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Updated: June 9, 2025
But his chief interest for us is not the reforms in text and ritual which he may have made, but his philosophic doctrines of which I have already spoken. Our principal authority for them is the Bṛihad-Âraṇyaka Upanishad of which he is the protagonist, much as Socrates is of the Platonic dialogues. Unfortunately the striking picture which it gives of Yâjñavalkya cannot be accepted as historical.
The term 'Death' here denotes matter in its extremely subtle form, which in other texts is called Darkness; as we infer from the order of enumeration in another passage in the same Upanishad, 'the Unevolved is merged in the Imperishable, the Imperishable in Darkness. That this Darkness is called 'Death' is due to the fact that it obscures the understanding of all souls and thus is harmful to them.
Our conception of knowing finite things is to know their name and form; but knowledge of God must be distinct from such knowledge. This is why some declare God to be unknown and unknowable; because He is far more than eye or mind or speech can perceive, comprehend or express. The Upanishad does not say that He cannot be known. He is unknowable to man's finite nature.
And that is the object which the Upanishad has in view when it says, Know thine own Soul. Or, in other words, realise the one great principal of unity that there is in every man. All our egoistic impulses, our selfish desires, obscure our true vision of the soul. For they only indicate our own narrow self.
This great Upanishad, consistent with the four Vedas, in harmony with Sankhya and Yoga, was called by him by the name of Pankaratra. This is excellent, this is Brahman, this is supremely beneficial.
It has been already shown, viz. under I, 2, 21, that the highest Brahman constitutes the initial topic of the Upanishad. And by the arguments set forth in the previous Sutras of the present Pada, we have removed all suspicion as to the topic started being dropped in the body of the Upanishad. And on account of abiding and eating. 'Two birds, inseparable friends, cling to the same tree. Up.
Sir Edwin Arnold popularized it by his metrical rendering under the name of "The Secret of Death," and Ralph Waldo Emerson gives its story in brief at the close of his essay on "Immortality." There is no consensus of opinion regarding the place of this Upanishad in Vedic literature.
Later sectarian writers never quote this verse, but their silence may be due to the fact that the Upanishad does not refer to Kṛishṇa as if he were a deity, and merely says that he received from Ghora instruction after which he never thirsted again.
"Thou art woman," says the same Upanishad , "and Thou art man: Thou art youth and maiden: Thou as an old man totterest along on thy staff: Thou art born with thy face turned everywhere. Thou art the dark-blue bee: Thou the green parrot with the red eyes. Thou art the thunder cloud, the seasons and the seas. Thou art without beginning because Thou art infinite, Thou, from whom all worlds are born."
The special purpose of this Upanishad is to give us the knowledge of the Real, that we may not come under the dominion of the ego by identifying ourselves with our body, mind and senses. Mortals become mortals because they fall under the sway of ego and depend on their own limited physical and mental strength.
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