What This Work Is
The Vedic Experience is not a commentary on the Vedas, not a scholarly treatise, not a devotional guide. It is something more ambitious: a living anthology of the entire śruti — the Ṛgveda, Atharvaveda, Yajurveda, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, Upaniṣads, Bhagavad Gītā, and Gṛhya Sūtras — arranged not chronologically but according to the pattern of life itself: birth, growth, blossoming, fall, death, and renewal.
Raimon Panikkar — philosopher, Catholic priest, and student of Vedic lore — spent over a decade working from Varanasi compiling this 1,000-page anthology. The project was collaborative: N. Shanta determined the gestalt, M. Rogers revised the style through the genius of the English language, B. Baumer and M. Bidoli went through the Sanskrit texts. The book is subtitled Mantramañjarī — a “cluster of blossoms” (mañjarī) of sacred words (mantra). A bouquet offered to the world.
Its aim is stated clearly: not translation but representation — an existential reenactment. “We do not want to put the music into words. Our aim is to speak the words, to play the music, to perform the dance, to utter the prayers, to sing the songs, to wonder, love, doubt, suffer, hope, and believe along with those documents of human history which we call the Vedas.”
The Preface: The Existential Wager
Panikkar opens with an image: what would you save from a burning house — a precious manuscript containing the message of salvation for mankind, or a group of people trapped in the same fire?
His answer is that the dilemma is false. One cannot be an intellectual concerned with truth while refusing to be human, nor can one agitate for justice while refusing to think. His book is the product of denying the ultimate validity of this choice. The manuscript may emerge charred, the people blistered, but “the intensity of the one concern has helped me in the other.”
The book begins on this note of sacrifice — because that is where the Vedas begin.
The General Introduction: What the Vedas Are, and What Panikkar Is Doing
The Vedic Epiphany
“One of the most stupendous manifestations of the Spirit is undoubtedly that which has been handed down to us under the generic name of the Vedas. The Vedic Epiphany belongs to the heritage of mankind.” Not to Hindu India alone. Not to scholars. Not to brahmins. To humanity.
Panikkar wants to rescue the Vedas from the monopoly of a single group — whether sectarian scholars or religious factions. The vantage point of this anthology: the Vedas as a revelation, as a disclosure of something that enriches human experience without prescribing what that something must be called.
Apauruṣeyatā — The Non-Authorship of the Vedas
The traditional Indian notion that the Vedas have no human author is not an embarrassment. It is a profound philosophical insight.
For Panikkar, apauruṣeyatā means: any one of us is the author of the Vedas when we read, pray, and understand them. Nobody is the author of living words except the one who utters them. What has no author is the relationship between the word and its meaning — this relationship is not artificial, not caused by someone. It is intrinsic.
When a word ceases to be a living word, when it ceases to convey meaning, when it is not a word for me, it is not Veda. The Vedas without an author cease to be an authoritative book. Only when you become their author — when through assimilation you are able to utter them — do the Vedas disclose their authentic authority.
“The Vedic Revelation is not the voice of an anthropomorphic Revealer, nor the unveiling of the veil that covers reality. It is dawn.” It is not a beam of light from a lighthouse; it is the growing light itself. The śruti is that which is heard, and what is heard is not merely the sound but all that there is to be heard, perceived, understood, realized. Our own process of discovery is part of the revelation itself.
Why the Vedas Are Paradoxically Not Central to Indian Philosophy
Panikkar makes a counterintuitive but historically important point: it is a well-known fact that Indian philosophical systems — even the most orthodox ones — have drawn very few of their reflections directly from the Vedas. The two Mīmāṃsās use Vedic material selectively. The Upaniṣads, while technically part of the śruti, have a quite different atmosphere. This very fact, paradoxically, gives the Vedas a universality that transcends any particular tradition.
On Translation
The problem of translation is not merely linguistic. Nearly all Western languages have been molded by the Jewish-Helleno-Christian tradition. To translate apsaras as “spirit” or gandharva as “angel” is to use religion-bound concepts. Language cannot be neutral.
Panikkar’s solution: treat the introductions as integral parts of the translation, and the criterion of selection as another constitutive element. The whole śruti can only be conveyed in a meaningful way when it enters into our own personal experience. We have to learn another language as children learn their first — not by referring to an objectified world, not relating one word to another in a different language, but by assimilating, understanding, using a word to express a state of consciousness intimately connected with experience.
The Pattern of the Book
The seven-part structure follows what Panikkar calls the most basic pattern offered by nature, life, and history — the same initiatory pattern found almost universally:
- Dawn and Birth — Pre-existence and emergence into being; foundation
- Germination and Growth — The beginning, striving, settling into existence
- Blossoming and Fullness — The acme, plenitude, maturity
- Fall and Decay — The beginning of the downward path; the acids of time
- Death and Dissolution — The price paid for having been alive
- New Life and Freedom — The marvelous mystery of reemergence; immortality
- Twilight — The ribbon that ties the bouquet; living unity
Part VII is presented without introductions and without notes — because twilight cannot be analyzed.
