The Great Transformation  by Karen Armstrong [emphases and notes are mine. GCS] 125 Ch 4 KNOWLEDGE (C. 700 to 60O BCE) Vedic religion came of age in the scriptures known as the Upanishads, also called the Vedanta, "the end of the Vedas." The ancient Vedic religion had been inspired by ceaseless migration and the appropriation of new territory. It had emerged from a world of violent conflict. In the Upanishads, a group of mystics embarked on the peaceful conquest of inner space. This marked a major step forward in religious history. External ritual was replaced by rigorous introspection, and yet this was regarded not as an innovation but as the fulfillment of ancient tradition. The thirteen classical Upanishads, produced between the seventh and second centuries, were accorded the same status as the Rig Veda. They too were shruti, "revealed," regarded as scripture par excellence. They are not easy to interpret, but they have been more influential in shaping Hindu spirituality than any other part of the Vedic corpus. The two earliest Upanishads emerged seamlessly from the world of the Brahmanas. Like the Aranyakas, or Forest Texts, they were esoteric sections added onto the Brahmana commentaries of the different priestly schools. The first of the Upanishads actually called itself an Aranyaka. The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad is the "Great Forest Text" of the White Yajur Veda School. It opened with a discussion of the Vedic horse sacrifice, one of the most important of the royal ceremonies and the speciality of the White Yajur Veda. The author of the Upanishad pointed out bandhus ("connections") in the traditional way, identifying various parts of the horse with the natural world. The stallion's head was the dawn, his eyes were the sun, and his breath was the wind. But in the Upanishad, the ritual could be performed and completed mentally. It had ceased to be linked with a physical, external sacrifice but took place entirely in the mind of the sage (rishi). 126 The Chandogya Upanishad was the Vedantic text of the Udgatr priests who were responsible for the chant, and it began appropriately with a meditation on the sacred syllable "Om," with which the Udgatr priest began each hymn. Sound had always been divine in India; it was the primal reality, because, it was said, everything else derived from it. Now, the Chandogya Upanishad made this single syllable stand for all sound and for the entire cosmos. Om was the essence of everything that existed - of the sun, moon, and stars. It was the brahman in form of sound, the vital power that held everything together: "As all leaves are held together by a stalk, so all speech is held together by Om. Verily, the whole world is nothing but "Om."1 But the chant was not merely a transcendent reality external to the priest who intoned it. It was also one with the human body, with the atman, with breath, speech, ear, eye, and mind. The Chandogya Upanishad directed the attention of the audience back to the inner self. When a priest intoned this sacred syllable with these "connections" firmly in his mind, he attained the goal of the spiritual quest. Because Om was the brahman, it was "the immortal and the fearless."' A person who chanted this immortal and fearless sound while contemplating these bandhus would himself become immortal and free from fear. [liberated, saved] This brings us to the heart of the Upanishadic vision. The focus was no longer on the external performance of a rite, but on its interior significance. It was not sufficient simply to establish the connections (bandhus) between the ritual and the cosmos; you had to know what you were doing, and this knowledge would take you to the brahman, the ground of being. The worshiper no longer directed his attention to devas outside himself, he turned within, "for in reality each of these gods is his own creation, for he himself is all these gods."3 The focus of the Upanishads was the atman, the self, which was identical with the brahman. If the sage could discover the inner heart of his own being, he would automatically enter into the ultimate reality and liberate himself from the terror of mortality. To an outsider, this sounds frankly incredible-a series of abstract statements that are impossible to verify. And indeed, it is very difficult to follow the teachings of the Upanishads.4 The sages did not give us rational demonstrations of their ideas. The texts have no system and the logic frequently seems bizarre. Instead of reasoned arguments, we have accounts of experiences and visions, aphorisms and riddles that are hard to penetrate. Certain phrases recur that clearly bear a weight of meaning that the Western reader cannot easily share. "This self is the brahman" - Ayam atma brahman - the sage tells us. "That is the teaching."5 The Chandogya is even 127 more elliptical: "That you are!" the sage tells his son. `Tat team asi' These are the "great sayings" (maha-vak)as), but it is