8. Brahman as Brahmā, the Ultimate Attainment of Meditation

It is apposite to end this chapter with a few comments on the ultimate point of the process of meditation and the course of the gods, the northern path. As I said above, it is the so-called lower Brahman or Brahman as the effect, apara-brahman, kārya-brahman. In cosmological terms, these two refer to Hiraṇyagarbha, an individual Self or vijñānātman whose body is the whole world. They are, however, a broader, complex notion that comprehends the totality of creation.^[1] As a vijñānātman or jīva and in virtue of possessing a relation to adjuncts, Hiraṇyagarbha is an individual Self just like any other. However, his adjuncts happen to be “very pure.” By “pure adjuncts” Śaṅkara has in mind the same avidyā-kāma-karma complex that individuates any individual Self, but in Hiraṇyagarbha’s case they are attenuated to the degree that this will be his last birth. That principle accommodates the doctrine of Bādari in the Brahma-Sūtra according to which residents of brahma-loka who develop knowledge of Brahman through the process of gradual liberation are liberated along with Hiraṇyagarbha at the expiry of the kalpa. This purity of adjuncts is what earns Hiraṇyagarbha the right to be called Brahman: although he is Brahman to no higher degree than anyone else, it is relative to the purity of his adjuncts that scriptures attribute the appellation “Higher” to him, whereas they describe the (common) individual Selves as liable to transmigration because of preponderance of impurity of adjuncts.^[2]

Hiraṇyagarbha is the first entity that appears in the creation process, and there are several important textual loci that Śaṅkara relates to his appearance. For instance, he is what is called “death” at the beginning of the first adhyāya of the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka: “In the beginning, there was nothing here at all. Death alone covered this completely, as did hunger; for what is hunger but death?”^[3] He is also that Brahman which appears as the first product in the creation process delineated in the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad: “He is omniscient and knows it all, knowledge is his creative power. From him are born Brahman, name, form, and food.”^[4] Finally, he is the second “full” or pūrṇa in the famous mantra of the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka: “That over there is full, this over here is full: the full proceeds from the full. Taking the full from the full, only what is full remains.”^[5] He is also the recipient of the Vedas at the beginning of creation.^[6]

Hiraṇyagarbha is properly the universal soul that animates the whole world as the life-breath or prāṇa that pulsates through the universe and keeps it together, just as it keeps individuals alive. Indeed, prāṇa is how Śaṅkara most commonly identifies him in the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad As the life force animating the world, he is commonly called the thread that runs through all things, “like the (invisible) pillars of a house,” for which reason he is also known as the sūtrātman.^[7] This sūtrātman is the innermost entity in brahma-loka, pervading it just as it pervades the whole world.^[8] Since he is the first creation of Brahman and himself the cause from which the creation of the five elements as well as the mind and the senses proceeds, he is sometimes described as the cause although himself an effect.^[9] He is also the collective vijñānātman, the subtle body of the world, on which all individual Selves are strung through their own subtle bodies.^[10]

Hiraṇyagarbha has attained such a lofty status by being the best practitioner of the path of combined ritual and meditation in his past life, becoming so perfected in it as to be born as its very embodiment:

Because Prajāpati in his past life, when he was a practitioner, was the first in virtue of practice of cultivation through perfect ritual and meditation among those who aspired for the status of Prajāpati through practicing ritual and meditation, he burnt all faults such as attachment and ignorance that prevent one from becoming Prajāpati before all the other aspirants for the position did.^[11]

Hiraṇyagarbha/prāṇa also has a gross form, constituted by the world as a totality and by specific heavenly bodies and divinities related to them representing his faculties, for instance the sun and the moon as his sight. A verse from the Muṇḍaka may be given as an instance of what the being of this gross form involves:

He is the inner Self of all whose head is fire [Śaṅkara—heaven], whose eyes are the moon and the sun, whose ears are the directions, whose speech are the revealed Vedas, whose breath is air, whose heart is the whole world and whose feet is the earth.^[12]

Śaṅkara’s common appellation for this gross manifestation of Hiraṇyagarbha/prāṇa is piṇḍa, “the ball,” that is, the (general, collective) individual, and other common names for it are Virāṭ—the preferred, standardized term in the commentaries on the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad and PU and in later Advaita Vedānta—Vaiśvānara or the Self common to all, Puruṣa-vidha or the Self that has the shape of a man, Ka the interrogative pronoun, Prajāpati, or even Hiraṇyagarbha.

