Brāhmaṇagītā: The Dialogue of the Brāhmaṇa and the Brāhmaṇī

The Brāhmaṇagītā is a long teaching found in the Anugītā, a section of the Aśvamedhika Parva (the fourteenth book of the Mahābhārata), in Chapters 20 to 34. After the Kurukṣetra war, Śrī Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna an itihāsa (a traditional account from the past) that runs through fifteen chapters: the conversation between an unnamed brāhmaṇa and his wife, the Brāhmaṇī. The wife sees her husband sitting still, apparently doing nothing, and scolds him for giving up all karma (religious and worldly action). Chapter after chapter, the brāhmaṇa answers her with the whole of adhyātma-vidyā, the knowledge of the inner Self.

His answer covers many teachings: the Vaiśvānara fire within the body; the inner “offerings” of ten, seven, five and four hotṛs (the purohitas who make offerings); the stories of Speech and Mind, of Mind and the senses, of the five prāṇas (life-breaths), and of Nārada and Devamata; the teaching on Oṃ; the picture of entering the great forest; the debate between a Yati (renunciant) and an Adhvaryu (the purohita who carries out a yajña) on harming living beings; the linked stories of Kārtavīrya, Paraśurāma and Alarka; the song of Ambarīṣa on conquering the guṇas and greed; the brāhmaṇa’s dialogue with King Janaka; and a description of the jīvanmukta, one who is free while still living. In Chapter 34 the frame falls away. Kṛṣṇa reveals to Arjuna that the brāhmaṇa of the story is his own manas (mind), the Brāhmaṇī is his own buddhi (intellect), and the kṣetrajña (the knower within the body) whom they both served is Kṛṣṇa himself.

The Setting: A Story Within the Anugītā

Śrī Kṛṣṇa, called Vāsudeva throughout, introduces this whole cycle of teaching as an ancient itihāsa. It explains the verse of the Bhagavad Gītā in which he says that he is the Vaiśvānara fire living in the bodies of all beings, digesting the four kinds of food with the help of prāṇa and apāna (the in-breath and out-breath). “Pārtha! Best of the Bharatas!” Kṛṣṇa says, “on this matter people tell an ancient itihāsa, in the form of a dampati-saṃvāda”, a dialogue between a householder husband and wife. The fact that the whole cycle is Kṛṣṇa’s own story to Arjuna is not mentioned again until Chapter 34. There it becomes the key to everything: the brāhmaṇa and the Brāhmaṇī are shown to be parts of Kṛṣṇa’s own inner being.

The story opens with the Brāhmaṇī finding her husband sitting in silence. He has set aside the agnihotra (daily fire offering) and his other rites (nyasta-karma, “one who has laid down action”). As she sees it, he has no dayā (kindness) for her (kīnāśa, “hard-hearted”) and does not see that she has no other refuge (avicakṣaṇa, “unperceiving”). She asks him plainly: what loka (world after death) can a wife reach if her husband has given up all karma? Wives are said to reach the same worlds their husbands reach, so what gati (destination) awaits her? The brāhmaṇa, calm in mind, only smiles and tells her he takes no offence at her words. His answer then fills fifteen chapters.

The Vaiśvānara Fire (Chapter 20)

The brāhmaṇa’s first reply is that people who have śraddhā (faith) only in karma that can be seen, such as vratas (vows) and dīkṣā (initiation), call only these things “karma”. But one who gives up jñāna (true knowledge) gains nothing from karma except moha (delusion). No being can stay without karma for even one muhūrta (a period of about 48 minutes). From birth onward, through countless bodies in many kinds of life, the karma of body, mind and speech, good or bad, goes on without a break.

He then tells of his own realisation. As the outward paths of ritual were being destroyed all around him by rākṣasas, he lost interest in them, and by his own effort he saw the seat of the Self within himself. This is the avimukta-sthāna, the place between the eyebrows where the iḍā and piṅgalā channels meet. There Brahman, free of all pairs of opposites, shines; there Soma joins with Agni; there Vāyu moves, sustaining all beings. In that place Brahmā and the other devatās, together with those of high vows, calm minds and conquered senses, offer upāsanā through yoga to the undying Brahman. This Brahman is an akṣara (imperishable reality) that cannot be smelled, tasted, touched, seen or heard, and is known only to the mind. From it the whole fabric of creation comes forth, and into it creation dissolves again. From it the five prāṇas arise (prāṇa, apāna, samāna, vyāna and udāna) and into it they return.