hard to see why we should accept them. Instead of developing an argument systematically, the sages often presented their audience with a string of apparently unrelated insights. Sometimes they preferred to give negative information, telling us what was not the case. Thus Yajnavalkya, the most important rishi in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, refused to define what he meant by atman: About this self [atman], one can only say "not ... not" [neti ... net:]. He is ungraspable, for he cannot be grasped. He is undecaying, for he is not subject to decay. He has nothing sticking to him, for he does not stick to anything. He is not bound; yet he neither trembles in fear nor suffers injury.' Often a debate ends in one of the contestants falling silent, unable to proceed, and this gives us a clue. The sages are conducting a brahmodya, the contest in which the competitors tried to formulate the mystery of the brahman. The competition had always ended in silence, indicating that the reality lay beyond the grasp of speech and concepts. The "great sayings" are not accessible to normal, secular modes of thought. They do not proceed from logic or sense perception, but can be apprehended only after a long period of training, meditation, and cultivating a habit of inwardness that transforms our way of looking at ourselves and the world. A reader who has not adopted the Upanishadic method will not be able to comprehend its conclusions. The word "Upanishad" meant "to sit down near to." This was an esoteric knowledge imparted by mystically inclined sages to a few spiritually gifted pupils who sat at their feet. It was not for everybody. Most Aryans continued to worship and sacrifice in the traditional manner, since they lacked either the talent or the desire to undertake this long and arduous quest. The sages were exploring new ways of being religious. In penetrating the uncharted world of the psyche, they were pioneers, and only a talented few would be able to accompany them. But life was changing, and this meant that some people needed to find a spirituality to meet their altered circumstances. The first Upanishads were set in a society that was at the very beginning of the process of urbanization! There is little agricultural imagery in these texts, but many references to weaving, pottery, and metallurgy. People were traveling long distances to consult these sages, which meant that transport was improving. Many of the debates took place in the court of a raja. Life was becoming more settled, and some had 128 more leisure for contemplation. The Brhadaranyaka was almost certainly composed in the kingdom of Videha, a frontier state on the most easterly point of Aryan expansion in the seventh century.9 Videha was scorned as an unsophisticated, newfangled place by the Brahmins in the "Land of the Arya" to the west, but there was a great admixture of peoples in these eastern territories, including Indo-Aryan settlers from earlier waves of migration, tribes from Iran (later known as the Malla, Vajji, and Sakya), as well as peoples who were indigenous to India. These new encounters were intellectually stimulating. The renouncers were also generating fresh ideas, as they experimented with their ascetic lifestyle. Certainly the two earliest Upanishads both reflect this intense intellectual and spiritual excitement. Neither the Brhadaranyaka nor the Chandogya was written by a single author; they were anthologies of separate texts that were put together later by an editor. Authors and editors alike all drew upon a common stock of anecdotes and ideas circulating in the courts and villages. People thought nothing of traveling from Gandhara to Videha, which were a thousand miles apart, to consult one of the distinguished teachers of the day: Sandiliya, who speculated about the nature of the atman; Janaka, king of Videha; Pravahna Jaivali, king of KuruPanchala; Ajatashatru, king of Kashi; and Sanatkumara, who was famous for his lifelong celibacy." The new ideas may originally have been developed by Brahmin priests, but kshatriyas and kings also took part in the debates and discussions, as did women - notably Gargi Vacaknavi and Maitreyi,Yajnavalkya's wife. Both women seem to have been accepted by the other contestants in the brahmodya, and their contributions were included by the editors as a matter of course. But the two most important rishis in the early Upanishads were Yajnavalkya of Videha and Uddalaka Aruni, a famous teacher of the Kuru-Panchala region, both of whom were active in the second half of the seventh century." Yajnavalkya was the personal philosopher of King Janaka of Videha, who was himself a leading exponent of the new spirituality. Like all the Upanishadic sages,Yajnavalkya was convinced that there was, as it were, an immortal spark at the core of the human person, which participated in - was of the same nature as - the immortal brahman that sustained and gave life to the entire cosmos. This