PRASHNA UPANISHAD

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PRASHNA UPANISHAD

(Being the Upanishad of the Six Questions)

first question

1. OM! Salutation to the Supreme Spirit. The Supreme is OM.

Sukesha the Bharadwaja; the Shaibya, Satyakama; Gargya, son of the Solar race; the Koshalan, son of Ashwala; the Bhargava of Vidarbha; and Kabandhi Katyayana; — these sought the Most High God, believing in the Supreme and to the Supreme devoted. Therefore they came to the Lord Pippalada, for they said: “This is he that shall tell us of that Universal.ˮ

2. The Rishi said to them: “Another year do ye dwell in holiness and faith and askesis: then ask what ye will, and if I know, surely I will conceal nothing.ˮ

3. Then came Kabandhi, son of Katya, to him and asked: “Lord, whence are all these creatures born?ˮ

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4. To him answered the Rishi Pippalada: “The Eternal Father desired children, therefore he put forth his energy and by the heat of his energy produced twin creatures, Prana the Life, who is Male, and Rayi the Matter, who is Female. ʻThese,ʼ said he, ʻshall make for me children of many natures.ʼ

5. “The Sun verily is Life and the Moon is no more than Matter: yet truly all this Universe formed and formless is Matter: therefore Form and Matter are One.

6. “Now when the Sun rising enters the East, then absorbs he the eastern breaths into his rays. But when he illumines the south and west and north, and below and above and all the angles of space, yea, all that is, then he takes all the breaths in his rays.

7. “Therefore is this fire that rises, this Universal Male, of whom all things are the bodies, Prana the breath of existence. This is that which was said in the Rig-veda:—

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8. “ ʻFire is this burning and radiant Sun, he is the One lustre and all-knowing Light, he is the highest heaven of spirits. With a thousand rays he burns and exists in a hundred existences; lo this Sun that rises, he is the Life of all his creatures.ʼ

9. “The year also is that Eternal Father and of the year there are two paths, the northern solstice and the southern. Now they who worship God with the well dug and the oblation offered, deeming these to be righteousness, conquer their heavens of the Moon: these return again to the world of birth. Therefore do the souls of sages who have not yet put from them the desire of offspring, take the way of the southern solstice which is the road of the Fathers. And this also is Matter, the Female.

10. “But by the way of the northern solstice go the souls that have sought the Spirit through holiness and knowledge and faith and askesis: for they conquer their heavens of the Sun. There is the resting place of the breaths, there immortality casts out fear, there is the highest heaven of spirits: thence no soul returns: therefore is the wall and barrier. Whereof this is the Scripture:—

11. “ ʻFive-portioned, some say, is the Father and has twelve figures and he flows in the upper hemisphere beyond the

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heavens: but others speak of him as the Wisdom who stands in a chariot of six spokes and seven wheelsʼ.

12. “The month also is that Eternal Father, whereof the dark fortnight is Matter, the Female and the bright fortnight is Life, the Male. Therefore do one manner of sages offer sacrifice in the bright fortnight and another in the dark.

13. “Day and night also are the Eternal Father, whereof the day is Life and the night is Matter. Therefore do they offend against their own life who take joy with woman by day: by night who take joy, enact holiness.

14. “Food is the Eternal Father: for of this came the seed and of the seed is the world of creatures born.

15. “They therefore who perform the vow of the Eternal Father produce the twin creature. But theirs is the heaven of the spirit in whom are established askesis and holiness and in whom Truth has her dwelling.

16. “Theirs is the heaven of the Spirit, the world all spotless, in whom there is neither crookedness nor lying nor any illusion.ˮ

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Second question

1. Then the Bhargava, the Vidarbhan, asked him: “Lord, how many Gods maintain this creature, and how many illumine it, and which of these again is the mightiest?ˮ

2. To him answered the Rishi Pippalada: “These are the Gods, even Ether and Wind and Fire and Water and Earth and Speech and Mind and Sight and Hearing. These nine illumine the creature: therefore they vaunted themselves, ʻWe, even we support this harp of God and we are the preservers.ʼ

3. “Then answered Breath, their mightiest: ʻYield not unto delusion: I dividing myself into this fivefold support this harp of God, I am its preserver.ʼ But they believed him not.

4. “Therefore offended he rose up, he was issuing out from the body. But when the Breath goes out, then go all the others with him, and when the Breath abides all the others abide: therefore as bees with the king bee: when he goes

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out all go out with him, and when he abides all abide, even so was it with Speech and Mind and Sight and Hearing: then were they well-pleased and

hymned the Breath to adore him.

5. “ ʻLo this is he that is Fire and the Sun that burns, Rain and Indra and Earth and Air, Matter and Deity, Form and Formless, and Immortality.

6. “ ʻAs the spokes meet in the nave of a wheel, so are all things in the Breath established, the Rig-veda and the Yajur and the Sama, and Sacrifice and Brahminhood and Kshatriyahood.

