The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter I

Fourth Brahmana: Creation from the Universal Self

Passing on to the Fourth Brāhmaṇa, we actually go to a different subject altogether. As a matter of fact, this Fourth Section is the most important portion in the First Chapter. It is a grand description of the story of creation, right from the beginning down to the lowest level. And, incidentally, a mention is made of the strata of Reality through which the descent takes place and also the degrees of Reality through which the ascent has to take place, reversely. So, in this sense, the Fourth Section, which is called the Puruṣhavidha-Brāhmaṇa, is a quintessential teaching, of which everything else can be said to be a commentary, following it subsequently. The whole saga of creation is a grand dramatic event. This is described in this section. While it is a description of creation, it is a description of everybody—'you', 'I' and all creatures—because we are all included in creation. It, incidentally, also points out the relationship that obtains among things, the duties which one has to perform in respect of another, and in regard to the Ultimate Truth, and so on—all that is concomitant in the nature of the subject.

In the beginning, what was? This is the point from which the section begins. When creation was not there, what existed then? There was no world, there were no individuals, no persons, no activities, but something was. What was there?

1. ātmaivedam agra āsīt puruṣavidhaḥ, so'nuvīkṣya nānyad ātmano'paśyat, so'ham asmīty agre vyāharat; tato'haṁ nāmābhavat, tasmād apy etarhy āmantritaḥ; aham ayam ity evāgra uktvā, athānyan nāma prabrūte yad asya bhavati. sa yat pūrvo'smāt sarvasmāt sarvān pāpmana auṣat, tasmāt puruṣah; oṣati ha vai sa tam, yo'smāt pūrvo bubhūṣati, ya evaṁ veda.

The Supreme Self alone was. Nothing else existed. The Ātman alone was, because the Ātman was inclusive of all beings. It was the Self, as it is the Self, and it shall be the Self, of everyone, and of everything. It is the Being of all beings, Satyasya Satyam, as the Upaniṣhad will tell us. That alone was, and one cannot conceive of anything else.

Now, Pure Being is inconceivable. When we try to conceive Pure Being, it looks like nothing, and hence we have to adopt a particular mode of thinking in respect of the Being that is supposed to be responsible for creation, because creation implies the manifestation of a cause, and that is the production of an effect. The effect must have a cause. The cause must be related to the effect. The effect must be conversely related to the cause. So, the conception of a cause being inevitable when we assume that there is an effect, the whole story of creation seems to arise on account of our perception of the world.

When we perceive an effect, we have to infer a cause, and the question does not arise as to whether the world is there or not, because our senses tell us that the world is there. We do not ask a question to our own selves, 'Is the world there; does the world exist?' We do not put such a question, because it is taken for granted that the world is, merely on the stand that it is perceived. Inasmuch as we are wholly dependent upon sense-perception, and we regard the conclusion of sense-perception as entirely reliable and real, we are involved in it vitally, organically, completely, and we cannot be convinced of any other truth than our own conviction that the world is; and, so, by the inductive process of reasoning, we may say we are taken to the essence of a cause of the effect that we perceive in the form of this world of manifestation; and the cause should have certain characters which are present in the effect, and the effect has nothing in it which is not in the cause.

Now, causation is a movement in space. It is a condition of creation. Space and time are essential for creation. So, we have to assume, together with the assumption of a cause, the principle of spatiality, temporality and causality. The ultimate cause must have had, potentially present in it, the principles of spatiality, temporality and causality. Space, time, causes—these elements are absolutely necessary for anything to be manifest. And, therefore, that which was prior to the process of creation, prior to the beginning of things, must have had these conditions of space, time and cause in itself.

Inasmuch as the Ātman is the Absolute, and we cannot conceive of a relation of the Ātman to space, time and cause, the Upaniṣhad uses the word, Puruṣhavidha, i.e., we have to regard this condition of ultimate causality, the ultimate cause as something equivalent to a Person. We regard God as the Supreme Person, because there is no alternative for us. The reason why we regard God as the Supreme Person is that we cannot conceive of a category of life which is superior to humanity. There are stages and degrees of life beyond the human level, of course, but they are only possibilities for us, and not actualities. The conception of a cause should have some connection with the actuality that is in our minds. An infinite expanse of the highest conceivable to the human mind is assumed as the cause of the manifestation of the world, the Supreme Person, Puruṣhavidha.

