In this chapter, the Upanishad proceeds to explain the stages of self-control and the recognition of the atman in one’s day-to-day life. The various sections deal with different aspects of the same question: self-discipline and meditation are described throughout. Here, the Upanishad commences with the analysis of a particular type, pertaining to the individual body. How are we to perform self-control, atmavinigraha? It is nothing but a remembrance of the various functions taking place in our body, instead of forgetting them on account of a tremendous attraction to objects outside. We seem to forget ourselves. We are wise about others, but not about ourselves. We have to be wise in regard to ourselves, instead of being wise about others.

The Individual Self

puram ekᾱdᾱś-advᾱram ajasyᾱvakra-cetasaḥ,
anuṣṭhᾱya na śocati vimuktasca vimucyate: etad vai tat. (1)

“A city of eleven gates belongs to the uncrooked intelligence. By ruling it, one does not grieve.” This body has eleven gates. What are the eleven gates of this body-city? Some say the eleven orifices in the bodily system are the two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, mouth, the two of evacuation, navel and the crown of the head. But these are gates of only the gross body. There are also eleven gates in the subtle body, the eleven senses: five jnanendriyas, five karmendriyas, and the mind.

So this city of the human personality is endowed with eleven openings, and consciousness can rush out through any of these. It can rush forth if there is even one gate; what to say if there are eleven! It splits up and moves. But this light within is not elevenfold. It is single, and it is not channelised, just as the space in a vessel is not limited to its walls. If a violent wind blows, it is not blown out. His light is always straight, and it is never extinguished. Our body is perpetually illumined by this light within. It does not bend with the body or get destroyed when the latter disintegrates. It does not get affected with the affections of the body. Nothing on earth or in heaven can affect light. This light is avikara aja. One cannot restrict it as one can the things of the world. Though it illumines the eleven gates and also the things outside them, it is unaffected by what happens in the body and around it.

This bodily city is to be the object of one’s self-study. He who analyses the constitution of it will not grieve any more. The physical body is made of the five elements, the gross bhutas: earth, water, fire, air and ether. It is the combination and permutation of them. Its constitution is the same as that of the world: the body is inert as earth is. It is endowed with light, power and motion, activity and sensation, just as a material medium may be charged with electric force. The body becomes a live wire by life-force, and is called jiva. The five elements do not possess this energy which may be called life. Hence, the human body is more than these elements. The vitality in us is a special thing. Not only that, we have various sensations which other living beings do not have. We establish a traffic between ourselves and the world outside through these gates of the senses. Through them, we move out of the body and go to the world, receive commodities and bring them into it. The world enters into us and we rush out; a perpetual commerce takes place. If the gates were not there, there would be no commerce and no jiva. The jiva within lacks contents, and the world outside lacks vitality. They supply to each other what they need.

This mantra explains Kant’s philosophy. We carry on this traffic with the outer world: it supplies contents, and we supply forms. This fact of mutual existence was already described in the Upanishad. The jiva is unhappy because he seems to lack something which the world contains, some objects that he needs. But you want meaning to be attached to them which you have to supply. So your consciousness pervades the object so much that it is mistaken for the need—like the iron ball that is charged with heat seems to be fire itself—and thus the world and the inner consciousness form samsara. This is the essence of our world-experience. Let one meditate on this.

Do not be a slave of this traffic; to be a witness to it, performing anushthana in this very birth, consciousness should visualise itself as the supreme Lifegiver of all things, for without it, they would disintegrate. When it combines itself with the elements, it becomes a jiva, and when it separates itself from them, it becomes liberation: the freed ones get free. “This, verily, is That.”

haṁsaḥ śuciṣat, vasur antarikṣasat hotᾱ vediṣat, atithir duroṇasat,
nṛṣat, varasat, ṛtasat, vyomasat, abjᾱ, gojᾱ, ṛtajᾱ, adrijᾱ, ṛtam bṛhat. (2)

