Am-Ness – In Gita Verse 14.16 The result of pious action is pure and is said to be in the mode of goodness. But action done in the mode of passion results in misery, and action performed in the mode of ignorance results in foolishness.
Krishna’s Wisdom Through the Lens of the Sarvasar Upanishad
Krishna, in the timeless glow of the Bhagavad Gita, imparts that actions sown in the soil of goodness yield the fruit of purity, actions steeped in the heat of passion brew misery, and those shrouded in the fog of ignorance beget foolishness. The Sarvasar Upanishad, a poignant tapestry of Vedantic thought, casts light upon these teachings with its incisive quest for our innermost truth.
“I am beyond the body, senses, intellect, mind, and ego – the untouched, all-knowing Self. An eternal witness, illumined and free. In this, no shadow of doubt can reside.”
The sages of yore wielded the potent ‘Neti Neti’ – not this, not that – evoking a tradition of negation in pursuit of truth. By consecutively shedding temporal facets, the Upanishads guide us toward the undying essence.
The rishi speaks, “I am unborn.” Thus, any entity that has a beginning – the breath, senses, or ‘I’ – cannot embody the immutable Self. The original being is always a precursor, and all else is subsequently born of it.
The self is neither encased in senses nor entwined in the maturing mind, nor is it the sense of self within. The ego is but a mental mirage. Strip away thought, and the Self endures – as is, a boundless existence, pure ‘am-ness’ that is the very definition of the soul.
This ‘am-ness’ represents the primordial canvas – unsullied, unmarked by identity or deed. It invites us to delve into our core being, which persists, even when breath, sense, and thought are peeled away.
What lingers when all is stripped away? It is not emptiness; it is the pure potentiality of existence in its most basic germinal state. And at the heart of this core resides a single, incontrovertible truth: this essence is consciousness itself – a consciousness pure, objectless, like a mirror reflecting nothingness.
This Upanishadic vision transcends mere intellectualism or speculative theory – it is an unwavering direct experience, as the rishi proclaims, “I have lived, seen; this is experiential truth.” A truth derived not from abstraction but from a journey within – a path that pierced the veil of doubt to bask in the radiance of pure self-knowledge.
The narrative brought forth in this blog is a reminder that the profound directives of the Upanishads are crystalline signposts towards experiential enlightenment. The rishi, through their attestations, offers a beacon for each soul to move beyond the intellect into the serene certainty of the Self through personal realisation.
In tandem with these profound insights, Krishna’s guidance charts a parallel odyssey. Recognise and release the grip of your passions and ignorance, delicately deconstruct these layers, and what emerges is pure ‘am-ness’: a serene state devoid of the ego – a state of being that epitomises existential authenticity.
Let us tread this path laid out by Krishna and the rishi of the Upanishad – with every step taken in awareness, every layer shed in understanding, may we too arrive at the tranquil shores of ‘am-ness’, and in doing so, discover the expansive beauty of our truest self.
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