Story · 21
Kaca and Sanjivani
While teaching his son Kaca, Brihaspati, preceptor of the gods, said one thing to him that was almost entirely silence. The true bond between a father and a son is recorded in that silence.
Rama asked, “Master, if I cannot find my own self, then who am I?”
Vasistha said, “Rama, this is the very thing Kaca once sang. Listen to his story.”
Father and Son
Brihaspati was the guru of the gods, and his son was named Kaca.
Kaca was still young, his eyes bright and his voice sweet.
One day he was sitting beside his father, carrying a single question in his mind.
Kaca said, “Father, there is something I must ask. I had believed that I exist, but when I looked within myself, I did not find any I there. There was only an emptiness. And yet within that emptiness there was something that knew it was empty. What is that?”
Brihaspati looked at his son for a long while, then said, “Son, the one you are searching for stands behind everything. Yet it belongs to no one. It has no ego, it has no I.”
Kaca said, “I understand.”
Brihaspati said, “No, not yet. But you will.”
After this Kaca practiced tapasya for many years, and one day a song rose up within him.
The Song
Kaca began to sing.
That which lives in every form,
that is what I am.
That which lives in every word,
that is what I am.
That which lives in every breath,
that is what I am.
That which lives in every silence,
that is what I am.
Yet I am not in any one form.
Yet I am not in any one word.
Yet I am not in any one breath.
Yet I am not in any one silence.
I am behind every one of them,
and nowhere at all.
I have no ego.
I have no I.
Yet I am.
Yes, I am.
Kaca’s song spread out into the air.
Brihaspati heard that song and said, “My son has now become my guru.”
When Kaca opened his eyes, his father was standing right beside him.
Kaca said, “Father, I have found it.”
Brihaspati said, “Yes.”
Kaca said, “Father, have you found this too?”
Brihaspati said, “Son, each person has a time of his own. I have found it, and yet your song did not come from my finding. It is your own.”
Kaca bowed his head, and Rama asked, “Master, will I also sing one day?”
Vasistha said, “Rama, whatever you sing will be your own. Perhaps it will come in words, perhaps without words. But you will sing.”
Rama looked toward the water, where his own silence was settling down.
Literary context
This story draws on passages from the Sthiti Prakarana and the Nirvana sections of the Yoga Vasistha. Kaca’s song is a small yet powerful example of the poetic tradition of the shastra.
The philosophical view
Kaca, the son of Brihaspati, sings a song of “I am Brahman, you are Brahman, all of this is Brahman.” His father Brihaspati, the guru of the gods, listens and gives a light laugh, and says that there is no such thing as an ego, and so your song too is not “mine.” Kaca falls silent and takes up tapas. The story tells us that the first step after realization is to release the very “I” that claims the realization as its own, and then the song starts to sing itself.
Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), in the conversations recorded in Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi (1955, compiled by Munagala Venkataramiah), said again and again that one must go beyond even “I am Brahman,” because there the “I” still remains. The final state is the one in which the “I” also dissolves, and only “is” remains. Kaca’s story, told through the mouth of Brihaspati, teaches exactly this, that the highest song is the one with no one to sing it.