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Aitareya Upanishad · Anchored at AiU 2.1.5, AiU 3.1.3.
The seer Vamadeva knew the births of the gods in the womb. Then the question: who is this Self we worship? The answer is the Rigveda's great saying.
The Aitareya Upanishad's first chapter ends with the Self entering the body it had made and recognising Brahman there. Its second chapter comes down to earth, to the most ordinary facts of a family, and finds three births in them. The first is in a man. The seed he carries is the strength gathered from all his limbs, a self held within his self, and when he places it in a woman, that is its first birth. It becomes one with her, like a limb of her own body, and does her no harm, and she nourishes this self of his that has come into her. When the child is born, the father cares for it from the very start, and in caring for the child he cares for himself, so that the worlds go on. That is the second birth. Then the son is set in the father's place to carry on the holy works, and the father, his work done and his years full, departs — and on departing he is born again. That is the third birth.
The Self the first chapter followed into the body does not stay put in one life. It passes from father to child, from body to body, and keeps being born. Then the Upanishad sets beside this chain of births a single voice that broke it. A seer has said this, the text tells us, and it quotes a verse of the Rigveda spoken by the sage Vamadeva while he was still lying in his mother's womb: even while in the womb I came to know all the births of the gods. A hundred fortresses of iron held me down. Then, like a hawk, I burst out swiftly. And knowing this, the text goes on, Vamadeva rose up from this world when the body fell away, won all his desires in the world of heaven, and became immortal.
The third chapter then asks the question Vamadeva's knowledge raises, in the voice of people who want to worship rightly. Who is this one whom we worship as the Self? Which one is the Self? Is it that by which one sees forms, or hears sounds, or smells scents, or speaks words, or tells the sweet from what is not sweet? The question is sharper than it looks: the first chapter showed each sense as a god settled in its own dwelling, so which of them is the Self?
The Upanishad's answer moves inward, from the senses to what lies behind them. There is the heart, and there is the mind, and then comes a long list of what they do: awareness and perception, understanding and wisdom, intelligence and insight, steadiness and thought, reflection and drive, memory and resolve, purpose and life, desire and will. These are all, the text says, names of prajnana — consciousness, the knowing that knows. The list does not reduce consciousness to a single faculty. It says that every faculty is one name for it.
And then the text widens the circle until it holds everything. This is Brahman. This is Indra. This is Prajapati, and all the gods. These five great elements — earth, wind, space, water and light — are this. The small creatures and the large, those born from an egg and those born from a womb, those born from moisture and those that spring from the soil; horses, cattle, people, elephants; whatever breathes, whatever moves or flies, and whatever stands still — all of it is guided by consciousness and established in consciousness. The world has consciousness as its eye. Consciousness is its foundation.
Prajnanam brahma. Consciousness is Brahman.
Two words in Sanskrit, and the whole Upanishad has been leaning toward them since its first sentence. The Self that was alone in the beginning, that thought and made worlds, that entered the body through the crown of the head and looked out and saw Brahman — that Self is not hidden behind consciousness as something else. It is consciousness. The seeing in the eye, the hearing in the ear, the memory, the will, the desire, are not many selves but many names for one knowing, and that knowing is the ground of the earth and the gods alike. Later Vedanta tradition counts prajnanam brahma among the four great sayings, the mahavakyas, one drawn from each Veda, and this is the one that comes from the Rigveda; the others are tat tvam asi, aham brahmasmi and ayam atma brahma.
The Upanishad closes by bringing the two halves of its story together. With this Self that is consciousness, it says, the knower rose up from this world, won all his desires in the world of heaven, and became immortal — became immortal. They are almost the same words it used for Vamadeva. The hawk that burst out of a hundred iron fortresses was set free by knowing — by knowing what had always been doing the knowing.
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