The Kathopanishad: A Wondrous Epic of the Spirit ( ENDS ): 12. - Swami Krishnananda.

Chinmaya Mission :

Chinmaya Mission Jaipur orchestrated a groundbreaking Bhagavata Saptah, featuring Swami Abhedananda Ji from South Africa, held at Vrindavan from December 2nd to 8th, 2023. 

This marked the centre’s first initiative to have a camp outside Jaipur, drawing 180 devotees globally. 

Swami ji’s arrival on November 30th was warmly welcomed, and boarding arrangements were meticulously made for participants from Jaipur, Jodhpur, Delhi, and even international locations like Singapore and the USA. 

The daily sessions, skillfully blending deep Vedantic principles with humor, captivated attendees. Sumptuous meals, diverse each day, and the inclusion of Vrindavan chaats on December 6th added culinary delight. 

The celebration of Lord Ram and Lord Krishna Janmotsav on December 6th, adorned in festive attire, created a spiritually enriching atmosphere. 

The event concluded on December 8th with a symbolic spiritual bathing in the river of Vedantic Knowledge, leaving an indelible mark on all participants.

===============================================================

Saturday, 30 Dec 2023. 06:50.

Article

Scriptures

Upanishads

The Kathopanishad: A Wondrous Epic of the Spirit

(Spoken on June 19, 1972)

Post-12.

================================================================

But the lower integrations are of a different nature altogether. The lesser integration is where we see a harmony around us. It is not actually unity of the object of perception with the perceiving process, which is the last thing to be experienced, but only a harmony or a collaboration of forces. But in the lower stage, still we see a difference of things as if there is nothing connected in this world. Everything is thrown in different places by an invisible connecting link of space, time and cause.

But for gravitation, space, time and cause, etc., there would not be even a conceptual unity or harmony among things. We cannot see a physical unity of things. We have only an imaginary unity, such as what we call social unity, international unity, family unity, etc., which is really not there. It can be broken any moment because it is only a conceptual relationship that has been established by the function of the mind of people. But higher than that is actual physical merging of forces, a creative entering of forces into themselves so that there is an awakening of oneself to the fact that harmony is not merely conceptual or notional as we have in the physical world, but it is creative existence. It really is there. There is a real collaboration of forces. One is connected with the other as threads in a cloth, we may say. Physically we can see the interconnection of threads in a cloth. They are not merely notionally connected, but they are really and physically related to one another. But, the highest integration is where the threads themselves get lifted to an awareness of there not being any kind of warp or woof, but a single indeterminate mass of existence, a featureless transparency of Spirit.

Towards that we have to move through these arduous processes of ordeal – the discipline of the body, the discipline of the mind, the psychological organs, and finally the overstepping of the boundaries set before us by the causal body itself, which I said are represented by the three days of fasting by Nachiketas. So from the individual body there is the rise of consciousness to the astral level, from the astral level the consciousness rises to the causal level, and from the causal level the consciousness rises to the cosmic intellectual level, the Mahat-tattva, as it is mentioned in the Kathopanishad. From the cosmic intellectual level we rise to the cosmic causal level. This is what the Vedanta calls as Ishvara. And from the cosmic causal level, we rise to the Absolute.

All these stages are described in a scattered manner in the Kathopanishad itself, so that we may safely say that the Kathopanishad is a wondrous epic of the spirit before us, a beautiful scripture which I would like every one of you to study with deep concentration.

================================================================

End

Next

Article

Scriptures

Upanishads

The Kathopanishad

To be continued

===============================================================