Taittiriya Upanishad Lecture 92 Ch2.8 on 18 February 2026
Full Transcript(Not Corrected)
Brahmānanda Mīmāṃsā: An Analysis of the Bliss of Brahman
A Discourse on the Eighth Section of the Brahmānanda Vallī, Taittirīya Upaniṣad
Opening Invocation
ॐ जननीम् शरदाम् देविम् रामक्रिष्णम् जगत् गुर्म्
पादपद्मे तयोः स्रित्वाः प्रणमामि मुहुरुमु
Oṁ jananīṁ śaraḍhāṁ deveṁ rāmakriṣṇam jagad-gurum
pādapadmetayosritvā pranamāmi-muhurumuhu
ॐ सह नाववतु ।
सह नौ भुनक्तु ।
सह वीर्यं करवावहै ।
तेजस्वि नावधीतमस्तु मा विद्विषावहै ।
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥ हरि ॐ
OM SAHANAVAVATO SAHANAV BHUNAKTO SAHAVIRYAM KARAVAVAHAI TEJASVINAVADHITAMASTUMA VIDVISHAVAHAI OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTIHI HARIHI OM
OM May Brahman protect us both. May Brahman bestow upon us both the fruit of knowledge.
May we both obtain the energy to acquire knowledge.
May what we both study reveal the truth. May we cherish no ill feeling toward each other.
OM PEACE PEACE PEACE BE UNTO ALL
Introduction: Beginning the Analysis
We have started studying the eighth section of the Brahmānanda Vallī of the Taittirīya Upaniṣad. We have entered into Brahmānanda Mīmāṃsā — an analysis of Brahmānanda. Even though we have discussed a few points previously, certain key ideas have to be kept firmly in mind. Only then does the meaning become more clear to all of us.
The Joy of Mere Existence
Whatever pleasure, happiness, and joy we are all experiencing — and "we" means every living creature — is a form of ānanda. Is even an amoeba experiencing joy? Yes. Even the very act of existence is a source of joy. We are simply not consciously realising how joyful we are, even by our very act of living.
Just imagine our day-to-day life. We are not suffering, nor are we excessively happy or joyful, and so we do not take notice of how joyful we actually are. The moment some pain comes — a toothache, headache, stomachache, any ache — we immediately become conscious of how our existence is being threatened. Notice what happens: the toothache arrives, we get rid of it, and feel what a tremendous relief! That is joy. But what were you experiencing before the toothache even started?
You need not be continuously in pain, then have the pain removed, in order to experience joy. In fact, that is what we are doing all the time. When I wake up, I feel hungry; I eat breakfast, and I feel happy. At noon, my stomach starts growling, and I fill it up — with whatever we are filling it with nowadays — and I feel relieved. But pause for a second and think: what were you experiencing before the hunger began?
Only the pain reminds us: "You fool — remember how happy you are, without experiencing anything, just by being." That is called the joy of existence.
The Bliss of the Brahman Knower
What happens to a person who has realised Brahman, who has realised God? He experiences this joy continuously. He does not need some suffering to be removed before feeling joyful. The very thought "I am" gives him a tremendous joy.
What a thing we are missing, all the time!
When a person becomes a knower of Brahman, whether that person is in the waking state, the dream state, the deep sleep state, or beyond — he is always happy, and he knows he is happy. When a person is happy naturally, that is the happiness of being: "I am." He is continuously and unbrokenly conscious of it. That is called cit. He is Jñānasvarūpa — nothing else but this: "I am continuously happy, and I am continuously aware that I am being happy."
Compared to that, our own cit — our awareness of being continuously happy — goes away. The cause for that unhappiness is always some problem, some pain. But we have to understand: to be alive is itself a great good, and many good people experience this deeply.
The Nature of Lokas as States of Mind
This is one of the important points we must understand here. A beautiful analysis is being made of the many Lokas mentioned in this section — about eleven are named, only as a sample, as examples. In between each of them, there perhaps are hundreds, thousands, billions, and trillions of degrees of Lokas.