Vedic Man as Celebrating Man
The most important characterization in the introduction: Vedic Man is fundamentally a celebrating Man. Not a philosopher, not a moralist, not a devotee — a celebrant.
He does not celebrate his own victories or even a nature festival. He concelebrates with the whole universe, taking his place in the cosmic sacrifice in which all the Gods are engaged together. Other cultures produced better warriors, craftsmen, and adventurers. Vedic Man presents “this markedly liturgical attitude to life, this extraordinary power of celebration.”
The Vedic experience does not carry a doctrinal message but a universal form of human celebration. Modern Man seeks an active participation in the overwhelming dynamism of the universe, in which his involvement is possible only if it is “actively passive.” And this is precisely the core of the Vedic experience: Man is called upon to perform the sacrifice that makes the world and even the Gods subsist.
Part I: Dawn and Birth — The Pre-Foundation
Part I deals with the invisible, underlying foundations of reality. It speaks neither of that which is nor of that which shall be. It operates in a past tense that does not refer to a temporal “was.” The origin of time cannot itself be temporal.
A. Prelude (Ādi) — The Hymn of the Origins
The first text given is the Nāsadīya Sūkta (RV X.129) — the most philosophically daring hymn in all Vedic literature.
“In the beginning there was neither Being nor Nonbeing. There was no space, no sky beyond. What was enfolded where? In what abode? What was the water, deep and unfathomable? There was neither death nor immortality then. No distinction between day and night. The One breathed without breath by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing whatever.”
Panikkar’s analysis goes through three stages:
1. Solitude: The Primordial One awoke and found itself alone. Self-awareness is born — and with it, loneliness. Aloneness is an unnatural state even for Being. The discovery of solitude produces fear; the rationalization of that fear produces boredom. And from boredom arises the desire for another.
2. Sacrifice: Prajāpati desires a second but has no primary matter. A second identical to him will merge with him; a second inferior will be a puppet. The Vedic Revelation unveils the mystery through the myth of the sacrifice of Prajāpati — who dismembers himself in order to let the world be and be what it is. Creation is sacrifice, the gift of Prajāpati in an act of self-immolation. There is no other to whom the sacrifice is offered. Prajāpati is simultaneously the sacrificer, the sacrifice (victim), the one to whom it is offered, and the result of the sacrifice.
Two principles are at work: kāma (love, desire, eros) and tapas (ardor, fervor, creative heat). Neither is a motive for action; both are indwelling principles of reality itself. “Order and truth (ṛta and satya) were born from tapas.” Desire is the first sowing of consciousness (manas). “He desired. He practiced tapas. He created the whole world.”
3. Integration: Once created, creatures turned their backs on Prajāpati and went away. They try to escape the creator but fall into chaos. If the universe is to subsist, the divine must penetrate the creatures again. But this second act needs the collaboration of the creature. This is Man’s place in the sacrifice. Man’s role is not offering gifts to God to earn release — it is creating and procreating along with God, reconstructing his Body.
“That I may become everything!” is the cry Panikkar finds in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. Not a hankering for power, not hedonism, but an existential desire to be at the very core of reality.
The Nāsadīya: Theological Core
This hymn does not attempt to communicate information. It shares a mystical awareness that transcends the sharpest lines of demarcation: the divine and the created, Being and Nonbeing.
The One is not seen against any horizon or background. All is included. All is pure horizon. The first verse is composed entirely of questions — because neither affirmation nor negation can carry the weight of the ultimate mystery. Only the openness of an interrogation can embrace what mere thinking cannot encompass.
“Being as well as Nonbeing, the Absolute as well as the Beginning, are contradictory concepts when applied to the primordial mystery.” The negative and positive aspects of existence both belong to the Ultimate. A metaphysician might say Nonbeing is a nonentity and unthinkable — yet on the level of thinking, the concept of Being cannot include its contradiction.
The symbol of water is the most pertinent one: the primordial water covers all, supports all, has no form of its own, is visible and invisible, has no limits, pervades everything. It is the first condition of life, the place of the original seed, the fertilizing medium.
The two last stanzas: “agonized queries.” No reply is vouchsafed because reality is still on the move and any definite answer would preclude its constant newness. The sage asks: What is the origin? Who is the purpose? It cannot be the Gods, for the Gods themselves belong on this side of the curtain. Nobody can know what is the very foundation of knowing, nor can anyone say it is not known — that would be negative theology as assertive as its opposite.
B. The Word (Vāc)
The Word, vāc, is grammatically feminine and this fact has conditioned a great deal of thinking. Vāc expresses “that total surrender to the source from which it springs which is characteristically found in the archetype of feminine love.”
Vāc is not merely meaning, or sound, or vehicle of spiritual truths. She does not contain revelation; she is revelation. She was at the beginning. She is the whole of the śruti. The śruti is vāc.
