Long ago, a father named Uddalaka said to his son, “Svetaketu, go to a teacher and study. Darling, everyone in our family studies.”
Svetaketu began to study at twelve. He came home at twenty-four, having learned all the Vedas. He was proud, and he thought himself very learned. His father asked, “Have you asked for the teaching by which we hear what cannot be heard, and know what cannot be known?”
“What is that teaching, Sir?” asked Svetaketu. “My dear,” said his father, “know one lump of clay, and you know all that is made of clay. The things have different names, but the truth is that all of it is clay.”
“Know one nugget of gold, and you know all that is made of gold. Know one pair of nail-scissors, and you know all that is made of iron. Only the names are different. That, my dear, is the teaching.”
“Surely my teachers did not know this,” said Svetaketu. “If they had known it, why would they not have told me? Please, Sir, tell it to me.” “Be it so,” said his father.
“In the beginning, my dear, there was only Sat, That which Is. It was one only, with no second. It thought, ‘May I be many. May I grow.’ And it sent out fire.”
“The fire thought, ‘May I be many,’ and it sent out water. That is why, when we are hot, water comes out on us as sweat. The water sent out food. That is why food grows wherever it rains.”
“Every living thing comes from an egg, from a living being, or from a sprout. Then That which Is went into fire, water and food. It gave everything a name and a shape, just as clay things have many names but are all clay.”
“A burning fire has three colours. Its red is the colour of fire, its white the colour of water, and its black the colour of food. ‘Fire’ is only a name. What is real is the three colours. The sun, the moon and the lightning are the same.”
“The finest part of the food we eat becomes your mind,” said his father. “Please, Sir, tell me more,” said Svetaketu. “When curds are churned, the butter rises to the top. Just so, my child, the finest part of food rises up and becomes the mind.”
“A person has sixteen parts, my son,” said his father. “Eat no food for a while, but drink as much water as you like.” Svetaketu did so, and came back. “What shall I say?” “Say the verses of the Vedas.” “They do not come to me, Sir.”
“From a great fire, only one coal as small as a firefly may be left,” said his father. “It cannot burn much. Just so, only one of your sixteen parts is left. That is why you do not remember the Vedas. Go and eat!”
Svetaketu ate and came back. Now he knew by heart everything his father asked him. “Put grass on that tiny coal, and it blazes up again,” said his father. “Food lit up your one part, and now you remember.” Svetaketu understood: the mind comes from food.
“When you sleep, my son, you go to your own Self, the real you,” said Uddalaka. “A bird tied by a string flies this way and that. It finds no rest, and at last it settles where it is tied. Just so, the mind settles on the breath.”
“Your body is like a shoot, and a shoot must have a root. Its root is food. Food’s root is water, water’s root is fire, and fire’s root is That which Is. That is the Self. Tat tvam asi: you are that, Svetaketu.” “Please, Sir, tell me more.”
“Bees make honey, my son, from the juices of faraway trees, and make them all one. In the honey, no juice can say, ‘I come from this tree.’ Just so, all creatures go back into That which Is, and do not know it.”
“Some rivers run east, like the Ganga. Some run west, like the Sindhu. They go from sea to sea and become the sea. In the sea, no river knows, ‘I am this river.’ Just so, all creatures come from That which Is, and do not know it.”
“If someone struck this big tree at its root, its sap would flow, but it would live. Full of life, it stands firm, drinking in its food and glad. When the life leaves the body, the body dies. But the life itself does not die.”
“Bring me a fruit of the banyan tree.” “Here is one, Sir.” “Break it.” “It is broken, Sir.” “What do you see?” “Tiny seeds, almost too small to see.” “Break one.” “It is broken, Sir.” “What do you see?” “Nothing at all, Sir.”
“My son,” said his father, “from that finest thing that you cannot see, this great banyan tree has come. Believe it, my son. That is the Self. You are that, Svetaketu.” “Please, Sir, tell me more.”
