The Brahma Sutra · Book 1: Convergence · Pada 3 · Further proofs and the question of the deities’ eligibility

Mundaka 2.2.5: “He in whom heaven, earth and the sky are woven, and the mind with all the breaths, know him alone as the Self, and leave off other words; he is the bridge of the immortal.” What is the abode in which all this is woven?

The opponent says something other than Brahman, because of the word “bridge”: a bridge leads to a farther bank, and Brahman has none, being “endless, shoreless” (Brihadaranyaka 2.4.12). So the abode is the pradhana, the cause of all and so its abode; or air, the thread on which the worlds are strung (Brihadaranyaka 3.7.2); or the embodied soul, the abode of all it enjoys. 1.3.1 answers: the highest Brahman, because of its own word, “know him alone as the Self,” where Self is used in its first sense; and the verses around it call it by its own names, “the Person is all this, sacrifice, penance, Brahman, the highest immortal” (2.1.10), “that immortal Brahman is before and behind, to the right and the left” (2.2.11). “Know him alone” tells the hearer to dissolve the many effects and know the one Self they rest on, as “bring what Devadatta sits on” means the chair; and a bridge, setu, is from the root that means to bind and hold, so the word says that the abode holds everything and says nothing about a farther shore. 1.3.2: and because it is named as what the released reach: “the knot of the heart is cut, all doubts are resolved, his works perish, when he is seen who is high and low” (2.2.8), “the wise one, freed from name and form, goes to the divine Person higher than the high” (3.2.8); no text sends the released to the pradhana.

1.3.3: not what is inferred, since no word names it, and “he who knows all, perceives all” (1.1.9) names an intelligent being; air falls for the same reason. 1.3.4: nor the bearer of breath (pranabhrit), the jiva, which is a self and is conscious and is still ruled out, because its knowing is hemmed in by its adjuncts and it cannot fill heaven and earth. 1.3.5: because of the declaration of difference: “know him alone as the Self” sets the knower, the soul that wants release, apart from what is to be known. 1.3.6: because of the subject matter: “what is that, knowing which all this is known?” (1.1.3) can be asked only of the Self of all. 1.3.7: and because of the two states, standing and eating: “two birds, close companions, clasp the same tree; one of them eats the sweet fruit, the other looks on without eating” (3.1.1); the one who merely stands is the Lord, the one who eats is the soul, and that verse keeps to the topic only if the abode was the Lord. Scripture never sets out to teach the soul, which everyone already knows as doer and enjoyer; the Lord, whom experience never shows, is what every text is for. Taken apart from its adjuncts, Shankara adds, the soul is that very Lord, as the spaces in jars are the one space.

Context: Mundaka 2.2.5, with 2.1.10, 2.2.8, 2.2.11 and 3.1.1 around it. The abode of heaven and earth was touched at 1.2.21 as the source of beings, and is taken up here again to settle it.

Chandogya 7, Narada and Sanatkumara. Narada has mastered every science and comes in grief: “I have heard from men like you that the knower of the Self crosses grief; I am in grief; take me across” (7.1.3). Sanatkumara leads him up a ladder, name, speech, mind, resolve, thought, meditation, understanding, strength, food, water, fire, space, memory, hope, each “more” than the last, up to breath: “breath is more than hope; breath is father, breath is mother, brother, sister, teacher, Brahmin; he who sees this becomes one who speaks beyond” (7.15). Then: “but he speaks beyond who speaks beyond by the Real,” and a second ladder rises through understanding, thought, faith, steadfastness, action and happiness to this: “the bhuma, the plenitude, is happiness; there is no happiness in the small; the bhuma alone is happiness. Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, knows nothing else, that is the bhuma; where one sees another, that is the small. The bhuma is immortal; the small is mortal” (7.23 to 7.24). Is the bhuma breath, or Brahman?

