4. The Vedāntic Mahā-vākyas

In Pañca-Prakriyā, Sarvajñātman discusses ahaṃ brahmāsmi and tat tvam asi as, now explicitly, mahā-vākyas, and there seems to be a reason why only these two. Ahaṃ brahmāsmi is the topic of Chapter Two of the treatise, which discusses more generally how knowledge of unity of Brahman with the Self, culminating in direct experience, arises in the qualified aspirant who had approached a teacher, one who turns out to be imagined through the student’s ignorance in the manner of dream objects, and who is surrounded by thousands of similarly imagined fellow brahmacārins. Issues such as the nature of and disagreements about the two types of liberation, absolute and living, are discussed. The mahā-vākya, in other words, looks at the identity of the two categories from the side of the student and addresses questions that are pertinent to the student in whom knowledge arises and for whom liberation takes place. Chapters Three and Four discuss tat tvam asi and the notion of avāntara-vākya, and clearly the view of the mahā-vākya is from the standpoint of the teacher: it is the teacher who should know how to organize the instruction around the two categories. The opening of Chapter Four is quite explicit about it, as it says that the avāntara-vākyas will be discussed for the benefit of the student who had duly approached the teacher, with the whole shebang of the adhikāra stuff that is familiar to us from the openings of the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra and the Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī^[1]

My object in emphasizing this is to bring home the point that there was no such thing as four Vedas cum four mahā-vākyas doctrine in early Advaita Vedānta; there wasn’t even a mahā-vākya doctrine at all, in the sense we commonly think of it, namely as tat tvam asi from the 6^th prapāṭhaka of the Chāndogya or ahaṃ brahmāsmi from the 1^st adhyāya of the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka and situated strictly in their context. There was, rather, a mahā-vākya context, a kind of Upaniṣadic statement that identifies Brahman the great cause and ground of Being with the inner Self of every creature that perceives itself as the cognitive agent. The mahā-vākya context is a context of categories that is superordinate to any textual incarnation in which it may appear, and in which the only meaningful difference is that of perspective in a teacher-student relationship. As I have been drumming for some time, in terms of this mahā-vākya context, the tasmād vā etasmād ātmanaḥ of the Taittirīya provided the core of the doctrine, because it related the categories in the textual locus where the two were paradigmatically laid down.

We will come back to this mahā-vākya context. Now let us focus on what Sarvajñātman called the avāntara-vākyas, thus explicitly adopting the Mīmāṃsā mahā/avāntara model. These are statements that pertain to the members of the mahā-vākyas, the categories of tat and tvam, and refer to scriptural passages where they are individually described.^[2] Sarvajñātman calls them “sentential supplements of the mahā-vākyas,” mahā-vākya-śeṣa, making it explicit that these statements are attached to the respective categories and serve their individual purposes in their own context, not the mahā-vākya context.^[3] The avāntara-vākyas have a “scope” or an “extension,” parimāṇa, on each side of the two categories. On the side of the tat category, this scope is constituted by way of predication of “unrepeated qualities” to Brahman within nirguṇa passages. What Sarvajñātman means by “unrepeated qualities” is an idiosyncratic way to designate the positive and negative attributes that formed the notion of Brahman both in

the Brahma-Sūtra and in Śaṅkara’s definition. They are “unrepeated” in the sense that they are not such qualities as satya-kāma and satya-saṅkalpa in the formation of Upaniṣadic saguṇa meditations by way of forging units out of the several passages where a respective meditation is described.^[4] They constitute the essential notion of Brahman. They are to be collected from the Upaniṣads of all Vedic branches, and special care should be made in the effort of gathering negative attributes, lest slacking may bring about an incomplete negation of the false points of identifications for the Self.^[5]

In Pañca-Prakriyā Sarvajñātman deals only with the avāntara-vākyas that present the positive attributes (vidhi) of Brahman, but in the Saṅkṣepa-Śārīraka he also includes the negative attributes (niṣedha) and understands their purpose in the same way as Śaṅkara: they negate all possible points of identification for the Self within the sphere of fine and gross objects.^[6] Focusing on the positive attributes, the avāntara-vākyas are satyaṃ jñānam anantam brahma and ānando brahmeti vyajānāt from the Taittirīya 2.1.1 and 3.6.1, and there is nothing particularly different in this from Śaṅkara’s Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 4.1.2, except that Sarvajñātman is much more comfortable with ānanda or bliss as an attribute of Brahman so as to stay within the Taittirīya setting, rather than go to the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka. Although these are positive attributes, they present Brahman in terms of denial rather than affirmation: Brahman as a thing is opposed to unreal, insentient, limited things that are liable to suffering, which obviously constitutes the sphere of created things.^[7] This denial is accomplished through Brahman’s feature of being limitless, ananta, and that becomes very important for the next textual level, below the avāntara-vākyas.

