Power and Desire in the Early Upanishads

Foundations of Yoga Philosophy for Teachers Course Reference Guide

Course Title: Modernity and Transformations Faculty: Douglas Brooks, Ph.D. Total Duration: 4 hours Number of Modules: 4 modules (comprised of modules 912) Number of Lessons: 22 lessons

Module 9: Power and Desire in the Early Upanishads

Lesson 1: Integrating Understanding and the Ineffable Learning

“Upanishads” (spelling reference) as the foundational texts of yoga

How does the content of the Upanishads create the foundation of yoga?

Upanishads are also known as “Vedanta” (Veda + Anta = “The resolution of the Veda”)

Veda that which is true, verified

The Vedanta yogis are the yogis who first came to the West and shared their teachings, e.g. 3:30 Swami Vivekananda (arrives in USA in 1893).

“Raja Yoga” the yoga of sovereignty

Vivekananda combined his knowledge of the Upanishads with his own experience to create a unique interpretation of yoga, the nondualist Advaita school of Vedanta.

Early prose Upanishads (700 BCE) are linked to the symbolic teachings of the Arankyakas, an elaboration of texts on Vedic ritual.

Ironic Question: How do we articulate the sublime secret (veda) of the universe? How do we express that which cannot be expressed?

“Upa” + “nisad” = to place one thing next to the other. Reflective of the methodology of the Upanishads that takes us from the micro to the macro, that takes us into the highest realms of

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understanding and to the core of reality.

Later Texts: Chandogya Upanishad Taittiriya Upanishad Aitareya Upanishad

Lesson 2: An Intelligent Universe in SelfExpression

Claim: the Upanishads never describe a God (extrinsic force) who created the universe.

The emergence of the universe comes from subtle, present realities. There is something “Sat” something real, beingness.

Everything else that comes into existence is some form of degradation the subtle moving into the gross. Spirit gives way to matter.

An interesting contrast for contemporary yoga teachers is that modern science suggests that life is an evolution.

How could an intelligent, manifest reality appear if it did not originate from a selfknowing, supreme source?

“Brahman” a neutered noun, indicating an abstract notion of divinity that is selfknowing.

Brahman comes close to a designed pattern, a purposeful projection of the universe that moves from the subtle to the gross.

Is this feasible given our modern knowledge? To what pattern of the universe are we yoking ourselves?

Does order create intelligence, or does intelligence create order?

Lesson 3: Intelligent Design

Brahman later becomes associated with “Isvara” the empowered consciousness of its own intelligence.

Brahman in the Upanishads is associated with power.

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As yogis, we look to integrate our understandings and draw connections within the system of relationships to cultivate power.

“To understand the sublime course of being is to be able manifest power in the world.”

When you know the sublime, you have the ability to change the material world with authority over the material world, i.e. to be “sovereign” over the world by tracing the sources of power to their origin.

Lesson 4: Desire for its Own Sake

The source of the universe holds immeasurable amounts of power. By tracing the pathways of power, we can unleash them in manifest forms.

There is value in this, but also risk, and provides insights into how the power of nature can be harnessed for good or bad.

A universe that is an expression of its selfinitiated desire.

If a universe has no need, then what is the purpose of desire? It desires to create the patterns and relationships of reality as a manifestation of desire itself. Desire is not about fulfilling a goal, it is the nature of power.

Desire is the source of power and our problems as human beings.

Lesson 5: Prana as the Gateway to the Sublime

Desire is the problematic nature of the universe. It is the profound hope of experience to be fulfilled without desire there can be no yoga.

The misidentification of desire with small, limited thoughts and feelings, rather than the identification of desire with the sublime and an expression of supreme prana.

Is desire itself a problem to be transcended or can we trace the patterns of life to the sublime source of desire to arrive at an empowered state of being?

In order to integrate ourselves with the source of our being, we must know the vital pathway of prana.

The breath (prana) is the gateway to the sublime.

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Lesson 6: The Story of the Vital Functions: Chandogya 5.1

Story from the Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 5.