The opponent says breath: after breath no one asks “is there something more than breath?”; the one who speaks beyond was made so by breath, and the sentence about the Real only adds a quality to him; “sees nothing else” fits deep sleep, when the organs sink into breath and breath alone stays awake (Prashna 4.2 to 4.3); bliss attaches to that sleep (Prashna 4.6); “breath is immortality” (Kaushitaki 3.2); and breath is called the self of all, father and mother, the hub on which the spokes rest. 1.3.8 answers: Brahman, because the bhuma is taught after samprasada. Samprasada is deep sleep, in which breath keeps watch, so the sutra’s word stands for breath; and everything in this chapter is taught after the thing before it and is other than it; the text never says “name is more than name.” “But he speaks beyond who speaks beyond by the Real” turns with its “but” to a new matter, and “one must desire to know the Real” begins a new climb; the Real is Brahman, “the Real, knowledge, infinite” (Taittiriya 2.1). Narada’s grief ends only in the knowledge of the highest Self, “there is no other way” (Shvetashvatara 6.15); the chapter closes with Sanatkumara showing him “the far shore of darkness” (7.26.2); and it says “breath springs from the Self” (7.26.1), which breath could not say of itself. 1.3.9: and the attributes agree. “Where one sees nothing else” is Brihadaranyaka 4.5.15, “when the Self alone is all this, how should one see another?”; the bliss of sleep is mentioned only to show that bliss is the Self’s nature, “on a portion of this bliss all other creatures live” (Brihadaranyaka 4.3.32); the bhuma’s immortality is the absolute kind, while “whatever is other than that is perishable” (Brihadaranyaka 3.4.2); and “it rests on its own greatness,” “it is below and above, behind and before, it is all this,” “the Self is all this” belong to Brahman alone.

Life mostly passes in the small, a gain here, a new thing there, each slipping through the fingers as the next arrives. The Upanishad’s word for it is alpa, the little, and its claim is plain: happiness without a limit is found only where there is no second thing to see.

Context: Chandogya 7.1 to 7.26, the bhuma vidya, one of the central teachings of Vedanta and the source of the Advaita phrase “where one sees nothing else.”

Brihadaranyaka 3.8, Gargi’s second question. “That which is above heaven and below the earth and between them, and what was and is and will be, in what is it woven?” “In space.” “And in what is space woven?” Yajnavalkya answers: “That, Gargi, the knowers of Brahman call the imperishable (akshara): neither coarse nor fine, neither short nor long, without shadow or darkness, without air or space, without taste or smell, without eyes or ears, without speech or mind, without breath or mouth, without measure, without inside or outside; it eats nothing and no one eats it. At the command of this imperishable, Gargi, sun and moon stand apart, heaven and earth stand apart, moments and hours, days and nights, months and seasons and years stand apart; at its command the rivers run east and west. It is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower; there is no other seer than it. In that imperishable, Gargi, space is woven.” Which imperishable?

The opponent says the syllable, since akshara commonly means a letter and the syllable Om is praised everywhere; or the pradhana, which has no form and is the cause of all. 1.3.10 answers: Brahman, because it supports everything up to space. The weaving ran from earth through the worlds up to space, and space is the support of all effects; what supports space is the cause of all, and a syllable is no such thing. 1.3.11: and this supporting is Brahman’s because of the command: “at the command of this imperishable sun and moon stand apart”; command belongs to a conscious ruler, and the pradhana commands nothing. 1.3.12: and because every other nature is excluded: “the unseen seer, the unheard hearer” shuts out matter, which sees nothing; “without eyes, without ears” shuts out the embodied soul; and “there is no other seer than it” shuts out any seer beside it. Whatever is left is Brahman.

Context: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.8, Gargi Vachaknavi’s two questions at Janaka’s assembly. The refrain of 3.7, the unseen seer, returns here word for word.

Prashna 5, Satyakama’s question to Pippalada about meditating on Om until death. One measure of the syllable brings a man back to a human birth; two carry him to the moon’s world and back; “but he who meditates on the highest Person with the three measures of Om comes to the light, the sun; freed from evil as a snake from its slough, he is led by the Saman chants to the world of Brahma, and from that mass of souls he sees (ikshate) the Person who is higher than the highest, who dwells in the body” (5.5). Who is the highest Person?

The opponent says the lower Brahman, Hiranyagarbha, since the fruit is a world reached by going, and the highest Brahman is reached by no road. 1.3.13 answers: the highest Brahman, because it is named as the object of seeing (ikshati-karma); “he sees the Person who is higher than the highest” is said of the one seen, and seeing in its full sense, direct knowledge, has the highest Self for its object. The world of Brahma is where the meditator goes; the Person higher than Hiranyagarbha, “the mass of souls,” is what he sees there, and that is the course of release by stages that Book 4 will lay out. The three measures of Om are the support, and Brahman is what the support holds up.

Context: Prashna 5.1 to 5.7, the meditation on Om, which Book 4 picks up when it treats the way of the knower of the qualified Brahman.

