A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s3.2.1

c8.s3.2.1

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.