Lessons: 1. There is a vital pathway to the source of our being and we, as human beings, tend to limit walk more limited paths which leads to a disconnected (unyoked) life. 2. We are not being cut off from our desires, rather, we are being invited to an unlimited, sublime source from which our highest desires and intentions will flow.

“When a person know the best and the greatest, he becomes the best and the greatest, and the best and the greatest is none other than the breath.

When a person knows what is most excellent, he becomes this excellence among the company he keeps, and such excellence is speech.

When one know the firm base and stands firm in the world, and next to him, that firm base is sight, for when one knows those connectivities, his desires, both human and divine, ar fulfilled for him, for making the connection happens by listening.

When one knows there is a sublime refuge, he becomes a refuge for others and such a refuge is the mind.

Once, all the vital powers of breath were arguing amongst themselves who was the greatest. ‘I am the greatest, I am the greatest,’ so each shouted, and the pranas went to Prajapati, the lord of creatures, their originator. They asked the divine one, ‘Great one, sir, who is the greatest among us.’ And he said, ‘The one after whose departure the body appears in the worst way. Well that is the greatest one among you.’

And so, among these vital powers Speech departed, and after spending a year away returned and said, ‘Well, how did you manage to live without me?’ And the others replied, “We lived as dumb in the world, without speaking, but breathing with the breath, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, reflecting with the mind.’ And so Speech reentered, knowing that speech was limited.

And so then Sight departed, and spending a year away it returned and said, ‘Well, how did you manage to live without me?’

‘We lived as the blind would live, without seeing, but breathing the breath, and speaking with speech, and hearing with the ear, and reflecting with the mind.’ And so Sight understood.

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Hearing departed, and so followed the same pattern. ‘We lived as the deaf would, without hearing, but breathing with the breath, and speaking with speech, seeing with the eye, and reflecting with the mind.’ And so hearing reentered.

And then the Mind departed, and after spending a year away it returned. ‘How did you manage without me?’ the Mind said. And, ‘We lived as simpletons would, without reflection, but still we breathe, and still we speak, and still we see and hear with the ears.’ So the mind reentered.

Then as Breath was setting off, it so vitalized all the others, in a way a fine horse would jerk at the stakes to which it was tethered, they all gathered around the Breath, and they implored the Breath, ‘Oh no please stay, surely you are the greatest among us. Don’t depart.’

And Speech said, ‘As I am the most excellent so you are the most excellent.

And Sight told him, ‘As I am the firm base, so you are the basis.’

And Hearing told him, ‘So I am all the connectivities of listening, so you are that connection.’

And the Mind told him, ‘So as I am the refuge, so you will be that refuge. For surely do people call things that they say, see, and hear, and mind, but they call them pranas, breaths, vital connections, for only the breath becomes all these.’”

Lesson 7: The Story of the Breath

Prana feeds all the other vital functions. How vital are they then? The breath is truly the one vital source that manifests the other important forms.

1. If we follow a limited path, we will arrive at a limited result. 2. There is a relationship between dependence and source. Dependant relationships are conditional, and therefore we must look somewhere else for the unconditional sublime. 3. There is a pathway to the sublime, and that is the breath because it animates all the other functions. When we know the source and cause of things, we are empowered to understand their effects.

Lesson 8: Interpreting an Inexhaustible Resource

Conclusion: These resources are invitations to interpretation. How do you make these texts and teachings your own and relevant to your own life? This is the fundamental work of yoga.

What is the value of our own interpretation of these texts? How can we empower ourselves through

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them?

Don’t settle for something less than the result of your undaunted courage and the strength of this resource itself!

What is valuable about being human is contained within these stories.

MODULE 10: Upanishads: Conversations with the Self

Lesson 9: The Conversation of Cosmology

Chandogya Upanishad many continuing themes, but also the introduction of many ideas that will become important to Vedantan philosophy and contemporary yoga.

Major focus: strategies of learning and the assimilation of the teachings.

Teacher conveys the essential ideas, concepts, and values, and then nurtures the student’s discipline, personal commitment, and experience of the teachings.

Penetrating the deepest layers of reality and our common humanity.

