The verse and its meaning · Upanishads · Shvetashvatara · What Is the Cause?

The One Behind Them All

Shvetashvatara Upanishad 1.3

ते ध्यानयोगानुगता अपश्यन्देवात्मशक्तिं स्वगुणैर्निगूढाम् । यः कारणानि निखिलानि तानि कालात्मयुक्तान्यधितिष्ठत्येकः

Meaning · English

Through meditation they saw God's own power, kept out of sight by its own qualities. He alone governs all those causes, time and the self among them.

The seekers did not settle the question by argument. They sat in meditation and looked. What they saw was a power that belongs to God, the deva, and is also his very self. That power stays hidden, wrapped in its own qualities, the gunas, so it is easy to miss. Time, nature, chance, the elements, the individual self: the causes named earlier still do real work. But none of them acts alone. One being stands over every one of them and directs them.

Look at a wall clock. You see the hands sweep and hear the tick, but the spring that drives it all sits inside the clock's own case, out of view. Time, nature, the elements and the self are the moving hands. The power governing them is the spring, hidden by the very body it moves.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Weighing the Candidate Causes · Shvetashvatara Upanishad 1.2
• Next: A Wheel Counted Part by Part · Shvetashvatara Upanishad 1.4
• All of Upanishads · Ask Krishna about it

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