Vāc is the primordial mystery combining past, present, and future. Everything that is participates in vāc; through her everything has come into being. Every word is sacred. Words are not instruments; they are Man’s supreme form of expression. “In the last analysis God has no name because He himself is Word.”
The Vedic account gives four levels of vāc: parā (transcendent), paśyantī (visionary), madhyamā (intermediate), and vaikharī (audible). Most humans know only the last. The great seers heard all four.
C. The Elements
Fire (Agni), Water (Āpas), Wind (Vāyu), Earth (Pṛthivī). These are not chemicals or physical substances but manifestations of divine power in the world.
Panikkar gives extended treatments of each. Agni: the Fire is both the sacrificial mediator between earth and heaven and the divine flame in every human heart. Water: the primordial waters precede creation; the waters are the abyss out of which being emerges; they purify and heal. Wind/Spirit: the wind is simultaneously the physical wind and the Spirit — it is heard but not seen, wanders free, is the first-born, friend of the waters, breath of the Gods. Earth: the mother substance, who holds, sustains, and nourishes; who trembles at the serpent but stands with Indra against chaos.
These elements are not separate from the divine; they are the divine, perceived through the medium of the sensory world.
D. The Lord (Īśa)
Lord is perhaps the most universal name for the mystery greater than ourselves. Not every tradition agrees in calling the Supreme Being, or Person, or Creator, or God. But almost all traditions speak of a Lord — bhagavat, īśvara, prabhu, ba’al, adon, kyrios, allāh, ahura mazdā.
Panikkar gives texts from across the śruti — from Varuṇa as cosmic sovereign, to the Hiraṇyagarbha hymn (“In the beginning rose Hiraṇyagarbha… Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?”), to the Bhagavad Gītā’s transcendent immanence.
The Bhagavad Gītā section is crucial: “By me, by my unmanifested form all this world is pervaded. All beings subsist in me, but I do not reside in them. Yet beings subsist not in me. Consider my sacred mystery.” The divine is bhūtabhṛt (support of beings), bhūtabhāvana (origin of beings), but is not bhūtastha (subsisting in them). Outside and within all beings; he moves and moves not; because of his subtlety, incomprehensible; far, but yet near.
E. Emerging Life (Prāṇa)
Prāṇa — the life-breath, the vital power, the animating force — is not merely respiration. It is cosmic life-energy. The Upaniṣads debate which of the five vital functions (prāṇa, apāna, vyāna, udāna, samāna) is most important; in the end, prāṇa wins because without it none of the others can function.
The Chāndogya Upaniṣad’s teaching: “All these living beings arise from prāṇa and return to prāṇa.” Man exists in a vast network of breath — the same breath that animates the cosmos.
Part II: Germination and Growth — The World of Blessings
A. The First Blessings of the Lord
Part II addresses the world of human existence as experienced from within — as a gift. Man becomes conscious of his own existence and begins to question: whence did this come? The Vedic answer: it is a divine blessing, a mangala (auspiciousness).
Savitṛ — the Vivifier, the Solar deity par excellence. Not simply the physical sun, but the creative principle of illumination and nourishment. The Gāyatrī mantra is addressed to Savitṛ: “We meditate upon the glorious splendor of the Vivifier divine. May he himself illumine our minds!” This is the most revered of all Vedic mantras — the one received by every initiated student, recited at dawn and dusk for life.
Panikkar’s analysis of the Gāyatrī: prayer is “a recapitulation, a summing up, of all that there is in the mind and heart, and also in the body of the worshipper… participation in the systole and diastole of the whole universe.” The three lines: (1) the splendor of the Ultimate — uncreated light; (2) the creating light of Savitṛ who illumines everything; (3) that divine light in our minds, making us ourselves refulgent — “light from light, splendor from splendor, oneness with the source of light.”
Indra — the cosmic warrior who fights on behalf of all. When men fight one another, both sides invoke Indra. Human enmity is not ultimate. There is an archway over our heads that links together friends and enemies, good and evil. There is no ontic excommunication.
Prāṇa as gift — the experience of life throbbing within us. The discovery that one is living — not as an intellectual principle but as an experiential encounter with life in our lungs, organs, brains.
Time (Kāla) — the realization of our temporal structure and simultaneously the intuition of an element incommensurable with time yet inseparable from it.
B. Awakening and Coming of Age
This section centers on the Upanayana — the initiation ceremony, the “second birth,” in which a young man is led by a teacher into the world of sacred knowledge.
The ceremony is described in extraordinary detail from the Gṛhya Sūtras: the sacred girdle (symbolizing control of passion), the deer skin (symbolizing assumption of the ṛṣi’s virtues), the sacred thread, the staff (symbolizing the cosmic axis), the touching of the student’s heart by the teacher (“Under my direction I place your heart. Your mind will follow my mind”), the dedication to the Gods (“Agni, I entrust this student to you; Indra, I entrust this student to you”), and finally the transmission of the Gāyatrī itself.