Dialogue between Father: Uddalaka (long a on first a) Aruni (long a, dot under i), and son: Svetaketu (accent over s).

This dialogue argues that all of life has a common, singular ancestry. “In the beginning this world is simply what is It thought to itself, ‘Let me become many. Let me propagate myself.’” …

What is the relationship between one and many? How are we all one? How are we different?

Those who commit to the path of yoga will progress towards the universal, but how they walk the path will be different.

Big take away: The universe is a process of its own desire!

Lesson 10: Mapping the One into Many

There is a mappable trail from the single original to the current forms of existence.

Example: DNA is made of the same substance and is common to most living things, but it is the way in

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which the DNA organizes itself that creates particularities. We are the form of our own particular DNA, but we are fundamentally linked by the common ancestry of DNA itself.

Lesson 11: One Without a Second: Panentheism Defined

Isvara the lord, the empowered agency, the source that experiences itself.

Panentheism not monotheism or pantheism.

Monotheism: ● There is one God, a God who is not to be confused with creation itself. ● The big question is how do we bring this God into the world if this God made the world. ● Highlights human vulnerability and God’s perfection, and asks how do we access the perfection of that God.

Pantheism in India: ● The concept of Isvara (coming from root “empower/power’), meaning a “one without a second.” There is no otherness. ● Nature is the encompassing reality of the divine whatever God is doing is the appearance of the world.

Panentheism: ● The idea that universe is nothing but the expression of this singularity of one becoming many. ● As in pantheism, everything exists as that singularity taking form. ● The subtlety of panentheism is the idea that God itself has a deliberative purpose and a capacity beyond humanity, which is to create many things from itself.

The intelligence of the material world is distinguishable from the world itself.

That intelligence is selfempowered to manifest the universe from itself, moving from the subtle to the gross, making everything a part of Isvara while Isvara directs the process.

Lesson 12: Interpretation and Dissent

Other ways of thinking: Buddhists are not interested in pursuing the origin of the universe because they believe that that source is a mental construction, an invented limitation, and so they do not pursue it.

Hindus believe that knowing this ancestral source is a requirement to understand the nature of the deepest human possibility and of the universe itself. There is common essence.

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Buddhism rejects essence because: ● They believe that this is not how the world comes into being, or ● it is irrelevant to the task of realizing our deepest human engagement.

Hindu yogis pursue a source and process by which the source moves from the subtle to the gross.

Both camps, however, agree that the appearances of karma create limitations and falsities.

600500 BCE this is the era where these arguments arise.

Sramanas wandering mystics who strongly disputed the Hindu notion of panentheistic Isvara from the Upanishads (Chapter 6).

Bottom line: to be a Hindu yogi is to believe that the universe appears plural but is singular and that there is a traceable path of reality.

Lesson 13: The Upanishadic Origins of the Theory of Karma

Continued conversation between Uddalaka Aruni and Svetaketu reveals an investigation into other fields such as embodied psychology as well as spiritual and scientific subjects.

The foundation of these topics is still the idea of Isvara the original intelligence that guides the development of the natural world and our own psychology.

We share in the intelligence of the universe, and that is a sense of Self.

Buddhists argue that karma cannot create or explain itself, whereas Hindus would argue that, “Within karma... there must be an intelligence that creates karma itself.”

Karma an explanation of how the world operates and why we are here and how we experience ourselves.

Upanishads new contribution to the understanding of karma is Isvara, the idea that karma reveals itself as orderly and has a divine, guiding intelligence.

Buddhists karma causes and creates itself.

Lesson 14: Common Concepts, No Consensus

Is the world one becomes many? Is karma simply recreating itself?

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Bottom line: there is a diversity of opinions about the nature of the divine and of karma in the field of yoga, but there are also commonly held concepts and beliefs.

Lesson 15: Pathways to the Heart

Key Vedantan phrase: “Tat Tvam Asi” You are that, that thou art

Tat that Tvam you Asi you are

This is often interpreted to be an inquiry into, “What about you is a part of the divine?”

