ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT LIFE AND GOD

This appeared in the Times of India, Chennai edition of 27 Oct 2008 under the Sacred Spaces column. I found this very very enlightening and so I thought of putting it down on my blog. Made lots of sense to me. Here are the writings:

"By whom willed and directed does the mind alight on its objects? By whom commanded does the prana(vital breath, that precedes all, start? By whom willed do men utter speech? What intelligent power directs the eye to see, the ear to hear?"
- Kenopanishad 1.1

"It is the ear of the ear, It is the mind of the mind, It is the speech of the speech, It is the breathing of the breathing, It is the eye of the eye...."
- Kenopanishad 1.2

"The teacher proceeds from the known to the unknown....We all know that we hear with our ears. But a set of ears on their own are as deaf as a post. Follow the sound vibrations through the eardrums along the nerves. It is the brain which is actually hearing those vibrations. But that is not the end of it. If the Consciousness leaves the brain you won't hear. Even if that Consciousness simply shifts the focus of your brain for a moment, the ears still transmitting the sounds to it as it ticks away, but you are deafened...

Consciousness is the see-er in the eye, the mind in the mind, the speaker in the speech. That says the teacher, is the source of existence, is God(Brahman). So God is the subject of all you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, feel or understand. Therefore, God can never be an object of perception or comprehension."