Swami Ranganathananda

Introduction to
The Message of the Upanishads
THE CHARM AND POWER OF THE UPANI$ADS
Table of Contents
The Principal Upanisads...................................2
From Obscurity to Prominence...........................5
What the Upaniads Contain..............................7
Satyasya Satyam............................................8
Inquiry into the 'Within' of Nature.....................10
Science and Religion.....................................11
Sruti versus Smrti.........................................14

The Message of the Upanisads [Published by Bharatiya

Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai] is a study, verse by verse, of three of
the principal Upanisads, namely, Isha, Kena, and Katha. The
first contains eighteen, the second thirty-five, and the third
one hundred and nineteen verses. Though constituting a
small portion of the total Upanisadic literature, they yet con-
tain a lucid exposition of all the essential ideas of this im-
mortal literature.
Scholars are divided as to the date of the composition of
the Upanisads. Many of them are agreed, however, that most
of the principal Upanisads belong to the period prior to the
advent of Buddha in the seventh century before Christ. There
are over two hundred Upanisads, many of them sectarian in
character and palpably post-Buddhistic and even post-Sank-
aracarya.
 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

The Principal Upanisads

The principal Upanisads are accepted to be those which
Shankaracarya (A.D. 788-820) chose to comment upon; they
are ten in number and are enumerated in the Indian tradition
as follows: Isha, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Mundaka, MandUkya,
Taittirlya, Aitareya, Chandogya, and Brhaddranyaka.
According to some scholars, Sankara also commented on
an eleventh Upanisad, the Svetashvatara. In his commentary
on the Brahma-Sutra, he refers to four more, namely, Kausi-
taki, Jabala, Mahanarayana, and Paingala.
1. The Isha Upanisad embodies in its very opening verse
the central theme of all the Upanisads, namely, the spiritual
unity and solidarity of all existence.
2. The Kena illumines the nature of knowledge by pointing
out the eternal knower behind all acts of knowing, and puri-
fies man's concept of ultimate reality of all touch of finitude
and relativity by revealing its character as the eternal Self of
man and the Self of the universe.
3. The Katha holds a special fascination for all students of
the Upanisads for its happy blend of charming poetry, deep
mysticism, and profound philosophy; it contains a more uni-
fied exposition of Vedanta than any other single Upanisad; its
charm is heightened by the two characters of its dialogue,
namely, old Yama, the teacher, and young Naciketa, the stu-
dent.
4. The Prasna, as its name implies, is an Upanisad of
questions; each of its six chapters comprises a question asked
by each of a group of six inquiring students on various as-
pects of Vedanta, and the answers given by their teacher, the
sage Pippalada.

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

5. The Mundaka, after classifying all knowledge into para,

higher, and apara, lower, and describing all science, art, lit-
erature, politics, and economics—in fact, all positive know-
ledge, the knowledge of the changeful many—as apara, and
boldly including even the holy Vedas and all sacred books in
this category, proclaims that one knowledge as para ‘by
which the imperishable changeless reality (of the One behind
the many) is realized’. And the Upanisad sings in ecstasy the
glorious vision of the One in the many.
6. In the brief compass of its twelve verses of condensed
thought, the Mandukya surveys the whole of experience
through a study of the three states of waking, dream, and
dreamless sleep, and reveals the Atman, the true Self of
man, the Turiya or the Fourth, as it puts it, as pure con-
sciousness, eternal and non-dual. It proclaims in its second
verse the infinite dimension of man in a pregnant utterance—
one of the four mahavakyas or ‘great utterances’ of the Up-
anisads: ayam citma brahma—‘This Atman (Self of man) is
Brahman’.
7. The Taittiriya, after majestically proclaiming that ‘the
knower of Brahman attains the Supreme’: Brahmavidapnoti
param, describes the five koshas or sheaths that enclose and
hide Brahman, and demonstrates the technique of piercing
these sheaths of relativity and finitude with a view to reach-
ing the infinite and the eternal at the core of experience. It
also provides a scientific definition of Brahman as ‘That from
which all these beings are born, by which, after being born,
they live, and into which they merge when they cease to be’.
8. The Aitareya establishes the spiritual character of the
Absolute through a discussion of the nature of the Self of
man, and proclaims this truth in another of the four ma-

