The Brahma Sutra · Book 4: The Fruit · Pada 3 · The path of the gods and gradual liberation

Up to the beginning of the way the departure is the same; about the way itself the texts seem to disagree. One text makes it the joining of nadis and rays, “by those very rays he goes up” (Chandogya 8.6.5); another begins it with light, “they go to light, from light to day” (5.10.1; 4.15.5); the Kaushitakins say “having reached the path of the gods he comes to the world of Agni” (1.3); the Brihadaranyaka says “when the person goes from this world he comes to the wind” (5.10.1); the Mundaka says “free of passion they depart through the gate of the sun” (1.2.11). Are these different roads, or one road described piecemeal? Different, says the objector: they stand in different chapters and belong to different meditations, the “very” in “by those very rays” shuts out other stages, and “as quickly as he sends off his mind he goes to the sun” leaves no time for stations. Sutra 4.3.1 answers: everyone who sets out for Brahman goes by the road that begins with light, “because it is widely known”. The chapter of the five fires extends that road to “those who in the forest meditate on faith as truth” (Brihadaranyaka 6.2.15), that is, to the followers of other meditations; there is one road to the world of Brahman with many stations, and each text names some of them, as each text names some particulars of a meditation that the others must be combined with; the goal is everywhere the same, “in these worlds of Brahman they dwell for ever and ever” (6.2.15), “there he dwells eternal years” (5.10.1), “whatever victory, whatever greatness is Brahman’s, that he wins” (Kaushitaki 1.2), “those who find the world of Brahman by brahmacharya” (Chandogya 8.4.3), and one road is recognized in every passage by the stations it shares with the rest. “Very” affirms the rays; one word cannot both affirm the rays and strike out the light. The speed is relative, swifter than any other journey, in a moment, as the text puts it. And “on neither of these two ways” (5.10.8), which teaches a third and lower course for those who miss both, leaves room beside the path of the fathers for one path of the gods only. The fuller list governs the shorter: the road begins with light, and the other texts fill in its stations.

How are the stations the different texts name to be fitted together? The Kaushitaki lists the world of Agni, of Vayu, of Varuna, of Indra, of Prajapati, of Brahman (1.3). Agni is the same as light, since both mean burning, so no question of order arises there; Vayu is missing from the road that begins with light, and sutra 4.3.2 places him: after the year and before the sun, “because of the absence and presence of specification”. The Chandogya runs light, day, the bright half of the month, the six months when the sun goes north, the year, the sun (5.10.1), and the Kaushitaki’s “he comes to the world of Vayu” gives no order at all, two clauses set side by side; the Brihadaranyaka does give one, “when the person goes from this world he comes to Vayu; Vayu makes room for him like the hole of a chariot wheel; through it he goes up and comes to the sun” (5.10.1), so Vayu goes in between the year and the sun. The Vajasaneyins add a further station, “from the months to the world of the gods, from the world of the gods to the sun” (Brihadaranyaka 6.2.15); each text being authoritative, both the year and the world of the gods are inserted in each, the year first because it hangs together with the months, the world of the gods after it, and Vayu after both, just before the sun.

The Chandogya continues, “from the sun to the moon, from the moon to lightning”, and there the Kaushitaki’s Varuna is placed: above the lightning the soul goes to the world of Varuna, says sutra 4.3.3, “because of the connection”. Lightning and Varuna belong together, since the broad lightnings dance from the clouds with deep thunder and then the water falls, “it lightens, it thunders, it will rain” (Chandogya 7.11.1), and Varuna is lord of the waters in shruti and smriti alike. Above Varuna come Indra and Prajapati, there being no other place for them and the text giving them in that order; they are fitted in at the end because they are additions to the road with no station of their own, and lightning is the last station of the road that begins with light.

