Yājñavalkya
Contents10 of 10
  1. The Pupil Who Gave Back His Learning
  2. A Veda from the Sun
  3. The Thousand Cows
  4. The Questioners
  5. The Thread and the Inner Controller
  6. Gārgī
  7. Śākalya
  8. The Light of a Man
  9. The King Who Gave Himself
  10. Maitreyī

Maitreyī

Yājñavalkya had two wives, Maitreyī and Kātyāyanī. Of the two, Maitreyī was one who spoke of Brahman. When Yājñavalkya was ready to leave his home for the life of a wanderer, he said to her, Maitreyī, I am about to leave this householder's life and go forth. Come, let me settle what I have between you and Kātyāyanī.

Maitreyī said, Sir, if this whole earth full of wealth were mine, would I become immortal by it, or not? No, said Yājñavalkya. Your life would be like the life of those who have plenty. But there is no hope of immortality through wealth. Then Maitreyī said, What would I do with that which will not make me immortal? Sir, tell me instead what you know.

Yājñavalkya said, You have always been dear to me, and what you say now makes you dearer still. Come, sit down. I will explain it to you, and as I explain it, meditate on what I say. It is not for the love of the husband, Maitreyī, that a husband is dear. It is for the love of the Self that a husband is dear. It is not for the love of the wife that a wife is dear, but for the love of the Self. Not for their own sake are sons dear, or wealth, or the worlds, or the gods, or anything at all, but for the love of the Self. The Self, Maitreyī, is what one must see, must hear of, must reflect on and meditate on. When the Self has been seen and heard of, reflected on and known, then all this is known.

He told her how all the Vedas are breathed out from that great being, as smoke rises from a fire of damp wood; how this Self has no inside and no outside, but is all of it one mass of knowing, as a lump of salt is all of it one mass of taste. And when she said that he had bewildered her, he said: Where there seems to be a second, there one sees another, hears another, thinks of another, knows another. But where everything has become one's own Self, then what is there to see, and what to see it with? What is there to hear, to think of, to know, and with what? With what would one know that by which all this is known? This Self is not this, not this. With what, my dear, would one know the knower? You have been taught, Maitreyī. This, my dear, is immortality.

And having said this, Yājñavalkya went away.