5. sa vᾱ ayam ᾱtmᾱ brahma, vijñᾱnamayo manomayaḥ prᾱṇamayaś  cakṣurmayaḥ, śrotramayaḥ, pṛthivīmaya āpomayo vāyumaya ākāśamayas tejomayo’tejomayaḥ, kᾱmamayo’kᾱmamayaḥ, krodhamayo’krodhamayo, dharmamayo’dharmamayaḥ sarvamayaḥ tad yad etat; idam-mayaḥ adomaya iti. yathᾱkᾱrī yathᾱcᾱrī tathᾱ bhavati, sᾱdhukᾱrī sᾱdhur bhavati, pᾱpakᾱrī pᾱpo bhavati; puṇyaḥ puṇyena karmaṇᾱ bhavati, pᾱpaḥ pᾱpena; athau khalv ᾱhuḥ; kᾱmamaya evᾱyam puruṣa iti, sa yathᾱkᾱmo bhavati, tat kratur bhavati, yat kratur bhavati, tat karma kurute, yat karma kurute, tat abhisampadyate.

In the first half of this passage, the Upaniṣhad gives, in its own beautiful style, the way in which the soul can assume various forms, psychic as well as physical. First, there is a manifestation of the intellect. That is the Jīva-Bhāva or the individuality in us. The root of individuality is the intellect, and it grossens itself into the mind, the Prāṇas, the senses, and lastly the physical body. It is not the physical body that is manufactured first. It is the intellect that is manifested first. The cause comes first, the effect afterwards. The subtlest cause is the intellect principle. Then there is the grosser one - the mind; then the still grosser one - the Prāṇa; then the senses; then the physical body. All this takes place in a very inscrutable manner. It does not mean that the intellect is there, clearly observing things as it does when it is very active in a physical body after rebirth. It is in a potential state, just as the tree is present in a seed. Its manifestation is supposed to be prior to the manifestation of other things, namely, Prāṇas, body, etc. So there is first Vijñāna or the intellect, then the mind, the Prāṇas, the senses, and only lastly the physical body constituted of the gross elements - earth, water, fire, air and ether - pṛthivīmaya āpomayo vāyumaya ākāśamayas.

But if you take birth in a subtle realm like paradise, perhaps you are reborn in Indra-loka then you get a body shining like fire. It will not be a gross body like this. It will be a very subtle body. It is Tejomaya, lustrous, and is ethereal in its form. The subtle body, whether it is reborn in the physical world or in any other realm, has certain desires, and so it can be said to be Kāmamaya. It is filled with desire of some kind or the other. It may be a necessary desire or an unnecessary desire; it may be a liberating desire or a binding desire; it may be a visible desire or an invisible desire; that is immaterial, but desire must be there; otherwise, the individuality itself cannot be there. These desires get withdrawn at the time of fulfilment, and then Kāmamaya becomes Akāmamaya. You appear to have no desire when it has been fulfilled by acquisition of its corresponding object. But if the desire is not going to be fulfilled, if it is going to be frustrated by the impediment imposed by certain external factors, then it becomes Krodhamaya. You get angry. You get annoyed because some obstacle is coming in the way of the fulfilment of your desire. When the obstacle is removed, your anger subsides. Then you become Akrodhamaya. There is no anger at that time. Then, once again you develop your usual normal attitude. It is the cause of your Dharmamayatva or Adharmamayatva. The virtuous way or unrighteous, vicious way in which one lives depends upon the way in which one's desires operate in the world, or whether they work in a constructive manner or a destructive manner. If they are constructive, then the individual is Dharmamaya, full of virtue; but if they are destructive, then one's life is Adharmamaya, characterised by viciousness. It is everything - Sarvamaya, Idaṁ-maya, Adomaya. The individual has potentialities for anything. There is nothing which this individual personality does not contain. It is a miniature of the entire creation. Whatever you can find anywhere in the whole cosmos, you can find inside this body in a subtle form, in a seed form. This individual is veritably a great marvel. The whole mystery of creation is revealed in a microcosmic form in this individuality.

This whole miracle of life is carried forward each time in the process of reincarnation - births and deaths. 'Whatever one feels, that one thinks; whatever one thinks, that one speaks; whatever one speaks, that one does; whatever one does, that one reaps.' This is how the Upaniṣhad sums up its doctrine of ethical conduct and the psychological effect which our present way of life has upon our future incarnation. Yathᾱkᾱrī yathᾱcᾱrī tathᾱ bhavati, sᾱdhukᾱrī sᾱdhur bhavati, pᾱpakᾱrī pᾱpo bhavati; puṇyaḥ puṇyena karmaṇᾱ bhavati, pᾱpaḥ pᾱpena; athau khalv ᾱhuḥ; kᾱmamaya evᾱyam puruṣa iti, sa yathᾱkᾱmo bhavati, tat kratur bhavati, yat kratur bhavati, tat karma kurute, yat karma kurute, tat abhisampadyate. Whatever is your inclination within, whatever direction your feelings take, that will be the kind of experience that you will have in the future life.