What are light and the rest? Marks along the road, places of enjoyment, or beings who lead the traveler? The objector tries the first two. The instruction has the shape of directions to a town, “go from here to the hill, from there to the fig tree, from there to the river, and then you reach the town”, and “from light to day, from day to the bright half” reads the same way. Or they are places of enjoyment, since the text says “world”, “he comes to the world of Agni”, and “world” names a place where living beings enjoy, the world of men, of the fathers, of the gods, as a Brahmana text says “they stay attached to the worlds made of day and night” (Shatapatha 10.2.6.8). Leaders they cannot be, having no intelligence, and a king sends intelligent men to guide travelers over hard roads. Sutra 4.3.4 answers that they are leaders, since the text indicates it: “from the moon to the lightning; there a person who is not human leads them to Brahman” (Chandogya 4.15.5, 5.10.2). The phrase “not human” has a point only if the leaders before him were persons and human; it excludes the humanity already in the reader’s mind. Sutra 4.3.5 gives the ground the indication rests on: both are bewildered, the traveler because his organs are withdrawn and he cannot steer himself, light and the rest because they have no intelligence, so the deities who preside over light and the rest are appointed to lead, as drunk or senseless men are led along a road by others. The marks will not do in any case, since they are not always there: a man who dies at night cannot come to “day” in its physical form, and he cannot wait (4.2.19), whereas gods are permanent and may be called light and day because they preside over them. “From light to day” then means through the god of light to the god of day, as guides in the world say “go to Balavarman, from him to Jayasimha, from him to Krishnagupta”; the beginning of the text states a bare relation, the end states the relation of led and leader, and the end rules the beginning. No one enjoys anything on the road, his organs being folded away, and “world” is said because those worlds are places of enjoyment for the beings who live there. So he who reaches the world of Agni is led on by Agni, and he who reaches Vayu’s world by Vayu. What of Varuna and the rest, placed above the lightning, when the text says that from the lightning a non-human person leads? Sutra 4.3.6: from there onward the person of the lightning alone leads them, through the worlds of Varuna, Indra and Prajapati, because the text says so, “when they have reached the lightning a person who is not human leads them to the worlds of Brahman” (Brihadaranyaka 6.2.15), and Varuna and the rest help, by not hindering or by lending a hand. Light and its fellows are the gods who lead.

The question here is where the leading ends. “He leads them to Brahman”: is that the effected Brahman, the lower, qualified Brahman that is Hiranyagarbha, or the highest Brahman, unchanging and without a second? The doubt arises because the word Brahman carries both senses and because the text speaks of going.

Sutras 4.3.7 to 4.3.11 give Badari’s view, and Shankara makes it the siddhanta. Sutra 4.3.7: to the effected Brahman, because going to it is possible; the effected Brahman occupies a place and can be a goal, whereas the highest Brahman, present everywhere and the inner Self of all, admits no goer, no goal and no going. Sutra 4.3.8: the Brahman reached is qualified in another text, “he leads them to the worlds of Brahman; in these worlds of Brahman they dwell for ever and ever” (Brihadaranyaka 6.2.15), and the plural “worlds”, the word “world” itself, which names a place of enjoyment that can be entered, and the picture of an abode with dwellers in it suit the lower Brahman and never the highest. Sutra 4.3.9: the word Brahman is used of it “because of nearness”: when the highest Brahman is taught, for the sake of meditation, with effected qualities such as “consisting of mind”, qualities that hang on pure limiting adjuncts, that is what we call the lower Brahman, and it is near enough to carry the name. The objector presses: nothing lasts apart from the highest Brahman, yet scripture says those who go by this road do not return, “they do not return to this human round” (Chandogya 4.15.6), “for them there is no return here” (Brihadaranyaka 6.2.15), “going up by that he reaches immortality” (Chandogya 8.6.5). Sutra 4.3.10 answers: when the effected world of Brahman passes away, the souls in whom perfect knowledge has meanwhile risen go, together with Hiranyagarbha its ruler, to what is higher than it, the pure highest abode, because scripture says so; this is release by stages, krama-mukti, which the texts on non-return require once it is seen that the highest cannot be reached by going. Sutra 4.3.11: smriti agrees, “when the dissolution has come and the end of the highest, they all, with Brahma, their minds purified, enter the highest abode”.