This is a quotation from the Rig Veda and from the Yajur Veda, a description of the atman, to be reached by anushthana. Inwardly He is the Self, and outwardly, He is ishvara. The purport of it is that the atman is all-pervading, omnipresent. This is suddha satta, the Abode of Pure Being. “He moves as air in the sky; He is the pervader of space, the priest and the guest that you see daily; He is what you call man, He is what you call woman; He is what you call law in this world; He is all-pervading ether; He is what you call water, what you call earth; He is what you call mountain. He is what you call truth par excellence. He is what is called the Great Reality; He is what you call atman. All things, right from heaven to earth, are vitalised and pervaded by the atman.” First, we have the word ‘shuchishat’, etc. He is in heaven, in earth, in air, in fire, in ether and in all the contents of the world, not only in the physical ones, but also in all the laws that operate in all qualities and relations, in everything that has significance. He is not only in the external and internal, but also in the relation that obtains between them; not only in the relation, but the as relation itself. He is the perceiver, the perceived and the process of perception, and at the same time transcends this threefold process.

In the second mantra, the atman is described as not only the pervasive principle in all creation, but also the contents which He pervades. This will suffice to remove many misconceptions in regard to Him. That which is the Self of all beings is regarded by people as limited. They imagine the atman to be inside the body. It is wrong to so think, because He is that which is Universal and Absolute. The ideas of inside and outside are created by the process of psychological and intellectual thinking. Hence, it would be like putting the cart before the horse if we think that the atman is located inside the body. He is neither inside nor outside. He is the pervasive Principle and the Substance through which He circulates. He does not pervade the universe like water pervading a cloth; He is not one thing entering another. This omnipresence of sarvatrata of the atman described as pervading all things is for the purpose of explanation, inasmuch as it cannot be described in any other manner. The atman is the Self. The Supreme Being is called the atman because It cannot be visualised by the senses and It is prior to all concepts. Inasmuch as It is prior to everything, presupposing all activities of cognition and perception, all our faculties being external forms of It, such being Its marvellous pervasive character, it was best to call It the atman of all things.

Again and again, the perverse mind wants the same thing it wanted before. It clings to the ideas of internal and external, and these ideas do not leave us. People look within the body or physical frame to see the atman. He is within in a different sense altogether. Lord Jesus said: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within.” How can a kingdom be within? It sounds absurd. But it is a spiritually conceived ‘within’ rather than the physical walled within.

It is the habit of the eyes to look within in a physical sense, and they want to see the atman in this way alone. He is internal not only to the eyes, but also to the mind. Hence, even a psychological introversion is not enough, because the mind also introverts in space. Just as the eyes can see objects only in space and time, so is the case with the mind, too. The supreme Spirit is subtler than even the mind in the sense that He does not think as the mind thinks. To think is to separate the objects from Him.

He is within in a universal sense. If you could conceive of the universal within, that would be the atman. He is not internal in a spatial sense, and not external in the sense of time. He is not endless expanse in space, or passage of time endlessly projected forward. The mind is habituated to think in terms of space, time and causality, and thus we try to do the same thing with the atman.

Even the topmost heavens are pervaded by Him, so you must bar the idea that He is within the body. He is purest uncontaminated Being, untouched by the dust of earth and heaven. He enlightens the highest heights. And downward from them is the ethereal region, also pervaded by Him. He is the cosmic principle, besides being the life-principle. He is in the five elements. He is also vitality, and all things that move on earth. He is not merely the Pervader, but also the Material of which the universe is made, as well as its material Cause. He is its regulating laws: the physical ones, the biological ones and all the others as well, called rita and satya. The latter is law existing as the atman, the former is the law manifested in this universe. All our laws must be in conformity with rita, and are meant to regulate the movement of people and bring about a balance of forces as manifestations of the supreme Harmoniser. This atman is the largest of all Beings, and also the smallest one, pervading, as the Substance, all alike.