The entire scope of ignorance that has been explained is of two kinds: internally, it is life-breath, the support, like pillars and the like of a house, that which gives light, the immortal. Externally it is characterized as the effect, non-luminous, subject to birth and death, like the grass, kuśa, and plaster of the house, denoted by the word “real,” mortal. It was concluded, “By that, prāṇa (denoted by “immortal”) is covered.” That prāṇa is manifested variously in different media. Prāṇa is said to be the one god. Its external persona is one, general, diversified as the sun, etc., designated by various words such as Virāt, Vaiśvānara, the Self in human form, Prajāpati, Ka, Hiraṇyagarbha etc., of which piṇḍa is the main one.^[13]

Through the process of creation, Hiraṇyagarbha/prāṇa and Virāṭ/piṇḍa evolve into and comprehend the whole world: on the one side through the evolution of the elements, and on the other through the process of individuation from Virāṭ to the petty creatures. This totality may be identified with what Śaṅkara calls the world as evolved name and form (nāma-rūpa-vyākṛtaṃ jagat), the world in all its bits and pieces, and it is this which is the broader sense of the term kārya-brahman, Brahman that is the effect.

An important manifestation of Hiraṇyagarbha is the sun, with which prāṇa forms the ground that makes the northern course possible: the prāṇa that flows through the human body from the channels of the heart forms a continuum with the rays of the sun, the sun itself is the gate that one must pass through at entering brahma-loka, “the golden dish” that has to be removed so that one could see and finally reach the highest divinity of the Vedic form of ignorance, Hiraṇyagarbha himself at the top, the mental or subtle body of the world. The sun, of course, forms a continuum with all forms of fire, sacrificial or otherwise. This helps us understand the set of vidyās or meditations that Śaṅkara associates with kārya/apara-brahman and the attaining of brahma-loka: there is the pañcāgni-vidyā or the meditation of the five fires that presents the process of transmigration and the paths to the world of the forefathers and the world of the gods; the vaiśvānara-vidyā or the meditation on the Self that is common to all and manifests as the fire of digestion; the meditation on Brahman as Satya, the three-syllabled Brahman that is the person in the orb of the sun; and in general, all meditations on the primacy of prāṇa, or the life-breath.^[14]

In fact, these are all meditations on prāṇa, in which one identifies with the World Self and wins the world of Brahman:

Now, by proceeding along the northern course, they attain that part of Prajāpati which is Prāṇa, the eater, and the sun. Through what? By knowing the prāṇa, the sun, the Self of that which is moving and stationary, through austerity. Specifically, through control of the senses, faith, and meditation on oneself as Prajāpati; in other words, by meditating “I am prāṇa, the sun.”^[15]

In religious terms, the lower Brahman is Brahmā the demiurge, who has absorbed in his persona a host of features and names of the central divinity of Vedic ritualism: Hiraṇyagarbha, Ka, Puruṣa, Prajāpati. Śaṅkara even quotes the first verse of the famous “Who” hymn of the Rig Veda (10.121), where Hiraṇyagarbha makes his grands appearance and which calls him the life-breath of the gods (devānām asuḥ),^[16] and draws the equivalence with Brahmā explicitly.^[17]

This kārya/apara Brahman is invariantly the highest attainment of all meditations, however, that proceed by way of absorption, even when their cosmological referent is not prāṇa or the effected Brahman. Śaṅkara does seem to see a different set of meditations in which it is really the supreme Brahman that is being meditated on and not prāṇa/Hiraṇyagarbha, but with a predication of certain qualities. These include, at the least, the dahara-vidyā, the śāṇḍilya-vidyā in Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.14, and meditations on Oṃ as a symbol of the supreme Brahman.^[18] The first two are singled out because the qualities that are predicated to Brahman concern directly his causal role. In fact, the second opens with the famous sarvam khalv idaṃ brahma tajjalān śānta upāsīta, which Śaṅkara relates directly with the creation, maintenance and destruction of the world, a role not associated with the lower Brahman, but Īśvara, the supreme Brahman in its garb as the cause of the world and its inner ruler (kāraṇa-brahman and antaryāmin).^[19] It is to Īśvara that certain qualities are predicated, not to Hiraṇyagarbha.

One does get the sense that these are more directly meditations meant for gradual liberation. For instance, the meditation on Oṃ as a symbol of the higher Brahman delineated in the Praśna-Upaniṣad is said to lead one to brahma-loka, where one would almost seamlessly “see the highest Puruṣa” and be liberated, because liberation depends on “seeing the thing as it is and not depending on fancy.”^[20] However, the general principle is that whenever absorptive meditation is the process, one that depends on distinctions and in which qualities are intended to be affirmed, the ultimate attainment is always the world of Brahmā because the respective meditations are predicated on duality, and the world of Brahmā is the highest one could get in that sphere. All such meditations, whether concerning prāṇa/Hiraṇyagarbha or Īśvara, are encompassed under the appellation of saguṇa-vidyā, upāsana, meditation on Brahman as possessing qualities.