Uddalaka’s first metaphor: the real treasure. How is this “treasure” hidden? ● Names and forms ● Karma ● Absence of curiosity ● Limited identifications and hiding the treasure from ourselves ● Distractions

Brahman is the atman the universal source is nothing but the source that resides within you.

When you are established in the self, one can then distinguish between the limited and the unlimited. A sacred boundary.

To identify the sacred in the outer world is to identify it within the inner world.

Sat the true essence of nature

Yoga takes us to the heart, the place in which feelings resolve themselves and express themselves, linking the physical and the spiritual and creating an empowered existence.

Lesson 16: A Universe of Power

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Summary: Desire is the nature of the universe, and we can gain an advantage achieving success by tracing the pathways of how desire expresses itself.

Success meaning spiritual and material success through access to the sublime.

Expressions of success: ● Power ● Desire ● Interest ● Advantage ● Success

The world is powerful, but not necessarily good, and we are responsible for creating our moral paradigm and our creative lives in this karmic, samsaric world.

This teaching’s essential claim is that life is rooted in connectivity, embedded in a powerful world, and we are responsible for our own actions.

MODULE 11: Upanishads: Conversations with the Self

Lesson 17: A SelfOrganizing Universe

Foundational perspectives of yoga philosophy: 1. A universe characterized by negotiation and desire 2. The universe has offered itself and is selforganized 3. The universe operates in a paradigm of power and relationship a. The idea of sacrifice leading to tapas, a fire, an austerity that ignites inner awareness and burns of the dras of the world. b. A world ablaze as sacred

An exchange between the energies that shape the world and us. What is the relationship between the superior, subtle forces and the gross, somatic forms?

Homology the process of matching up, becoming the same.

The process of the universe can be thought of as a devolution.

There is no creator who makes the world from nothing. The universe is selfcreated, and we “sit nearby” and trace the singular into the plural, and from the plural to the singular to retrieve the

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power of brahman.

Essential task: how can we map the orderly patterning of the cosmos/rta?

The primal desire to be drives the world to unfold itself in this way, shaping the one into the many.

Even as forms become more disorderly, the new forms remain as orderly as they can be. Reversing this process is a much more challenging endeavor.

The verses of the Chandogya Upanishad themselves mirror the orderly devolution of the universe through repeated words, themes, and phrases.

Bottom line: it all adds up!

Use the map as a way to reawaken yourself and bring yourself back to the place of that singular power. The tracing of that road map is the sacred process, leading to the original fire of being, brahman.

Lesson 18: The Daily Sacrifice

Chapter 5 of Chandogya Upanishad an examination of archaic culture that described the relationship with the divine.

The vedic gods as the ancient, primal shapes the divine takes.

Aditi the ancient mother whose eighth son Manu is humanity’s ancestor. We are descended from the divine!

Deva from the root “to shine, to illumine”

Fire emits heat and light, which is why it is so central to a vision of a world that is shaped and created as light. We are a devolution of that same light. The light is the self within. Everyday is an opportunity to rearrive at the sublime.

E.G. One prana to five pranas, an energy that diversifies itself.

The Upanishads encourage us to think that this world has accountability! In this way, our material actions are infused with a sense of ritual and of the sacred; a selfconsciousness.

The daily, procedural sacrifice, how we live our lives, becomes a sacred process of mapping our way towards the source.

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Review: the Vedic ancestors had relationships with the gods on a daily basis in a systematic way to create a process of transmutable exchange in order to access the sublime.

“Dehi me, dadami te” Give to me, I give to you

As we experience ourselves, we reregister the sacred relationships that created us. The Upanishads have a similar process to the Vedas, but are using a much more internalized methodology.

Vedic mantras are the direct expression of the patterned divine energy that takes shape in this world.

The early Upanishads still revere the recitation of mantra as a recreation of the universal codes, an interaction with the very structures of the universe.

“When someone knows and offers the daily fire sacrifice, with this knowledge, then all those bad things in him would be burned up like the tip of the reed stuck in the fire.” This is not just an ethical process we are encouraged to embrace the experience of ritual in every role as we move towards the divine.