“Put this salt in water, and come to me in the morning.” Svetaketu did so. In the morning his father said, “Bring me the salt you put in the water last night.” Svetaketu looked for it, but he could not find it. It had melted.
“Taste it from the top. How is it?” “It is salt.” “Taste it from the middle. How is it?” “It is salt.” “Taste it from the bottom. How is it?” “It is salt!”
“Throw it away, and come to me.” Svetaketu did. But the salt is there for ever. “Just so, my son, you do not see That which Is in this body. But there indeed it is. You are that, Svetaketu.” This was the teaching his father had asked about.
“Think of a man, my son, led away from his home, the land of Gandhara, with his eyes covered, and left where there are no people. He turns to the east, the north and the west, and calls out, ‘I was brought here with my eyes covered!’”
“Then someone unties the cloth and says, ‘Gandhara is that way.’ Asking from village to village, he comes home. Just so, a person who meets a teacher comes to know the truth. You are that, Svetaketu.” Svetaketu understood what his father said. Yes, he understood it.
For grown-ups
Where this story comes from
This story is drawn from the Chandogya Upanishad, Sixth Prapathaka, khandas 1 to 14, with the cuts named below. The last sentence of the book comes from khanda 16. The Chandogya Upanishad belongs to the Sama Veda. The Sixth Prapathaka is a conversation between a father, Uddalaka Aruni, and his son, Svetaketu. Verse numbers follow Max Müller’s translation, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 1 (The Upanishads, Part 1, Oxford, 1879). We also checked R. E. Hume’s translation (The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, 1921). Where the two differ, we name the difference. The father’s words “thou art it” are, in Sanskrit, tat tvam asi: “you are that”. It is a faithful simplification. We shortened and skipped lines, and we name them below. We did not add events, and we did not change anyone’s reasons. Eight lines need a note.
1. The name Uddalaka (page 1). At 6.1.1 Müller gives the father’s name only in a bracket: “(Uddalaka, the son of Aruna)”. The text names him at 6.8.1: “Uddalaka Aruni said to his son Svetaketu”. Page 1 uses the name from the start.
2. “Everyone in our family studies” (page 1). Müller has: “there is none belonging to our race, darling, who, not having studied (the Veda), is, as it were, a Brahmana by birth only” (6.1.1). The page keeps “darling” and the reason (everyone in the family studies). It leaves out “a Brahmana by birth only”, a word this book does not teach.
3. The last sentence (page 25) comes from khanda 16. Within khandas 1 to 14, the sentence “He understood what he said, yea, he understood it” comes only at 6.7.6, about food and the mind (page 13). The same sentence ends the father’s whole teaching, after khanda 16 (Müller numbers it in 6.16.2; Hume in 6.16.3). Two teachings come between: a sick man among his relatives (6.15) and a man accused of theft who grasps a heated hatchet (6.16). The book leaves both out, and it moves the sentence to the end of the teaching it tells. So the book does not say which teaching made Svetaketu understand. The text says only that he understood at the end.
4. Food (pages 7, 9, 10, 15). Müller writes “earth (food)” for the third thing that That which Is sends out (6.2.4), and his note says it means the earth and all that is heavy, firm and dark. Hume writes “food”. The pages say “food” throughout, so a child meets one word for one meaning. In the same way the pages say “fire” where Hume says “heat” (Müller’s note 3 to 6.2.3: “Fire is a better rendering for tejas than light or heat”).
5. The three colours (page 9). Müller has: “The red colour of burning fire is the colour of fire, the white colour of fire is the colour of water, the black colour of fire the colour of earth. Thus vanishes what we call fire, as a mere variety, being a name, arising from speech. What is true are the three colours” (6.4.1). The page keeps the three colours, says “food” for earth (note 4), and tells the second half as “‘Fire’ is only a name. What is real is the three colours.” This echoes the clay of page 3, where the text says the difference is “only a name” (6.1.4). The father describes a fire; none is present, so the picture shows it as a small inset.
