The mahAvAkyA-s: the Essence of advaita Text in its context (Question session with an advaitin)
Q: My first question. Why is the system called advaita? Is it not negativistic?
advaitin: Firstly, it is not a system. Yes, it is included in the six systems of Indian philosophy,vedAnta. advaita aims, indeed its sole aim is, to help you break out 0f every system. advaita is not a system, but a state. It is the state of liberation- true, total freedom. The upaniShad-s teach this ultimate liberation. It is the essence of their teaching. The teachers of the upaniShad-s are called seers (dRRashta-s) and the texts are referred to as ‘what is heard’ (sruti). But what they teach is the state which cannot be ‘seen’ (darshana) or ‘heard’ (sruti). It is a state indeed beyond the reach of all senses. The upaniShad-s speak of the unspeakable. And so, we have to encounter the difficulty of the limitations of language in our study of theadvaitic texts. In the quest for truth, words fail, shut up and turn back along with the their dear companion, mind, which like cart-wheel stuck up in mud, spins and spins furiously and comes to a grinding halt, failing to move forward.
Negativistic. Indeed the method of advaita is chiefly one of negation, ‘neti neti’, (‘not this not this’). And yet it is not nihilism. Nihilism negates what is. advaita negates what is not.
Now, I shall come to your question. ‘Why is it called advaita?’ It is because there is no second.
Q: Then you can call it ‘one’.
A: ‘One’ has meaning when it is preceded by zero and followed by two. There never was a zero, nothingness. And nothing follows it, and it is without a second. Non-dual. It is therefore not ‘one’, or monist. advaita is not monism. However, it does not mean that Brahman is not referred to as ‘one’. It is, as in ’Ekam sat’, ‘ekamevAdvitIyaM’
Q: advaita is a vast subject. It requires a long and hard study. Are there any short approaches to it?
A: Yes, indeed. There are four great gateways leading directly to the shrine of truth.
There are four statements about the one truth. They are called mahAvAkyA-s, one from each of the four veda-s. All the four speak the same truth. They are not different statements. They are different ways of approaching the one truth... And these are:
- ‘praj~nAnaM brahma’ (RRRgveda: aitareya upaniShad (3.1.3.))
- ‘aham brahmAsmi’ (yajurveda: bRRihadAraNyaka upaniShad (1.4.10.))
- 'tattwamasi’ (sAmaveda:chhAndogya upaniShad (6.8.7.))
- ‘ayamAtma brahma (atharvaNa veda: mAndukya upaniShad (2.))
Q: Do these mahAvAkyA-s appear in other places, in other upaniShad-s too?
A: They do. But those are not their places of birth.
Q: And the order, in which these are supposed to be taught, is the order inviolable?
A: Not really, not now, at least. The order was once determined by the branch of the veda one followed. Those who followed RRRgveda started with the RRgveda mahavakya. And those who adhere to yajurveda started with‘aham brahmAsmi’. And so on. But wherever we start, whichever gate we choose to enter from, we reach the shrine. The same shrine .Shall we begin with ‘praj~nAnaM brahma’?
Q: Sure. Although I don’t go by RRg or any other veda. It makes no difference to me personally. Nor should it to most students of advaita today.
A: Well. ‘praj~nAnaM brahma’ shall be our first gate of preference. And we shall certainly come back to the other gates too. For, we then get to know the truth from several approaches. Truth is one. The sages speak of it in different words and ways.
Q: But why the prefix ‘pra’? ‘j~nAnaM’ would do. And j~nAnaM does refer to brahman in many statements, as in‘satyaM j~nAnaM anantam brahma’ (Ta.Up.(2-1-1)).
A: That is true. But then, ‘praj~nAnaM’ is also used in other senses. In fact it appears in the mantra immediately preceding this: ‘samj~nAnamAj~nAnaM vij~nAnaM praj~nAnaM’. And here it means not brahman but prajnapti,prajnata, the alert intellect. So, a term’s meaning depends on its context. Here in ‘praj~nAnaM brahma’ ,the prefix ‘pra’ is necessary to distinguish it from j~nAnaM.
Q: And what then is j~nAnaM?
A: j~nAnaM refers to the knowledge of the individual self. praj~nAnaM refers to the consciousness that makes that knowledge possible.
And here we shall go back in the aitareya upaniShad where the mahAvAkya ‘praj~nAnaM brahma’ occurs. TheupaniShad gives an account of creation.
Q: So advaita professes creationism?