was a discovery of immense importance and it would become a central insight in every major religious tradition. The ultimate reality was an immanent presence in every single human being. It could, therefore, be discovered in the depths of the self, the atman. The Brahmanas had already concluded that the core of the human beingvariously identified as breath, water, or fire-was identical to the sacrifice, and that the power at the heart of the sacrifice was brahman, the essence of everything that existed. Yajnavalkya and the other Upanishadic sages developed this concept and freed it from external ritual. The atman was no longer simply the breath, which gave life to the human being, but that which inhaled and exhaled; it was the agent behind all the senses and was, therefore, beyond description. "You can't see the Seer who does the seeing," Yajnavalkya explained. "You can't hear the Hearer who does the hearing; you can't think with the Thinker who does the thinking; and you can't perceive the Perceiver who does the perceiving. The Self within the All [brahman] is this atman of yours."" For the first time, human beings were systematically making themselves aware of the deeper layers of human consciousness. By disciplined introspection, the sages of the Axial Age were awakening to the vast reaches of selfhood that lay beneath the surface of their minds. They were becoming fully "self-conscious." Because the self was identical with the immortal, unchangeable brahman, it was also "beyond hunger and thirst, sorrow and delusion, old age and death."" It was,Yajnavalkya explained to his wife, Maitreyi, "imperishable ... indestructible." But like the brahman itself, it was transcendent, "ungraspable." It was only possible to define or comprehend something when there was duality. A person can see, taste, or smell something that is separate and apart from him- or herself. But when "the whole [brahman] has become a person's very self [atman], then who is there for him to see and by what means? Who is there for me to think of and by what means?" 14 It was impossible to perceive the perceiver within oneself. So you could only say neti ... neti ("not this"). The sage affirmed the existence of the atman while at the same time denying that it bore any similarity to anything known by the senses. Yet the goal of the new spirituality was knowledge of the unknowable atman. How could this be achieved? Yajnavalkya did not impart factual information, but used the traditional form of the brahmodya debate to show his interlocutor that when he considered brahman or atman, he had come to the end of what the ordinary thought processes could usefully do. It was a technique similar to the dialectic method developed later by Socrates. By eliminating his opponent's inadequate definitions of the atman, taking them apart one after the other, Yajnavalkya gradually led him or her from the consideration of external phenomena to an apprehension of the more elusive realities of the internal world. When, for example, King Janaka listed what other Brahmins had told him about the atman-that it was speech, breath, the eye, the wind, or the heartYajnavalkya insisted that these answers were only half true." The reality 131 they were looking for lay at the base of these phenomena, supporting them like the foundations of a house. They could not define but only participate in this more fundamental reality, live in it, as in a home. By systematically removing layer after layer of superficial knowledge,Yajnavalkya led his disciples to perceive everyday realities as manifestations of the absolute and to see that the core of the self was not the individual "I" that ruled our daily lives, hemmed in as it was with physical needs, desires, and fears, but an ultimate reality in its own right. They must undertake a long, slow quest for self-discovery. This was one of the clearest expressions of a fundamental principle of the Axial Age. Enlightened persons would discover within themselves the means of rising above the world; they would experience transcendence by plumbing the mysteries of their own nature - not simply by taking part in magical rituals. Instead of discussing the external ceremonies of the cult, as the ritual reformers had done,Yajnavalkya had begun to explore the psychological makeup of the human being in an attempt to locate the true self, the inner person that controlled and animated the "I" of our mundane experience. We had to go beyond this "I" and discover modes of being that were different from our normal consciousness, which was dominated by sense perception, common sense, and rational thought. Yajnavalkya taught his disciples to consider their dreaming state, when they were no longer bound by space or time. In our dreams, we take the external world apart and create our own joys, pleasures, and delights. We become creators like Prajapati, bringing pools, wagons, roads, and teams of oxen into existence, and building up a