The Brahma Sutra · Book 4: The Fruit · Pada 2 · The jiva’s inner journey at the leaving of the body

The second pada turns to the leaving of the body, and Shankara says at the outset whose leaving it is. The Sutrakara is about to describe the path of the gods, by which the knower of the qualified Brahman goes to his reward, and he first lays out, from scripture, the steps by which a soul passes out of the body; those steps, as sutra 4.2.7 will say, are the same for the knower of the lower kind and for the man with no knowledge at all, and the knower of the attributeless Brahman, as sutras 4.2.12 to 4.2.14 will say, does not pass out at all. The text is Chandogya 6.8.6: “when a man departs from here, his speech merges in mind, his mind in breath, his breath in heat, heat in the highest deity”. Does speech itself merge in the mind, or only its function? The objector takes the words as they stand: speech itself, since the direct sense beats an implied one wherever the two conflict. Sutra 4.2.1 answers that the function merges, and gives two grounds. “Because it is seen”: a dying man’s speech stops while his mind still works, and no one has ever seen the organ of speech sink into the mind; a thing merges in its material cause, as a pot merges in clay, and mind is no cause of speech, whereas a function may end in something other than its source, as the heat of a fire, born of wood, dies in water. “And from scripture”: the text stands as read once function and organ are spoken of as one, and the Sutrakara shows he means this by saying “non-division” expressly at 4.2.16, which would be idle if the organs had already merged entire at every step. Sutra 4.2.2 brings the rest of the organs along: “with his senses merged in mind he comes to a new birth” (Prashna 3.9) names them all, the eye and the ear are seen to stop while the mind runs on, the organs themselves cannot be absorbed into what did not produce them, and the text allows the reading; speech was named first only because scripture took it as its example.

Next, “mind in breath”. Here the objector argues that the thing itself merges, since breath may be called the cause of mind: “mind is made of food, breath of water” (Chandogya 6.6.5), and “water sent forth food”, food being earth (6.2.4), so mind merging in breath is earth merging in water, and an effect merging in its cause merges whole. Sutra 4.2.3 answers from the clause that follows in the text: the mind, having drawn the functions of the outer senses into itself, merges in breath by its function alone. In deep sleep and in the dying, breath goes on while the mind’s work has stopped, and that is what is seen. The roundabout causality proves nothing: by the same route the mind would merge in earth, earth in water, breath in water, and there is no proof that mind arose from the particular water that became breath. The mind itself, then, cannot merge in breath, and the scriptural statement is satisfied, as under the last sutra, by the function, organ and function being spoken of as one.

Then “breath in heat”. Taken as it stands, says the objector, and nothing may be added that scripture does not say. Sutra 4.2.4 adds something, with reasons: the function of breath lodges in the ruler, the jiva, the self that wears nescience, works and former experience as its adjuncts and rules the body and senses, “because of its going to him and the rest”. Other texts say so plainly: “all the pranas go to the self at the time of death” (Brihadaranyaka 4.3.38), “after him as he departs the prana departs, and after the prana all the pranas” (4.4.2), and “he becomes one with intelligence” (4.4.2) marks the jiva as the seat into which the prana, carrying the merged organs, has withdrawn; in the whole business of departure the jiva is the chief actor, and the specifications of other texts must be honored. What then of “breath in heat”? Sutra 4.2.5: the jiva, joined with breath, takes its stand in the subtle elements that accompany heat and seed the next body, since that is what the clause says once the jiva has been set between breath and heat; a man who travels from Shrughna to Mathura and from Mathura to Pataliputra is said in short to travel from Shrughna to Pataliputra. Why the other elements, when the text names heat alone? Sutra 4.2.6: the jiva does not lodge in one element only, because both scripture and smriti show the new body made of many: the teaching on “the waters called man” (Chandogya 5.3.3, taken up at 3.1.2), “made of earth, water, wind, ether, heat” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.5), and Manu’s “from the subtle parts of the five, all this is produced in order” (1.27). Brihadaranyaka 3.2.13, where after the organs withdraw “work” is named as the abode, speaks of bondage, the senses and their objects as graspers and over-graspers, and gives work the first place without shutting out the elements as the stuff of the body to come; the two texts do not quarrel.

Is this departure the same for the one who knows and the one who does not? Different, says the objector. The departure described lodges the soul in the elements for the sake of a new birth, and the knower is not born again, since “he who knows reaches immortality”. The texts that describe it stand in chapters on knowledge, true, as sleep and hunger stand in them (Chandogya 6.8), mentioned as things established elsewhere that help the lesson along; the lesson here is only “that deity into which the heat of the dying man merges, that is the Self, that you are”, and other texts deny departure of the knower outright, so the departure belongs to the ignorant alone. Sutra 4.2.7 answers that the departure, from “speech merges in mind” onward, is common to both up to the beginning of the way, because scripture marks no difference there; after that point the ignorant man, lodged in the subtle elements and driven by his works, enters a new body, and the knower, meaning the knower of the lower Brahman, enters the nadi that knowledge has revealed to him, the door of release. And the immortality? It is “without having burned”: the one who has not burned nescience and the other afflictions to the root wins, by the power of the lower knowledge, a relative immortality only, and for that there is a road to travel and elements to travel in, since breath cannot move without a base. Where the immortality is absolute there is no road and no travel at all, and sutra 4.2.12 will come to that man.

