Picture a still ashram where the first light of morning filters down through the trees, and six seekers, each carrying one heavy question in his mind and a bundle of samidha (sacrificial firewood) in his hands, have come to sit at the feet of their guru. These were no ordinary students. They were seekers who had grown weary of the world’s surface answers and now wanted to reach the true root. Seated before them is the rishi Pippalada (the teacher, held to be a master of the knowledge of Brahman), who does not hand them wisdom on the spot. First he tells them to stay a year with him in faith, tapas (austerity), and brahmacharya (discipline of the senses), and then to ask whatever is on their minds. This patient waiting is the first lesson of this Upanishad.
This Upanishad comes from the tradition of the Atharva Veda, and its very name tells you its soul: “prashna” means question, so the “Prashnopanishad” is the Upanishad woven out of six deep questions and their answers. Six students ask the rishi Pippalada in turn, and each answer carries us a little further inward: where did all this creation (the whole of what is made) finally arise from, what is the prana (life-force) within us and how does it divide itself through the body, where do we go in sleep and whose play is the dream, to which world does meditation on Om (the supreme sound-symbol) carry us, and at the last, who is that Purusha of sixteen kalas (the supreme consciousness expressed in sixteen parts) into whom all of this returns and dissolves. Holding the thread of these six questions, this Upanishad leads toward one root question: behind this visible world, what is that imperishable truth which, once known, leaves nothing else left to know.
The main characters of this Upanishad
Pippalada: a rishi of the Atharva tradition, who gave his answers to all six students only after a year of tapas.
The six seekers: Sukesha, Satyakama, Gargya (Sauryayani), Kausalya, Bhargava Vaidarbhi, and Kabandhi Katyayana, students who came in search of Brahman.
Creation and prana
The first question: where are creatures born from
The scene runs something like this. Six seekers, samidha (sacrificial firewood) in hand, arrive at the ashram of the rishi Pippalada. This is the same Pippalada whom this Upanishad honors as its guru. The visitors are in search of Brahman, and the guru tells them to stay here one more year with tapas (the practice of discipline and restraint), brahmacharya (discipline over the senses), and faith, and then to ask whatever questions arise in their minds. The year passes, and the first to rise is Kabandhi Katyayana, the student of the Katya line in whose mind the root question of creation is flashing. He asks: revered one, where are all these creatures (the world of living beings) finally born from?
Pippalada answers with an old story. In the beginning Prajapati (the lord of creation, the maker) desired to bring forth creatures. He performed tapas, and out of that tapas he shaped a pair, rayi and prana. Rayi is that which gives form, makes solid, fills, meaning matter and anna (food, gross substance); prana is that which gives consciousness, gives motion, gives life, meaning the life-force. Prajapati thought that from these two the many creatures would be made.
Then this Upanishad ties this pair to the two lamps of the sky. Prana is called the sun and rayi the moon. The sun rises pouring life through its rays into beings above, below, and in every direction, so it is the prana of all creatures. The moon is the vessel that fills and wanes, the store of anna and sap; from it the form of rayi is nourished. Day and night, light and shadow, the eaten and the eater, all of these are two faces of this one pair. Whatever takes form in the world is a portion of rayi, and whatever breathes within that form is a portion of prana.
Swami Krishnananda draws the gist of this passage with great simplicity. By his reading, this Upanishad says that God is that very supreme Prajapati or maker, in whom the matter and the power of the world lie dissolved together. Put another way, rayi and prana are two aspects held within one and the same maker; and by Swamiji’s account that whole of God rests symbolically within Pranava, that is Omkara (the sound of Om). Matter without power is inert, and power without matter has no ground; the world is the name for the unbreakable joining of these two.
Now the other end of the question. If everything is born from this pair, then where does the living being go after death? Here the tradition (the mainstream of Shankara’s commentary) opens this portion as two paths, and ties them to the two courses of the sun. One course is Dakshinayana, when the sun seems to slope toward the south; this is the path of rayi, the path of the moon. The other course is Uttarayana, when the sun climbs toward the north; this is the path of prana, the path of the sun.
By the tradition, those who stay busy with ritual action and charity, who perform yajna (fire-rites), who have wells and ponds dug, who hold ishta-purta (works of religious duty and public good) to be the whole point of life, reach the world of the moon when they die. There they enjoy the fruit of their merit, and when the fruit runs out they return; this coming and going continues. But those who turn inward through tapas, brahmacharya, and faith to search for truth take the path of the world of the sun, from which there is no returning; that state is called amrita (immortality, the state of not being born again). This is why the story ends by singing the glory of the sun, for that prana is the doorway of that deathless path.