whole new world by means of "the inner light that is in our heart.'"' In dreams, we become aware of a freer and higher self, since, for a short time, we are released from the constraints of the body. We also have nightmares, however, when we become acutely aware of our pain, fear, and desire. But in deep sleep, which is dreamless, the self is liberated from even these mental appearances of activity. In deep sleep, a person is "beyond fear." Deep sleep, Yajnavalkya believed, was not oblivion, but a state of unified consciousness. He compared it to the experience of sexual intercourse, when "a man embraced by a woman he loves is oblivious to everything within or without." He loses all sense of duality: "There isn't a second reality there that he could see as something distinct and separate from him.."I' Conscious only of oneness, the self experiences ananda, the "bliss" of brahman. [ultimate 'joy'] But the temporary release that we experience in sleep or orgasm is only a foretaste of the permanent liberation that is the goal of the spiritual quest, an experience of complete freedom and serenity. [salv.] This enlightened 132 state comes when the sage experiences the atman. At one with the inner core of his being, he "becomes calm, composed, cool, patient and collected," because he is in the world of the brahman. Suffused by the immortal, fearless brahman, he is "free from evil, free from stain, free from doubt." Because he knows the "immense and unborn self, unaging, undying, immortal and free from fear," he knows the brahman and is himself released from terror and anxiety." [salv.] ['knowledge', 'gnosis', does not lead to salvation, it is salvation] Thus knowledge of the self was an experience of pure bliss, an ekstasis. This knowledge lay beyond concepts and did not depend upon logical deduction. It was rather an awareness of an "inner light within the heart," a direct and immediate intuition, beyond any ordinary joy. This "knowledge" transformed the individual. [cf Wilber: A spirituality that transforms] It could be attained only after a long training in inwardness, which the aspirants could achieve by practicing Yajnavalkya's dialectical method: systematically dismantling normal habits of thought; cultivating an awareness of their interior world, their dreams, and subconscious states; and by constantly reminding themselves that the knowledge they sought was beyond words and of an entirely different order from their secular thoughts and experiences. Yajnavalkya could not impart this knowledge, as if it were ordinary, factual information. He could only teach the method that enabled his disciples to arrive at this state. [ !! ] Yajnavalkya believed that a person who knows thus-who had realized his or her identity with brahman-would go to brahman at death, taking their "knowledge" with them. In the traditional Vedic ritual, a person constructed the self that would survive in the world of the gods by means of his liturgical action (karma). But for Yajnavalkya, the creation of an immortal self was not achieved by external rites, but by this carefully acquired knowledge. The ritualists had believed that the self was built by accumulating a stock of perfectly executed sacrifices, but Yajnavalkya was convinced that the eternal self was conditioned by all our actions and experiences. "What a man turns out to be depends on how he acts and on how he conducts himself. If his actions are good, he will turn into something good. If his actions are bad, he turns into something bad." Yajnavalkya was not simply talking about our external deeds. Our mental activities, such as our impulses of desire and feelings of attachment, were also crucial. After his death, a man whose desires were fixed on the things of this world would return to earth, after a brief stay in heaven. His mind and character still clung to the mundane, and so he would be born again to endure a new life here below, "back to this world, back to action." But a man who sought only his immortal self, and was not attached to this 133 world, belonged to the brahman: "A man who does not desire - who is without desires, who is freed from desires, whose desires are fulfilled, whose only desire is his self - his vital functions do not depart. Brahman he is, and to brahman he goes."'9 He would never again return to this life of pain and mortality. This is the first time we hear of the doctrine of "action" (karma), which was about to become crucial to Indian spirituality. InYajnavalkya's time, however, it was a new and controversial idea. When his Brahmin friend Artabhaga askedYajnavalkya what happened to a person after death, he replied, "We cannot talk about this in public. Take my hand, Artabhaga, let's go and discuss this in private.."" The new doctrine of karma seemed subversive. Sacrifice was supposed to ensure permanent residence in heaven, but some people were losing faith in the efficacy of ritual. Yajnavalkya and the other Upanishadic sages were