What the ancient sages actually said about the final goal of human existence
Abstract: Every great spiritual and
philosophical tradition in human history has, at its centre, some vision of the
highest possible human attainment. In the Upanishadic tradition, that highest
attainment is called Moksha, which means liberation or freedom. But liberation
from what? And freedom to what? These are not simple questions, and the
Upanishads do not give simple answers. What they give, across dozens of texts
composed over many centuries, is a remarkably coherent, philosophically
sophisticated, and personally transformative account of what it means to be
fully and finally free, of what human existence is capable of at its absolute peak.
This article traces the Upanishadic
understanding of Moksha through its primary scriptural sources, examining what
the sages said about the nature of bondage that liberation releases, the nature
of the self that is liberated, what liberation actually looks and feels like
from the inside, whether it can be attained in this lifetime or only after
death, and what the relationship between Moksha and the ordinary lived life of
the person who attains it actually is. Inline references to specific
Upanishadic texts are provided throughout so that the reader can trace each
claim directly to its source. The language is kept plain and the argument is
carried by narrative, because the sages themselves were clear that Moksha is
not the exclusive property of scholars. It is the birthright of every human
being.
Keywords: Moksha, Liberation,
Upanishads, Atman, Brahman, Jivanmukti, Videhamukti, Bondage, Freedom,
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chandogya Upanishad, Mundaka Upanishad, Mandukya
Upanishad, Katha Upanishad, Taittiriya Upanishad, Advaita Vedanta,
Shankaracharya, Self-Knowledge, Sanatan Dharma
Introduction: The
Question Underneath All Questions
At some point in every thoughtful
human life, the ordinary goals of existence begin to feel insufficient. Health,
wealth, success, relationships, reputation, pleasure: all of these are
genuinely desirable and genuinely worth pursuing. But none of them, when
attained, produces a contentment that is lasting, complete, and entirely
independent of further conditions. The successful person fears losing their
success. The wealthy person fears losing their wealth. The person in a loving
relationship fears its end. Something in human consciousness reaches, beneath
all these particular desires, for something that is not subject to being taken
away. Something that does not need any external condition in order to be fully
and completely itself. [See
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.22 on the freedom that comes with self-knowledge]
The Upanishads name this something
Moksha, and they describe it as the discovery of what you already are rather
than the achievement of something you do not yet have. That distinction is
everything. If Moksha were an achievement, it would be subject to the same
vulnerability as every other achievement: it could be lost. But the Upanishads
insist with great philosophical precision that Moksha is the recognition of
what was always the case, the direct seeing of a truth that was never actually
absent, only temporarily and correctively obscured. This is the most important and
the most liberating idea in the entire Upanishadic tradition, and this article
is devoted to explaining it as clearly and as simply as it can be explained
without losing its depth. [Mundaka
Upanishad 2.2.8: the self shines forth and the universe shines with it]
Part One: What Are
We Liberated From?
The Nature of
Bondage: Samsara and the Mistaken Identity
Before liberation can be
understood, bondage must be understood, because liberation is liberation from
something specific and that specific thing needs to be clearly identified. The
Upanishads are very precise about what binds the human being. They do not say
that we are bound by the world, or by our bodies, or by other people, or by our
circumstances. They say that we are bound by a single fundamental error: the
error of mistaking what we appear to be for what we actually are. [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10: the one who
knows Brahman as 'I am this' becomes all this]
This error has a name in the
Upanishadic and Vedantic tradition: Avidya, which means ignorance or
not-knowing. But it is a very specific kind of ignorance. It is not ignorance
of facts about the external world. It is ignorance of one's own deepest nature.