The gist: all creation is the play of a single pair, rayi and prana, matter and consciousness, moon and sun; and by Swami Krishnananda’s account the two lie dissolved within one and the same maker. Countless forms may show on the outside, yet the paths are only two. Action done only to win its fruit gives the winding, returning path of the moon, while turning inward to search for truth is the path of the sun, from which one need not return.
The second question: the prana that holds everything
Among the six seekers who stayed a year in the ashram of the rishi Pippalada with tapas, brahmacharya, and faith, the second was named Bhargava. He had come from the land of Vidarbha, and so is called Vaidarbhi. Hearing the answer to the first question, a curiosity rose in his mind, and joining his palms he asked: revered one, this body of ours that stands here, which gods (the powers at work within the body) hold it up, which of them spreads light, and which is the greatest among them all?
In the answer the rishi Pippalada gave, the scene of an inner assembly opens up. Here the gods live inside us, each an inner power doing its own work within the body: akasha (open space), vayu (air), agni (heat), water and earth (the solid ground), along with our senses (the powers of seeing, hearing, speaking, thinking) and the mind. Together all of these have kept this house-like body standing, the way pillars and walls together hold up a roof.
Then a rivalry breaks out among these very powers. Each sense begins to sing its own praise. Speech (the power of speaking) says that without it this body would lie dumb. The eye says that without it all is darkness. The ears, the mind, each asserts its own importance, as if every one of them were sure that it alone is the true master of this house.
Then, in the middle of it, the chief Prana rises (the central life-force from which breath and every action runs). Somewhat displeased by this quarrel, it begins to lift, as if ready to leave the body. And the moment prana stirs even a little, all the senses waver together at once, and all their arrogance sinks. Here the Upanishad sets the image that lodges in the mind even today: just as, when the queen bee of a hive flies up, all the bees behind her leave the hive and fly up too, and when she settles they all settle again, in the same way it is only when prana holds still that all these powers hold in their own places.
The tradition (the mainstream of Shankara’s commentary) opens this passage this way. This quarrel of the senses is really a picture of the ego within us (the feeling that I alone am great). Each sense believes it is independent, that it runs on its own strength. But the tradition explains that all their capacity is borrowed, and comes to them from prana. Just as, when a power source is cut off, all the lamps of a house go dark together, in the same way the moment prana withdraws, seeing, hearing, speaking, thinking, all come to a halt at a single stroke. This is why prana is called the ground of everything. It is the very life on whose support all the other senses play their game.
The tradition adds one more image here, that of fire. Just as a single fire, divided among many pieces of wood and coal, appears to burn separately in each, and yet the fire is one, in the same way the one prana divides through the body and works in five forms (breathing in, elimination, digesting, carrying upward, and spreading through the body to hold it together), while from within it is one and the same flame of life burning in all. This is why the sun too, and the directions, and the earth, and every power of the body, all turn out to be different faces of the one prana. Whoever recognizes this prana flowing in this way through everything, the tradition says, his children and cattle never dwindle, and he becomes a sharer in amrita.
The gist: however much the senses may swagger in their own self-praise, all their strength is borrowed. The prana at whose stirring all things waver, and at whose stillness all things hold, is the real ground, burning as one in all things like fire. To recognize that one life within yourself is the root of all stillness.
The third question: how prana divides through the body
In the ashram of the rishi Pippalada the six seekers sit, having passed a year in tapas, brahmacharya, and faith, and are placing their questions one by one. The student who now comes forward for the third time, palms joined, is Kausalya Ashvalayana (a seeker born in the line of Ashvala). In his mind is a question about the most everyday and the most deeply hidden thing in life at once, the very breath that moves in and out. He asks: revered one, where is this prana (the life-force by which the body lives) born from? How does it enter this body, and once inside, in what way does it divide itself? By which path does it leave the body, and staying outside how does it hold the outer world, and staying inside how does it hold the senses?
The rishi Pippalada begins his answer with something very deep. The question you are asking is a lofty one, and the answer will come from the same height. The tradition (the mainstream of Shankara’s commentary) opens this answer this way: prana takes its birth from the atman (the pure awareness seated within). It is no product of some inert air. Just as a man’s shadow is never separate from the man and yet appears spread out, in the same way prana is a shadow of the atman, descending into this body by its will alone. From this comes a secret truth: behind every breath stands the resolve of consciousness. It is never the work of biology alone.