This is not merely custom. It is an ontological transformation — the student enters a different relationship with reality. He is now a keeper of sacred knowledge, a participant in the cosmic dynamism.
C. The World of Man
Subsistence, society, marriage, the seasons, the cycles of life — all these are treated as sacred dimensions of human experience. Marriage is not a civil contract but a cosmic covenant. The wedding hymn (RV X.85) identifies the bride with Sūryā (daughter of the Sun) and the bridegroom with Soma. “Take her hand for happiness. May she live a long life with you.”
The Cattle: cows are not merely livestock — they are symbols of life, wealth, illumination, and the dhenuḥ (milch cow) is identified with heaven itself pouring out its bounty. The economy of the Vedic world is simultaneously a spiritual economy.
The King: his role is to maintain the cosmic order (ṛta) in human society. The king’s consecration (rājasūya) is a cosmic act, aligning him with the divine powers that uphold the world.
Part III: Blossoming and Fullness — The Zenith
A. Radiance and Cosmic Refulgence
The great hymns of cosmic praise. Surya (the Sun) as the supreme symbol of light — “the Joy of every single eye.”
Panikkar on the symbol of Light: it is the supreme symbol because it avoids the two pitfalls of spiritual thinking. If the link between the world of Men and the world of Gods is substantial, pantheism is unavoidable. If exclusively epistemic, the reality of the world vanishes. The symbol of Light allows for a specific sharing in its nature by both worlds. “This light is neither exclusively divine nor exclusively human, neither merely material nor merely spiritual. It is precisely this fact that links the two shores.”
The famous prayer to Surya (RV X.37): “May we never be deprived of the Sun’s shining, may we attain old age in happiness! Keen of mind and keen of sight, free from sickness, free from sin, rich in children, may we see you rise as a friend, O Sun, till a long life’s end!”
The Puruṣasūkta (RV X.90): the Cosmic Person from whom the universe is born through sacrifice. “The Primordial Man is all this, what has been and what is to be. He is Lord of immortality.” A thousand-headed, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed Puruṣa who encompasses the earth on all sides and also transcends it. Three-fourths of him ascended to heaven; one-fourth remained here below. “Thence he pervaded all things, animate and inanimate.” From his sacrifice arose the hymns, the formulas, the meters, the Gods, the animals, the seasons, the castes, the heaven, the earth, the mid-region, the sky. The universe is the body of the dismembered God.
B. Sacrifice (Yajña)
This is the longest and most central section of Part III, and arguably of the whole book. Panikkar’s philosophy of sacrifice is the philosophical heart of The Vedic Experience.
The Meaning of Sacrifice:
“Sacrifice is not a primitive rite of propitiation. It is the central act by which the universe subsists. By sacrifice the Gods paid homage to the sacrificial host. All the Gods worshipped in sacrifice the divine-life.”
Sacrifice has three dimensions, corresponding to three moments of Prajāpati’s cosmic drama:
- The solitude of Being — awareness of the gap between finite and infinite
- The self-dismemberment of Being — creative sacrifice
- The reintegration — Man’s collaboration in the cosmic process
“The sacrifice is not just a kind of offering to God so that he may release to us what we have earned. On the contrary, it is the action by which we create and procreate along with God and reconstruct his Body.”
Types of Sacrifice:
The agnihotra — the daily fire sacrifice performed at dawn and dusk, marking the passage of time as itself sacred.
The soma sacrifice — the pressing of the Soma plant, its filtration, its offering to the Gods. Soma is the plant, the drink, the divine illuminator, the inspirer of the seers. He is simultaneously the sacrificial offering and the divine presence that receives it.
The ashvamedha — the horse sacrifice, “king of the rites and rite of kings.” The sacrificial horse is homologized with the sun and with the primordial cosmic horse representing the entire universe. The whole of creation is symbolically encompassed in this one sacrifice.
The Sacrificial Post (Yūpa): When a tree is felled for the yūpa, it is “girdled and adorned… born anew.” A symbol of death and rebirth. The post becomes the cosmic axis (axis mundi), the pivot on which the earth revolves, the link between heaven and earth, the point where the sacrifice opens a channel to the divine.
The Altar (Agni):
“This altar is the earth’s furthest limit. This sacrificial offering is the hub of the universe. This Soma, the stallion’s powerful seed. This prayer, the speech of highest heaven.”
The altar is the microcosmic center. Agni (the fire) transforms the offering. But Agni is not merely the flame on the altar. He is “the one ocean, the foundation of riches, that shines forth from our heart.” He is the “immortal guest in mortal houses.” He is the link between the human and the divine, transforming all material gifts into spiritual realities so they may reach their endless destination.
The Cosmic Significance:
”Ṛta is the actual functioning or rather the proper rhythm of the sacrifice; while sacrifice is that which causes things to be what they are. By sacrifice Gods and Men collaborate, not only among themselves but also for the maintenance and very existence of the universe. Reality subsists, thanks to sacrifice.”