The deepest longings of the human individual are supposed to determine his future. Sa yathᾱkᾱmo bhavati, tat kratur bhavati, yat kratur bhavati, tat karma kurute, yat karma kurute, tat abhisampadyate: 'Whatever is your deepest desire will decide the nature of your determination, of the way to act.' The deepest longing of the soul, the desire of the mind or the urges of one's personal nature will influence the will, the volition. The will is nothing but the exoteric function of the desire within. 'As the desire is, so the will is; as the will is, so is the action. And as is the action, so is the consequence, or the result thereof.' Everything seems to be in our hands. Our weal and woe, our future, our destiny is actually operated upon by the deepest mechanism that is inside us. The switchboard of the cosmos, as it were, seems to be inside our own hearts.

Now, the question is: 'What is the cause of bondage?' No one really longs for it. Deliberately, one will not enter the prison, get caught and be put to hardship of any kind. Why then comes this bondage, when no one likes it? What we reject is exactly what we do not like, but what we do not get is what we are longing for, namely, freedom. The entire teaching the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣhad has given us up to this place is a philosophical explanation of the circumstances which have led to the bondage of the soul and which make emancipation difficult. The desire of the human being is said to be the cause of bondage. How could such a desire arise which would involve a person in bondage? The reason behind this erroneous urge is a kind of misconception. This subject we have already studied in detail in earlier sections dealing with what the Upaniṣhad calls Grahas and Atigrahas, the senses and their corresponding objects. The senses crave for objects; they search for things of the world; they hunger for contact, and are restless without these achievements which they are deeply longing for. The senses grasp the objects; the Grahas catch the Atigrahas; and there is a corresponding action from the side of the objects also. There is a tremendous influence exerted upon the senses by the objects which the senses long for. There is a deep desire of the senses to come in contact with objects, but the activity does not merely end with this unilateral movement. It is a bilateral action, action and reaction proceeding from the subject and the object simultaneously. So, the more the desire for the objects, the greater the strength of the pull of the objects on the subject. We are put to greater and greater subjection by the character of the objects on account of the desire for them. The greater is the desire, the weaker is the self. And so, the weakness of the self puts the self to further subjection and ultimately places it under the thumb of the objects. It is as if you are going to be drowned in an ocean - a wave dashes over your head, you go into the ocean, and when you are trying to come up, it dashes you once again, so that you are hit again and again until you cannot come out. Such are the objects. It is not merely this. There is a far more unfortunate situation or circumstance involved in the desire for objects. It is not one object that we desire. We actually do not know what it is that we want. When we pin our faith in any particular sense object, we are only experimenting with the capacity of that object to satisfy us. We do not know which object is really capable of rendering that satisfaction. Our whole life is spent in such experimentation. We go to the objects again and again under the impression that they are the things that we need, and for the time being there is a feeling that perhaps this is the one that we actually wanted. The experimentation takes some time, and during this period of experimentation the desire goes on increasing and getting intensified. The object also promises a tentative satisfaction on account of the misconceived affection which the senses have for the object. But no object can satisfy any sense, because the senses are mere agents of the desires that exist inside. The senses themselves are not responsible for our bondage. They are used as tools for the manifestation of an urge within us, but unfortunately this urge or desire is incapable of satisfaction.

The desire within us is also a confusion. It is not a desire for an object. What we ask for is not a thing of the world. It is something different, but we are not able to understand what it is actually. The understanding is muddled. There is a complete overturning of the cart, as it were, when the intelligence in the individual begins to operate through the senses demanding objects. The real asking of the individual is for permanent satisfaction and freedom. There is a piety and a holiness, if you say, so involved in the activity of the individual. But the instruments used are inadequate for the purpose. The senses cannot contact the object for which their deepest desires are. What we ask for is an infinity of possession and an infinity of satisfaction and a freedom. Such a thing cannot be communicated to us through the senses because they are externalised agents. We have bad friends in the senses, so they mislead us. They take us to objects and tell us, 'here is what you wanted'. But that is not really what you wanted. Just as we can be taken along bylanes by misleading guides in a big city, the senses put us off the scent. And then, due to a misconceived longing for an appearance rather than for a reality, which we begin to really believe in, there is a perpetual effort on the part of the mind, through its will, to maintain the duration of the contact with the object for as long as possible. Now the object changes colour like a chameleon and reveals its incapacity to satisfy us at different intervals of time. We get caught in a confusion of circumstance, with which we die. The body perishes. Our life is very short. We do not have enough time to experiment with everything in the world. By the time we get fed up with even a few things, the body also goes. But the desire has not gone. And the confused desire, which has not been enlightened as to the true nature of what it asks for, remains in that condition even at the time of death. The actions which were performed earlier due to this misconception, having produced results correspondingly, bind the soul once again, so that the body which was shed has gone, but a new body comes. This is the psychology or philosophy of rebirth, the whole difficulty being a misconstruing of the ultimate cause of desire that arises in our minds.