Chandogya 8.1.1: “In this city of Brahman there is a small lotus house, and within it a small space (dahara akasha); what is inside that is to be sought, that is to be inquired into.” The pupils ask what is inside, and the teacher answers: “as large as this space outside is the space within the heart; heaven and earth are both held in it, fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and the stars, whatever one has here and whatever one has not” (8.1.3), and then “this is the Self free from evil, free from age, free from death, free from sorrow, without hunger, without thirst, whose desire is real, whose resolve is real” (8.1.5). What is the small space?

The opponent says the element, since it is called space and compared to space; or the jiva, since the body is “the city of Brahman” and a city has a lord who lives in it, and since the sequel speaks of “the serene one who rises from this body” (8.3.4, 8.12.3), which is the soul. 1.3.14 answers: Brahman, from what follows. A thing is not compared to itself, so a space “as large as this space outside” is no element; and freedom from evil, age, death and sorrow, with a resolve that comes real, is said of Brahman and of no soul in its bound state. 1.3.15: from the going and the word: “all these creatures go day after day into this Brahma-world and do not find it” (8.3.2) speaks of the daily going of beings into Brahman in deep sleep, which is seen in other texts (“he has gone to Being,” Chandogya 6.8.1), and that going is a mark; and the word brahmaloka, read as “the world that is Brahman,” is a second mark. 1.3.16: and from the holding, since greatness of that kind is seen in it: “this Self is the dam, the boundary that keeps these worlds apart” (8.4.1), and holding the worlds apart is the Lord’s work, “the lord of all, the king of all, the dam that keeps these worlds from running together” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.22).

1.3.17: and from settled usage, since akasha is well known as a name of Brahman (Chandogya 8.14.1, Taittiriya 2.7). 1.3.18: if someone says the sequel refers to the other one, the soul, so the space is the soul, no, that is impossible, since a soul bound by its adjuncts has none of the eight qualities; the body is Brahman’s city because Brahman is met in it, as a king is met in his city. 1.3.19: if someone says the later chapter settles it for the soul, since Prajapati’s teaching ends, “this serene one, rising from this body and reaching the highest light, appears in its own form” (8.12.3), no; the soul there is the soul whose true nature has come to light, which is Brahman, since what rises from the body and reaches the light is no longer a bound thing. 1.3.20: and the reference to the soul has another purpose, which is to show that the soul, led from the person in the eye through dream and sleep, is at last the highest Self. 1.3.21: if someone says the text calls it small, that was answered at 1.2.7: the smallness is for meditation, and the text itself says the space inside is as large as the space outside.

People lay a hand on the chest and say that he lives in the heart. The dahara vidya is where that gesture comes from: the lotus of the heart, the small space inside it, and inside that the Self that holds heaven and earth.

Context: Chandogya 8.1 to 8.6, with Prajapati’s teaching of Indra and Virochana (8.7 to 8.12) as its sequel. The vidya is called the dahara vidya, the teaching of the small space.

Mundaka 2.2.10, the verse the Katha shares (2.2.15): “There the sun does not shine, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings; how then this fire? Him shining, everything shines after; by his light all this is lit.” Who is the one everything shines after?

The opponent says some luminous body, a light of lights that the sun and the rest borrow from, as the moon borrows from the sun. 1.3.22 answers: Brahman, because of the shining-after (anukriti) and because of “his.” The sun is the source of every light the eye knows, and no physical light outshines it; what the sun cannot light, and what the sun shines by, is the light of consciousness itself, Brahman, and the verse before this one has already named it, “in the golden highest sheath is the stainless Brahman, without parts; that is the light of lights” (2.2.9). “By his light all this is lit” says that every shining is a borrowing from the one who is never lit by another. 1.3.23: and smriti says the same, “the sun does not light it, nor the moon, nor fire; that is my highest abode” (Gita 15.6), and “the light in the sun that lights the whole world, the light in the moon and in fire, know that light to be mine” (15.12).

Context: Mundaka 2.2.9 to 2.2.11, Katha 2.2.15, and Gita 15.6 and 15.12.

Katha 2.1.12 to 2.1.13: “The Person the size of a thumb dwells in the middle of the body, the lord of what was and what will be; knowing him, one no longer shrinks away. The Person the size of a thumb is like a flame without smoke, the lord of what was and what will be; he is today and he is tomorrow.” Who is the thumb-sized Person?

