Ancient Wisdom & Modern Health 16

Kenopanishad

Conclusion

"One who knows this, having shaken off all sin, lives firmly seated in the endless, blissful, and highest reality, firmly seated."

Everything has been said. The teacher has reached the conclusion. The student knows to look between, behind, around, and through the teacher's words and never to look at them directly, for they could never contain what is trying to be conveyed. Therefore, the teacher makes no attempt here to use language in novel ways as had been done throughout the teaching. There's no attempt to qualify what it means to know, or the means to know, or how knowing is even possible. All such instruction has happened; the mind of the student has reached its subtle zenith and is preparing to take flight. Here the teacher is simply summarizing everything, knowing that the student is on the precipice of leaving behind old notions of what health is and launching into their own depths, realizing its true meaning.

By "having shaken off all sin," the teacher is reiterating all that was said before about departing from the world of common interpretation and common perception. As was previously clarified, this is not a departure that leaves no residue; it is a departure from the standard while recontextualizing that standard within a greater truth and experience. In other words, the ability to relate to the common understanding of health and disease is not lost, yet the student is on the launch pad of reveling in a kind of health that was so unthinkable previously that to say it has anything to do with what was previously known would be folly. 

To say that health and wholeness can be described as the improvement of a diagnosis is simultaneously true and false in that it is incomplete. It is complete, for example, to the extent that as hypertension improves, health also improves. But to the extent that it is incomplete–for example, while hypertension may improve with medication, the associated stress of the mind expressing itself through Mind-Body-Flow Theory as atherosclerosis may not improve–it is false. Or, for that matter, even if the very atherosclerosis improves, the angst that may be one of the factors leading several steps down the line to vascular pathology may not improve.

Ultimately, the trail of health has to be traced back to wholeness and the very source of our identity. Therefore, we depart from standard notions without losing the benefit of the particular knowledge they impart. Interpreting this in the context of healthcare, use the services provided having understood what they can do and cannot do in the greater process of healing, in the greater process of realizing our ever-existent health and wholeness. Without this context, one enters a hamster wheel of healthcare products and services that never quite reach the wholeness that we are, yet asymptotically lures people into endless pills and procedures. To shake off sin, in this instance, is to know the context and know when to use what.

And what would be the result of this? It would be to be firmly seated, to be firmly established, to revel in one's nature, to not merely dabble in the occasional delightful experience or peace, but rather to re-make one's home the very home we emerged from. But there is something very peculiar about this home: Our teacher tells us that it is endless.

A wealthy person may have a 10,000 square foot house. They may have 200 acres of land. They may even have islands to themselves. But what they have is not endless. As sure as the sun will set today, that which can be possessed has a clear demarcation setting it apart from that which cannot be possessed. But this peculiar home the teacher is indicating is one that is endless. Once entered, it transforms every aspect of space and time such that the very notion of entry and exit evaporates.

But is this a horror? Is this endlessness really something to be desired? Indeed it is, for the teacher clearly indicates that it is blissful. Health is blissful. To be clear, it is not ecstasy. Ecstasy, while tremendously desirable, is also intense, even incapacitating. Sustained, intense ecstasy necessarily correlates with decreased external activity. But this student is of an age that they are still in the world, working in the world, expressing in the world, mixing and shaping the world; therefore, while ecstasy is well within the student's reach to be experienced at any given moment for any period of time, the teacher here is indicating something beyond ecstasy in stating that this state of health, innate to us all and indeed inalienable to us all, is blissful. 

Bliss is not necessarily incapacitating. Bliss is the sheen and glow of fullness. It is the effervescence of wholeness. It is something beyond both body and mind. It allows the function of both yet transcends the function of both. Bliss can still allow speech, movement, and interpretation. This state of bliss, of joy from all sides, is indicated here by the teacher, nearing conclusion.

Not only is the state of health, once realized, endless and blissful, but it is also the highest reality. In a world that has gone mad with believing that we have to look like somebody else, sound like somebody else, act like somebody else, or believe that someone else's answer has to be our own, it is easy to believe standard ideas about health and wellness. And in such a world, it's easy to believe that words such as those pouring out of these teachers hearts are mere philosophical fancy, so the teacher adds here that what is being spoken is indeed, based on the teacher's own experience and the entire lineage of teachers that presents as this one, the highest reality.

Reality here is defined as that which is unchanged by the modifications of the world. H2O, for example, is more real than ice because H2O doesn't change just because ice changes. Air is more real than wind, because air exists whether or not wind exists, and the modifications of wind do not change the essential nature of air. Similarly, health, as indicated by the teacher here, is the highest reality in that it illuminates all other experiences of the human being through all the faculties of the senses and the mind. This is not an invitation to live in one's own personal mental fantasy, but rather an invitation to look beyond the external layers of teaching in our educational system and healthcare system and look within to that which illuminates the very concepts that have been set forth. Because this illuminating factor is unchanged by the changes of the body and the mind–indeed, it is unchanged by even birth and death–it is indicated as the highest reality, relative to common concepts of health and wellness.

Finally, with a flourish, the teacher ends by repeating that such a person who has departed yet contextualized common understanding, who lives in that which neither begins nor ends, and who experiences bliss and the highest reality, is firmly seated. While the scenes of the movie change and the narratives unfold, the light that expresses as the changes on the movie screen is utterly firmly seated. None of the plot twists experienced by the characters on the screen is experienced by the light, yet the characters are themselves none other than light dancing to its own tune. Therefore, even as it taps its toes to the rhythm of life, light is ever firmly seated. These are the last words the student hears as the engine fires and the mind takes flight until even it drops off unto its original nature as health and wholeness. This is your nature. Everything leads back to this. You are whole.

This concludes the Kenopanishad. Love and gratitude to all my teachers and all those who make this possible.