World of Philosophy

SR No.: 007005
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
Publication Year: 2011
Total Pages: 1002
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 30 MB

Page 66

mon experience, but it is not mathematically outrageous either. It is the mathematics of infinity. If one adds to or takes from infinity, it is the infinite that remains. One may add infinity to infinity or take infinity from infinity, still it is the infinite that remains. Infinity may go forth from infinity and still persist as infinity. In fact, in such a case, we will have two infinities, the original one, which remains infinite and the extracted infinity. However, both these infinities yet remain one infinite. We begin to see what integrality may imply in terms of a complex unity.
Thus this sloka initiates us to the contemplation that our universe is infinite but may have arisen out of a more fundamental infinite. Moreover, this emergent infinity does not in any way diminish the infinite content out of which it has arisen. Further, all instances within this universal infinity are also infinite yet don't modify the infinity out of which they are formed and in which they exist. This is the beginning of the Isha Upanishad, a contemplation of Reality as integral, not only in its whole but in its parts. It is an indivisible infinity that faces us in every finite and behind it in that which contains it and that which exceeds it. This becomes the basis of the cosmology of the Isha Upanishad, and, Sri Aurobindo will point out that this is consistent with the cosmology of all the Upanishads. Reality is infinite. This infinite conscious being, in the very possibility of reflexive knowledge, exteriorizes itself to itself in a self-representation. This self-representation cannot but be infinite, though an order of infinity within the infinity of absolute Being. The viewer is infinite, that which is viewed is also infinite. Neither of these infinities abrogate the original infinity out of which the possibility of self-knowledge arose. The viewing of the infinite by the infinite then produces a world in which the infinite is represented to itself in finite terms. But in each of these finites it is the infinite that dwells. Therefore every finite that represents the infinite is nothing but the infinite. This, according to Sri Aurobindo, is the integral basis of the philosophy of the Upanishads, and this is the background to the Isha Upanishad. What the Isha Upanishad does with this is to turn it into the basis of a knowledge of works in the world.
III
After this Invocation, we are led into the text of the Upanishad. It begins:
Isha vasyam idam sarvam yat kinchit jagatyam jagat.
Tena taktyena bhunjitha ma gridha kasya sviddhanam. Here is Sri Aurobindo's translation:
All this is for the habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal movement. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy. Lust not after any man's possession.
17