The thirteen

ऐतरेयोपनिषद्

Aitareya Upanishad

The Spirit Who Made Himself a House

Enter as the Spirit entered, by the gate He Himself cleft in His own boundary, and find that the house was built for the delight of the Guest.

Before there was a world there was a Seer, and He was alone; and the first act of the Aitareya is not a making but a seeing. “In the beginning the Spirit was One and all this (universe) was the Spirit; there was nought else that saw.” From that lone gaze the worlds, the guardians of the worlds, the body of man and the delight of a soul in its own house are drawn out in swift and pregnant sentences, with a boldness that makes the reader smile and catch his breath. It is the Upanishad of creation from within, of the Self who is at once the maker, the material and the guest.

The reader should know plainly what Sri Aurobindo has left us. He translated this Upanishad at Baroda about 1902, never revised the translation, and never wrote a commentary upon it; the version in this edition is that early rendering, and it is by that rendering that the mantras here are heard. What he says of it lies elsewhere, in passing remarks in an early essay, in the Isha commentaries, in the Kena commentary and in the Synthesis of Yoga. This Gateway gathers them and stands beside them, adding nothing to what he wrote, for the subject is one he himself named: the workings of the Self in the world as creator and master of evolution.

Sri Aurobindo’s writings on it · 1

The text · 33 passages

Translation by Sri Aurobindo.

1. Aitareya Upanishad 1.1.1
2. Aitareya Upanishad 1.1.2
3. Aitareya Upanishad 1.1.3
4. Aitareya Upanishad 1.1.4
5. Aitareya Upanishad 1.2.1
6. Aitareya Upanishad 1.2.2
7. Aitareya Upanishad 1.2.3
8. Aitareya Upanishad 1.2.4
9. Aitareya Upanishad 1.2.5
10. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.1
11. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.2
12. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.3
13. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.4
14. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.5
15. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.6
16. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.7
17. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.8
18. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.9
19. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.10
20. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.11
21. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.12
22. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.13
23. Aitareya Upanishad 1.3.14
24. Aitareya Upanishad 2.1.1
25. Aitareya Upanishad 2.1.2
26. Aitareya Upanishad 2.1.3
27. Aitareya Upanishad 2.1.4
28. Aitareya Upanishad 2.1.5
29. Aitareya Upanishad 2.1.6
30. Aitareya Upanishad 3.1.1
31. Aitareya Upanishad 3.1.2
32. Aitareya Upanishad 3.1.3
33. Aitareya Upanishad 3.1.4