What is a Loka? A Loka is a state of the mind. When we are happy, that is called ānanda loka. When we are experiencing material pleasure through this physical body, that is called Mānuṣya ānanda. When we are experiencing happiness in our intellect — a brilliant idea, or a better understanding of something already familiar — that lifts us. That is called medhānanda.
Aesthetic Experience and Dharmānanda
Higher than intellectual happiness is aesthetic happiness. Consider the person who, seeing a beautiful sunrise, a sunset, or any wonder of nature — even the smallest flower peeping out of a huge rock — experiences the greatest pleasure. We know that Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa, at the age of seven or eight, was walking in the fields when he saw the whole sky filled with thick black clouds indicating the onset of the monsoon, and a flock of pure white cranes flying in beautiful formation. Thousands of people must have noticed that same scene, yet their minds were not refined enough to receive it fully. But Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa fell down unconscious — not from disease, but because his physical body could not withstand the great joy that flooded him. Even in this very world, not in some higher realm, he experienced this.
Now consider Rāmacandra Mukhopadhyāya — the father of Śrī Śāradā Devī — who was an embodiment of truthfulness, Dharma, righteousness, compassion (Dayā), and charity (Dāna). During a terrible famine, he opened all his stored granaries to feed hundreds of starving people, giving whatever he had, for as many days as he could. That is called real Dāna, real love, real devotion to God. The happiness he experienced in equating himself with every creature — Sarva Jīveṣu Brahma Darśanam, seeing Īśvara in all beings — is what is called Dharmānanda, the happiness of righteousness.
Where was Rāmacandra Datta? Where was Śrī Śāradā Devī? Where was Śyāma Sundari Devī? In a way, they were in a different world — their bodies were in this world, but their minds were in the highest world. They were experiencing Brahmānanda even while looking at others receiving relief from hunger.
We cannot imagine such joy, just as we cannot imagine the joy that a Wordsworth, a Longfellow, or a Shelley feels when they walk through nature. The Dutch painter Van Gogh used to stand in the fields from sunrise to sunset, painting a dry haystack. Others who looked at the same haystack saw nothing remarkable. That is what distinguishes one person from another. As Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa said, some sweets are filled with pure chānā (cheese), and some with something ordinary — outside they look the same, but inside there is an enormous difference.
Discrimination, Dispassion, and the Spiritual Path
If we can compare these examples given by Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa and try to understand the Ānanda Mīmāṃsā, we grasp an important point: any person can experience right up to Brahmānanda even here, in this life. Not only Brahmānanda — even what are called the six lower worlds, down to Pātāla itself — all are creations and experiences of the mind.
Counting from our earth onwards, there are seven lower worlds, and the bottommost layer is called Pātāla. Suppose a person is experiencing unbearable agony there, and by the grace of a great soul he is elevated even one Loka higher — to less suffering. Just imagine how much bliss he experiences compared to what he knew before! Go on multiplying that example upward: from the thirteenth Loka to the twelfth, and so on upward. When a person who has been inhumanly tortured is rescued and given even a simple piece of toast, he derives happiness as if he were experiencing Brahman Himself. But the tragedy is that very soon he forgets what he experienced and how he experienced it.
We are very forgetful people. If we could keep in memory what it felt like to have been in those lower states, then every single bite of even a simple roṭī or cāpātī entering our mouths would give us unbearably great happiness.
True Discrimination and Its Fruits
Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa gives a pointed example to illustrate false versus true discrimination. Here is a man who has heard that after a certain age one must give up all attachment. He thinks he is practising, and others believe he is practising. One day a beggar comes, and this person feels like giving — he calculates carefully how much to give, and feels proud of his charity. Yet when it comes to his daughter's wedding, he does not hesitate to spend lakhs of rupees. He deludes himself: "I am practising spiritual life." This is the kind of hypocrisy that exists, though fortunately in small numbers.
