The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter IV

Third Brahmana: The Light of Man is the Self

1. janakaṁ ha vaideham yājñavalkyo jagāma: sa mene: na vadiṣya iti. atha ha yaj janakaś ca vaideho yājñavalkyaś cāgnihotre samudāte, tasmai ha yājñavalkyo varaṁ dadau: sa ha kāma-praśnam eva vavre, taṁ hāsmai dadau. taṁ ha samrāḍ eva pūrvaḥ papraccha.

Such is the glorious teaching. But the teaching is not complete even now. It goes on. Yājñavalkya's instructions to King Janaka unravel mystery after mystery. On a previous occasion when Yājñavalkya met Janaka, the former thought that he would not speak, that he would keep quiet. "I have spoken enough," he thought. It is said that there was a time when there was a discussion between Janaka, Yājñavalkya and other students on the subject of the worship of Vaisvanara, as the Universal Fire, Agnīhōtra, which is described in detail in the Chhāndogya Upaniṣhad. Janaka was well-versed in this art. He was a meditator on Vaisvanara, and every question that was posed before Janaka was answered by him promptly then and there. Yājñavalkya was highly pleased with the knowledge of Janaka, and said, "Ask for a boon." Then Janaka said, "May I be permitted to ask questions whenever I please; whenever I want to ask." That is all the boon he asked for. He should be permitted to ask questions whenever it was his pleasure. And so Janaka was blessed with Kama-Praśna by the sage Yājñavalkya, which means to say, Janaka had the freedom to ask questions whenever they occurred to his mind. So Yājñavalkya could not refuse to teach the king whenever requested.

2. yājñavalkya, kiṁ-jyotir ayam puruṣa iti. āditya-jyotiḥ, samrāṭ, iti hovāca, ādityenaivāyaṁ jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma kurute, vipalyetīti. evam evaitat, yājñavalkya.

Because of the boon that he had received from sage Yājñavalkya, that he could ask questions, Janaka again asks some questions. Here is the beginning of an important philosophy. Janaka asks: "What is the light which illumines this person?" In this human being, what is the light which illumines itself and illumines others? What is the power depending on which the person works? Ultimately, it is a sort of illumination, an awakening, a knowledge, which can be regarded as 'the light'. Now, what is this light? How do you work in this world; with the help of what? What is the aid that you have in this world which enables you to perform your function—Yājñavalkya, kiṁ-jyotir ayam puruṣa iti? Yājñavalkya said: "Well, the simple answer to this question as to what is the light with the help of which people work in this world is that the sun is the source of all light." He gave an immediate, open and simple answer. "It is due to the light of the sun that people perform actions in this world. If the light of the sun were not to be there, activity would be impossible. So your question is answered." What is the light with which the people act in this world, perform their functions here? The light of the sun is the answer. Āditya-jyotiḥ, samrāṭ, iti hovāca, ādityenaivāyaṁ jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma kurute, vipalyetīti. evam evaitat, yājñavalkya: It is due to the existence of the light of the sun that people move about, perform their activities, and appear to be contended. Janaka agreed that this is so indeed.

3. astam ita āditye, yājñavalkya, kiṁ-jyotir evāyam puruṣa iti. candramā evāsya jyotir bhavati, candramasaivāyaṁ jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma kurute, vipalyetīti. evam evaitat, yājñavalkya.

But when the sun sets, when the light of the sun is not there, what is the light, with the help of which people perform their functions? That is another question which follows the simple answer which Yājñavalkya gave. Astam ita āditye, yājñavalkya, kiṁ-jyotir evāyam puruṣa iti: When the sun sets, and there is darkness everywhere, what is the light, with the help of which people act? Then Yājñavalkya said the moonlight is the only support for them. When the sun is not there, the moon is there. With the help of moonlight, people may work. Candramasaivāyaṁ jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma kurute, vipalyetīti. evam evaitat, yājñavalkya: All actions are performed by the moonlight if the sunlight is not there.

4. astam ita āditye, yājñavalkya, candramasy astam ite, kiṁ-jyotir evāyam puruṣa iti. agnir evāsya jyotir bhavati, agninaivāyam jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma kurute, vipalyetīti. evam evaitat, yājñavalkya.

But if moonlight is not there, if sunlight also is not there, what is light, with the help of which you will work? That is the third question—astam ita āditye, yājñavalkya, candramasy astam ite, kiṁ-jyotir evāyam puruṣa iti. agnir evāsya jyotir bhavati: "Fire is the light then." You light a fire if there is no sun and no moon, and with the light and the warmth of the fire that you burn, you may be comforted, and you may do your work.

5. astam ita āditye, yājñavalkya, candramasi astam ite, śānte agnau, kiṁ-jyotir evāyam puruṣa iti. vāg evāsya jyotir bhavati, vācaivāyaṁ jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma karute, vipalyeti, tasmād vai, samrāḍ, api yatra pāṇir na vinirjñāyate, atha yatra vāg uccarati, upaiva tatra nyetīti. evam evaitat, yājñavalkya.

