The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 13 - Swami Krishnananda.

Swami Chinmayananda:

Someone asked Gurudev, I sleep too long, I feel always always sleepy. What is the healthy minimum of sleep?

What Bhagavad Gita says on this and how much sleep is good for yoga or any activity you wish to pursue, swipe to read! 

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Saturday 22, June 2024 06:20.
Upanishads:
Discourse No. 2-7 (Continued )
Post - 13.

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The bodily individuality is represented by sensory activity. Our bodies are weak, incapable of meeting the onslaught of natural forces on account of our yielding to the urges of sense. We cannot bear heat, we cannot bear cold, we cannot bear hunger, we cannot bear thirst, we cannot bear a strong wind, we cannot bear a flood. Natural forces are uncontrollable. Nature in its physical form has been estranged from the human personality on account of the yielding of the individual to the senses. The senses create a gap between the individual and the world outside. They tell you that the world is outside you, unconnected with you and you have to dread it, and sometimes cringe before it. You know that the world is more powerful than you in every way. We seem to be a nobody before it. We are afraid of all kinds of natural forces. So the fast of the senses, which represents the first discipline of a level of the human personality, releases such energy that you master the physical forces of nature. That is the first boon granted to Nachiketas: “When you return to the world, you will go as a master and not as a servant.” The world will recognise you as its friend and not as its enemy. The realised soul can come back to the world after a type of realisation, and when the realised soul comes back to the world, the world receives that soul in a different way from what it did earlier. The world treats you in a particular way now, in your state of ignorance, but will treat you differently when you meet it with knowledge. That is why Nachiketas asked, “When I go back to the world, may I be greeted with recognition and not with wrath and anger.” “Yes, may it be so,” said Yama, the Lord of Death. This means to say that even by the reception of a single boon, let alone the other two, you will become a master of the physical forces. The world will not threaten you any more. It will become your friend. At present the world is not our friend. That means we are afraid of it. The world is not our friend today, at this present moment of time, because the senses have created an attitude of estrangement between us and the world. “If you come to my residence and I treat you as a stranger, you will also treat me as a stranger; but if I treat you as a friend, as if I know you from eternity, you will be so immensely pleased and will treat me as your friend.” The world will treat you in the same way as you treat it. If you regard it as external to you, it will also treat you as external to it. If you say you are a foreigner, the world will tell you, “You are also a foreigner, come with a visa and passport, as you have no place for me. You get out,” it says, and you get out afterwards, one day or the other. You die because of estrangement of personality from the world—otherwise there would be no birth and death. If you unite yourself with the forces of the world, there will be no birth and death. Births and deaths are the consequence of estrangement of personality from natural forces. So the first day's fast of Nachiketas, physically through the withdrawal of the senses, created a reaction from the master of yoga, Yama, in the form of bestowal of a boon with such energy that it received the world as an organic part of its own self. The physical world became a friend of Nachiketas. This will happen to us, also. We are also Nachiketas, individually. Everyone is a Nachiketas, because Nachiketas is only a representation of a seeking soul. So when you control your senses, what will happen to you? The world will receive you as its friend and well-wisher. The consequence of sense-control is abundance in every way. You will not lack anything in this world, afterwards. All things will flow to you like rivers entering the ocean.

As rivers enter the ocean from all sides, all that you need will come to you like a flood coming from different directions. You need not run after the world; the world will run after you. You need not ask for anything from the world; it will come to you automatically, without your asking for it. This is the first boon, due to the first tapas of Nachiketas.

The second tapas is of a psychological character. This second day's fast of Nachiketas represents the subdual of the mind, not merely of the senses. When the mind is disciplined properly, it gradually gets attuned to the cosmos. This is the secret of the Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya which came to Nachiketas as a boon from Yama. While the control of the senses physically makes you a friend of the physical universe and all material things flow to you in abundance, and you become the richest of persons, literally, you become a master of the psychological world also—not merely of the physical world or of material things—in the higher stage of mind-control. The second fast of Nachiketas is therefore a psychological fast of the mind and all that constitutes the psychological stuff—mano-buddhi-ahamkara-chitta, as it's called. All the aspects of the psychological organs are disciplined in the second form of tapas. While the physical body is estranged from the physical world on account of the activity of the senses, the mind is estranged from the Cosmic Mind on account of the spatio-temporal linkage. You think in terms of space and time, objectivity or externality, and therefore you are estranged from the Cosmic Mind. In such a condition, even God does not seem to help you. Your prayers do not seem to reach Him at all. Why? Because you have cut yourself off from the source of cosmic energy by thinking individually, by the egoistic affirmation of personality. The second tapas or discipline of Nachiketas, the seeking soul, means, thus, the uniting of the individual mind with the Universal Mind, the result of which is the second boon bestowed by the Master of yoga, Yama.

Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya represents the knowledge of the cosmic fire. In certain philosophies, fire is regarded as the Ultimate Reality. For example, there was a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus by name, who considered cosmic truth as a form of fire. This is not an original thought of Heraclitus alone. In India also we regard agni, fire, as the symbol of the Ultimate Will. The very first mantra of the Rig Veda is an invocation of this fire, not the physical fire with which you cook your meal but the universal fire which is a representation of cosmic energy—the Vaishvanara-Agni. Aham vaisvanaro bhutva praninam deham asritah—“I, the Supreme Soul, work as the Vaishvanara-Agni within the individual,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Bhagavadgita. A knowledge of this Vaishvanara-Agni, which is the cosmic form of the Creator, brings universal abundance. This knowledge of the supreme creative principle came to Nachiketas as a result of the fast of the psychological personality. From the external, you go to the inward, and then to the universal.

The external world has become your friend. Now the inner world also becomes your friend. Wonderful is this experience. Sometimes, this inner experience of the universal is mistaken for the ultimate realisation itself. But it is not the ultimate, really. There is one more step, which was the point of the third question of Nachiketas, which comes later on, about which Yama was very reluctant to speak—and so rightly.

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Continued

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