Women on the path: Maitreyi

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