Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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keep this background in mind when trying to understand it. Further, we find that the Isha can easily be related to later seminal Indian texts of yoga, such as the Bhagavad Gita. Undoubtedly, this was a factor that drew Sri Aurobindo's interest. Many central ideas of the Gita can be found in the Isha Upanishad. It may even be argued that the Gita is mostly an elaboration of the Isha Upanishad, with the addition of the idea of the avatar which is not present in the Upanishad.
The seventeen verses of the Isha Upanishad are not divided into chapters or khandas. But in his commentary, Sri Aurobindo begins by indicating four movements in its organization. He writes,
The central idea of the Upanishad which is a reconciliation and harmony of fundamental opposites is worked out symmetrically in four successive movements of thought.
The first movement:
In the first a basis is laid down by the idea of the one and stable Spirit inhabiting and governing a universe of movement and of the forms of movement. (Verse 1, line 1)
On this conception the rule of a divine life for man is founded, -enjoyment of all by renunciation of all through the exclusion of desire. (Verse 1, line 2).
There is then declared the justification of works and of the physical life on the basis of an inalienable freedom of the soul, one with the Lord, amidst all the activity of the multiple movement. (Verse 2)
Finally the result of an ignorant interference with the right manifestation of the One in the Multiplicity is declared to be a state of involution in states of blind obscurity after death. (Verse 3)
Second movement:
In the second movement the ideas of the first verse are resumed and amplified.
The one stable Lord and the multiple movement are identified as one Brahman, of whom, however, the unity and stability are the highest truth and who contains all as well as inhabits all. (Verse 4 and 5)
The basis and fulfilment of the rule of life are found in the experience of unity by which man identifies with the cosmic and transcendental Self and is identified in the Self but with an entire freedom from grief and confusion with all its becoming. (Verse 6 and 7)
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