A: It does. And it doesn’t. We shall come to this a little later. But let us consider the account of creation in theupaniShad.
‘In the beginning, really, there was only this Atma. Nothing else for a rival. He (Atma) thought’ let me create the worlds. And he created the worlds’.
Q:’ In the beginning?’ When did all this begin?
A: I know you were going to ask that question. We shall come back to it. And to your earlier question too, about creationism. But let us proceed with the mantra. In the beginning, there was no space, no water, and no fire.
Q: Oh! How horrible!
A: Yes. But there was also no one to complain: ‘There’s no water, no power’. You were not there. I was not there. No one was there to complain. Not a creature. And no one to protest, (‘na anyat kinchana mishat’). The Atma felt lonely. It got bored. It would be safer to refer to Atma as ‘it’. That wouldn’t offend gender sensitivities. TheupaniShad-s are not very consistent. They sometimes refer to brahman as ‘it’, and sometimes as ‘he’. The primal power needed for the brahman to create the world is ‘she’. But the powerful person and his power cannot be two different persons, let alone sex or gender. The self yearned for a challenge, a thing to drive away depression, something to play with. It yearned for a ‘second’. And it said, of course to itself: ‘Let me create the worlds’. And he did instantly, all the four worlds.
The creation comprised four planes – ambha-s (celestial waters), marici (the intermediate space through which light passes), maram (the world of mortals), and apah (the nether worlds). All the four planes of creation from the top ambhas to the bottom apah are thus enveloped in a vast protective globe of water, very much like amnionic fluid in the mother’s womb, where the foetus develops and forms various organs and senses. Then the self thought these worlds must have governors or guardians. And he brought forth a puruSha out of this vast expanse of waters, very much like an egg. The self brooded over this cosmic egg, (abhyatapat) and the cosmic puruSha,virat was born. This is brahma, the creator who may be said to be the first creature. Then followed the other devatas, guardians. First, the mouth emerged and fire (agni) from it. Then the nose and the air from it. Thus all the infrastructural provisions, basic necessities for the worlds have been created. And at the same time the governors. The self also created a puruSha within the cosmic puruSha.
And the governors were asked to take their respective positions in the human body. It is through the human body that these devathas derive their nourishment. It is because of these presiding deities that the body functions and survives and the devathas survive through man’s body. Agni took charge of the tongue, vayu of the nose, the sun of the eye etc. After creating the worlds, their guardians, and assigning their duties, and when they have taken charge of their positions in the human body, the self thought ‘how can this puruSha be without me? ‘And the self drilled the puruSha’s head and entered his body through the bore.
Here the upaniShad is saying that the self entered puruSha through the head (seemanam vidarya) .But earlier in the AraNyaka portion of the same aitereya, it was said that the self entered puruSha through the feet. The question naturally arises, which is the self, the real self? Is it the one that entered through the feet of man, or the one that entered through his head? Are there two Brahman-s or Atma-s? One taking the royal route to enter and the other taking the rear door? And if there are indeed two Atma-s which one is to be worshipped? TheupaniShad-s speak in metaphors. We have to get behind these metaphoric accounts and see what they are driving us at. Let us leave these metaphors of the tip and the toe for a while.
Let us ask: how do we get what we call our knowledge? The eyes see, the ears hear, the tongue speaks and so on, and the mind thinks, and we know thoughts. But we also know that the eyes do not see, the ears do not hear, or the tongue speaks. A blind person also has eyes. A deaf person also has ears .The dumb has a tongue. But they do not see or hear or speak. This is too obvious. These sense organs cannot by themselves know things. There is some power that enables them to see and hear. There is a central power which empowers these sense organs to gather knowledge. And it is because of this power that the eyes see, the ears hear, the mind thinks and so on.
Let us make use of a simile. A pot has apertures and there is a lamp inside the pot. The lamp peeps through the apertures and illumines the objects outside it. All the objects around the pot are illuminated and are ‘known’. The human body has apertures too – eyes, ears and so on. (And the human body is referred to, in Sanskrit, as ‘ghata’, a pot.) And the light within the body peeps out of these apertures and ‘grasps’ the objects around. And so it is the light within that is the source of what we call our knowledge. Without this inner light, no knowledge is possible. So what should we consider to be the knowledge, the bringers of knowledge or the source that enables these vehicles to gather knowledge? Surely, it is the source that makes knowledge possible.
So what we call knowledge is j~nAnaM. And what makes this knowledge possible is praj~nAnaM.
Part 2 Coming Soon...
