The story

The Aitareya Upanishad belongs to the Rigveda, and it opens with no seeker and no teacher, only the time before anything was. In the beginning, it says, this was the Self alone, one only. There was nothing else that so much as blinked. The Self thought: let me create the worlds. And it brought forth four of them — the waters above, beyond the sky, with the sky as their support; the realm of light-rays, the middle space; the mortal world, the earth; and the waters below the earth.

The worlds were made, but nobody yet watched over them. So the Self thought: let me make guardians for these worlds. From the waters it drew out a Person, a purusha, and gave him shape. Then it brooded over him, warming him with its own tapas, its creative heat, and under that brooding he opened like an egg. His mouth burst open; from the mouth came speech, and from speech came fire. His nostrils opened, and from them came breath, and from breath, wind. His eyes opened, giving sight, and from sight, the sun. His ears opened, giving hearing, and from hearing, the directions of space. His skin opened, giving hair, and from hair came plants and trees. His heart opened, giving mind, and from mind, the moon. His navel opened, giving the down-breath, and from the down-breath came death. His organ opened, giving seed, and from seed, the waters.

Those powers were gods now, and the gods had nowhere to stand. They fell into the great ocean, and the Self gave them hunger and thirst. Find us a dwelling, they begged, where we can settle and eat food. The Self led a cow to them. That is not enough for us, they said. It led a horse to them. That is not enough for us either. Then it led a human being to them, and the gods cried out: well made! Sukrtam — truly a person is well made. Enter, the Self told them, each into your own place. So fire became speech and entered the mouth, wind became breath and entered the nostrils, and so on down the line, each power going back to the place it had come from: the sun into the eyes as sight, the moon into the heart as mind, death into the navel as the down-breath. Hunger and thirst asked for a place too. The Self gave them a share in every one of those gods, and so, the text says, whenever an offering is made to any god, hunger and thirst share in it.

Now there were worlds and guardians, and the guardians needed food. The Self brooded over the waters, and from them a form arose, and that form was food. As soon as it was made it turned away and tried to run. The Person tried to seize it with speech and could not; had he caught it with speech, we would be satisfied by merely talking about food. He tried with breath, with the eye, with the ear, with the skin, with the mind, with the organ of generation — and failed each time, and each failure has its own small joke attached: had he caught it by sight, we would be full from looking at food. At last he seized it with the down-breath, apana, and ate it.

So far the Self had worked from outside. Now it asked the question that is the hinge of the chapter. How could this go on without me? If speech speaks and breath breathes, if the eye sees and the ear hears and the mind thinks, then who am I? And by which way shall I go in? It split open the seam at the crown of the head and entered by that gate. The gate is called vidriti, the cleft, and the text calls it the place of delight. The Self that entered has three dwellings and three dreams: this is a dwelling, this is a dwelling, this is a dwelling. The text does not name them. Later commentators, Shankara among them, read them as the right eye in waking, the mind in dream and the space of the heart in deep sleep.

Then the one who had entered was born, and he looked around at all the beings and asked whether anything here could be spoken of as other. And he saw this very Person as Brahman, the most widely spread. I have seen this, he said — idam adarsham. That is why, the Upanishad says, his name is Idandra, the one who saw this. But people call him Indra, indirectly, because the gods are fond of what is indirect, as it were. With that small play on a name, the king of the Vedic gods turns out to be a hidden word for a moment of seeing — the Self recognising itself in the very creature it had entered. The chapter ends there, with the one who looks finding that what he looks at is Brahman.

Figures and teachings in this dialogue

• Teaching: All This Is Brahman

Questions to explore

• Why do the gods need a body to dwell in, and why is only the human one 'well made'?
• Food escapes speech, sight and mind, and is caught by the down-breath. What is the story saying about hunger?
• The Self enters last, asking 'how could this be without me?' What does that say about where we look for it?