the Brahman, meditation on the Lord, pranava and other mantras for spiritual enlightenment, and samskaras for purification of the mind.
7. The fire generated by the friction of bamboos in a forest consumes the whole
forest and then subsides. Likewise, the fire of knowledge kindled by the
disciplines practised by the Jiva’s embodiment, which is a product of the gunas
of Prakrti, ultimately destroys that very embodiment, and then subsides.
10. When the mind is seized with rajas, it makes plans for ends to be achieved and difficulties to be overcome. Such brooding over material objects and their attractiveness generates intense and irresistible desires in the mind of the perverse man.
11. A man of uncontrolled senses, dominated by desires, and infatuated by the fast flow of rajas, performs actions whose final end is well known to him, to be nothing but misery.
12. Suppose a man becomes subject to the agitation of the mind by rajas and tamas. Even then if he, without getting disappointed and dispirited, strives to perceive the evil of such sense-slavery and makes an effort to control the senses, he will succeed with the help of added strength generated through reflection.
13. Without carelessness and indolence, he should master posture and breath and, with patience, direct his mind to Me and make it centred in Me.
14. I instructed My disciple Sanaka and his group of sages that the highest form
of yoga consists in drawing away the mind from all objects and concentrating it
wholly in Me.
Generally, it is said that the mind experiences pains and pleasures. In fact, it is the individual ‘I’ consciousness that experiences the pains and pleasures, the colours and smells, etc. The mind performs the function of receiving the impressions of the different senses and uniting them into phenomenal objects, and presents them as the sense for which pleasures and pains are objects, to the ‘I’ consciousness.
18. Though Brahma is the Lord of all divinities, the self-born and the creator of all beings, he could not grasp the real issue involved in the question, as his mind was too much involved in his creative activities.
19. Brahma thereupon thought of Me to know the answer for the question, and I appeared to him in the form of a swan.
20. Seeing Me there, Sanaka and the other sages came near Me and saluted at My feet. Brahma, standing before us, questioned Me who I was.
21. Now listen what I said, on being questioned by those sages who were enquirers after the Truth.
22. I said: ‘Oh holy men! How is the question ‘Who am I?’ relevant, when the Atman in reality is not many? On what basis can I, therefore, answer your question?
23. Even if the question is with reference to the body, it is meaningless. The bodies of all beings, including those of the Devas, are made of the five gross elements. These elements are not separate from their ultimate cause, the Brahman. So all bodies are basically the same and cannot be distinguished from one another.
The five gross elements are earth, water, fire, air and space. Every object in the world is considered to contain all the five elements, but in different proportions. This doctrine of every object containing five elements is called Quintuplication.
The gross elements are symbolic of solid matter, liquid matter, energy matter, and gaseous matter in relation to the first four elements, space remaining as such. They are the transformations of the subtle elements. Otherwise, the correlativity like that between hearing and sound cannot be explained. Reversely the correlativity points to their unitary origin in the ego and finally in the ‘I’ consciousness.
24. Whatever is grasped by the mind, words, eyes, and other sense organs, all that is Me. Know that there is nothing different from Me.
25. Oh children! The mind enters the sense objects, and the sense objects enter the mind as impressions. Both the mind and the body, with which the sense objects are in contact, are only the adjuncts which apparently clothe the Atman which is not different from Me.
26. The mind becomes bound by repeated contact with the sense objects, and the sense objects entrench themselves in the mind as sense impressions. Both these – the sense objects and their impressions – must be overcome by recognizing their identity with Me.
27. The states of sleep, dream and waking are modes of the individual consciousness only, and not of the atman. The Jiva is distinguished from them as the witness of these states.
28. As long as the atman is connected with the intellect (buddhi) by superimposition, so long will that connection involve the aspirant in the consciousness of the body and the mind, and the experiences gained through them. This involvement in matter can be overcome by recognizing the aspirant’s identity with Me in the fourth (turiya) state of consciousness which is the witness of the first three states.
29. The bondage to sense objects established by ahamkara – the identification with the intellect (buddhi) manifesting as the ego-sense – detracts the atman from the Truth, causing untold suffering. The wise man should, therefore, cultivate dispassion for this life of bondage and its experiences, and abandon all thoughts, dwelling in Me in the fourth state of consciousness.
30. So long as an aspirant has not overcome the sense of reality for the many, through discrimination and reasoning, he is only a dreamer, though all the while he is apparently awake. He is like a somnambulist who is asleep, but behaves like one awake.
31. All the entities other than the Atman are false. So the body and all the institutions associated with it, the ends and practices based upon the false multiplicity like the varnashrama-dharma, the duties and religious practices based on it, and the imagined heavenly regions attainable through these as stated in the Mimamsa are equally false like the objects seen by a dreamer.
32. He who enjoys through the senses the perpetually changing gross objects of the external world during the waking hours, he who enjoys the subjective impressions of the same world in dream; and he who in deep sleep withdraws from all perceptions and is aware of nothing external, is the one unitary self as proved by the continuing memory of all these states of consciousness. He is the witness and master of all these movements of the body and the mind.
That there is continuing memory of experiences running through all these states of consciousness is proof of the existence of a unitary witness-consciousness in the self.
33. In this way, let an aspirant come to the conclusion that all the three states of consciousness are the manifestation of the gunas of Prakrti brought about by My Maya within Me. Let him sharpen his sword of understanding by sound reasoning and the instructions of the wise. So fortified, let him cut asunder the very knot of doubt, and resign himself to Me residing in his heart.
34. Know that this world experience is false like the dream experience. It is as unreal as the ring of fire produced by a whirling fire-brand. The one Consciousness appears as the three states and their content. This world of diversity produced by the evolution of Prakrti is only the projection of Maya, My mysterious power.
35. Withdrawing attention from the false objective world, abandoning all ideas of enjoyment from any object of desire, and immersed in the bliss of Self, the aspirant should withdraw from all work and sit absolutely quiet. But the world of multiplicity rejected by him will be experienced now and then owing to the strength of tendencies acquired in the past. But it will not detract and involve him in any way, as he has lost the sense of reality for it. The memory will persist but only as of a dream, all through life.
36. Such a man of realization is not even conscious of the body with the help of which he has attained that state, whatever happens to it by the power of prarabdha, whatever it does, just as a heavily drunken man knows not whether the cloth he has worn is on his body or has fallen off.
37. So long as the prarabdha-karma that has led to the present embodiment lasts, the body will remain alive. But the man of knowledge, who has attained the state of samadhi, will view the body and the world connected with it as a man awakened from dream views his dream-experiences.
38. Oh learned ones! I have now given you the quintessence, the most hidden part of the teachings of yoga and Sankhya. Know Me to be Yajna (Mahavishnu) come here to instruct you in the science of the spirit.
39. I am the goal, the support, the sustaining force behind all great endeavours and values – Sankhya, Yoga, Truth in its absolute and relative forms, lustre, sublimity of beauty, fame and self-control.
40. All the great virtues (gunas) like equanimity, dispassion, etc have their support in Me, the Transcendent beyond the gunas of Prakrti, who depends on nothing else, who is the Self of all, and, therefore, the dearest well-wisher of all.’
41. Sanaka and other rishis of his group had all their doubts cleared by Me in this way. They then saluted Me, and extolled Me in great hymns.
42. After they had thus worshipped and extolled Me, I moved on to My realm, as Brahma and others looked on.