A strange hush hung over the assembly of the gods that day. Victory over the demons had just been won, and the devas were swollen with the intoxication of their triumph. Then a figure of pure light appeared on the horizon, a Yaksha (a mysterious divine presence), with no introduction and no name. Agni (the god who presides over speech) stepped forward, gathered all his power to burn a single blade of straw, and lost. Vayu (the lord of the breath of life) came to blow that same straw away, and he too returned in failure. At last Indra, king of the gods (the ego, the symbol of the individual soul), went up to the presence himself, and the figure vanished from before his very eyes.
According to Swami Krishnananda, this scene says one thing only, that all the glory of the gods, all their strength, is borrowed, drawn from that principle of the self. Agni cannot burn, Vayu cannot blow, Indra cannot grasp, because they have no independent power of their own. So long as the ego is not dissolved, the individual soul cannot have the darshan of that supreme truth, and this is why the figure vanished the moment Indra came before it.
This is the Kena Upanishad, a short yet profound text that comes from the Talavakara (Jaiminiya) branch of the Sama Veda. It takes its name from its very first word, “kena,” which means “by whom.” This Upanishad lays its hand straight on the root and asks, who gives these ears the power to hear, who sends this mind the impulse to think, what is the unseen presence behind these vital breaths and senses that keeps them moving.
Swami Krishnananda says that this atman (self) is the ruler and the mover of the mind, the vital breath, and the senses, working without a body and without a mind, whose very being is what sets all of these in motion. The eye sees, but the “seer” seated behind that seeing cannot be seen by the eye. The mind thinks, but the consciousness on which the mind leans to think cannot be thought by the mind. That moving principle rests beyond the senses, and yet within them.
First this Upanishad points toward that unseen mover through reasoning and reflection, then, setting in its middle this short but piercing story of the Yaksha and the gods, it explains that same truth in the language of experience. To know the one that never comes within the grasp of speech, mind, and eye is the real purpose of human life, and that is the resolve of this text.
The main characters of this Upanishad
The gods (Agni, Vayu, Indra): who, after a single victory, grew proud that the win had come by their own strength.
The Yaksha: a mysterious figure, who was in truth Brahman itself, come to break the pride of the gods.
Uma Haimavati: the goddess who told Indra who that Yaksha was, Brahman.
Who stands behind the senses
“By whose impulse?” Behind mind, breath, and speech
Picture the courtyard of a quiet ashram, where a student sits before his guru and a question that has been turning inside him for many days finally stirs. This is the very question that bursts out at the opening of the Kena Upanishad (the Upanishad that rests on its first word, “kena,” meaning “from whom, by whose impulse”). The student asks, by whose will does this mind (manas, the power of thought and reflection) run toward its object? At whose command does the vital breath (prana, the life force, the current of the breath) move? Who sent speech out to speak, the eye to see, the ear to hear? This question, which looks so simple, is really the first spark of the entire search.
Swami Krishnananda opens this question in a strikingly dramatic way. He says that this Upanishad asks, right at the start, “Who is seeing? Who is hearing?” We have taken it for granted that the eye sees, the ears hear, the nose smells. Yet according to the Swami, nothing of the sort is happening. The one who smells is someone else. If the eye alone did the seeing, a corpse would see too, since a corpse also has pupils in its eyes. Where the life force has withdrawn, no action is possible and no experience. So the real master of seeing and hearing is not the senses.
Then Swami Krishnananda draws a map, step by step. As he sees it, that cosmic self (the one conscious self of the whole creation) works through the individual’s self. First it glimmers in the intellect (buddhi, the discerning understanding) and becomes knowledge, then descends into the mind, then into the energy that takes the form of the vital breath, and at last into this body. Only then does this body, which in itself is a lifeless frame built of the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and ether, the five root elements), appear alive and beautiful. On the strength of this borrowed light a person says, “We are seeing, we are living.”
It is right here that the line of the Kena comes, which the Swami recites this way, “The one who sees from behind the eyes, who hears from behind the ears, who breathes from behind the breath, who thinks from behind the mind, who understands from behind the intellect, know that one.” This is the heart of the formula that the tradition calls “the ear of the ear, the eye of the eye, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech.” These senses are only windows, and the one who sees and hears is seated behind them.
Here Swami Krishnananda takes a delicate turn. Calling the Kaushitaki Upanishad as his witness, he says that knowing the object is not enough, “understand the one who understands.” That there is a tree in front of you, the eye reports that much, but the real question is, by whose power is that understanding able to understand? To know the one who understands the understanding is far more valuable than the object that has been known. And right here he adds a warning too, this consciousness that stands behind all of these never comes into anyone’s grasp. The body does not truly live by its own strength, nor do the senses see by their own strength, nor does the vital breath move on its own, nor does the mind think in freedom, nor does the intellect understand on its own power. All of it is the play of that one making itself manifest.
