The Five Selves and the Bliss of the Eternal

Whoever finds Brahman, Truth, Knowledge, Infinity, hidden in the cavern heart of being, enjoys all desire and abides with the Eternal.

The Taittiriya has three chapters, and they are like three rooms in one house: the room of the school, where the disciple is trained in speech, in conduct and in the syllable OM; the room of Bliss, where the Brahman is named Truth, Knowledge, Infinity and the self of man is shown as five selves, one within another, rising to Delight; and the room of Bhṛgu, where a son goes to his father and climbs by his own askesis the same ladder that the second chapter has described. The Upanishad ends, in the last verses, with a knower who ranges the worlds and sings a song of joy.

Sri Aurobindo translated it at Baroda about 1902 and never revised the translation. In 1918 he wrote for the Arya “The Knowledge of Brahman”, a reading of the opening sentences of the second chapter, and began a second piece, “Truth, Knowledge, Infinity”, which he did not finish and which appeared only after his passing. So the commentary is brief, a few luminous pages, and the reader will find that its light falls forward and backward: on The Life Divine, which sets a Taittiriya verse at the head of its chapter on the Delight of Existence, and on an early essay of the Karmayogin days in which the ladder of Bhṛgu is read as the story of the human mind’s ascent. We shall follow these lights where they lead.

Sri Aurobindo’s writings on it · 3

The text · 33 passages

Translation by Sri Aurobindo.

The Five Selves and the Bliss of the Eternal

The text · 33 passages

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