While the wisdom of the Veda is said to be timeless, its fundamental spiritual ideas have been distilled into shorter bursts of high-powered teachings known as the Upaniṣad. Chock-full of mythological allegories, each of the Upaniṣad illustrates an important tenet of Vedic wisdom. The oldest of these more concise texts is the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, which gives us an origin tale for the universe that explains how the nothingness became “somethingness” and how our universe further developed into the infinite forms we recognize today. As the universe developed, there also developed the tension between opposites — light and dark, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance. Finding a way to navigate this constant tension is one of the main ways we find solace within our spiritual practice.
The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad probably dates from around 1500 BCE. From it comes this chant:
tamaso mā jyotir gamaya
mṛtyor mā amṛtam gamaya
Lead me from untruth to Truth
Lead me from darkness to Light
Lead me from death to Immortality
This mantra makes for a wonderful invocation for practice, or even a silent mantra for meditation. It’s a powerful mantra that keeps the aspirant’s mind fixed on the issue at hand — moving through the shadows to recognize the light of internal awareness. The beginning of this chant features an oṁ that brings to the mantra the initial creative vibration present at the beginning of all things. This relates it back to the source text it derives from, which explains the mythic origins of the universe. In further repetitions of the mantra, the oṁ may be skipped in the first line, or it may continue to be chanted. Try moving through the chant one line at a time, and if teaching it to others, use a call-and-response fashion, pausing at the end of each line for respondents to repeat it. Each line contains a pair of opposites — the initial aspect we are moving away from and the complement we are moving toward. The movement between them is expressed by the term gamaya. The three lines feature untruth (asat) and truth (sat), darkness (tamas) and light (jyotir), and death (mṛtyor) and immortality (amṛtam). Essentially, for the yoga practitioner, we are always striving toward the light.
This invocation from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad encapsulates a central yogic idea: that there is a source within us that is self-empowered, self-effulgent, and eternal. As humans, we live within the wheel of saṁsāra. This is another name for the cycles of life discussed in the Guru Mantra (page 33). As such, each one of us must confront death, ignorance, and error, but we can find our way through this to what is timeless and unchanging. Most importantly, the immortality expressed in this sacred mantra is not the desire for the physical body to live forever. Rather, it’s the desire to experience or realize the everlasting source within us — which some call a soul, spirit, ātman, or jīva.
Further, as the mythic story of this Upaniṣad makes clear, it is mantra and sacred sound that can lead us to this place. Through mantra, and the sacred vibration it harnesses, we can be led home — to our internal, everlasting, self-effulgent essence.
The universe is sleeping. A cosmic ocean, it lies dormant and quiet. Completely still and absent of light. There is no time or space, just their absence. Lying dormant at the bottom of this ocean of nothingness are millions and billions of tiny seeds, which in and of themselves are also nothing — without time, space, or light. However, within those seeds is potential, just as the great banyan tree lies hidden inside its tiny seeds. Those seeds await the proper conditions to sprout. Until then, the seeds remain hidden and quiet. Nothingness ensues.
This yogic origin story — describing a timeless cosmic ocean in which no-thing exists — is equivalent to the scientific origin story of the Big Bang, which proposes that at one point everything in time and space existed as a sort of presingularity…a prepotential state. In Sāṁkhya philosophy,5 which presents the yogic view, this is known as puruṣa, sometimes referred to as consciousness, or unmanifest reality. Puruṣa can also be understood as the principle force behind our favorite sound of oṁ — the sound that eventually gives rise to all things, according to Upanishadic and Vedic texts. It’s tough to put a finger on the formless, but suffice to say that puruṣa is the subtle, underlying source present within all things. It is this potential force that composes this original cosmic soup, without which nothing eventually arises.
Then after a long period — what the tradition refers to as “the night of Brahmā” — creative numinosity begins to stir. Through this indescribable force, the seeds ripen, the atom splits, and suddenly time and space are born. Seeds grow and ripples appear on the surface of the ocean. Waves appear and affect other waves; seeds take root and develop into the fiery element of creation. The power of manifestation, prāṇaśakti (prana shakti), bursts forth, forming mind, senses, dreams, desires, and eventually the earth or the substance of the universe in all its diversity.
In the story, the manifestations that arise out of the cosmic ocean of puruṣa are known as prakṛti (prakriti), or manifest reality. As prakṛti continues to develop and materialize, it becomes denser and denser and further removed — or externalized — from the original source. Eventually, we ourselves become so cloaked in this externalization that we don’t recognize the original numinous vibration or puruṣa in the things that we see and experience. This cloaking effect (for more on this, see the Gāyatrī Mantra, page 65) is known as māyā, or the illusory veil that pulls the world over our eyes so we see and experience only the veil and not the truth that is cloaked behind it.
This is exactly like the concept in the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix, in which the hero, Neo, is “unplugged” from the computer simulation that he (and almost everyone else) has mistaken for reality. Through this simulation, humans are kept unconscious of their true plight, as biological energy sources for machines that have taken over the planet. When Neo is first approached within the computer simulation by an awakened man named Morpheus, who is working with others to extract humanity from this dream state, Morpheus must find a way to explain to Neo that what seems to be reality is not actually real. The Matrix, in fact, is a symbolic representation of māyā, and the effects of recognizing it as such are the same. Only once we see and understand that everyday reality is māyā, an illusion like the computer-simulated Matrix, can we recognize the ultimate truth that lies behind it. In yogic practice, that truth (sat) is of our immortality (amṛtam). Here is the conversation Morpheus first has with Neo:
MORPHEUS: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when you go to church, or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
NEO: What truth?
MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
By the film’s end, Neo not only realizes that the Matrix is all in his mind, but that his mind is actually more powerful and can control this illusion. This is similar to how we, through yogic practices, eventually are able to see through the veil of māyā to recognize the effulgent source (puruṣa) at the heart of all things. Once we do, we can control our own reality. We let go of the false understanding that externalized forms are “real” and immutable. We see past this to the inner reality, which is that timeless, formless, pure consciousness is at the heart of everything.
In the origin story from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, the cosmic ocean churns and separates and divides further into the components of the mind, the sensory organs, and eventually the separation of heaven and hell. When this happens, the demons (known as asura) and the gods immediately go to war with one another.
And as soon as the demons and gods start fighting, the gods are immediately outdone — there always seem to be more demons than gods! The gods convene to create a plan to defeat the demons through the tremendous power of mantra. Mantra, when chanted correctly, has the power to correct, redirect, and reunify all that is separate. Through its practice, prakṛti, or manifest reality, dissolves back into the timeless puruṣa. For us, as individuals, this means that mantra has the ability to reunify any feeling of separation we have from our source. This is yoga!
The gods have their answer, their great weapon to defeat the evil demons. And so the mouth, with its grand power of speech, is summoned to chant their chosen words — a chant so powerful and utterly divine that it can harness and channel the power of the universe to overcome evil. But the demons get word of this great plan. They attack the mouth and wound its speech, so that it speaks not just perfect mantra but harmful words as well. The mouth fails, so the gods must find another way.
They enlist the eyes! The beautiful eyes! There is no way for the demons to pierce this beauty, so the gods ask the eyes to chant the sacred mantra. But the demons are clever, and they attack the eyes so that the eyes see not just what is beautiful but what is ugly and fearsome.
So the gods recruit the ears, for perfect ears hear only perfect vibration. The ears chant beautifully until they are pierced by the harsh words of the demons. The ears falter, hearing not only harmonious sound but also cries and screams and terrible untruths. The gods then ask the fingers of touch to learn the chant, for how could touch be spoiled? It is so perfect in its caresses and ability to soothe. But the fingers are pricked and start curling in on themselves, withholding their power and transmitting pain as much as pleasure. The smelling nose is asked to chant, but it is at once overcome with putrefaction and founders.
Well, since the mind thought of this brilliant idea, the gods finally plead with the mind to focus on the perfect chant to help them win this war! The mind focuses intently and is indeed harder for the demons to attack, but once they do, negative thoughts arise and suddenly the mind wonders about its own ability to do this task. Does it even have the skills? Can it do it? Doubt fills the mind, and the mind becomes useless in creating the power needed to overcome the demons.
The gods are heartbroken. They just know that mantra is the only sure way to harness the absolute power of formless, pure consciousness, but how else are they to get to it? All the indriya, or organs of action, have failed. But, suddenly, the gods think: “What if it isn’t an indriya who is chanting? Indriya are fallible, as they’re made of the divisive nature of prakṛti! That’s it! We’ll enlist the prāṇa — the driving force of puruṣa — to chant!” And so the gods ask prāṇa to chant for them. Prāṇa politely and humbly obliges. It begins the chant, not just chanting the mantra, but invoking the very essence of the mantra and driving it forth as the supreme weapon of unification. The demons try and try, but all their attacks are hopeless against the impenetrable, infallible prāṇa, whose ultimate connection to the numinous source is indivisible. There is no “other side of the coin” with prāṇa, whose nature is unity.
Through prāṇa’s embodiment of the mantra, the most powerful weapon — sacred sound — is used to defeat the demons and create peace once again. The gods can rest and finally become what they know themselves to be: perfect, whole, and complete.
As a mystical practice, yoga allows us to understand the external world on an internal level. In keeping with the hermetic aphorism of Hermes Trismegistus, “as above, so below,” the yogi is one who seeks to understand the external world through inquiry into the internal landscape. This means that all life becomes refocused through an internal lens of self-inquiry, where we see that the whole universe is simply a reflection of ourselves. If we understand this myth as a metaphor, then we see that this story of gods and demons is simply an analogy to illustrate our own dualistic tendencies.
As humans we often fall prey to a dualistic concept that makes us feel separate from the source. We allow the tongue to speak harshly, the hands to withhold tender touch, and the mind to rationalize our self-doubt. Yoga, as a mystical practice, involves deep self-inquiry where we travel within to discover where our internal truth, light, and reality reside. The external world shows us our separateness, while the internal world reveals the truth that we are eternally connected to the source of our being.
One of the most powerful methods of focus to help us reveal our internal nature is mantra. As we channel our own energy, or prāṇa, into uplifting phrases, then just like the gods, we defeat our inner demons and reveal our own wholeness. Through self-inquiry, we discover the all-connected source within. We stop seeing the external world as “real,” and like Neo in The Matrix, we discover the ways in which we can reshape and reunderstand ourselves in order to see the world differently. This internal inquiry will reveal the light that is cloaked by self-doubt and self-judgments. People who have discovered this self-effulgence are those who illuminate and inspire others — simply through their presence alone. It is these luminaries who have the capability of transforming the world they live in. And we are all capable of that, for we all come from the same luminescent, vibrational source.