Kena Upanishad / Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 18 · Translations and Commentaries Published by Sri Aurobindo

The Kena Upanishad: Commentary XIV: The Transfiguration of the Self and the Gods

pp. 85–91

The means of the knowledge of Brahman are, we have seen, to get back behind the forms of the universe to that which is essential in the cosmos—and that which is essential is twofold, the gods in Nature and the self in the individual,—and then to get behind these to the Beyond which they represent. The practical relation of the gods to Brahman in this process of divine knowledge has been already determined. The cosmic functionings through which the gods act, mind, life, speech, senses, body, must become aware of something beyond them which governs them, by which they are and move, by whose force they evolve, enlarge themselves and arrive at power and joy and capacity; to that they must turn from their ordinary operations; leaving these, leaving the false idea of independent action and self-ordering which is an egoism of mind and life and sense they must become consciously passive to the power, light and joy of something which is beyond themselves. What happens then is that this divine Unnameable reflects Himself openly in the gods. His light takes possession of the thinking mind, His power and joy of the life, His light and rapture of the emotional mind and the senses. Something of the supreme image of Brahman falls upon the world-nature and changes it into divine nature.

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