But if fire also is not there, what is the support then? Sun has set, the moon has set, fire also is not burning, for some reason. Then, what is your light, and what is your support? How would you sustain yourself and do your duties? Astam ita āditye, yājñavalkya, candramasi astam ite, śānte agnau, kiṁ-jyotir evāyam puruṣa iti: When everything goes, and no light is there at all, no torch, not even stars twinkling in the sky, everything is pitch darkness, how do you communicate with people? How do you know where what is? By sound, by speech. "Who is there?" "Are you here?" "I cannot see anything, everything is dark," people start saying thus when all lights are off. When somebody says; "I am here", "it is this", "it is that", then by the sound of the speech of the person, you locate where what is. So Yājñavalkya says: "When the sun sets, when the moon is not there and fire does not burn, by sounds and by speech people communicate their ideas with one another. Merely by speech they can work, if everything else fails."

6. astam ita āditye, yājñavalkya, candramasy astam ite, śānte agnau, śāntāyāṁ vāci, kiṁ-jyotir evāyam puruṣa iti. ātmaivāsya jyotir bhavati, ātmanaivāyam jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma karute, vipalyeti iti.

But suppose there is nobody around you, and nobody speaks, no sound is coming forth, then how will you act? There is nobody around you; no sound comes; there is no gesture of any kind, externally; you cannot locate anything; everything is dark; sun has gone; moon has gone; fire does not burn—what is the light then? What will you do at that time? Your own self is the light; there is nothing else afterwards. You guide yourself, by yourself. You have a special sense in you. You may call it a sixth sense. Apart from the five senses, we have a sixth sense in us by which we act when everything else fails. It is a kind of inward illumination which begins to reveal itself when everything else fails as a support. That light is our own self. Why is it that we should wait for the time when everything else has failed, before the light within manifests itself to guide us? Is it necessary for the sun to go, moon to go, fire to go, etc., in order that we may know that we have a light within us and that we can be a light to our own selves?

Ordinarily, there are external temptations and stimulations from outward sources. The light within gets attached to these stimulants from outside. It may be sunlight, it may be any object of sense. Our selves get absorbed in the objects outside and become totally dependent on externals. We appear to have some sort of an independence and a capacity to exist by ourselves, only when everything external fails. Normally, we feel that we require many external appurtenances to sustain us from outside. We require a bungalow; we require many other facilities to exist; we require friends and servants; we require food and water; we require so many things. Without these things, we feel we cannot live. But if nothing of this kind is there, still we will exist. And that capacity to exist, when everything goes, reveals itself only when everything goes, not before, because of the dependence and the hope that the self pins upon the objects of sense outside, due to their presence. That you have a light of your own; that you have a worth of your own; that you have a status of your own, you cannot realise as long as you are dependent on things outside. We look like nobodies as long as we are just one in the crowd. But we are not really one in the crowd; we have a status of our own. But that status is never known to us due to our sense of dependence, a habit of hanging on to something else, which we have cultivated right from childhood. We have been brought up in an atmosphere of dependence. Always, we are depending on somebody or something—on parents, on teachers, on society, on bosses, on money, on wealth. All sorts of things are there on which we hang for our support. But there can be circumstances when we are deprived of all supports. When we are deprived of every kind of external assistance, the self that we are, the strength that we are, the status that we have, comes to our relief and begins to act. It is impossible to imagine what that light is and what that strength is. We have got maximum power within us. We are mines of strength. We are not poor weaklings as we appear to be. We appear so on account of certain defects in our personality. One of the defects is the habit of depending on things; the other defect is our intense desire for objects of sense. Every desire draws energy from the body, from the Pranas, the senses and the mind, and pours it upon the objects which we are contemplating. We get depleted of all strength due to contemplation of objects. Secondly, there is also an inward feeling that we cannot exist without these objects. So, for these reasons, the light within gets stifled and smothered and it is not seen. It is like a light inside a bushel, as they say, and its existence remains undiscovered. Ātmanaivāyam jyotiṣāste, palyayate, karma karute, vipalyeti iti: You depend on your own self when everything else goes. This is what Yājñavalkya says. Your self is your light; your self is your knowledge; and your self is your strength; your self is your sustenance. There is nothing except your self when everything else fails.

But what is this self? You are telling us that the self is the ultimate support, light, strength, etc. What exactly do you mean by this "self'?

The Different States of the Self

7. katama ātmeti. yo'yaṁ vijñānamayaḥ prāṇeṣu, hṛdy antarjyotiḥ puruṣaḥ sa samānaḥ sann ubhau lokāv anusañcarati, dhyāyatīva lelāyatīva, sa hi svapno bhūtvā, imaṁ lokam atikrāmati, mṛtyo rūpāṇi.

