The purpose of the story that we started discussing, namely the story of Uddalaka and Swetaketu was to declare the oneness of ‘everything’.
How do you say two things are same even though they appear to be different?
Take for example water. It can be in three forms liquid as water, solid as ice and gaseous as steam. How do we know all these three are same intrinsically?
Heat the water for sufficiently long time. It ultimately evaporates and becomes steam. Next cool this steam, it becomes water again. Cool it further, it becomes ice! So in spite of having three different forms, the basic composition of water, ice, and steam are same.
In the story we were discussing, father Uddalaka follows a two way inferencing approach. He shows how our existences can be traced back to ‘Sat’. As well as how we ultimately end up in ‘Sat’. Since this is true of everyone, he infers unity among all that exists.
He points to a huge tree and asks his son how such a gigantic tree came into existence. The son replies that a tiny seed brought about such a huge tree. The conversation between father and son goes something like this.
“Cut open the seed. What do you see inside? Do you see the tree?”
“No, father, I only see atomic fragments inside, but no tree”
“But the tree did come out of such a tiny seed!”
“You need to plant the seed in soil, water it, provide sufficient sunlight. And finally one day the seed sprouts and grows into a huge tree that you can see. The seed definitely had the tree in essence. But it got transformed into a tree by combining with soil, water and sun”.
The father says, we need to trace back each of the things we see around.
He asks his son,
“Fast for 15 days and come back to me”
The son did exactly as asked.
The father continued
“Tell me about what you have studied”
“I don’t remember a thing father!”
“Eat something and come to me.”
The son ate something. Now he could answer all questions asked by his father.
The reason is that his mind was not functioning because he had not eaten anything for 15 days. That means, mind depends on the energy we get from food. How does the mind get that energy? It is the blood that carries the energy from other parts of the body. It is water that makes the blood flow. It is the earth that provides the food.
In this way the father explains how by backward reasoning we can infer that ultimately, our existences can be traced to three basic elements – Satwa, Rajas and Tamas.
Whether it is a tree or a human being, all start off from these three basic elements. Various combinations of these three basic elements are behind all material things we see around.
But is that all?
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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