The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 10 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Wednesday 10, May 2024 07:20.

Discourse No. 2 - 4.

Post - 10.

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The first stage is the exoteric approach of the human mind to the values of the world—the mistaking of the external for the ultimate, which is represented by the sacrifice of Vajasravasa Gautama. The world is a real presentation as it is in its crass form, and the after-death experiences are supposed to be merely a copy of the present life experiences, only in a more rarefied form, so that the popular conception of heaven after death is of a magnified form of the pleasures of sense that we have in this earthly world. If you get kheer only occasionally here, you will get kheer every day there! This is the type of joy that we seem to aspire for in the sensory world of the gods. We have no concept of God or the Creator, or the hereafter, except in terms of what we experience today. This is why Vajasravasa Gautama aspired for a heaven of satisfaction through the senses, and therefore he thought that a mechanical act of pretended charity can also procure for him such an enjoyment of the senses, because he was not prepared to part with everything that he had. 

Nothing can be so painful to the human ego as to part with its own pleasures. It wants to seek satisfaction of the senses both here and hereafter. If the scriptures tell you to give in charity so that you may become happy in the heaven hereafter, you try to make a counterfeit charity of giving only a coin that will not work anywhere, or a torn currency note. You imagine it is a charity. You have given in charity, and yet you have not lost anything! Sometimes you give in charity only to your dear and near friends. You give a lot of charity to your own son when he is educated in the college, or bring wonderful saris to your wife. This is a great charity, indeed. You give two pence to the poor servant who washes your vessels. This charity will not procure you anything worth the while. But this was the type of mistaken charity carried on by Vajasravasa Gautama. The Upanishad explains beautifully the fate of the human mind in a state of ignorance.

The mind rises beyond this level in the conscience of Nachiketas and searches for a meaning in life, which comes to us as a teacher in the form of the observance of the transience of all phenomena. Death is the greatest teacher. Yama is, therefore, the great Guru of the Katha Upanishad. You will not learn a lesson better than through the experience of the transitory nature of things. When you have lost all your belongings, when your life itself is at stake, you learn a lesson better than you learn in universities. People lose all their belongings in political revolutions, of which you can read through the history of the nations. The lessons they learn are sufficient for them throughout their lives. The transitory nature of things points to the existence of an eternal value in life. This is why Yama comes into the picture of the Katha Upanishad. When you lose everything, as in a political catastrophe, you begin to feel that there is no worth in life at all. “Oh, everything has gone! I have lost my relatives. I have lost my property. All my bank balance is gone. I am not sure whether I am secure in my physical life itself.” Awful is one's situation at that time. Nobody can explain it through discourse or study of books. One who has passed through this stage will know what it is. 

But, even then, we do not learn the lesson properly. We once again come back to the same old groove of thinking when we are placed in better circumstances. That is to say, even if death itself is to threaten you with its uplifted rod—yamadanda—and you are frightened for a moment and wish to turn to the ultimate Truth, God, when the rod is withdrawn you go back to the rut of old thinking, and the pleasures of sense attract you. This is what happened to Nachiketas, also. Though Yama himself came as the great Master of the teaching of the yoga, knowledge was not immediately bestowed upon even such a qualified student as Nachiketas. It is not that you can go to a Guru and say, “Teach me; I have got to catch a train in the evening.” There are many students who come here and say, “I have only half an hour at my disposal. Can you tell me something about yoga?” This sort of yoga will carry you nowhere. You may catch the train first, and then come. This mechanised and merchandised yoga will not be of any use. It is a foolhardy attempt and a mockery of God Himself.

Nachiketas, a first-rate student of yoga, was not given this knowledge, what to talk of second class and third class students! We are much below that; and Nachiketas was a superlatively good student, and yet Yama said, “Don't ask, don't talk.” And, what was given to him? The wealth of the whole world—temptation! Buddha was tempted. Christ was tempted. None will be free from these temptations. And it does not mean that all the students of yoga will have to pass through the same kind of temptation, so that you can catalogue the temptations and keep them in your mind. No! 

They come in different forms, though the background of the temptations is one and the same. Just as, though everyone has the same kind of hunger every day, everyone does not eat the same diet—your likings for diet vary according to your own predilections and physiological condition, though hunger is uniform and equal in every individual—likewise, temptations are uniformly present on the path of yoga, but the forms in which they come vary from individual to individual, so that what I face will not be the same as what you have to face. You cannot say what will come to you tomorrow.

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Continued

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