Inverted Tree of Reality

"The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: It is said that there is an imperishable banyan tree that has its roots upward and its branches down and whose leaves are the Vedic hymns. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas." ................Bhagavad-Gita Ch 15:1

"This banyan tree, which has got roots above the soil and branches underneath, is quite ancient. That (its root) is pure, that is Brahman, that is the eternal and immortal. On it rest all the worlds. No one goes beyond that. This is that." ............Katha Upanishad Ch 4:1

If a Banyan tree is surrounded by water, the pure reflection of the tree will cause one to wonder which is real. With its multitude of aerial roots, the connectivity to the real and the reflection defies differentiation. This is true of any situation where one witnesses a true reflection like the landscape in the accompanying picture. This is the reason we get disoriented in the polar regions when there is a white-out, that is snow on the ground and white clouds in the sky. Man's consciousness has been groomed through referential inference. We need a frame of reference and the validity of our perception is as good as, but never better than, the validity of our frame of reference. It is therefore true that we only perceive illusion as all our references are based on sense data derived from objective grasping.

This is the reason that the mythological episode of the garden of Eden mentioned in Genesis chapter 2 talks of two trees namely; a tree of knowledge and a tree of life. God's command was to eat of the tree of life but never from the tree of knowledge and this type of knowledge is amplified as that of 'good and evil'. Every knowledge which is not life empowering is derived from a judgment resulting from a reference steeped in duality. Duality is not of Divine nature and thus leads to corruption and death.

The unpolluted reflection is the Ashwattha tree the tree of life about which I wrote in my commentary on the Gospel of Thomas and I reproduce what I wrote for the reader's benefit: Article

"All these symbolism of five worlds of consciousness, five levels of awareness, five members of the mind and five tabernacles are unified in Yeshua’s teaching as Five Trees of Paradise in keeping with a more eastern symbolism which can be traced to the Vedic philosophy.

From the universal viewpoint, the Ashwattha, the sacred tree, is an emblem of the "Tree of Life," the symbol of the never-ending universe. Here we have an instance of progress from universals to particulars. This tree has (1) "its roots above," (2) "its branches below," (3) "the lesser shoots," (4) "the leaves," and (5) "those roots which ramify below." Commencing in the unknown, the universal, the beginningless and endless, the Rootless Root of all-being, the Tree is thus reversed. The "roots above," generated in Heaven, represent the "First Cause," the Logos that links manifestation to Purusha-Spirit-SELF."

The pure reflection and the cyclic nature of consciousness is again brought to our attention in the writings of Hermes Trismegistus in his Emerald Tablet, an ancient document probably dating to the Greco-Egyptian time. The verses 2 and 3 says: "That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing. And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation."

Let us now reflect on this great revelation and love to you all.