The last clause, “heat in the highest deity”, means that the heat of the dying man, together with the jiva, the breath, the organs and the other elements, merges in Brahman. What kind of merging? Total, says the objector: the deity is the material cause of everything that has an origin, and merging in one’s cause is complete absorption. Sutra 4.2.8 answers that the subtle elements which house the organs last “until the union”, until the final release that perfect knowledge brings, because scripture speaks of samsara continuing: “some enter the womb to be embodied, others a stump, according to their work and their knowledge” (Katha 2.2.7). Otherwise every soul’s adjuncts would dissolve at death, every soul would be released, and injunction and teaching alike would be pointless; and bondage, which comes from wrong knowledge, is undone by nothing short of right knowledge. Brahman is the cause of those elements, and at death they merge in it as they do in deep sleep and in the dissolution of a world, as seeds that persist. Sutra 4.2.9: this seed of heat and the rest is subtle in substance and in size, since scripture has it leave by the nadis; its fineness lets it out, its transparency lets it through, and the bystanders see nothing go. Sutra 4.2.10: for that reason it is not destroyed by what destroys the gross body, the burning and the rest. Sutra 4.2.11: the warmth we feel in a living body belongs to this subtle body, as the proof of touch shows, since shape and color stay in the corpse and the warmth leaves it, and scripture says “warm if he is going to live, cold if he is going to die”. The subtle body outlasts the gross one and goes on until knowledge ends it.

From the words “without having burned” in 4.2.7 it follows that where immortality is absolute there is no going and no departure from the body at all, and scripture closes the door on any other thought: “as for the man who does not desire, who is without desire, freed from desire, whose desire is satisfied, whose desire is the Self, his pranas do not depart; being Brahman he goes to Brahman” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.6). This denial stands within the higher knowledge, and from it Shankara draws that the pranas of the knower of Brahman do not leave the body. Sutra 4.2.12 states the objection, and the objection is the whole purvapaksha: the text denies a departure from the embodied soul. It does not deny a departure from the body. The Madhyandina reading has the ablative, “from him the pranas do not depart”, and the genitive of the Kanva reading, which marks relation in general, takes its particular sense from that; the chapter’s subject is the embodied soul, with its claim to exaltation and bliss, so “from him” means from the soul as it sets out. The sense is then that the pranas stay with the departing soul, and soul and pranas leave the body together. Sutra 4.2.13 refutes it: in the text of some, the denial of a departure from the body is plain. Artabhaga asks Yajnavalkya, “when this man dies, do the pranas go out of him or not?” “No,” says Yajnavalkya, “they are gathered up in that very place; he swells, he is inflated, inflated the dead man lies” (Brihadaranyaka 3.2.11). Swelling belongs to a body and never to a soul, so the “him” from which the pranas do not depart is the body, the text speaking of body and embodied as one, and that settles the ablative reading. The genitive reading denies a departure established elsewhere, and what is established for ordinary men is the departure of soul and pranas from the body; no text ever established a departure of the pranas from the soul for the denial to deny. The context agrees: the Brihadaranyaka describes at length the departure and transmigration of the man who does not know, “by the eye or the head or other openings of the body, after him departing the prana departs”, closes that account with “so much for the man who desires”, and then names the knower “the man who does not desire”, a contrast with no point if he too departs. And for one who has become the Self of the all-pervading Brahman, with every desire and every work spent, departing and going have no occasion and no possibility; “there he reaches Brahman” (4.4.7) means a reaching without a road. Sutra 4.2.14: smriti says the same, “he who has become the Self of all beings and sees all, the gods themselves are bewildered at his track, seeking the path of the pathless” (Mahabharata). Against the story of Shuka, who flew to the sun’s sphere seeking release and shouted back to his father, Shankara answers that the tale shows an embodied yogin using the powers of the lower knowledge to reach a place and drop his body, since all beings saw him go, and no one sees a traveler without a body; “swifter than wind he passed through the air, showed his power, and was known by all beings”. What is settled is this: the knower of the attributeless Brahman neither moves nor departs, and his pranas dissolve where they are. Whose going the texts about going describe, the third pada will say.

Where do the organs and elements of the knower of the highest Brahman go? Sutra 4.2.15: into that highest Brahman, because scripture says so, “thus these sixteen parts of the seer, going toward the Person, on reaching the Person sink into him” (Prashna 6.5). An objector sets against it Mundaka 3.2.7, which speaks of the knower too and says “the fifteen parts go to their elements”. That text gives the common view, Shankara answers: the parts of the body made of earth and the rest go back to earth and the rest, and anyone can see it; the Prashna text gives the knower’s own view, in which the whole aggregate of his parts merges in Brahman alone. The two do not conflict; each speaks from its own standpoint.