The adhikarins for meditation, to which ritual may be added to form a jñāna-karma-samuccaya, a combination of “knowledge” and “action,” are householders who have been instructed in some such meditation and practice it, as well as renunciants and hermits.^[21] This is, then, a legitimate form of jñāna-karma-samuccaya, but jñāna does not stand for knowledge of Brahman or the Self. Although it is based on some of the famous Upaniṣadic passages that are associated with Śaṅkara in the scholarly imaginaire, such as sarvaṃ khalv idam brahma, it is not knowledge but meditation, because in these texts Brahman is presented as an object of meditation, as if possessing qualities which it does not, in fact possess. I will elaborate on this in Chapter Eight, and our business with meditation is not nearly over.

We may conclude this chapter with the observation that this process of meditation-cum-ritual is fully compatible with the Brahma-Sūtra attributed to Bādarāyaṇa account of combining jñāna and karma. The problem with it was, of course, that it did not lead to liberation. It brings one close, or, as Śaṅkara says, “its results are proximate to liberation,”^[22] but it was not the real thing. In any case, Śaṅkara’s beef with the jñāna-karma-samuccaya was not with this variation, whose value both he and Sureśvara affirm whenever possible.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

A quite reliable and thorough presentation of Hiraṇyagarbha in Śaṅkara’s system is found in a little-known essay by Anam Charan Swain (1971). Statements where Śaṅkara draws the direct equivalence between kārya/apara-brahman and Hiraṇyagarbha are many: see, for instance, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.1.8 and 1.1.9, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Aitareya Upaniṣad 3.3, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Praśna Upaniṣad 5.5.

[2]:

“Because of the preponderance of purity of adjuncts, śruti and smṛti generally describe him as the higher [Brahman] … whereas in the case of the jīvas, because of preponderance of impurity of adjuncts only transmigration is generally affirmed;” hiraṇyagarbhas tūpādhi-śuddhy-atiśayāpekṣayā prāyaśaḥ para eveti śruti-smṛti-vādāḥ pravṛttāḥ. … jīvānāṃ upādhi-gatāśuddhi-bāhulyāt saṃsāritvam eva prāyaśo 'bhilapyate; Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.6, VIII.92.

[3]:

Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.2.1. Śaṅkara thereon: “Death here refers to Hirṇyagarbha identified with the intellect, because the property of hunger belongs to the Self that is identified with the intellect (the vijñānātman);” buddhy-ātmano 'śanāyā-dharma iti sa eṣa buddhy-avastho hiraṇyagarbho mṛtyur ity ucyate. VIII.21.

[4]:

yaḥ sarvajñaḥ sarva-vid yasya jñāna-mayaṃ tapaḥ |
tasmād etad brahma nāma rūpam annaṃ ca jāyate. Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.1.9.

[5]:

pūrṇam ahaḥ pūrṇam idam pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate |
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate. Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.1.1.

[6]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.3.30.

[7]:

Hiraṇyagarbha is called the sūtrātman in Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.5.1.

[8]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.7.1-2.

[9]:

See, for instance, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.1.3.

[10]:

sa hy antarātmā liṅga-rūpeṇa sarva-bhūtānām. tasmin hi liṅgātmani saṃhatāḥ sarve jīvāḥ. tasmāt sa jīva-ghanaḥ. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Praśna Upaniṣad 5.5, IV.286.

[11]:

sa ca prajāpatiḥ, atikrānta-janmani samyak-karma-jñāna-bhāvanānuṣṭhānaiḥ sādhakāvasthāyā, yad yasmāt, karma-jñāna-bhāvanānuṣṭhānaiḥ prajāpatitvaṃ pratipitsūnāṃ pūrvaḥ prathamaḥ san, asmāt prajāpatitva-pratipitsu-samudāyāt sarvasmāt, ādau auṣat adahat. kim? āsaṅgājñāna-lakṣaṇān sarvān pāpmanaḥ prajāpatitva pratibandha-kāraṇa-bhūtān. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.1, VIII.80. See also Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.3.30.

