Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 4, Brahmana 3. The self-luminous Self: waking, dream, and the light of man
New to these pages?
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.
The voice in the dark
"When the sun has set, Yajnavalkya, the moon has set, and the fire has gone out, what then is the light of this person?" "Speech becomes his light. For it is by the light of speech that he sits, goes about, does his work, and returns. Therefore, O emperor, even where one's own hand is not clearly made out, there, when a voice is raised, one goes straight toward it." "It is just so, Yajnavalkya."
Now even the fire is out and it is utterly dark. What light is left. Yajnavalkya says: speech, sound. In total darkness, where you cannot even see your own hand, if someone speaks you can still move straight toward the voice, so sound itself serves as a kind of light to act by. Janaka agrees.
In the commentaries
Sankara explains that sound is brought in to exhaust the last of the external aids: even when no light remains, a person can still act by hearing, so the inquiry cannot stop until every outer prop is gone and only the inner self is left to be named.