Asato Ma Sadgamaya (Pavamana Mantra)

A prayer from a sacrifice

These lines are among the oldest prayers still in daily use. They come from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.3.28), and their original setting is precise. In the Soma sacrifice, the priest called the prastotr begins the Pavamana chants, the songs sung as the Soma is purified. While he does, the Upanishad says, the patron of the sacrifice should quietly recite: asato ma sad gamaya, tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, mrityor ma'mritam gamaya. That is why the prayer is still called the Pavamana mantra, even though almost no one who says it today has seen a Soma sacrifice.

The Upanishad explains its own prayer

What makes this passage unusual is that the Upanishad immediately interprets the words. When one says "lead me from the unreal (asat) to the real (sat)", it says, the unreal is death and the real is immortality, so the line means "make me immortal". When one says "lead me from darkness to light", darkness is death and light is immortality, so again it means "make me immortal". And of the third line, "from death to immortality", it says simply that nothing is hidden there.

So in the Upanishad's own reading, the three lines are not three requests but one, said three ways, each a little plainer than the last. Later teachers drew other layers from it: from ignorance to knowledge, from illusion to truth, from the changing to the unchanging. But the original gloss is worth remembering. It is a prayer to go beyond death.

Light and darkness

The middle line, tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, has taken on a life of its own. It is the motto of countless schools and institutions, it is painted above doorways, and it is quoted every Diwali as the meaning of the festival of lamps. The image fits easily: a lamp lit against the dark is the most natural picture of understanding pushing back ignorance.

When it is said

Asato Ma is recited at the beginning or end of study, meditation and yoga sessions, in school assemblies, at the start of discourses, at Diwali, and at the lighting of lamps on any auspicious occasion. It is often followed by Om shanti shanti shantih, the triple prayer for peace. It also suits moments of grief, since its last line speaks directly to the fear of death. Because it asks for nothing material, people of every background find they can say it sincerely.