The brāhmaṇa describes how this dissolving works in the body. Samāna and vyāna dissolve along with prāṇa. Udāna moves between apāna and prāṇa, and this is why a sleeping person’s prāṇa and apāna never leave the body. Because it holds up all the prāṇas, those who know the truth call it udāna, and knowers of Brahman say that what lives “in me” as tapas (inner heat and discipline) is this same principle.

In the middle of the five prāṇas, at the seat of samāna, the Vaiśvānara fire shines in seven forms. Its seven parts are set out below.

These seven hotṛs offer the seven havis into the seven-formed Vaiśvānara, and then bring them forth again in their own sources: earth, air, space, water, fire, mind and intellect. The qualities of these offerings enter the quality born of fire, and stay there as saṃskāra (stored impressions) in the citta (the storehouse of the mind), even in deep sleep. In the waking state they come out again as smell, taste, form, touch and sound. Doubt, and its settling into firm conviction, also arise from the same place. In this way, the brāhmaṇa says, creation is sevenfold. The three full offerings (pūrṇāhuti) of the knower, the knowing and the known, filled with the light of the Self, fill all the worlds.

The Ten Hotṛs and the Dialogue of Speech and Mind (Chapter 21)

The brāhmaṇa now answers the Brāhmaṇī’s unspoken charge that he sits there having given up action. He shows that a far greater karma is always going on inside him. He names the ten hotṛs: ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose, feet, hands, upastha (organ of generation) and pāyu (organ of excretion). The tongue counts twice: as a sense organ when tasting and as an organ of action when speaking. The ten matching offerings are sound, touch, form, taste, smell, speech, action, movement, semen and urine, and their release. The ten fires that preside over them are the directions, Vāyu, Sūrya, Candra, Pṛthivī, Agni, Viṣṇu, Indra, Prajāpati and Mitra. Only a mind that is steady at all times, and not the forced breath control of haṭha-yoga, can dissolve this whole array back into its cause. What remains after that dissolving is pure jñāna, the highest and truly discerning knowledge, beyond which nothing exists.

Within this teaching the brāhmaṇa tells the ancient dialogue of Vāk (Speech) and Manas (Mind). They came together before the jīva (the individual soul) and asked which of them was greater. The jīva said the mind was supreme. Vāk, as Sarasvatī, protested that she was the kāmadhenu (wish-fulfilling cow) given for their benefit.

The brāhmaṇa, speaking for the mind, argued that all the moving and unmoving worlds, even svarga, which is reached through mantra, syllable and tone, are in the end only the mind’s own movements. Whatever moves towards an object belongs to the “moving” class, and speech belongs to that class too.

Vāk replied that she always stands between prāṇa and apāna. When she loses the support of prāṇa, she sinks to her lowest level and must run to Prajāpati himself for grace. When prāṇa comes to support her, she is silent on the out-breath and speaks only with his help. She described her two natures, the sounded (ghoṣiṇī) and the unsounded (aghoṣiṇī). The unsounded is the greater: it is Hiraṇyagarbha’s own imperishable speech. As the śruti (Veda) says, “vācaṃ dhenum upāsīta”, “one should honour speech as a cow”. Speech is a kāmadhenu with four udders, the four sacred calls svāhā, svadhā, hanta and vaṣaṭ, and like a well-milked cow she gives rasa (nourishing essence). The higher speech, which speaks of Brahman, gives what is eternal, that is, mokṣa (liberation).

The Brāhmaṇī then asked which came first, speech or mind. The brāhmaṇa explained that the mind sets speech in motion through prāṇa, apāna, udāna and vyāna. The breath, fed by prāṇa, becomes settled in samāna and finally ripens into spoken words. He concluded that speech and mind each serve their own purpose. The mind is the steady, unmoving ground of thought. Vāgdevī (the devī of speech) is the moving vehicle that carries thought outward through mantra, syllable and tone. Neither cancels the other: each is greatest in its own field.

The Seven Hotṛs and the Dialogue of the Mind and the Senses (Chapter 22)

Next the brāhmaṇa teaches the seven hotṛs: nose, eye, tongue, skin, ear, mind and intellect. Each lives in its own subtle sphere, hidden from the others, and knows nothing of the others’ qualities. Ajñāna (ignorance) is simply not knowing another’s nature. The nose alone grasps smell, the tongue alone taste, the eye alone form, the skin alone touch, the ear alone sound, the mind alone doubt, and the intellect alone certainty. None can do another’s work.