beginning to believe that, however many perfectly executed sacrifices he performed, a person might have to return to this world of pain and death again and again. He would not only have to undergo a traumatic death once, but would have to endure sickness, old age, and mortality repeatedly, with no hope of final release. He would be liberated from this ceaseless cycle (samsara) of rebirth and redeath only by the ecstatic knowledge of the self, [salv.] which would free him of the desire for ephemeral things here below But to become free of desire and attachment is extremely difficult. We instinctively cling to this life and to our personal survival. We think that our individuality is worth preserving, but, the sages insisted, this is an illusion. Once a person became aware that his or her self was identical with the brahman, which contained the whole universe, it became crystal clear that there was nothing to be gained by hanging on to this present, limited existence. Some of the sages were convinced that the best way to attain this liberating knowledge was to become a renouncer, giving up worldly gain, and eliminating desire by a life of austerity. [salv.] [these are my notes made while reading: Jesus was teaching this practical form of 'salvation' by showing what is essential. Christianity lost the essence and made a 'system' out of it] [NOTE: 'salvation' = liberation from what prevents the experience of participating in the "divine", which was so essential (for the ancient people) for them to be truly human. Cf HG 5 - 'salvation' is the total realization of who we are as humans. Cf TGT 130ff also THB - "rituals" - karma have as purpose to make one spiritual, to shape one's spirituality, this vs "seeking the Self" ib 132-3 - To be 'saved', one has to become a "renouncer", not just of the world, but also of 'rituals'/karma.] This was not yet considered obligatory, but eventuallyYajnavalkya embraced the life of a "striver" (shramana), leaving his wife, departing from the court, and going into "homelessness" in the forest." But Uddalaka Aruni, one of the most important sages of the Chandogya Upanishad, remained a Brahmin householder in the region of KuruPanchala all his life. This Upanishad ended by affirming the value of a devout existence in the world. Once a householder had completed his period of study as a brahmacarin, he must return home and put into practice everything that he had learned from his teacher. He must chant the sacred Vedas, bring up his children, meditate, and practice ahimsa, refrain- 134 ing from violence and acting with kindness to others." Someone who lives in this way all his life," the text concludes, "attains the world of brahman, and he does not return [to this world] again."" [salv.] A gentle, kindly man, Uddalaka agreed in essentials withYajnavalkya. He saw brahman, the ultimate reality, as identical with the atman of a human being, taught the new doctrine of karma, and meditated on the experience of sleep as a foretaste of enlightenment. LikeYajnavalkya, he was convinced that liberation (moksha) from the painful cycle of death and rebirth was the goal of the spiritual life, and that it could not be achieved by external ritual practice, but only by the quest for interior knowledge. [salv.] In chapter six of the Chandogya, we see Uddalaka initiating his son Shvetaketu into the esoteric lore of the new spirituality, a precious glimpse of the way this teaching was transmitted. Shvetaketu would eventually become an important sage in his own right, but in this chapter he had only just finished his twelve-year stint as a brahmacarin and had returned home, "swell-headed and arrogant," thinking that he knew everything there was to know about Vedic life.23 Uddalaka patiently undermined this misplaced confidence, teaching his son a different way of perceiving the world, himself, and the ultimate. He began by explaining that the identity of any object was inseparable from the material of which it was madeclay, copper, or iron. The same was true of the universe, which had originally consisted of being itself - absolute, undivided simplicity: "One only, without a second."24 Like Prajapati, the One propagated itself by means of heat (tapas), which eventually brought forth, from itself, the entire range of creatures. In this way, the One became the origin, the essence, and therefore, the true self of every single creature: "The finest essence here - That constitutes the self of this whole world," Uddalaka explained, again and again. "That is the truth; That is the self [atman]. And you are That, Shvetaketu."ZS These sentences run like a refrain through the whole chapter, reinforcing the central teaching. Shvetaketu was brahman, the impersonal essence of the universe, which Uddalaka, like other sages, refers to as the neutral, elliptical [marked by deliberate obscurity of style or expression] "that." But metaphysical instruction alone would not suffice. Shvetaketu had to appropriate