Aitareya Upanishad is a primary ancient Upanishad and is listed as the 8th of the 108 Upanishads. Considered one of the middle Upanishads, it was composed sometime around 6th or 5th century BCE. The Aitareya Upanishad is divided into three chapters, containing 33 verses. The Aitareya Upanishad is contained in the Rig Veda, and forms a part of the Aitareya Aranyaka. The author of the Aitareya Aranyaka and the Aitareya Upanishad has historically been credited to the sage Aitareya Mahidasa. The portion of the Aranyaka preceding the Upanishad deals with rituals for attainment of identity with Prana, that is, Saguna Brahman (Brahman with attributes). The Upanishad itself, as Shankaracharya argues and establishes in his commentary, holds out a distinct goal – realization of the identity of the individual soul (Jiva) with Nirguna Brahman (Brahman without attributes), which is pure Consciousness. The Upanishad concludes by proclaiming Brahman as Consciousness to be the basis of everything.
Shankara points out that there are three categories of people who wish to acquire wisdom. The first category consists of those whose minds have tranquility, equanimity, dispassion and a thirst for spiritual wisdom and liberation. The other two categories of people are those who want to become enlightened gradually leading a moral and ethical worldly life, and those who are content with having material prosperity doing spiritual practices for fulfillment of earthly desires.
The Upanishad begins with a peace invocation:
May my speech rest on my mind, May my mind rest on my speech, O manifest one, be manifest to me. May both mind and speech secure the Veda for me. May all that I have heard not depart from me. By this study I shall bring together day and night.
I will speak what is right. I will speak what is true. May that protect me. May that protect the speaker (Teacher). May it protect me. May it protect the speaker (Teacher). May it protect the speaker (Teacher). Om shantih shantih shantih.
~ Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes translation
First Adhyaya
I.1 Om! In the beginning this was but the absolute Self alone. There was nothing else whatsoever that winked. It thought, ‘Let Me create the worlds.’
~ Swami Gambhirananda translation
The first adhayaya (chapter) provides an allegorical description of the creation of the universe – as also of man – from Consciousness.
Atman is asserted to have existed alone prior to the creation of the universe. It is this Atman, the Self or the Inner Self, that is then portrayed as the creator of everything from itself and nothing, through heat. The text states that Atman created the universe in stages. First came four entities: ambas (space), marichi (light-atom) mara (earth, stars), and apas (water, cosmic fluid). Then came the cosmic self and eight psyches and principles (speech, in-breathing, sight, hearing, skin/hair, mind, out – breathing, reproductivity). Atman then created eight guardians corresponding to these psyches and principles. Then, asserts Aitareya Upanishad, came the connective principles of hunger and thirst, where everything became interdependent on everything else through the principle of apana (digestion). Thereafter came man, who could not exist without a sense of Self (Atman).
I.12 Opening up the crown of the head, he entered by this gate. This gate is known as the cleft (vidritti). It is a place of delight. It has three dwellings, *three states of sleep: ….
~Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes translation *waking (eye), dream (inner mind), and deep sleep (heart) – ~ Robert Earnest Hume footnote
This mode of being then began cogitating on itself, saying that “I am more than my sensory organs, I am more than my mind, I am more than my reproductive ability”, and then asked (abridged),
कोऽहमिति Who am I?
The world as a creation, Man (person) as the highest manifestation of the Atman who is also named as the Brahman – this is the basic idea of this section.
~ Paul Deussen, Aitareya Upanishad, Chapter 1
Second Adhyaya
In the second chapter, Aitareya Upanishad asserts that the self (causal body, a composite of desires and attachments) in any man is born thrice: first, when a child is born (procreation); second, when the child has been cared for and loved to selfhood where the child equals the parent; third, when the parent dies and the self (causal body) transmigrates. The overall idea of chapter 2 of Aitareya Upanishad is that it is procreation and nurturing of children that allows for the continuity of humanity, and the theory of rebirth, which are the means by which the self persists in this universe.
This way, the cycle of birth and death continues so long as a human being remains content in a worldly life, identified as his body and mind.
Shankara’s commentary here is highly illuminating, and is quoted as follows:
The created Beings fell into the Great Ocean, i.e., samsara or the phenomenal world where the great water currents consist of miseries created by ignorance, desire, and action…Without beginning or end, shoreless and without bottom, it affords relief in the form of the fleeting joy produced by the contact of the senses with their objects…
But there lies in the ocean a raft of knowledge in which are stored the provisions of many goodly virtues, such as truthfulness, integrity, charity, compassion, non-violence, control of the body, restraint of the mind, and determination, and also a track in the form of holy company and renunciation, which leads to the shore of liberation.
~ T.N.Sethumadhavan translation
Third Adhyaya
The third adhyaya or chapter of Aitareya Upanishad discusses the nature of Atman.
Aitareya Upanishad, like other Upanishads, asserts the existence of Consciousness as Atman, the Self or Brahman. It contains one of the most famous expressions of Vedanta, “Prajnanam Brahma” (Consciousness is Brahman), which is one of the Mahavakyas. This is one of the great utterances in the principal Upanishads, asserting the identity of the individual soul and the Supreme Being. It all started with Consciousness, Atman. Atman projected the universe and entered into it thereafter. When it looked around, it found that everything was pervaded by it. As Atman is Brahman, Brahman is nothing but Consciousness – prajnanam brahma.
1. Who is this that we worship as the Self? Which of these is the Self?
It is he by whom one sees, by whom one hears, by whom one smells odors, by whom one speaks words, by whom one distinguishes the sweet from the not sweet.
2. It is this heart and this mind. It is awareness (samgyana), perception (agyana), discernment (vigyana), consciousness (pragyana), intelligence, insight, fortitude, thought, reflection, liveliness, memory, resolve, purpose, vitality, desire, mastery – all these are just names for consciousness.
3. This is Brahman. This is Indra. This is Prajapati. This is all these gods and these five great elements – earth, air, space, water, light. It is (big) creatures and various small ones, creatures of one sort or another – those born of an egg, those born of a womb, those born from moisture and those born of earth: horses, cows, humans, elephants. It is all that breathes here, both walking and flying, and all that does not move.
All that is guided by consciousness, founded in consciousness..…..Its foundation is consciousness. Consciousness is Brahman.
~ Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes translation
The Upanishad concludes with an assertion that the one who has this knowledge (that the substratum of everything in the universe is Brahman), transcends beyond this world after death and reaches the Supreme Abode of beatitude. He joins the Supreme Absolute and attains everlasting bliss. He becomes immortal and gets freed from the cycles of birth and death.
Aitareya Upanishad proclaims Atman as the Self, the inner essence that transcends personality. The Self is awareness itself, devoid of any content such as thoughts, feelings and perceptions. It is pure wakefulness, the awareness that enables one to understand that one is consciousness. Pure Consciousness is the knower. The same idea was expressed in the Kena Upanishad, which referred to the Self as the “ear of the ear, mind of the mind, speech of speech, the breath of the breath, the eye of the eye.” Brahman is our own being, our own Consciousness..
Brahman is the same as Atman. Brahman is the ocean, and Atman is a drop in the ocean. Each drop of water can say “I am the ocean,” because each drop is made of the same substance of which the ocean is made. The fully realized not only perceive the drop merging into the ocean, but, as the Indian poet Kabir writes, “perceive the ocean merging into the drop.”
Please note: excerpts, commentary and references from the following teachers of Vedanta. Vedanta Society lectures and literature Swami Sarvapriyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Swami Gambhirananda
Excerpts from the following commentaries and translations of the Upanishads: T.N. Sethumadhavan Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes Robert Ernest Hume
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