Mantra 7

In plain words

Even though it has already been shown that this light stands apart from the body, Janaka is still confused -- because we only ever see one thing helped by another of its own kind, he can't tell whether this light is simply one of his own organs, or something genuinely separate. So he asks: 'Which one is it?' And honestly, the confusion makes sense -- the reasoning here is subtle, and easy to get lost in. Or perhaps this is what is happening: even granting that the Self is distinct from the body, every organ seems to have a mind of its own, because nothing marks the real Self out from the rest by simple discernment. So Janaka is really asking: 'That is exactly why I ask -- which one is the Self?' Which is it, he wants to know -- body, senses, breath, or mind -- the one you spoke of, Yājñavalkya, the one whose light lets a person sit and move and act? Or maybe he means something else: 'The Self you have in mind, the one made of understanding -- well, every one of these vital breaths seems to be made of understanding too. So among all these breaths, which one is it?' It's like asking, in a room full of brilliant scholars, 'all of them are dazzling -- but which one actually knows the six auxiliary sciences?' Read one way, the whole question is simply 'which is the Self,' and the answer is just 'this one, made of understanding.' Read another way, the question keeps going all the way through 'among the vital breaths.' Or perhaps the entire verse is the question: 'this person made of understanding, this light within the heart, among the vital breaths -- which one is he?' ...the seventh case here is doing something special: it is showing distinction, the way 'a stone among the trees' really just means 'near the trees.' Because with the vital breaths, it is genuinely unclear whether the Self is separate from them or not -- so the sense is 'distinct from the breaths, yet among the breaths.' And that has to be right, because anything that exists within a group is, by definition, distinct from that group -- a tree standing among stones is still not a stone. Now, someone might worry: doesn't 'in the heart' suggest the intellect is just another breath, nothing special? That is exactly why the text adds 'within' -- to make the distinction unmistakable. By 'heart' here, Śaṅkara means the literal lotus-shaped lump of flesh; and because the intellect lives there, it borrows that same name -- so 'in the heart' really means 'in the intellect.' And the word 'within' exists specifically to separate the Self from the intellect's own passing states. Light gets called 'the Self' simply because shining is exactly what it does. And it is by that very light -- the Self itself -- that a person sits, moves, and works, so that this whole body-and-organ mass behaves as if it were conscious all on its own -- the way a jar looks lit up in sunlight, or the way a green gem dropped into milk, just to test it, tints the whole bowl with its own colour. In the same way, this light of the Self, finer than the intellect and finer even than the heart, sits within the heart and yet draws the entire body and its organs into a single unit, casting its own reflection across all of it, passed down in stages according to how subtle or coarse each part is, because the Self is the innermost thing there is. The intellect catches this light first, simply because it is so clear and sits closest to the Self -- which is exactly why even wise, discerning people first mistake the intellect for the Self itself. Then, next in line, the mind picks up its own trace of that same awareness, through its contact with the intellect. Then the senses catch it too, through their link with the mind. And immediately after that--

Close to the Sanskrit

Although distinctness of the light from the body has been established, still, out of a confusion caused by seeing that assistance is given only by something of the same class, [Janaka], unable to discriminate whether it is one of the organs itself or something distinct, asks: 'Which one?' The confusion is understandable, given the subtlety of the reasoning that makes it hard to know. Or else: even though it has been established that the Self is distinct from the body, all the organs seem, as it were, to possess understanding, since the Self is not perceived by discrimination among them; so I ask -- 'Which is the Self?' Which one, among body, sense organ, vital breath and mind, is that Self spoken of by you, by whose light, as you said, he sits and acts? Or else: the Self you have in mind, consisting of understanding -- well, all these vital breaths, too, seem to consist of understanding; among these breaths, which one is it? -- just as, among a gathering of brahmins, one might ask: 'All of these are brilliant; which of them knows the six auxiliary sciences?' On the first explanation, 'which is the Self' is, just this much, the whole question-sentence, and 'this one, consisting of understanding' is the answer. But on the second explanation, the question-sentence runs on, ending at 'among the vital breaths.' Or else, the whole remaining verse is the question-sentence: 'the person consisting of understanding, the light within the heart, among the vital breaths -- which one is he?' ...for showing distinction, the seventh case here is used -- as in the phrase 'a stone among the trees,' where the locative has the sense of mere proximity. For, among the vital breaths, whether the Self is distinct or not distinct from them is left in doubt; the meaning intended is 'distinct from the vital breaths, yet among the vital breaths' -- that is the sense. For whatever exists among a group is, by that very fact, distinct from it -- as a tree standing among stones is distinct from the stones. Here, on the point of 'in the heart,' this might be thought: that among the vital breaths the intellect is merely of the same class as the breaths -- so the text says, 'within the heart.' By the word 'heart' is meant the lotus-shaped lump of flesh; because of residing there, the intellect too is called 'heart' -- 'in that,' 'in the heart,' means 'in the intellect.' The word 'within' is meant to show the Self's distinctness from the modifications of the intellect. 'Light' is called 'the Self' because it has the nature of illumination. By that very illuminating Self, as his light, he sits, goes about, does work -- for this body-and-organ mass behaves as though conscious, as a jar appears lit up in the light of the sun; or as an emerald or similar gem, dropped into milk or some such substance for testing, makes that very substance take on the gem's own hue -- just so this light of the Self, being subtler even than the intellect and than the heart, though situated within the heart, unifies the whole aggregate beginning with the heart -- body and organs together -- and casts upon it the reflection of the Self's own light, in a graded succession, on account of the scale of subtlety and grossness running through it, since the Self is the innermost of all. The intellect, first of all, because of its transparency and its immediate proximity to the Self, becomes the reflected image of the light of the Self's consciousness; because of that, indeed, even for discriminating people, the notion 'I am this' arises first with regard to the intellect. Then, next in that same succession, the appearance of consciousness arises in the mind, through its contact with the intellect; then in the sense organs, through their conjunction with the mind; then, immediately after that--