this knowledge internally, make it his own, and fuse these external teachings with his personal mental landscape. He had, as later thinkers would put it, to "realize" them, make them a reality in his own life, and Uddalaka had to act as a midwife, slowly and carefully bringing this new insight to birth within his son. [ !! ] This was not a wholly academic, abstract education. Shvetaketu had not only to listen to his father's metaphysical explanations, but to perform tasks that made him look at the 135 world in a different way. Uddalaka drew upon everyday examples, and made Shvetaketu take an active part in a series of experiments. In the most famous of these, he told his son to leave a chunk of salt in a beaker of water overnight. The next day, the lump had completely dissolved, but when his father made him take a sip from various parts of the cup, asking each time how it tasted, Shvetaketu had to reply: "Salty." The salt was still there, in every part of the beaker. "You, of course, did not see it there, son, yet it was always right there." So too was the invisible brahman, essence and self of the whole world. "And you are that, Shvetaketu."26 Like the salt, the brahman could not be seen, but it could be experienced. It was manifest in every single living thing. It was the subtle essence in the banyan seed, from which a great tree grows, yet when Shvetaketu dissected the seed, he could not see anything. The brahman, Uddalaka explained, was the sap that was in every part of the tree and gave it life.27 It was, therefore, the atman of the tree, as it was the atman of every single human being; all things shared the same essence. But most people did not understand this. They imagined that they were special and unique, different from every other being on the face of the earth. Instead of appreciating the deepest truth about themselves, they clung to those particularities that, they thought, made them so precious and interesting. But in reality, these distinguishing characteristics were no more durable or significant than rivers that flowed into the same sea. Once they had merged, they became "just the ocean" and did not stridently assert their individuality, crying, "I am that river,„ "I am this river." "In exactly the same way, son, Uddalaka persisted, "when all these creatures reach the existent, they are not aware that `we are reaching the existent.' " They no longer cling to their individuality. Whether they were tigers, wolves, lions, or gnats, "they all merge into that," because that is what they have always been, and they can only ever be that. To cling to the mundane self was, therefore, a delusion that would lead inescapably to pain and confusion. People could escape this only by acquiring the deep, liberating knowledge that the brahman was their atman, the truest thing about them." But this knowledge was not easy to acquire. How could you find the unknowable atman? The atman was not what Western people call the "soul" or the psyche.29 The Upanishads did not separate body from spirit, but saw human beings as a composite whole. Uddalaka made his son fast for fifteen days, allowing him to drink as much water as he liked. At the end of this, Shvetaketu was so weak and malnourished that he could no 136 longer recite the Vedic texts that he had mastered so competently with his guru. He had learned that the mind was not pure intellect but was also 136 "made up of food, of breath, of water, and speech, and heat. "3O The atman was physical and spiritual; it was immanent in the heart and in the body, the ultimate, immutable, inner core of all things, material and ephemeral. It could not be identified with or compared to any single phenomenon. It was "no thing," and yet it was the deepest truth of everything." It could be discovered only within the human being, after a long, disciplined effort. It took years to open up the depths of the self, through silence and a spiritual discipline that led the aspirant to realize the futility of desiring things that were only transient, and that it was stupid to prize individual qualities that were of no more importance than the grains of pollen that eventually made up a pot of honey." The pupil must work patiently with a guru, who would help him to see what was really there, what was really important. The early Upanishads were not rebelling against the old Vedic ritualism so much as moving beyond it. [That's what O'm was trying to teach!] Unless a sage learned to look through the external rites to their inner meaning, he would never become aware of the absolute reality of brahman at their core. [salv.] The Chandogya said that priests who chanted the syllable Om mindlessly and mechanically were like dogs baying for food." The gods had faded into the background. In these early Upanishads, Prajapati, the personalized expression of brahman, was no longer the lofty creator god but had become an ordinary guru, who taught his pupils that they must not regard him - Prajapati - as the highest reality, but seek their own atman: "The self that is free from evils, free from old age and death, free from sorrow, free from hunger and thirst," he told them, "that is the self that you should try to discover."34 Devas and asuras also had to learn this important truth and had undergone exactly the same arduous training in inwardness as human beings. The Chandogya tells a story about the moment when devas and asuras first heard about the atman. "Come," they said to one another, "let us discover that self by discovering which one obtains all the worlds and all one's desires are fulfilled." 