That is, for the purpose of teaching how this Brahman that is Being, consciousness, bliss is unlimited, different from the kinds of real, conscious, and pleasurable things that we are acquainted with, there are Upaniṣadic passages of five kinds. The first three are texts of creation, maintenance, and destruction of beings; the fourth are texts that describe Brahman entering its creation; the fifth are texts that describe how Brahman that had entered beings rules them from within. Sarvajñātman’s instances are all from the Taittirīya: “That from which these beings are born, by which they live once they are born, and in which they return at death, that is Brahman, that is what you should strive to know distinctly”; “Once it had created them, it entered into them”; “It is out of fear from it that the wind blows and the Sun rises.”^[8] Now, Sarvajñātman calls such texts “arthavāda passages that form supplements to the meaning of the affirmative and negational statements, like the statements of praise and censure.”^[9] His Mīmāṃsā discourse is at its peak here: he labels the avāntara-vākyas that contain the positive and negative attributes of Brahman vidhi and pratiṣedha, terms which Mīmāṃsakas used for injunctions and prohibitions, and he attaches to them Upaniṣadic passages that are arthavāda, explicitly likened to the Mīmāṃsa arthavādas that were passages that had no independent truth value, but served the purposes of the injunction or the prohibition that they latched on. The purpose that the Upaniṣadic arthavādas serve is to facilitate reasoning into the possibility of Brahman’s being limitless, evidently through analogy, illustration, etc.^[10]

There are obviously many points on which we could pause, examine what Sarvajñātman is saying in more detail or see how much his presentation follows Śaṅkara’s: the careful reader would have recognized all his building blocks in the previous chapters. However, that is irrelevant for our purpose here, which is to appreciate the relation between different kinds of Upaniṣadic passages and the hierarchy that obtains between them. There are texts that present Brahman’s characteristics, but these characteristics are not of the kind that is commonly known: they are unlimited, non-dual. The Upaniṣads facilitate the making sense of this through passages that, for instance, talk about creation, but do not intend to affirm creation. The avāntara-vākyas have arthavādas under them.

There are avāntara-vākyas on the side of the category of tvam as well, and their scope is, as we would expect, the pañca-kośa section of the Taittirīya.^[11] They serve the purpose of drawing out the inner Self that had entered the heart of beings by gradually reducing its scope, as we saw in Chapter Eight. Another procedure that can be applied for the same gain is the examination of the three states of awareness—waking, dream, and deep sleep—to find out that while the states change, the Self itself does not. Sarvajñātman’s reference point for this is Aitareya 1.3.13, tasya traya āvasthās traya svapnāḥ, “These are its three dwellings, three sleeps,” but obviously the model would have been Yājñavalkya’s teachings to Janaka in the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad The upshot of these two procedures is that the category of tvam stands for the inner Self, different from and unrelated to the three states, single yet ensouling all animate things in the world, from individuals and respective divinities to the world itself.^[12]

At this point, at the completion of the understanding of tvam through its avāntara-vākyas, the principle that we have been pursuing through the course of the dissertation kicks in: all this is empty talk unless it serves some good of man. As Sarvajñātman puts it, “the purport of narrating about the three states of awareness, as in ‘These are its three states, three sleeps,’ does not serve a good of man in its own meaning.” Through the phala-śruti of Vedānta, the Taittirīya text “the knower of Brahman attains the highest,” it follows that such good of man is contingent of the unity of Brahman and the Self. Further, through the rule that we discussed in the Second Chapter in connection with the ārād-upakārakas—a scriptural passage that is not related to a result on its own attaches to a proximate text that is—the passages that discuss tvam, such as those about the three states of awareness, seek the context of the mahā-vākya, tat tvam asi as the statement through which the human good that is unity of Brahman with the Self is realized.^[13] We have, thus, gone a step above the avāntara context and reached the mahā-vākya.