The Brāhmaṇī asked how such mutually hidden things could still be known by their separate natures. The brāhmaṇa answered with the ancient dialogue of the Mind and the Senses.

The Mind said it was eternal and supreme over all beings. Without it the nose would not smell and the eye would not see; the senses would stand like hearths of damp wood with no fire.

The Senses answered humbly but sharply. Rules, they said, are for the weak; the truly strong need no one else. If the mind is so powerful, let it taste, see and hear all by itself, instead of living off the senses’ leftovers. They compared the mind to a student who runs to a guru for the meaning of the Veda and only afterwards thinks it over with his own understanding. In the same way, the mind only experiences, in dream and waking, what the senses have already grasped. It is the jīva’s own desire for enjoyment, born of its intentions and dreamed again and again, that drives it towards sense objects. When that desire is used up and the force of prāṇa settles down, lasting śānti (peace) is reached, like a fire that grows quiet when its fuel is gone.

The Senses ended by saying that neither side is supreme on its own; each depends on the other. Without the senses the mind gains nothing of value; without the mind the senses find no joy.

The Five Hotṛs: The Dispute of the Five Prāṇas (Chapter 23)

Asked how the seven hotṛs become five, the brāhmaṇa explains how the prāṇas arise from one another. Air, fed by prāṇa, gives rise to apāna. Vyāna comes from that air. Vyāna, gathering air, gives rise to udāna. Udāna, grown strong, brings forth samāna.

These five once went to Brahmā and asked him which of them was the greatest. Brahmā answered that the greatest is the one whose leaving makes all the others leave, and whose stirring makes all the others stir again. He sent them to find out for themselves.

Each prāṇa in turn withdrew to prove it was the greatest, and each time the others showed that another prāṇa ruled over it:

• Prāṇa withdrew, but was told that Apāna ruled over it
• Apāna withdrew, but Vyāna ruled over it
• Vyāna withdrew, but Samāna ruled over it
• Samāna withdrew, but Udāna ruled over it
• Udāna withdrew, only to be told that Vyāna ruled over it, closing the circle

Unable to settle the dispute, all five returned to Brahmā (here also called Prajāpati). He said: “You are all the greatest, or, just as truly, none of you alone is the greatest. You hold each other up.” He explained that it is one single air that appears as five only because of different upādhis (limiting conditions). In the same way the one ātman (Self), divided by upādhis, seems to become many, to pass through joy and sorrow, and to be both the enjoyer and the enjoyed. Seeing this oneness, he told them to act towards one another with compassion. He blessed them, “May all be well with you; go in peace,” and asked them to remain each other’s well-wishers, always supporting one another.

The Dialogue of Nārada and Devamata (Chapter 24)

To teach that the ātman and Brahman are one, first by setting out an appearance and then by taking it back, the brāhmaṇa tells the dialogue of the devarṣi (divine ṛṣi) Nārada and Devamata.

Devamata asked: when a jīva first enters a body, which of the five prāṇas starts to work first? Nārada answered that behind the immediate cause lies an earlier one: the pair of prāṇa and apāna, which fills the worlds across, above and below.

Pressed further, Nārada explained the teaching in full. Brahman, whose nature is ānanda (bliss), takes the form of the universe through māyā and saṅkalpa (will). From saṅkalpa arises joy, and from the desires attached to sound, touch and the other sense objects, creation goes further. Brahman is the common cause, as rain is for all seeds; the individual’s desire-laden seed is the particular cause, like the seed itself. From desire, born of activity, arise vīrya and rajas (the male and female generative powers), whose shared source is samāna and vyāna. So prāṇa and apāna, rising and falling, are themselves rooted in this deeper pair.

Nārada taught that Agni is none other than the Paramātman (the Supreme Self), that the Veda is his command made manifest as breath, and that sarvaṃ khalv idaṃ brahma, “all this is truly Brahman”. Smoke and ash come from fire but stay outside fire’s own nature. In the same way tamas and rajas, the causes of dullness and distraction, stay outside pure consciousness, while sattva alone gives rise to samāna and vyāna, the higher form of udāna that shines between the eyebrows.

He ended by showing that the basic pairs of opposites, such as night and day, being and non-being, effect and cause, all have fire standing between them as the uniting udāna. Śānti is reached only by resting in vyāna, which is the eternal Brahman itself, the one thing that unites effect, cause and pure sattva.

