The Life-Giving Self

Just as children babble on aimlessly about things they do not understand, so we do the same, though in a more sophisticated way, especially in religion and philosophy. So the three verses relating to the Self and life are very much needed by us. First the upanishad tells us:

“He, the adorable one, seated in the heart, is the power that gives breath. Unto him all the senses do homage.”1

Adorable

The word Prabhavananda translates “adorable” is vamanam, which means adorable, dear, and pleasing. These epithets are traditionally used in relation to Shiva, the symbol of the atman and atmic consciousness. This is important, for the Self is not just Truth or Reality–a mere abstraction–but when experienced as either the individual Self or the Supreme Self produces in us a personal response, literally the response of bhakti (devotion) and even prema (love).

In contemporary India there is the idea that bhakti and prema can only be experienced toward a being that possesses form (rupa) or qualities (guna)–that it is impossible to have these responses to Brahman the transcendent Being. But in the upanishads and the Gita we are constantly exhorted to love Brahman–not just some “forms” of Brahman–and the atman. This also indicates that the ancient upanishadic sages did not believe that the Absolute or the Self was without attributes of any kind. Rather, they considered that, although anything said would be only approximations of divine realities, still human beings could conceive of God in at least a dim way. And they absolutely could experience God, and have reactions and definitions arising from their experience. In Chapter Twelve Krishna speaks of this in more detail, and we will consider it there.

To the yogi, then, the Self and Brahman are equally adorable.

Seated in the heart

God and the Self are seated in the heart, as the upanishads and the Gita continually emphasize. There they abide permanently–it is not a matter of occasional visitations. Knowing this, Jesus said: “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”2 This, too, is a matter of direct experience. Saint Luke used the word idou–in other words, “See for yourself that the kingdom of God is within you.” This is not something Jesus wants us to believe and act on blindly–he wants us to experience this truth, for only experience produces lasting effects.

The heart is the throne of God and the throne of the divine Self. When Jesus says: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne,”3 he is speaking of our heart–not his. Our heart and the heart of God are not the same, but they are ONE.

Power that gives breath

The upanishads literally say that it is the Self which produces our inhalations and exhalations. “Who could live, who could breathe, if that blissful self dwelt not within the lotus of the heart?”4 “The Self is the breath of the breath.”5 “The breaths are the Real, and their Reality is the Self.”6 “He who breathes in with your breathing in is your Self. He who breathes out with your breathing out is your Self.”7 “From him is born the breath.”8 “The shining, immortal person who is breath is the Self, is Brahman.”9 “Which is the one God? The breath. He is Brahman.”10

In the spiritual texts of India the word hridaya–heart–means not just the heart, or core, but also is said to indicate the space (akasha) where the inbreath and outbreath merge–the ultimate heart. This is why yoga must involve working with the inhaling and exhalation breaths in the form of subtle pranayama. “The breath is the Supreme Brahman. The breath never deserts him who, knowing thus, meditates upon it. Having become a god, he goes to the gods.”11 “They who know the breath of the breath…have realized the ancient, primordial Brahman.”12

The senses do homage

In the primal texts of Sanatana Dharma we find references to “gods” (devas). In modern Hinduism we find a panorama of all kinds of gods, demigods, and suchlike, so it is supposed that the ancient tests refer to them when speaking of “devas.” But a simple perusal of the context of those references reveal that the upanishadic sages meant the senses (jnanendriyas), not some kind of external deific intelligences.

The senses “do homage” in the sense that in the evolved individual they draw near to (upasate) and become merged in the Self, which is their source. Now this tells us two interesting and usually unsuspected things. First, that it is natural for the Self to control the senses, not to be their slave. Second, it is completely natural for the senses to move inward toward the Self and experience the Self by uniting with It. Neither of these is our present experience. Rather, we consider it normal for the Self to be bound by the senses, and for it to require great struggle to turn them inward and bring them to experience of the Self. Evidently we have lived in a subnormal condition so long that we have come to think subnormality is normal. We are like the drunk man who was walking along with one foot on the sidewalk and the other down in the street. When someone stopped him and asked why he was walking that way, he burst into tears and answered: “Thank God! I thought I was a cripple.”