In this way the Swami turns the passage toward that “one.” The Rigveda declares, एकं सद्विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति (what is, is one single truth; the wise call it by many names). The glimmer of that one existence runs through all these colors, forms, and movements. Our being, your being, the being of this table, all of it is only a share in that cosmic existence. In Swami Krishnananda’s words, in reality that alone is supreme, and nothing exists by its own power. That consciousness behind mind, breath, and speech is the one worth recognizing.
The gist: the eye lays claim to seeing, though the one who sees is not the eye. Breath, speech, mind, intellect, all of these are windows; they move only by the one consciousness seated behind them. A whole lifetime passes in knowing the objects outside, and toward the one who is the knower we never once turn. This is the first signal of the Kena Upanishad, do not count the windows, look through them to what stands behind.
The one the mind cannot think, by which the mind thinks
The first section of the Kena Upanishad opens with a singular question. The student asks his teacher (acharya, the guru who imparts knowledge), by whose power does the mind take flight, at whose signal does the vital breath (the breath of life) move, by whose impulse does speech speak, and before whom do the eyes and ears do their work? The question is no small one. All day long we see, hear, and think, yet we never stop to ask who is driving all of this. Right here the Upanishad takes us by the hand and turns us inward.
The answer that comes disappoints at first. Kena 1.3 says, the eye does not reach there, nor speech, nor mind. We do not even know how to explain it to another, because it stands apart from the known (what has already been known) and beyond the unknown (what has not yet been known) as well. Swami Krishnananda opens this mantra with great care. As he explains it, the eye, speech, and mind are all like rays thrown outward from the knower, never inward. They reveal objects (the things lying outside), and never the seer (the one who sees) from whom they issue.
Swami Krishnananda offers a plain illustration. Just as fire cannot burn itself, so the atman (your true nature, the consciousness that is the root of all) cannot know itself through these instruments. The eye will show every color, yet it cannot see itself. The mind will catch every thought, yet it cannot catch the ground on which thoughts arise. For this reason the Upanishad says that Brahman (the supreme truth, the source of all) is neither known nor unknown. Not known, because there is no instrument at all by which to know it, all our instruments are perishable, and what is perishable cannot reach the imperishable. Not unknown either, because it is already present in every act of knowing, seated in the foundation of every experience. The Swami says the atman is present in all knowledge as a thing taken for granted, and without it no knowing is possible at all.
The second section sharpens this point further. In Kena 2.1 through 2.3 the teacher makes a declaration that turns everything upside down. The man who says that he knows Brahman thoroughly does not in fact know it. And the one who says that he does not know, knows something. Swami Krishnananda untangles this riddle. As he sees it, whatever is known becomes an object, a separate thing set before the knower. But the atman is the knower of all, and it can never be set before anyone as an object. So the moment someone says I have known it, he has bound it within a limit, made it into a thing measured and weighed, and right there he has missed it.
So then, why does the one who says I do not know actually know something? The Swami explains that this denial is in fact a deep recognition. That man has understood this much, that Brahman is no object that can be grasped. Knowing always rests on two, the knower and the known. But the atman is advaita (without a second, one alone), and there no second remains, apart from the knower, that could be known. Swami Krishnananda says plainly, there is no such thing as a little knowledge of Brahman, it cannot be divided into pieces, it is all or nothing. So the one who boasts has taken an image in his own mind to be Brahman, and the one who halts in humility stands close to the truth.
Swami Krishnananda sets the heart of this whole passage into a single sentence. He says, this atman is the knower of all and is known by none. The eye sees by it yet cannot see it, the mind thinks by it yet cannot think it, speech speaks by it yet cannot describe it. The very consciousness by whose power we know everything lies beyond our grasp for this reason, that it is not far from us, we ourselves are that.
The gist: whatever we wish to know has to be made into an object and set before us, and the atman never becomes an object, it is the knower itself. This is why the one who claims to have known Brahman completely has missed it, and the one who halts in humility, seeing that this is no thing that can be grasped, has come near the truth. The one by which the mind thinks cannot be thought by the mind, because it is your own self.
The story of the Yaksha
The gods and the Yaksha: the breaking of pride
A great war has just ended in heaven. The gods and the demons had clashed, and this time victory went to the gods. The gods can barely contain themselves. They are patting their own backs, “Look, we won, all of this happened by our own strength.” It is here that the passage of the Kena Upanishad opens which is called the Yaksha-upakhyana (the story of the Yaksha). Swami Krishnananda says that this Upanishad asks all of us one direct question, day and night we keep saying “we plowed this field, we planted this tree, we won this war,” but are we truly the doers of it?