True discrimination — viveka — is not a dry intellectual exercise. It is that which erupts into action. The moment we come to know that something is poison, we renounce it immediately. The moment we truly understand that a certain attachment is not conducive to our happiness, the mind becomes detached — no effort is required. As soon as genuine discrimination arises, dispassion (vairāgya) follows automatically. True viveka always results in vairāgya, and only a person who has thus experienced can truly give up. Others' words about renunciation are mere words without meaning.
Mānuṣya Ānanda: The Baseline Measure
Here the Upaniṣad establishes its baseline measure. Imagine a young man who is extraordinarily powerful — physically, mentally, and intellectually; who can rule the whole world; who is fully learned and possessed of the highest ideals, putting them into practice one hundred percent. He is āśiṣṭha, dṛḍhiṣṭha, baliṣṭha — filled with will-power that none can withstand. He is the unparalleled, unchallenged emperor of the entire known universe — as Cengiz Khān was the unchallenged emperor of a vast land in his time, or as Emperor Aśoka held sway over three-fourths of India. Imagine this person as the unchallenged master of the entire universe, with all happiness at his disposal. Such a person's ānanda is one measure — one Mānuṣya Ānanda.
And importantly, it is not even necessary for such a person to be constantly experiencing every pleasure. The very thought — "I possess everything; I am the master of everything; anytime I want, I can experience anything" — that thought itself produces that happiness. One measure of human happiness (eka Mānuṣya Ānanda).
The Śrotriya and the Akāmahata
Now an essential point: the same happiness — at every level — is also experienced by a Śrotriya who is also akāmahata. The Śrotriya is not a mere paṇḍit. He is endowed with knowledge born of the scriptures and supported by personal experience. He is a practitioner. He has experienced the highest, at whatever level he has reached through his spiritual sādhana. And because he has truly experienced a higher joy, the lower joys fall away automatically — not by forced effort, but the way the ground falls below as you climb a mountain. He is akāmahata — unstruck by desire for the lower, because the higher includes the lower, just as one rūpī includes one āṇā, four āṇās, eight āṇās, twelve āṇās. The question of giving up does not arise for such a person, because the higher ānanda includes the lower ānanda. That is the meaning of akāmahata.
The Hierarchy of Ānandas: From Mānuṣya to Brahmaloka
The Upaniṣad then proceeds to describe the successive grades of ānanda, each one being described as a hundred times — or rather, indescribably greater than — the one below it. Let us walk through them in sequence.
Mānuṣya Gandharva Ānanda: One hundred times the measure of Mānuṣya Ānanda is the bliss of the Mānuṣya Gandharvas — men and women raised to a semi-celestial status by their deeds and refinement. The same bliss is experienced here by a Śrotriya who is akāmahata and has raised his mind to this level.
Pitṛ Loka Ānanda: Our ancestors, after the fall of the body, enter Pitṛ Loka — also called Cira Loka (the enduring world). Their experience of ānanda is a hundred times greater than that of the Mānuṣya Gandharvas. And the same ānanda is experienced by the Sādhaka who has lifted his mind to that corresponding level.
Karma Deva Ānanda: Higher than the Pitṛ Loka is the Loka of the Karma Devas — those who have attained that state by their meritorious actions. Their happiness is billions of times greater. And by pleasing the resident Devas of that Loka, they are elevated further.
Deva Loka Ānanda: Above the Karma Devas are the Devas themselves — sometimes called the thirty-three Devatas. Their ānanda is millions of times that of the Karma Devas. The same ānanda belongs to the Śrotriya who is akāmahata and has attained that state through sādhana.
Indra Ānanda: Higher still is Indra, the emperor of all the Gods. His happiness is far greater than all the Devas put together.
Bṛhaspati Ānanda: Above Indra is Bṛhaspati, the Guru and teacher of the Devas — just as Śukrācārya is the teacher of the Asuras. Bṛhaspati knows everything. His ānanda is thousands of billions of times more than even Indra's ānanda. And the same ānanda belongs to the Sādhaka who has raised his mind to that corresponding state.
