The Brahma Sutra · Book 4: The Fruit · Pada 4 · The experience of liberation and the final word

The last pada opens on the released self. “Thus this serene one, rising from this body and reaching the highest light, is manifested in its own form” (Chandogya 8.12.3). Does the self manifest itself through some added mark, as the knower of the lower kind does in the world of the gods and the other places of enjoyment, or through its own self alone? Through an added mark, says the objector, as everywhere else: release is a fruit, like heaven; “manifestation” means coming into being; and if the self were manifest by its own nature it would have been so all along, since a thing is never without its own nature. Sutra 4.4.1 answers: through its own self alone, because of the word “own”. On the other view “own” would say nothing, since whatever form a thing takes is in that sense its own; the word has force only if it points to the Self and says that the manifestation is through the nature of the Self and through nothing added. What then is the difference between the self before and after? Sutra 4.4.2: it is released, as the promise shows. Before, its self was stained by the three states, “it is blind”, “it weeps, as it were”, “it goes to utter annihilation” (Chandogya 8.9 to 8.11); after, it abides in its own pure Self. That this is release the promise proves: Prajapati says “I will explain him to you further” (8.11.3), introduces the released self with “him who is free of the body neither pleasure nor pain touches”, and closes with “by its own form it is manifested; that is the highest Person”; the opening too, “the Self that is free of sin” (8.7.1), promises the released self. Release is a fruit only as the end of bondage, with nothing new added, and “manifestation” is an origination only against the former state, as a man recovered from sickness is said to show himself well. Sutra 4.4.3: the light into which it enters is the Self, from the subject of the chapter. A released self could not be lodged within an effect, since every effect is tainted, and “light” would ordinarily mean the physical light; here the chapter’s subject is “the Self free of sin, age and death” (8.7.1), to leave it for a physical light would be to drop the topic, and scripture elsewhere calls the Self light, “that the gods meditate on as the light of lights” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.16), as 1.3.40 showed. Nothing is gained in release; what was always one’s own stands clear.

Does the self that “reaches the highest light and is manifested in its own form” stay separate from the highest Self, or abide in non-division from it? Separate, one might think, since “he moves about there” distinguishes a place from one who dwells in it, and “having reached the highest light” has an agent and an object. Sutra 4.4.4 sets this aside: non-separate, because that is what scripture shows. “That you are” (Chandogya 6.8.7), “I am Brahman” (Brihadaranyaka 1.4.10), “where he sees nothing else” (Chandogya 7.24.1), “there is nothing second, nothing other and separate that he could see” (Brihadaranyaka 4.3.23) show the highest Self in non-division, and the fruit must answer to the cognition, as 4.3.15 said; the texts whose business is to describe the released self say the same, “as pure water poured into pure water becomes just that, so is the self of the sage who knows” (Katha 2.1.15), as do the rivers that enter the sea. The texts that sound like separation are read in a secondary sense as non-separation, “in what does the infinite rest? in its own greatness” (Chandogya 7.24.1), “delighting in the Self, playing with the Self” (7.25.2). Ramanuja takes the non-division as that of a mode and its substance; for Shankara it is identity, with no second thing left to be divided from.

The self is manifested by its own nature; what is that nature? Three teachers answer. Sutra 4.4.5, Jaimini: a nature like Brahman’s, the whole list of Chandogya 8.7.1, free from sin, age, death, grief, hunger and thirst, with true desires and true will, together with omniscience and omnipotence, because of the “reference and the rest”: the reference to those qualities in 8.7.1 teaches that the Self is so made, “he moves about there eating, playing, rejoicing” (8.12.3) and “for him there is freedom in all worlds” (8.1.6) teach a lordly power, and “all-knowing, all-powerful” are plain designations. Sutra 4.4.6, Audulomi: the nature of pure intelligence alone, since that is its Self; the qualities differ only in the words that name them and together say no more than the absence of sin and the rest, “this Self is without inside or outside, wholly a mass of knowledge” (Brihadaranyaka 4.5.13), and true desire, though a real attribute, hangs on adjuncts, as every manifold character is denied of Brahman (3.2.11); eating and playing mean the absence of all pain and are praise, like “delighting in the Self” (Chandogya 7.25.2), since play needs a second thing. Sutra 4.4.7, Badarayana: even granting that intelligence alone is the true nature, the former nature, the lordship like Brahman’s that the reference and the rest intimate, is admitted from the standpoint of the world of appearance, and so there is no contradiction.

