The Fear of Death and Immortality in the Upanishads – 24130

Student: Vita Polonsky

ID: 208783852

1) Chandogya Upanishad – 6.15. (1-3)

The three following verses describe the process of death and dying. As long as the body
remains alive, heated in the hereby presented ladder: the voice not merging with the mind, the
mind with the heat and the heat with ultimate truth, the being thus remains alive. However,
when the process of merging begins it is then when the person ceases to recognize oneself and
the ones surrounding him. The person loses the memory and all knowledge (na vidur) of his
past and as such his identity. The dead is solved with the sat or the cosmic principle, with the
ultimate Self, which is all-encompassing and, in this hierarchy, seems to form an ultimate goal
in the guise of death. The sixth chapter a narrative telling the dialogue of Uddālaka and his
son, returning after 12 years of learning the Vedas with pride in his knowledge. Uddālaka
seeing Śvetaketu’s contentment decides to ask him as for that knowledge by means of which
“what is unheard becomes heard, what is not thought of becomes thought of, what is unknown
becomes known?”. This refers to the knowledge of Self, by knowing the Vedas on does not
know the ultimate truth – Uddālaka, thus adverts to an additional layer of knowledge, one
which could be attained by means of learning the Vedas – in which one understands the
nature of Self, and thus knows all. Thereafter, Śvetaketu asks to be taught that which his
father is referring to. One of Uddālaka’s elucidations are of the origination of things, their
identity in the grand scheme of things: the bees are collecting the nectar from distinct places
but does the honey still possess its past identities? The different streams and rivers all merge
into the ocean, do they remember they’re being a river then? This explanation is on a passage
later appearing repeatedly: “The finest essence here – that constitutes the self of this whole
world; that is the truth; that is the self (atman). And that is how you are, Śvetaketu.” What is
thus the quintessence of life – it is the being conscious of subject, the person and the subject
are one and the same, in being the ultimate Self. The ‘finest essence’ is that which is stripped
away from the body, desires, past, memory, it is that which recognizes the self not in
connection with the body and its desires, but as the matter that is undifferentiated from the
matter of the world, that which in the Indic tradition is the ātman, that which does not wither
or decay.
2) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.1-2

In the beginning of the world, Viraj or the ultimate consciousness was in a human form, the
one born of the whole and finding oneself alone (finding nothing else but himself) he reflected
and saw only his body and organs. He proclaimed, “Here I am” (sah aham [so’ham] asmi) or
“I am he”. This utterance is significant for he acknowledges and apprehend his being as the
ultimate Self, as the self of all things, referring to the ultimate all-encompassing existence, the
knowledge of oneself as all being the true knowledge of self. Then he goes on saying “It is I”
thus above all it is that ‘I’ and not his name or other – identifying himself not by a name of
body. This birth in human form is perhaps an embodiment of that beginning of that absolute
creation into a body that is consequently prone to first the forgetting of one’s ultimate self,
and then fear, etc. Even if it bears its origin in the one non-dual consciousness that perception
is lost once one identifies oneself as an individual separate entity. In this passage however, as
one is still alone and unable to distinguish between one and the other, when experiencing fear,
the human form is still able to dissolve this fear saying, “of what should I be afraid, when
there is no one but me?”. The fear thus is when one tries to become another, when one is
trying to attain self-knowledge going towards his mokṣa, he shall be free of fear as he has
achieved the ultimate understanding of Self (or immortality). However, when one has another
object, when one tries to become something that one does not know, his path is filled with
fear as he does not possess knowledge of another, he only possesses the deep-seated grain of
knowledge of his own self. When one understands who one is, he is not afraid – as such
abhayā is a characteristic of true self-knowledge and in it comes also the understanding of all
that life entails, becomes nonthreatening. Here the creation comes from the ultimate and non-
historical – such is meaning and death and when one grasps this absolute knowledge as given
by the Upanishads, one is remedied by a transformative knowledge of Self that is beyond and
overcomes fear (that is fear of death). Wisdom is what provides mokṣa and in these two verses
we are witness to that beginning of self-identification, the reflection on the question of ‘what
is self’ its boundaries, one observes the ‘all’, divided into smaller and smaller pieces made
from and enclosed within that ultimate entity returning later to its source seeing the nature of
true Self. It is by this narrative that one sees the journey ahead, the journey from the source,
all the while possessing its seeds and finally the realization of one’s origin and of one’s true
nature.