Isha Upanishad - Super school - Auroville - Isha Upanishad 702

If you read the fourth verse and the last line, ‘In that the Master of Life establishes the Waters’. This is quite a difficult phrase. In the Upanishads as in the Veda, there is this symbolic meaning of the word ‘waters’, water is an image in the Vedas and Upanishads and they speak of seven waters. There are seven waters according to the Upanishads and according to the Vedas. And the seven waters are described in the Vedas and the Upanishads, not here and that is what needs to be expounded. There are seven waters, seven currents; you might say as a result there are seven worlds.

 This world that we see, in which we live, in which we breathe, in which there activities, in which we are engaged, it is only one of the seven worlds. It is said by the Upanishads if you think that this is the only world you are mistaken, this is not the only world there are many other worlds. And although we live here, our own being also has got seven threads and therefore we live simultaneously in the seven worlds. We are aware only of this world, we are aware of only one thread, to some extent of the second set and the third thread also but with regard to the fourth, fifth, sixth and the seventh thread, we are not aware at all. One thread is what is called annam, the food sheath or the physical that is the one world of which we are aware. Our body is physical and it is a thread by which you are connected with this physical world. The second world is called prana, the world of breath, the world of life-force, dynamism, activity, movement of the energy. We have lives therefore, we are having that awareness but we are not aware of a world where there is only life. There is a world where there is only life, not the Earth, not the physical. There is a third world, which is the world of the mind, manas. We also have the mind and therefore we are aware of it to some extent but we are not aware of that mind, where there is only the world of mind, where there are only minds, − there is a world of thoughts. We are aware of these three in a certain way and we're connected with these three words in a pre-dominant manner. When you develop your mind, you are creating greater and greater contact with the world of the mind. You become more and more attuned to the world of the mind. But then there is the fourth world which is called ’turiam swid’ in the Veda. ‘turiam swid’ it is the fourth world. turiam means other than the three, the fourth. There is a fourth world and that is the world of the supermind. Then there is the fifth world, it is a world of delight ‘ananda’. And there is the sixth world; it is the world of consciousness ‘chit’. Then there is the seventh world, which is the world of ‘sat’, which is the world of your existence. So, there are seven worlds and these seven worlds are established. It says in that the Master of life establishes the waters. In that,− that is the Brahman. The master of life is the Lord himself. The Lord establishes, manifests seven worlds in that Brahman. In a very minor manner, we can say that in the essence that is Rose seven waters of poured, so that you have rose water in plenty. It is the same reality, the same essence, manifested in seven waters. It is the Lord who pours into the Brahman, these seven waters, the seven rivers, which belong to the Brahman itself. There is a word in Sanskrit which has been given in the text is called matrishawa, ma-tri-shawa, − is the master of life. That which is entered into the mother that he has extended itself to the mother, the very word indicates a concept which is here in the Upanishad, the concept of the mother. There is a Lord, there is a divine mother, there is Brahman and there are these waters. It is one reality but it has great complexity in it. It is like one body having so many organs; nothing is separated from the body, from the totality of the body. Similarly, it is one reality in which there are relationships within itself. If I want to touch this part of my body, it is the same body touching itself but through certain relationships which are internally made. The Upanishad tells us is this reality is seven fold.