Katama ātmeti, is the question. Katama ātmeti. yo'yaṁ vijñānamayaḥ prāṇeṣu, hṛdy antarjyotiḥ puruṣaḥ: You ask me, "What is this Ātman which is your light, which is your support and which is your power?" It is that which twinkles through your reason and understanding and intellect. It does not fully manifest itself in you under ordinary conditions. It peeps through your intellect. You can infer the existence of this light through the activities of the understanding. You cannot directly perceive it. You can only infer its being. It cannot be perceived, because it is the very self that perceives. It is the seer, therefore it cannot be seen. You have already been told this elsewhere in the Upaniṣhad. The Ātman cannot be contacted by any ordinary means, but it can be inferred. If the light of the intellect is to be regarded as an essential property of the intellect only, how is it that we seem to be full and complete in every respect in the state of sleep when the intellect does not act? How is it possible for us to be so refreshed and so happy in a condition where the means that we employ, called the intellect, for purposes of satisfaction, does not operate? What is that which we employ in waking state for the purpose of gaining out desired ends? The means that we employ is the intellect. It is the ruling principle in our waking life When that ruling guide, the great factor of dependence, our reason itself, fails in sleep, naturally everything should get abolished. But that does not happen to be the case. Something in us continues sleep. We do not experience in sleep any sense of weariness, fatigue, exhaustion and sorrow. On the other hand, we wake up into the sorrow when we regain consciousness of the world outside. It is the world outside that causes sorrow to us, not the state of the absence of consciousness of the world outside. It is impossible that the sleep condition can be abolition of all values. Therefore, it must be a false belief which takes for granted that values are there only in the waking world. It is a futile attempt the part of people to run after things in the waking life, under the impression that values are deposited in the objects of sense outside. It is the impossibility to gain what we seek in waking life that drives back to our own self in sleep.

Every day we are tired by the search for that which we cannot get in the world of objects. Every day we are experimenting with different objects of sense and trying to see if we can discover in that object, that which we really want. The whole of the life of a human being is nothing but a series of experiments with things for the purpose of discovering whether what is required is there or not. But the experiment always fails. The days that we pass thus, wear away our senses, wear out our energies, and then we go back for rest to our own home, as it were, which is the state of sleep. Just as people go to the factory and office, get tired of work, and go back to their homes in the evening, so, as it were, the self wanders in this desert of Samsāra, in the world outside, searching in the mirage for a little water to drink and not finding it there, goes back to its mother in the state of sleep and says, "I have found nothing there; I have come back." And the Mother embraces the returned child. The great Father embraces you. The very source of friendship, affection, all vitality, energy and support, becomes your real friend in the state of sleep. How can you regard sleep as a state of unconsciousness? How can it be inert as it is generally taken to be? If it is not inert, if it is consciousness, naturally it should be a wider source of that consciousness than what we discover in the little modicum of its expression in the form of this intellect in the waking state.

This Ātman is manifest partially in the intellect, Vijñānamaya, and in the senses—the eyes, ears, etc. It is the activity of the self that is responsible for the activity of the senses. It is the energy of the Ātman that is ultimately responsible for the working of all the faculties, intellect included. Sa samānaḥ sann ubhau lokāv anusañcarati, dhyāyatīva lelāyatīva, sa hi svapno bhūtvā, imaṁ lokam atikrāmati, mṛtyo rūpāṇi: Fatigued with all that one sees in the waking up world, fed up with all the search that one makes in the waking life, one goes back to the other world, as it were, where the roots of being are to be discovered and contacted. The self, after its daily wandering in the world of Samsāra in the waking life, goes to the state of dream where it hopes to be free from the trammels of sense, which are veritable forms of death. The Upaniṣhad says here—mṛtyo rūpāṇi—the things that you see in waking life are forms of death. They are there like devils, there to devour. They are not your supports. The senses mistake the objects for supports, for sustenance. But the objects are destroyers because they sap the energy of the senses. They drain away the strength of your personality, and make you empty, as it were, of all that you regard as yourself. Ultimately you get nothing from this world. Inasmuch as the objects outside draw out the senses of the person, and become responsible for his death and rebirth, they are called forms of death—mṛtyo rūpāṇi. Transcending this world of death which is waking life, the individual self, with the instrument which is the mind, goes to the world of dream, and then passes on into the state of deep sleep.

This is the daily routine of the human personality, but due to some mysterious obstruction which prevents the recognition of oneself in deep sleep, there is a return of the mind once again to the waking life. It wants again the repetition of the same old routine of getting fatigued with the objects of sense due to its not finding what it seeks there, and then again going back to the state of sleep. Not discovering consciously what the state of deep sleep is, there is a return once again to the waking condition. This cycle continues, and this is Samsāra Chakra, the wheel of earthly existence.

Continued