How Are the Upanishads Useful?
Acharya Prashant: The questioner is asking, “Don’t Vedanta and Upanishads too contain words and information? And the mind is prone to forget any information. How is remembering the information contained in the Upanishads useful for self-realization?” You seem worried that the mind will forget the information that comes to you via the Upanishads. You probably want to memorize it and keep it with you forever. On the contrary, that’s not at all the objective of the Upanishads. The Upanishads do not want you to carry them in your mind by way of memory for too long. Let’s understand.
You see, why does one require Vedanta or Upanishads at all? There has to be a reason. If you’re otherwise and already perfectly fine, then why do you require anything additional? You’re living your life in your particular way, and all is well with you; then you do not need to read anything, or do you? The Upanishads are not a thing of fashion or a thing of compulsion; you do not go to them just because a lot of people do. Neither must you go to them because religion or tradition demands so.
There has to be a substantial reason if you are to go to the Upanishads. The reason is your worried mind. The reason is your taxed and loaded mind. Right? You’re anxious, you’re stressed, you’re confused, you’re agitated, or you are depressed. In either case, your mind is not healthy. Sometimes you find yourself excited; sometimes you’re dejected and desolate; sometimes you are extremely hopeful, and sometimes you’re the epitome of nihilism. And with this, and due to this diseased and centerless mind, one goes to the Upanishads. And the Upanishads themselves make it amply clear right at the outset. They say, “You are diseased in many ways—that’s why you have come to us.”
There are many Shanti paths associated with the various Upanishads, and if you read them, you’ll get a fair idea of why the Upanishads were composed in the first place. They want to help you in matters of the mind: they address your fear, they address your insecurity, they address your inner conflicts, they address your ignorance. That’s why you go to them—which means that when you go through the Upanishads, you are already carrying a lot. What is it that you are carrying? Ignorance, conflict, fear, agitation and all else. And all this that you are carrying is actually sitting in the mind as information.
So, it is with a lot of information that you are going to the Upanishads. You are looking at Upanishads as a body of information, whereas, first of all, you should be talking about your own body that is carrying so much information.
And it is with this body and body centricity that you are approaching the Upanishads; it’s a bundle of, it’s a mountain of information that’s coming to the Upanishads. And this information is very concretely set in your being; it is not merely a thing of the mind, it is running in your veins. It has become your life matter.
Your face has become a depiction of all this knowledge that you are carrying in your mind. Every cell of your body is feeling the burden of this that you are carrying in your mind. In fact, the mind is not much except the information load that it carries—and we are people with bloated, inflated minds. If some kind of a diagram of our subtle body could be drawn, it would be 99% just the top story (points towards his head). In your day-to-day living, tell me how much do your knees matter to you? Does the word ‘knee’ even occur to you usually? It’s the brain that the ego identifies with and lives in. And human beings are especially identified with their brain; with their intellect, with memory and all else.
So, look at this person who’s going to the Upanishads. He is just a huge truckload of information that he calls as knowledge—though it is not—and he is going to the Upanishads. And here are the Upanishads, very sleek bodies of subtle verses. Very-very sleek bodies. Even if they contain information, that information is not too much. They are not really encyclopedic; very pithy, very terse. Nevertheless, when you read them, you do get some information, and a lot of information you already have. So, what’s really happening?
The information contained in Upanishads is of a special type. It does not really sit well with the information you already have. The knowledge that the Upanishads give you—and here I’m using information and knowledge interchangeably, just for the purpose of this discussion. The knowledge that the Upanishads give you does not get co-opted into your existing structure of knowledge; it’s a very special and exquisite type of knowledge that the Upanishads contain. You’ll not be able to absorb it nicely into your existing system.
See, you take in some food, and what happens to that food? That food becomes your body, right? That food gets co-opted; that food gets absorbed. Upanishads are not that kind of food that your body can absorb. When Upanishads go in—forget about the body being able to absorb them—they go in and they start destroying all that is false within. Of course, your antibodies spring into action and do whatever they can, but then the Upanishads and their knowledge are too much for the antibodies. Soon your resistances all fail and fall.