“Vedic Man is fundamentally a celebrating Man… he concelebrates with the whole universe, taking his place in the cosmic sacrifice in which all the Gods are engaged together.”
The Muni (Silent Ascetic) (RV X.136): The long-haired ascetic who “within him has fire, within him drink, within him both earth and heaven.” Girded with wind, donning ocher mud for a garment. Flying through midair, seeing the forms of all things. “At home in both seas, East and West.” He drinks the poisonous drink with Rudra — because to enter the divine directly is to drink from the cup of death. He is the extreme limit of the sacrificial movement: the one who offers himself entirely.
C. Breaking the Boundaries
The question of liberation — mokṣa — first appears here, but not as escape. It is the realization that reality is larger than we thought. The Upaniṣads begin to emerge in this section, pressing against the limits of ritual and cosmology. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad’s famous dialogue between the young Naciketas and Yama (Death) — which is really a dialogue with death itself, asking what lies beyond.
Part IV: Fall and Decay — Sorrow, Sin, and Mercy
A. Sorrow and Suffering
The experience of human limit. Illness, old age, failure, grief. These are not problems to be eliminated but dimensions of the total experience of being human. The Vedic poets do not flee from sorrow; they bring it before the Gods.
The Atharvaveda is particularly important here — it contains many hymns against disease, darkness, and adversity. These are sometimes dismissed as “primitive magic,” but Panikkar reads them differently: they are expressions of the whole Man in crisis, of the total participation of body, mind, and spirit in the human condition. The body is not excluded from the sacred.
B. Sin and Mercy
This section gives Panikkar’s fullest treatment of the ethical dimension of the śruti.
Varuṇa is the central figure — the God of cosmic order, omniscient judge, and merciful forgiver. Panikkar’s extended account of Varuṇa identifies five characteristics:
Cosmic king and sovereignty — “According to Eternal Law you govern the whole world.” He sits in the firmament and measures out the earth with a yardstick. He is the supreme lord over all the Gods.
God of water — Lord of the cosmic waters, dispenser of rain (with Mitra), keeper of rivers in their beds. He remains God of the seas long after his eclipse in later mythology.
Māyā as divine power — Varuṇa is the great māyin among the Gods. It is by māyā that he establishes the earth, sends rain, keeps watch on his law, and makes the sun travel its course. The English word “craft” denotes fairly well the ambivalence of māyā — a power derived from uncommon knowledge that can be used for good or ill. This will be corrupted later into māyā as delusion, but in the Vedas it is primarily the power of creative intelligence.
Ṛta as the ground of his sovereignty — Varuṇa and Mitra are the guardians of ṛta. Varuṇa’s ṛta keeps the rivers in their beds; he is the fountainhead of ṛta to such a degree that when Agni strives for ṛta he is called Varuṇa. Moral order and cosmic order are not two separate things in Varuṇa’s person. Sin is neither simply a moral concern of the individual nor merely a cosmic catastrophe of a natural stain.
Forgiveness and mercy — The most distinctive character. Varuṇa punishes falsity (anṛta), his watchmen inspect Men’s lives. Yet in almost every hymn to Varuṇa there is a prayer for gracious forgiveness of sins and removal of guilt — in a way not employed for any other deity. Man is not aware of his sin and yet is conscious that Varuṇa is angry. Recognizing the break in fellowship with God, he declares himself sinful and from the bottom of his heart asks for personal forgiveness, not merely reparation of a disruption in cosmic order.
RV VII.86 and VII.89 are given as masterpieces of Vedic spirituality — intimate, penitential, full of trust. “Have mercy! Forgive whatever sin we have committed, wittingly or unwittingly.” “As a father forgives a son, as a friend forgives a friend, so, Varuṇa, forgive us!”
What Varuṇa punishes most severely is untruthfulness. Anṛta is the worst transgression. Varuṇa discerns truth from falsehood. “He counts the blinks of every eye” — omniscience not as threat but as intimacy. “God is the point of convergence of all things. He is the point of divergence of all things.”
Varuṇa’s pāśa (noose) binds the sinner — but he also releases. His “healing remedies are countless.” He is asked to “loosen from us the bonds of sin as from a calf.” He is the father who understands human weakness and forgives those who return.
Part V: Death and Dissolution
A. The Great Departure
The Vedas are unafraid of death. They approach it directly, with great poetry and greater honesty.
Yama — the first mortal who died, who “found the way” and went ahead to the world of the ancestors. He is king of the dead, not a demon. He is a guide. The dead join him at the feast with their ancestors.
RV X.14 — the funeral hymn: “Go forth, O Soul, on the ancient paths by which our forefathers have passed before. There thou shalt see the two kings, Varuṇa and Yama, both rejoicing in the sacred fire.” The dead man is released from his sin on the threshold of paradise, told to “unite with the reward of sacrifices and good works,” to leave his transgressions behind and join Yama and the ancestors.
