Inspirations from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

CHILDREN ask questions, ‘Why this, why that?’. Probably, even in ancient civilisations, little boys and girls spontaneously and persistently confronted their parents with the great word: ‘Why?’ or its equivalent. The Upanishads emerged out of this questioning spirit of human nature.

There was also a worshipping spirit. But it was mixed with fear. The universe—the all—seemed to be under the control of invisible forces. Let me worship them with ceremonies, prayers, hymns, sacrifices, so that I might stay safe while I live and after I die. The early civilisation in what is now called India developed many hymns, ceremonies and rituals in order to win the favour and protection of the unseen forces.

But alongside this outer expression of the religious spirit, there was also a tendency to question, to look for a deeper meaning and purpose, to gain a comprehensive and satisfying understanding of all we are experiencing, and even to check whether we are experiencing it in the right way.

They asked: ‘Are there many gods, or forces of nature, or are they imagined expressions of one supreme power? Is that power really separate from me, or is there some hidden connection, even a oneness between what I am and the whole of reality? People come and go; and our loved ones, who seemed to be a permanent support, are eventually, or suddenly lost to us or we to them. Suffering seems unavoidable, however much I pray and worship. How real is this experience, for everything is passing and therefore not wholly reliable?’

Such concerns inspired some to change their religious approach. They turned to meditation, and went to live in the forests, where they felt they would gain greater peace and focus. And out of the old collections of hymns and ritualistic instructions, which collectively were called the Vedas, emerged a new body of teaching, called the Aranyakas—aranya meaning forest. Here the stress was not on outer action but inward reflection on spiritual symbols, by endowing them with a cosmic significance. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, to the puzzlement of first-time readers, starts with a description of such an Aranyaka meditation on the ‘horse sacrifice’ performed by kings; happily, no physical activity is prescribed—it is a meditation on cosmic ‘correspondences’, such as envisaging the horse’s head as the dawn, its eye, the sun, and so on.

But even this inward directing of the religious spirit, as long as it was tied to the idea of gaining for the individual favourable results and a high state of consciousness, was destined to be transcended. For in their solitary reflections, the forest sages discovered—or were blessed with—the ultimate breakthrough in understanding. They realised that at the deepest level of their inner being, there was no duality between the self that is the ground of our being, and the reality that underlies the whole universe. They realised, in fact, that their innermost Self was beyond change, and therefore beyond time; that it was beyond appearance, and therefore without a form. This ultimate reality was already referred to as ‘Brahman’, meaning great or vast. Now it was understood that the universal Brahman was not different from the essential principle at the heart of our own being.

Nor was this deeper conviction of our identity with the All regarded as a special or unusual state. It was seen as the true position—the Truth—about the whole of experience of anyone, anywhere. In contrast to our normal way of thinking, what was reckoned to be unusual and strange was not this realisation of universal unity; the anomaly was our ingrained belief that we are limited individuals, and our uncritical acceptance of the reality of the ever-changing mind and the world it lives and moves in. This in turn persuades us that living in and with duality is the only cognitive option available to us.

The realisation of non-duality led to a further refinement of the Vedic teaching, and this is embodied in the Upanishads. It was probably a few hundred years before these higher teachings evolved into the collection we now refer to as the principal Upanishads, ranging from the prose expression of the earliest revelations, to the poetry, and more ordered presentation found in subsequent writings. In fact the tradition began as an oral one, passed down by word of mouth and carefully remembered. The Brihadaranyaka is possibly the earliest upanishadic teaching to have emerged as a Sanskrit text, usually dated to around the seventh century BCE.

The purpose of all the Upanishads is to lead us to the realisation that our innermost Self is the Self of all. It is Brahman. And the other side of the teaching is to clarify the nature of Brahman, so that we rightly understand exactly how our Self can be one with it. For instance it is no good telling human beings that they are one with Brahman as conceived as the creator of the universe, and thereby foster the belief that we ourselves can produce wonders of this kind. The Upanishads stress that the final and truest understanding of Brahman or the Absolute is that it transcends all such roles as world creator. It is good to view the world as having its source in the divine transcendent principle, but such ideas and meditations are reckoned to be preliminary and preparatory. They help us to purify and universalise our thought, but they are not meant to solidify the idea of a creator God and a created world. Ultimate reality in the Upanishads goes beyond all limitations, and it is realised as our true Self.

Our true nature transcends individuality and abides eternally in the light and bliss of the realisation: ‘my Self is the Self of all’. Any other interpretation of the truth of Self, World and God, is based on ignorance, or not-knowing. It means that, fundamentally, we are not experiencing ourselves, or the world, or God, from the standpoint of ultimate Truth.

Another way of denoting the function of the Upanishads is to view them as means to dispel this ignorance and awaken us to what we truly are. Here are some words of Shri Shankara from his commentary on this Upanishad:

This ‘being the Self of all’ is the highest state of conscious¬ness of the Self, its supreme natural state. But when, before this, one feels oneself to be other than the Self of all, even by a hair’s breadth, that state is not-knowing. In contrast, ‘being the Self of all’, being all, within and without, is the highest state of the Self. Therefore, when our not-knowing falls away and knowledge attains its summit, ‘being the-Self of all’ supervenes, and this is liberation.