When the knower’s parts merge in Brahman, does a remainder stay behind, as it does for other men, a seed of a future body? Since the knower’s merging is a merging like any other, one might expect a potential body to remain, and that is why sutra 4.2.16 says in so many words that there is non-division, according to scripture. The Prashna text, after teaching the dissolution of the parts, goes on: “their name and form are broken, and people speak of the Person alone; he becomes partless and immortal” (6.5). Parts that nescience made cannot leave a remainder once knowledge has dissolved them. For the ignorant man and for the knower of the lower Brahman the subtle body persists as a seed (4.2.8); for the knower of the highest, the parts enter into absolute non-division from Brahman, and nothing is left to go anywhere.

The inquiry into the higher knowledge, which a special occasion forced, is over, and the sutras return to the lower. The departure of the knower and the ignorant was said to be common up to the beginning of the way; sutra 4.2.17 describes how the knower of the qualified Brahman enters the way. The soul’s abode, when it has drawn speech and the other powers into itself and is about to leave, is the heart, “taking with him those elements of light he descends into the heart” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.1), and the text continues, “the tip of his heart lights up, and by that light the Self departs, by the eye or the head or other places of the body” (4.4.2). Is this exit the same for both, or is there a rule for the knower? The same, one might think, since the text gives none. The teacher answers that the lighting of the heart’s tip and the lit door are common, and the knower leaves by the head alone, for three reasons the sutra names. “By the power of knowledge”: if he left by any opening, like everyone else, he could reach no exalted sphere, and his knowledge would be for nothing. “By meditation on the way that is part of it”: the vidyas enjoin meditation on the soul’s travel along the nadi that runs through the skull, the way being a part of the vidya, and he who has meditated on that way goes by it. “Favored by him who dwells in the heart”: the Brahman within the heart, on whom he meditated, favors him, and grown like it in nature he departs by the nadi that “exceeds the hundred”, the hundred-and-first, while other men pass out by other nadis; the text on the knowledge of Brahman in the heart says “a hundred and one are the nadis of the heart; one of them runs out through the crown; going up by that he reaches immortality; the others serve for going out in other directions” (Chandogya 8.6.6). This departing knower is the meditator on the qualified Brahman, the one for whom a road remains; the knower of the attributeless Brahman, as the last adhikaranas showed, never sets out at all, his pranas having dissolved where they were.

The dahara vidya opens, “there is this city of Brahman, and in it a small lotus, a house, and within it a small space” (Chandogya 8.1.1), and a later section of the chapter, beginning “now these nadis of the heart”, describes the joining of the nadis and the sun’s rays and then says, “when he departs from this body he goes up by those very rays”, and “going up by that he reaches immortality” (8.6.2 to 8.6.6). So sutra 4.2.18: the soul that has left by the hundred-and-first nadi follows the rays. The doubt is about the hour. Does the one who dies at night follow the rays as the one who dies by day does? Scripture marks no difference, so the sutra lets both follow. Sutra 4.2.19 meets the objection head on: at night, it is said, the rays are withdrawn and the link is broken, so the night-dier cannot follow them. The link of rays and nadis lasts as long as the body lasts, the sutra replies, and scripture shows it: “from the sun they stretch out and slip into these nadis; from these nadis they stretch out and slip into the sun” (8.6.2). Rays are there at night too; the nights of summer are warm with them, and in other seasons they are few and hard to feel, as on a clouded winter day, and scripture says “he makes day in the night”. If the night-dier rose without rays, the rays would be pointless for everyone, since no text says that the day-dier uses them and the night-dier does not; if dying at night cost the knower his fruit, knowledge would bear fruit only by luck, the hour of death being no one’s to choose, and no one would take it up; and if he waited for dawn, the funeral fire might have left him no body to join to the rays, when scripture says he does not wait, “as quickly as he sends off his mind he goes to the sun” (8.6.5). Whatever the hour of death, the departed meditator follows the rays.

For the same reasons, says sutra 4.2.20, the knower who dies in the southern course of the sun also wins the fruit of his knowledge: waiting is impossible, the fruit cannot hang on luck, and the hour of death is unfixed. The objector had grounds: the northern course is praised, Bhishma lay on his bed of arrows waiting for it, and scripture says “from the bright half of the month to the six months when the sun goes north”. The praise belongs to those without knowledge; Bhishma waited to uphold custom and to show that by his father’s boon he could choose his hour; and the six months, as 4.3.4 will show, name a conducting deity and no season. A smriti text presses harder: “the times at which yogins depart, to return or to return no more, those times I will tell you” (Gita 8.23), fixing day and the bright half for no return. Sutra 4.2.21 answers: those rules are given by smriti for yogins, and Sankhya and Yoga are themselves smriti, with a sphere and an authority of their own; a smriti rule about the hour of dying has no hold on knowledge that rests on shruti. The rule belongs to the yogins of the smriti alone, and it does not touch the knower whose way rests on shruti. Where the Gita goes on to name “fire, light, the day, the bright half, the six months of the northern course; smoke, night, the dark half, the six months of the southern course” (8.24 to 8.25), it is naming the deities who lead on the path of the gods and the path of the fathers as shruti fixes them, and there Shankara finds no conflict at all.