Time-Steps of the Cosmic Horse- The Contemplative Philosophy of the Great Forest (Brhadaranyaka) Upanisad

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I CAME across Sri Aurobindo's translations and interpretations of the Upanisads in the 1970s, at a time when counterculture was "blowing in the wind" and the established and predictable answers to living had lost their taste. Not that these texts drew my attention sufficiently for me to delve into them at this time, but my contact with them was coloured by a freshness, not the deadweight of canonical literature. My own dissatisfaction with the expectations of life in which I found myself amplified by the mood of the time made me receptive to the creative power of Sri Aurobindo's translations and commentaries, even though I merely browsed these writings. The description of the sacrificial horse with which the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad begins made a particularly strong impact on me, a surreal and cosmic description that immediately expanded one's horizons. Within this remarkable description, there was a line that stopped the mind in its tracks with its unexpected implications: Time is the self of the horse sacrificial (BU 1.1.1, in Aurobindo 2001: 268) - a line that left a seed waiting to germinate. To the static image of a cosmic Being it bestowed a soul of Becoming, the time-steps of freedom and unpredictable change. In retrospect I realized how fortuitous this was, since had I encountered instead the more common translation of this line by established scholars such as Radhakrishnan (1968: 149) or more recently, Olivelle, (1998: 37) "The year is the body of the sacrificial horse", the wooden animal would have never left its musty stable in my mind.

It was only after I came to Los Angeles at the end of the 1980s that the Upanisads beckoned to me again. The philosopher Dr H. Maheswari from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram had come to visit the East-West Cultural Center and offered a retreat on Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Isa Upanisad. In the very first of those sessions I re-experienced the shock I had experienced when I encountered the first stanza of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, a shock that had less to do with content than with style. To be presented with lines like.

One unmoving that is swifter than Mind. That the gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing, passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life establishes the Waters.

That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.

Isallp 4-5, in Aurobindo 2001: 6-7

opened the doors on another dimension, it stunned the expected and brought close a profound presence. The noisy certitudes of thought were imperiously hushed by the entrance of something vast, like the being of Night dressed in countless stars. The mystery of the Upanisads was kindled in me once more, the seed that was sown in that early contact with the Brhadaranyaka had begun to sprout.

However, it was only after 2005 that I began a more systematic relation with these texts. For one, my teaching position at the University of Philosophical Research gave me the opportunity to spend more time with them as I taught a course in early Indian wisdom literature. But more importantly, this period coincided with an enhanced intuition of the relation of literary style with cultural history and, consequently, a growing sense of the historicity of the early Upanisads. Michel Foucault's epistemic understanding of history and the extension and application of these views to mystic literature by Michel de Certeau goaded me in this direction.

Locating the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad "GREAT Forest Upanisad" is a literal translation for the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad. More properly, it should be the Upanisad of the Great Forest, since aranya is forest and aranyaka means "of the forest". Even more specifically, the Aranyakas are "forest texts", a class of Vedic literature originating from about the eighth century BCE and dealing with commentarial and contemplative considerations of the Vedas. The term brhad, meaning vast, is found in the Veda and treated as a synonym of Brahman, a term meaning the Divine Word in the Veda, but denoting absolute conscious reality (that which is everywhere, hence vast) in the Upanisads and appearing perhaps for the first time with this meaning in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad. From this point of view, the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad can be translated as the Upanisad of the forest text pertaining to Brahman. Upanisad means literally "to sit near" though in the texts themselves, the term assumes several alternative meanings, such as "secret knowledge", "secret name" or "intimate relation"; thus, the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad could be thought of as the forest text of intimate relation with Brahman or the forest text of the secret knowledge of Brahman.

The Brhadaranyaka Upanisad is divided into six chapters (adhyayas), which are grouped in three volumes (kandas) - Madhu Kanda (volume of honey), Muni Kanda (volume of the ascetic) and Khila Kanda (supplementary volume/appendix). Honey in the Veda (see RV 1.90) and early Upanisads (BU II.5) is a synonym for bliss. The fifth section (brahmana) of the second adhyaya of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad is a paean to bliss as the essence of macrocosmos and microcosmos, ending with the self (Atman) as the source of both. Muni Kanda, sometimes called Yajnavalkya Kanda, consists mostly of the interactions of Yajnavalkya with King Janaka and the advisors of his court, debating matters of conventional knowledge with unconventional twists, not without humour and sometimes with lethal consequences. The term muni, related to mauna, which means self-imposed silence, refers to one who practises asceticism. Both madhu and muni are terms related to the forest or wilderness and highlight the kinship of the Upanisad and its eponymous description to the forest. The Madhu Kanda consists of two Brahmanas, the first set in cosmological space-time and the second set in a liminal space-time between domesticity and renunciation. The present text deals with the Madhu Kanda, which distills the mystic and contemplative philosophy of the Upanisad. The Muni Kanda, dealing with the colloquies of Yajnavalkya, is set in the courtly space-time of the polis, but as evident in the title, this is also a liminal courtly setting, visited by the figure of a muni who transits between and is equally at home in the court and the forest. The Vedas (literally, Knowledge) are considered to be four in number, Rg, Yajus, Sama and Atharva and each of these is divided into four classes of texts, the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanisads. The Samhitas constitute hymns or poems addressed to a variety of gods, the Brahmanas include mythological passages and ritual instructions, the Aranyakas dwell on symbolic explanations and the Upanisads deal with proto-philosophical interpretations. Taken as a single body of Vedic literature, these divisions have been related to the four stages of Hindu life (asrama dharma), the Samhitas meant for the student stage (brahmacarya), the Brahmaņas for the householder (grhasthya), the Aranyakas for those leaving social life (sarhsara) to retreat to the forest (vänaprastha) and the Upanisads for renouncers of samsara (samnyasa).