The Two Paths (Devayāna and Pitṛyāna): The “path of the Gods” (devayāna) leads to the world of light, to non-return. The “path of the ancestors” (pitṛyāna) leads to the world of the moon, from which one returns to earth for another life. The Upaniṣads develop this into the full doctrine of saṃsāra.
Refusal to Accept Death as Final: RV X.58 is a series of invocations calling back a dead man’s spirit from all the places where it might have gone — to Yama, to heaven, to earth, to the waves of the ocean, to the sun, to the plants, to the shining rays, to the highest mountains, to the past, to the future — “may it return to you again that it may live and dwell here.” Life is precious. Death is not welcomed; it is accepted only when fully lived.
Rejuvenation: The story of Cyavana — made young again by the Aśvins, his skin peeled off like a garment, given another form, freed from old age, “renewed like a chariot so that he could run again.” This is not immortality but the gift of renewed life within the temporal world.
B. The Other World
What awaits after death? The Vedas are not dogmatic here. Multiple images:
- The “world of the blessed” where “there is no sorrow, no suffering”
- The “sun-realm” where the liberated dwell in light
- The world of Yama’s feast
- The possibility of return through rebirth
The Chāndogya Upaniṣad describes the fate of the dead in detail: “Those of pleasant conduct here, the prospect is that they will enter a pleasant womb, either the womb of a brahmin, or the womb of a kṣatriya, or the womb of a vaiśya. But those of stinking conduct, the prospect is that they will enter a stinking womb.” The moral valence of one’s life determines the next trajectory.
Part VI: New Life and Freedom — Liberation
This is the theological summit of the anthology. Three sections, each organized around the great Upaniṣadic utterances (mahāvākyas).
A. The Ascending Way (Brahmajñāna)
Panikkar presents six utterances as the supreme embodiment of Indian wisdom, framing the classical four mahāvākyas between two additional utterances:
- “That is Fullness, this is Fullness” (BU V) — The paradox that Brahman does not diminish by giving itself
- “I am Brahman” (Aham Brahmāsmi, BU I.4.10) — The first classical mahāvākya
- “Thou art That” (Tat tvam asi, CU VI.8.7) — The second classical mahāvākya
- “This Self is Brahman” (Ayam Ātmā Brahma, MaU 2) — The third classical mahāvākya
- “Consciousness is Brahman” (Prajñānam Brahma, AiU 3) — The fourth classical mahāvākya
- OM — The Absolute syllable, the paramavākya
Toward the One (Ekam evādvitīyam — “One without a second”):
The Chāndogya Upaniṣad’s dialogue between Uddālaka and Śvetaketu is given in full. The father instructs the son: “In the beginning, my dear, there was only Being, one only, without a second. It thought: ‘Would that I were many! Let me procreate.’ It sent forth fire. Fire thought: ‘Would that I were many.’ It sent forth water. Water thought: ‘Would that I were many.’ It sent forth food.” Then the climactic teaching: “That which is the subtle essence — in it all that exists has its Self. That is the Real. That is the Self. Thou art that, Śvetaketu.”
Panikkar: “Oneness and consciousness are the two landmarks on the ascending way.” The double title of this section: the desire to know Brahman (brahmajijñāsā) and the knowledge of Brahman (brahmajñāna) — the seeking and the finding — which ultimately are the same.
The “Honey Doctrine” (Madhu-Vidyā): The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad teaches the interdependence of all things through the symbol of honey and bees. Earth is honey for all beings; all beings are honey for earth. Water is honey for all beings; fire, wind, sun, regions, moon, lightning, thundercloud, space, righteousness, truth — each is the honey of all the others. And in each case, the Person who dwells in the cosmos and the Person who dwells in Man are said to be the same: the Ātman, the immortal, Brahman, the all.
B. The Internal Way (Ātmajñāna)
The inward path to Brahman through the realization of the Ātman.
Nāciketas and Yama (Kaṭha Upaniṣad): A young boy is sent by his angry father to Death (Yama). Yama offers him three boons. For the first two, Nāciketas asks for reconciliation with his father, and for knowledge of the fire-sacrifice. For the third, he asks: “What happens to Man after death?” Yama tries to dissuade him, offering cattle, women, gold, kingdoms. Nāciketas refuses all: “All these pleasures pass away, O End of all. They weaken the vigor of all the senses. Even the longest life is short. Keep your horses, dances, and music.” Yama is pleased. He teaches:
“The Self is not born, nor does it die. It did not come from anywhere; it did not become anything. It is unborn, eternal, ever-lasting, ancient. It is not slain when the body is slain.” “The Self, not larger than a thumb, dwelling within, always seated in the heart — him one should draw out from one’s body with steadiness, as one draws out the pith from a reed.”