The Four Hotṛs (Chapter 25)

Having taught oneness by direct instruction, the brāhmaṇa now shows it by reasoning, through a fourfold picture of yajña. The four hotṛs that fill the whole world are:

• Karaṇa, the instruments: the seven senses
• Kartā, the doers: the seven agents, the one who smells, sees, touches, speaks, tastes, thinks and knows
• Karma, the objects: sound, touch, form, taste, smell, what is thought and what is known
• Mokṣa, liberation

He shows that the causes that are qualities and the causes that are actions are, in the end, not different. The senses, as devatās, are always “eating” their offerings. Yet they leave the knower untouched once he sees, “I am without qualities and without end; these qualities have no real link with me.” This seeing alone is mokṣa: the senses become a means to liberation exactly when one gives up the sense of being the doer.

He explains this with the example of food. The ignorant person who eats with the feeling “this is mine” destroys the food and is destroyed by it, in an endless chain of deaths. The wise person who eats without attachment becomes Īśvara himself, the very source of food, untouched by any fault.

He then teaches the inner yoga-yajña. The six kinds of sense experience are offered as homa (fire offering) by holding back the six senses: what the mind grasps, what speech utters, and what is heard, seen, touched and smelled. The self-shining Paramātman, rich in all qualities, is the ground of this yajña. Prāṇa is the stotra (hymn of praise) and apāna the śastra (recited verse), and giving up everything is the highest dakṣiṇā (gift to the purohitas). The doer (ahaṅkāra, the ego), the one who approves (the mind) and the self (the intellect), though they are all forms of Brahman, act in turn as the hotā, adhvaryu and udgātā purohitas. Speaking the truth is the śastra of the praśāstā purohita, and apavarga, mokṣa itself, is the dakṣiṇā.

Those who know Nārāyaṇa recite the ṛk verses of this yoga-yajña. They say that the bhaktas of old who sought Nārāyaṇa brought fully under control the “animals” that are the senses. The sāma chant sung in that bliss by the siddhas (perfected beings), as found in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, is the model for completing this yajña.

Hearing Oṃ (Chapter 26)

The brāhmaṇa says that the Paramātman alone is the ruler, guru, friend, listener and even the enemy of all beings. He lives always in the heart and guides each being according to its own saṃskāras.

To show how one teaching bears different fruit in different hearers, he tells how the devas, ṛṣis, serpents and asuras once went together to Prajāpati and asked him for the path to śreyas (the highest good). Prajāpati answered with a single syllable, “Oṃ”, and fell silent. Each group went home and understood the syllable through its own nature:

• The serpents took it as permission to bite
• The asuras took it as permission for showy pride
• The devas understood it as dāna (giving)
• The ṛṣis grasped it as dama (self-control)

So one guru and one teaching produced four different resolves, because the inner guru speaks through each hearer’s own saṃskāras.

From this the brāhmaṇa draws the meaning of true brahmacarya. The true brahmacārī is one who has left vows and rituals behind and rests only in Brahman. For him Brahman itself is the fuel, the fire, the water and the guru. This is the subtle brahmacarya taught by those who know the truth and followed by those who know the Self.

Entering the Great Forest (Chapter 27)

The brāhmaṇa now pictures saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death) as a great forest that he has passed through to enter. The road to it swarms with the mosquitoes of saṅkalpa (wishful intentions). It has the unbearable heat and cold of grief and joy, the darkness of delusion, and the snakes and scorpions of greed and disease. Desire and anger lie in wait like robbers on the lonely road. Having gone through all this, he says he has now entered the great forest that is Brahman itself. It fills everything and is beyond difference and non-difference and beyond worldly pleasure and pain. Nothing is smaller, greater or subtler than it, and no joy is higher.

In this forest stand seven great trees: mahat (cosmic intelligence), ahaṅkāra (the ego) and the five tanmātras (subtle elements), which together make up the body. They bear seven kinds of flowers and fruits, enjoyed by seven guests, the devatās who preside over the senses. The forest is ordered by seven āśramas, seven samādhis (states of deep absorption) and seven dīkṣās.

Two more trees, the intellect and the mind, bear countless fruits of an unmanifest colour. These fruits are offered as homa into the single fire of the ātman, with the five senses as fuel, and they yield the sevenfold mokṣa. Yet this fruit goes to the guṇas alone and does not lead to a new body, because the wise person has no sense of being the doer.

