Section 6.16 (Sixteenth Khaṇḍa) (Three Texts)

Upaniṣad text:

‘My boy, they bring a man, holding him by the hand, (saying)—He has taken something,—he has committed theft, heat the axe for him; in case he has committed the deed, he makes himself false, on that account, and being addicted to falsehood, he covers himself with falsehood and grasps the heated axe; he is burnt, and then he is killed.’—(1)

Commentary (Śaṅkara Bhāṣya):

‘Listen, my boy, when a man is suspected of having committed theft, the king’s officers hold him by the hand- with his hands tied up,—and bring him for trial and punishment,—when asked—‘What has he done?’—they say—‘He has taken something,—something belonging to such and such a person the questioner says—‘Does he deserve arrest and bondage only for taking something from some one? In that case there could be arrest also when some property is given and received as a gift.’—The officers say—‘He has committed theft,—he has taken another man’s property by theft.’—When the officers have said this, the suspected person denies his guilt—‘I have not committed the theft.’—The officers say to the suspected man—‘You have committed theft of this property.’—When the accused has denied his guilt, they say—'Heat the axe for him;—let him clear himself (by ordeal).’—If the man has really committed the theft,—and denies the guilt only outwardly,—he makes himself false,—i.e., by the mere denial, he represents himself as what he is not; and thus being addicted to false hood) he covers himself with falsehood,—i.e., hiding himself under untruth—he grasps the heated axe—foolishly;—and he is burnt and killed by the king’s officers,—on account of his own fault of being addicted to falsehood.—(1)

Upaniṣad text:

‘If, however, he has not committed it, then he makes himself true on that account and being addicted to Truth, he covers himself by Truth and grasps the heated axe;—he is not burnt, he is let off.’—(2)

Commentary (Śaṅkara Bhāṣya):

‘If, however, the man has not committed the deed,—he makes himself true, on that account; and covers himself by truth,—in the form of not committing theft,—he grasps the heated axe,—and being addicted to truth, he is not burnt, because of the intervention of truth, and he is let off,—rescued from his false accusers. Though the contact of the heated axe with the hand is practically the same in both cases of the man who has committed the theft and the man who has not committed the theft,—the man addicted to untruth is burnt,—not so the man addicted to truth.—(2)

Upaniṣad text:

‘And as he is not burnt,—in that has all this its Self; That is the true; That is the Self; that thou art, O, Śvetaketu.’—Then, he understood it of him,—yea, he understood it.—(3)

Commentary (Śaṅkara Bhāṣya):

As in the case cited, the man addicted to truth, on grasping the heated axe, is not burnt, because his palm was protected by truth,—in the same way, at the time that the bodies of the man having the true knowledge of Being—Brahman and the other man who has no such knowledge, are dying—though the merging into Being is similar in both cases, the man with knowledge having become merged into Being, does not return to the body of the tiger, or of a deity or other beings,—while the man without knowledge, addicted to the false, in the shape of the products, does return, to be born again as a tiger or a deity or other things, in accordance with his Kārmic Residua, in the manner described in the scriptures. Thus liberation and bondage are due to addiction to truth and untruth (respectively);—and that which is the root of the universe, wherein all creatures dwell and rest,—and in which all things have their Self,—which is immortal, free from dangers, blessed, without a second,—that is true, that is thine Self—hence, that thou art, O Śvetaketu.—This sentence has been explained more than once.

Question—“Who is this Śvetaketu, who is spoken of as Thou?”

Answer—I, Śvetaketu, who know myself as the son of Uddālaka, having heard the teaching and pondered over it and learnt it, requested the Father to teach him what he had not heard, or pondered over, or known—‘What, revered Sir, is that Teaching?’—This represents the person who, being entitled to be the hearer, the ponderer and the knower,—did not, before he was taught by his father, had not reached the true nature of his own self, as Being, the Self of all, as distinct from all aggregates of causes and effects,—which—as the Supreme Deity,—has entered into the aggregate of causes and effects made up of Fire, Water and Food, for the differentiating of Names and Forms,—just as man enters the mirror, as his own reflection, or the Sun enters into water and other reflecting surfaces, as its own reflection;—now however, having been enlightened by his father by the teaching ‘that Thou art’, through a number of illustrations and reasons,—he understood from his father that ‘I am Being itself—The repetition is meant to indicate the end of the Discourse.

Question:—“What is the resultant cognition regarding the Self which is brought about by the Verbal means of cognition (Vedic text) set forth in this Sixth Discourse?”

(The idea underlying this question is that according to the Vedānta, ‘the Self is self-luminous’, which means that for any cognition regarding the Self, no other agency or means of cognition is needed, it is all self-sufficient; so that, if the words and texts set forth under this Discourse serve to bring about any cognitions regarding the Self,—that millitates against the self-luminosity of the Self; if, on the other hand, the texts do not bring about any cognitions, then they are futile, as means of cognition, Pramāṇa).