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

havakyas (V. 3): Prajñanam brahma—‘Brahman is pure Con-

sciousness.’
9. The Chandogya introduces us to charming truth-seekers
like Satyakama, Svetaketu, and Narada, and outstanding spir-
itual teachers like Aruni, Sanatkumara, and Prajapati.
Through several illuminating teacher-student dialogues, the
Upanisad helps us to discriminate the reality of being from
the appearance of becoming. In a brief utterance of deep
spiritual and philosophical import, treated as another of the
four mahnvakyas, it sings in refrain the divinity of man: tat
tvam asi—‘That thou art’. It prescribes a knowledge of this
innate divinity of man as the one remedy for the deeper ills
of life (VI. 8. 7): tarati gokam atmavit—‘The knower of the
Atman crosses all sorrow’. In its profoundly human episode of
the discipleship of Indra under Prajapati, it instructs us in the
true nature and technique of man's spiritual quest and the
blessings that flow from spirituality. It is an impressive ac-
count of man's spiritual education, his growth from worldli-
ness to spirituality. It points out the limitations of material-
ism as a philosophy of life and the evils that flow from it.
10. The Brhadaranyaka, the longest of the Upanisads, is,
as its name implies, a big (brhat) forest (aranya) of philo-
sophical thought and spiritual inspiration. Four outstanding
personalities illumine its pages—two men and two women—
Janaka, the philosopher-king, Yajñavalkya, the philosopher-
sage, Maitreyi, the deeply spiritual wife of Yajñavalkya, and
Gargi, the vacaknavi, the ‘gifted woman speaker and philo-
sopher’, who is foremost among the questioners of Yajña-
valkya in philosophical debate. The Upanisad majestically ex-
pounds, through its fascinating dialogues conducted by these
outstanding and other lesser personalities, the central theme

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

of all the Upanisads, namely, the divinity of man and the

spiritual solidarity of the whole universe in Brahman. It con-
tains another of the four mahavakyas (I.4.10), namely, aham
brahma asmi —‘I am Brahman', besides the ayam atma
brahma of the Mandukya already referred to. It dares to
characterize Brahman as ‘the fearless’, and presents its real-
ization by man as the attainment, here and now, of the state
of absolute fearlessness and fullness of delight.

From Obscurity to Prominence

It goes to the eternal credit of Sankara that, through his
masterly commentaries on the principal Upanisads, he
brought out of obscurity this immortal literature, as also the
great Bhagavad Gita, and made them accessible and intelli-
gible to a wider audience; and that audience has been stead-
ily widening ever since, aided by the contributions of sub-
sequent commentators, thinkers, and sages, until, in the
present age, thanks to the techniques of modern western
civilization, the whole world has become its actual or po-
tential audience. Apart from the great western orientalists,
whose translations and expositions brought this and other
books of the Indian tradition to the attention of scholars in
East and West, it was from Swami Vivekananda, the most au-
thentic voice of Vedanta in the modern age, that vast masses
of men and women in both the hemispheres became drawn to
the spiritual charm and rational strength of this literature
and to a recognition of its relevance to man in the modern
age. In his lecture on ‘Vedanta and Its Application to Indian
Life’, the Swami says (Complete Works, Vol. III, Eighth Edi-
tion, pp. 237-38):
‘Strength, strength is what the Upanisads speak to me
from every page. This is the one great thing to remember,

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

it has been the one great lesson I have been taught in my

life. Strength, it says, strength, O man, be not weak. “Are
there no human weaknesses?”—says man. There are, say
the Upanisads, but will more weakness heal them, would
you try to wash dirt with dirt? Will sin cure sin, weakness
cure weakness.... Ay, it is the only literature in the world
where you find the word abhih ‘fearless’, used again and
again; in no other scripture in the world is this adjective
applied either to God or to man.... And the Upanisads are
the great mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough
to invigorate the whole world. The whole world can be
vivified, made strong, energized through them. They will
call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and
the down-trodden of all races, all creeds, all sects, to
stand on their feet and be free. Freedom—physical free-
dom, mental freedom, and spiritual freedom—are the
watchwords of the Upanisads.'
Sankara's commentaries on these Upanisads, especially on
those of their passages pregnant with philosophical and spir-
itual import, are masterpieces of philosophical discussion il-
lumined by deep spiritual insights. His masterly handling of
the Sanskrit language in these commentaries gives us a prose
which is marked by brevity and vigour, simplicity and poetic
charm.

