8. aitareya Upanishad:
The taittirIya Upanishad concludes with the ecstatic Vedic chant (sung by realized Sages) that “I am food; I am the eater of the food.” Here, “food” is not merely what is eaten from a plate. Whatever is consumed is food. The four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—are served to us on the vast platter of space. We consume them directly or in the countless forms they assume.
Our consumption is not merely through the mouth. The mind also feeds continuously. From birth until death it devours impressions, memories, relationships, possessions, emotions, hopes, fears, and ideas about this world and even other worlds. All these constitute food for the mind.
Thus, “food” in the mantra stands for the entire field of experience. The eater is the individual (jīva); the eaten is the world. In Vedāntic language, the eater is the knower and the food is the known. Everything cognized belongs to the world of names and forms.
The Upaniṣhad therefore ends by bringing together the knower and the known and declaring that both are included in “I.” Hence the sage proclaims, “I am the world and I am the individual.”
When both the individual and the world dissolve into “I,” no boundary remains between them. This naturally raises the crucial question: Who or what is this “I”?
The answer is astonishing. “I” is neither the knower nor the known. It is pure Knowingness (jñāna), the illuminating principle, because of which both knower and the known appear.
[Note: The Sanskrit word jñāna is often translated as “knowledge” or “awareness.” I prefer the term Knowingness because the English word knowledge usually refers to accumulated information or understanding gained through experience or study. In Vedānta, however, jñāna does not denote stored information but the fundamental capacity “to know,” analogous to the sensing ability of a sensor rather than the data it records. This distinction is central to Advaita.]
At first glance this appears paradoxical. Can Knowingness exist independently? Does it not require both a knower and something known?
Ordinarily we think so. A relation seems impossible without the two entities it relates. Just as hunger presupposes someone who is hungry and something edible, Knowingness appears to presuppose both knower and known.
The aitareya Upaniṣad offers a radically different answer. (The word aitareya literally means “other,” suggesting a different standpoint). It declares that the individual and the world do not exist independently; both depend upon Knowingness. Knowingness alone is self-existent.
Light offers a helpful analogy. Light does not depend on the seer or the objects seen. Rather, both become visible because of light. Whether people are born or die, whether events occur or cease, light remains unaffected. It is not created by those who see through it.
Likewise, Knowingness is illumination, and the Self is the illuminator. Without that illumination even sunlight could ever be known, nor could the world be revealed in sunlight.
At this stage it is useful to distinguish between Infinite Knowingness and our ordinary knowing.
Our everyday knowing is limited and relational. Consider a book lying before us. Does the book exist because we see it, or do we see it because it exists? Each appears dependent upon the other. The same mutual dependence exists between the individual and the world. As long as our knowing is relative, such questions remain unresolved.
Infinite Knowingness, however, is entirely different. It is independent, indivisible, and ever-present. It is Absolute Consciousness, called prajñāna in Sanskrit.
From the aitareya Upanishad, we get the second mahAvAkya.
प्रज्ञानं ब्रह्म ॥ – – – Mantra 3.5.3, aitareya Upaniṣad
(Meaning: Absolute Knowing is brahman).
This is not the ordinary consciousness familiar to us. All living beings—and indeed, according to Vedānta, even plants and minerals are conscious, though it remains latent in some forms. Yet our individual consciousness is limited. We do not even know our own birth or death, though both define our embodied existence.
Without a world there is nothing to perceive; without the perceiver the appearance of the world is meaningless. Both derive their seeming existence from the same underlying Reality. Consciousness is that underlying Reality.
Consciousness, wearing the individual as one costume, appears as the knower. Wearing the world as another costume, It appears as the known. Thus the one Infinite Knowingness alone shines as both subject and object, pervading the living and the non-living alike. That Infinite Knowingness is prajñAna.
But how are we to be sure that Absolute Consciousness (prajñAna) truly exists? Is it merely a philosophical concept, or is it an actuality?
Let us begin with our own experience.
Where is the knowingness within us located? We naturally feel that it pervades the entire body. We say, “I know my toes,” just as we say, “I know my head.” Who is this “I” that knows the whole body? Does this knowingness itself have any form? Clearly, it does not.
It is therefore easy to accept that the formless “I” permeates the entire body, even though the body has a definite form. Yet we hesitate to extend this understanding further. We assume that the body belongs to the knower, whereas everything outside falls under the known.
But even within the body, every part—the toes, hands, head, and every organ—is itself an object of knowledge. None of these knows itself. They are all known. Knowingness alone is that by which they are known.
Let us therefore distinguish, at least conceptually, Knowingness from the body. Its essential nature is simply “to know,” and it has no form of its own. Anything that is truly formless cannot possess boundaries. Without boundaries there is nothing to limit its presence. Knowingness, considered in itself, is therefore not confined to the body. In its pure nature, it is unbound. This is what Vedānta calls Absolute Consciousness (prajñAna).
We readily observe that no object knows itself. A chair does not know itself. A tree does not know itself. Even the body does not know itself. Whatever is known is an object. What, then, knows all these objects? The answer can only be: Knowingness.
Consider the simple act of seeing a tree. We do not see merely a leaf, a branch, or the trunk in isolation. The tree is apprehended as a single whole. In Vedāntic language, the known has entered the field of Knowingness.
This observation has an important implication. The known can appear only within Knowingness; it cannot contain Knowingness. Thus the knower is never enclosed by the known. Every finite object is accommodated within the limitless field of Knowingness, while Knowingness itself remains unrestricted by any object.
For this reason, Knowingness does not end with the perception of one tree. It effortlessly embraces mountains, oceans, the sun, the moon, the stars, and entire galaxies. Every object that appears becomes its “food,” recalling the declaration of the taittirIya Upanishad: “I am food; I am the eater.”
Thus, our own experience points toward an extraordinary truth. Knowingness itself is never encountered as finite. Though individual acts of knowing are limited, the field in which everything is known reveals no boundary. In this way, the limitless nature of Knowingness provides experiential support for the Upaniṣhadic teaching of prajñAna, the Infinite Consciousness
(To Continue … Part 31 (aita 2))