Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 1.djvu/222

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
108
KHÂNDOGYA-UPANISHAD.


merged in his mind, his mind in breath, breath in heat (fire), heat in the Highest Being (devatâ), he knows them.

2. 'But when his speech is merged in his mind, his mind in breath, breath in heat (fire), heat in the Highest Being, then he knows them not.

'That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it.'

'Please, Sir, inform me still more,' said the son.

'Be it so, my child,' the father replied.


Sixteenth Khanda[1]

1. 'My child, they bring a man hither whom they have taken by the hand, and they say: "He has taken something, he has committed a theft." (When


    know, return again to a new form of existence. It is important to observe that the commentator denies that he who knows, passes at his death through the artery of the head to the sun, and then to the Sat. He holds that with him who knows there is no further cause for delay, and that as soon as he dies, he returns to the Sat.

  1. The next question is: Why does he who knows, on obtaining the Sat, not return, while he who does not know, though obtaining the Sat in death, returns? An illustration is chosen which is intended to show how knowledge produces a material effect. The belief in the efficacy of ordeals must have existed at the time, and appealing to that belief, the teacher says that the man who knows himself guilty, is really burnt by the heated iron, while the man who knows himself innocent, is not. In the same manner the man who knows his Self to be the true Self, on approaching after death the true Self, is not repelled and sent back into a new existence, while he who does not know, is sent back into a new round of births and deaths. The man who tells a falsehood about himself, loses his true Self and is burnt; the man who has a false conception about his Self, loses likewise his true Self, and not knowing the true Self, even though approaching it in death, he has to suffer till he acquires some day the true knowledge.