The Brihadaranyaka is the longest work of its kind. Swami Madhavananda’s translation with the Sanskrit text and Shankara’s commentary runs to 900 pages, though the last two of the six sections are regarded as later additions. The reader will find a mixture of material, including some teachings that relate to the rituals of the time. Even the philosophical sections sometimes contain allusions that the modern reader might find strange. And yet we soon find ourselves in touch with genuine philosophical reflections and insights, and powerful and penetrating ideas about Brahman, the Self, and their identity. The Upanishad also has a degree of human interest, and even humour. The teacher who dominates its pages is the sage Yajnavalkya. Much of the teaching is given at a competitive public debate, sponsored by King Janaka, who is a keen student of the transcendent philosophy. Yajnavalkya’s wife, Maitreyi, also wants to learn deeper truths and receives teachings. And a woman named Gargi speaks with spiritual authority and boldness at the assembly, challenging Yajnavalkya with two questions that she says are like sharp arrows designed to confound the most acute intelligence. The humour comes, for example, in Yajnavalkya’s move to gather up the prizes before the debate has even started, to the dismay of the other philosophers in attendance. Needless to say, Yajnavalkya answers Gargi’s two unanswerable questions, and wins the debate by a walkover.

Let us clarify in modern terms what this teaching is all about. The message is basically that we all have an option in life that is life-changing, life-enhancing, and ultimately life-transcending. Our mortal nature, which embraces our body, senses and mind, with its intellect, feelings, memories and imagination, is not the whole of us. It is a fragmentary and ultimately an illusory expression of our true nature. The Upanishads shed light on the deeper life within us. And their revelation is that the inmost power and presence in us is not separate from the power that underlies the whole universe.

The normal scenario is that there is the world—what we regard as the All. And there is us, functioning as body, mind and senses, undergoing our life-cycle from the cradle onwards, until—in the words of an English poet—‘death shuts up the story of our days’. For some, this is imagined to be the end of the drama. For others, influenced by their religion, some form of individual survival is anticipated, and this thought may give comfort.

The whole purpose of the upanishadic teaching is to point out that there is a deeper life-stream we can enter—one which leads to enlightenment and transcends birth and death. It establishes the reality and supreme importance of Self as the ultimate revealer and support of all we experience.

We used the phrase: ‘all we experience’. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad points to the possibility of a new and liberating experience of the All—however we may at present regard this concept. An illustration may be suggested.

Many people play the lottery and daydream about how free they will become if and when they win the big prize. A really greedy person addicted to making money would have no difficulty in imagining a situation in which the wealth of the whole world fell into his or her hands. But wealth is a strange thing. However rich we are, we cannot carry all of it with us. So we might ask: ‘Is what we can’t carry with us, really ours?’ In fact, any person of modest means, can play a game with their mind. They can imagine: ‘The wealth of the universe is mine here and now. I haven’t got it with me because it would take up too much space. For storage purposes I’ve distributed it across the population of the earth.’ And if you think in that way, it is as if whatever wealth you see and hear about is yours. The wealth of the universe is yours.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad proposes such a situation. It comes where Yajnavalkya is giving spiritual teachings to his wife Maitreyi. She raises the question: ‘Sir, if indeed this whole world full of wealth be mine, shall I be immortal through that?’ The sage replies: ‘No, your life will be just like that of people who have plenty of things, but there is no hope of immortality through wealth.’

But the fullness and expansion people link with riches and influence, is possible in a truer and deeper sense. This is what the Upanishad teaches. It is not a case of being able to say: ‘I own the wealth of all.’ but rather to realise: ‘I am the Self of all.’ The sage goes on to tell his wife about her deeper being—her true Self:

The Self, my dear, is to be realised—to be heard of, reflected on, meditated on. By the realisation of the Self, my dear, all this is known.

This Self goes beyond the self enclosed in individuality. But our mind has to work towards this revelation. We need to hear about the Self with an open mind, to think about it in our spare moments, and to devote special times when we close out everything else and meditate on sentences that point towards that Self. This is what the Upanishad calls giving our attention to ‘the world of the Self.’

