Upanishads · Kaṭharudra 41
॥
Devanāgarī
तथा ज्ञातं च चैतन्यं फलमित्यभिधीयते । सर्वोपाधिविनिर्मुक्तं स्वात्मानं भावयेत्सुधीः
Transliteration (IAST)
tathā jñātaṃ ca caitanyaṃ phalamityabhidhīyate | sarvopādhivinirmuktaṃ svātmānaṃ bhāvayetsudhīḥ
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
तथा ज्ञातं च चैतन्यंtathā jñātaṃ ca caitanyaṃand so known consciousness
फलम् इति अभिधीयतेphalam iti abhidhīyateis called the fruit
सर्व-उपाधि-विनिर्मुक्तंsarva-upādhi-vinirmuktaṃfree from every limiting adjunct
स्व-आत्मानं भावयेत् सुधीःsva-ātmānaṃ bhāvayet sudhīḥlet the wise one contemplate his own self
Translation
And so known consciousness is called the fruit. Let the wise one contemplate his own self, free from every limiting adjunct.
Version
07a44cbae5f2 · published Aug 12, 2026, 5:00:00 AM UTC
Available inRUENPage between verses with
The mapping is finished, and a conclusion is drawn: contemplate your own self, sarva-upādhi-vinirmuktam, "free from every limiting adjunct." Upādhi means "an adjunct, an imposition, a conditioning factor" — something that gives a thing an appearance not its own. The example always cited in these books: a transparent crystal beside a red flower appears red; the redness is upādhi.
This likeness is good and is accepted by the Vaiṣṇava side — with one qualification worth stating. Remove the flower from the crystal, and it will turn out to be colorless, but not propertyless: it will remain hard, transparent, faceted. That is, removing the adjunct reveals not emptiness, but the thing's own properties.
Herein lies the whole answer to this whole mapping. That the soul is not the body, not the mind, not memory, and not a position in society — is true, and this must be removed. But one who has removed all this finds not the absence of himself, but himself: conscious, eternal, small, and belonging to someone. The negation of foreign marks does not cancel one's own, otherwise every cleaning would end in the annihilation of what was cleaned.
The same holds for Him. Negations like "unseen, inexpressible, qualityless" remove from Him our marks — corporeality, compositeness, perishability; and leave His own, which this same book has listed: witness, support, of pure form (8).