The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 19 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday  14, September 2024, 07:15.
Upanishads:
The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 
Swami Krishnananda.
Discourse No. 3
Post - 19.

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Now, the Guru should have a double qualification. He must be living what he teaches, and also he should have the power to express what he knows. That is a brahmanishtha and a shrotriya, beautifully blended. Such a person is an ananya. You have no other alternative than this. You approach a Guru who is established in the knowledge which he has acquired, in whom knowledge has become a part of his being and life and practice, and who has also the blessing of the power of expression; otherwise, this truth cannot be known. This knowledge cannot be obtained through mere study for oneself, by private enterprise, merely. It requires the grace of a Master. Knowledge acquired through a Guru is living knowledge. It has a vitality about it, whereas the knowledge that you acquire merely by study of books is inert knowledge. It is like tinned food which has no life in it. There is a difference between a mango that is plucked from a tree and the mango that has been saturated in syrup in a tin for three years. Academic knowledge is also knowledge, but it cannot carry conviction and cannot transform your heart. What you gain through the Guru is full of living force and energy and vitality and power which the Guru conveys to the disciple through initiation, which is called the process shaktipata, by which the will of the Guru enters the mind of the disciple. 

The role that the Guru plays in the imparting of knowledge is not mean. No one should underestimate this process of initiation. It is a super-logical mystery, a super-scientific fact. The Upanishad confirms it. Wherever you see in the Upanishad a description of the imparting of knowledge, you find it has always been done through a Guru to a disciple. Indra went to Prajapati for knowledge. Narada went to Sanatkumara for knowledge. Brahmanas who were well-versed in the scriptures, and great men in their own way, went humbly even to a Kshatriya king, with sacred firewood in their hands, with offerings, and without any superiority-feeling of their being in a higher order of society. The Kshatriya kings sometimes used to feel awkward and were placed in an embarrassing situation. The king would say, “I am a Kshatriya and I am not supposed to impart knowledge to you, Brahmanas.” But these seekers used to say, “We have not come here as Brahmanas. We have come as humble students and aspirants of knowledge.” The Vaishvanara-Vidya described in the Chhandogya Upanishad was given by a Kshatriya to learned Brahmanas. Where the question of knowledge and aspiration for God are concerned, class and social distinction do not count. Anyone can be a disciple of any superior. It is only knowledge that is expected and not social category. The Guru is most important and initiation very essential. This is what seems to be conveyed by this term 'ananya' in the Upanishad. Subtle is this knowledge.

Now, what is knowledge? Why is it regarded as so subtle? The subtlety of it really lies in the fact that it is not an object of knowledge. Anything that is an object of our understanding or mind can be regarded as a gross presentation definable in character—spatial and temporal in its location, and causal in its connection. The whole world is a network of space, time and cause. Everything is somewhere in space. Everything is sometime in the passage of the temporal process of events, and everything is connected with something else in a causal chain. Everything is a cause, and everything is an effect. This is the way we try to understand things. But this supreme mystery about which Nachiketas put the third question is not the cause of an effect. It does not produce anything. It is not also the effect of a cause. It has not been produced by anything. It is not located in a particular place. It is not spatial. It is not also temporal, because it is not there sometimes only in the passage of events. It is not anywhere, because it is everywhere, and that which is everywhere is something which cannot be defined by the mind. That which is indefinable is also unknowable to the mind, because knowledge given to the mind and the intellect is always in terms of definition. The definition need not necessarily be verbal or linguistic. There is a psychological definition of an object inwardly conducted when we begin to cognise it. 

A definition is an activity of the mind by which it apprehends the location of an object in a particular manner, and so indefinable things are also unknowable things. Inasmuch as reality is not spatial or temporal, and is not causally connected, it is not definable by logical characters, and therefore not capable of being known by the mind; not also capable of being judged by the intellectual categories. Well, we can understand why Yama refused to give an answer to this question of Nachiketas. How can you say anything about it to a poor boy from the mortal world, come in a state of sheer enthusiasm? Indra had to observe brahmacharya for more than a hundred years to receive this knowledge from Prajapati. Four times had he to go to Prajapati, and Prajapati would not impart this knowledge at once. He gave a tentative explanation, and gradually instructed Indra after the latter underwent this penance of brahmacharya. Together with the insistence on the necessity of a Guru in the imparting of knowledge, the Upanishads are also never tired of hammering upon another qualification of the student of this knowledge—brahmacharya. In many places it appears that brahmacharya and Brahman are almost identified. Wherever there is brahmacharya, there is also Brahman-knowledge. Very significant is this word—brahmacharya. It is the conduct of Brahman that is actually called brahmacharya. Charya is conduct, behaviour, attitude, disposition, demeanour, and brahma is the Truth. 

Continued

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