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Prashna Upanishad · Anchored at PrU 6.5, PrU 6.8.
Who sleeps, and who sees dreams? What does Om win? And who is the Person of sixteen parts — the question Sukesha could not answer for a prince?
Three of the six seekers who came to Pippalada with fuel in their hands had asked their questions, and had been led from the birth of creatures to prana, and from prana to the Self that casts it like a shadow. The fourth was Sauryayani Gargya — a man, not Gargi of the Brihadaranyaka — and he turned to something every person does each night without understanding it. In a person, he asked, what sleeps? What stays awake? Which god sees dreams? Whose is the happiness? And in whom are all these established?
Pippalada began with the evening sky. When the sun sets, all its rays become one in its disc of light, and when it rises they spread out again. In the same way, in sleep, all the senses become one in the highest of them, the mind. Then a person neither hears nor sees, neither speaks nor moves. He is asleep, people say. But the fires of prana keep watch in this city of the body, and Pippalada lays the household sacrifice over the sleeping form. The breaths are its three fires. The middle breath balances the two offerings, the breath going in and the breath going out. The mind is the one who offers the sacrifice, and the up-breath is its reward, which leads him every night into Brahman. Even asleep, a person is keeping a fire he does not know he keeps.
In dream, Pippalada said, the god — the mind — enjoys its own greatness. What it has seen it sees again; what it has heard it hears again; what it felt in distant lands it feels again. Seen and unseen, real and unreal, it sees all of it, for it is all of it. But when it is overcome by light, the god sees no dreams, and then, in the body, a happiness arises. And everything, Pippalada said, goes home to the highest Self as birds go to their roosting tree: earth and water, fire and air and space, the eye and what it sees, the mind, and the one who sees and hears and knows. Whoever knows that Imperishable, without shadow, without body, without colour, knows all and becomes all.
Satyakama asked fifth. If someone meditates on Om until the end of his life, what world does he win? Om, Pippalada told him, is both the higher and the lower Brahman, and by that one support a knower reaches one or the other. Meditate on its single measure, and the verses of the Rigveda soon bring you back to the world of men. Meditate on two measures, and the verses of the Yajurveda lead you up to the world of the moon, and you return from it. But meditate on the highest Person through all three measures, and you become one with the light of the sun. As a snake slides out of its old skin, you are freed from evil, and the chants of the Samaveda lead you to the world of Brahman. By Om alone, the wise one reaches what is peaceful, ageless, deathless and fearless.
Then Sukesha spoke, and his question came with a confession. Hiranyanabha, a prince of Kosala, once asked me, he said, whether I knew the person of sixteen parts. I told the young man that I did not. If I knew him, why would I not tell you? One who speaks untruth withers to the root, so I may not speak untruth. The prince said nothing. He climbed into his chariot and drove away in silence. Now I ask you, Sukesha said to Pippalada: where is that person?
Here, within the body, my friend, Pippalada answered, is that Person in whom the sixteen parts arise. He brought forth prana; from prana came faith, then space, wind, light, water and earth, the senses, the mind and food; from food came strength, austerity, the sacred verses, the rites, the worlds, and in the worlds, name. Sixteen in all. Then comes the image that answers the prince. As rivers flowing toward the ocean disappear when they reach it — their names and forms are gone, and people speak only of the ocean — so these sixteen parts, flowing toward the Person, reach him and disappear. Their names and forms are gone; one speaks only of the Person. Then he is without parts, and immortal. Know him, in whom the parts are fixed like spokes in a hub, so that death may not trouble you.
Pippalada then said something rare for a teacher. This much I know of the highest Brahman, he told them; there is nothing beyond it. The book began with "if we know, we will tell you", turned on a teacher who said "I did not know", and ends with one who says exactly how far his knowing goes. The six pupils honoured him. You are our father, they said, who carries us across our ignorance to the farther shore.
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