Believe it or not, there was a time in India when women walked the earth freely. Men and women were like twin forks of a compass, equal in every way. When was this, you might ask? Was it British India or the age of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and other reformers? Did Independent India usher in a new dawn for the girl child? Alas, O miserari, was it some dark, dark age, when men lost all sense of balance, truth and self respect, when reason bit the dust? Brace yourself; this was the age of enlightenment: the age when Indian thought reached its zenith, the hallowed time when the Vedas were composed by sages like Vashishta and Yajnavalkya.
Rishi Yajnavalkya, often considered the
greatest seer and thinker of the Vedic age, was the son of Rishi Devarata and a
disciple of his uncle Vaisampayana. He
is credited with writing the Shukla Yajurveda Samhita and the Shatapatha
Brahmana which contains the largest of the Upanishads – the Brihadaranayaka
Upanishad. Legend has it that Devarata
considered Yajnavalkya arrogant and cast him off from his ashram after forcing
him to vomit all the knowledge and the wisdom he had learnt there. Yajnavalkya
obeyed but he vowed that he would never take a human guru again. Yajnavalkya
then went through a period of austere tapasya to propitiate Surya. Lord Surya
was pleased. Yajnavalkya asked Surya to teach him those portions of the Vedas
which were known to no one else. This Surya was most happy to do. He is
supposed to have taken the form of a horse and so the shlokas have a rhythm
like the canter of a horse.
Yajnavalkya, like many other sages of the
time, was both a Rishi and a householder. He was married to a lady called
Katayayani. She was a devout housewife whose world revolved around her home,
hearth, husband and children. It came to pass that there lived in Mithila a
woman with a philosophic bent of mind, a brahmavadini, a seer. She is said to
have composed ten verses of the Rig Veda.
She was a brahmacharini and had received Vedic initiation or ‘Upanayana’,
which at that time was open to both girls and boys. Maitreyi had heard much
about Yajnavalkya and wanted him as her guru. She went to Katayayani and begged
her permission to marry Yajnavalkya so that she could become his disciple and
spiritual companion. Katayayani agreed readily because this aspect of
Yajnavalkya’s personality did not interest her in the least.
Years passed. Rishi Yajnavalkya decided
that the time had come for him to take sanyas. He settled all his affairs and
divided his property equally between Katayayani and Maitreyi so that they
should be well provided for after he left them.
Maitreyi reasoned that if Yajnavalkya was leaving his community, family
and work, it must be for something far greater. A conversation follows between
them which is the heart and soul of the Upanishad. Max Muller translates it
with the lyricism of a poet and the transparent mind of a mystic.
Maitreyi asks Yajnavalkya; “My Lord, if this whole
earth, full of wealth, belonged to me, tell me, should I be immortal by it?”
No,’ replied Yajnavalkya. “Like the life of rich
people will be thy life. But there is no hope of immortality by wealth.”
And Maitreyi said: “Then what is the good of all this
if one day death is to swallow me up, and transience is to overwhelm me,
impermanence of the world is to threaten us and if everything is to be insecure
at the very start, if all that you regard as worthwhile is, after all, going to
be a phantom, because it is not going to assure us as to how long it can be
possessed, how it may not be taken away from us and at what time – if this is
the uncertainty of all existence, what good can accrue to me from this that you
are bestowing on me, as if it is of
great value?”
Yajnavalkya is charmed by Maitreyi’s
profound question. She becomes all the more precious in his eyes. His answer
connects all existence, bliss and thought in the three worlds to the
indestructible, eternal Self. Here is Swami Vivekananda’s translation of
Yajnavalkya’s reply:
“None, O beloved, loves the husband for the husband’s
sake, but it is for the sake of the Self who is in the husband
that the husband is loved; none, O beloved, loves the wife for the wife’s sake,
but it is for the sake of the Self who is in the wife that the wife is loved..
Yajnavalkya traces the roots of all bliss to the Self and
then goes on to link everything - children, wealth, devas, jatis etc to the
Self. Each note of a musical composition is distinct but together each separate
note is an indivisible part of a melody, an organic whole:
‘As all sensations of touch meet
the skin, all tastes meet the tongue...all perception meets the mind, all
knowledge meets the intellect...and all the Vedas meet in one place, speech;
...so does this great Being...rise from these elements and vanish again in
them.’
‘When
there is as it were duality, then I see the other...I perceive the other, I
know the other, but when the Self only is all this...how should he see
another...perceive another...know another? How should he know him by whom he
knows all this?’
“Idam brahma, idam kshatram, ime lokah, ime
devah, imani Bhutani, idam sarvam yada yam atma.”
This Source of Knowledge; this source of
power; all these worlds; all these gods; all these beings – all this is just
the Self. The little ‘self ‘in each
being is an atom of One Universal Self.
If we look for say, the love of a child anywhere else except in the
Self, we lose that love:
“...Whosoever looks for anything elsewhere
than in the Self is abandoned by everything.” Duality is a mirage. To think
that I see or perceive another is a delusion and ultimately leads to
grief. Realty is one and indivisible.
Maitreyi is confused and afraid. Is there
no individuality? Does she have no separate existence, no unique identity? Is there no God? We think of God as someone
up there in heaven above the clouds, i.e. as a being with clearly defined
attributes confined to a specific, if unknown space. Sri Rama is the prince of Ayodhya. He carries
a bow and is ‘Maryada Purshottam.’ Sri Krishna plays the flute in Vrindavan; He
is Hari, the great magnet that attracts
all beings to Himself, the fountainhead of wisdom in the Geeta. Each avatar has a ‘lila’. The moment you
speak of ‘Self,’ you must turn inwards to the deepest recesses of your own self
and that is frightening. ‘I’ am not, and you don’t exist either. That truly hideous guy I can barely tolerate
is me. There is just One Existence – the Self. As we have seen, the question
then is: How can I know that by which everything is known? How do I see the
perceiver? How do I reach the incomprehensible, eternal, unattached, unfettered
Self? Why am I blind to the heart of my being?
Here is Swami Vivekananda’s translation of
Yajnavalkya’s reply:
“This Self...is to be heard, reasoned about and
meditated upon. O my Maitreyi, when that Self has been seen, when that Self has
been realized, then all this becomes known...As to all water, the goal is the
ocean, as a morsel of salt put into the sea water melts away and we cannot take
it back, even so, Maitreyi, is this Universal Being eternally infinite...The
whole universe rises in Him and goes back to Him.
This is the ultimate statement of Advaita
philosophy, of monism, its ‘crest jewel’ or ‘chuda mani.’ Everything that is,
is God. Nothing exists apart from Him. We live and move and have our being in
Him. The moment we understand and live this truth, mortal becomes immortal and
we are free.
Yajnavalkya leaves his home and nothing
more is heard of Maitreyi. The last words have been uttered and understood. For
every sincere seeker, this is the path to freedom.
Pic: Gajendranath Tagore
Pic: Gajendranath Tagore
