--- title: "Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī — The Self Dearer Than All — Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 — Advaita & Upanishads Codex" slug: "upanishads-brihadaranyaka-yajnavalkya-maitreyi" type: "verse" category: "brihadaranyaka-upanishad" url: "https://thecodex.expert/advaita/upanishads/brihadaranyaka/yajnavalkya-maitreyi/" url_json: "https://thecodex.expert/advaita/api/v1/entries/upanishads-brihadaranyaka-yajnavalkya-maitreyi" source_citation: "Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 · Trans. Swami Mādhavānanda (Advaita Ashrama, 2010)" confidence: "high" author: "LUDIFU" last_updated: "2026-04-27" word_count: 5631 cite_as: "Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī — The Self Dearer Than All — Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 — Advaita & Upanishads Codex, Advaita & Upanishads Codex, https://thecodex.expert/advaita/upanishads/brihadaranyaka/yajnavalkya-maitreyi/, last updated 2026-04-27." --- # Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī **Source:** Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 · Trans. Swami Mādhavānanda (Advaita Ashrama, 2010) **URL:** https://thecodex.expert/advaita/upanishads/brihadaranyaka/yajnavalkya-maitreyi/ **Type:** verse **Category:** brihadaranyaka-upanishad **Confidence:** High — sourced from Tier 1/2 academic translations **Last updated:** 2026-04-27 ## Summary Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4: Yājñavalkya prepares to leave home. His wife Maitreyī asks for the teaching rather than property. The self is the ground of all… ## Content ## The Conversation at the Point of Departure ## The Self as the Ground of All Love ## The Mahāsattva: The Great Being ## Maitreyī's Confusion and the Teaching of Dissolution ## The Dialogue in the Advaita Tradition ## Maitreyī as a Model Student ## The Dialogue on What Is Truly Dear ## The Teaching: Not for Love of Husband ## The Instruction: After the Self Is Seen ## Maitreyī's Confusion and the Nature of Consciousness ## Maitreyī in the Tradition ## The Parallel in Book Four Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī — The Self Dearer Than All — Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 — Advaita & Upanishads Codex Home › Upanishads › Bṛhadāraṇyaka › 2.4 Last verified: April 2026 · Source: Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 · Trans. Swami Mādhavānanda (Advaita Ashrama, 2010) Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · 2.4 Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī — The Self Dearer Than All ← Back to Bṛhadāraṇyaka 🟢 Curious 🔵 Exploring 🔴 Deep Dive Layer 1 — What it literally says मैत्रेयि त्वं वाव मे प्रियासि सत्यमेव ब्रवीमि एहि उपविश व्याख्यास्यामि ते maitreyi tvaṃ vāva me priyāsi satyam eva bravīmi ehi upaviśa vyākhyāsyāmi te In plain English Maitreyī, you are truly dear to me. Come, sit. I will explain to you. Layer 2 — What it means Yājñavalkya is preparing to leave home — to become a wandering renunciant. He has two wives: Kātyāyanī, who understands only household matters, and Maitreyī, who is a philosopher. He goes to Maitreyī to divide his property. He explains that she and Kātyāyanī will each receive a share. Maitreyī asks a single question: if the whole world full of wealth were mine, would it make me immortal? Yājñavalkya says: no. It would only give you the life of someone wealthy. Maitreyī says: then what would I do with wealth that cannot make me immortal? Tell me instead what you know. Yājñavalkya sits back down. He says: you are dear to me, and you ask for what is dear to me. Listen. He then teaches her that the self — Ātman — is the ground of all love. You love your husband not for the sake of the husband, but for the sake of the self within him. You love your children not for their sake but for the self within them. The self is dearer than all beloved things — because it is the ground of all love. Layer 3 — What it points to Reading this page will give you the concept clearly. But the Upanishads were not written to be understood the way you understand chemistry or history. They were written to point toward something you can only recognise in yourself. That recognition is not on this page. This page only clears the way. The Conversation at the Point of Departure Bṛhadāraṇyaka 2.4 opens with one of the most poignant scenes in the Upanishads. Yājñavalkya announces to his wife Maitreyī that he is about to leave the householder life and enter the forest stage — he is preparing to renounce worldly existence entirely. In preparation, he intends to divide his property between his two wives: Kātyāyanī, who tends to conventional domestic concerns, and Maitreyī, who shares his philosophical interests. Maitreyī's response turns what might have been a practical discussion about property into one of the deepest philosophical exchanges in Indian literature. Maitreyī asks: "Venerable sir, if this entire earth, full of wealth, were mine, would I be immortal through it?" Yājñavalkya's answer is precise and without consolation: "No. Like the life of a wealthy person will be your life. There is no hope of immortality through wealth." Maitreyī's response to this is immediate and unequivocal: "What shall I do with that by which I do not become immortal? Tell me, venerable sir, what you know." This exchange — two sentences of honest philosophical inquiry — establishes the context for everything that follows. Maitreyī is not interested in security, comfort, or social position. She is interested in immortality — the direct recognition of the deathless self that is the Upanishads' central teaching. Her willingness to renounce the entire wealth of the earth for the knowledge that leads to immortality places her in the tradition of the highest seekers. The Self as the Ground of All Love Yājñavalkya's central teaching in this dialogue is one of the most radical statements in all of philosophy: "The husband is not dear for the sake of the husband; he is dear for the sake of the self. The wife is not dear for the sake of the wife; she is dear for the sake of the self. Sons are not dear for the sake of sons; they are dear for the sake of the self." The teaching continues through wealth, the gods, all beings — nothing is dear for its own sake; everything is dear for the sake of the self. This statement has often been misread as a counsel of selfishness or indifference to others. Śaṅkara's commentary corrects this misreading precisely: the "self" for whose sake everything is dear is not the individual ego but the ātman — the non-dual consciousness that is the ground of all. The love one feels for a husband or wife, for children or wealth, is not a private transaction between separate individuals; it is the one consciousness recognising itself in its apparent expressions. When you love your child, what you are actually loving — whether you know it or not — is the self (Brahman) that appears as your child. The love is real; its object, as a separate entity with independent existence, is not ultimately real. And when you recognise this — when you recognise that the self you love in your child is the same self you are — the love does not diminish; it expands to include everything, because everything is the self. This is the teaching of non-dual love that the Upanishadic tradition offers in contrast to both attachment (loving an object as permanently separate from you) and indifference (not loving because objects are not real). Non-dual love is the love of the self in all its expressions — a love that is, paradoxically, both more intimate than personal attachment (because it recognises identity rather than mere proximity) and more expansive (because it cannot be confined to a subset of the self's expressions). The Mahāsattva: The Great Being The philosophical heart of the dialogue comes when Yājñavalkya describes the condition after death of the one who has recognised the self: "As a lump of salt, thrown into water, dissolves in the water and there is no way to take it out — wherever one takes a sample of the water it is salty — in the same way, verily, this great being (mahāsattva) has no limit or boundary, an ocean of pure knowing." This is one of the mo --- *Cite as: "Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī — The Self Dearer Than All — Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4 — Advaita & Upanishads Codex", Advaita & Upanishads Codex, https://thecodex.expert/advaita/upanishads/brihadaranyaka/yajnavalkya-maitreyi/, last updated 2026-04-27.* *Part of [Advaita & Upanishads Codex](https://thecodex.expert/advaita) — a LUDIFU knowledge project.*