Kena and Other Upanishads

The words chakshuh śrotram do not refer to the physical eye & ear but to the sense activity that uses the organ. This is evident from the expressions in verses 6 & 7, chakshúnshi pashyati & śrotram śrutam—which cannot mean, "one sees the eyes" or "the ear is heard."

Púrve is used here in the Vedic sense, the ancient sages before us and śuśruma means not the physical hearing but the reception by the Sruti, the inspired Word.

Upásate is by some understood in the sense of adoration; but the force of the word is here the same as in the Isha Upanishad, ye avidyám upásate, which does not mean "those who adore Ignorance", but those who devote themselves to the state of Ignorance and make it the sole object of their consciousness.

Here and in the verses that follow my rendering differs from the received interpretation which runs, "That which one cannot think with the mind", "That which one cannot see with the eye", etc and in verse 8, "That which one cannot smell by the breath", yat práṇena na práṇiti. Práṇa is undoubtedly used sometimes of the breath as the medium of the sense of smell & práṇiti to express the action of that sense. But in this Upanishad Prana has been used to indicate the nervous or vital force, the primal or principal Life-Energy, práṇah prathamah, and not a subordinate sense function; the expressions employed almost reconstitute the image of the Horse by which the Life-Energy is symbolised in the language of the Veda and in the opening of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It is difficult to believe that one & the same word means the Life-Breath in the question proposed, verse 1, and the sense of smell in an integral part of the answer given, verse 8. But if Prana means the Life-Energy typified by its obvious physical function, the life-breath, verse 8 can only mean, "He who liveth (breatheth) not by the life-breath", & the other verses must follow suit. For a kindred idea we may compare Katha Upanishad II.2.5. "No mortal lives by the superior or the inferior life-energy, but by another thing men live in which both these have their foundation."

The received interpretation runs "Know that to be the Brahman and not this which men follow after here," and by this text Shankara supports his metaphysical doctrine that the objective world is not Brahman and is therefore an illusion. The objections to the interpretation seem to me insuperable. The words are not Tadeva Brahmeti twam viddhi, but Tadeva Brahma twam viddhi, which we should naturally interpret "Seek to know that Brahman" i.e., "seek to know Brahman in That Consciousness" and not in the form of this objective world to which most men are attached. Moreover, we ought to give their full value to the remarkable expressions "That by which the mind is thought, seeings seen, hearing heard." Such phrases can hardly refer to the pure Absolute remote from all relativity or to the pure Self of Shankara to whom the objective world is non-existent. They indicate another state of consciousness, intermediate, if you will, in which the universe exists not as an objective and external reality, but within the percipient consciousness and is no longer perceived only through the objective organs and their functions, but known directly to the power from which those organs & functions are derived. This idea is confirmed by the apologue in which Brahman appears as a Power governing the universe, the Ish or Lord of the Isha Upanishad, in whom and by whose existence the gods exist, but also by whose active might and its victories they conquer and reign. It is therefore a self-Existence which is active in its stability and conscious in the multiplicity of the universe as well as in its self-unity. The Upanishads, I think, nowhere deny but rather affirm that the objective world also is Brahman. The error of Ignorance is to accept it as represented by the mind & senses in their inadequate symbols and as if they were real in themselves, each in its own separate reality. The wise put from them the error of the mind and the senses and in the self-luminous & self-effective Consciousness beyond attain to that freedom, unity & immortality which we have seen set before humanity as its goal in the Isha Upanishad.