A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s3.2

Language: English

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13. We now come to a very famous parable in the Chhāndogya Upanishad which unmistakably tells us how we must arrive at the conception of the Self-conscious Being within us as constituting the ultimate reality. In a very clever analysis of the psychological states through which a man's soul passes, the author of that Upanishad brings out how the ultimate reality must not be mistaken with bodily consciousness; how it must not be confused with the dream-consciousness; how it transcends even the deep-sleep-consciousness; how, finally, it is the pure Self-consciousness, which is beyond all bodily or mental limitations. We are told in the Chhāndogya Upanishad that the gods and demons were, once upon a time, both anxious to learn the nature of final reality, and they therefore went in pursuit of it to Prajāpati. Prajāpati had maintained that "that entity, which is free from sin, free from old age, free from death and grief, free from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing, and imagines nothing, must be regarded as the ultimate self." The gods and demons were anxious to know what this Self was. So the gods sent Indra and the demons Virochana as their emissaries to learn the final truth from Prajāpati. They dwelt there as pupils at first for a period of thirty-two years, which condition was necessary before a master could impart spiritual wisdom to his disciples. Then Prajāpati asked them what it was that had brought them there.

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Indra and Virochana told him that they had come to him in order that they might know the nature of the Self. Now Prajāpati would not immediately tell them the final truth. He tried to delude them by saying first that the Self was nothing more than the image that we see in the eye, in water, or in a mirror. It was this, he said, which must be regarded as the immortal and fearless Brahman. Indra and Virochana became complacent in the belief that they had understood the nature of the Self. They bedecked themselves by putting on excellent clothes and ornaments, cleaned themselves, looked into a water-pan, and imagined they had visualised the ultimate Self, and went altogether composed in mind. Virochana told the demons that he had been in possession of the ultimate secret, namely, that the so-called Self was no other than the image that one sees in the eye, in a mirror, or in a pan of water, thus identifying the Self with the mere image of the body. The Upanishad tells us how there are a certain set of people who take this as final gospel, which it calls the gospel of the Asuras. There must be a slight reference here to those, who, like the later Chārvākas, maintained that the Self was nothing more than the mere consciousness of body. Indra, however, unlike Virochana, bethought himself that Prajāpati must not have given him the final answer in the matter of the knowledge of ultimate reality. There was this difficulty that pressed itself before him.

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"It is true," he said, "that, when the body is well adorned, the Self is well adorned; when the body is well dressed, the Self is well dressed; when the body is well cleaned, the Self is well cleaned; but what if the body were blind, or lame, or crippled? Shall not the Soul itself be thus regarded as blind, or lame, or crippled"? He thought that there was this great difficulty in the teaching that had been imparted to him by Prajāpati, and so he went back again to Prajāpati to request him once more to tell him what ultimate reality was. Prajāpati advised him to practise penance once more for thirty-two years, and, when Indra had performed that penance, Prajāpati supplied him with another piece of knowledge. "The true Self is he," said Prajāpati, "who moves about happy in dreams. He is the immortal, the fearless Brahman." In fact, Prajāpati told him that dream-consciousness must be regarded as identical with the Self. This seemed to please Indra and he went back; but before he reached the gods, he saw again that there was another difficulty in the information that had been imparted to him.