Seven perfected mahārṣis (great ṛṣis), headed by Vasiṣṭha, merge into this forest and are born again from it alone. The tradition reads this as the senses’ own point of dissolving and rising. In this forest live seven women, shining with the light of pure consciousness, mothers to all, who receive the finest essence from those who live there. Seven lights, named as fame, radiance, fortune, victory, success and splendour, follow the sun of the Self that rules there.

Within this same reality of Brahman lie all hills, mountains and rivers. They meet in the deeply hidden space of the heart, where the yoga-yajña finds its true setting. This is the very nature of Pitāmaha (Brahmā, the grandfather of the worlds). It is reached by those who are satisfied through knowledge of the Self, whose longings have faded and whose pāpas have been burned away by tapas. Knowing this forest through true knowledge, the wise take refuge in śama (inner calm). Only through śama does the intellect become steady and the pure forest become truly known.

The Dialogue of the Yati and the Adhvaryu (Chapter 28)

To show that the ātman stays untouched even in the middle of apparent action, the brāhmaṇa tells the story of a Yati (renunciant) and an Adhvaryu (the purohita who carries out a yajña).

Watching an animal that had been sprinkled with water and consecrated for a yajña, the Yati condemned the rite as hiṃsā (harm to a living being).

The Adhvaryu answered that the animal does not truly die, quoting the śruti “paśur vai nīyamānaḥ”, “the animal, when led forward…”. Its earthy part merges into earth, its watery part into water, its eye into Sūrya, its ears into the directions and its breath into space. One who acts in this way, following the śāstra (scripture), incurs no fault.

The Yati pressed further. He quoted a śruti saying that the animal’s own relatives must agree to its offering, and asked what good the rite did the Adhvaryu himself.

The Adhvaryu agreed that the animal’s senses had already returned to their causes, leaving only a lifeless body like firewood. He named “ahiṃsā paramo dharmaḥ”, “non-harming is the highest dharma”, as the Yati’s own guiding principle. But he pointed out that even necessary harm carries its own matching yajña of prāyaścitta (atonement).

The Yati then urged that all beings should vow complete non-harming, trusting only in results they can see, not in unseen results promised by the śruti.

The Adhvaryu’s deciding reply was that prāṇa fills every being. So the Yati himself, just by smelling, tasting, seeing, touching, hearing or thinking, is harming life at every moment. No worldly act is wholly free of harm, so the Yati’s own non-harming cannot be complete either.

The Yati then described two sides of the ātman: the akṣara, which is true, never cancelled in past, present or future, and undying; and the kṣara, which perishes. He said that one who no longer identifies with breath, tongue, mind and the guṇas, who is beyond pairs of opposites, free of desire, equal towards all beings, free of “mine”, and self-controlled, knows no fear anywhere, whatever his outward actions.

Hearing this, the Adhvaryu, humbled and enlightened, concluded that carrying out his vow as laid down in the Veda, without ego, likewise brings no wrong. The Yati fell silent, and the Adhvaryu went on with the great yajña, free of delusion. The dispute is not settled in favour of either side. Both non-harming as the highest dharma and yajña performed without a sense of doership are brought together through freedom from the pride of being the doer. The brāhmaṇa closes by noting that knowers of Brahman call this teaching on liberation extremely subtle, knowable only through the teaching of those who have seen the truth.

Kārtavīrya, Paraśurāma and Alarka (Chapters 29–30)

To show that conquering the senses is the truest courage, the brāhmaṇa next tells of Kārtavīrya. Having conquered the earth up to the edge of the ocean, one day he shot arrows at the ocean itself, just for sport. Samudra (the ocean devatā) appeared and pleaded for the beings living in him. Kārtavīrya only demanded to be shown a hero equal to himself. With pointed irony, Samudra sent him to the āśrama of Jamadagni, where his son Paraśurāma would give him fitting “hospitality”.

Kārtavīrya went there in a rage. Paraśurāma cut off all his thousand arms and killed him. When Kārtavīrya’s relatives attacked the āśrama, Paraśurāma destroyed their armies too. The surviving kṣatriyas (warriors) lived long in fear and without contact with brāhmaṇas, and so they declined in status; the text names the Draviḍas, Ābhīras, Paṇḍras and Śabaras as coming from kṣatriyas who fell in this way.