What the Upaniads Contain

In the Upanisads, we get an intelligible body of verified
and verifiable spiritual insights mixed with a mass of myths
and legends and cosmological speculations relating to the
nature and origin of the universe. While the former has uni-
versal validity, and has a claim on human intelligence in all
ages, the latter forswears all such claim. All positivistic
knowledge contained in any literature, including religious lit-
erature, is limited and conditioned by the level of contem-

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

porary scientific knowledge. Modification, and even scrap-

ping, of much of this knowledge due to subsequent advances
has affected the truth-validity of much of man's literary her-
itage, including his religious and philosophical ones.
The spiritual insights of the Upanisads, however, are an
exception to this tyranny of time. Subsequent scientific ad-
vances have not only not affected their truth-value but have,
on the contrary, only helped to reveal the rational basis of
their insights and enhance their spiritual appeal. This is no
wonder, because these insights are the products of an equally
scientific investigation into a different field of experience,
namely, the world of man's inner life.

Satyasya Satyam
By sheer speculation on the meaning of the facts of the
external world, the Vedic thinkers had earlier arrived at a
unitary conception of the universe, at a materialistic mon-
ism, through their concepts of avyakta, indeterminate
nature, or prana cosmic energy. But the culminating point of
their discoveries was the spiritual unification of all experi-
ence in the Atman or Brahman: Brahmaivedam visvamidam
varishtham—‘All this manifested universe is verily Brahman
the Supreme’ (Mundaka, II. 2. 12); idam sarvarm yadayam
atma—‘All this (manifested universe) is this Atman’
(Brhadaranyaka, II. 4. 6); and tat etat brahma apurvam ana-
param anantaram abahyam, ayam atma brahma sarvanubhuh
—‘This Brahman is without a prior or a posterior, without in-
terior or exterior, this Atman is Brahman, the experiencer of
everything’ (ibid., II. 5. 19).
If everything is the Atman or Brahman, the universe of
name and form cannot be an illusion. The Upanisads consider

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

it as maya; but this does not mean illusion. Maya is a mere

statement of fact, what we are and what we see around us.
It refers to the inner contradictions involved in our experi-
ence of the world and in our knowledge of it. These contra-
dictions will remain, say the Upanisads, so long as we remain
at the sensate level, so long as we fail to take into account
the Atman, the Self behind the not-Self, the One behind the
many. Yet, all our experiences and knowledge in the sphere
of maya are experiences and knowledge of the Atman, com-
ing through the sense-organs. Hence they are not illusory, but
true. Man travels, says Swami. Vivekananda, not from error
to truth, but from truth to truth, from truth that is lower to
truth that is higher. Hence the Upanisads describe the world
of the not-Self as ‘truth’ and the Self or Atman as ‘The Truth
of truth’. This is conveyed in a significant passage of the
Brhadaranyaka (II. 1. 20) :
Tasyopanisat satyasya satyamiti; prana vai satyam; tesam
esa satyam—‘Its (Atman's) intimate name is the ‘Truth of
truth'; the cosmic energy (prana) is, verily, truth; and This
(the Atman) is the truth of that’.
Elucidating this Vedantic idea, Swami Vivekananda says
(Complete Works, Vol. V, Seventh Edition, p. 272):
‘There is really no difference between matter, mind, and
Spirit. They are only different phases of experiencing the
One. This very world is seen by the five senses as matter,
by the very wicked as hell, by the good as heaven, and by
the perfect as God.’

Inquiry into the 'Within' of Nature

Pointing out the reason for this change in the field of
search from the external to the internal, which occurred in
ancient India, and its significance for human thought, Swami

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

Vivekananda says (ibid., Vol. III, Eighth Edition, pp. 330-31):

‘Just as the Greek mind, or the modern European mind,
wants to find the solution of life and of all the sacred
problems of being by searching into the external world, so
also did our forefathers; and just as the Europeans failed,
they failed also. But the western people never made a
move more, they remained there; they failed in the
search for the solution of the great problems of life and
death in the external world, and there they remained
stranded. Our forefathers also found it impossible, but
were bolder in declaring the utter helplessness of the
senses to find the solution. Nowhere else was the answer
better put than in the Upanisads: yato vaco nivartante
aprapya manasa saha—‘From whence words, unable to
reach, come back reflected, together with the mind’ Tait-
tirlya, II. 4); na tatra caksurgachati na vaggacchati—‘here
the eye cannot go, nor can speech reach’ (Kena, I. 3).
There are various sentences which declare the utter help-
lessness of the senses, but they did not stop there; they
fell back upon the internal nature of man, they went to
get the answer from their own soul, they became intro-
spective; they gave up external nature as a failure, as
nothing could be done there, as no hope, no answer, could
be found; they discovered that dull, dead matter would
not give them truth, and they fell back upon the shining
soul of man, and there the answer was found’.
Posing the question how the West, which has undoubtedly
been in the forefront of advance in several fields of know-
ledge from the time of the Greeks, could lag behind India in
this field of inquiry these thousands of years, Professor Max
Müller answers (Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy,
London, 1894, p. 7):
`But if it seems strange to you that the old Indian philo-
sophers should have known more about the soul than

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

Greek or medieval or modern philosophers, let us remem-

ber that however much the telescopes for observing the
stars of heaven have been improved, the observatories of
the soul have remained much the same.'