In plain words

In the body, through contact with the senses — this is how it works. Step by step, the Self lights up this whole structure of causes and effects with a light that isn't borrowed from anywhere: it is consciousness itself, shining as its own nature. And because of that light, everyone in this world keeps forming a shifting notion of self, pinning it now on the body, now on its states, always in proportion to how little they've learned to tell the two apart. The Lord says the same thing in the Gītā: 'As one sun lights up this whole world, so the knower of the field lights up the whole field, Bhārata' — and, 'The radiance living in the sun...' The Kaṭha Upaniṣad says it too: 'The eternal among the fleeting, the conscious among the conscious.' And elsewhere: 'Only by his shining does anything else shine at all; his light is what lights up this whole world.' Even the old mantras say it: 'The sun burns because it has already been set ablaze by that splendour.' So this is the light within the heart. And 'Person' — because like space it reaches everywhere, it is full, and that fullness is why it's called Person. Its self-luminous nature has no rival: it lights up everything else, and nothing lights it up in return. That very Person is light through and through — and that is exactly what you're asking about when you ask, 'Which one is the Self?'

When the outer lights go down — the sun, the moon, the fire, all the helpers of the senses — it is through the mind that the Person, the light within your own heart, becomes the one who carries the organs onward. That much has already been said. But notice: even while the sun is still up, still lighting the world for your eyes, the same thing is true. Sun, moon and fire exist for someone else's sake, and a body made only of matter can't run itself; nothing unconscious ever manages its own affairs. So even in broad daylight, without the Self's own untouched light quietly behind everything, this whole arrangement of body and organs wouldn't hold together for a moment. That, in fact, is why the Upaniṣad will soon call it 'made of everything.' You cannot pull the Self out into view the way you draw a reed's pith out of its grass sheath, showing it bare, in its own light. And because you can't, people mix everything up: they load the doings of name and form onto the Self, they load the Self's own brightness onto name and form, and they load name and form onto that brightness in turn. That's how a whole world ends up arguing — this is the self, this isn't; it has these qualities, it doesn't; it acts, it doesn't act; it's pure, it's stained; it's bound, it's free; it stays, it leaves, it arrives; it exists, it doesn't — round and round. And so, being one and the same all along, it seems to travel between two worlds, the one you're in and the one still ahead, through wave after wave of putting down one body and its senses and picking up another. But look closer: what actually causes that sense of travelling from world to world is nothing but the resemblance of the mind — not anything happening to the Self itself. It's the resemblance between one set of name-and-form and the next, that alone, which breeds the confusion; the Self has no part in causing it. Here's the proof, and it's not abstract — it's something you can watch directly. The Self seems to think, seems to be lost in thought, because it lights up the mind's own thinking the way a lamp lights up whatever stands in front of it — never moving, but taking on the shape of what it shines on, so it looks like it's the one thinking. That's where the illusion 'it thinks' comes from. In truth, it never thinks at all. The same goes for the sense that it trembles or rushes about: it's really the mind and the breath that are moving, and because the Self is what lights them up while they move, it seems to share their motion. In truth, that light never moves an inch. How do we know all this? Because the Upaniṣad itself hands us the proof, drawn straight from something you already know: dream. Whatever your mind becomes, you seem to become right along with it — that's the whole secret. When your mind slips into sleep, you slip into dreaming; the moment your mind starts to stir toward waking, so do you. So it says: 'having become dream,' lighting up its own part in that, taking on the exact shape of the mind's sleep, it leaves behind this waking world of bodies and business, worldly and sacred both, by nothing but its own separate light — and it settles into lighting up the mind's dream instead. That is exactly why it is, by its very nature, its own light: untouched, with no doer, no doing, no tool and no result to its name. All that talk of coming and going between worlds is only ever the mind's resemblance doing the talking. And 'the forms of death' are nothing mysterious either — death just means action and ignorance and their kin; it has no shape of its own besides the causes and effects that make up a body. That is exactly what the Self, in dream, walks straight past: those forms of death, the mere holding-places for action and its fruit.