After twenty-one rounds of destroying the kṣatriyas, a voice from the sky, and at the same moment Ṛcīka and the other pitṛs (ancestors), advised Paraśurāma to stop. When he could not bring himself to stop, the ancestors scolded him directly: killing kṣatriyas is not fitting for a brāhmaṇa.

The ancestors then gave him the corrective story of King Alarka, a rājarṣi (king who was also a ṛṣi). Having conquered the earth with his bow, Alarka turned to the search for subtle truth. He decided to shoot his arrows instead at the mind, the real cause of his outward conquests. In a series of debates, the mind, then each sense in turn (nose, tongue, skin, ear and eye), and finally the intellect told Alarka that no such arrow could pierce them. Shooting it would only tear his own vital points and kill him; he must find a different weapon.

After long tapas, Alarka understood that dhyāna-yoga (the yoga of meditation) is higher than every other means to the highest good. With that one arrow he conquered all his senses at once, entered the Self and reached the highest perfection. The ancestors then told Paraśurāma to give up killing kṣatriyas and to do tapas as Alarka had done. So commanded by his own forefathers, the son of Jamadagni did so and reached a rare perfection.

The Song of Ambarīṣa (Chapter 31)

Continuing the teaching on the bondage of the three guṇas, which a seeker of liberation must give up, the brāhmaṇa quotes an ancient song once sung by the rājarṣi Ambarīṣa.

Ambarīṣa says that sattva, rajas and tamas are his real enemies. They show themselves through nine tendencies:

A calm, self-controlled person destroys these nine with the arrows of śama (inner calm) and the disciplines that go with it. Yet Ambarīṣa sings that one fault, the greatest of all, was still left unslain: lobha (greed).

Driven by greed, a being fails to reach vairāgya (freedom from attachment). Overcome by the craving it creates, a person rushes into low actions, loses knowledge and does what should never be done. From greed comes craving, and from craving comes worry. The greedy person first gathers too much rajas, then tamas follows, and through these guṇas he is bound to the body, born and dying again in an endless chain. Greed is therefore the deepest root of the cycle of rajas and tamas that keeps us bound. It is the last and most dangerous enemy, and can be cut only with the sword of jñāna.

Ambarīṣa concludes that whoever understands the nature of greed and destroys it with steady courage rises to ātma-rājya, the kingdom of the Self. This is true self-rule, and it is nothing other than supreme bliss, for where knowledge of the Self has arisen, the knower himself becomes the king. Having set the kingdom of the Self before him and slain greed, his one remaining enemy, Ambarīṣa sang this song.

The Dialogue of the Brāhmaṇa and King Janaka (Chapter 32)

As an example of why greed must be cut away, the brāhmaṇa tells the story of a brāhmaṇa and King Janaka. Janaka was punishing a brāhmaṇa caught in some wrongdoing and banished him from the kingdom. The brāhmaṇa asked Janaka to state exactly where the borders of “his” country lay, so that he could settle just beyond them in another king’s land.

The question left Janaka speechless. For a moment delusion covered him, as Rāhu covers the sun in an eclipse. But within a muhūrta he grew calm and answered. Searching the whole earth with the eye of discernment, he said, he could find nothing anywhere that was truly “his”, not even Mithilā, ruled by his father, grandfather and great-grandfather one after another. All states of wealth and poverty have a beginning and an end, just as the Veda asks, “mā gṛdhaḥ kasya svid dhanam”, “do not covet; whose, indeed, is wealth?” Yet from another point of view the opposite is equally true: because nothing belongs only to him, the whole earth is equally his, and so equally everyone else’s. So he told the brāhmaṇa there was no need to leave at all.

Asked to explain further, Janaka said that this same recognition that every condition passes away let him give up the sense of “mine” while at the same time holding that the whole earth is his. He described this in terms of conquering the senses. Because he does not seek smell, taste, form, touch or sound for his own enjoyment, earth, water, fire, air and sound each stay under his control. Because he seeks nothing in the mind for his own pleasure, the mind too stays subdued. Every act he does is only for the devas, the ancestors, all beings and guests, never for his own satisfaction.

The brāhmaṇa then laughed and revealed that he was Dharmadevatā (Dharma in person), who had come only to test the king. He declared Janaka the sole turner of the wheel that leads to Brahman. That wheel’s rim is sattva itself, born of knowledge, and once set turning it never turns back. So Janaka was confirmed as the one who would carry this knowledge of Brahman forward.