Science and Religion

All science is the search for unity. Vedanta discovered this
unity in the Atman; it followed its own method relevant to
this field of inquiry. But it illustrated its conclusions with
whatever positive knowledge was available at the time. In
recent centuries this knowledge has been advanced radically
and vastly by modern science, the impact of which on Ved-
anta, however, has been most wholesome. In fact, Vedanta
hopes for and welcomes further radical advances in modern
science by which its own spiritual vision of the One in the
many may be corroborated by positive scientific knowledge,
so that the spirituality of science and the spirituality of reli-
gion may flow as a united stream to fertilize all aspects of
human life. Referring to this fact and hope in his 'Paper on
Hinduism' read at the Chicago Parliament of Religions on 19
September 1893, Swami Vivekananda says (Complete Works,
Vol. I, Eleventh Edition, p. 15):
`All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the
long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of
science today, and the Hindu is only glad that what he has
been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught
in more forcible language and with further light from the
latest conclusions of science.'
Vedanta is thus both religion and philosophy. As religion, it
discovers the truths of the inner world, and fosters the same
discovery by others; and as philosophy, it synthesizes this sci-
ence of the inner world with the other sciences of the outer
world, to present a unified vision of total reality, and to im-

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

part to human life and character depth of faith and vision

along with breadth of outlook and sympathy.
Religion, according to Vedanta, is supersensual knowledge;
it is not supernatural, but only supersensual. Vedanta does
not speak of any supernatural revelation. What lies within
the sphere of the senses is not the concern of religion; nor
has it the competence for it, says Vedanta, for that is the
field of the positive sciences, the verdict of which will always
hold in this field in preference to the verdict of religion. 'Not
even by a hundred statements of the Sruti (body of supersen-
sual knowledge, or scripture), can fire become cold', says
Sankara, because it goes against what has been ascertained
by sense experience and positive knowledge. On the other
hand, the positive sciences have no authority in the su-
per-sensual field of experience. They overreach themselves
when they pronounce judgements on subjeots like soul and
God; they may, and often are, competent to provide hints
and suggestions; but the inquiry itself is the concern of an-
other science, the science of religion. Clarifying the position
of these two types of sciences, Swami Vivekananda says
(Complete Works, Vol. VI, Sixth Edition, p. 81):
‘Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world
just as chemistry and the other natural sciences deal with
the truth of the physical world. The book one must read to
learn chemistry is the book of (external) nature. The book
from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.
The sage is often ignorant of physical science because he
reads the wrong book—the book within; and the scientist
is too often ignorant of religion, because he, too, reads
the wrong book—the book without.’

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 The Message of the Upanishads – Swami Ranganathananda

Sruti versus Smrti

The Upanisads are an impressive record of this 'reading of
the book within'. The scriptures of every religion are such re-
cords. But all of them, except the Upanisads, contain also a
good bit of extraneous matter, not only myths and legends
and cosmological theories, which the Upanisads also contain,
but also a large number of rules and regulations, with their
do's and don'ts, to guide the individual and collective conduct
and behaviour of their respective followers. The significance
of these latter being merely local and temporary, they are
not capable of universal application and are not relevant for
all time; the fundamental message of all religions, however,
derive from their central core of essential spiritual truths
which are universal and for all time. The Upaniqads are the
only sacred books which addressed themselves exclusively to
the discovery of these essential spiritual truths and to lead-
ing man, irrespective of creed and race, to their realization
in his own life. Indian tradition refers to the Upanisads,
therefore, as Sruti, as contrasted with another class of reli-
gious literature known as Smrti, including the Dharma Sastra,
to which it wisely left the work of forging social rules and
regulations in the past, as it would leave it to the political
constitutions and social consciences today
ef

Source: Pages 1-8 of the Introduction to The Message of the

Upanishads by Swami Ranganathananda. Mumbai. Bharatiya
Viaya Bhavan. 2Nd Edition 1971.

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