6. The last line of page 23 is ours. The page ends: “This was the teaching his father had asked about.” The text does not say this in the salt khanda. It links the salt back to the father’s first question (6.1.3), the teaching “by which we hear what cannot be heard … by which we know what cannot be known”. We make the link because page 2 asks that question and a child should hear the answer named. The whole Sixth Prapathaka is the father’s reply to it.
7. “The real you” (page 14). At 6.8.1 a sleeping man “is gone to his own (Self)”. The page adds “the real you” to explain Self to a child. The text supports it at 6.8.7: “It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it.”
8. The sap (page 18). Müller says the struck tree “would bleed, but live” (6.11.1). Hume has “would bleed, but still live”. Müller’s note says the commentator sees “how their sap runs”. The page says “its sap would flow”, which is the same thing in a tree and gentler on the page.
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Three things this telling leaves out, and why
- The length of the fast (verses 6.7.1–2) — please do not copy it. The father tells Svetaketu: “Abstain from food for fifteen days, but drink as much water as you like, for breath comes from water, and will not be cut off, if you drink water” (6.7.1), and Svetaketu does so (6.7.2). The page says only “Eat no food for a while, but drink as much water as you like.” It does not say fifteen days, and the pictures show no hungry or weak figure. This was a teacher’s test for a grown man of twenty-four, in the text. It is not a thing to try with a child, or for a child to try. The point of the teaching is the opposite: when Svetaketu ate, his mind came back (6.7.4–6).
- “Conceited … and stern” (verses 6.1.2–3). Müller calls the young man “conceited, considering himself well-read, and stern”, and the father repeats it. The page says “He was proud, and he thought himself very learned.” It leaves out “stern”, a word with no picture a child can hold. The book never mocks his pride. It shows it only in the source’s own words.
- “That which is not” (verses 6.2.1–2). The father first names a view he rejects: “Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not … and from that which is not, that which is was born.” He answers: “How could that which is, be born of that which is not?” The page keeps only his own teaching, that in the beginning there was That which Is, one only, without a second. The debate is too abstract for ages 6 to 9.
- The old householders (verses 6.4.5–7). The father says that great householders and theologians of old knew all things from the three colours: whatever looked red, white or black. The page keeps the three colours and the sun, moon and lightning in one sentence. It leaves out the householders.
- The three portions of food, water and fire (verses 6.5.1–3). Each of food, water and fire becomes threefold in a person. The finest part of food becomes mind, of water breath, and of fire (in oil and butter) speech. The grosser parts become body waste, flesh, blood, bone and marrow. Page 10 keeps only that the finest part of food becomes the mind, because that is what the fast then tests. The rest, and the same teaching for water and fire (6.6.3–5), is named here only. The father sums it up: “mind comes of earth, breath of water, speech of fire” (6.5.4).
- Hunger and thirst, and a man who departs (verses 6.8.3–6). The father explains hunger and thirst as “food-leader” and “water-leader”, plays on Sanskrit words. Page 15 keeps the shoot and the root, and the chain food, water, fire, That which Is. In 6.8.6 he says “when a man departs from hence, his speech is merged in his mind, his mind in his breath, his breath in heat (fire), heat in the Highest Being.” That is a picture of dying. It is left out.
- “A lion, or a wolf … or a musquito” (verses 6.9.3 and 6.10.2). After the bees and after the rivers, the father says: “Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a musquito, that they become again and again.” It is a teaching about rebirth. The book leaves it out, because it would turn two pages into a list of animals with no picture of the point. Müller’s bracket on 6.9.2, “(either in deep sleep or in death)”, is left out too.
- The struck stem and top, and the withering branches (verses 6.11.1–2). The father strikes the tree in his teaching three times: at the root, the stem and the top. Each time “it would bleed, but live”. Then he says that a branch withers when the life leaves it, then a second, then a third, and then the whole tree. Page 18 tells the root once and goes straight to the point: “This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living Self has left it; the living Self dies not” (6.11.3). The pictures show no one striking the tree.
