Śruti / The twelve Upaniṣads / Aitareya · 8 of 12

8. Consciousness is Brahman

Aitareya (ऐतरेय)

The Aitareya (ऐतरेय) belongs to the Ṛgveda, to the Aitareya śākhā, inside the Aitareya Āraṇyaka (ऐतरेय आरण्यक). The upaniṣad as commonly printed has three adhyāyas. This page does not invent a map of the āraṇyaka beyond that: the upaniṣad is part of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka. The famous two words sit at the end of the third adhyāya.

The first movement is a creation told as the self's own making. In the beginning this was the self alone. He thought of worlds, and of guardians for the worlds, and a person was drawn so that the guardians would have a house to enter. Hunger and thirst are given as companions of those powers. They enter the person. Food flees, and is caught. The tale is bold and bodily. It is the Ṛgveda's own upaniṣad saying that the world is arranged so that powers have somewhere to live, and that the living place is a person.

The close turns from the building of the person to the question of the person. Who is this self by whom one sees, hears, smells, speaks, and knows? The answer gathers every name of knowing, heart, mind, direction, and life, and sets them down as modes of consciousness. Then the two words: consciousness is Brahman. One who knows so, the book says, goes up from this world and has his desires fulfilled in that heaven. The breakthrough is the identification. The self that was alone at the start is not a distant maker left behind the organs. The knowing, by which any organ knows, is Brahman.

प्रज्ञानं ब्रह्म prajñānaṃ brahma

Consciousness is Brahman. The two words are Aitareya (ऐतरेय) 3.3. They are the mahāvākya this book contributes. The surrounding sentences are not sat here.

नेपालीमा

ऐतरेय ऋग्वेदको ऐतरेय शाखा हो, ऐतरेय आरण्यकभित्र। छापिने उपनिषद् तीन अध्यायको हुन्छ। आरण्यकको पूरा नक्सा यो पृष्ठले बनाउँदैन।

सुरुमा आत्मा एक्लो थियो। लोक र तिनका रखवाल बनाइए। मान्छे तिनको घर भयो। अन्त्यमा प्रश्न छ, जसले देख्छ र जान्छ, त्यो आत्मा को हो? उत्तर: प्रज्ञानं ब्रह्म। जान्नु नै ब्रह्मन् हो।

Where it sits

The Ṛgveda's hymns are ṛta and the gods. Tat tvam asi is the next sitting.