Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda continues the Yoga Vasistha, Upasama Prakarana, Section 35, where Prahlada gives spiritual aspirants a practice of affirmation for enlightenment. The section opens on a single, startling claim: when the Self is known, all is known.
The Craving to Know Everything
The human mind wants to see everything, know everything, leave nothing hidden and no secret anywhere in the universe. Swamiji points out the obvious problem: you go on like this from life to life, and the things left to see are never exhausted. So how does one become free of the craving to know it all?
Not by finally knowing it all — that can never happen — but by knowing the one thing behind all of it. The soul is Saccidananda, the reality behind everything. Swamiji’s illustration is the dream: at night you have a whole world to see and accomplish, but the entire dream resolves into the one personality lying on the bed. Know that dreamer, and you know everything the dream was made of.
This, he says with a laugh, is the most profound point, delivered in a humorous way.
Wisdom Is Not Collected Knowledge
Here Swamiji draws a sharp line. Wisdom is not the collecting of all types of knowledge, because every piece of knowledge you collect rests on your conditioned mind. All the knowledge you can gather through Google is not absolute — a few years later, with more progress, the same Google gives different answers. Anything known through the conditioned mind is refracted light; wisdom itself is like the sun. The single sun cannot be counted, yet its reflections are endless. So the whole search finally comes down to one inquiry: Who am I? “Atmanastu kamaya sarvam priyam bhavati” — for the sake of the Self, everything else becomes dear. What is truly of value is your own Self.
When the Self Is Known, the Debts Are Paid
Every person carries fivefold duties, five debts: to God, to the rishis, to the forefathers, to humanity, and to the birds and animals. You can never fully discharge them — you cannot meet everyone you have hurt, cannot serve everyone who has passed. But there is one answer: when you are moving toward God, all debts are paid. This does not mean you stop acting; on the contrary, your life becomes most active, most dynamic, most qualitative, while your inner heart moves steadily toward God. In a dark room, imagined shadows create their own terror; open the window, and the light of wisdom solves the whole problem. Aham Brahmasmi.
Three Stages of Affirmation
Swamiji unfolds the affirmation in three deepening stages. Dehabuddhya tu daso’ham — while busy with the body and physical reality, feel there is a loving Master and you are safely in His hands; He carries the worry of the world. Jivabuddhya tvadamshakah — deeper, as a soul you are a ray of God, His very nose, eyes, toes, inseparably related to Him. Atmabuddhya tvamevaham — the climax, where all separation dissolves: how can a ray separate itself from its source even for a moment? The real you is the Absolute Self. Aham Brahma.
These three, brought into daily life, are Integral Yoga: touching action, action becomes karma yoga; touching feeling, it becomes bhakti; touching the will, it corrects what to will and what not to; and jnana reveals the one reality in every individual. No one works on all four equally — you emphasize the one that suits your temperament — but all four are interconnected, and advancing in one advances the rest.
The Same Source, Ascending and Descending
Swamiji lays the Vedantic foundation plainly. Brahman alone exists; Prakriti is His magical power in three forms. Sattva predominating is Maya, the knowledge aspect, expressing as Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and the path of knowledge. Rajas predominating is Avidya, ignorance, through which countless souls pass through turmoil. Tamas predominating becomes all matter — not only gross matter but even ego, intellect, senses, and vital forces — planned by nature to let the soul evolve. The same electrical source, he says, lights your house or, mishandled, sets it on fire; the source is not to blame. The same Brahman gives the energy that lets you evolve and the downward pull that drags you down. But since you are Brahman, you hold the key to stop your own downward grade — and that key becomes available through satsanga and a plan of integral yoga.
Untouched: Sky, Lotus, Rock, Flame
Then come the great images of the section. Just as the sky is untouched by clouds, the lotus untouched by the water it holds only to shake off, and a rock unmoved by storm, so “I am untouched by the clouds of mental distraction, the waters of attachment, the sorrows of the world.” Fear and sorrow are storms; you are the mountain. Mental distractions are clouds; you are the sky.
