As I said earlier, worldly science tries to deal with the diverse things that exist in this world around us. In contrast, spiritual science tries to see the unified view of this apparently diverse world.
The main contribution of the Upanishads is to declare that the apparent diversity is only superficial. Underneath this diversity, there is unity.
So the story we have been discussing, namely the story of father Uddalaka and son Swetaketu, starts off with the fundamental question of “how did this world come into existence?”
Most religions, whether it is Judaism, Christianity, Islam or even Hinduism for that matter, assume that some God created this world that we see around. Each religion has its own version of how the God created it. Probably these stories are meant for common people who may not have the ability to comprehend intricate and abstract ideas.
But ancient Indian schools deviate from this approach. For example, in the story we are discussing, the father Uddalaka asks
“They say that this world came out of void. But how can that be? How can something come out of nothing?”
Interestingly, all ancient schools of Indian thought believed in something very similar to our scientific law of “indestructibility of matter” - matter can neither be created nor be destroyed. So they firmly believed that the world did not come from nothing.
But the question is “who created it?”
The Upanishads say that no one created it since it was not created at all. That means that it always existed. It is only its form that kept changing from time to time. The basic thing – if at all we can talk about such a thing – ever existed.
What was this basic thing? Is it the same as what religions refer to as God? But there is a problem. The moment you give a name to it, you invariably give it a form and an individual identity!
Something that is at the root of all this existence, how can it have a restricted form and individuality?
So the Upanishads normally refrain from giving a specific name to it or describe its form. Most of the time they refer to it as just ‘Tat’, a Sanskrit word which just means ‘That’. Sometimes they use the word ‘Sat’ or ‘existence’ to refer to it. It is just a word, like we use ‘x’ in algebra for example! We need some word to talk about it.
The next question is whether this ‘Sat’ animate or inanimate? Can it think? Does it have a will?
This question may not make much sense in religious contexts where the God being a person who can think, who can will, etc, are taken for granted.
But not so in ancient Indian schools of thought. For example, India had schools of thought such as the Sankhya, who believed that the world emanated from something which is neither sentient nor had any will nor the capability to think. Very much like our modern scientific view about the origin of this world we live in.
Is ‘Sat’ insentient, devoid of will and intelligence? We will see that in the next episode.
A
story of Uddalaka and Swetaketu 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).
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