However, you can still deny the Upanishadic knowledge an outright victory. How do you do that? You do that by playing the biased referee. Remember that ultimately it’s you who has to declare the winner. And in spite of the Upanishadic knowledge demonstrating its trueness and superiority, you may still choose to side with your old, conditioned knowledge. That can happen, that can still happen. So, it is not really automatic that you’ll read the Upanishad and the knowledge will go in, and the knowledge will destroy all the falseness within and the next morning you will wake up enlightened. That doesn’t really happen.
If the Upanishads are allowed to work—and it’s a big ask; to allow the Upanishads to work upon oneself, requires great commitment towards Truth and liberation. Otherwise, the Upanishads are too much to handle; you will just not be able to tolerate their rigor, their vigor, their cut—they cut through everything. So, if the Upanishads are somehow allowed to operate within, then their action is thus: they would destroy the false patterns of knowledge that you are carrying within, and having destroyed the false patterns they themselves would then evaporate or sublimate like camphor, without leaving any residue behind. Right? Something that has come to you just to cleanse, and once the cleansed object is gone, the cleaning agent too is not to be found.
Otherwise, it would be a very absurd situation. The old dirt is gone and some other new thing has occupied its place. That is no relief, or is it? Because those who have known the mind, they have categorically said that anything that starts occupying the mind too much and for too long is just a burden and a disease. So, even if it is an apparently holy verse, but if it becomes a permanent fixture upon the mind, if it gets situated very stubbornly upon the mind, then it is not good for you.
Upanishads are like medicines. Medicine cannot become food; medicine cannot become your staple diet. Medicine comes just to fight the disease, and once the disease is gone, the medicine too is gone. So, you need not be worried that you need to memorize the Upanishads. Obviously, India has had a rich and a very practically useful tradition of memorization. We call our bodies of sacred literature as Shruti, then as Smriti for a reason. We hear, we memorize, and that’s how the knowledge was transferred generation after generation—all those things were there.
But remember that memorization is not what spirituality is about. Understand the Upanishads. The real challenge does not pertain to memorization; the real challenge is about not playing the biased referee. We talked of him, right? When the Upanishadic knowledge comes in, you’ll find yourself greatly impelled to declare it as false. You’ll want to side with your pre-existing knowledge. Why? Because it is your knowledge. Before coming to the Upanishad you’re already carrying it, so it is yours.
So, there are two teams vying against each other, and one of the teams belongs to the referee. It requires great truthfulness and discipline on behalf of the referee to remain unbiased. You are that referee. Remember, it’s your knowledge versus the Upanishadic knowledge. Upanishadic knowledge would prevail provided you provide it with a fair and level playing field. Mostly we don’t—and that’s why the Upanishads remain ignored. We say, “How can all my patterns and beliefs and knowledge systems be proven so false and so absurd, and that too so easily?”
Upanishads don’t take long, you see. Five verses are enough to destroy five generations of your traditional knowledge system. Sometimes just five words of one verse—gone! Entire personality is gone, entire history is gone (laughs) . So, they’ll win, but we don’t allow them to win. That’s where real discipline is required, not in memorization. We think, “Oh, we have not been fair to the Upanishads if we have not memorized them!”
No, no, no—you have not been fair to the Upanishads if you have not really considered them; if you have not really been just to them; if you have not given them a level playing field; if you have not been unbiased. That’s the real challenge. Memorization is not the challenge. Remaining unbiased is the challenge.
So, let the Upanishads come to you, and receive them in a neutral way. There is no need to be biased towards them; there is no need to be inclined towards them. And there are some people who do that as well. They say, “These are holy words, so surely they are right. So, I declare them winners in advance.” No, you don’t need to do that. Just in a neutral way, in a fair way, receive them, consider them. Let them work upon you. Meditate on them. And that would suffice.
