‘By what, Maitreyi, can one know the knower?’ — Brihadaranyaka Upanishad — ChatGPT, Can you comment on and give a discourse on this in the context of Advaita vedanta.
ChatGPT said:
Ah, wonderful. This line from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (II.4.14) is a thunderbolt of Advaita Vedānta. Let me give you both commentary and a discourse-style unpacking:
The Text
“Yena vā are draṣṭavyam, tenaiva draṣṭavyam. Na vā are draṣṭuḥ draṣṭāram paśyeḥ. Na vā are śrotuḥ śrotāram śṛṇuyāt. Na vā are mantur mantāram manvīta. Na vā are vijñātur vijñātāram vijānīyāt. Eṣa ta ātmāntaryāmyamṛtaḥ.”
Loosely rendered:
“By what shall one know the Knower? The seer of seeing cannot be seen; the hearer of hearing cannot be heard; the thinker of thought cannot be thought of; the knower of knowing cannot be known. That, O Maitreyi, is your Self, the indwelling immortal.”
Commentary (Advaita Vedānta)
- The Knower Cannot Be Objectified
- Everything you know—body, senses, thoughts, emotions, even the ego (“I am so-and-so”)—is an object of knowledge.
- But the knower (the witnessing Awareness) cannot itself be reduced to an object.
- To try to “know” the knower is to still imagine it as “something out there,” which is ignorance.
- The Knower Is Self-Evident
- The Upanishad is telling Maitreyi: stop searching for the knower as if it were a hidden object.
- It is that by which all knowing occurs. It never needs another proof. It is svayam-prakāśa (self-luminous).
- Just as you don’t need a candle to see the Sun, you don’t need another means to “know” Awareness.
- Advaita’s Radical Move
- Here the Upanishad slams the door on Dvaita, on Vishishtadvaita, and even on philosophy-as-usual.
- You cannot “reach” the Self through thought, perception, scripture, or argument.
- The Self is not an object in the field; it is the very Light by which the field appears.
- Practical Implication
- When you turn inward asking, “Who is the knower of this thought?” you come to silence.
- That silence is not empty—it is fullness, Awareness itself.
- This is why Śaṅkara insists: liberation is not acquiring some new knowledge, but recognizing that you are already the Knower that cannot be known.
Discourse (Radical Advaita Tone)
Maitreyi asked, “By what shall one know the knower?” The Master replied: It cannot be done. For the knower is not another object among objects. The seer of seeing cannot be seen; the hearer of hearing cannot be heard. O fool, you have searched in scriptures, in philosophies, in sciences, in all corners of the world. But the Knower has never moved from its throne. It shines as the very light by which you search. You cannot turn a torch upon the Sun; the torch itself borrows light from the Sun. So too, all knowing borrows its light from the Self. To know this is not to add a new fact, but to collapse into that Self-awareness where no knower and known remain. This is Advaita: not two, not even one, but the impossibility of any division whatsoever.
So: the Upanishad is dismantling the very project of knowing. It says: the ultimate cannot be known—because it is the Knower. That is why Advaita Vedānta dismisses both literature and philosophy as inadequate (tying back to your earlier mood): they remain caught in the realm of knowable objects. Only direct abidance in the Self, beyond knower-known duality, is liberation.
👉 Would you like me to also draw a parallel here with modern consciousness studies (e.g., how cognitive science and neuroscience still stumble on the “hard problem” because they try to objectify the Knower)? That might give your discourse a contemporary sharpness.
You said:
Yes
ChatGPT said:
Perfect. Let’s extend the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad’s teaching into the contemporary landscape of consciousness studies.
The Upaniṣadic Question in Modern Garb
Maitreyi asks: “By what shall one know the knower?”
Today, philosophers of mind like David Chalmers frame this as the “hard problem of consciousness”: how can subjective experience (the knower) ever be explained in terms of objective data (the known)?
- Neuroscience can track firing neurons, brain regions lighting up, chemical signals shuttling.
- Psychology can chart behavior, cognition, memory, emotions.
- AI research can simulate intelligence and perception.
But none of these touch Awareness itself. They study the contents of experience, never the light by which content is known.
Parallel With Advaita Vedānta
- Subject–Object Divide
- Science studies the objects of experience (thoughts, perceptions, brain states).
- Advaita points to the subject, the witnessing Awareness.
- The subject can never become an object of study—by definition.
- The Self as Self-Luminous
- Upanishad: “The knower of knowing cannot be known.”
- Chalmers: Consciousness resists reduction because it is intrinsic, first-person, irreducible.
- Śaṅkara would say: exactly so—because Consciousness is svayam-prakāśa, shining by itself.
- Limits of Reductionism
- Modern science believes: more data, finer instruments, bigger models, and we’ll crack the knower.
- Advaita says: you’ll never crack it because you are it. Trying to “know” Awareness is like the eye trying to see itself without a mirror.
- Resolution
- Science is caught in what Advaita calls Mithyā—it explains appearances within the dream.
- The Upanishad explodes the dream by pointing you back to the dreamer.
Discourse-Style Wrap-Up
Modern neuroscience asks, “Where in the brain is consciousness?” The Upanishad laughs: “By what shall one know the knower?” The very light you are using to look for consciousness is Consciousness itself. Instruments, theories, and data all shine in borrowed light. The “hard problem” will never be solved in the laboratory because the scientist is the problem—more precisely, the presupposed knower standing behind the experiment.
Advaita does not offer a solution in the usual sense. It dissolves the problem. It says: stop treating the Knower as an object. Abide as That. Then, you will know—without knowing—what cannot be known.
⚡This is where Advaita is not just ancient mysticism, but a direct strike at the blind spot of modern science.
Know Thyself 