The Absolute Self (Paramātman): The madhu-vidyā teaches that earth-body, water-seed, fire-speech, wind-breath, sun-eye, regions-hearing, moon-mind, lightning-inner light, thundercloud-sound, space-space within the heart, holy order-obedience to holy order, truth-truthfulness, humanity-humanness — all these pairs show the cosmic and the personal to be one Ātman, one immortal Brahman.
Yājñavalkya when pressed to speak about the Ātman can only state its unknowability: “You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the understander of understanding. This is your Self, within all.”
Aṅgiras’s Teaching on Liberation: “As water does not cling to a lotus leaf, so no evil deed clings to one who knows Brahman.”
C. The Encounter (Brahmadarśana)
The final movement — the actual confrontation with Brahman.
OM: Panikkar’s treatment of OM is the culmination. OM is not merely a syllable. It is the symbol that encompasses all: past, present, and future, and whatever is beyond time.
The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad teaches the four states:
- Vaiśvānara — the waking state, conscious of the external world
- Taijasa — the dreaming state, conscious of the internal world
- Prājña — deep dreamless sleep, undifferentiated consciousness
- Turīya — the fourth, which is “not conscious of the subjective nor of the objective, not conscious of itself, not unconscious. It is invisible, ineffable, intangible, devoid of characteristics, inconceivable, unnameable. The essence of the knowledge of the one Self, it is the ending of the world. It is peace. It is bliss. It is non-duality (advaita). That is the Ātman. That is what must be known.”
The syllable OM corresponds to these four: A (waking), U (dreaming), M (deep sleep), and the soundless fourth (Turīya) — the silence after OM.
“Taking his Ātman for one firestick and the syllable OM as the second one, a knower, by a vigorous kindling of knowledge, burns away the bonds of ignorance.”
The Maitrī Upaniṣad gives two Brahmans to be contemplated: Brahman as sound and the soundless Brahman. By Brahman as sound one proceeds upward and attains rest in the soundless. “Just as a spider that climbs up its own thread reaches free space, so also one who meditates rises up by saying OM and reaches ultimate freedom.”
The Praśna Upaniṣad explains the three elements of OM: If you meditate on one element (A), you will be enlightened and quickly return to life; men lead you to the world of men. If on two elements (AU), you will be led to the world of the moon and return. If you meditate on the Supreme Person with all three elements (AUM), you are led by chants to the world of Brahman, and you see the Person dwelling in the city of the body who is higher than the highest existence.
Part VII: Twilight — The Living Unity
Part VII is unique: it has no introductions and no notes. It simply presents the texts, without commentary, without explanation.
Panikkar’s reason: twilight cannot be analyzed. To introduce it would be to destroy it. The unity that this final section embodies and conveys is a living unity — not a doctrinal harmony, not a systematic conclusion, but an existential oneness that can only be experienced, not explained.
The dawn comes again. The sacrifice continues. The word is spoken again. OM.
Panikkar’s Philosophical Architecture
Across the full 1,000 pages, several master themes appear and reappear:
1. The Anthropocosmic Vision
The most fundamental characteristic of Vedic thought: the radical non-separation of divine, human, and cosmic dimensions. These are not three separate realms that need to be mediated — they are three aspects of one reality. The human being is a mesocosmos, a middle world that participates in both the divine and the material.
“Prayer is participation in the systole and diastole of the whole universe.” The worship of the sun is not nature worship in the sense of worship of a physical object — it is the recognition that the light which illumines the eye and the light that illumines the mind are the same light.
Every sacrifice is simultaneously cosmic (upholding the order of the universe), personal (transforming the sacrificer), and divine (the Gods themselves are renewed by the offering).
2. Sacrifice as Constitutive of Reality
This is Panikkar’s deepest claim and his most original contribution. Sacrifice is not a religious practice that some people do. It is the structure of reality itself.
“Sacrifice is that which causes things to be what they are.” The universe exists as the result of the primordial sacrifice of Prajāpati. Every moment of existence is a participation in that ongoing sacrifice. The sun sacrifices itself by shining. The earth sacrifices itself by bearing. The river sacrifices itself by flowing. Man sacrifices himself by giving.
The collapse of the sacrificial consciousness is not progress. It is a form of amnesia. To recover the sense of sacrifice is to recover the sense that one’s existence has a cosmic dimension — that what one does matters not merely personally but cosmically.
3. Karma as the Structure of the Sacrifice
The Vedic karman (action) is not primarily about moral merit and demerit. It is about the structure of participation in the cosmic dynamism. When the Kaṭha Upaniṣad speaks of two paths after death — one that leads to non-return and one that leads back to rebirth — it is pointing to the fact that action has consequences that extend beyond the individual life. Karma is the memory of the universe, the way in which what has been done is held by the fabric of being.
“The proper sphere of sacrifice is the sphere of communication, and communication constitutes the very structure of the universe.”
4. The Word as Sacred
Vāc is not merely language. It is the first principle of differentiation — the act by which the silent One began to distinguish itself from itself, to be self-aware, and thus to create. Language is not a tool invented by humans to communicate about a prior reality. Language constitutes reality at the level available to consciousness.
