Hinduism Today | Vedas | January, February, March, 2003

The entire purport if the vedas is liberation or freedom. Freedom may be interpreted in many ways. It is Brahman, it is atman, it is nirvana. Or it can be said to consist in Being, in Happiness, in Release from all bondage. More numerous still are the ways supposed to lead to it. Right action, true knowledge and real love are the classical ways.

Our selection stresses only some features of moksha. The thrust of most of the texts is true to the basic meaning of the word, from the root muc- or moksh-, to loose, to free, release, let loose, let go, and thus also to spare, to let live, to allow to depart, to dispatch, to dismiss, and even to relax, to spend, bestow, give away, to open. There is a climate of simplification, of elimination, of utter freedom and even unconcern, which forms one of the fundamental features of the entire Vedic experience. Not by accumulation and increased concern, but by simplification and unconcern, will Man reach his final destination. The consequences of this attitude are a whole lifestyle.

I know that Primordial Man, golden as the sun, beyond darkness. Knowing him a man even now becomes immortal. This is the way to attain him; there is no other.

[Brahman] is grasped in a flash of awakening. Then it is thought that one attains immortality. By the atman one achieves spiritual strength, and by wisdom is found immortality. Wherever he is known, there is truth; wherever not known, ruination. Discerning him in every being, the wise, departing from this world, become immortal.

The entire purport of the vedas is liberation or freedom. Freedom may be interpreted in many ways. It is Brahman, it is atman, it is nirvana. Or it can be said to consist in Being, in Happiness, in Release from all bondage. More numerous still are the ways supposed to lead to it. Right action, true knowledge and real love are the classical ways.
Our selection stresses only some features of moksha. The thrust of most of the texts is true to the basic meaning of the word, from the root muc- or moksh-, to loose, to free, release, let loose, let go, and thus also to spare, to let live, to allow to depart, to dispatch, to dismiss, and even to relax, to spend, bestow, give away, to open. There is a climate of simplification, of elimination, of utter freedom and even unconcern, which forms one of the fundamental features of the entire Vedic experience. Not by accumulation and increased concern, but by simplification and unconcern, will Man reach his final destination. The consequences of this attitude are a whole lifestyle.

I know that Primordial Man, golden as the sun, beyond darkness. Knowing him a man even now becomes immortal. This is the way to attain him; there is no other.
shukla yajur veda 31.18

If here and now one knows him before the decay of the body, then one is prepared to receive a body in the worlds of creation. In the atman one sees as it were in a mirror, in the world of the Fathers one sees as in a dream, in the world of the spirits, as reflection in water, in the world of Brahman, as light and shade. When the wise man knows the sense perceptions—their rising and their setting, each one in separation—and the origin of each, then he grieves no more. Beyond the senses is the mind, beyond the mind, pure intellect, beyond the intellect, the great atman, beyond the great atman, the Unmanifest.

Beyond the unmanifest, moreover, is the Person, all-pervading, uncharacterized. When a man knows Him, he attains liberation and proceeds to immortality. His form is not in the field of vision. No one is able to see Him with the eye. Apprehending Him by heart, by thought, and by mind, those who know him thus become immortal.
When the five organs of perception are still, together with the mind, when the reason does not function—this they aver to be the highest state. This they deem to be yoga—the steady concentration of the senses. Man then becomes pure attention, for yoga is both origin and extinction.

In this great wheel of Brahman, the life and foundation of all, the soul wanders like a swan, thinking himself and the Inspirer to be separate. When grace comes from Him, he attains immortality. This has been praised as the supreme Brahman in which the three-fold reality is established and imperishable. Those who know Brahman within, realizing Brahman and absorbed in Brahman, are released from birth. The Lord encompasses this all, composed of things perishable and imperishable, formed and unformed. The self, a mere enjoyer, suffers without a Lord, but he who knows God is freed from all fetters.

Two are unborn, the knower and the ignorant; the Lord and the not-Lord. The one, an enjoyer, is chained to enjoyments; the other, the atman, is infinite, of universal form, nonactive. By knowing the threefold, one also knows Brahman. Perishable is matter; immortal, imperishable the Lord, who, the One, controls the perishable and also the soul. Meditating on Him, uniting with Him, becoming more and more like Him, one is freed at the last from the world’s illusion. The Eternal which resides in the atman should be known. Beyond this there is nothing that needs to be known. The enjoyer, the object of enjoyment, the Inspirer—this has been declared to be the All, the threefold Brahman.

As a mirror covered with dust, when cleaned, shines with fresh brightness, so the embodied self is unified on seeing the atman’s true nature, attains its goal and is released from sorrow. He who with the truth of the atman, unified, perceives the truth of Brahman, as with a lamp, who knows God, the unborn, the stable, the One free from all forms of being, is released from all fetters.

The Vedas are the divinely revealed and most revered scriptures, sruti, of Hinduism, likened to the Torah (1,200 bce), Bible New Testament (100 ce), Koran (630 ce) or Zend Avesta (600 bce). Four in number, Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva, the Vedas include over 100,000 verses. Oldest portions may date back as far as 6,000 BCE.

Raimundo Panikkar, 82, holds doctorates in science, philosophy and theology. His anthology of verses, The Vedic Experience, excerpted above, is the result of ten years spent in Banaras translating with the help of Vedic scholars.