The Mystic Poet Of Esha Upanishad

In our Bhagavad Geeta and Upanishad study group we have been reading Esha Upanishad. As I read and reread Shlok 8 I couldn’t decide if the shlock was pointing to the attributes of Supreme consciousness or to the realized individual soul or to both. Our scriptures consider both essentially the one in essence, yet working on different levels. 

While Shloka 4 and 5 clearly point to the supreme Brahman, shloka 6 and 7 points to the individual soul that has realized the unity with the Cosmic Brahman.

With this reference in mind first I wanted to understand it as written for an individual realized soul. But the words like -  ‘the self- existent has ordered objects perfectly according to their nature from years sempiternal’, were pointing to the cosmic Supreme being…

The words ‘It is He that has gone abroad… too were taking different meaning in my mind.

If used for Brahaman it would simply point to the Supreme being extending itself in the manifested world.

Used for an individual it would mean the soul that has the power to extend itself in the oneness of the world beyond the limitations of its mind and body.

At least this is my understanding and both these understandings seemed justified to me, but still I was not satisfied. Why the poet has grouped them together in one shloka while keeping them apart at previous shloka. What were we to understand or to take from his linguistic notion?

We talked more of the shloka in the light of Sri Aurobindo’s commentary, but the question still persisted in my mind. 

During our discussion one of the members mentioned something written in Bhagavad Geeta and all of a sudden I remembered, Lord Krishna too in Bhagavad Geeta while addressing himself seems to interchange the epithet for the Supreme soul and Individual soul from shloka to shloka and it often sounded so mystical. As we studied more of Bhagavad Geeta we realized Krishna was a supreme Yogi and dwelling in Supreme or worldly consciousness simultaneously and talking from that level was within the yogic power of his realized soul.

Sri Aurobindo too was a Yogi and it was not hard for him to write about the shloka in context with the supreme being and the soul without having any conflict.

The answer to my puzzled mind suddenly became clear. The shlokas of Esha Upanishad also are the utterance of an ancient supreme yogi, a poet-seer, the one who could come in and out of Supreme consciousness and describe that experience with somewhat mystical wordings, placing it all together in just a few words of a Shloka. We can never understand them intellectually unless we have faith in the process of consciousness higher than the mind or willing to believe in it or have experienced it. It is talked about again and again by mystic saints from years sempiternal. It is us who just don’t get it!

Savita Tyagi
5.23.2020