Now prana, having entered the body, divides itself into five forms, as if a king were to set five different officers over five different tasks of his kingdom. Swami Krishnananda counts out this division very plainly. By his account, when we breathe out, prana (the energy that moves outward) is at work; and when we draw the breath in, apana (the energy that pulls inward) does its work. The third is vyana (the energy spread through the whole body), which circulates the blood and fills every corner of the body with the feeling of being alive. The fifth is samana (the energy of the navel region), which sits at the navel and generates heat, wakens the gastric juices, raises hunger, and digests what has been eaten.
Among these five, Swami Krishnananda pauses separately on udana (the energy that carries upward), and names its three tasks. First, when we place food in the mouth, it is this udana that sends it down from the throat and makes us swallow. Second, this same udana pushes our individual consciousness (the awareness gathered into a separate personal form) toward deep sleep, as if patting the whole day’s wakefulness to rest. And third, by his account the deepest task of udana comes at the time of death, when this udana separates the subtle prana-body from this gross physical form. So the very energy by which we swallow each morsel and sink into sleep each day also holds the thread of the final journey.
The tradition lays out the map of this final journey more fully. It is said that one hundred and one (101) nadis (the subtle channels through which prana flows) issue from the heart, and one of them runs upward toward the head. At the time of death udana takes the living being along one of these nadis and rises, and which path opens depends on a whole life’s karma and on the last feeling that rests in the mind at the moment of leaving. If the movement is of merit, it goes toward the auspicious worlds; if the movement is of sin, toward a lower course; and if the two are mixed, back toward the world of human beings. As the final thought, so the onward course; this is why the seeker’s whole practice is a preparation for just this, where the mind will settle in the last hour.
So the whole answer to Kausalya’s question binds into a single thread. Prana is born from the atman, manages the entire business of the body as five officers, flows through the web of the heart’s one hundred and one nadis, and the same udana by which we live each day one day carries us away from here as well. Breath looks like a small thing, yet at its root is consciousness and at its far end the next journey.
The gist: the breath we have been given is a shadow of the atman, and no inert air; dividing into five forms, it runs the work of a whole life, and the same udana by which we swallow each morsel and sink into sleep each day carries us off in the final hour. So wherever we train the mind through a lifetime, in the end consciousness will flow down that same path.
Sleep, Om, and the Purusha
The fourth question: who wakes in sleep
In the ashram the fourth student’s turn comes. Sauryayani Gargya (an inquiring brahmin born in the lineage of the sun), palms joined, sits before the guru, the rishi Pippalada (the teacher of this Prashnopanishad, to whom the six students put their questions one by one). His question rises from an ordinary daily event, yet its root runs very deep. He asks: when a person falls asleep, who is it that really sleeps in him and who stays awake? To whom do dreams appear? And that happiness of deep sleep, who is it that finally enjoys it?
The rishi Pippalada opens the answer in three states. The first is the waking state (the condition of being awake), in which we are sitting right now. Swami Krishnananda explains it this way: the consciousness of a waking person touches and enjoys the outer world through nineteen gates. These nineteen gates are the five organs of knowledge (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching), the five organs of action (hands, speech, feet, and two other organs of action), the five pranas (prana, apana, vyana, udana, samana, that is the breath and the five life-currents of the body), and the four faculties of the mind (manas, intellect, ego, and chitta). Through these nineteen mouths consciousness keeps eating the food that is the world. By his account, in waking the grossest layer, the annamaya kosha (the physical body made of food), is at full force.
The second state is dream (the condition of dreaming). Swami Krishnananda says that in dream the real outer world falls away, the consciousness of the gross body goes to sleep, yet the senses quietly withdraw into the mind. Now the senses have no outer help left, and even so the mind alone builds a whole world out of its old impressions. In his words, in dream too those same nineteen gates run, only now they are made by the mind. Dream eyes, dream ears, dream hands and feet, dream space and time, dream people. In a dream a person runs, eats food, and even watches his own birth and his own death. This entire world the mind has shaped from its own samskaras (the imprints of past experiences), without the help of any outer object.
The third and deepest state is sushupti (deep sleep without dreams). Swami Krishnananda describes it this way: here there is no awareness of the body, the mind does not think, the intellect makes no decision, nor is there any sense that we are even breathing. The mind too now dissolves into that supreme radiance, and only the anandamaya kosha (that seed-layer of bliss which is called the causal body) remains. No dream, no sorrow, only pure rest. By his account, in that hour we were not the body, nor the mind, nor the intellect. We were only pure awareness (unmixed, unsullied consciousness), and that sat-chit-ananda (a single form of being, awareness, and bliss) was our real nature. That is why, waking from sleep, a person says: what a good sleep I had, I knew nothing at all.
