As I follow the wisdom of the Upanishads and the power of the Rigveda, many things become ever clearer to me. The spiritual power of India’s ancient scriptures lies in their unfiltered access to experience and intuition.
The systems of thought I have encountered in the Western tradition are fundamentally always trying to find a starting point:
- Philosophy always searches for the beginning. But it generally does so through the intellect. This leads to the question of an axiomatics and ontology, the question of fundamental assumptions and irreducible forms of being.
- Other, more religious and mystical attempts seek an anchor in the transcendental, metaphysical or supernatural. Ultimately, then, in an authority that can be experienced.
- Science, with its materialist approach to the world, searches for patterns and tries to generalize them in order to verify or falsify the theories derived from them.
What I am encountering here in India is the beholding of essence in meditation. Spirituality takes its starting point from the inward gaze. This inward gaze is pure and unclouded. It is like clarified butterfat—ghee.
Meditation Toward the Self
In meditation the body is in a position of rest and the mind lets the stimuli of the outer world fade away. Concentrating on the breath is often used as an aid at the beginning of a meditation. Counting your own breaths directs consciousness toward your own body, toward the life force of the breath, toward the relationship between the outer and inner worlds. Once the mind and body have come to rest in this way, the actual meditation only begins. The senses, now largely freed from the stimulus-response pattern, lie open. And this is precisely where the Upanishads begin.
The next step is not about an experience of the transcendental, the mystical, a reality of some other kind, as so many meditators believe. The Upanishads are concerned with bringing the senses into a pure form. Seeing becomes seeing, hearing becomes hearing, thinking becomes thinking, etc… No more and no less. Anyone who succeeds in remaining on this level of consciousness perceives the basic structure of consciousness. It becomes clear that sensory impressions, stimulated by the outer sense organs, appear within consciousness, but transformed. In philosophy many thinkers now jump far too quickly to the conclusion that these are mental representations. But much still happens before we arrive at mental images.
The Kena Upanishad asks: Who sees in seeing, who hears in hearing, who thinks in thinking, etc…. This is the question of all questions. The answer is clear and pure—Simplicity is complexity resolved—the absolute Self. What does that mean?
When my consciousness concentrates on one of the senses in meditation, that sense—detached from its object of perception and equally detached from the subject of perception—becomes pure content of consciousness, a form that arises from a vibration. Vibration is the term used by the Upanishads; for the scientific mind, we could speak of contents of consciousness that accompany neuronal currents. This vibration, triggered by the sense organs, constitutes consciousness. Even reductionist materialists would still agree here. It is what Hegel calls sense-certainty.
But who is it that has this sense-certainty? It is not the subject that synthesizes the mental images, the representations, but a mingling of vibrations. Consciousness does not exist in isolation. Consciousness is a mingling of different contents of consciousness. The vibration of the senses mingles with our breath and heartbeat, with nature. In brief: Consciousness is bound to the life force (Prakriti), to a soul (Purusha) and identity (Atman).
Atman and Brahman
Within meditation, the mingling of the senses can be observed well. Clear consciousness becomes aware of this harmony and delights in it. It is here that ecstasy and blessedness can be experienced. And here, at least for me, the Self awakens in a deeper sense. For here consciousness is detached from the stimulus-response pattern. Synthesized consciousness (Atman) unfolds a power of action of its own, becomes an agent, that is, free. And in precisely that consciousness of the free Self (a much stronger concept than the rather technical self-consciousness with its self-referential structure), the Self recognizes its unity with the absolute Self. Free consciousness recognizes itself as part of consciousness as such. Atman is Brahman and Brahman is Atman.
Images of the Rigveda
From here, images of the Rigveda also become clear to me. The sacred cows that appear as rays of the sun and in other strange constellations, the horses that are harnessed and come out of the cities, or carry the gods, the fire that is everywhere in different forms, sometimes smoky, sometimes clear.
Sometimes after a meditation I transport myself into a prehistoric time, a time with few tools, without writing, under the starry sky, where horses graze in the meadow and milk is boiled over the fire and churned butter is clarified. The mystery of life and consciousness, the experience of being part of the cosmos, sitting around the campfire, or lighting oil lamps with clarified butter for the gods, is a deep spiritual experience that can still be felt to some extent in the temples and at festivals in India.
The clarified butter of the majestic, freely roaming cows, giving strength and light, the breath of the snorting horses at dawn, the fire that warms and is reflected in the sun and moon. These are very concrete experiences that are a central subject of spiritual meditation. The Rishis start quite concretely from what is before them, and they reflect inward and describe the mystery of our existence here and now. This is not a spirituality built on authority or proceeding from a priori categories. This spirituality is developed from the most general world of experience; it explains who and what we are. It merely gives names to things and forces and describes them.
The gods are nothing other than those forces we see: the growth of trees in nature, struggle and love among living beings, the forces of our subconscious, the ideals of our mind. They are part of every culture, they are there everywhere, they are real. In Hinduism they are named as forces and revered as gods. What could be wrong with that?
We live in this world, here we are, and here is our spirituality. It does not lie in the beyond, and nor is it not.
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