Sarvajñātman had made several jumps, of course, some of the Urukrama kind, in coordinating texts from various places: his reference text about the three states of awareness is in the Aitareya, and the statement of result is the Taittirīya, and there is no real proximity as required by rule. Still, the pañca-kośa doctrine is in the Taittirīya, and that was a passage with an identical purpose, establishing the category of tvam. Tat tvam asi is, of course, in the Chāndogya, far from the Taittirīya brahma-vid āpnoti param, but Śaṅkara said, we will remember, that tat tvam asi and tasmād vā etasmād ātmanaḥ from the Taittirīya had the same meaning. Further, the Aitareya statement on the three states is relatively proximate to prajñānaṃ brahma, an identity statement like tat tvam asi. And, in culling the avāntara-vākyas for the category of tat, the procedure was to track down relevant passages from Upaniṣads of all Vedic branches. This provides a network in which everything is proximate to everything else, one way or another.

In the mahā-vākya context, now, the two categories are identified, that is, their primary references are identified. To be specific, Brahman which is characterized as limitless Being, consciousness, bliss, that is, which is opposed to unreal, insentient, limited things that are liable to suffering, but is a mediate, external entity known through scripture, is identified with the inner Self, which, because of its innerness, is “dual,” having things that are present to it as objects of awareness. The two categories obviously exclude one another in two respects: Brahman is non-dual, whereas the Self is dual; and, Brahman is mediate, whereas the Self is immediate, known privately. Something’s gotta give: for non-exclusion to obtain, mediacy drops from the scope of meaning of Brahman, and duality drops from the scope of meaning of the Self. This happens through the secondary relational signification function, jahad-ajahal-lakṣaṇā, in which the respective words indicate a single reference through eliminating the mutually exclusive parts.

Thus, the two words, through directly expressing their respective meanings, indirectly denote a single entity that is defined as an inner Brahman, that is, Brahman whose nature is eternal, pure, conscious, free, real, supreme bliss, non-dual, and at the same time inner awareness.^[14] This is the Brahman that is the synonym for absolute liberation.

I would like to draw now the attention to the end of Chapter Seven, where we concluded the preliminaries of liberation and saw how the whole Vedic corpus, without the explicitly kāmya sections, was for liberation through mediate causality, pāramparya. We saw that unity obtained between the texts of knowledge and action through the vividiṣā statement in Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22 and the principle of vākyaikavākyatā or unity of purpose of distinct texts. Sarvajñātman does not talk about this in the Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā, but the theme does appear indirectly in his statement of adhikāra: before one should approach a teacher, one must be freed from all impurities, obtaining thus the results available through the karma-kāṇḍa section of the Veda, and then renounce all action.^[15]

Introducing this as our final consideration in the Vedāntic mahā-vākya doctrine, I offer the following schematic representation of the hierarchy and structure of the notions and texts we covered:

Scheme 1: Mahā-vākya Structure
mahā-vākya context: tat tvam asi, ahaṃ brahmāsmi Reference [through jahad-ajahal-lakṣaṇā]: Brahman as eternally pure, awake, free, real, supremely blissful, non-dual awareness. (nitya-śuddha-buddha-mukta-satya-paramānandādvaya-cit-pratyag-brahma) Statement of result: brahma-vid āpnoti param (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.1), relates the two categories through purpose
avāntara-vakya context (mahā-vākya-śeṣa):
tat-padārtha positive and negative (vidhi-pratiṣedha) satyam jñānam anantam brahma (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.1.1) ānando brahmeti vyajānāt (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 3.6.1) reference (parokṣa, advaya): Brahman that is opposed to the non-existent, unreal, dull, limited, suffering, characterized as being, consciousness, unlimited, bliss (asad-anṛta-jaḍa-paricchinna-duḥkha-virudhaṃ yat satya-jñānānantānanda-lakṣaṇaṃ brahma) Arthavāda (avāntara-vākya-śeṣa), five types: (1-3) creation statements (sṛṣṭi-sthiti-pralaya-vākya) yato vā imāni bhūtāni jāyante. yena jātāni jīvanti. yat prayanty abhisaṃviśanti. tad vijijñāsasva. tad brahmeti (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 3.1.1) (4) entrance statements (praveśa-vākya) tat sṛṣṭvā. tad evānupraviśat (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.6.1) (5) regulation statement (niyamana-vākyam) bhīṣāsmād vātaḥ pavate, bhīṣodeti sūryaḥ (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.8.1)	tvam-padārtha pañca-kośa (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.2-5) three states of awareness (Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad) reference (pratyakṣa, sadvaya): The inner Self, without adjuncts, pure awareness, one in all creatures
Qualifications context: Statement of adhikāra: Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.2.12-13 Principles of causality and manner of achieving adhikāra (vividiṣā): Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22, 23 (1) Pāramparya: the performance of ritual and meditation without desire, for personal purity, culminating in dispassion (4.4.22) (2) Samuccaya: dispassion and the practice of yama-niyama (4.4.23)