Answer:—We have already explained above that the result brought about by this Discourse is the setting aside of the notion that ‘Self is the actual doer (of acts) and enjoyer (of the results of those acts);—and when we spoke of the entity denoted by the term ‘thou (i.e. the living Self, the Jīva, born in the body) and the fact of that entity being one who is to ‘hear’ and ‘reflect upon’ (the Self),—we did so only for asserting what is not (generally) known. Before all this is known, the ordinary man has such notions as—‘I shall perform these actions, the Agnihotra and the rest. I am entitled to the performance;—the results of these acts I shall enjoy in this world and in the other;—or having done these acts, I shall be happy and contented’,—all these notions, which involve the idea of the Self being the actual performer and enjoyer, are set aside by the assertion that ‘Thou art That Being which is the root of the universe, one, without a second’,—for the man who has become awakened to true knowledge; that the said notions are set aside by this last assertion follows from the fact that the two are mutually contradictory (so that if the latter is true, the former must be false). As a matter of fact, when it has been realised that ‘I am the Self, one, without a second—it is not possible for him to have such notions involving diversity as ‘this is to be done by me,—that by another’, ‘that having done this act, I shall enjoy its result’; hence, it is only right and proper that on the realisation of Being, the Self, the True, without a second, the idea of ‘the Living Self’ being a product and unreal.

Objection:—“What is done in the assertion ‘That thou art’ is that the idea of ‘Being’ is attributed to what is denoted by the term ‘thou’ just as this idea of Brahman and other Deities is attributed to the Sun, the Mind and other things,—or as in the ordinary world, the idea of

Viṣṇu and other Deities attributed to the Images; and the assertion does not mean that thou art that same Being.”

Answer:—Not so; this assertion is entirely different in character of those relating to the Sun and other things. In such passages as I the Sun is as Brahman’ (should be looked or meditated upon as Brahman), the intervention of the term ‘as’ makes it impossible for it to provide the idea that ‘the Sun is actually Brahman itself’; also because the Sun and other things have such qualities as colour and the like, and because Ākāśa and Mind are always spoken of along with the term ‘as’,—therefore none of these can be Brahman;—while in the case of the assertion in question—‘That thou art’—what is done is that first of all it is shown that the Being enters the world (at birth) (which shows that the Being is something distinct from the world), and then it is declared that ‘That thou art’ which asserts, without the slightest restraint, that the ‘Thou’ is absolutely and entirely the same as Being, the Self.

Objection:—“The assertion ‘that thou art’ may be a figurative one, just as a man endowed with courage and other qualities is spoken as ‘you are a lion’. (So ‘That thou art’ may mean that thou art like the That, ‘Being’).”

No; because it has been taught that Being, one, without a second, is the only real Entity—like ‘clay’ being the one entity pervading all products of clay. If it were a more figurative expression, the knowledge thereof could not be spoken of as bringing about that mergence into Being where ‘the delay is only so long’ etc., because all figurative notions are false (unreal).—just like the notions ‘you are Indra’, ‘you are Yama’.—Nor can the figurative expression be regarded as an eulogy, because Śvetaketu is not a person to be worshipped (hence eulogised); and as regards the Being, it would be no eulogy for It to be eulogised as being

Śvetaketa; certainly the king could not be eulogised as you are the servant (Even granting that it is an eulogy of Being.) It would not be right to restrict the Being, which is the All-Self, to one point, by asserting ‘That thou art’, which would be like restricting the kingship of the king over the whole country to kingship over a single village. And apart from these, there is no other way of interpreting the teaching that ‘Thou art Being, the Self’.

Opponent:—“All that is taught here is that one should cultivate the notion that ‘I am Being’, and it does not make known, by saying ‘thou art Being anything that is not already known.—‘But, even under this view, it would not be possible that the unheard becomes heard etc.’—Not so; because in reality the idea that ‘I am Being’ is meant to be an eulogy”.

This cannot be right; because it has been taught that ‘the man with a teacher knows; and for him the delay is only so long etc., etc.’—If the idea that ‘I am Being’ had been enjoined as one to be cultivated,—and not as asserting the fact of the entity devoted by the term ‘Thou’ being of the nature of Being itself,—then there would be no point in asserting the means of obtaining that knowledge to be that ‘it is only the man with a teacher who knows—just as in the case of such injunctions as ‘one should perform the Agnihotra’, the presence of the teacher from whom the Veda is learnt is already implied, and is nowhere actually enjoined. Further, in that case there would be no point in asserting any such interval as is mentioned in the phrase ‘for him the delay is only so long etc., etc.’. Lastly, under this interpretation that even without the realisation of one’s having his self in Being, if one only formed the said idea only once, he would at once attain liberation (as he would have fulfilled the injunctions of cultivating the said notion).

Further, where it has been declared that ‘That thou art’, and its full signification understood as meaning that ‘I am Being’—this notion cannot be rejected as being asserted by an unauthoritative assertion, or as not brought about by all (by any means of cognition). Because as a matter of fact, all Upaniṣadic texts point to the same conclusion (that ‘I am Being’). The case of this declaration is exactly like that of the injunction of the Agnihotra and other rites; in the case of this injunction, it cannot be denied that it lays down the performance of the Agnihotra and other rites, nor can it be denied that this notion is not brought about by that injunction. So also in the case in question.

It has been argued that—‘If one has his Self in Being, how is it that he does not know himself?’—But this does not vitiate our position. Because normally, creatures do not even realise the fact that they are a living entity, the actor and enjoyer,—distinct from the aggregate of causes and effects (body); how can it be possible there to realise that they are of the nature of ‘Being’? In fact, if they had realised this difference of their selves (from the body) how could they have the idea of being the actor and enjoyer? and yet this idea is found to be present. In the same manner, so long as this man regards the body as the Self, they cannot realise the idea that they have their Self in Being.

From all this it follows that what the sentence ‘That thou art’ does is to set aside the idea of ‘Self’ in regard to that ‘Living Ego’ which is a product, unreal and entitled to the performance of acts.

End of Section (16) of Discourse VI.

End of Discourse VI.