In the next section of the Chandogya Upanishad, we have a debate between three men well-versed in the Udgita. The question is what is the abode or origin of Udgita. Many answers like tone, breath, food and water are given. Yonder world is said to be the origin of water. The origin of the Yonder world is this world says Jaivali, a debater. He says finally that the origin of this world is Space. It is greater than all these and the ultimate abode. Udgita is the highest and the best! One who meditates on Udgita, the Upanishad declares, becomes the highest and the best! Akasa or Space here stands for the Supreme Self. The question discussed is what is the ground of the world. Theories that the ultimate ground is sound, breath, water, heaven and earth are discarded as inadequate!
Ushasti Chakrayana goes to the sacrifice where the priest sings the ‘Prastava’. He asks the priest if he knows the God related to the mantra. He puts the same question to the Udgita priest and the ‘Pratihari’ priest, when they are unable to answer. Then Chakrayana says it is Life as all beings enter into it and rise from it! To the same question by the Udgita priest, Chakrayana says that the God is the Sun as all beings sing of the Sun when he is up! To the question of the 'Pratihari’ priest, he replies that the God is Food itself! People live because of taking food! This story is meant to teach that in performing sacrifices one should know what he is doing. He should have a knowledge and the meaning of the mantras and of the deities involved!
In the next section, Gayatri mantra is extolled as everything, speech, earth, the body, and the heart! Gayatri metre has four feet and each foot has four syllables. It is six fold in the shape of speech, creatures, earth, body, heart and the vital breaths! The Upanishad declares that greater than the Gayatri mantra is the Purusha himself! All mortal beings are only a fourth part of Him! The other parts are Immortal in heaven! Purusha is Brahman as He is Himself and not His manifestation symbolized by Gayatri! The Space outside the person, inside and within the heart is Brahman which is perfect and unchanging! The Brahman symbolized by Gayatri is now identified with Akasa or Space with its three phases-that which is outside man, that which is inside and that which is within the heart!
The Upanishad equates the light shining above heaven with the same light within man! It is higher than everything, beyond which there are no other worlds! As a visible proof one perceives by touch the warmth of the body! The audible proof is that one hears a rumbling sound! The Upanishads thus establishes that there no difference between the eternal Brahman and the the Space in and out and within man!
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