That thou art
Here a doubt is raised: the jīva has the sense of 'I' and knows but little; Īśvara is without the sense of 'I' and knows all. From the great saying 'That thou art,' how can the two be known as one, when each is held by qualities opposed to the other? If this is asked, the answer is no. The one identified with the gross and subtle bodies is the spoken sense of the word 'thou.' The pure consciousness, freed of all conditioning, full in the depth of samādhi, is the aimed-at sense of the word 'thou.' Īśvara, marked by all-knowing and the rest, is the spoken sense of the word 'that.' Consciousness alone, without any conditioning, is the aimed-at sense of the word 'that.' So, in their being as consciousness, nothing stands in the way of the oneness of jīva and Īśvara.
An objection may be raised: the jīva has ego and knows only a little, while Īśvara is egoless and all-knowing. Since the two carry opposite qualities, how can the great saying 'That thou art' (tat tvam asi) teach their oneness? The answer is that it can. The literal sense of the word 'thou' (tvam) is the one who identifies with the gross and subtle bodies. The intended sense of 'thou' is the pure consciousness, free of all conditioning, realized in samādhi. The literal sense of the word 'that' (tat) is Īśvara, marked by all-knowingness and the like. The intended sense of 'that' is pure consciousness, without any conditioning. So, taken as pure consciousness, there is no obstacle to the oneness of jīva and Īśvara.
- tat tvam asi
- mahāvākya
Where the schools meet, and where they part
The saying tat tvam asi is taken by all three as a true teaching about the self and Brahman, not a figure of speech, and the spoken senses of thou and that, the little knower and the all-knower, plainly cannot be flatly equated as they stand.
The opposed qualities, knowing little and knowing all, belong to the conditioned self and the lord, and the saying directs the student past the surface clash to what thou and that truly hold in common.
The saying is liberating instruction received from a teacher, and its right hearing is what ends the seeing of the jiva and Isvara as simply other.
The two words clash only in their spoken senses, which are owned by the conditionings, the body-bound self and the maya-bound lord. By implication those conditionings are let go, as the contrary place and time drop from this is that Devadatta, and what is left is one consciousness, free of every limit, the pure awareness that thou names when the adjuncts are stilled and that names with its lordly marks set aside. So the saying teaches strict non-difference: the difference was never in the self, only in what was laid over it, and when that lifts there is nothing left to keep jiva and Isvara two.
Thou and that are two words naming one reality, but that reality is Brahman who holds the soul as his body, the inner controller seated within all and inseparable from them. So tat tvam asi says that the self addressed as thou has the supreme Self as its own Self and ground, the Lord who indwells and sustains it; the two words coincide because the two are held inseparably, never because the two collapse into a bare sameness. The soul is real and abides as the mode of Brahman, and to drop its reality as a mere adjunct would empty the word thou of the very thing it names.
A saying of oneness can never cancel the standing difference of soul and Lord, which is real and without beginning or end. By Madhva's rule such words are read as the soul's likeness to and utter dependence on the Lord, the reflection on its source, not as identity. So tat tvam asi tells the awakened soul that it is wholly of that, sustained by it and akin to it as image to original, knowing the Lord as its inmost ground; the thou is known as belonging to that and resting on it, never as being that. The five-fold difference, soul from Lord above all, holds even in release, and the saying is heard rightly only when it deepens dependence rather than dissolving it.
When the contrary qualities are set aside and thou and that meet, do they meet because there is finally one consciousness with no second self at all, or because the soul, real and abiding, has come to know the Lord who holds it as his own and on whom it utterly rests? The saying speaks the three words; the schools divide on what is confessed in them, and we keep the division open.
The saying sets a self that knows little beside a Lord who knows all. How does the passage let the two be one?
- It treats the saying as praise, not as literal teaching, so the clash need not be resolved
- It lets the opposed qualities fall away as belonging only to the conditionings, leaving the one consciousness the two words point to
- It argues that the jiva slowly acquires all-knowing and so grows into the Lord
- It denies that the jiva ever really knew little in the first place
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What is the disagreement the schools leave standing under this saying?
