The thirteen

श्वेताश्वतरोपनिषद्

Śvetāśvatara Upanishad

The Deva, His Shakti and the Lord of Maya

May the shining Godhead who is one and without hue, and hides his Force in the modes of her working, yoke us with a good and bright understanding.

The Śvetāśvatara is the Upanishad of the Deva. Its opening question is the oldest that men ask, whence are we born, whereby do we live, and whither do we go, and its answer is not an abstraction but a Presence: the shining Godhead, the Lord of all lords, who has hidden his own Force in the modes of her working, who is master of Māyā, and who, being one, rules the many. It is an Upanishad of meditation and of devotion together; it begins by rejecting Time and Nature as the causes of things, and it ends in an unfeigned love for the Lord and for the Master who reveals Him.

Sri Aurobindo left of it neither a commentary nor a complete translation. He translated the fourth to the sixth chapters in the first decade of the century, and rendered the fourth again in Pondicherry some years later; whether he ever put the first three into English is not known. The wording of the mantras in this edition is therefore Max Müller’s. But the Upanishad runs like a vein through his prose. The lines of its verses, in his own translation, stand at the head of some ten chapters of The Life Divine; it is named in the Karmayogin essays and in his early Philosophy of the Upanishads. We shall hear him there, and where the reader will be given his words we shall give them; where he is silent we shall not speak for him.

Sri Aurobindo’s writings on it · 1

The text · 113 passages

Translation by F. Max Müller, with Sri Aurobindo’s renderings wherever he made them.

1. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.1
2. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.2
3. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.3
4. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.4
5. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.5
6. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.6
7. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.7
8. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.8
9. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.9
10. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.10
11. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.11
12. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.12
13. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.13
14. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.14
15. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.15
16. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 1.16
17. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.1
18. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.2
19. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.3
20. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.4
21. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.5
22. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.6
23. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.7
24. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.8
25. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.9
26. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.10
27. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.11
28. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.12
29. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.13
30. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.14
31. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.15
32. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.16
33. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 2.17
34. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.1
35. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.2
36. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.3
37. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.4
38. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.5
39. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.6
40. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.7
41. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.8
42. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.9
43. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.10
44. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.11
45. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.12
46. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.13
47. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.14
48. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.15
49. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.16
50. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.17
51. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.18
52. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.19
53. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.20
54. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 3.21
55. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.1
56. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.2
57. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.3
58. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.4
59. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.5
60. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.6
61. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.7
62. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.8
63. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.9
64. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.10
65. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.11
66. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.12
67. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.13
68. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.14
69. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.15
70. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.16
71. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.17
72. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.18
73. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.19
74. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.20
75. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.21
76. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4.22
77. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.1
78. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.2
79. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.3
80. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.4
81. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.5
82. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.6
83. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.7
84. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.8
85. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.9
86. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.10
87. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.11
88. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.12
89. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.13
90. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 5.14
91. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.1
92. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.2
93. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.3
94. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.4
95. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.5
96. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.6
97. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.7
98. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.8
99. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.9
100. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.10
101. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.11
102. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.12
103. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.13
104. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.14
105. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.15
106. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.16
107. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.17
108. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.18
109. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.19
110. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.20
111. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.21
112. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.22
113. Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 6.23