Shankara’s two knowers meet in this ruling. The nature itself is intelligence, and that is what the knower of the attributeless Brahman stands in; the lordly qualities are true of the meditator on the qualified Brahman in his world, spoken from the empirical standpoint, and nothing in them touches the first. Both views hold, each in its field.

From here to the end of the book the sutras describe the released as the meditator on the qualified Brahman, the one who reached Brahmaloka by the path of the gods, since the knower of the attributeless Brahman has no desires and no world to exercise them in. The dahara vidya says: “if he desires the world of the fathers, by his mere will the fathers rise” (Chandogya 8.2.1). Is the will alone the cause, or the will with other means? With other means, says the objector, as in life: meeting one’s father takes a wish and also a journey, and “by his mere will” means, as of a king, that the rest of the apparatus is at hand; otherwise the fathers would be as unstable as a daydream and give no solid enjoyment. Sutra 4.4.8 answers: by will alone, because scripture says so, and any added cause would contradict it; a cause the released had to work for would leave his will barren until the work was done; and the analogies of life do not bind what is learned from scripture, since the will of the released differs in kind from ours and makes things as stable as the purpose needs.

Sutra 4.4.9: for this same reason, because his will is never barren, the knower has no other lord over him, since no one who can help it wishes himself a master, and scripture says “for those who depart from here having found the Self and those true desires, there is freedom in all worlds” (Chandogya 8.1.6). His will is his fullness, and it is his own.

The text “by his mere will the fathers rise” shows that the released one in Brahmaloka has a mind to will with. Does he also have a body and senses? That is the question weighed here, the embodiment of the souls in Brahmaloka, and nothing else.

Sutra 4.4.10: the teacher Badari says there is none, because scripture says so, “with the mind seeing those desires he rejoices” (Chandogya 8.12.5); if he rejoiced with body and senses too, the text would have no reason to say “with the mind”. Sutra 4.4.11: the teacher Jaimini says there is a body, because the text records an option, “he is onefold, he is threefold” (7.26.2), and the option of being many cannot be without many bodies; the passage stands in the bhuman vidya, which concerns the attributeless Brahman, and the lordship it mentions belongs to the qualified state, placed there to glorify the knowledge of the bhuman, so it counts as the fruit of qualified knowledge. Sutra 4.4.12: Badarayana rules that he is of both kinds, because scripture indicates both, as the twelve-day soma rite is a sattra or an ahina by the indications of two texts; when he wishes for a body he has one, and when he wishes to be without one he is without, since his wishes come true. Sutra 4.4.13: without a body the process runs as in dream, where fathers and the rest are present to perception alone. Sutra 4.4.14: with a body, as in waking, where the objects of his wish are real.

Badarayana accepts both conditions, and both belong to the saguna knower in his world. The knower of the attributeless Brahman has no body to debate, since for him there is no one left to be embodied.

Sutra 4.4.11 allowed the released a body; when he makes himself threefold, are the extra bodies soulless, like wooden figures, or alive like ours? Soulless, says the objector, since neither the self nor the mind can be divided, and one self with one mind can animate one body. Sutra 4.4.15 answers: his entering is like a lamp, and scripture shows it. As one flame passes into many flames lit from it, by its power of changing form, so the self of the knower, though one, multiplies by its lordly power and enters all those bodies, “he is onefold, he is threefold, fivefold, sevenfold” (Chandogya 7.26.2); puppets moved by strings and strange souls entering the new bodies both fail the text, and soulless bodies cannot move at all. The indivisibility proves nothing, since a self whose wishes come true may create other bodies with inner organs modeled on his own and, dividing through the division of his adjuncts, give each a soul; the yoga books treat of this under the connection of one soul with many bodies. An objection follows: how can such lordship stand when scripture says the self in that state has no specific cognition, “with what should he know another?” (Brihadaranyaka 2.4.14), “there is no second that he could know” (4.3.30), “an ocean, a single seer, without duality” (4.3.32)? Sutra 4.4.16: those texts refer to deep sleep or to the final union, as their own topics make plain, “he has gone to his own, they say, he sleeps” (Chandogya 6.8.1) for the one and “being Brahman he goes to Brahman” (Brihadaranyaka 4.4.6) for the other; the texts that describe lordship refer to another condition, an abode like heaven where qualified knowledge bears its fruit.

