A section from the journey

Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi

Yajnavalkya is ready to renounce the world. He offers to divide his wealth between his two wives. But Maitreyi asks a sharper question: would all the riches on earth make her deathless? When he says no, she wants only what he knows. So he teaches her that we love nothing for its own sake. We love it because the Self shines through it. The Self is what is truly worth seeking.

We have learned the great ideas of this age. The Self within. The one reality behind all things. The wheel of birth and death, and the freedom beyond it. Now let us meet the teachers who gave us these ideas, and let us meet them the way the Upanishads do, in the middle of a conversation.

The boldest of them all was a sage named . He was a master of the old fire-rites, and a fearless debater. Hold his name. We will sit with him more than once. We begin in his own home, on the day he chose to leave it.

Yajnavalkya had decided to give up the household life and become a renouncer, one who walks away from home to seek freedom. The word for this is . Before he went, he wished to be fair. He had two wives, Maitreyi and Katyayani. He called Maitreyi to him and said he would divide all he owned between them.

But did not reach for the wealth. She was a seeker herself, a woman who loved the talk of brahman. She asked him a sharper question. If the whole earth, full of riches, were mine, she said, would I become deathless by it?

He told her the plain truth. No. Your life would be like the life of the rich, and there is no hope of becoming deathless through wealth. Riches cannot buy what does not die.

Then Maitreyi said the words that make this story shine. What I cannot become deathless by, what use is that to me? Tell me, sir, only what you truly know. And so, instead of dividing his gold, he gave her the best of all he had. He taught her the Self.

Here is the heart of what he said. We never love a thing only for its own sake. Listen closely to his words.

“Lo, verily, not for love of the husband is a husband dear, but for love of the Self a husband is dear. … Lo, verily, not for love of all is all dear, but for love of the Self all is dear.”

Sit with that for a moment, for it turns the world gently on its head. We think we love a person for who they are. We think we love wealth for what it buys. Yajnavalkya says no. Under every love we feel, there is one deeper love. It is love of the Self, the atman, which shines out through the people and the things we hold dear. They are dear because the Self is in them, and in us. So it is the Self that we are really seeking, all along.

And so he gave her the path. The Self, he said, is the one thing to seek. He named four steps, gentle and clear.

“Lo, verily, it is the Self that should be seen, that should be hearkened to, that should be thought on, that should be pondered on, O Maitreyi.”

First the Self is heard of, from a teacher. Then it is thought on, turned over in the mind. Then it is pondered deeply, in stillness, until it is known not as an idea but as the truth of who you are. This is why Maitreyi let the gold go. She had glimpsed the one thing that does not pass away. To find it is , the great release. And notice who is being taught here. A woman, named and honoured, hungry for the deepest knowledge there is.

Think of someone you love. Yajnavalkya would say that the brightness you see in them is the Self, shining through. When you have loved another, have you ever felt that you were reaching, through them, for something even deeper still?