Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 3, Brahmana 8. Gargi again: the imperishable, the aksara
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
Never seen, yet the seer
This Imperishable, O Gargi, is never seen but is the seer, never heard but is the hearer, never thought but is the thinker, never known but is the knower. There is no other seer than this, no other hearer than this, no other thinker than this, no other knower than this. On this very Imperishable, O Gargi, is space woven, warp and woof.
Yajnavalkya gives the witness-formula: the Imperishable is itself never an object, never seen yet the seer, never heard yet the hearer, never thought yet the thinker, never known yet the knower; and there is no other seer, hearer, thinker, or knower besides it. On this Imperishable, at last, is space itself woven, warp and woof, the answer to Gargi's final question.
akṣara
the imperishable. The Imperishable on which even space is woven, never seen but the seer, defined only by what it is not, under whose rule the worlds hold their courses.
Where the schools meet, and where they part
In this passage the Imperishable is named through negation, set apart from all that is gross and subtle, and declared the seer who is never seen, never made an object by any faculty. All three schools take these as the words of the verse, though each hears what they reveal differently.
This Imperishable is the final ground of the passage; on it the ether and all the worlds are woven, warp and woof, and beyond it there is nothing further to ask.
The Imperishable is the one Brahman without a second, and it is the unseen seer because it is vision itself, the eternal Subject that can never become an object. The negations work because it is not a substance at all; with no second thing beside it, there is nothing by which to mark it. Therefore there is no other seer, hearer, thinker, or knower than this, and the seeker's own awareness is that very Imperishable, to be recognized, not found. The ether woven on it has no being apart from it.
The Imperishable is Vishnu, Hari, Janardana, the one independent Lord (svatantra) on whom every dependent thing rests. Madhva reads the negations as marking how utterly Vishnu differs from all that is gross or subtle, not as denying that the gross and subtle world is real; because he is described as neither, it does not follow that gross and subtle things do not exist, nor that the Lord is a bare attributeless ground, for he is full of infinite auspicious qualities. Even space is Lakshmi, who herself finds shelter in Vishnu, so the warp and woof reveals a graded order of dependence (taratamya), not one being. He is the unseen Seer as the sole independent knower with no gross form of flesh, the immutable form of Truth.
The Imperishable is Brahman as the inner controller and highest Self, the Paramatman whom the immediately preceding antaryamin brahmana names as the one who dwells within all and is never seen yet is the Witness. Space and the worlds woven on it are real and are his body, his sarira, held in inseparable dependence (aprthak-siddhi); the negations deny only finite and material limits of the Lord, never the reality of the souls and matter that form his modes. He is unseen as object yet known through his own dharma-bhuta-jnana, and release is communion and likeness with him, never the erasure of the difference.
When the seer can never be seen, is that seer one's own sole reality with no second, or the independent Lord on whom soul and world forever depend, real and apart from him, or the indwelling Self whose very body the real world and souls are? The verse names the Imperishable by negation alone and does not settle which, and the three schools part here, the non-difference of Advaita, the graded dependence of Dvaita, and the inseparable yet real distinction of Visistadvaita standing each on its own ground.
Why does Yajnavalkya describe the Imperishable only by negation (not gross, not subtle, not short, not long)?
- Because the Imperishable does not exist
- Because it cannot be set before the mind as one more object, so the verse approaches it by taking away what it is not
- Because language is forbidden in the dialogue
- Because Gargi would not understand a direct answer
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Where Sankara reads the unseen Seer as the one Self without a second, Madhva, sourced in his own bhasya, reads it as:
- A mere name with no referent
- An impersonal void beyond all gods
- Vishnu, the one independent Lord on whom every dependent thing, even space as Lakshmi, rests
- The individual soul and nothing more
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The seer who is never seen
Gargi has loosed two arrows. The worlds, she is told, are woven on space; and when she asks on what space itself is woven, the answer is the Imperishable, the aksara, named by everything it is not. Not gross, not subtle, not short, not long, without shadow, without inside or outside. And then the turn that has held seekers ever since: it is never seen, yet it is the Seer; never heard, yet the Hearer; never known, yet the Knower.
Sankara reads this as the discovery that the ground of all can never be an object, because it is the Subject of every seeing and knowing. You cannot find it the way you find a thing, for it is the very looking. There is no other seer but this, and so the search must turn around into recognition: what you have been looking for is the one who looks. On this the ether is woven, and this is the Truth of truth.
Madhva, in his own bhasya on this brahmana, holds the same words to a different ground. The Imperishable is Vishnu, Hari, the one independent Lord, and the negations tell us how utterly he differs from all that is gross or subtle, not that the gross and subtle world is unreal, and not that he is a bare ground emptied of quality. Even space here is Lakshmi, and Lakshmi herself rests in him; so the warp and woof shows a graded order of dependence, the many leaning on the One, never collapsing into it. He is the unseen Seer because he alone is the independent knower.
The school of Ramanuja, reading forward from the inner controller of the brahmana just before, hears the antaryamin: the Imperishable is the Self within all, and space and the worlds woven upon it are real, his very body, held in a dependence that cannot be prised apart. The negations strip away the Lord's finite limits, not the truth of the souls and matter that are his modes. To know him is communion and likeness, not the erasure of the line between worshipper and Lord. The verse gives this reading firm footing, for the antaryamin brahmana that closes just before it ends on this very sentence, never seen yet the seer, set inside the refrain of the indweller whose body is the world.
So the same sentence, never seen yet the Seer, opens onto three grounds: the sole Self with no second, the independent Lord on whom all leans, the indwelling Self whose body is the world. Each reads the negation faithfully; each hears a different silence after it.
All three meet at the unseen Seer and the ground that holds even space; they divide on whether that Seer is one's own sole reality, the independent Lord on whom all forever depends, or the indwelling Self whose body the world and the souls truly are.
When you reach for the one who sees and find it can never be seen, have you found your own self with no second, or the Lord on whom that self forever depends?
In the commentaries
Here the teaching turns to its hinge. The Imperishable is never seen, yet it is the Seer; never heard, yet the Hearer; never thought, yet the Thinker; never known, yet the Knower. Sankara explains that it is never an object of sight because it is vision itself; never heard because it is hearing itself; and so through every faculty, it is the seeing in all seeing, the knowing in all knowing. Therefore there is no other seer but this, no other hearer, thinker, or knower; not the insentient pradhana, not any second principle, but this very Imperishable knowing through every intellect. It cannot be made an object because it is the eternal Subject, and the search that hunts for it as a thing must turn instead to recognition. On this the ether is woven, and this is the furthest limit, the Supreme Brahman, the Truth of truth.