- “Delay so long as he is not delivered” (verse 6.14.2). After the man reaches Gandhara, the father says of the one who has a teacher: “For him there is only delay so long as he is not delivered (from the body); then he will be perfect.” Müller’s note explains it as the time between true knowledge and death. It is left out. Page 25 keeps that a person who meets a teacher comes to true knowledge.
- The sick man and the heated hatchet (khandas 15 and 16). Two teachings come after the man from Gandhara. In 6.15 relatives gather round a sick man and ask “Dost thou know me?” until his speech is merged in his mind. In 6.16 a man accused of theft grasps a heated hatchet: the liar “is burnt, and he is killed”, and the truthful man is not burnt. The book leaves both out. They are a deathbed and an ordeal, not for this age. The book keeps only the sentence that ends khanda 16, that Svetaketu understood (see note 3).
- Robbers and tigers (Müller’s note to 6.14). Müller quotes a commentator who says the man was carried off by robbers into a forest of tigers. That is not in the text. The book does not use it, and the pictures show an empty place with no one else in it.
Pages 6 to 10 tell khandas 2 to 6 in five pages. Page 8 tells Müller’s “germ” as Hume’s “sprout” (6.3.1), and “revealed names and forms” (6.3.2–3) as “gave everything a name and a shape”. It links the names back to the clay of page 3, as Müller’s note 2 to 6.1.4 does. Page 8 leaves out that That which Is entered with “this living Self” (6.3.2). Page 11 tells the fast as “for a while” (see What we left out). “Repeat the Rik, Yajus, and Saman verses” (6.7.2) becomes “Say the verses of the Vedas”. Page 13 tells Müller’s “that, lighted up with food, burnt up” (6.7.6) as “Food lit up your one part”, and “Mind, my son, comes from food, breath from water, speech from fire” as “the mind comes from food”. The son’s “Please, Sir, inform me still more” and the father’s “Be it so, my child” come nine times in khandas 5 to 14. The pages keep the son’s line three times (pages 10, 15 and 20). The father’s sentence “That which is that subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it” comes seven times in khandas 8 to 14 (6.8.7, 6.9.4, 6.10.3, 6.11.3, 6.12.3, 6.13.3, 6.14.3). Our Upanishads guide says nine, which counts khandas 15 and 16. The pages keep “you are that, Svetaketu” four times (pages 15, 20, 23, 25) and leave it off the bees, the rivers and the tree. Page 17 keeps Müller’s “like the Ganga” and “like the Sindhu”, which are his brackets; it leaves out his bracket about clouds. Page 19 tells “These seeds, almost infinitesimal” as “Tiny seeds, almost too small to see”. Page 19 says banyan for Müller’s Nyagrodha tree; Hume calls it the sacred fig. Page 22 keeps Müller’s “taste it from the surface” as “from the top”. Page 23 keeps Müller’s “but salt exists for ever” as “But the salt is there for ever”; Hume reads the son’s words as “It is always the same”. Page 24 keeps Müller’s “east, or the north, or the west”; Hume has “east, north, or south”. Page 24 says “his home, the land of Gandhara” where Müller says “the Gandharas”; Hume says he will “arrive home at the Gandharas”.
The question children ask here
“If I can’t see the salt, how do I know it’s there?” The father answers this with a test, not a word. We keep what the text says:
- Svetaketu puts the salt in water at night. In the morning he looks for it and cannot find it, “for, of course, it was melted” (6.13.1). Page 21 tells this.
- His father asks him to taste the water from the surface, the middle and the bottom. Each time he says, “It is salt” (6.13.2). Page 22 tells this.
- Then the father says: “Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do not perceive the True (Sat), my son; but there indeed it is” (6.13.2). Page 23 tells this. Just before, he has shown that a whole banyan tree comes from a thing too small to see in its seed (6.12.1–2).
“You can’t see the salt, but you can taste it everywhere in the water. Uddalaka said the true thing inside us is like that: we can’t see it, but it is there.”
A Sanatani Production