The Vedas must be heard to be Vedas. The tradition of oral transmission — memorized, chanted, transmitted from teacher to student — is not a pre-literate deficiency. It is a recognition of the ontological primacy of the spoken word. The written Veda is a trace, an approximation. The living Veda is the word in the throat of one who has understood it.
5. Brahman-Ātman Non-Duality
The Upaniṣads reach their culmination in the disclosure that the Ātman (the innermost Self) and Brahman (the ground of all being) are not two. This is not a doctrine to be accepted. It is a realization to be achieved — through meditation, through right relationship, through sacrifice, through the life of the student under a teacher.
“On knowing Him does one become an ascetic” — meaning: the true renunciation is not an act of will but a consequence of clear seeing. When you truly see what things are, you naturally release your grip on what they are not.
Brahman is not God in the monotheistic sense. It is not a Person who created the world. It is “the real, the truth, the One” — the ground from which all emerges and to which all returns. The realization of this ground is not the destruction of the self but its infinite expansion. “That is Fullness, this is Fullness, from Fullness comes Fullness. When Fullness is taken from Fullness, Fullness remains.”
6. Liberation as Integration, Not Escape
This is perhaps Panikkar’s most striking philosophical move. He consistently reads the Vedic tradition against any interpretation of liberation (mokṣa) as flight from the world. The Bhagavad Gītā’s message to Arjuna: fight, win, care — but with such intensity, such insight, that you pierce through appearances and reach reality. Not by fleeing reality.
“The eternal is not outside but within the temporal; the world is not an illusion, if it is seen for what it really is. The illusion is to mistake it for what it is not.”
The highest ascetics (the munis, the sannyāsins) are not those who have most successfully fled the world. They are those who are “at home in both seas, East and West” — who have so fully integrated the cosmic and the personal that they participate in the universal life without being captured by any particular form of it.
“Find enjoyment by renunciation” (Īśa Upaniṣad) — not renunciation as deprivation, but as the discovery that liberation from bonds of desire allows us really to enjoy things, without being haunted by the fear of losing them.
The Gayatri: The Heart of the Anthology
Panikkar returns to the Gāyatrī mantra repeatedly because it is the most compact expression of the Vedic experience:
“OM. We meditate upon the glorious splendor of the Vivifier divine. May he himself illumine our minds! OM.”
This is not prayer in the sense of asking. It is prayer in the sense of identification — of assimilation — of becoming what one prays. “Real prayer is always an act that embraces, all in one, the Divine, the Human, and the Cosmic.” The three lines represent three dimensions:
- The splendor of the Ultimate — uncreated light as it is in itself
- The creating light of Savitṛ who illumines the world
- That divine light entering our minds — making us “light from light”
The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad explains: the Gāyatrī has four feet. The first three encompass the three worlds, the three Vedas, and the three vital breaths. But the fourth foot — “that sun which glows above the dark skies” — is not obtainable by anyone. “How could anyone receive so much?” This fourth foot is the transcendent that is simultaneously accessible and inexhaustible.
The First and Last Mantra
Panikkar opens with RV I.1.1 — the first verse of the whole Ṛgveda:
“I magnify God, the Divine Fire, the Priest, Minister of the sacrifice, the Offerer of oblation, supreme Giver of treasure.”
An invocation. To invoke something greater than ourselves and thus break our own boundaries is the beginning of wisdom, the source of hope, the condition of joy. The invocation to Agni, the mediator par excellence, who transforms all material and human gifts into spiritual and divine realities.
He closes the anthology with the last sukta of the Ṛgveda, also dedicated to Agni — completing the circle.
Between the first mantra and the last: the whole of human experience, the whole sweep of the śruti, the whole journey from birth to liberation and back to dawn.
A Final Note on Panikkar’s Position
Panikkar was a Catholic priest, a student of Vedanta, and a philosopher of interreligious encounter. He never argues that the Vedas supersede other traditions, nor that they are merely one option among many. His claim is more fundamental: the Vedic experience, as a human experience, belongs to everyone who is human. It is not the property of any religion. The deepest things it says — about sacrifice, about the word, about light, about the non-duality of the self and the ground of being — are things that resonate across traditions precisely because they are human things, not sectarian ones.
“The Vedic Revelation belongs to Man, and it is as a document of Man that it is here presented.”
This is not relativism. It is the claim that beneath the specific forms of any tradition’s expression, there is a common human depth from which the tradition drinks. The Vedas, being among the oldest expressions of that depth, still have something to say — not as historical curiosities, but as living words.
“The Vedic experience may perhaps disclose, not an alternative to the modern view of life and the world, which would probably solve no problem and would certainly prove alienating, but an already existing, although often hidden, dimension of Man himself.”
That dimension is what this book, across its 1,000 pages and seven-part arc from birth to liberation and back to twilight, seeks to make available once more.