It is the condition of taking the self to be the body-mind complex, the mortal,
limited, vulnerable, desiring, fearing personality, when the actual self, the
Atman, is none of those things. The Chandogya Upanishad describes this
fundamental error in the story of Indra, who twice comes to the sage Prajapati
seeking to know the self and twice goes away with an incomplete answer,
identifying the self first with the body and then with the dream self, before
finally arriving at the recognition that the self is neither. [Chandogya Upanishad 8.7 to 8.12: Indra's
threefold enquiry into the nature of the self]
The consequence of this fundamental
error is Samsara, the cycle of repeated birth, life, suffering, death, and
rebirth. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad describes how a person, at the moment of
death, carries with them the accumulated desires and intentions of their
lifetime, and those desires and intentions determine the conditions of the next
birth. This is not punishment. It is a natural law of consciousness: a being
that takes itself to be a small, separate, desiring self will keep seeking fulfilment
through the only channels available to that self, namely more births and more
experiences, until the desire that drives the cycle is finally and fully
satisfied. And the desire is finally and fully satisfied only when its root
cause, the Avidya about the self's true nature, is removed. [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5 to 4.4.6: the
soul at death is like a caterpillar that reaches the tip of one blade of grass
and draws itself to the next]
The Prison Without
Walls
One of the most striking features
of the Upanishadic description of bondage is that the prison has no walls. The
Atman is never actually bound. Its nature is never actually changed or
diminished by the process of birth, life, and death. The Katha Upanishad says
explicitly that the self is not born and does not die, that it was not produced
from anything and nothing was produced from it, that it is unborn, eternal,
ancient, and undying, and is not killed when the body is killed. [Katha Upanishad 1.2.18: na jayate mriyate va
vipashchin]
If the Atman is never actually
bound, then liberation is not the removal of actual chains. It is the
recognition that the chains were never real. The Mandukya Upanishad's teaching
about Turiya, the fourth state of consciousness that is the ground of waking,
dreaming, and deep sleep, makes this point with particular precision: the
Atman, which is Turiya, is never involved in the experiences of any of the
three states. It is always free. It is always the witness. The suffering arises
entirely from the identification with the witnessed, from the mistake of taking
the witnessed contents of consciousness, the thoughts, the emotions, the body's
sensations and history, to be the witness itself. [Mandukya Upanishad verses 7 and 12: Turiya
is not conscious in the ordinary sense and is identified directly with Brahman]
Part Two: The
Nature of Moksha Itself
Liberation as
Recognition, Not Achievement
The Chandogya Upanishad contains
the most famous and the most repeated description of the relationship between
the individual self and the ultimate reality: Tat Tvam Asi, that thou art. This
declaration, repeated nine times in the sixth chapter as Uddalaka teaches his
son Shvetaketu using different analogies, the nyagrodha seed, the salt in
water, the rivers entering the sea, is the Upanishads' most condensed statement
of what liberation consists in: the direct recognition that the Atman, the
individual witnessing self, is not separate from Brahman, the infinite ground
of all existence. [Chandogya Upanishad
6.8.7 through 6.16.3: Tat Tvam Asi repeated as the concluding teaching of nine
successive analogies]
The Mundaka Upanishad describes
what happens when this recognition is genuine and direct. It says that the one
who knows Brahman becomes Brahman. Brahmavid Brahmaiva Bhavati. This is not a
poetic exaggeration. It is the precise philosophical claim that the recognition
of identity with Brahman is not an intellectual position adopted by a separate
self who is now claiming to be Brahman. It is the dissolution of the separate
self as such, the end of the mistaken identity, the falling away of the
superimposition, which reveals that what was always there was Brahman. The
separate self was the misperception. What remains when the misperception ends
is not nothing and not a new state. It is what was always the case. [Mundaka Upanishad 3.2.9: brahmavid brahmaiva
bhavati]
The Taittiriya Upanishad approaches
the same truth through its description of Ananda, bliss, as the nature of
Brahman. It describes the bliss of different levels of being, from the bliss of
a young, healthy, learned human being in full possession of all earthly goods,
and then multiplies that bliss a hundredfold at each successive level until it
reaches the bliss of Brahman, which is described as the foundational bliss from
which all other bliss is derived. The person who knows Brahman, the text says,
is not afraid of anything at all. They know that bliss as their own deepest
nature, not as something received from outside but as what they themselves most
fundamentally are. [Taittiriya Upanishad
2.8 and 2.9: the scale of bliss from human to Brahman, and the fearlessness of
the knower]
The Three
Classical Descriptions of Moksha
The Upanishadic tradition uses
three primary images to describe what Moksha actually is, and each image
illuminates a different dimension of the experience. The first image is freedom
from fear. The Taittiriya Upanishad says that the one who knows Brahman becomes
Brahman and is no longer afraid of anything. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says
that the one who knows the Atman as Brahman has gone beyond fear. Fear, in the
Upanishadic understanding, is the primary symptom of the mistaken identity: the
small, separate self fears everything that threatens its continuation and its
pleasures. When the misidentification dissolves and the boundless nature of the
Atman is directly known, there is nothing left to fear, because there is no
longer a small, separate, threatened self to do the fearing. [Taittiriya Upanishad 2.9: esa hy eva
anandayati, the knower becomes this bliss and fears nothing; Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad 4.4.25: the knower of Brahman goes beyond fear]
The second image is fullness. The
famous verse from the Isha Upanishad that stands at the opening of that text
declares: that is full, this is full, from the full the full arises, taking the
full from the full the full alone remains. Purnam adah purnam idam purnat
purnam udachyate, purnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyate. Moksha is the
recognition of this fullness as one's own nature. Not the fullness of having
acquired many things, which is always relative and always potentially
incomplete, but the intrinsic, self-sufficient fullness of the Atman, which is
already complete in itself and needs nothing added to it to be what it is. [Isha Upanishad, invocation: purnam adah
purnam idam]
The third image is light. The
Mundaka Upanishad says that when Brahman shines, everything shines with it. The
sun does not shine there, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor lightning, nor fire.
