The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 5 - Swami Krishnananda

Bhagavatham village: ( Swami Udit Chaithanya )

പാലക്കാട് വടക്കന്തറ ശ്രീ തിരുപുരായിക്കൽ ഭഗവതി ക്ഷേത്രത്തിലെ 3 വർഷം കൂടുമ്പോൾ നടക്കുന്ന വേലാ മഹോത്സവത്തിൽ Feb 26 ആത്മീയ പ്രഭാഷണ ഭാഗ്യം ഉണ്ടായി . 

2024 April  21 മുതൽ ആരംഭിക്കുന്ന ഗുരുവായൂർ സപ്‌താഹ Brochure പൈതൃകം കുടുംമ്പാങ്ങൾ പ്രകാശനം ചെയ്തു . 

2025 Jan palakkad Muncipal ground ൽ  ഭാഗവത സപ്താഹ മഹോത്സവ ത്തിനു വടക്കന്തറ ശ്രീ Shyam ജി യുടെ നേതൃത്വത്തിൽ തയ്യാറെടുക്കുന്നു (+91 94473 54285)

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Translation:

Had the luck of spiritual discourse on Feb 26 at Vadakanthara Sri Thirupurayikkal Bhagavathi Temple, Palakkad. 

Guruvayoor Saptaha Heritage Brochure which starts from 2024 April 21, has been published. 

Preparing for Bhagavata Saptaha Mahotsav in 2025 Jan palakkad Muncipal ground under the leadership of Vadakanthara Shri Shyam ji (+91 94473 54285)

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Friday  01,  Mar  2024 07:00.

Discourse No. 1.

Post - 5.

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Sometimes, in certain persons, almost every day, there is a shake-up of the personality from within, which tells us that we are not entirely what we appear to be. We are not the Mr. and Mrs. that we are now. We are not the boss or the servant that we appear to be. We are not the man or the woman or the child that people call us. We seem to be in possession of something, a little different from all these things which are the ultimate values of earthly existence. That something seems to speak to us from within, oftentimes, and makes us restless. If at all we are restless in our day-to-day existence, it is because we are made up of something which is a little different from what we are constituted of in our physical existence. If our physical personality and our social relationships in the world are to be the all, then there would be no uneasiness in life. Our unhappiness, our sorrow— whatever be the kind of that sorrow—our insecurity, whatever be its character, is born of a stuff of which we are made in the deepest recesses of our being, which boils up to the surface and struggles to gain access into the surface of consciousness. But we stifle its words, we hush it down and curse it to death, as Vajasravasa Gautama did to his son. “You go on speaking again and again. You go to hell!” This is what we tell our conscience. If our subtle conscience begins to give us a wise advice occasionally—“Friend, you are going wrong!”—you stifle it, cut its throat, and curse it to hell. “Speak not again,” do we tell it; and we make it blunt, and it cries within us. Our real nature within is weeping, “Oh, what is my fate!” We have layers of personality, a description of which is given beautifully in this Upanishad, about which we shall speak on the succeeding days.

The layers of our personality corresponding also to the layers of the outer cosmos speak in their own languages at different moments of time. We do not entirely belong to this earth, because we have other layers of personality which cannot belong to the surface of the physical world. We are not merely social individuals or entities. Our relationship is not one of father and mother, father and son, mother and son, daughter, brother, sister, boss, subordinate, this and that, as we usually imagine. We have within ourselves mysteries which we ourselves do not understand, and cannot understand. This amounts to saying, we do not know our own selves. We cannot know our own selves under the present circumstance. What is beneath our own skin, we cannot say. Our endowment, the faculty of the highest character with which we are blessed in this human life, the intelligence that we are possessed of, is skin-deep. We cannot go beneath the skin. Therefore we cannot know the other layers of our personality which are more real than what appear outside. Unfortunately for us though, what is invisible in our own personality is more real than what is visible in the outer personality of ours. The real 'I', the real 'you', the real 'we' is screened away from the intelligence that works in unison with the senses, so that when you see the world, you are not seeing the real world. When you think about yourself, you are not thinking about the real 'you' in you. When you conceive the relationships that you have with others, you are not really conceiving or understanding the real relationship that you have with others. Your loves and affections—your relationships with others in the form of like and dislike—all are misconceptions, root and branch. All our activities, it follows from this analysis, are also a thorough outcome of a complete misconception of life. We are done for if this state of affairs is to continue. We cannot say what will happen to us and what will befall us if this misery of misconception in our own selves is to continue for endless years.

One who cannot understand oneself cannot also understand others, because understanding is a faculty of oneself, and if this faculty is to be the judge and the instrument for other personalities in this world, if that itself has gone wrong, well, your relationship with other people would also be a misconception that has gone wrong entirely. Well, it follows, again, that your understanding of the world also is a misconception. When you do not know yourself, you do not know other things, you do not also know the world as a reality. So the whole series of our experiences in life is a piled up layer of clouds of misconception, sorrow piled over sorrow, grief coming upon grief, misery incarnate in this life. “Anityam asukham lokam,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna. What is this world? We do not know when it started and when it will end. Every moment it changes, without any notice being given to us. Therefore misery indeed is this world— asukham. Why is this misery? Because experience, which is inseparable from the pleasures and pains of life, is based on an understanding which is thoroughly mistaken. Outwardly and inwardly, to the right and to the left, in the top and the bottom, everywhere we live in a misconceived world.

The Katha Upanishad breaks through this fortress of ignorance, pierces through the veil of this darkness of the series of misconceptions we seem to be involved in, and takes us to the heart of things, and enthrones us on the empyrean of immortal existence, eternal life, infinite satisfaction. Wonderful is this Upanishad. God shall bless you with this knowledge.

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Next

Discourse No. 2

Continued

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