AITAREYA UPANISHAD - 18. Rishi Maheedasa Aitareya.

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Tuesday, January 10, 2023. 07:00.

PART 1: Chapter 3B, 4 Mantras : The Lord’s Regal ENTRY

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Mantram - 3.13: “Oh! I Have Seen This Before!”

POST-18

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Mantram - 3.13: “Oh! I Have Seen This Before!”

With Translation :

8 sah jaatah bhootaani abhivyaikhyat; = Having been born (i.e. entering the body), He gazed around upon the “creatures”.

9 “kim iha anyam vaavadishat?” iti = “What is there other than Me that needs to be named?”

10 sah etam eva purusham brahma; tatamam (tata-tamam) apashyat, = He saw this Purusha, the Supreme Brahman; He saw this over-spreading wonder;

11 “idam adarsham” iti 3. * = (He said to Himself): “Oh, I have seen this before!”

*[‘iti’ is elongated to three Matras, following the Vedic rule concerning words that refer to 

Brahman or suggest Liberation.]

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Bhashyam (Vyakyanam) :

Pujya Gurudev writes in his commentary: “When emotion overpowers thought and 

when ideas get fired up to its white-heat of intensity, language does not conform to the 

conventional rules of grammar and syntax but, as it were, evaporates here and there into 

explosive amazement and wonderment!”

This is what we are seeing in this verse. We owe it to ourselves to spend due time on 

this verse. It inspires us from many angles – poetic, dramatic, Vedantic, meditational and 

educational. From any of these angles, we pick up gems. 

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Brahman’s Experience: “Prajnaanam Brahma” :

8 Firstly, we are very fortunate indeed to be listening to the Lord Himself at the 

moment when He has just entered His own creation and taken up residence in the first 

living being. The Lord’s Birth, as such, need not be taken literally. Using his poetic licence,

the Rishi Maheedasa conveys something very deep in his heart, and does so very effectively.

Bhootaani: “creatures”. In this line this word refers to the Deities who are controlling 

each individual sense organ. Each Deity is like a creature within the Body! And how does the 

Lord meet all the Deities upon entering the Body?

The very moment He enters, He gazes out through the eyes, thinks through the 

mind, hears the first sound coming in through the ears, etc – He gets the first taste of being 

an embodied creature, exactly as we all are experiencing every moment of our lives. 

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9 But there is one huge difference between the Lord’s experience and ours: He 

recognizes everything around Him as Himself! This is quite special, indeed. He is not seeing 

creation as separate from Himself. Being utterly Pure, unlike the sullied or tainted Jeeva, He 

is not seeing different forms as the Jeeva does. He says, Kim Iha Anyam?, “What else is 

there besides Me, the Atman? I cannot name anything for they are all just Me!” He only sees 

Himself everywhere, not objects outside Him that have their own identity and which 

therefore require a name to be identified. This is the experience of Pure Consciousness. 

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The Experience of “Prajnaanam Brahma” :

10 This is, indeed, the experience of God-realization itself. The Lord is unblemished 

Consciousness; His experience is to see Consciousness alone everywhere. This is the most 

direct experience of the Mahavakya Prajnanam Brahma, “Consciousness is Brahman,”

which a group of students will ponder over in the Fifth Chapter. When Pure Consciousness 

enters a body, the experience is of Prajnanam Brahma!

Tatamam: [which Sri Shankaracharyaji corrects to ‘Tata-Tamam’] – He sees Himself 

as “all-pervading, over-spreading” everywhere around Him. That is the grand Vision of God.

The Lord, glancing around and seeing nothing but Himself, is amazed at the uniqueness of 

this embodied experience, of which He Himself is the Architect!

This is surely Rishi Maheedasa’s signature – he is at his creative best in this mantram. 

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11 Then the Lord exclaims in joy and wonder combined, “Oh! I have seen all this 

before!” That is as far as the verse goes. The rest is for us to sit and ponder over.

The elongation of the last word into 3 Matras is to express the joy of having attained 

union with Brahman. This is the Vedic tradition. 3 Matras means that the syllable is chanted 

for three times longer than the normal duration. 

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A “Vedantic Wonder” :

In Vedanta, Adhyaropa or ‘theoretical superimposition’ is done only so that the 

reverse process, called the Apavada, can be shown in order to trace the route back to the 

Source of creation. Here, in just a single verse of exquisite poetic beauty, the entire Apavada 

or de-superimposition is accomplished. What power there lies in these, the fewest of words, 

to convey the deepest spiritual goal of man – that is why it is a “Vedantic Wonder”!

The verse is describing nothing short of a taste of Self-realisation. We are getting a

first-hand account of the “moment of realization” which a sage experiences only after long 

and arduous practice of meditation, austerity and self-control. Here we are tasting the

experience of the Lord Himself! Recognising this, our appreciation of this verse multiplies. 

The more alert we are the more can we grasp what this Upanishad really has to teach us.

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REFLECTIONS – OUR SEPARATION FROM GOD :

Figuratively, the Supreme Lord had this experience no sooner he stepped into the 

embodied state; That is our true Self. Each one of us has this experience – but, alas, we

forget it as we enter yet another womb. Our cry at birth is because we want to get back to 

that blissful state of freedom. But destiny thrusts upon us a painful experience of separation 

the moment we are born. 

Our tears at childbirth soon dry up. We come with an alien soul-culture preprogrammed in us over many previous births. Hence, our experience of embodiment is 

different from the Lord’s. Ours is painful. And after birth, as we encounter more of the alien 

programming, we wallow in filth and dirty ourselves day after day, year after year, and 

perhaps birth after birth. Our origin becomes unrecognizable to us. Alas, we drift further 

and further away from that original blissful state of being.

Only a ‘miracle’ can bring us back to our original state. How can we realize our great 

folly? Rishi Maheedasa, like a professional therapist, compassionately tries to retrace our 

mind to that glorious moment described in this verse – when we, too, can become aware of 

who we really are, a moment which we have totally forgotten.

The joy of realization expressed in this verse, is denied to us due to the cloud of 

delusion surrounding our soul. It is covered by layers of “impurities” due to ignorant living 

birth after birth. We have got used to living with that impurity, and indeed we actually revel 

in it (see next verse)! When the full thrust of this verse penetrates our hearts, we are able to 

see our error. Then we shall make every effort to regain our experience of supreme Bliss 

once again. That is the hope of Rishi Maheedasa.

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Next

Mantram 3.14: From Idandra to Indra – Knowledge to Ignorance!

To be continued

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