The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s5.9

v2.c40.s5.9

More important than these theories are others: Indra⁷ and the demon Virocana went to Prajāpati for instruction: he first describes the Ātman as the body, a view thought adequate by Virocana, who is the prototype of all men who merely see in the body the hope of immortality, and, therefore, deck it out on death with gay raiment. Prajāpati then explains the self as the spirit in dreams, but Indra is not satisfied, since the spirit is still in this condition opposed to a world beyond itself. Prajāpati then propounds the self in dreamless sleep, where there is no distinction of subject and object, which he explains as not the annihilation of the self, but its entry upon the fullest light in identification with the absolute. With this view must be compared a more developed one expressed in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad,¹ where there are distinguished five Ātmans; the first is the *annamaya*, which corresponds to the body; then the *prāṇamaya*, which corresponds to the life of the breaths or vital airs; the *manomaya*, the self of the mind, which here clearly means the activity of the self as conscious will in such actions as sacrifice and study; the *vijñānamaya*, in which for sacrifice is substituted knowledge and worship of the deity in that manner; and finally the *ānandamaya*, that of joy before whom words and thought recoil, not finding him. This last self is not an object of knowledge, and hence it is described as not real—empirically—, as unconscious and unutterable. In it is bliss, which is broken by the belief in any difference between the self and it.