Now Gargya’s real question is solved right here: if nothing at all was there, then who enjoyed the happiness and who kept the memory of it? Swami Krishnananda offers a plain proof. You wake in the morning and say with full conviction that today too you are the same person you were yesterday; even through the sleep in between, your identity did not break. By his account, this very unbroken thread of consciousness proves that even in deep sleep someone stayed awake, who kept watching everything. That waking one is the atman (our real conscious nature), the witness of all three states (the observer who watches without ever wavering). In waking it is called Vishva, in dream Taijasa, in deep sleep Prajna, and beyond these three, watching them all, this is the pure atman. The senses sleep in the mind, the mind sleeps in the atman, but the atman never sleeps.
The gist: the dream is a world shaped by the mind and deep sleep is full rest in that supreme radiance, yet in both states one thing never sleeps, and that is you yourself, the waking witness without whom neither the happiness of sleep would be remembered nor would it be certain in the morning that the one waking is the same one who lay down last night.
The fifth question: meditation on Om
The assembly is now at its fifth turn. The six seekers sit at the feet of the guru Pippalada (the teacher these young men have come to for the knowledge of Brahman), and the turn comes to Shaibya Satyakama (of the line of Shibi, a seeker with a hunger for truth). Palms joined, he sets down a plain, simple question that is really the question of a whole life’s practice: “Revered one, the person who keeps meditating on Om (Pranava, the one name of Brahman and the sound-form of the atman) right up to his last breath, which world does he reach after death?” This is the question of a man who wants to spend his whole life on a single call, and no matter of mere scholarship.
The guru Pippalada first shows the real height of that Om. He says that this Pranava is itself Parabrahman (the formless, attributeless, supreme truth) and it is also Aparabrahman (the form with attributes, the shape that can be held in meditation). One Om has two steps, a lower one on which the foot is set, and a higher one that is to be reached. This is why the seeker who takes refuge in it arrives, by this one means, at one or the other of the two, depending on how deeply he has lived this sound.
Swami Krishnananda presses on this very point. By his account, the Om that the guru Pippalada is teaching Satyakama holds both forms, higher and lower, para and apara; the whole staircase is hidden in one Pranava. About the make of Om he reminds us again and again that it is the joining of three matras (sound-parts), a, u, m, and a-u-m together form Om. These three matras are no mere outer letters. In Swamiji’s view they are tied to the three states of our consciousness: a for waking (Vishva), u for dream (Taijasa), and m for deep sleep (Prajna), and the soundless silence that remains beyond these three is the atman itself. He says plainly that the real Om “is a vibration.” It is no word and no letter, an all-pervading tremor whose whole purpose in being chanted is to wash away the dust of old karma settled in the mind (the grime of samskaras).
Now the guru Pippalada’s real teaching opens, and the tradition (the mainstream of Shankara’s commentary) tells it this way: the fruit rests on how many matras of Om the seeker was able to descend into. The one who can hold his meditation only to a single matra (a) is brought quickly back by his own practice into this very world of human beings; the verses of the Rig Veda carry him as far as the world of men and leave him there, where by the force of tapas and restraint he does win greatness, yet stays bound.
The one who meditates joining two matras (a and u) rises as far as the world of the mind; the mantras of the Yajur Veda carry him to the middle region, to the world of the moon (Soma-loka). There he enjoys the happiness of his merit, but when the enjoyment is spent he returns again; this too is no final resting, only a higher stage.
And the one who, knowing all three matras (a, u, m) as a single whole, meditates with his mind fixed on the supreme Purusha, walks an entirely different road. The tradition says that the tones of the Sama Veda carry him upward, to that world of Brahman called Satya. Just as a snake sheds its old slough (its outer skin), so this seeker sheds all his sins, and gains the darshan of that supreme Purusha who dwells within every body. This is the summit of the whole practice, where incomplete meditation brings one back and whole meditation carries one home.
The gist: there is one Om, but the fruit rests on how deeply we descend into it. Half a hold brings us back into this same world, a little more depth to some higher stage, but only meditation that lives all three matras as a whole shakes off sin like a slough and carries one to the supreme Purusha. The sound stays the same; what changes is our depth.
The sixth question: the Purusha of sixteen kalas
The student who comes to Pippalada with the last question is named Sukesha. Pippalada is that same rishi in whose ashram the six seekers, staying a year with tapas, brahmacharya, and faith (unbreakable trust), are placing their questions one by one. Sukesha tells of an old incident. Long ago a prince, Hiranyanabha Kausalya, came to him and asked: “Sukesha, do you know that Purusha of sixteen kalas?” Here kala means a part, a component, the piece out of which a complete thing is made; and Purusha means that conscious principle which dwells in this body.