When that shines, everything shines after it. By its light all this is
illuminated. Brahman is not illuminated by any external source of light,
because Brahman is the source of all illumination, including the illumination
of consciousness itself. The knower of Brahman is not someone who has acquired
a new light. They have recognised that they themselves are the source of the
light that was always making all experience possible. [Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.10: na tatra suryo
bhati, the famous declaration that the sun does not shine there, for Brahman's
light illuminates all]
Part Three:
Liberation in This Life
Jivanmukti: Free
While Still Alive
One of the most distinctive and
most practically important features of the Upanishadic understanding of Moksha
is that it can be attained in this very life, in the body one currently
inhabits, in the circumstances one is currently living in. This concept is
called Jivanmukti, liberation while living, and it is one of the most radical
ideas in the history of human spirituality.
[The concept of Jivanmukti is developed most systematically in
Shankaracharya's commentaries and later in the Jivanmuktiviveka of Vidyaranya,
but its scriptural roots are in the Upanishads themselves]
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
describes the sage Yajnavalkya, who is clearly depicted as a person of complete
realisation, living an ordinary social life: teaching students, engaging in
philosophical debate at the court of King Janaka, maintaining a household with
two wives, and eventually choosing to leave the householder stage and enter
renunciation. His realisation does not remove him from ordinary human
engagement. He continues to act, to speak, to make choices, to live fully in
the world of human relationships and intellectual exchange. What has changed is
not his external circumstances but his relationship with those circumstances,
the quality of awareness with which he inhabits them. [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.1 through 4.5:
Yajnavalkya in the court of Janaka and in his household, as a realised being
living a fully engaged life]
The Katha Upanishad describes this
condition with a precision that is worth pausing over. It says that the wise
one who knows the self as bodiless within the bodies, as unchanging among
changing things, as great and omnipresent, does not grieve. The grief is not
removed by removing the circumstances that cause grief. It is removed by the
direct recognition that what the grief-prone self takes itself to be is not
what it actually is. The grieving self was a misidentification. The Atman does
not grieve, because the Atman is not subject to loss. [Katha Upanishad 1.2.22: the wise one does
not grieve, knowing the self as bodiless within the bodies]
What Changes and
What Does Not
A natural and important question
arises here: if liberation is available in this life, and if the liberated
person continues to live in the world and engage with other people and face the
ordinary challenges of human existence, what actually changes? How is the
Jivanmukta different from anyone else, from the outside? And from the inside? [This question is addressed directly in the
Bhagavad Gita's concept of Sthitaprajna, 2.55 to 2.72, which draws directly on
Upanishadic teaching]
From the outside, very little may
change. The Jivanmukta has a body that continues to move through the world according
to its own momentum, what the tradition calls the Prarabdha karma, the karma
already set in motion by previous actions that must play itself out in the
present life. The body ages. It gets hungry and sleepy and sometimes ill. The
person continues to act in the world, to speak and respond and relate. The
Chandogya Upanishad records the case of the sage Janashruti, who is wealthy and
generous and socially engaged. The presence of realisation does not require the
renunciation of worldly life, though it may naturally lead to simplification of
desires. [Chandogya Upanishad 4.1:
Janashruti, a householder and donor who seeks knowledge of the self from the
sage Raikva]
From the inside, everything
changes. The Taittiriya Upanishad's description of the knower who is no longer
afraid, and the Mundaka's description of the sage who sees Brahman everywhere
and in everyone, point toward a quality of experience that is fundamentally
unlike the ordinary experience of a person still operating under Avidya. The
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad describes it as a state in which duality has ceased:
where there seems to be duality, one sees the other, one hears the other, one
knows the other. But when the Atman has been directly seen as the one reality,
what is there to see? What is there to know? The multiplicity of experience
continues, but it is now experienced from within the recognition of the
underlying unity, like watching waves from the perspective of the ocean rather
than from the perspective of one particular wave. [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.5.15:
Yajnavalkya's final teaching to Maitreyi on the dissolution of duality in the
knowledge of the Atman]
Videhamukti:
Liberation Beyond the Body
The Upanishadic tradition also
speaks of what happens after the death of the body of a Jivanmukta, a person
who has attained liberation while still alive. This is called Videhamukti,
liberation without the body. For the ordinary person, death is followed by the
journey of the soul through the subtle realms and eventually back to a new birth,
driven by the unfulfilled desires and accumulated karma of the previous life.