- Whether tat tvam asi truly belongs to the scriptures
- Whether the meeting of thou and that is one consciousness with no second, or the dependent soul knowing the Lord who holds and sustains it
- Whether the jiva or Isvara was named first
- Whether a teacher is needed to hear the saying at all
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That thou art
A doubt comes first, the doubt a careful student is bound to feel. The self that is being taught has the sense of I and knows only a little. That which it is being pointed toward knows all and has no such sense of I. These are contraries. Heat is not cold, the small is not the vast, and no saying can simply call them one. So how can three words, that thou art, make the little knower and the all-knower one and the same.
The clash is not denied. It is set where it belongs. The opposed qualities, the knowing little on one side and the knowing all on the other, do not belong to what thou and that finally name; they belong to the conditionings, the body-bound self and the maya-bound lord. A word can carry a spoken sense and, where the spoken sense will not stand, a sense it aims at underneath. When a man points and says, this is that Devadatta I knew long ago, the years and the distant place that contradict each other are quietly let go, and only the one person is meant. Just so, thou lets go the body it is bound to and means the pure awareness uncovered in the stillness of samadhi; that lets go its lordly marks and means awareness without any limit at all. At the surface the two are opposed and the saying is impossible. At the level they aim at, they were never two, for as consciousness there is nothing to keep them apart.
On its own reading the passage does not defeat the difference; it shows where the difference lived. The difference was never in the self. It was in what had been laid over the self, the adjuncts that make one seem small and the other vast; and when those are let go, the difference has nothing left to stand on. Held to its own terms, the saying teaches that there is one consciousness and no second self anywhere, and that the seeming two were one all along.
The other schools hear the same three words and confess something else in them. To Ramanuja's school thou and that are two words for one reality, but that reality is Brahman who holds the soul as his own body, the indweller seated within and inseparable from it; so the saying tells the self that it has the Lord as its very Self and ground, the two coinciding because they are held inseparably and not because the soul is dissolved into a bare sameness, the soul abiding real as the mode of the One. To Madhva a word of oneness can never cancel a real and beginningless difference; the saying tells the awakened soul that it is wholly of that and sustained by it, akin to it as a reflection to its source, knowing the Lord as its inmost ground and resting on him utterly, yet never being him, the soul distinct from the Lord even in release.
So the divide is not over the weight of the saying but over what is finally confessed in it. When the contrary qualities are set aside and thou and that meet, do they meet because there is one consciousness with no other, the divided self waking to what it always was? Or do they meet because the soul, real and abiding, has come to know the Lord who holds it as his own and on whom it wholly rests? Tat tvam asi, that thou art: on its own reading it rests in the one consciousness. We hand the three words on as they stand, and we do not say for you who it is that they name.
Whether the meeting of thou and that is one consciousness with no second self, or the dependent soul knowing the Lord who holds and sustains it and abiding distinct, the saying itself does not settle for every school.
When the small self and the boundless meet in you, is it one awareness with no other, or a self come home to the One who holds it?
In the commentaries
The objection is the honest one a careful student must raise: the jiva has the sense of I and knows only a little, Isvara is without that sense and knows all, and contraries cannot be one, so how can the saying make them one. The answer turns on how a word carries its meaning. A sentence has a spoken sense and, where the spoken sense will not stand, an aimed-at sense reached by implication; when someone says of the man before him today, this is that Devadatta I knew years ago, the place and time that clash are quietly let go and only the one person is meant. So in tat tvam asi the qualities that clash, the little knowing on one side and the all-knowing on the other, belong only to the conditionings, the body-bound self and the maya-bound lord, and they are let go. What the two words finally point to is one and the same: consciousness itself, free of every conditioning, the pure awareness that in thou is uncovered in the depth of samadhi and in that is the lord with his marks set aside. Taken at the spoken level the two are opposed and the saying is impossible; taken at the level they aim at, there is nothing left to keep them two, for as consciousness they were never apart. So the contradiction is not refuted; it is seen to live only in the adjuncts, and when those drop the difference has nothing to stand on.