Mandukya_Upanishad

seen the Ātman? Can you get the Ātman here, there, in this,in that? It is nowhere! It is not in anything particularised,and, therefore, we cannot get the Ātman by any amount ofsearch in the outer world of objects. So, all the loves of theworld are futile in the end, and are bound to be frustrated,doomed to suffer, because of this erroneous approach toReality made through the objects, to which Reality cannotbe confined on account of their inherent structural defect.And, in this experimentation, we die. Life is too short. Theexperimentation does not end. In the next birth we do,again, experiment with things, because the objects increation are infinite. We make infinite experiments, and thestruggle goes on. This process is called samsāra,transmigration; and in all the lives that we take, in all thedeaths that we pass through, the Ātman cannot be seen, justas the Gopis could not see Kriṣhna until He Himself made aWill to appear before them. Nobody could inform theGopis as to where Kriṣhna was. ‘I do not know: I do notknow’: this is what all the objects will tell you. What are weasking for, then? We have never seen it. And, consideringthis enigmatic situation of the quest for the Ātman, theUpanishad finally said that perhaps it can be realised onlyby him whom it chooses. You have to leave it to itself. Youdo not know how you can see it. There seems to be nomeans of knowing it. Nothing in the world can be a help tous in knowing it. Yam eva eṣha vrinute tena labhyah:Whom it chooses, he alone can obtain it. This seems to be asolution arrived at by the sage of the Kaṭha Upanishad. Weare tired of the quest. And when the Gopis were fatigued inthis arduous quest, when they became unconscious in their109