But for the Jivanmukta, whose karma has been effectively burned up by the fire
of self-knowledge and whose desires are no longer generating new binding karma,
the death of the body is the final and complete dissolution of all remaining
conditions of apparent limitation.
[Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.6 to 4.4.7: the person of desire is
reborn; the one who is without desire and whose desires are fulfilled goes not
anywhere, being Brahman, they merge in Brahman]
The Mundaka Upanishad describes
this final dissolution with one of the most beautiful images in the entire
Upanishadic corpus. It says that just as rivers, flowing, enter the ocean and
lose their names and their individual forms there, while the ocean itself
remains unchanged, so the knower, freed from name and form, attains the divine
person who is beyond the beyond. The rivers do not cease to exist. They become
the ocean. The individual self does not cease to exist. It is recognised as
always having been the infinite self. The apparent dissolution is actually the
revelation of what was always the case.
[Mundaka Upanishad 3.2.8: nadyah syandamanah samudre, as rivers merge in
the ocean]
Conclusion: The
Freedom You Already Have
The Upanishadic teaching on Moksha
is, taken all the way to its logical conclusion, the most radical statement
about human nature ever made. It says that you are not, at your deepest level,
what you have been taking yourself to be. You are not the anxious, limited,
mortal, desire-driven personality that wakes up every morning and negotiates
its way through another day of hopes and fears. That personality is real as an
appearance, as a temporary and useful form that the Atman has taken on for the
purposes of a particular life. But it is not the whole truth about you, and it
is not the deepest truth about you.
[Chandogya Upanishad 3.14.4: sarva idam brahma, tajjalan iti, all this
is indeed Brahman, from which all arises, to which all returns]
The deepest truth about you, the
Upanishads insist, is that you are the Atman: pure, unbounded, deathless
awareness, identical in its innermost nature with Brahman, the infinite ground
of all existence. This recognition is Moksha. Not the reward for a good life.
Not the destination of a long journey. The revelation of what has always been
true, the correction of a fundamental error in self-perception that, when
genuinely corrected, produces a freedom that cannot be taken away by any change
in circumstances because it does not depend on any circumstances to begin
with. [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.22:
the one who knows the Atman as Brahman, having known this, the ancestors, the
gods, even the Vedas cannot prevent them, for they become all this]
The great prayer at the opening of
the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad asks for the most fundamental of all gifts: lead
me from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to
immortality. Asato ma sadgamaya, tamaso ma jyotirgamaya, mrityor ma amritam
gamaya. The movement it describes is not from one place to another. It is from
misperception to clear seeing. From taking the rope to be a snake, to seeing
the rope as a rope. From taking the Atman to be the body, to recognising the
Atman as Brahman. And in that recognition, the Upanishads promise, everything
that the prayer is asking for is already fully given: the real, the light, and
the deathless. [Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
1.3.28: the great prayer from which this conclusion takes its movement]
Aham Brahmasmi
I am Brahman. [Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad 1.4.10]
Brahmavid
Brahmaiva Bhavati
The knower of
Brahman becomes Brahman itself. [Mundaka Upanishad 3.2.9]
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