[12]:

agnir murdhā cakṣuṣī candra-sūryau diśaḥ śrotre vāg vivṛtāś ca vedāḥ |
vāyuḥ prāṇo hṛdayaṃ viśvam asya padbhyāṃ pṛthivī hy eṣa sarva-bhūtāntarātmā ||—Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.1.4.
Śaṅkara in the avataraṇa to the verse: yo hi prathamajāt prāṇād dhiraṇyagarbhāj jāyate ‘ṇḍasyāntar virāṭ etc.

[13]:

sa ca vyākhyāto 'vidyā-viṣayaḥ sarva eva dvi-prakāraḥ—antaḥ prāṇa upaṣṭambhako gṛhasyeva stambhādi-lakṣaṇaḥ prakāśako 'mṛtaḥ; bāhyaś ca kārya-lakṣaṇo 'prakāśaka upajanāpāya-dharmakas tṛṇa-kuśa-mṛttikā-samo gṛhasyeva satya-śabda-vācyo martyaḥ; tena amṛta-śabda-vācyaḥ prāṇaś channa iti copasaṃhratam. sa eva ca prāṇo bāhyādhāra-bhedeṣv anekadhā vistṛtaḥ. prāṇa eko deva ity ucyate. tasyaiva bāhyaḥ piṇḍa ekaḥ sādhāraṇaḥ—virāḍ vaiśvānara ātmā puruṣavidhaḥ prajāpatiḥ ko hiraṇyagarbha ity-ādibhiḥ piṇḍa-pradhānaiḥ śabdair ākhyāyate sūryādi-pravibhakta-karaṇaḥ. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.1.1, VIII.216.

[14]:

This is most obvious in his commentary on the fifth adhyāya of the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad

[15]:

atha uttareṇa ayanena prajāpateḥ aṃśaṃ prāṇam attāram ādityam abhijayante. kena? tapasā indriya-jayena. viśeṣato brahmacaryeṇa śraddhayā vidyayā ca prajāpatyātma-viṣayā ātmānaṃ prāṇaṃ sūryaṃ jagataḥ tasthuṣaś ca anviṣya aham asmīti viditvā ādityam abhijayante abhiprāpnuvanti. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Praśna Upaniṣad 1.10, IV.245.

[16]:

Under Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.2.23:
hiraṇyagarbháḥ sám avartatā́gre bhūtásya jātáḥ pátir éka āsīt
sá dādhāra pṛthivī́ṃ dyā́m utémā́ṃ kásmai devā́ya havíṣā vidhema—
“In the beginning the Golden Embryo arose. Once he was born, he was the one lord of creation. He held in place the earth and this sky. Who is the god whom we should worship with the oblation?” Translation Doniger 1981: For the hymn, see Doniger 1981:26-29; Brereton and Jamison 2014:1592-94.

[17]:

Ibid., Śaṅkara quotes the following verse: “The first embodied Self is called puruṣa. It is he, Brahmā, the first creator of beings, who was born in the beginning.”—
sa vai śarīrī prathamaḥ sa vai puruṣa ucyate |
ādi-kartā sa bhūtānāṃ brahmāgre samavartata.
Note the echo of the hymn in this verse through the common verb, samavartata: it is he, Brahmā, who was born/arose in the beginning. The same verse is quoted by Sureśvara in Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.2.162. The theme of Brahmā being the first-born, appearing on a lotus stemming from the navel of Nārāyaṇa as he lies on the waters of the causal ocean, is a commonplace in the Purāṇas. See Dimmitt and van Buitenen 1978:16-29.

[18]:

See Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.2.1-2; Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.14.4; Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.3.13.

[19]:

See Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.14.4, IV.177: manomaya-ity-ādinā jyāyānebhyo lokebhya ity-antena yathokta-guṇa-lakṣaṇa īśvaro dhyeyaḥ. This is not the place to elaborate on Īśvara. See Hacker 1995 and Comans 2000 for some basic discussion. In general, Īśvara for Śaṅkara is para-brahman or kāraṇa-brahman, which are correlative terms with the apara/kārya set. He is the higher Brahman because it is the cause of the lower, effected Brahman in its totality. His key attributes are omniscience and omnipotence, through which he is related to the creation of the world (Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.5), and being the internal ruler behind everything, including prāṇa or the sūtrātman (Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.8.12), through which feature he is related to all individual Selves as their real Self. In religious terms, he is Nārāyaṇa (īśvaro nārāyaṇākhyaḥ, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.7.3, IX.432).

[20]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.3.13.

[21]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Chāndogya Upaniṣad 5.10.12; Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6.2.15.

[22]:

kaivalya-sannikṛṣṭa-phalāni, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Chāndogya Upaniṣad Introduction, IV.9.