I have been reading the discussions in this thread with great interest. I find that Shri tks sir, has learnt the Upanishads for many years under learned Gurus and has even "understtod"what Iswara is. Such a goodluck cannot be expected by everyone.
As an ordinarily orthodox brahmin I have been trying to learn the Taittiriya Upanishad from an elderly person knowing sanskrit well and having lot of religious books with him. When we came to the end of the bhriguvalli, I had some doubts which the teacher was not able to clarify. I reproduce it below:
The jivatma exclaims, in the upanishad, when it has already shed the first four of the five "koshas" —
"aham annam annam adantaaadmi"
meaning "I am the food; those who do not give food, I eat (them)"
Sankara in his commentary gives a round-about sort of explanation but still comes to the point that the Atma which is very near to attaining identity with the Absolute Parabrahman, says that It will eat those who do not give food to others coming to them for food etc.
I have heard one upanyasam by one guru saying that this is a warning that the Parabrahmam itself will eat those who do not offer food to IT by doing Parishechanam and praanaahuti before eating their meals.
Apart from thelaughability of such interpretations, I have the following doubts which the knowledgable members here may kindly clarify:-
1. Why should an aatma, at the verge of uniting with the Parabrahman, think of such mundane things?
2. Is it that even at that stage the jiva is desirous of "warning" and threatening others not to do certain things or to comply with certain other things?
3. From the statements preceding this [imaan lokaan kaamaannee kaamaroopyanusamcharan] it will be seen that the (nearly) liberated jeeva has the ability and freedom to travel across the different worlds and take whatever form it likes. Does the upanishad tell that even at such a stage the jeeva will be concerned with food?
4. My teacher said perhaps it might refer to some very mysterious and secret teaching. If so, I would like learned members like Shri tks who have understood Iswara himself, to elucidate.
Sri Sarma -
Welcome, I thought you left and stopped reading the forum messages.
First, let me tell you in categorical terms that I have not realized anything (yet)
I am a student like everyone else is.
But I do want to share that when we start out hearing Puranic stories and stories in epics like Ramayana we have a sort of child-like notion of God - it is often an enhancement or replacement of our Parents who provided for us unconditionally when we were young, nurtured us, punished us to make us do the right things, cared for us, loved us and overall were this magical figures that represented everything we needed for our survival. As we grew up, we recognized that they are not infallible after all but we still needed that infallibility in our life and a notion of God is but a natural extension. A temple or some image helps us with role-play with this infallibility.
Some question this notion of God and in my view that is healthy. It is easy to question but harder to come up with answers that is consistent and cogent.
If we tended to make up over own things we either become a confused person hopelessly trying to retrofit a 'greatness and infallibility' to a set of ideas we don't understand clearly or we end up declaring that there is no such thing (calling themselves Atheists or Agnostics which sounds a bit better).
If terrible things were to happen to good people who associate goodness with doing 'poojas' etc without understanding they can also 'turn against God' in their anger and in my view they form a class militant Atheists. If someone has serious and unresolved issues with their father/mother and raised in a very strict family, they assert their individual freedom by denigrating all they learnt as just 'blah blah' without understanding.
By continuing our study of Upanishads which do not require us to believe anything - unlike other great religious theologies - our notion of God is replaced by notions of Isvara (which is in my view is not a good translation of God). This notion does not require one to believe Iswara unconditionally (which means suspending all our reasoning faculty). Instead it requires us to *understand* Iswara since the notion is not the childhood notion anymore.
We do need Shraddha (faith until later ratified by understanding) and must really want to get the knowledge, otherwise it is not accessible. When one gets it, there is no need for proof because your realization is the proof. However this realization is not some kind of experience. If you solve a problem by better understanding we feel that the knowledge suddenly made the problem go away or made us look at a problem differently. It is like the famous Eureka moment but it is not mystical.
The ideas of Jivatma, Paramatma are but feeble attempts by various authors to explain the gaining of knowledge but in the process end up confusing many people. Some people like to use 'self' and one with capital 'Self' and add to the confusion. There is but only one Atma.
I dont like to go into depths of discussions here in a forum for several reasons. It is hard to get all these teachings even when one is sincere and spends large amount of effort. A forum posts is but a feeble attempt. And in this part of the Discussion forum anyone can make foolish and denigrating comments and out of respect to such teachings I dont like to go into depths.
Also most TB readers are silent readers and rarely call out comments even when they are by someone from another faith wanting to denigrate these teachings.
As you correctly observed the literal translation of most of this teaching is meaningless and silly. Knowledge of Sanskrit is not enough to understand this. In this
post I tried to explain why the correct context is important.
Let me make a feeble attempt at a context that is relevant here.
We have all made a conclusion about our nature based on our physical form, mental capacity, profession, family, experience, emotions etc. All these are 'pointers' (some who have studied computer science can appreciate the usage of pointers) to describing our 'I-ness' the sense of individuality but does not describe the 'I-ness' itself. The reason is that you can change your name, your experience, acquire new family, even change your form (these days there are people that go through trans-gender operations). The pointers can be changed but the 'I' is not changed. Since all these pointers have limited existence in space and time we conclude that 'I' itself is subject to these changes, creation and destruction.
A sweeping assertion by Upanishads is that 'You are not what you think you are'.
The real you (not the pointer to you) is the cause of this entire universe or multiverse.
The above assertion is hard to swallow because we are so convinced that we are the items we objectify namely all these pointers.
When this realization happens there is a loss of individual self.
Now coming to your question.
At the moment this realization set is - a person (still feeling a sense of individuality being awakened by this realization) with ego is totally in awe!
At that moment of knowledge and wonderment the person is at loss of words. The false identification with the pointers - body -mind-sense complex evaporates and the intellect of the individual is subdued. Limitation that the individual believed is gone.
Suppose someone tells you that you actually own billion dollars worth of gold in your home and that you are now richest man alive in this planet and have been rich all along but simply did not know. Think about the emotion and multiply that by billion times - that is what this verse is trying to convey.
'I am food, I am food' : This proclamation is conveying the experience that I , 'the subject' am the 'cause' of this world of Objects (food for example)!
The subject-object one-ness is further expanded to say - I am the eater of the food.
I have given you a little context of how to interpret the verses. I could give 4 week classes even with my limited knowledge most of which would be setting the right context to understand the verses.
You need to find a teacher who knows more than Sanskrit in my humble opinion.
Hope this helps. I dont intend to follow up more on this but will answer clarification type questions.
Best Regards
