The story

By its fourth chapter the Shvetashvatara Upanishad has stopped debating causes and started praying. The chapter opens with a verse about colour. There is One who has no colour of his own, it says, and who, by the many workings of his power, for a purpose hidden from us, gives out many colours. At the beginning he spreads the universe out, and at the end he draws it back into himself. May that God join us to clear understanding. The world in all its shades is the work of something that has no shade at all.

Then the Upanishad reaches for a riddle. The word aja in Sanskrit means "unborn", and it also means "goat", and the text plays on both at once. There is one unborn she-goat, red, white and black, who bears many young that look like her. One unborn he-goat lies beside her, enjoying her. Another unborn one leaves her, having had his enjoyment. Readers in the tradition have taken the she-goat as nature, prakriti, with her three colours and her endless brood of creatures, and the Upanishad itself gives them warrant a few verses on, where it names nature outright. The two he-goats are two ways a soul can stand toward her: one still lying in her embrace, one that has had enough and walks away.

The next two verses are among the most famous in all the Upanishads, and the Shvetashvatara shares them word for word with the Mundaka. Two birds, companions joined together, cling to the same tree. One eats the sweet fruit; the other does not eat, and only looks on. On that same tree a person sinks down and grieves, bewildered by his own helplessness. But when he sees the other, the Lord, content, and sees his greatness, his sorrow leaves him. The first of the two verses is older still; it is found in the Rigveda.

Then comes the line this telling is named for. Know that nature is maya, the Upanishad says, and that the great Lord, Maheshvara, is the one who wields maya, the mayin. The whole world is filled with beings that are parts of him. Maya here is the power by which the One shows many colours. The text does not stop to argue whether the many are real or unreal; it says who holds the power. The she-goat of a few verses earlier has a master.

The sixth chapter gathers these threads into a hymn. Like a spider, it says, the one God covers himself, of his own nature, with threads born of nature, and it prays that he may grant us entry into Brahman. The web is drawn out of the spider's own body, and the same web hides the spider from sight. Then comes the verse that holds the chapter together. One God, hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self of every being, overseer of all actions, dwelling in all things, the witness, pure awareness, alone and beyond all qualities. And then a verse the Upanishad shares with the Katha and the Mundaka: there the sun does not shine, nor the moon and stars, nor these lightnings, much less this fire. He shining, all things shine after him; by his light all this is lit.

Only at the very end does the text name the man it is named after. By the power of his tapas and by the grace of God, it says, the wise Shvetashvatara came to know Brahman, and he proclaimed it well, the supreme and purifying teaching, loved by the company of seers, to those ascetics who had gone beyond the ordinary stages of life. Grace is not an afterthought here. The first chapter said the swan reaches immortality when it is favoured by the Lord; the last chapter says the sage himself knew Brahman by tapas and by God's grace together.

The book then guards its own door. This deepest secret of the Vedanta, it says, was taught in an earlier age. It must not be given to anyone whose mind is not at peace, nor to anyone who is not one's son or pupil. And its last verse explains why. These teachings shine out for the great-souled one who has the highest devotion, bhakti, to God, and the same devotion to the guru as to God. For that person, the text says twice, they shine.

This is the only place the Shvetashvatara uses the word bhakti, and it is often cited as the first time the word appears in any Upanishad. The older dialogues spoke of knowing, seeing, meditating and becoming. This one, at its close, says that the knowing itself will not light up without love — love of God, and love for the teacher who hands the teaching on. The book that began with a circle of teachers asking what the cause is ends with a single devoted seeker, to whom the answer shines.

Figures and teachings in this dialogue

• Shvetashvatara
• Teaching: All This Is Brahman

Questions to explore

• What does it mean to call nature maya, and God the one who wields it?
• The two birds of the Mundaka return here. What does this Upanishad add to them?
• Why does the text tie its teaching to devotion — to God, and to the guru as to God?