Looking at the scheme and the foregoing analysis in terms of textual structure and cohesion, it is immediately apparent that tat and tvam in the mahā-vākya context are just a demonstrative and personal reference respectively to their avāntara-vākyas, insofar as their interpretation, not in the theological sense but purely on the level of meaning, is impossible without reference to texts where they are elaborated. The pronouns stand in a cohesive relation to their avāntara-vākyas through semantic identity, and the full sentences can be introduced in place of the pronouns by way of substitution. The avāntara-vākyas on their part are the requirement for the resolution of the personal pronouns, but they are also presuppositions with their own requirements, insofar as the attributes of Brahman are incomprehensible without recourse to Upaniṣadic passages where they are discussed. In Sarvajñātman’s packed account, anantam was the ground for having recourse to such passages, but it was really the juxtaposition of anantam to the other three characteristics, as we saw in Śaṅkara’s account of the identity statements. “What do you mean, consciousness unlimited?–Look at the bhūma-vidyā.–Being unlimited? The sad-vidyā.” This was also possible through semantic identity, as satyam and sat from the Taittirīya and the Chāndogya have the same meaning, as Śaṅkara said.

The mahā-vākya itself, then, is really an ellipsis for a much longer statement that joins the respective meanings of the two categories such that they are purged of their mutually exclusive elements, yet at the same time a mandatory ellipsis since the mutually exclusive elements need to be simultaneously meaningful. The final reference that obtains through the juxtaposition of the meaning of the counterparts, in which Brahman is no longer mediate and the Self is no longer dual, is not informative in the same way as when Brahman is both mediate and immediate and the Self is both dual and non-dual: it is in that liminal state that liberation takes place. Thus, the mahā-vākyas are simultaneously pithy and massively long, through subsuming and requiring the avāntara and the arthavāda context. Add to this the prerequisite context that provides for the very possibility of understanding the maha-vākyas, and they can potentially involve everything in the Veda that can be used in the pursuit of liberation. In the mahā-vākya, the full finality of meaning of the Veda obtains.

Before moving to the conclusion, I want to hazard the following idea. The mahā-vākyas are, of course, scriptural statements, part of the Upaniṣadic corpus. Their expanded form, however, must be worked out by tracing the cohesion relations that obtain between the terms on the mahā, avāntara, and arthavāda level, and through the vividiṣā between the jñāna and karma corpus, and by providing a structure that does not appear naturally, in the sense that there is no scriptural text as such that states the expanded form explicitly. As we learned from the Mīmāṃsā-Kośa, a mahā-vākya is an inferable thing. To go back to the Second Chapter, now, scripture is like a grand repository of empirically unavailable data that one can tap into contingent on one’s aspirations and abilities—“The Veda gives rise to veridical cognitions for a competent person,” as Sarvajñātman says^[16] —but then do stuff with this data, explore how it can be structured for one’s needs. From such perspective, mahā-vākyas are, like the ritual manuals or prayoga-vidhis, what that one must work out on one’s own or through a model. In this sense, a mahā-vākya is something like the prose section of the Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī, a structure of scriptural data around the identification of the two categories, meant for attaining liberation.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

athātho ‘vantara-vākyārthaṃ vyākhyāsyāmaḥ, vidhivad upasannāya nityānitya-vastu-vivekādi-sādhana-catuṣṭaya-sampannāya brāhmaṇāya śravaṇa-manana-nididhyāsanādi-vidhi-preritāya yataye mukhyādhikāriṇe. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, p.38-9.

[2]:

tatrāvāntara-vākyas tāvad brahmātmaikatva-lakṣaṇa-mahā-vākyārthānvayi-tat-tvaṃ-padārtha-dvayam eva. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, p.40.