The lamp gathers it all together. Its flame belongs to the oil, the wick, and the lamp, yet transcends them and cannot be bound even by the strongest rope. Tamas is the oil, rajas the flowing of oil through the wick, sattva the flame that finally burns. The wick is the ego — trim it, make it humble, and it no longer obstructs; then the real you, the light, shines. And while shining, from the practical side you still hold all the stages, helping those in tamas, those progressing, those trimming their egos — outshining all as the light of light. Swamiji notes they were celebrating Dipavali as he taught this.
The Two Birds, and the Smile at Death
He recalls the Mundaka Upanishad’s parable: “dva suparna sayuja sakhaya,” two birds, identical and inseparable, on one pippala tree. One eats the fruit, vomiting and eating again, lost in digestive trouble; the other sits serene above. When the eating bird finally straightens its head and looks up, it recognizes it is only a reflection of the calm bird — and its whole appetite for the fruit falls away. Coming to that stage, the eating bird simply disappears; the one real bird alone remains, and the entire tree vanishes.
From here the fear of death dissolves too. The body can be torn to atoms — and in fact it changes constantly; practically every seven years you have a new body, and you do not go hunting for the old one. The enlightened mind meets even the statement of death with an inner smile: outwardly the body has its way, inwardly nothing is lost, nothing gained — which is why the dying keep their hands open. A pot may break, but the space within it cannot.
Pleasures, Prosperity, and the Drifting Clouds
All sense pleasures, Swamiji says candidly, are the magical play of the nervous system — a tickling of the nerves. Good food tickles the tongue; to a camel, thorns would tickle more than sweets. To make the nervous system your goal is a childish way of understanding yourself. Yet the same pleasure, touched by divine wisdom, can point back to its source — food received as God’s prasada, God shining through the eyes of a loving child. Let prosperity and adversity alternate as they will; they are only interpretations of the nervous system. “Yo vai bhuma” — how can they affect one who is like the ocean of fullness?
Finally: let numerous desires of the mind drift in the vastness of the Self. Once they were clouds trapping a little patch of sky and racing off with it. Now you are the sky, the screen on which a thousand cinema shows play without staining it — and you can even let those clouds bring rain, “sugandhim pushtivardhanam,” helping others grow, while you yourself do nothing to the sky. With that, Swamiji closes: Om, Purnamadah Purnamidam. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.
Reflect
What are you still trying to see and possess “out there,” that you have not yet recognized as already your own Self?
Scholar’s Corner
- Yoga Vasistha, Upasama Prakarana, Section 35: Prahlada’s affirmations of the Self — “when the Self is known, all is known,” the three stages of relationship with God, and the images of sky, lotus, lamp, and the two birds.
- Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.1: “dva suparna sayuja sakhaya” — the two birds on one tree, the eater and the serene witness.
- Chandogya Upanishad 7.23-24: “yo vai bhuma” — the Infinite (Bhuma) as the ground of true happiness.
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.4.5 / 4.5.6: “atmanastu kamaya” — all things are dear for the sake of the Self.
Glossary
- Upasama Prakarana
- “the section on quiescence/liberation,” the sixth book of the Yoga Vasistha.
- Prahlada
- the great devotee whose Self-inquiry frames this section.
- Aham Brahmasmi
- “I am Brahman.”
- Dehabuddhya daso’ham / jivabuddhya tvadamshakah / atmabuddhya tvamevaham
- the three stages — as body I am His servant, as soul His ray, as the Self I alone am.
- Saccidananda
- existence-consciousness-bliss, the nature of the Self.
- Prakriti
- nature; Brahman’s creative power in three gunas — sattva, rajas, tamas.
- Vidya / Avidya
- knowledge and ignorance.
- Sarvam brahmamayam jagat
- “all this world is filled with Brahman.”
Watch the full lecture at https://youtu.be/GCK77lbnKM4
This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.