ῡrdhvam prᾱṇam unnayaty apᾱnam pratyag asyati,
madhye vᾱmanam ᾱsīnaṁ viśve devᾱ upᾱsate. (3)

He is not merely the cosmic principle and the regulator of cosmic activity. All activities, even in the human system, are regulated by the atman; even our breath, He being the integrating principle in us. “He moves the prana up and casts out the apana, the ramifications of the vital force in us, He, the dwarf seated in the middle, adored by the gods.” We know from our day-to-day life how this energy pervades the whole body. Every part of it is filled with light. We are aware of every part of our system, and in order to make this body active, to give it the energy of locomotion, to make the legs move, the eyes see and the other senses do their respective work, the pranas fill it with rajas, the force of activity. The prana is pushed out, and the apana is drawn in. Thus you cannot help breathing in and out, every moment, and you have no control over your internal system which is directed by someone different altogether. We should not be under the impression that the pranas give us life. They are sent in different directions by the silent Being inside who is Himself not visible, like an absolute ruler who may send out his army or emissary. It is He who gets forth the prana on account of which all action is done: vamana, the silent atman—most delightful and resplendent.

When He acts through the representatives which are the senses, desires are manifest. When He takes possession of us through any one of them exclusively, we are captured by a rapture. It may be caused by a sensory or mental activity, as in music, beautiful scenery, a masterpiece of literature. And then, you feel an elation wherein all five senses are hushed. Beauty can manifest in art or sense-enjoyment which is binding; but the highest rapture comes when in spiritual ecstasy the beauty of the atman manifests internally; pure, non-sensory, independent of contact with mind and senses. Neither they nor the prana or apana are working then, but only that which brings illumination of the whole being.

While the senses and prana are activated by this silent Witness within, it is not to be forgotten that everything is subservient to Him. All gods, meaning all the senses, worship Him outwardly. He is silent. He does not act in a way we can understand. His existence is charged with a power that is enough to energise the whole universe.

So the true worship of God would be to adore Him in all things, as all gods: vishva deva—not this or that god. He is the prana within and without; being inside as the senses and outside, cosmically, as the sutratman.

asya visraṁsamᾱnasya śarīrasthasya dehinaḥ,
dehᾱd vimucyamᾱnasya kim atra pariśiṣyate: etad vai tat. (4)

“When this Being separates Himself from the body and is released, what happens to the body, and what remains in the end?” The body’s beauty is that of the atman, and when He is withdrawn, there is no beauty left. All the bodily parts are integrated by Him, and when He leaves, there is decay and decomposition, and they go back to their sources, the elements. Yama gives here a twofold answer. When the two exist together, there is what is called a personality, jivatva, and they seem integrated. When the two get separated, the body goes to its physical sources, and in His ultimate separation, the atman goes to the atman. Birth is nothing but the animation of the mind and senses by the light of the atman, and death is separation. When it takes place, there is on one side physical death, and on the other, spiritual segregation of the connection between mind and atman.

The mind acts as a twofold link: to the body and to Him. It can peep within as well as without. When it looks outward through the physical senses, it becomes impure, the lower mind or asuddha-manas. When it looks within, independent of them, it becomes the higher mind, suddha-manas. That is why, though it is the cause of our bondage, it can also be the cause of our liberation.

In empirical death, the subtle body gets isolated from the physical one. Here, the contact of the atman with the mind, does not end; only the physical body is cast off. The subtle and causal bodies remain, and they are the cause of samsara. The causal body is the anandamaya kosha into which we enter in deep sleep. As long as those two persist, transmigration for the sake of enjoying karmas cannot cease.

While empirical death is the separation from the physical sheath by the mind and the atman, spiritual death is the separation of the atman from the mind. When this isolation takes place ultimately, in the atyantika pralaya, the final death of individuality, which is moksha, what remains? When all that is external is left behind, what remains? All apparent restrictions of consciousness cease, and the atman recognises His pristine, original Universality.

na prᾱṇena nᾱpᾱnena martyo jīvati kaścana,
itareṇa tu jīvanti, yasminn etᾱv upᾱśritau. (5)

“We do not live by prana or apana, but by something else, on which the prana and apana live.” If we live on prana and apana; on what do they live? That even the gods live on the Supreme Being is illustrated in the Kenopanishad; we do not live merely by sense-activity, by mental functions, by our intellect: all these fail us one day or the other; all these live on something else. This is to be contemplated upon.