Taittiriya Upanishad II.i.1 //Satyam, Jnanam, Anantam Brahma (Interlude)

What happens when you have the interplay of three adjectives which inflect each other creating a boundless space? From Satyam we move to Jnanam to Anantam. One opens up to the other even demanding this extension. It's not that either, it's an encompassing and a nesting at once. There is a conceptual planetary system, so to speak, and our attention and absorbtion is the gravity that holds it together. "That is the infinite in which one does not know anything else". The inflection of the infinite creates a consciousness which is not a knower there being no second thing to know. The 'jnanam' (consciousness or knowledge) in its turn inflects the 'satyam' (true/changeless) so there is a triple system in which the divine energy moves back and forth.

The characteristic mistake of the 'objector' is to focus on one of these terms and try to show that there is an error.

Objection: From the denial of particulars in the (above) statement, "One does not know anything else", it follows that one knows the Self.

By isolating the boundless/infinite, the triple system effect is lost.

Taittiriya Upanishad II.i.1 (no.2 in series)

The knower of Brahman attains the highest. Here is a verse uttering that very fact: Brahman is truth, knowledge and infinite. He who knows that Brahman existing in the intellect, lodged in the supreme space in the heart, enjoys, as identified with the all-knowing Brahman, all desirable things, simultaneously.

When it is said that the knower of Brahman knows the highest, what is it that they know. When the answer is given it is parsed to make sure that the meaning extracted from the incorrigible words of the Upanishad are according to their meaning. It is a lawyerly approach in which the position of commas becomes a fulcrum for distortion. For instance the phrase satyam jnanam anantam Brahma could be construed as a catenary of entities 'the truth', 'knowledge', the 'boundless' and last but not least Brahman. That would be a false reading as all those attributes have the same case ending so the phrase is meant to be a definition of the substantive 'Brahma'.

The objection comes:
If this is a definition that demarcates are we to think that it only distinguishes between this (satyam jnanam anantam) Brahman and all other sorts of Brahman much as we sort red lotuses from blue lotuses.

Not so. Sankara offers the distinction between an adjectival string that identifies an entity as a member of a class and the defining nature of the string string satyam jnanam anantam Brahma. The lotus could be described as aquatic fragrant, red,transplantable, hardy etc. All of these attributes are interlinked conceptually as dealing with plants of a certain genus. Contrariwise you could have satyam Brahma, jnanam Brahma, anantam Brahma. Satyam, jnanam and anantam have no intrnsic connection.

The words, satya etc., are unrelated amongst themselves, since they subserve something else; they are meant to be applied to the substantive. Accordingly each of the attributive words is thus related with the word Brahman independently of the others; satyam brahman, jhanam brahma, anantam brahma

Taittiriya Upanishad II.i.1. (Tai.Up. 1 in series)

The knower of Brahman attains the highest. Here is a verse uttering that very fact: Brahman is truth, knowledge and infinite. He who knows that Brahman existing in the intellect, lodged in the supreme space in the heart, enjoys, as identified with the all-knowing Brahman, all desirable things, simultaneously.

(Taittiriya Upanishad: II.i.1)

The commentary by Shankara on this verse over the following 18 pages is a condensed explication demonstrating the supple and subtle power of his mind. The primary thing to be noted is that he takes this definition of Brahman as truth, knowledge and infinite (Satyam, Jnanam, Anantam Brahman) as a given and does not attempt a proof of its, Brahman’s, existence. It is established by the Vedas, in other words, by the knowledge of countless sages in that tradition. There is no better proof than realisation. To know that Brahman exists is congruent with knowing that you yourself exist. Yes indeed but when the man from Kerala told me about the sharing of power in that state between C.P. Mos. and C.P. Pek. I asked him about how that was working out. He replied:
- Difficulties are there.

The objector, a standard character in Shankara’s commentaries attempts to use the classic interpretation of Advaita against the concept of realisation. How can we attain Brahman if we are already Brahman? How can we make a journey to where we already are? How can we take possession of that which we already have?

Answer: this is no fault.

What prevents us from seeing the truth is a wrong view that interposes itself. It is like a wrong method of counting that consistently gives the incorrect result. The example given is the classic tale of the Tenth Man. Ten men crossed the hazardous river and on the far bank their leader began to count them to see if everybody had arrived safely. He counted nine and began to bewail the loss of one member of the group. Someone passing corrected him:
- You are forgetting to count yourself.

A wrong method of looking at reality bars you from the true picture. There is a systematic error, similar to the counting error. ((personal note: don’t overcook the analogy by drawing more out of it than that)). You think of yourself as an individual amongst other individuals and count on that basis. Your identity is established on the basis of your thoughts and perceptions. This is faulty but natural. When you think of the whole that unites us or the substratum of unchanging consciousness which is the true source of identity, your counting is corrected.

…...similarly in the case of one , to whom Brahman remains unattained owing to his ignorance, there may be discovery of that very Brahman by realising that omnipresent Brahman to be none other than one’s own Self – a realisation that comes through enlightenment consequent on the instruction of the scriptures.