Sukesha was a student who spoke the truth. Rather than fashion a lie, he joined his palms and said that he did not know it, because to lie is, for a seeker of the knowledge of Brahman, to dry oneself up from the root. That incompleteness stayed lodged in his mind for years. This is why now, in this ashram, he sets that same question before his guru Pippalada: “Where is that Purusha of sixteen kalas?”
Pippalada answers, and his answer turns you inward. “Gentle one, that Purusha is within this very body itself, and nowhere far off in the sky. From him the sixteen kalas were born.” Then he counts out the kalas one by one. First of all, from that indivisible Purusha rose prana (the life-force). From prana came shraddha (faith), then the five great elements, that is akasha, vayu, agni, water, and earth (the five root elements of creation). Along with these appeared the senses (the powers of seeing, hearing, touching), the mind (the field of thoughts), and anna (the food by which the body holds together). From anna came virya (the energy of creation), from that tapas (the heat of practice), mantra, action, and the worlds, and in the worlds, name. In this way all sixteen kalas spread out like the rays of that one Purusha.
By the tradition (the mainstream of Shankara’s commentary), the secret here is that these sixteen kalas are nothing outside the Purusha. Just as the spokes of a chariot wheel, though they issue from the hub, rest in the hub itself, so these kalas depend on that central Purusha. This Purusha is himself nishkala, that is, one who has no parts of his own; the kalas have indeed arisen out of him, yet he is not divided among them. What we call our body, our senses, our name and form, all of it is the shadow of this one.
Then Pippalada gives the comparison that becomes the gist of this question. “Just as flowing rivers move toward the sea, and on reaching the sea lose their own separate name and form, and are simply called ‘the sea,’ so at the moment of liberation the sixteen kalas of this wise person return to their source, that same Purusha, and dissolve.” Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, every name sinks into the ocean; yet the water is not lost, only the wall of separation falls. The tradition reads it this way: the “dying” of the rivers is really their becoming complete.
This is why the final end of the answer is that the kalas are perishable, but the Purusha from whom they came is amrita. Name and form, that is what we hold onto and call identity, scatter with time; yet that ground-consciousness remains just as it was. For the seeker who comes to know this indivisible Purusha, the tradition says, death becomes the river’s going to meet the sea, and no longer stays a mere breaking.
The gist: what you take to be your sixteen pieces, prana, senses, mind, name and form, are all rays that came out of one Purusha, and that Purusha dwelling in this very body is in no way separate from you. On reaching the sea the rivers lose their name, and keep their water; in the same way, the day these kalas return to their source, only the shell of identity scatters, and what remains, that immortal Purusha, is you yourself.
And at the last, toward yourself
The scene is the same one we began from. The courtyard of the ashram, the morning air, and those six students seated before the rishi Pippalada (the teacher the six seekers reached after a year of tapas). The last question was Sukesha’s (the son of Bharadvaja): who is that Purusha of sixteen kalas? Sukesha had told the teacher truly that he himself did not know it, because one who speaks untruth dries up from the root. And Pippalada turned his pointing finger inward, into this very body, away from any distant world outside: that Purusha is right here, within you. Prana, faith, akasha, vayu, agni, water, earth, the senses, the mind, anna, name, form, these sixteen kalas (parts) came out of that one, and returning, dissolve into it. Right here the single sum of the six questions opens up: the question of the creation of beings, the question of the glory of prana, the question of dream and deep sleep, the question of meditation on Omkara, all come to rest on one center. By Swami Krishnananda’s account, this creation is no spontaneous bursting-forth from some inert nature; at its root is that conscious Purusha who first ‘thought,’ and then shaped prana, so all life runs on the two supports of prana and consciousness, and behind both stands that same indivisible, nishkala (partless) Purusha. The tradition tells it with the image of the chariot wheel: just as all the spokes sink into the hub (the central axle), so these sixteen kalas go and merge into that Purusha; on arriving there their names and forms break apart, and whoever comes to know him becomes partless and immortal, and death no longer torments him.
So in the end this Upanishad turns us toward ourselves rather than toward any new information. What you kept searching for outside was never anywhere outside at all; the axle of the sixteen spokes that keep this life turning sits silent within you, turning them all without moving itself. All the questions were pretexts for recognizing that one, and to recognize it is the rest of all questions. Pippalada’s courtyard is now your own heart; turn inward once and bow to that indivisible Purusha, and then nothing is left to ask.
The gist: the six questions have one answer, and that answer lies within, not somewhere outside. The axle on which all the spokes of life turn, that partless Purusha, is in your own heart; to recognize it is the final rest of every longing.
This interpretation is based mainly on Swami Krishnananda’s (the Divine Life Society) reading of the Prashnopanishad in the Shankara tradition.