Sutras 4.3.12 to 4.3.14 then set out Jaimini’s view, and for Shankara this is the purvapaksha, placed after the siddhanta so that the learner may weigh it. Sutra 4.3.12: to the highest Brahman, because that is the word’s primary sense, and the primary sense is preferred wherever it is possible. Sutra 4.3.13: scripture shows it, since “going up by that he reaches immortality” makes immortality the fruit of going, and immortality is nowhere in an effect, “where one sees another, that is small, that is mortal” (Chandogya 7.24.1); the Katha too, having introduced the highest Brahman, takes up no other knowledge later. Sutra 4.3.14: the intention of entering, “I enter the hall of Prajapati, the house” (Chandogya 8.14.1), cannot aim at the effected Brahman, since the sentence before it names the highest Brahman as the subject and the sentence after it makes the speaker the Self of all, “glory” being a name of the highest Brahman. Shankara weighs the two sets of sutras and rules that the first refutes the second and the second cannot refute the first. No one is bound to a word’s primary sense where that sense is impossible, and going to the highest Brahman is impossible: it is all-pervading, “the Brahman that is immediate and direct, the Self within all” (Brihadaranyaka 3.4.1), “the Self alone is all this” (Chandogya 7.25.2), “Brahman alone is all this, it is the best” (Mundaka 2.2.11), and no one goes to what is already reached. The objector’s comparison fails, that a man standing on the earth may still go somewhere on the earth, or that a child reaches the man it will be: those cases turn on differences of place and time, and scripture denies Brahman every difference, “without parts, without action, tranquil, without blemish, without taint” (Shvetashvatara 6.19), “neither coarse nor fine, neither short nor long” (Brihadaranyaka 3.8.8), “not this, not this” (3.9.26). The creation texts do not restore the differences, since they aim at the oneness of Brahman, as the clay and its pots show, and it is the texts of oneness, which end all desire, “what grief, what delusion is there for him who sees the oneness?” (Isha 7), that rule the others and never the reverse. A soul that went to Brahman would have to be a part of it, an effect of it, or other than it, and each road is closed: a part has already reached its whole, an effect its cause, and a different soul would be atomic, middling or infinite, every one of which was refuted in the second book (2.3.19 onward), while “that you are” would be void. Nor does the knower’s going glorify his knowledge or aid it, since his satisfaction is already complete. Along the way Shankara also dismisses the claim that a man who keeps the obligatory rites and avoids the forbidden and the desired will drift into release when his present works are spent, with no knowledge needed: no text says so, the store of past works is never known to be empty, and a self that is agent and enjoyer by nature cannot even want to be otherwise, “there is no other way to go” (Shvetashvatara 3.8). The going texts, then, belong to the lower knowledge, to the five fires, to the couch of Brahman, to Vaishvanara, and to the dahara vidya whose “leader of blessings” and “true desires” mark the qualified Brahman; where scripture names the highest Brahman and seems to speak of going, as in “the knower of Brahman reaches the highest” (Taittiriya 2.1), “reaching” means the realization of one’s own nature once the names and forms laid on by nescience fall away, like “being Brahman he goes to Brahman” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.6).

Are there really two Brahmans? Yes, Shankara says: “the syllable Om is the higher and the lower Brahman” (Prashna 5.2); the higher is what the texts of negation describe, the lower is what the texts for meditation describe with name and form, “made of mind, with breath for body, with light for shape” (Chandogya 3.14.2), and the distinction leaves non-duality untouched because name and form are the work of nescience. What is decided: the meditator on the qualified Brahman goes by the path of the gods to the world of Hiranyagarbha, enjoys its lordship, and at its end attains the highest with its ruler; the knower of the attributeless Brahman takes no road, since he is released here, the moment knowledge rises, and the body falls when his begun works are spent. Badari’s view is the final one, and sutra 4.3.12, in Jaimini’s name, sets out another view to sharpen the student’s understanding.

It is settled that all going is to the effected Brahman. A further doubt: does the non-human person lead everyone who rests on the effected Brahman to the world of Brahman, or only some? Everyone, says the objector, provided the knowledge is not of the highest Brahman, since sutra 3.3.31 attached the going to all the meditations on the qualified Brahman without distinction. Sutra 4.3.15 gives Badarayana’s answer: he leads those who do not rest on symbols. Excepting those whose meditation rests on a symbol, a name or the mind taken as Brahman, the non-human person leads all who rest on the effected Brahman to its world; “there is no fault in the twofold relation”, since the argument of 3.3.31 may be read of all meditations except those on symbols; “and the meditation on that” gives the reason, for he whose meditation is fixed on Brahman wins a lordship like Brahman’s, “in whatever form they meditate on him, that they become”, whereas in a meditation on a symbol the symbol is the chief thing and the mind is fixed on it. Where scripture says outright that others go, as in the five fires, “he leads them to Brahman” (Chandogya 5.10.2), that holds; the rule for cases without such a statement is that those whose aim is Brahman go to it and others do not. Sutra 4.3.16: scripture itself shows the difference among the symbol meditations, grading their fruits one above another, “as far as name reaches he moves at will; speech is greater than name; as far as speech reaches he moves at will; mind is greater than speech” (Chandogya 7.1.5 onward), a grading possible only because the meditations rest on symbols; if they rested on the one Brahman the rewards could not differ. So the meditators on symbols are not led, and each gets the fruit his symbol allows. The knower of the attributeless Brahman stands outside this question altogether, since for him there is no leading and no road (4.2.13). Ramanuja reads the sutra otherwise, taking the ones led to be the meditators on the highest Brahman and on the pure soul, carried to the highest Brahman itself; Shankara cannot, since for him the highest Brahman is never the goal of a journey.