The opponent says the jiva, since it has a measure, taken from the heart it lives in, and dwells “in the middle of the body,” while the Lord has no measure at all. 1.3.24 answers: Brahman, from the word itself: “the lord of what was and what will be” is said of the Lord and of no soul, and “he is today and he is tomorrow” says that he does not pass. 1.3.25: the thumb is spoken with reference to the heart, because men are the ones addressed. The scripture speaks to those who may study and act on it, and a man’s heart is a thumb’s breadth; so the Lord without measure is given a thumb’s measure as present in the human heart, the way space is given the measure of the bamboo joint it fills, and this for the sake of meditation. The next adhikarana asks whether “men” there means men alone.

Context: Katha 2.1.12 to 2.1.13, with Shvetashvatara 3.13 repeating the figure. The thumb-sized Person is also the one Yama shows Nachiketa at Katha 2.3.17, “drawn out of the body like a reed from its sheath.”

The last sutra said the scripture speaks to men. Does it speak to men alone, or may the gods also inquire into Brahman? Eight sutras argue it out, and Jaimini and Badarayana are named on opposite sides.

The Mimamsaka’s case: the gods have no bodies, so they cannot desire or study; if they had bodies, one Indra could not be present in person at the hundred sacrifices offered to him on the same day; and if the gods are born and die, the Vedic words that name them lose their eternal link to their meanings, and the Veda’s authority goes with it. 1.3.26, Badarayana: beings above men are eligible too, because it is possible. The gods can desire release, having seen that every effect and power passes; they have bodies, as mantras, explanatory passages, the epics, the Puranas and common belief all show; no text bars them as it bars the Shudra; the thread ceremony is only for study, and the Veda is open to the gods without it; and they do go to teachers, “Indra lived a hundred and one years as Prajapati’s pupil” (Chandogya 8.11.3), “Bhrigu went to his father Varuna and said, teach me Brahman” (Taittiriya 3.1). 1.3.27: if someone says bodies would put the gods in contradiction with the rites, no, because one being is seen to take many forms at once: the three thousand three hundred and six gods are the powers of thirty-three, and the thirty-three in the end are the powers of one, breath (Brihadaranyaka 3.9.1), and a yogin can walk the earth in a thousand bodies; or else one god may be the object of many offerings at once, as one Brahmin may be honored by many at the same time.

1.3.28: if someone says the word itself is contradicted, no, because the world, gods included, arises from the word, as scripture and smriti show. Words are tied to kinds and never to individuals; the kind “cow” stays though cows are born and die, and so with “Vasu” and “Rudra”; “Indra” is the name of a post, like “general”; and the Vedic word stands before each creation in the creator’s mind, “saying bhuh, he made the earth” (Taittiriya Brahmana 2.2.4.2), “in the beginning he shaped the names and forms of all beings from the words of the Veda” (Manu 1.21). Here Shankara stops for a long argument with the grammarians, who hold that behind the sounds of a word stands a single indivisible thing, the sphota, which the sounds reveal; he answers that the letters themselves, heard in order and held together by the mind, are the word, and need no second entity behind them. 1.3.29: and from this follows the eternity of the Veda, “the Rig Veda and the rest are the breath of the great being” (Brihadaranyaka 2.4.10), the same words with the same meanings before every creation. 1.3.30: and there is no contradiction even in the recurrence of creation and dissolution, since names and forms are the same in every age, as a man waking from sleep takes up the same life; “the creator made the sun and the moon as before” (Rig Veda 10.190.3), and smriti says the rishis return to the same names and works.

1.3.31, Jaimini: the gods are still unfit, because of the impossibility in the honey teaching and others like it: “the sun is the honey of the gods” (Chandogya 3.1.1), and the sun cannot meditate on itself as honey, nor the Vasus hope to become Vasus. 1.3.32: and because the words for the gods are used of lights: Aditya names the ball of light in the sky, and a light has no heart, no mind and no wishes; the mantras and explanatory passages that give it a person serve the rites and prove nothing. 1.3.33, Badarayana: the gods do have eligibility, for the texts show it, “whichever god awoke to it, he became it” (Brihadaranyaka 1.4.10), “Indra went forth from the gods and Virochana from the demons” to seek the Self (Chandogya 8.7.2). The honey teaching is closed to them, since they are its objects; the knowledge of Brahman is open, and no one is fit for everything, as a Brahmin is unfit for the royal sacrifice. The words for the gods, though they name lights, carry intelligent persons of power who live in the light and take what form they please, Indra as a ram carrying off Medhatithi, the sun as a man coming to Kunti. And the passages that praise and explain do report facts along the way, as a traveler on another errand still sees the grass and leaves on his road; the epics and Puranas rest on them and on the sight of ancients who spoke with the gods face to face.