The supreme presence, which is the self of this whole cosmos, saw that the gods were drunk with pride and had taken all the power to be their own. It thought, they will have to be given a lesson. Taking the form of a Yaksha (a mysterious, wonder-filled figure), it came and settled on the crown of a tree near the dwelling of the gods. The gods were baffled, wondering who this strange figure was. They went to their king, Indra (the sovereign of the gods). Indra first sent Agni (the god of fire), whose power was such that he could turn the whole earth to ash. The Yaksha asked, “Who are you, and what can you do?” Agni boasted, “I can burn everything to ashes.” The Yaksha set a single blade of straw before him, “Burn this.” Agni threw all his power into it, but he could not even stir that straw, let alone burn it. He came back, saying, “I simply could not make out who that was.”
Then Indra sent Vayu (the god of the wind), who boasted that he could sweep the entire earth away. The Yaksha set that same straw before him, “Show me you can blow this away.” Vayu put out his full force, but the straw did not budge an inch. Vayu too returned defeated. At last Indra himself set out. But the moment Indra arrived, the Yaksha turned invisible. In that same place appeared Uma Haimavati (the daughter of the Himalaya, the wisdom-power of Brahman, the goddess). She told Indra, “The one you saw was the supreme creator, Brahman itself. You were under the illusion that you had won the victory over the demons. You cannot so much as lift a single straw. All the strength belonged to that presence, it was working from within you, and you imagined that you were the doer.”
Swami Krishnananda takes this story to be a story of the breaking of pride, and for him each and every character stands for some power within us. As he reads it, the Yaksha is the supreme Brahman, Agni is speech (the power to speak), Vayu is the vital breath and the mind, Indra is the ego, that is, the individual soul, and Uma is knowledge. His point is that a person’s power, stature, and glory are never his own, they are borrowed from the atman. This very borrowed shine deceives us into thinking that we are great, that we are wise, that we are strong. Speech can speak, the vital breath can set things moving, the mind can think, yet not one of these can so much as touch that truth. This is why Agni and Vayu, foremost though they were among the gods, were defeated before a single blade of straw.
For Swami Krishnananda, the vanishing of the Yaksha the moment Indra arrives is the deepest signal in this story. The ego cannot stand face to face before that supreme form, the way a doll of salt that walks into the sea to measure its depth dissolves and disappears. When Indra (the ego) comes close, the visible form fades away, because the ego is the very center of pride before which divinity does not reveal itself. But before the ego that does not panic at defeat and flee, that holds its ground, knowledge dawns. This is Uma, says the Swami, because before divinity its power appears first (sattva, that pure state of the mind where the ego has been washed away). When Uma too dissolves, that is, when even that last thin state is crossed, only then does the true nature of the Yaksha, pure Brahman, open out. The fading of the visible, in the Swami’s words, feels like the death of all consciousness, and yet it is the very doorway of that eternal consciousness.
From this Swami Krishnananda draws one more lesson, the fact that the ego breaks again and again is itself the proof that it is not real. What was truly real would succeed in every effort it made. The ego, though, is crushed at every moment from one side or another, and all the sorrow of this world is the pain of this ego being crushed. To teach a lesson, Brahman need not put on some vast and terrifying form, it takes on a form cut to the measure of each creature’s pride, in that very place, at that very moment. And just as this truth held for the gods, the Swami gives the example of Krishna and Arjuna, the same Arjuna before whose Gandiva bow the earth would tremble could not lift even a staff after Krishna left his body, because that all-pervading power seated within, Krishna, had withdrawn. The truth, says the Swami, is that Brahman alone is, and nothing else.
The gist: the strength we swagger with is not our own at all, it is borrowed from the atman. Agni could not burn a blade of straw, Vayu could not stir it, because they were never the doers. The melting away of pride is no loss, it is the very doorway through which the true nature, the supreme Brahman, opens out into view.
Brahman is the presence behind the forms people worship
The situation is this, a wondrous Yaksha (a divine, unknown figure) appeared among the gods, and no one could tell who it was. Agni (the god who presides over speech) and Vayu (the god of the vital breath) went before it with all their power, yet could not stir even a single straw, and returned ashamed. Then Indra (king of the gods, here the symbol of the ego and the individual soul) advanced toward it himself, but the moment he drew near, the figure vanished in that same instant. In that empty sky a radiant female form rose up, Uma Haimavati (the daughter of the Himalaya, here the very form of the power of knowledge), and she told Indra the truth on which this entire Upanishad rests.
