A student named Ashvalayana comes to Brahma, the grandsire of creation (the first maker, also called Parameshthi), humble, hands folded, and asks for one thing only. He says, my lord, teach me that knowledge of Brahman which is highest, which the good and wise have always served, which is deepest and most secret, and by gaining which a knower quickly washes away every sin and reaches that supreme Person. With this humble question the Kaivalya Upanishad opens.
The mood of this Upanishad
Kaivalya means aloneness, and this aloneness carries no sadness. It is the state where the atman (self), once it arrives, no longer needs any other support, where nothing second is left, where only that one remains, which is why kaivalya has been called another name for moksha (liberation). This small Upanishad is a map that carries you to that same alone, complete state, and its whole trust rests on meditation, on the meditation of that Maheshvara whom it calls Umasahaya, Shiva who is seated together with Uma.
Brahma’s answer, four steps
Brahma does not turn the student away. He opens the path gently and says to know that supreme through faith, bhakti (devotion), meditation, and yoga. Then he says something that sounds harsh to the ear and is, in truth, simple and honest.
न कर्मणा न प्रजया धनेन त्यागेनैके अमृतत्वमानशुः।
That is, no one has become immortal through a heap of actions, nor through children, nor through piles of wealth; immortality has been won by a rare few on the strength of renunciation alone. This renunciation goes deeper than throwing outer things away. It is the loosening of that inner grip by which we hold everything tight and call it our own. Brahma explains that this supreme reality shines hidden beyond even heaven, in the cave of the heart (the deep inner cavern), and only those disciplined seekers enter it who have mastered their senses.
Meditation on Umasahaya in the heart-lotus
Now the Upanishad tells you exactly what to do once you sit. It says, sit at ease in some solitary place, keep your body, neck, and head straight, still the mind, gather in all the senses, and with devotion bow to your guru before turning inward. Then, at the center of your heart-lotus, which is pure and free of sorrow, meditate on that one who is unthinkable, unmanifest, whose forms are endless, who is Shiva, utterly at peace, immortal.
उमासहायं परमेश्वरं प्रभुं त्रिलोचनं नीलकण्ठं प्रशान्तम्।
The seeker who meditates on that Parameshvara, without beginning, middle, or end, spread through every place, in the form of consciousness and bliss, seated together with Uma, the three-eyed lord, blue-throated, utterly at peace, reaches the root of all beings, the witness of all, that being who sits beyond the darkness.
That one, the form of all
Then, in a single breath, the Upanishad makes all the names one. It says, that same one is Brahma, that same one is Shiva, that same one is Indra, that same one is the imperishable supreme, shining by its own light. That one is Vishnu, that one is the life-breath, that one is time, that one is fire, that one is the moon. All that has passed and all that is yet to come, all of it is that one eternal being. And at this very turn comes the line that meets the call of the Shvetashvatara.
ज्ञात्वा तं मृत्युमत्येति नान्यः पन्था विमुक्तये।
Knowing that one, a person steps across death; for liberation there is no other road at all.
The play of three cities
But why, forgetting that one, do we wander among the many? The Upanishad answers this from our own three daily states. Awake, we taste pleasure and pain in the outer world. In dream, that same soul roams an inner world built by its own maya, and there too it laughs and weeps. And in deep sleep, when everything grows still and dissolves, it returns to a state that feels like bliss. In these three cities, waking, dream, and deep sleep, the soul keeps playing, and from the turning of these three this whole many-colored world seems to rise. The Upanishad says that the one who witnesses these three states, who dwells within all three and stays untouched by them, is our real form.
मय्येव सकलं जातम्, I alone am all
And now the Upanishad reaches its highest pitch. Here the seeker’s voice changes. He is no longer talking about some God seated far outside; the words now rise from within him.
मय्येव सकलं जातं मयि सर्वं प्रतिष्ठितम्। मयि सर्वं लयं याति तद्ब्रह्माद्वयमस्म्यहम्॥
That is, all this was born in me alone, all rests in me alone, and all, in the end, dissolves back into me alone; that non-dual (that which has no second like it) Brahman is my very self. The seeker goes on: I am subtler than the atom and vaster than the vast, I am this whole strange universe, I am that ancient Person, I am the lord, and the form of Shiva too is mine.
The Upanishad opens this experience further. The seeker says, I have neither hands nor feet, yet there is no fathoming my power; I see without eyes and hear without ears, because I am that consciousness by whose support the eye sees and the ear hears. And he adds that the one whom all the many Vedas strive to know, that too is I. This is the exact opposite of an ego swelling up. This is the moment when that small “I”, which until now had held itself confined to body and mind, falls away, and the drop recognizes that it was never apart from the ocean at all.
And in the end, kaivalya
So the Kaivalya Upanishad takes us on a whole journey. At the start, a student with folded hands asks for the knowledge of Brahman. In the middle, he is taught to sit, taught to meditate on Umasahaya Shiva in the lotus of the heart. And in the end he comes to rest on this recognition: the one he had been searching for outside was seated forever within him, in his own very form. This is kaivalya, that alone completeness where, once you arrive, nothing second is left to gain. The Upanishad says that whoever reads and reflects on this knowledge with faith has even the deepest stains within washed clean, and reaches that same state of kaivalya. On the day this feeling settles inside you, that I am the very one who witnesses all, on that day the whole running about stops, and the peace that remains is liberation.
Source: the Kaivalya Upanishad.