Prajāpati Ānanda: Higher than Bṛhaspati is Prajāpati — whom we also call Hiraṇyagarbha, or Suvirāṭ. His happiness is billions of times more than Bṛhaspati's ānanda.
Brahma Loka Ānanda: And higher than Prajāpati — billions of times greater — is Brahma Loka Ānanda, the bliss of Brahma. The bliss of Prajāpati multiplied a hundred times is one measure of the bliss of Brahma. This too belongs equally to the Śrotriya who is akāmahata and who has raised his mind to that state of Brahma Loka.
Saṃsāra and Mithyā: The Finite Nature of All Graded Ānandas
All of these graded ānandas — from Mānuṣya Ānanda right up to Brahma Loka Ānanda — fall under what we call Saṃsārānanda. Saṃsāra means that which is temporary, changing, and dependent. Even Brahma Loka falls under Saṃsāra. Therefore all these ānandas, however vast, are called Mithyānanda. Mithyā does not mean unreal or imaginary — it means changing. They are nonetheless ānandas, but they are finite ānandas. Any of these graded ānandas can be experienced by one who is Śrotriya and akāmahata.
The Leap to Brahmānanda
Once a person reaches Brahma Loka Ānanda, he glimpses — by the grace of God — that even this is temporary and finite. There is something even higher: Brahmānanda. And Brahmānanda is not obtained from outside. All the ānandas up to Brahma Loka were Viṣayānanda — ānanda derived from objects and worlds. But now the realisation dawns: "I am that Ānanda Svarūpa." Every Viṣaya, every object, every Loka is only a mirror reflecting what I could not see within myself. To see that reflection clearly, all the coverings must be removed.
This is why, after Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa realised "I am Brahman," the question of going into samādhi and coming out of samādhi no longer arose as something separate and dramatic. These became natural movements of his being. He never became separated from that Brahmānanda — whether joking, laughing, weeping, or entering into samādhi. He was always in it. In fact, one could say he was enjoying that Brahmānanda in various guises, knowing it is only Brahmānanda: Brahmānanda in the form of rasoguḷā, Brahmānanda in the form of jalebi, and even — understand this point well — Brahmānanda in the form of a throat disease. From our point of view, that is agony. From Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa's point of view, it was only a divine play (līlā). Sukha and Duḥkha both are expressions of Brahmānanda alone.
Remember the story of the wandering sādhu who was being pelted with stones and said: "Thus plays the Father." Once a person realises Brahman, it is all nothing but play.
The Purpose of This Mīmāṃsā
The purpose of this entire Ānanda Mīmāṃsā is this: you do not need to go anywhere. You can be right here. Develop viveka (discrimination) and vairāgya (dispassion). True discrimination always results in dispassion. Once you reach that state, ānanda will come to you. The comparison is made eleven times in the text, each level as a reassurance for us: "If I lift my mind, what do I get?" You get ānanda. And the higher your mind, the higher the ānanda.
It is like a pole vault: you take the help of the pole, reach the highest height possible, and then — give it up. That is how the Saṃsārī mind is finally transcended. Just as a bucket holds one cup, ten cups, a hundred cups — the higher ānanda holds and includes all the lower ānandas. There is no throwing out; there is only inclusion.
Closing and the Mahāvākya
Once a person has reached Brahma Loka Ānanda and then transcends even that, he realises — by the grace of God — that the Brahman who is manifesting as Āditya, and who is manifesting in him as the Jīva, 'Sa Ekaha' are nothing but one. This is one of the great Mahāvākyas of the Upaniṣads.
This beautiful topic we will continue in our next class.
Closing Prayer
ॐ जननीम् शरदाम् देविम् रामक्रिष्णम् जगत् गुर्म्
पादपद्मे तयोः स्रित्वाः प्रणमामि मुहुरुमु
Oṁ jananīṁ śaraḍhāṁ deviṁ rāmakriṣṇam jagad-gurum
pādapadmetayosritvā pranamāmi-muhurumuhu
May Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother and Swami Vivekananda bless us all with Bhakti. Jai Ramakrishna!