7. “ ʻAs the Eternal Father thou movest in the womb and art born in the likeness of the parents. To thee, O Life, the world of creatures offers the burnt offering, who by the breaths abidest.

8. “ ʻOf all the Gods thou art the strongest and fiercest and to the fathers thou art the first oblation: thou art the truth and virtue of the sages and thou art Atharvan among the sons of Angiras.

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9. “ Thou art Indra, O Breath, by thy splendour and energy art Rudra because thou preservest: thou walkest in the welkin as the Sun, that imperial lustre.

10. “When thou, O Breath, rainest, thy creatures stand all joy because there shall be grain to the heartʼs desire.

11. “ ʻThou art, O Breath, the unpurified and thou art Fire, the only purity, the devourer of all and the lord of existences. We are the givers to thee of thy eating: for thou, O Matarishwan, art our Father.

12. “ ʻThat body of thine which is established in the speech, sight and hearing, and in the mind is extended, that make propitious: O Life, go not out from our midst!

13. “ ʻFor all this Universe, yea, all that is established in the heavens to the Breath is subject: guard us as a mother watches over her little children: give us fortune and beauty, give us Wisdom.ʼ ˮ

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Third question

1. Then the Koshalan, the son of Ashwala, asked him: “Lord, whence is this Life born? How comes it in this body or how stands by self-division? By what departs, or how maintains the outward and how the inward spiritual?ˮ

2. To him answered the Rishi Pippalada: “Many and difficult things thou askest: but because thou art very holy, therefore will I tell thee.

3. “Of the Spirit is this breath of Life born: even as a shadow is cast by a man, so is this Life extended in the Spirit and by the action of the Mind it enters into this body.

4. “As an emperor commands his officers and he says to one, ʻGovern for me these villagesʼ, and to another ʻGovern for me these othersʼ, so this breath, the Life, appoints the other breaths each in his province.

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5. “In the anus and the organ of pleasure is the lower breath, and the eyes and the ears, the mouth and the nose, the main breath itself is seated; but the medial breath is in the middle. This is he that equally distributes the burnt offering of food: for from this are the seven fires born.

6. “The Spirit in the heart abides, and in the heart there are one hundred and one nerves, and each nerve has a hundred branch-nerves and each branch-nerve has seventy-two thousand sub-branch-nerves: through these the breath pervasor moves.

7. “Of these many there is one by which the upper breath departs that by virtue takes to the heaven of virtue, by sin to the hell of sin, and by mingled sin and righteousness back to the world of men restores.

8. “The Sun is the main breath outside this body, for it cherishes the eye in its rising. The divinity in the earth, she attracts the lower breath of man, and the ether between is the medial breath; air is the breath pervasor.

9. “Light, the primal energy, is the upper breath: therefore when the light and heat in a man has dwindled, his senses

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retire into the mind and with these he departs into another birth.

10. “Whatsoever be the mind of a man, with that mind he seeks refuge with the breath when he dies, and the breath and the upper breath lead him with the Spirit within him to the world of his imaginings.

11. “The wise man that knows thus of the breath, his progeny wastes not and he becomes immortal. Whereof this is the Scripture:—

12. “ ʻBy knowing the origin of the Breath, his coming and his staying and his lordship in the five provinces, likewise his relation to the Spirit, one shall taste immortality.ʼ ˮ

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fourth question

1. Then Gargya of the Solar race asked him, “Lord, what are they that slumber in this Existing and what that keep vigil? Who is this god who sees dreams or whose is this felicity? Into whom do they all vanish?ˮ

2. To him answered the Rishi Pippalada: “O Gargya, as are the rays of the sun in its setting, for they retire and all become one in yonder circle of splendour, but when he rises again once more they walk abroad, so all the man becomes one in the highest god, even the mind. Then indeed this being sees not, neither hears, nor does he smell, nor taste, nor touch, nor speaks he aught, nor takes in or gives out, nor comes nor goes: he feels not any felicity. Then they say of him, ʻHe sleeps.ʼ

3. “But the fires of the breath keep watch in that sleeping city. The lower breath is the householderʼs fire and the breath pervasor the fire of the Lares that burns to the southward. The main breath is the orient fire of the sacrifice: and even as the eastern fire takes its fuel from the western, so in the

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slumber of a man the main breath takes from the lower.

4. “But the medial breath is the priest, the sacrificant: for he equalises the offering of the inbreath and the offering of the outbreath. The Mind is the giver of the sacrifice and the upper breath is the fruit of the sacrifice, for it takes the sacrificer day by day into the presence of the Eternal.

5. “Now the Mind in dream revels in the glory of his imaginings. All that it has seen it seems to see over again, and of all that it has heard it repeats the hearing: yea, all that it has felt and thought and known in many lands and in various regions, these it lives over again in its dreaming. What it has seen and what it has not seen, what it has heard and what it has not heard, what it has known and what it has not known, what is and what is not, all, all it sees: for the Mind is the Universe.