This Supreme Being, whom we regard as the God of the creation of the world, became conscious of Himself. And what was He conscious of? Of Himself only, as 'I-Am-That-I-Am', as the Great 'I'. Since nothing was outside Him, there could not have been a consciousness of anything else besides Himself. The Supreme Universal Self-Consciousness, which is identified with the concept of the Supreme Person, was conscious of Himself, or Itself, we may say, because it was neither male nor female, and knew nothing outside it, was not aware of anything external to it, because there was nothing outside it. It was Pure, Universal Self-Awareness—Ātman.

'I-Am'. This was the Consciousness. He felt, as it were, 'I-Am', not also as 'you are', 'it is', etc. There was no 'you', 'he', 'she', or 'it' there. It was the Primordial 'I', not the ego-ridden bodily individual 'I', but pure, unadulterated Universal 'I'. And this Eternal 'I' is reflected in other empirical 'I's. The Supreme principle, therefore, is the principle of Self, which is designated here as the 'I', so that when reality is reflected in anything, it reflects as the 'I' principle there. The self-appropriating and self-arrogating attitude of the individual is the outcome of this element of 'I' asserting itself in all things, as coming through the grades of manifestation downwards from the eternal 'I', which is all-comprehensive. So, the eternal 'I' is felt even in an atom to assert itself as the 'I', as anyone of us also is capable of asserting himself as the 'I'. Nothing can be more valuable than the 'I' in a person. Nothing can be more dear than that, and nothing is worth the while conceiving except the principle of the 'I'. When the 'I' goes, everything else also goes. So, all the associations which we regard as meaningful in life are auxiliaries to the safety of this 'I'. We guard this 'I' with meticulous care. We love it immensely, and everything is loved because of this 'I'. We love the 'I' so much that everything is reflected there, in fullness. So, the Supreme 'I' asserted itself?—'I-Am', and nothing else was.

Because it asserted itself as the 'Aham', we call it 'I-AM'. It has no other name. That was the name of God, and that is the name of God. There is no other name, because God is Pure Self-Consciousness. This is the reason why, says the Upaniṣhad, that even today people refer to themselves as 'I'. Who are you? It is 'I'. This is the answer one gives. If you knock at the door of someone's house and call out, "Who is there?" the answer comes, "I". Afterwards one may say, "My name is such-and-such", but in the beginning, "It is me". What is this 'me'? Nobody knows what it is, but that is the 'you', and so you assert yourself as the 'me' or the 'I'. This feature of assertion as the 'I' or the 'me' in all individuals is due to the original assertion of the Absolute as the 'I'. That is felt in every one of us.

This Supreme Person is called the Puruṣha. Why is He called the Puruṣha? What is the meaning of the word? Puruṣha, here, says the Upaniṣhad, means someone who has burnt up the evil of external contact. That Consciousness burnt up all evil, and we are told here that the evil referred to is the evil of externality. There was no externality then, and there is no evil except externality. Everything is a part of that; everything is a manifestation of that. Whatever we call evil and undesirable in this world is the child of externality. When externality is not there, evil also cannot be there. And there was no externality in the One Puruṣha. The evil of contact with externality does not arise when everything was the Self alone. Inasmuch as it burnt up the externality and was conscious of Itself alone, to the exclusion of everything else, therefore it is called the Puruṣha. And so is the case with anyone who knows this—ya evaṁ veda. Anyone can become like that, says the Upaniṣhad, assuring us that we can also be like this Puruṣha, and destroy all evil. The evil of contact can cease when the desire for contact ceases. Desire for contact arises on account of belief in the reality of externals, and so it is an injunction to meditation on the Supreme Puruṣha, simultaneously.

Nobody can stand before that person who has this knowledge. As it was mentioned earlier, in another context, no one can compete with this person who has this knowledge of non-external Being. One who is established in this non-external Universality cannot be faced by any other person in the world. He becomes an indomitable power; He becomes a Supreme Master; he becomes an authority; and he becomes a source of fear to others. He becomes energy incarnate. And this is purely because of the fact that this energy is not depleted through external contact. So, he is all-powerful. And no one can stand before him; no one can compete with him; no one can vie with him in any way. Such a person is fit for the ascent to the state of the Puruṣha whose manifestations, whose glories, whose effects are described in the subsequent narrations.

Continued