What were the creatures trying to convey?

In the previous post, I described how various creatures – bull, fire, swan and a waterbird – all came one after the other and tried to teach Satyakama something. But what exactly were they trying to convey?

They were saying that God is everywhere. Everything we see around is an aspect of God. God is the source of all energies. God is behind our perception and existence as sentient beings.

What do these things mean?

My understanding of the Upanishads is that they try to unify the entire universe – both animate as well as inanimate.

We see many things around us. Some of them are inert. Some are inert but are repositories of energy. Some show signs of being alive and sentient. If we were to imagine an entity called God which has to be beyond all these, how should that entity be?

Imagining that God is someone who is an all powerful being; who sits high up there; and who controls everyone below, is quite naive. It is like an ant imagining the God to be someone with 12 legs and foot long feelers and so on. That sounds childish.

Upanishads declare that God is the source of everything. God controls everything, God is everywhere and so on. A corollary of all these assertions, is that God is everything! He is not limited to our domain of imagination. He is beyond that. This is what probably the various creatures were trying to explain to Satyakama.

Many dualists, whether they are the dualist Indian philosophers or inherently dualist ideologies such as Christianity and Islam, abhor the idea of God being everything. Many of them are prepared to accept that God is everywhere. But they shudder to think that everything is God.

They have a dichotomy – God and the rest. Or even a trichotomy – God, anti God and the creatures controlled by them.

But logically speaking, saying that God is everywhere is as good as saying God is everything. Otherwise, there will be contradiction. If you say that God is everywhere and at the same time he is not everything, it just means that there is somewhere God does not exist. Otherwise ‘everything’ would not have been there separate from God.

So, it is a bit tricky issue. Just ponder over it.



Well, let us continue with the story. What happened to Satyakama when he returned to his teacher? Did his teacher teach him at least then?

We will see that in the next post.

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A story of Satyakama Jabala from Chandogya Upanishad, which is part of Sama Veda. Upanishads are concluding parts of ancient Indian Vedic scriptures believed to be at least 5000 years old. The interpretation is by Dr.King (Copyright © 2019 Dr. King).