Other verses in the Upanishad explain that our ordinary experience is based on a false superimposition of the Self, which is that in us that is truly conscious, and the mind, which borrows, so to say, the life and awareness that has its source in the Self, and then appears to be conscious in its own right. Thus the Self seems to be blended with our mind’s functions and almost appears as subservient to them. ‘When it does the function of living, it is called the vital force; when it speaks, the organ of speech; when it sees, the eye; and when it thinks, the mind.’ (1:4:7)

In ordinary language, we say things like: ‘I saw, I heard, I think.’ In this way we conflate or combine our sense of selfhood with the workings of our mind, and we see the Self of other people in the same limited light. But the real position is radically different from this self-limitation. In the words of Shankara:

Even before knowing Brahman, everybody, being Brahman, is always really identical with all, but ignorance superimposes on us the idea that we are not the absolute, that we are not Brahman and we are not all.
(Commentary to verse 1:4:10)

Even before realisation one has always been Brahman, but through ignorance one considered oneself different from it; one has always been all, but through ignorance one considered oneself otherwise. Therefore, banishing this ignorance through the knowledge of Brahman, the knower of Brahman, having all the while been Brahman, became Brahman, and having throughout been all, became all.
(Commentary to verse 2:5:15)

Both statements are comments on the riddle that our non realisation is apparent rather than real, and that this ‘ignorance’ is dispelled by the higher knowledge, which reveals the Self as independent, disidentified, transcendent. And in several places in the Upanishad the Self is spoken of as being like an unchanging inward watcher, the ultimate principle of awareness, and that ‘You cannot know the knower of knowing’ objectively; we can only realise it as Self. Another verse from a later chapter tells us:

This great and eternal Self seems to be identified with the mind, the intellect and the senses. It is hidden deep in our being, in [what is called] the space within the heart. It is the controller of everything, the Lord of everything, the ruler of everything… Knowing it alone one becomes a sage. (4:4:22)

It is a matter of researching our inner experience in such a way that we may realise that the Self—our ‘I’—is not the mind.

Someone with a sharp inner sense can train themselves to be keenly aware of their own thinking processes. But there is one aspect of this inner life they can never be aware of, because it never appears within the stream of thought. We can never become aware of awareness itself. It can never pass into the container of the mind and be seen among its contents. This unchanging awareness, otherwise called consciousness, is our true Self.

All the mind’s movements, changes and qualities are known to this innermost awareness. But no change, movement or quality can ever be observed in the awareness itself. You cannot say anything revealing about it, because it is too near, too great, too subtle. So we derive from the Upanishads statements of what the reality is not, such as: ‘It is neither gross nor minute, neither short nor long, neither red in colour nor oily in texture; neither shadow nor darkness; without voice or mind; without inside or outside.’ The Upanishad several times declares: ‘Not this, not this’—‘Neti, neti’ in Sanskrit, as the surest indicator of reality, the phrase that guards it from all limited ideas, however sublime.

This Self is that which has been described as not this, not this. It is imperceptible for it is never perceived; undecaying, it never decays; unattached, for it is never attached; unfettered—it never feels pain and never suffers injury. (4:4:22)

This witnessing presence is not just slightly different from the mental experience, as we might say imagination is slightly different from memory. It is totally different. Since it is not touched by individual mental activity, why should it be limited to individuality? The Upanishad teaches that it is not limited in this way. In all the experience of anyone anywhere, ‘There is no other witness but this… no other knower but this.’ There is not a plurality of consciousnesses that corresponds to the plurality of bodies. Consciousness is the one knowing principle in all of us.

What about the universe? What about the more familiar idea we have about the whole, the all that surrounds us and of which we feel we are a part? In the Upanishad, this world is a realm of ever changing appearances, conditioned by ‘name, form and action’, and not the ultimate truth of experience. But this same illusory world is seen by us as real enough, and on this level of human understanding, the world is to be viewed as an expression of a supreme and joyful intelligence, called the Immutable—that which never changes, yet which allows the ever changing universe to manifest and function. Hence the sage, in answer to Gargi, teaches:

Under the mighty rule of this Immutable, O Gargi, the sun and moon are held in their position; under the mighty rule of this Immutable, heaven and earth maintain their places; moments, hours, days and nights, months and seasons keep to their order; rivers follow their courses; the actions of human beings have their due reward.’ (3:8:9)

This intelligent force is joyful, because the world appearance it has projected is meant to be helpful to the creatures within it, and they in turn are meant to make their helpful contribution to the world appearance. This point is made in what is known as the honey chapter. Here the different aspects of nature and human nature are compared to honey—honey being a symbol of what is good, wholesome and pleasing. This string of verses begins:

This earth is like honey to all beings, and all beings are like honey to this earth. It is the same with the shining immortal being who is in this earth and the shining immortal being in the body. These four are in reality the Self alone. This self-knowledge is the means of immortality. This underlying unity is Brahman. This knowledge of Brahman is the means of becoming all. (2:5:1)
Thus we come back to the idea of the all and of becoming all.

Are we advised to study the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad? It is certainly a sublime expression of the Vedantic wisdom, unfathom-able in its profundity. Its teaching will probably prove more meaningful if we first familiarise ourselves with some shorter Upanishads, such as the Katha and Mundaka. Thus prepared, selected sections of the Brihadaranyaka will strike a note of recognition in our heart, and we will benefit from the eternal and universal wisdom it is imparting.

Let us end with some words of Shankara on bliss. He is commenting on the verse which says: ‘Knowledge, bliss, Brahman—our supreme goal’ (3:9:28):

The bliss of Self is serene, beneficent, matchless, spontaneous, ever content, ever the same.

A.H.C.