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Self is the key to understanding the Hindu ethos

As against the Vedas who teach procedures and means to perpetuate your physical existence the Upanishads harp on metaphysics and teach ways and means to perpetuate your Aatma or the ethereal presence.

Strangely, the line of arguments in Upanishads mostly starts from the real and in the process jumps to ethereal in the end, leaving a mumuxu like me rather flabbergasted. I take an example from the most revered of all Upanishads, the Brahadaranyaka Upanishad.

As the name of the Upanishad (Brahad means big or extensive) suggests, it is the biggest amongst the 108 upanishads and it covers an array of topics and ethical issues. In one of the chapters, (pronounced Yagyavalkya) ‘Yajnavalkya-Maitreyi dialogue’ sage Yajnavalkya talks to his loving and intelligent wife Maitreyi to enlighten her about the quintessence of life.

Sage Yajnavalkya, so the story goes, had two wives --- Maitreyi and Katyayani. One day Yajnavalkya told his loving and intelligent wife Maitreyi that he has decided to renounce his mundane household life and move to jungles to meditate and to become a hermit, that is, a sanyasi.

Said he to Maitreyi : Now that I am quitting this household, I would like to divide my worldly/material wealth between you and Katyayani so that you two could live separately, without mutual pinpricks. Being close to Maitreyi he asks her to name the things she would love to have.

Maitreyi says : Even if I get all the riches in this world will it make me immortal?

Yajnavalkya replied : No, the wealth will only make you lead a wealthy life without your desired immortality. Wealth cannot ensure immortality.

Maitreyi said : What’s the use of having the riches then if they cannot promise immortality. Kindly tell me the means by which I could surely become immortal. 

And so began Yajnavalkya’s famous discourse on Self, the Aatma.
Said he : It’s not for the sake of husband that the wife loves her husband. It’s essentially for her own self, for her own benefit, that she desires her husband. Similarly the wife is dear to her husband not for the sake of wife, but for the sake of husband himself, for the benefit of his own self.
The sons are dear to the parents not for the sake of sons, but for the sake of parents’ own self.
Nor the wealth is dear to us for the sake of wealth, but for the sake of our own self.
It’s not for the sake of a Brahmana (a priest) that the Brahma (the universal, impersonal, neutral, absolute, all-pervasive, timeless divinity) is dear to us. We adore Brahma for our own self.
This world is verily dear to us, not for the sake of this world, but for the sake of our own self.
The gods are dear to me not the sake of the gods, but for the sake of my own self.
The people around us are dear to me not for the sake of people, but for the sake of, benefit of, my own self.
Everything is dear to me not for the sake the things, but for the sake of, benefit of, myself.

Dear Maitreyi, the Self should be realised, should be heard, be meditated upon; through hearing, through reflection of the Self. For by the realisation of the Self, all is known.

The readers are advised to closely follow the line of argument that intelligent Yajnavalkya wants Maitreyi to follow. In a queer twist, Yajnavalkya takes a giant leap.

From all individual/particular and multiple ‘selfs’ Yajnavalkya jumps to  the universal, supreme, impersonal, neutral, absolute, all-pervasive, timeless divinity – the Self, the Aatma. Something akin to ‘The One’ of the Greek philosopher Plotinus. Having done so Yajnavalkya leads us to establish the roots of Advaita (monism) philosophy.
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