If the Ishopanishad is spoken by a sage, how is it apaurusheya?

From Divyangi Lalita M

In the explanation of the Isopanishad, you had mentioned that it is a conversation between sages. Since this knowledge is also called apaurseya, meaning directly spoken by the Lord, I am not able to connect these two together. Can you please explain.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna question from Divyangi Mithamataji if the Ishopanishad is Apahushaya, that would mean that it is spoken by the Lord, it has come from the Lord but you mentioned in your class that it is a conversation between the sages so how can we reconcile the two? answer actually the Ishopanishad is not a conversation between the sages it is a prayer offered by Manu to Yajnavatar that’s what is explained by the Acharyas in their commentaries Bhanu Maharaj has done a translation of the various Acharyas commentaries and therein this point is explained that it is not exactly a conversation but it is a prayer offered or you could say, not all the verses are prayers so we can say it is a meditation we see that it is a meditation in the nature of the Absolute Truth which concludes in prayers now with respect to it being Apahushaya we have to understand what Apahushaya means it means not having any human origin but that doesn’t mean that there is no human medium ultimately whatever has come from God when it has come to us it has come to the world it has to come through some medium so the medium is always there which is which is to be human or when you use human we can say it has come to Devatas, from the Devatas it has come to humans in a broad sense it ultimately has to come from the divine knowledge has to come through a non-divine source through a non-divine medium not source, to us so how have the Vedas come to humanity that is through the certain sages so now if we look at the life of Manu, he himself is a very great sage, he is a Raj Rishi so Embu Manu, in fact some of the prayers that he has offered, I described in the first chapter of the 8th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam and some of those are very similar to what is talked about in the Isopanishad so he is himself a great soul and after having lived a life of devotion to the Lord then at a particular time in history he becomes a channel for the scripture to reveal himself, so now it is explained that the scripture itself is eternal just as Krishna is eternal, the spiritual world is eternal, even Shabda the sound vibration of the scripture is also eternal, but that eternal sound, it becomes revealed, it becomes accessible to people at a particular time in history through certain mediums so when Swayambhu Manu speaks this, this is not just his realizations, yes it’s definitely his realizations but by the arrangement of the Lord, he is speaking that which is the eternal word of the scripture, the eternal word of Shruti, which is channeled through him so therefore, the difference between the difference between the paurushya knowledge and paurushya knowledge is that when we write something, we speak something it’s largely based on our intelligence even when there are great scientific or philosophical insights which come, there may be some element of the inspiration of the super soul definitely but also some of the things people consider as inspirations today they may be in future turned out to be errors so we can’t always say that everything that we get or anything that we get is necessarily coming completely from the super soul, so paurushya means the sages, they go into ecstatic trance of meditation and they become channels for this particular speech to be spoken so it’s not that they created the sound, it’s not that they originated this particular set of verses, these verses are eternal they exist forever just as the Lord exists forever so the scriptures are especially in terms of the paurushya, Shruti, they exist eternally and because they exist eternally they are called paurushya and they just become, manifest to us through a particular channel so those are the great sages who in ecstatic trance are inspired by the Lord to speak exactly those words which are there originally in the scriptures and that’s how the scriptures which are having no human origin which come from the divine Lord, come to us through a human being who is in divine consciousness and now the difference between Shruti and Smriti is Smritis are realizations which are also we can say they are spoken in divine consciousness but the important point about Shruti is that even the letters stay as it is, in Smriti often the things are explained according to time, place, circumstances so there are various things which come which are contextual also to illustrate the eternal principles so in Smritis all the letters and the words are not necessarily eternal many of them can be contextual it’s like when Krishna speaks to Arjuna I gave this knowledge to the sun god now when Krishna gave this knowledge to the sun god he will not speak I gave this knowledge to the sun god the essential knowledge will be the same but certain things will be contextual which will not be there in the essential knowledge so with respect to the Shruti even the letters remain the same and the message also remains the same and that is the eternal sound is exactly manifested without any change at a particular time through these sages who are in divine trance thank you so Krishna