Vyapti & Upadhi
At the start of my studies in Vedanta, which really began with a grounding in cosmology, I was immediately fascinated with the element of akasha/ether/space and the principle of all-pervasiveness (vyapti) that it conveyed. Objects occupy space and space is not affected. You can move an object, but space doesn’t move (well, akasha doesn’t; the space of science seems to bend, so it cannot be exactly what the seers mean by akasha). A glass of water does not make space wet, fire cannot heat it, and a knife cannot divide it. Akasha became a superlative cognizable element for which to describe, by way of analogy, the meaning of all-pervasiveness and thus the nature of the Self.
Prior to this, and from my Catholic and later Religious Science upbringing, I had heard that God is omnipresent, everywhere. But I do not remember ever really looking into what that actually meant. God is everywhere, but somehow that excluded me, like superman hiding from the penetrating power of kryptonite behind a lead wall (of body and mind).
I think this superficial treatment is common with the idea of infinity as well. Many people do not come to terms with it. Listening to a reading from Swami Vivekananda’s works at the Vedanta Society one day, I heard him say that there cannot be two infinites. They would cancel each other out. This was a grand koan for peeling away name and form from Reality!
And what about eternity? Yes, it happens after death, doesn’t it? I’m teasing, of course. I was sitting at an SRV retreat in Deadwood, Oregon with a sangha brother who was quietly practicing mindfulness in eating. Slowly, he looked up in an obvious “ah ha” moment and said to the first person he saw (me), “Wow, eternity is right now, not something in the future.” These things are so obvious but pass us right by until we are ready to hear them.
These three ideas, all-pervasiveness, infinity, and eternity, can go a long way toward breaking down false identification with a personal individuality, which is, as Ramprasad puts it, “the narrow prison-house of suffering.”
Next came the teaching on upadhi, the “limiting adjunct.” I don’t know what was harder to fathom, the Sanskrit word or its English definition. A limiting adjunct is something that apparently limits and gives shape to something that is unlimited. Among the classic examples are how the mountains or a cityscape give shape to the sky, which is formless. Actually, that sounds so straight forward now, but I remember struggling for a long time with this because I thought the sky started at the horizon. The Avadhuta Gita’s verses ending in “homogenous, like the sky” forced me to consider that sky, space and akasha were interchangeable. But the clincher, for finally understanding this essential principle of upadhi, was a beautiful walk through a pasture in a small, narrow valley near the Oregon coast. It was almost sundown. The sun was behind the mountains and the sky had turned that vibrant violet-blue color before going golden. I was staring up at all the fir trees rimming the valley, following the line of the mountains against the sky, and probably very peaceful in mind, when the idea of upadhi came forth and its classic example now present before me. It was suddenly clear, and the obstacle of thinking the sky started at the horizon, and that space was something we only see the stars in at night – that sky and space were not two different things — just went away.
This was just the start, however. Now it was really possible to work with this idea of upadhi and apply it to a growing understanding of all-pervasiveness, infinity, and eternity and what that means for the so-called individual self.
In the Mandukyo Upanisad and Gaudapada’s Karika, we get a very clear presentation of how Consciousness manifests both in the Cosmic/samasti and Individual/vyasti modes. These are the two most subtle upadhis we have to see through. Further, within the Cosmic and Individual modes, there are three bodies for expressing in gross, subtle and causal realms of relativity, which are also aligned with the states of waking, dream, and deep sleep. These, too, are upadhis over the same indivisible Consciousness. They have even been given their own names as if they are separate entities (but this is for the purposes of recognition and understanding so they can be used or transcended at will):
Cosmic Individual
Causal/deep sleep: Ishvara (Godhead) Prajna (enjoyer of bliss in nescience)
Subtle/dream: Hiranyagarbha (womb of universe) Taijasa (projector via the mind)
Gross/waking: Vaishvanara (physical universe) Vishva (enjoyer of gross objects)
There is much that can be said about the implications of this simple diagram. For now, let’s just say that the “Cosmic personalities” represent Consciousness operating in freedom and omniscience and collectively functioning as the Creator or God in the gross, subtle, and causal states of the universe. The “individual personalities” are operating under the influence of avidya, ignorance, and create individual experiences at each state.
The main point is that it is one seamless Consciousness that is apparently limited by these different upadhis that we assume to be our personal identity at any given state of consciousness. Consciousness is all-pervasive; It penetrates everything; all exists in It. Its eternity is never broken up by states of waking, dream, or sleep, much less birth and death. Its infinity is absolute. From another angle, as Consciousness, we can sport in knowledge and freedom as these individual and cosmic modes, like water that takes the form of waves, foam and bubbles.
I’ll close with a few quotes that are pertinent:
From Swami Yatiswarananda (Meditation and Spiritual Life)
“Physically we must be in tune with the infinite physical universe, mentally with the infinite mental universe, and spiritually with the infinite supreme Spirit. And then we see everything it its proper place, in the proper light, and act accordingly. The finite should be always in tune with the Infinite and that, on all the different planes, in all the different forms of consciousness. One should feel the presence of God always at all levels.”
From Babaji Bob Kindler (from my class notes)
“Brooding upon death, fear, doubt – these are the actual constituents of the veil of ignorance, also called nescience. That heavy curtain keeps a man in ignorance when he enters deep sleep, and keeps him from remembering it when he awakens.”
“If you imagine time to be real, then everything becomes ponderous and burdensome. If you know it to be illusory then you are free from incremental knowledge and plunge into the infinite.”