“And so, therefore, even if one who has this knowledge were merely to give leftovers to a foundling, to an outcast, so such an offering made in that self is common to all beings.”

No matter how small the action, you want to kindle the experience of divinity in every action you take. Every action becomes an exchange with divine knowledge.

Lesson 19: The Resolution of Being

“In the beginning this world was simply what is existent. It was only one without exception, one without a second some would say what is nonexistent but how can what is existent be born from … … what is nonexistent?”

Was the ever NOT a world? The Upanishads say NO, there has always been a world that is constantly recreating itself from itself. This is a major difference between Hinduism and other religious traditions. The way we understand the cosmos is to observe our own lives, because we are a microcosm of the universal process.

The universe has invented us precisely in the same way that it invented itself. When we see this connection, the world becomes sacred and our access to the sacred becomes real.

This is a process of selfillumination.

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MODULE 12: Learning to Learn

Lesson 20: The Beginnings of Studentship

The origins of studentship are in the in oral traditions of remembering and listening.

Mnemonics memory devices and transmission ideas that enabled yogis to recreate and transmit the teachings exactly.

“Svadhyaya” recitation, repetition, memorization, placing into one’s self.

The pastoral, migrating Vedic peoples used oral tradition to sustain their culture.

Memory and recollection, as keys to their oral tradition, become central to the philosophies of the Vedic people as they tried to understand the cosmos, as well as their culture. How we learn is mimetic (it mimics) to the way we came into being.

Brahman class recognized and elevated for their ability to transmit the oral “scriptures.”

There is no class of religious specialists or renunciates e.g. ascetics, babas, sadhus, swamis, in the ancient Vedic world.

“Swami” one who is reliant only upon oneself.

The Vedic world was a householder world, and within the the many families there were some religious specialists.

“Kshatriya” warrior class

In the Upanishads, one’s spiritual studentship began as a process of how one creates a life that will fully engage the world and lead to sublime understanding.

“Brahmacharya” studentship and the commitment to the desensualized discipline required to study.

Being a brahman is an invitation to learn that requires restraint of worldly desires, a behavioral response, to realize the fullness of their education and to become of service to their culture.

The Upanishads are a legacy of the Vedic oral tradition, refined to include education and new ideas about the pursuit of the sublime.

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Celibacy is an extreme example of the commitment needed to become a meaningful contributor to society and to the personal pursuit of the sublime.

Lesson 21: The Elements of Studentship

Chandogya Upanishad Chapter 6 describes the rigor of the student life.

Repeating points: ● One’s personal, spiritual endeavor is a part of one’s responsibility to add value to family and culture. ● “Thinking himself to be learned.” Do not think that because you have taken the time to learn means you have arrived at the deeper connection to tradition, to the teachings of yoga, and to one’s own heart.

Yoga is not an antiintellectual tradition, but beware of the arrogance that can come with education.

1. Solve the problem of ignorance through learning. 2. Arrogance (pursuit of false certainty) needs to be put in check. a. Abhyasa we must commit again and again to these practices 3. Use your education to move you towards the sublime.

Ultimately, we are pursuing the sublime certainty by uncovering the truth (satya) that has always been present.

The universe portrays its own intelligence by the universal truths we uncover. The universe does not announce its truths. We are uncovering a reality that is already present. In order for it to be present, it must be true. Examples: periodic table of elements, astronomy

“Sat” being, existence

The early traditions of yogic learning are social intelligence, becoming a sensitive and astute human being.

We are taught to work with each other to produce an understanding of the world we couldn’t create on our own.

“As we uncover the world, we uncover each other.”

When we think we know it all, our learning becomes static and we don’t evolve, and we will not

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collaborate to build a new world based on our knowledge of our sublime truths.

Lesson 22: Opening the Doors

1. The content of learning; the subjects of yoga are the subjects of life. 2. How we learn to learn is how we learn to teach.

Learning as a collective, human endeavor furthers the ability to learn, to teach, and to be of benefit to all.

A cooperative intelligence in the greater task of our shared humanity is the foundation of yogic learning.