35 So Indra, representing his devas, and Virocana, one of the leading asuras, arrived on Prajapati's doorstep as humble Vedic students, carrying wood for their teacher's fire. They studied with Prajapati for thirty-two years but were still no closer to finding the atman. Prajapati told them to dress up in their best clothes and look at their reflections in a pan of water. What did they see? A replica of themselves, beautifully attired and spruced up, they replied. "That is the atman; that is the immortal," Prajapati told them, "that is the one free from fear; that is brahman."36 They left, delighted with themselves, and Virocana took this knowledge back to the asuras. The body was the atman, he told them; a person could 137 win his heart's desire in this life and the next simply by taking care of his physical needs: there was no need for sacrifice or ritual. But before Indra returned to heaven, he stopped in his tracks. Even an elegantly clothed body, he realized, would become old, sick, and eventually die. So he returned to Prajapati, carrying his firewood, and studied for another sixty-nine years, going deeper and deeper into himself. Prajapati told him that the atman was found in the dreaming state, when the self was free from physical constraints, and at first Indra was happy with this explanation. But then he reflected that in sleep a person could feel afraid, fear death, and even weep. So he returned to Prajapati again. This time Prajapati told Indra that he would find the atman in profound, dreamless sleep, when he was "totally collected and serene ... that is the self; that is the immortal; that is the one free from fear; that is brahman. "37 Again, Indra was attracted by this idea, but after a while found it disappointing; in such profound unconsciousness, a person might as well be dead. So he stayed with Prajapati for another five years, until he was ready to hear the truth. Finally Prajapati told Indra that the enlightened person had to learn to look beyond his mind and his body before he could find the inner self that was independent of all his physical and mental functions. The atman was that which enabled a man to smell, to see, to think: The one who is aware: "Let me say this"-that is the self; the faculty of speech enables him to speak. The one who is aware: "Let me listen to this"-that is the self; the faculty of hearing enables him to hear. The one who is aware: "Let me think about this"that is the self; the mind is his divine faculty of sight. This very self rejoices as it perceives with his mind, with that divine sight, these objects of desire found in the world of brahman.38 The story illustrates the long process of self-discovery. The teacher could not simply give his pupil the answers, but could only lead him through the stages of introspection. Just when it seemed that they had got to the root of the matter, the student discovered for himself that this was not the end of his quest, and that he had to go still deeper. Even the mighty Indra took 101 years to discover the atman that gave the gods immortality.39 The sages of the Upanishads were seeking the essence of the personality, and in the course of that process some experienced an ineffable joy and peace. Guru Prajapati called the person who had made this interior journey "the deeply serene one," who "emerges in his own true appearance."4̊ He had somehow come to himself, not by receiving privileged 138 information, but by living differently. The process was just as important as the achievement of the final goal. Somebody who merely reads the text of the Chandogya, however, cannot have this experience. There could be no enlightenment unless the student had actually made the meditation, and gone through the long and difficult journey of introspection. Most important, metaphysical contemplation was only a small part of the initiation. Like a brahmacarin, the Upanishadic student had to live in a humble, self-effacing way, and this was as crucial as the intellectual content of the quest. Indra, a god who never stopped boasting about his exploits, had to gather wood for his teacher, look after his fire, clean Prajapati's house, be chaste, give up warfare, and practice ahimsa. Human sages and gods were discovering a spiritual technology that would work only if people abandoned the aggressively self-assertive ego.