Isha Upanishad - Super school - Auroville - Isha Upanishad 701

Date - 5.02.2003

You will notice that in the first three verses there is a description of the Lord, in the verses four and five you will find a change from the Lord to the Brahman. I had told you three important words in the Ishopanishad, Brahman, Purusha and Ishwara.  The first three verses refer to Ishwara, in these two verses we have the description of the Brahman that is to say you will find the word ‘It’ instead of He. In the first three verses the Lord is referred to as He. Brahman is referred to as ‘It’, because Brahman as I told you means that essence.

The essence which spreads out everywhere, if you have essence of rose and you have beautiful drink of rose water then the essence of rose spreads into the entirety of water. It is the same essence and fragrance as the original essence. So that which spreads out is the power, is the force of the essence. In the verses four and five it says,

“One unmoving that is swifter than Mind, that the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing passes beyond others as they run. In That (It doesn't say in Him in ‘That’) the Master of Life establishes the Waters.”

“That moves and That moves not; That this far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.”

The Lord and the Brahman are one and the same and yet there is a difference. The Lord in the form of essence is the same everywhere but the Lord as the master, He presides over everything, therefore, there is some difference between Him and the others. This is a speciality of the nature of the Supreme. There is nothing, as I've said comparable to the Supreme because he is only One. If there was somebody else, you could have compared him with something else but he is incomparable and a speciality of the nature of that Reality is that it is at once essence and the Lord and as essence it spreads everywhere and there is no difference between the Brahman and all that is manifested. This is the speciality of what is called Upanishadic thought.

According to Upanishad there is only one Reality. This is the metaphysics of the Upanishads there is only one Reality. In Sanskrit there's a famous sentence ‘ekam eva adivityam’, ekam means one, eva is only, adivityam without the second, it is One only without the second. There is nothing in this world, which is not the Brahman. Everything in the world is Brahman; this oneness is the hallmark of the highest realisation.

When it is asked, what is the special meaning of spirituality? The answer is the sense of oneness, it is when you feel oneness then you are truly spiritual. So long as you feel difference there is still some kind of lacuna in your realisation and as yet difference is not absent. But this difference is a part of the nature of oneness, difference that does not oppose the oneness; such is the nature of the ultimate Reality. And in this particular verse number four, this identity is expounded, “One unmoving that is swifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life establishes the Waters.”

That moves and That moves not; is the same reality that moves and that does not move, it is the essence which always remains the same, it moves not, it is the essence which spreads out everywhere. There is no difference between the two that which is far is also very near that is within all this that also is outside all this, wherever you look out, whether you look out into the essence or you look out into the spreading of that essence everywhere, it is the same Reality.

 Now there are two important statements in these two verses, which you which you should relate, express more clearly.