Many bodies for the meditator in Brahmaloka, and no cognition of a second for the one who has become Brahman: the two sets of texts speak of two states, and neither contradicts the other.

Those who, by meditation on the qualified Brahman, enter with their minds into a state of equality with the Lord: is their lordship unlimited, or limited in some way? Unlimited, says the objector, because texts say so: “he obtains self-lordship” (Taittiriya Samhita 1.6.2), “all the gods bring him offerings” (1.5.3), “for them there is freedom in all worlds” (Chandogya 8.1.6).

Sutra 4.4.17 is the root statement: all lordly powers belong to the released, making oneself atomic and the rest, with the exception of the business of the world, its creation, maintenance and dissolution, “because of the topic, and because they are not near”. Where the origin and the rest of the world are taught, the Lord is the topic, and the ever-perfect Lord alone is appointed to the work of the whole world; he alone is eternal and is the one scripture describes as its maker, whereas the lordship of the other souls has a beginning, since it depends on their seeking and striving to know the Lord, which keeps them far from the running of the world. And because they have minds, their minds might differ, one wishing to preserve the world and another to destroy it; the only escape from such conflict is that the wishes of all conform to one, and so every other soul depends on the highest Lord.

Sutra 4.4.18 meets the appeal to direct teaching. “He obtains self-lordship” goes on, “he obtains the lord of mind”, “he becomes lord of speech, lord of the eye, lord of the ear, lord of understanding”, and this says that his lordship depends on the Lord who, charged with office, abides in the spheres of the sun and the rest; so in every such passage the lordship of the other souls is to be read as resting on the ever-perfect Lord.

Sutra 4.4.19: and there is a form of the highest Lord that does not abide in effects, since scripture declares his abiding in two forms, “such is his greatness; greater than that is the Person; one foot of him is all beings, three feet of him is the immortal in heaven” (Chandogya 3.12.6); those whose trust is in the qualified form do not reach the other, their minds being set elsewhere, and he who stops at the form with qualities also stops at a limited lordship within it. Sutra 4.4.20: perception and inference, shruti and smriti, both show the highest light beyond effects, “the sun does not shine there, nor the moon and stars, nor these lightnings, much less this fire” (Mundaka 2.2.10), “the sun does not light it, nor the moon, nor fire” (Gita 15.6).

Sutra 4.4.21: the lordship of those who rest on the effected Brahman is not absolute for this reason too, that scripture indicates equality in enjoyment alone. “To him he says: water is enjoyed by me; that world is yours to enjoy” (Kaushitaki 1.7), “as all beings honor that deity, so do all beings honor him who knows this” (Brihadaranyaka 1.5.20), “he obtains equality of form and sameness of abode with that deity” (1.5.23) mark the difference between the Lord and the released. The objector draws his conclusion: a lordship that is limited comes to an end, and then they must come back from the world of Brahman.

Sutra 4.4.22, the last of the work, answers: there is no return, because scripture says so. Those who go by the path of the gods, to which the nadi and the ray lead and on which light is the first station, and reach the world of Brahman as scripture describes it, “where in the third heaven from here are the two lakes Ara and Nya, the lake Airammadiya, the ashvattha that drips soma, the city of Brahman Aparajita and the golden hall the Lord built” (Chandogya 8.5.3), do not return when their enjoyment is done, as those who went to the moon return: “going up by that he reaches immortality” (8.6.6), “for them there is no return here” (Brihadaranyaka 6.2.15), “they do not return to this human round” (Chandogya 4.15.6), “he reaches the world of Brahman and does not return” (8.15.1). The end of their lordship brings no return, as 4.3.10 showed: at the end of that world they go with Hiranyagarbha to the highest.

Here the two knowers of the whole book stand together at the close. It is settled that those who by perfect knowledge have dispelled all darkness and rest in the ever-perfect nirvana do not return; and since those who rely on the knowledge of the qualified Brahman come in the end to that same nirvana, they too do not return.

Textual context: Chandogya 4.15.6, Brihadaranyaka 6.2.15, Mundaka 3.2.6, “na cha punar avartate”, and he does not return. The shruti states it plainly, and Badarayana, who argued through five hundred and fifty-five sutras, rests the last of them on the word of the shruti alone, “shabdat”, because scripture says so.

The sutra is spoken twice, “anavrittih shabdat, anavrittih shabdat”, and Shankara ends his commentary on the repetition: the words said again mark the conclusion of the teaching. No return, because scripture says so. No return, because scripture says so.