Question: Why does one suffer in the world?
Acharya Prashant: Even to reach the sanctroum of the temple, one has to pass through the peripheries, the stairs, the doors. The peripheries, the initials are all important as mediums, as methods but they must be given only that much significance. One must be able to use them and go past them. That is their rightful purpose.
What you call as the Upanishads are in the first glance, just books and words that is what is apparent. You can pick up the book and you can read the words. What you meet and come across in the Upanishads are words and characters that too again are visible and apparent. But the books of the Upanishads, the words, the aphorisms, the characters, the tales, they all must be taken as the peripheries, the gateways, the stairs. One must go into them and go past them; one must not stay there. You have with you, this beautiful text, which I hope all of you have read.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and we have picked for discussion today, an occurrence between sage ‘Yagyavlkya’ and his consort ‘Maitreya’. You can take it as a tale. You can assume that what you are reading are words. You can conclude that you are coming across a man and his wives. All that is easy, as easy as missing the point. But if you are careful then you would not see the sage as a man, the wives as persons. You go so deeply into the story that you will be able to go beyond the story, go beyond the narrative, the fiction, and enter into something that no fiction can ever touch.
Who is the Yagyavlkya? The Rishi here represents the truth, the heart. The story says that he had two wives ‘Maitreya’ and ‘Katyayani'. Just forget the facts, just ignore the question of whether he actually had two wives. Take the two wives as one. Just as every person is two, similarly it is wise and useful as a pointer to represent the one fact of the mind as two different entities.
