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The Chhandogya Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda
178
Saunaka approached the brahmacharin and replied:  You are saying that food has been
refused to the great deity, the all-pervading one. Listen to what I have to say on this. You
are speaking like this because you are under the impression that you are a meditator on
the Samvarga and that we know nothing about it. You made a remark that we are
ignorant of the presence of this great god to whom all the food belongs. Then what is it
that we are meditating on? I will tell you. There is a great Soul, the Self of all beings, the
source and essence of all the gods, the creator, the progenitor of all things. He is the one
who eats through the mouth of knowledge itself. It is not an ordinary mouth with
physical teeth and physical tongue. He has teeth which are shining with the lustre of
knowledge. It is the essence of knowledge which is the essence of His being and He
swallows all things. He is a great devourer. There is nothing in creation which He cannot
devour. Everything is food for him and He consumes it through his own being, not
through any external instrument. He is the wisest of all existences. His glory is great
indeed. He cannot be eaten or swallowed by anybody, or not even affected in the least by
anyone, or contacted and contaminated by any other in any manner whatsoever. But to
Him everything is food. He eats non-food also, not only the ordinary food. The eaters
themselves are eaten up by Him. This is what we are meditating upon. Having made
this remark he told his servants,  Please give this boy food.
This conversation conceals something very interesting. Its meaning is very hard to
comprehend. We can however follow the interpreters and the commentators and make
out, to some extent, the sense implied in this conversation. The implication of this
discourse between the two parties seems to be that from the point of view of the
brahmacharin it was wrong on the part of the other two persons to ignore his presence
altogether and pay no heed to his request for food, especially as it was well-known that
he was no ordinary person, having attuned himself to the cosmic deity. That was his
point of view. The point of view of the others who retorted in reply seems to be that they
were not so ignorant as he imagined them to be. But, what is the point in refusing food
to him? There must be some reason behind it. There is a meaning which we have to read
into the words of the scripture to understand the reason. What we are told is that they
merely wanted to test the brahmacharin to find out his depth of knowledge and the
stuff out of which he was made. So they gave a reply which suggested that they
possessed a knowledge, perhaps comparatively superior to his own knowledge.
In what way was it superior? This superiority is only suggestive and it is not openly
stated. Samvarga is cosmic as well as individual, as it has been told in the earlier
mantras. As the cosmic counterpart it is Vayu, and as it functions in the individual it is
prana. Now, the four great ones who were swallowed up by the god, as the
brahmacharin pointed out, are the other lesser deities, the fire, the sun, the moon and
the water who are all comprehended in the being of Vayu, Hiranyagarbha, the
Supreme Reality. In the individual aspect also He is devourer of four things that are
inferior to the prana, namely eye, ear, mind and speech. It is possible for such a
meditator to have a mistaken notion that the cosmic is different in some way or other
from the individual, or at least that there is a line of demarcation between the universal
and the particular. In spite of the fact that the two are one, there seems to be a suggested
difference between the outer and the inner, vayu and prana. But in the meditation that
Saunaka and his friend practised, this difference seems to be obliterated completely,
because they seem to be contemplating on that Being who has not this suggested
The Chhandogya Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda
179
difference between the outer and the inner, the cosmic and the individual, but is one
single Reality. This can be the implication of the reply given by Saunaka to the
brahmacharin.
 Well, anyway we have tested you. You are a good boy; take food. This seems to be the
final conclusion of Saunaka who told the servant to give him food. Or, it may be that
there is no such implied meaning. Their intention might not be to suggest that there is
some defect in the meditation of the brahmacharin. Perhaps it was merely a kind of
examination that they conducted in respect of him. Whatever it is, the whole section is a
glorification of Samvarga-Vidya and also a phalasruti, making out that the exalted effect
of this meditation is identity with the deity. One becomes possessed of the same power
as is possessed by the deity. He becomes self-confident, and whatever is subject to the
domain of the deity is subject to the rule and will of this meditator also. He becomes a
superior person in every manner as the deity itself is. This is in the form of a sequel, a
glorifying conclusion of the section dealing with Samvarga-Vidya In this Upanishad.
8. Tasma u ha daduh, te va ete pancanye pancanye dasa santastat
krtam, tasmat sarvesu diksv-annam eva dasa krtam, saisa virad-
arnnadi, tayedam sarvam drstam, sarvam asyodam drstam bhavati,
annado bhavati, ya evam veda, ya evam veda.
So they gave him food. Now follows a very complicated passage. It is peculiarly archaic,
as many of the mantras in the Vedas and the Upanishads are. I give you merely the
literal translation of what it is. This five and the other five make ten. This is the
enigmatic meaning of this sentence. This is called the krita. Therefore, food comes from
all the ten directions. The Virat is the eater of everything. Whatever it sees, it eats. The
food itself is the eater of food. This is the effect that follows in respect of anyone who
knows this secret.
Now, what do we make out of this? We cannot make out any sense if we read it literally
like that. But it has a significant mystical meaning. The five are the eater and five are the
eaten. The eater is Vayu cosmically, the absorber, the supreme deity into which
everything enters. The other four are the articles of diet for this supreme deity.
According to some it is fire, sun, moon and water. If we do not want it to be so
complicated, we may say that they are the four elements, ether, fire, water and earth
which are absorbed into this Supreme Absorber. Inwardly the prana is the eater, and
the food is the sense-organs, speech, eye, ear and mind. So the four items which are
regarded as food or which are the eaten, together with the eater, constitute the five. The
five in the macrocosm and the five in the microcosm make ten. And this is the krita.
Here, krita is another difficult word. As we said earlier, it is the name of a cast of dice in
a game. There are numbers inscribed on this cast and they are four, three, two and one. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]