He was the greatest philosopher of the Upanishadic age — the sage Yajnavalkya, whose debates in the court of King Janaka constitute the highest philosophical discourse in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and whose teaching on the Self is the most precise available in the entire Sanskrit philosophical tradition.
He was preparing to leave his household and enter the fourth stage of life — Sannyasa, the life of the renunciant, the final withdrawal from the constructed world into the direct pursuit of liberation. He had two wives: Katyayani, who understood household life, and Maitreyi, who was a philosopher herself — one of the few women in the Upanishadic record who engaged with the deepest questions.
He called Maitreyi and said: I am about to leave this life for the forest. I wish to make a settlement between you and Katyayani.
Maitreyi asked: if I possessed the whole earth full of wealth, would I be immortal by that?
Yajnavalkya said: no. The life of the wealthy is like the life of the wealthy. There is no hope of immortality through wealth.
She said: what should I do with that by which I cannot become immortal? Tell me, revered sir, of that alone which you know to be the only means of immortality.
What follows — the teaching Yajnavalkya gives Maitreyi before he leaves — is the most sustained and precise account of the nature of the Self in the entire Upanishadic corpus. He tells her: the husband is not dear for the sake of the husband. The wife is not dear for the sake of the wife. The sons, the gods, the wealth, all beings — none of them is dear for the sake of itself. It is for the sake of the Self that everything is dear. This is not coldness. This is the most complete description of love available. Every love, in its deepest nature, is the Self loving itself through the form of the beloved. The husband, the child, the wealth, the friends — these are the forms through which the Self encounters itself. When you understand this, the teaching continues, you understand what immortality is: not the continuation of the individual self but the recognition of the Self that was never born and never dies, in which every individual self arises and passes.
Maitreyi said: here you have left me confused. He said: I am not saying anything confusing. The Self is indeed indestructible. But when there is duality — when the Self is not recognised and everything appears as separate objects — then one smells another, hears another, knows another. When, however, everything has become the Self, then by what should one smell whom, by what should one hear whom, by what should one know whom? By what should one know the knower?
He left. She had what she asked for. The wealth of the earth would not have given it to her.
Maitreyi asked the right question — the only question that the wealth of the earth cannot answer and that the forest could. The teaching she received is still available. The question she asked is still the question worth asking: what can I not obtain with everything I have? That is the only thing worth pursuing.