The State of One Free While Living (Chapter 33)

With this teaching complete, the brāhmaṇa describes his own state to the Brāhmaṇī. Her mind may see him as someone tangled in puṇya (merit) and pāpa, moving about identified with the body like ordinary beings, but that is not his true nature. He is at once a brāhmaṇa, a jīvanmukta, a mahātmā (great soul), a vānaprastha (forest-dweller), a gṛhastha (householder) and a brahmacārī, because whatever appears anywhere on earth is filled by him. He also identifies himself with Mṛtyu (Death), who consumes every moving and unmoving being as fire consumes wood.

The intellect alone, he says, grasps the whole of this earthly kingdom and even the kingdom of svarga. The intellect is all his wealth, his everything. There is only ekaḥ panthāḥ, one path, and that path is jñāna itself:

jñānād eva tu kaivalyam, nānyaḥ panthā vidyate ayanāya “From knowledge alone comes liberation; there is no other path to go by.”

Knowers of Brahman in all four āśramas (stages of life), though they carry different outward signs, all follow this same yoga of the intellect. Whoever’s intellect is fixed on peace reaches in the end the one Brahman, whose nature is being itself, just as all rivers, whatever their course, reach the same ocean. This path can be known by the intellect alone, never by the body. Karmas have a beginning and an end, and the body stays bound by karma’s chain, but the intellect is not bound in that way.

Now addressing the Brāhmaṇī as Īśvarī (mistress), since she too has been freed through this teaching from bondage to the body, the brāhmaṇa tells her she no longer needs to fear the world after death. Settled in the Self, she will reach his own Self.

The Great Revelation (Chapter 34)

The Brāhmaṇī says that her intellect is too small to hold such deep knowledge of the Self, given so briefly. She asks how she might gain an intellect able to hold it.

The brāhmaṇa answers with the picture of the two araṇis, the wooden sticks rubbed together to kindle the Vedic fire. The intellect is the lower stick and the guru the upper. When tapas churns them together, the fire of jñāna is born. Here tapas means reflecting (manana) and deep meditation (nididhyāsana) after hearing (śravaṇa) the words of the Vedānta.

She then raises a searching question. If the kṣetrajña, which seems bound and separate as the jīva, is truly one with Brahman beyond all conditions, how can that be? Wherever one thing rules another, the two cannot be called the same. The brāhmaṇa answers that the kṣetrajña is in truth without any mark that can be pinned down, and without qualities. It seems to have qualities and marks only because of bhrānti (confusion), and that confusion has no real cause. Once the confusion is removed, the hearing and other practices already given are enough.

Such means, he adds, have no fixed number. They may be counted as five, seven or eleven, or multiplied into hundreds and thousands, since “the means to reaching the goal are themselves not fixed in number” (upeya-pratipatty-arthā upāyā avyavasthitāḥ). The final realisation comes through neti, neti, “not this, not this”, setting aside everything until what remains, beyond which nothing more exists, is directly known as the Self.

At exactly this point the narration changes. It no longer says “the brāhmaṇa said” but “Śrī Bhagavān said” (Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa speaking), revealing that the whole dialogue so far has been a story Kṛṣṇa himself was telling Arjuna. The frame resumes: “Pārtha! After this, the Brāhmaṇī’s intellect, freed from all doubt about the kṣetrajña, went on striving towards what lies beyond even knowledge of the field.” Arjuna, amazed, asks where that great brāhmaṇa and his wife are now, and asks Acyuta (Kṛṣṇa) to let him meet the couple who reached such supreme perfection.

Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa then gives the great revelation:

mano me brāhmaṇaṃ viddhi, buddhiṃ me viddhi brāhmaṇīm, kṣetrajña iti yaś c’oktaḥ so’ham eva Dhanañjaya “Know my mind to be the brāhmaṇa; know my intellect to be the Brāhmaṇī; and the one called the kṣetrajña, that is I myself, O Dhanañjaya.”

So the whole cycle of teaching in Chapters 20 to 34 is revealed as an inner picture. Kṛṣṇa’s own mind, shown as the brāhmaṇa, has been teaching Kṛṣṇa’s own intellect, shown as the Brāhmaṇī. The kṣetrajña who presides over both, beyond even knowledge of the field, is Kṛṣṇa, Vāsudeva, himself.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Aśvamedhika Parva, Anugītā Parva, Chapters 20–34