Context: a question between Mimamsa and Vedanta, and the place where Shankara settles his view of the Vedic word against the grammarians. The thirty-three gods and the one god of Brihadaranyaka 3.9 are the hinge of 1.3.27.

If the gods may inquire, may the Shudra? Chandogya 4.1 to 4.2 tells of Janashruti Pautrayana, a generous king, who overhears two geese at night; one says of him, “how can you speak of him as if he were Raikva of the cart?” The king sends for Raikva, finds him scratching himself under his cart, and offers him cows, a necklace and a chariot; Raikva answers, “Fie, keep your necklace and your chariot, Shudra, together with the cows” (4.2.3), and teaches him only when he comes back with his daughter and a village. Who is being called Shudra, and what does it prove?

The opponent says the Shudra is eligible: he can desire the knowledge and is capable of it; the text that calls him unfit for sacrifice bars him for want of the sacred fires, which knowledge does not need; Raikva teaches a man he addresses as Shudra; and smriti knows Vidura and others born of Shudra mothers who had the knowledge. Shankara answers that there is no eligibility by the Vedic route, since the Shudra does not study the Veda, the thread ceremony that opens study belonging to the three upper varnas; wanting is no fitness without the means, and the word in Raikva’s mouth sits in a story, where it could at most open that one teaching. 1.3.34 then reads the word: it points at the grief (shuc) that rushed on Janashruti when he heard himself slighted, and Raikva, naming the grief, shows that he knows what he could not have seen; shudra is read as “he ran into grief” or “grief ran upon him.” 1.3.35: and Janashruti’s Kshatriya standing is understood from a sign later in the same teaching, where he is named with Chaitraratha Abhipratarin (4.3.5), a Kshatriya by his Kapeya priests and his line, since equals are named with equals, and from his doorkeeper and his gifts.

1.3.36: the teachings refer to the thread ceremony, “he initiated him,” “teach me, sir,” “fuel in hand they approached Pippalada,” and its absence is declared for the Shudra, “once-born,” “fit for no ceremony” (Manu 10.4, 10.126). 1.3.37: and Gautama proceeds to initiate Satyakama Jabala only once he has made sure he is no Shudra: “none who was not a Brahmin would speak so; fetch fuel, friend, I will initiate you; you have not left the truth” (4.4.5). 1.3.38: and smriti forbids the Shudra’s hearing, studying and acting on the Veda. Shankara ends with a door left open: those Shudras who, like Vidura and the dharma-hunter of the Mahabharata, come to knowledge through the ripening of earlier deeds cannot be denied its fruit, since knowledge always bears its fruit, and smriti opens the epics and Puranas to all four varnas, “he is to teach the four varnas.”

The adhikarana sits uneasily with a reader today, and it should. The discourse on varna in Badarayana’s time was far from today’s. We read the argument as Shankara made it, and we do not take it as the view of the living tradition.

Context: Chandogya 4.1 to 4.3 (Janashruti and Raikva, the samvarga vidya) and 4.4 (Satyakama Jabala). The Satyakama story is often read against the exclusion, since Gautama accepts a boy who cannot name his father; Shankara reads it the other way, as the teacher proceeding only after satisfying himself about the boy’s birth, and both readings should be known.

Back to the texts. Katha 2.3.2: “Whatever there is, this whole world, once it has come forth, trembles in the breath (prana); a great fear, a raised thunderbolt; those who know it become immortal.” Which breath, and whose thunderbolt?

The opponent says air, the fivefold breath, in its usual sense, and a thunderbolt in its usual sense, since lightning and thunder come from air when it gathers as the rain-cloud, and another text promises that the knower of air “conquers death.” 1.3.39 answers: Brahman, because of the trembling. The verse before says “that alone is called the bright, that is Brahman, that alone is called the immortal; all worlds rest in it, and none goes beyond it” (2.3.1), and the verse after says “from fear of it fire burns, from fear the sun burns, from fear Indra and Vayu, and Death as the fifth, run their course” (2.3.3); between two verses about Brahman the middle one cannot be about air, and the thing air itself fears cannot be air. A world that trembles in something has that thing for its abode, and the abode of all is Brahman; the cause of all fear is Brahman; prana is a name of it, “the breath of breath” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.18), “no mortal lives by the breath that goes up or down; we live by another in whom these two rest” (Katha 2.2.5). The thunderbolt is a cause of fear, as a king’s servant does his work with the king’s wrath hanging over him like a bolt; so fire, air, sun and the rest keep to their offices for fear of Brahman. And immortality is the fruit of knowing Brahman, “knowing him alone one passes beyond death; there is no other way” (Shvetashvatara 6.15); the air’s immortality is a relative thing.