According to Swami Krishnananda, Uma Haimavati said to Indra, “What you just saw was the supreme creator himself. You had fallen into an illusion, and it was a grave mistake, that you had won the victory over the demons. Where is the strength in you? You cannot lift even a single straw. All the strength came from that presence, it was working from within you, and you took it that you were the one doing.” The Swami calls this the scene of the subduing of the ego. The Yaksha here stands for the supreme Brahman (that supreme presence which is the source of all), and Uma is that first knowledge which rests just one step below the direct realization of divinity.
Here Swami Krishnananda gives the illustration of Krishna and Arjuna as well. No one could stand before Arjuna, the moment his Gandiva rose the earth would tremble, but when Krishna departed from this world, that same Arjuna could not lift even a staff. The strength belonged to that all-pervading presence seated within, and Arjuna was only the instrument (the medium, the tool). From this comes the Swami’s gist, “What is, is Brahman alone, and nothing else.” A person’s glory, knowledge, and power are not his own, all of it is borrowed from the atman.
On the axis of this very dialogue the Upanishad speaks the line that the tradition repeats again and again, “तदेव ब्रह्म त्वं विद्धि” (know that alone to be Brahman). Uma’s signal was this, that Brahman does not fit into the forms, the powers, and the deities that people in this world worship. The presence by whose strength Agni burns, Vayu blows, and Indra wins his victories, the one that is the real ground behind every act of worship, that is Brahman. The consciousness that makes worship possible is itself the one worth knowing.
The tradition (the mainstream of Shankara’s commentary) describes this glimpse as a flash of lightning. Just as lightning flashes for an instant in dense darkness and lays the whole scene bare for a moment, or as an eyelid blinks once, so the glimpse of Brahman comes, all at once, for a very short while, and then the mind cannot hold it. This glimpse is found within, at one’s own inner ground (adhishthana, the inner support), where consciousness turns toward itself; the external gods do not hold it.
But this glimpse does not settle just like that, without preparation. The tradition says that the foundation of this knowledge is laid on tapas (self-heating, the fire of spiritual practice), dama (the restraint of the senses), and karma (selfless service), and truth is the ground of all of these. The one whose life is steadied on these makes his mind fit to bear that flash and to rest within it. The fruit of knowledge is the vision of the self, and the path to that fruit runs through these very disciplines.
The gist: the presence by whose strength you see, hear, and conquer is Brahman itself; the forms this world worships from the outside are not that. Its glimpse lasts only a moment, like a flash of lightning, is found within your own self, and settles in the mind only on the foundation of tapas, dama, karma, and truth.
And in the end, toward yourself
Picture the student seated before his guru, and the whole question welling up inside him is the very one with which this Kena Upanishad begins (kena meaning “from whom,” the Upanishad that asks by whose impulse the mind runs). At whose command does the mind rush toward its object? By what consciousness does the eye see, the ear hear, the breath move? The student imagines that, just as he comes to know every object outside, he will likewise grasp this knower seated within, measure it, “know” it. And right here he stops short, because the very thing he wants to grasp is the grasping hand itself.
Swami Krishnananda lays this turn open. He says that all our instruments of knowing (eye, ear, mind, intellect) reveal only objects, never the knower. The atman is that “ear of the ear, mind of the mind, eye of the eye” (that is, the consciousness by whose power alone the ear hears and the mind thinks), and so it can never itself become the object of any sense. According to the Swami, the moment you set that consciousness before you and try to make it an “object,” in that same moment you manufacture the split between the knower and the known, and it is advaita (where there are not two), its very nature refuses this split. Every attempt to make an object of the supreme subject (the one who himself sees and hears) turns back on itself.
So what is the way? Swami Krishnananda says that this is a matter of entering into experience, and not merely of thinking it through. When thinking and experiencing become one, that becomes intuition (antarjnana, the direct knowing that rises from within), and it comes only from deep meditation. That consciousness is not reached by assembling it from outside, one comes to rest in it by letting the wall of self-separateness slowly dissolve. It knows itself by itself (sat-chit-ananda, being, consciousness, and bliss), the way nothing else is known. This is why that anchor of the tradition takes on its full meaning here, प्रज्ञानं ब्रह्म (consciousness itself is Brahman), तत्त्वमसि (you yourself are that reality). The one you had set out to seek was the very seeker.
The gist: the consciousness by which you see, hear, and think, do not go trying to grasp it like an object, because the one who grasps is that very consciousness. What remains is to rest in it, to abide there, and that abiding is a homecoming, a return to your own house.
This exposition draws chiefly on Swami Krishnananda’s (Divine Life Society) commentary on the Kena Upanishad.