6. “But when he is overwhelmed with light, then Mind, the God, dreams no longer: then in this body he has felicity.

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7. “O fair son, as birds wing towards their resting tree, so do all these depart into the Supreme Spirit:

8. “Earth and the inner things of earth: water and the inner things of water: light and the inner things of light: air and the inner things of air: ether and the inner things of ether: the eye and its seeings: the ear and its hearings: smell and the objects of smell: taste and the objects of taste: the skin and the objects of touch: speech and the things to be spoken: the two hands and their takings: the organ of pleasure and its enjoyings: the anus and its excretions: the feet and their goings: the mind and its feelings: the intelligence and what it understands: the sense of Ego and that which is felt to be Ego: the conscious heart and that of which it is conscious: light and what it lightens: Life and the things it maintains.

9. “For this that sees and touches, hears, smells, tastes, feels, understands, acts, is the reasoning self, the Male within. This too departs into the Higher Self which is Imperishable.

10. “He that knows the shadowless, colourless, bodiless, luminous and imperishable Spirit, attains to the Imperishable,

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even to the Most High. O fair son, he knows the All and becomes the All. Whereof this is the Scripture:—

11. “ ʻHe, O fair son, that knows the Imperishable into whom the understanding self departs, and all the Gods, and the life-breaths and the elements, he knows the Universe...!ʼ ˮ

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fifth question

1. Then the Shaibya Satyakama asked him: “Lord, he among men that meditate unto death on OM the syllable, which of the worlds does he conquer by its puissance?”

2. To him answered the Rishi Pippalada: “This imperishable Word that is OM, O Satyakama, is the Higher Brahman and also the Lower. Therefore the wise man by making his home in the Word, wins to one of these.

3. “If he meditate on the one letter of OM the syllable, by that enlightened he attains swiftly in the material universe, and the hymns of the Rig-veda escort him to the world of men: there endowed with askesis and faith and holiness he experiences majesty.

4. “Now if by the two letters of the syllable he in the mind attains, to the skies he is exalted and the hymns of the Yajur escort him to the Lunar World. In the heavens of the Moon he feels his soulʼs majesty: then once more he returns.

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5. “But he who by all the three letters meditates by this syllable. even by OM on the Most High Being, he in the Solar world of light and energy is secured in his attainings: as a snake casts off its slough, so he casts off sin, and the hymns of the Sama-veda escort him to the heaven of the Spirit. He from that Lower who is the density of existence beholds the Higher than the Highest of whom every form is one city. Whereof these are the verses:—

6. “ ʻChildren of death are the letters when they are used as three, the embracing and the inseparable letters: but the wise man is not shaken: for there are three kinds of works, outward deed and inward action and another which is blended of the two, and all these he does rightly without fear and without trembling.

7. “ ʻTo the earth the Rig-veda leads, to the skies the Yajur, but the Sama to That of which the sages know. Thither the wise man by resting on OM the syllable attains, even to that Supreme Quietude where age is not and fear is cast out by immortalityʼ.ˮ

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Sixth question

1. Then Sukesha the Bharadwaja asked him: “Lord, Hiranyanabha of Koshala, the kingʼs son, came to me and put me this question, ʻO Bharadwaja, knowest thou the Being and the sixteen parts of Him?ʼ and I answered the boy, ʻI know Him not: for if I knew Him, surely I should tell thee of Him: but I cannot tell thee a lie: for from the roots he shall wither who speaks falsehood.ʼ But he mounted his chariot in silence and departed from me. Of Him I ask thee, who is the Being?ˮ

2. To him answered the Rishi Pippalada: “O fair son, even here is that Being, in the inner body of every creature, for in Him are the sixteen members born.

3. “He bethought Him: ʻWhat shall that be in whose issuing forth I shall issue forth from the body and in his abiding I shall abide?ʼ

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4. “Then he put forth the Life, and from the Life faith, next ether and then air, and then light, and then water, and then earth, the senses and mind and food, and from food virility and from virility askesis, and from askesis the mighty verses, and from these action, and the worlds from action and name in the worlds: in this wise were all things born from the Spirit.

5. “Therefore as all these flowing rivers move towards the sea, but when they reach the sea they are lost in it and name and form break away from them and all is called only the sea, so all the sixteen members of the silent witnessing Spirit move towards the Being, and when they have attained the Being they are lost in Him and name and form break away from them and all is called only the Being: then is He without members and immortal. Whereof this is the Scripture:—

6. “ ʻHe in whom the members are set as the spokes of a wheel are set in its nave, Him know for the Being Who is the goal of Knowledge, so shall death pass away from you and his anguish.ʼ ˮ

7. And Pippalada said to them: “Thus far do I know the Most High God: than He there is none Higher.ˮ

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8. And they worshipping him: “For thou art our father who has carried us over to the other side of the Ignorance.ˮ Salutation to the mighty sages, salutation!

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