[3]:

Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 2, p.23.

[4]:

nirguṇa-brahma-para-samasta-veda-śākhopaniṣad-gatāpunar-ukta-samasta-padopasaṃhāreṇa. Ibid.

[5]:

yadi punar na samāharaṇaṃ bhavet paramita-pariṣedhanam āpatet. Sarvajñātman’s Saṅkṣepa-Śārīraka 3.318.

[6]:

Sarvajñātman’s Saṅkṣepa-Śārīraka 3.312-325.

[7]:

anṛta-jaḍa-paricchinna-duḥkha-viruddhaṃ vastu satya-jñānānantādi-śabdaiḥ brahma-śabdārthatvena nivedyate. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, p.40.

[8]:

tatra yato vā imāni bhūtāni jāyante. yena jātāni jīvanti. yat prayanty abhisaṃviśanti. tad vijijñāsasva. tad brahmeti [Taittirīya Upaniṣad 3.1.1]. iti sṛṣṭi-sthiti-pralaya-vākyāni. tat sṛṣṭvā. tad evānupraviśat [Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.6.1] iti praveśa-vākyam. bhīṣāsmād vātaḥ pavate, bhīṣodeti sūryaḥ [Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.8.1] ity-ādi-niyamana-vākyam. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, p.42.

[9]:

tasyaiva brahmaṇa tathā-nivedyamānasya ānantyopapādanāya pañca-vidhāni yukty-arthavāda-vākyāni vidhi-pratiṣedha-codanārtha-śeṣa-bhūta-stuti-nindārthavāda-vākya-vat sṛṣṭi-sthiti-pralaya-praveśa-niyamana-vādīni. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, 41-2.

[10]:

etaiḥ pañca-vidhaiḥ sambhāvanārthavāda-vākyaiḥ... Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, p.42.

[11]:

Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.2-2.5.

[12]:

tathā jāgrat-svapna-suṣupti-vilakṣaṇo jāgrat-svapna-suṣupti-sambandha-rahito ‘dhyātmādhibhūtādhidaiva-śarīrastha ekas tvaṃ-padārthaḥ. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, 45.

[13]:

tasya traya āvasathāḥ trayaḥ svapnāḥ ity-ādi-śrutau avasthā-trayasyopanyāsasya tātparyaṃ svārthe puruṣārthābhāvāt, brahmātmaikatva-jñāne ca brahmavid āpnoti param [Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.1.1] iti puruṣārtha-śravaṇāt, phalavat-sannidhāv aphalaṃ tad-aṅgam iti nyāyāt. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4, p.45-6.

[14]:

ato ‘sad-anṛta-jaḍa-paricchinna-duḥkha-viruddhaṃ yat satya-jñānānantānanda-lakṣaṇaṃ brahma tat tvam asi iti mahā-vākye tac-chabdena svavācya-śabala-brahma-gata-pārokṣyāṃśa-parityāgena lakṣayitavyam. yathoktaś ca pratyag-ātmā tvaṃ-śabda-vācya-śabala-gata-sadvitīyāṃśa-parityāgena svavācya-sadvitīyatva-śabala-tvaṃ-padārthābhidhāna-dvāreṇa tvaṃ-śabdena lakṣayitavyaḥ jahad-ajahal-lakṣaṇayā; anyathā sadvayam advayam, pratyakṣaṃ parokṣam—iti tat tvam asi mahā-vākyārtha-pratipattau virodha-prasaṅgāt. evaṃ padārtha-dvayaṃ śodhayitvā vyavasthitaṃ tad eva tat tvam asi ity ācāryo bodhayati. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 4. p.46-8; idānīm antaḥ-karaṇābhāvāt jāgrat-svapna-suṣuptīnām abhāve jīvatva-varjita-pratyagātma-caitanya-svabhāvo nitya-śuddha-buddha-mukta-satya-paramānandādvaya-svabhāvaṃ brahma tat-tvam-padārthau pariśiṣṭau. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 3, p.36.

[15]:

yajñādi-kṣapita-kalmaṣasya sarva-karma-kāṇḍa-phala-bhūtasya sarva-karma-sannyāsinaḥ. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 2, p.20.

[16]:

adhikāriṇaḥ pramiti-janako vedaḥ iti nyāyāt. Sarvajñātman’s Pañca-Prakriyā 2, p.21-2.