Section 7.17 (seventeenth khaṇḍa) (one text)

Upaniṣad text:

‘When one understands the True, then alone does he declare the True; without understanding the True, one does not declare the True; it is only when one understands the True that he declares the True. But this understanding itself one must seek to understand.’ ‘Revered sir, I seek to understand this understanding.’—(1)

Commentary (Śaṅkara Bhāṣya):

When one really understands the True,—as ‘this is what is really and absolutely True’,—then he renounces all that is false, unreal, in the shape of all products, which are the products of mere words,—and comes to realise that Being, alone, which pervades over all products, is True;—when he declares it.

“The product also is real; because Name and Form are real and Spirit is covered by Name and Form; as says another Vedic text—‘Spirits are True, and of these this is the Truest.’ (Bṛhadā. Upa. II. i. 10.)”

True; the other text has declared the product to be real; but it was not meant to be absolute reality, what was said was only relatively to the objects of sensation.—The Satya (true) has been declared to consist of the Sat and the Tyat (Taitti—Upa. II. vi. 1.) [ Where the syllable ‘sat’ stands for the three elemental substances and ‘tyat’ for the other two elemental substances, which are not so real as the other true; and thus, on the basis of this comparative or relative reality, the five substances have been called ‘satya’, Real—Ānandagiri] and it is on the basis of this relative reality that the substances have been spoken of as ‘True’, and what was meant was that it was through this relative reality that the kruwledge of absolute reality is obtained. This is what is meant by the declaration that ‘the Spirits are True, this is the Truest of the True’ (where the Truest is that which is absolutely real). And this sort’, of relative reality we accept in the present case also (for all products). In the present context, however, what is meant to be expounded specifically to Nārada—as promised in the words ‘that I am going to expound’—is that which is Pure Being, absolutely real, known by the name of ‘the Infinite’—after having weared him from (raised him above) from the false notion that by knowing the Spirit he has obtained the knowledge of what is absolutely real.

Without understanding the True, one does not declare the True;—if one speaks of the True without understanding it, he speaks, by means of the words ‘Fire’ and the rest, of Fire and other things (Fire, Water and Earth), regarding these latter as absolutely real; as a matter of fact, however, these things have no reality beyond their forms; and these forms also have no (real) existence, as compared to Pure Being; thus it is that without understanding the True one does not declare the True; and it is only when one understands the True that he declares the True; and as regards the understanding of the True, it cannot be acquired unless—it is sought after and prayed for; hence he says—‘this understanding itself, one must seek to understand.’—‘If that is so, then, Revered sir, I seek to understand this understanding.’—In this way, in the series beginning with the True, and ending with Action (spoken of in section xxi below), the preceding one should be explained as being the cause of the next following one.—(1)

End of Section (17) of Discourse VII.