Basically, the Self is the goal of all.

The essence

The upanishad then asks: “What can remain when the dweller in this body leaves the outgrown shell, since he is, verily, the immortal Self?”13 The answer is quite simple: nothing but the body remains, for the Self is as different from the body as the pearl is from the oyster and its shell. The departure of the Self produces death and decay, for it is the Self alone that gives–and is–life, the sustenance of the body.

Jesus, Himself a yogi having lived over half of his life in India, said: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”14 That is, we live not on matter, but on the very Life of God–because matter is only a modification of that Life Energy. The upanishad–which Jesus would have known–expresses the same idea by saying: “Man does not live by breath alone, but by him in whom is the power of breath.”15

It is not breath that makes us live–though breath is the basis of our body’s metabolism. This is why yogis can live without the physical act of breathing. What we cannot do without, and by which we do live is Him who is the source of breath, especially in His primeval form: Om, the Pranava, the Life-Giver, the Word of Life. Through the repetition and meditation of Om as recommended by Patanjali we enter into communication with the Lord, Ishwara, and then into unity with Him.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being.”16

More from the Upanishads: • An Introduction to the Upanishads
Selections from the Text of the Upanishads from The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal–translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester
• The Isha Upanishad • The Katha Upanishad • The Taittiriya Upanishad • The Aitareya Upanishad	• The Kena Upanishad • The Prashna Upanishad • The Mundaka Upanishad • The Mandukyka Upanishad
Commentaries on the Upanishads by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Katha Upanishad:
1. The Past is the Future 2. Seeing Death, Seeing Life 3. The Good and the Pleasant 4. The Way of Ignorance 5. The Mystery of the Self 6. How to Either Know or Not Know the Self 7. From the Unreal to the Real 8. Finding the Treasure 9. The Transcendent Reality of the Self 10. The Immortal Self 11. The Indwelling Self 12. The Omnipresent Self 13. The Sorrowless Self 14. Who Can Know the Self? 15. The All-Consuming Self	16. The Divine Indwellers 17. The Chariot 18. The Chariot's Journey 19. The Glorious Way 20. To Know The Self 21. The Power of Enlightenment 22. The Infinite Self 23. The Dweller in the Heart 24. The Birthless Self 25. The Shining Self 26. The Life-Giving Self 27. The Eternal Brahman–The Eternal Self 28. The Radiant Self 29. The Universal Tree 30. Hierarchy of Consciousness 31. From Mortality to Immortality
Isha Upanishad:	Kena Upanishad:
1. Seeing All Things in God 2. Living a Life Worth Living 3. Spiritual Suicides 4. The Undivided Unmoving Self 5. The Ever-Present Self 6. The All-Embracing Self 7. Perspective on Life 8. Seeing Beyond the Sun 9. The Final Aspiration	1. The Mover of the Moved 2. Knowing that is Ignorance, and Unknowing That is Knowing 3. The Blessed 4. Approaching Brahman
Prashna Upanishad:	Mundaka Upanishad:
1. The Right Beginning 2. The Father and Mother of All 3. The Powers That Make Us “Be” 4. Prana: Its History and Nature 5. The Witnessing Self 6. Meditation on Om 7. Where is the Self?	1. Knowing the ALL 2. Delusion and Ignorance 3. Wisdom and Truth 4. Getting in Perspective 5. Origin and Return 6. Knowing God 7. The Two Selves 8. The God Within, The Sage Without 9. Hail To the Sages!

2) Luke 17:21 [Go back]

3) Revelation 3:21 [Go back]

4) Taittiriya Upanishad 2:7 [Go back]

5) Kena Upanishad 1:2 [Go back]

6) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.1.20 [Go back]

7) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.4.1 [Go back]

8) Mundaka Upanishad 2.1.2,3 [Go back]

9) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.4 [Go back]

10) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.9.9 [Go back]

11) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.1.3 [Go back]

12) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.18 [Go back]

13) Katha Upanishad 2:2:4 [Go back]

14) Matthew 4:4 [Go back]

15) Katha Upanishad 2:2:5 [Go back]

16) Acts 17:28 [Go back]