ko 'yam ātmeti vayam upāsmahe | kataraḥ sa ātmā | yena vā paśyati yena vā śṛṇoti yena vā gandhān ājighrati yena vā vācaṁ vyākaroti yena vā svādu cāsvādu ca vijānāti ||
""Who is this Self that we worship?" "Which one is the Self — that by which one sees, by which one hears, by which one smells odors, by which one utters speech, by which one discriminates the sweet and the unsweet?""
What This Means:
The final chapter opens with the crucial question: Who is this Self we've been discussing? Is it the power of sight? Hearing? Smell? Speech? Taste? Which faculty is the real Self?
Going Deeper:
This sets up the climactic revelation. Each faculty has been associated with a cosmic deity. But the Self is not any single faculty — it's that which makes all faculties possible. The question aims to discriminate between instruments and their user.
How To Apply This:
Ask yourself: Are you the seeing, or that which is aware of seeing? Are you the thinking, or that which knows thinking occurs? Keep discriminating between the instruments and their witness.
Key Sanskrit Terms: