A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s3.2.2

c8.s3.2.2

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.