Close to the Sanskrit

In the body, because of contact with the senses — thus, by succession, the Self illumines the entire aggregate of effect and cause with the light that is its own nature as consciousness. By that indeed, for the whole world, in the aggregate of effect and cause and in its states, an unfixed notion of self-identification arises according to one's discrimination. And so it has been said by the Lord in the Gītā: 'As the one sun illumines this entire world, so the knower of the field illumines the entire field, O Bhārata,' and 'The splendour that is in the sun...' and so on. 'The eternal among the eternal, the conscious among the conscious' — thus also in the Kāṭhaka, and 'Him alone shining, everything shines after; by his light all this shines forth' — thus also. 'By whom the sun burns, kindled by that splendour' — thus also a Vedic mantra-passage. Therefore this one is 'the light within the heart.' Person — because, like space, it is all-pervading, it is full; hence 'Person.' And unsurpassed is its state of being self-luminous, because it illumines everything itself and because it is not illumined by anything else. That very Person is itself of the nature of light — the very one you ask about: 'Which is the Self?'

Of the external lights, the aiders of all the organs, at their setting — through the medium of the inner organ, the Person who is the light within the heart, the Self, is the aider of the organs — thus it has been said. Even when there is the presence of the external lights beginning with the sun, the aiders of the external organs, even then — because those lights exist for the sake of another, and because, the effect-and-cause aggregate being non-conscious, its own purpose cannot be established without the aid of the Self whose light is self-sufficient — in the absence of the Self's aid this effect-and-cause aggregate would not be the same by way of the general operation of the intellect. And for this very reason it will be said 'made of everything'. Therefore this one cannot be shown, separated out from something, in its own form of light, like a reed from its sheath; hence, superimposing onto that all the activity belonging to name-and-form, and the property of light onto name-and-form, and name-and-form onto the light of the Self, the whole world becomes deluded — 'this is the Self, this is not the Self,' 'possessing such properties, not possessing such properties,' 'agent, non-agent,' 'pure, impure,' 'bound, liberated,' 'stationary, gone, come,' 'exists, does not exist' — by such alternatives. Therefore, being the same, it moves through both worlds — the one already attained and the one yet to be attained, this world and the other world — by hundreds of connected, continuous successions of abandoning the acquired aggregate of body, senses and the rest and taking up another, moving in due order. It is precisely the resemblance of the intellect that is the cause of transmigration between both worlds, not the Self by itself — in that connection, the resemblance of the name-and-form adjunct, which is the occasion of delusion, is itself the cause, not the Self by itself — this very point is being stated. Since he, being the same, transmigrates through both worlds in due order — that this is directly evident is shown thus: because he seems to think — seems to perform the activity of thought, seems to ponder — he, illumining, by the light that is consciousness by nature, the intellect engaged in the activity of thought, remaining fixed, being similar to it and identical with it, seems to think, exactly as light does. Hence there arises the delusion of people, 'it thinks'; but in ultimate reality it does not think. Likewise it seems to tremble, seems to move about excessively; because, it being the illuminator precisely of those organs beginning with the intellect and of the vital airs while they are in motion, it appears similar to them, it thus seems to tremble; but in ultimate reality that light of the Self does not have the property of movement. How, again, is this understood — that it is precisely the delusion of being identical with that which is the cause of transmigration between both worlds and the like, not the Self by itself? To demonstrate the meaning of this, a reason is now taught. That Self — because, having become dream, he, being identical with whatever intellect he is joined to — whatever that intellect becomes, he too seems to become; therefore, when the intellect assumes the state of sleep, then he too assumes the corresponding activity; when the intellect is about to awaken, then he too. Hence it is said: 'Having become dream,' illumining his own corresponding activity, having taken the form of the intellect's sleep-modification, he transcends — that is, having gone past, he passes — this world characterized by waking transactions, constituted of the effect-and-cause aggregate, the seat of worldly and scriptural dealing, by his own separate light as Self; illumining the modification of the intellect proper to the attainment of dream, he remains established. Therefore he is, of his own nature, self-luminous; he is utterly pure, devoid of agent, action, instrument and result in ultimate reality; but it is precisely the resemblance of the intellect that is the cause of the delusion of transacting such as movement between both worlds. 'The forms of death' — death is action, ignorance and the like; it has no other form of its own; the very effects and causes are its forms; therefore he transcends those forms of death, the receptacles of action and its fruit.