Context: Katha 2.3.1 to 2.3.3, in Yama’s last teaching, with the question of Nachiketa about the Self beyond right and wrong (1.2.14) still the subject.

Chandogya 8.12.3, the end of Prajapati’s teaching of Indra: “Thus this serene one, rising from this body and reaching the highest light, appears in its own form; that is the highest Person.” Which light?

The opponent says the light the eye sees, in the word’s settled sense; at 1.1.24 the context forced another meaning, and here nothing does; besides, the chapter on the channels of the heart says that the one who departs “goes upward by those very rays” to the sun (8.6.5), so the light reached is the sun’s. 1.3.40 answers: Brahman, because it is seen as the subject through the whole chapter. “The Self free from evil” was set up at 8.7.1 as the thing to be sought out and known; Prajapati carries it on, “I will explain it to you further” (8.9.3 and after); he says that when the Self is free of the body neither pleasure nor pain touches it (8.12.1), and freedom from the body belongs to Brahman alone; and he closes with “the highest light, the highest Person.” The going to the sun by the rays is the release that still involves going, and the final release, as Book 4 will show, involves no going at all.

Context: Chandogya 8.7 to 8.12, Indra’s thirty-two years and then more under Prajapati, learning the Self through the person in the eye, the dreamer and the sleeper before reaching this.

Chandogya 8.14.1: “What is called space (akasha) is the revealer of names and forms; that within which these two are is Brahman, the immortal, the Self.” Space once more.

The opponent says the element: the word’s usual sense, and the element does make room for names and forms and so may be said to bring them out; nothing here speaks of making or ruling, the marks of Brahman. 1.3.41 answers: Brahman, because it is named as something other than names and forms. The whole world of effects is nothing except names and forms, so what is other than both can only be Brahman; and bringing them out in full is Brahman’s work, “let me enter these with this living self and unfold names and forms” (6.3.2), which also marks the living self as Brahman’s own; and the sentence ends by saying so, “Brahman, the immortal, the Self.”

Context: Chandogya 8.14, the last words of the Upanishad’s teaching before its closing prayer, and the sentence 1.1.22 leaned on for the sense of akasha.

Brihadaranyaka 4.3 to 4.4, Yajnavalkya and King Janaka. Janaka asks, “which is the Self?” and the answer begins, “he who is within the heart, among the breaths, the person made of light, consisting of knowledge” (4.3.7), and then runs through waking, dream, deep sleep and death. Is the passage describing the soul that passes from body to body, or the Self that does not?

The opponent says the passing soul, since the opening, “among the breaths, consisting of knowledge,” and the close, “that great unborn Self is he who consists of knowledge among the breaths” (4.4.22), both carry the embodied soul’s marks, and the middle describes its states. 1.3.42 answers: the highest Lord, because he is named as different from the soul in deep sleep and in departure. In sleep: “this person, embraced by the intelligent Self (prajna), knows nothing without and nothing within” (4.3.21), where the one embraced is the soul and the one who embraces, never parted from knowledge, is the Lord. In departure: “this bodily self, mounted by the intelligent Self, goes groaning” (4.3.35), the rider other than the ridden. The opening does not describe the passing soul; it names it as something known and says what it is, for “as if thinking, as if moving” (4.3.7) strips its attributes away, and the close says that the knowing self among the breaths is the great unborn Self. The middle shows the soul untouched by its states: each time Janaka says “speak on, for the sake of release,” Yajnavalkya answers “he is not attached to anything” (4.3.14 to 4.3.16), “he is followed neither by good nor by evil, for he has passed beyond all the sorrows of the heart” (4.3.22). 1.3.43: and because of words like Lord: “he is the lord of all, the king of all, the protector of all” (4.4.22) names the Self that does not pass, and “he does not become greater by good works nor smaller by evil” shuts out the one that does.

Context: Brihadaranyaka 4.3 and 4.4, the Janaka dialogue, which also holds the account of the soul’s departure that Book 3 will use. The Maitreyi dialogue is a different text (2.4 and 4.5) and is the matter of 1.4.19 to 1.4.22.