The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 15 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday 20, Jul 2024, 06:30.
Upanishads:
Discourse No. 2-7 (Continued)
Post - 15.

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The third asking of Nachiketas is a wondrous asking. Wonderful is the asker of this question! Wonderful is the answer to this question! The answer was given to Nachiketas finally, because Nachiketas was made of such a stern stuff within him. He rejected all the tempting objects of the world. Even universal knowledge was not sufficient to Nachiketas. The Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya was not adequate. And what is this question of Nachiketas, the third question?

ye-yam prete vicikitsa manushye ysti-tyeke nayam astiti caike;

“Does the soul exist, or does the soul not exist? What is it? Is it, or is it not? What do you mean by the soul?” The question whether the soul exists or not can be answered only when we know what the soul is. Without knowing what it is, how can we say if it is or not? The science of the soul is the science of the Upanishad. We have also a concept of soul. We speak of it almost every day, and our notion of the soul is one of a child, an untutored baby speaking of a soul as if it is a spark of vital activity within our individual body. There are some people who call it elan vital, a vital energy that is urging us to act from within us. The soul is generally taken to be an existence within us. We say the Atman is within, the soul is within. This word 'within' is hammered upon us again and again. Why do we say that the soul is within, is one question. And what does it actually mean when we say that the soul exists within the body? What is the soul? 

All this has been explained in this Upanishad in a symbolic manner, though not pointedly and explicitly. Yama does not give a clear-cut answer to the question of Nachiketas, though indirectly he comes to the point. As a matter of fact, you will never find a clear answer to this question anywhere in the Katha Upanishad. The teaching goes round and round, beating about the bush, as it were, finally not telling anything clearly in respect of this last question of Nachiketas. But the secret is hidden between the lines of these sonorous mantras of the text, if we study them with a philosophical inquisitiveness of insight. The more elaborate answers are to be found in the other Upanishads, like the Brihadaranyaka and to some extent the Chhandogya. If you want to know the entire implications of the teachings of the Katha Upanishad as an answer to the third question of Nachiketas, you may have to read the Brihadaranyaka and the Chhandogya Upanishads, because you cannot clearly understand as to what was the meaning of this last question of Nachiketas. 

What did he mean by asking about the character of the soul when it goes to the 'Beyond'? 'Mahati samparaye' is the word used by Nachiketas. Samparaya is the 'hereafter'. That which is 'beyond' this visible world is the samparaya. It is not merely the 'after death' of the physical body. He is not asking what happens to the soul after physical death, though many commentators seem to interpret it in this manner. A wise person like Nachiketas must have known what happens to the soul after physical death, but that was not the issue. He had added a qualification, mahati to samparaye, meaning the Great Beyond and not the ordinary beyond. The ordinary beyond is that which immediately follows the physical death of the personality, but the Great Beyond is the condition of the soul which transcends the universe. 

What happens to the soul, ultimately? Where does it exist? There was a teacher, perhaps a clergyman, who told before an audience: “God created the heaven and the earth,” in a biblical fashion. One of the listeners stood up: “Sir; where does God exist?” The clergyman said: “God is in heaven.” “Who created heaven?” “God created even heaven.” “But where did God exist before He created heaven? God is in heaven, and if He created heaven, He must have existed even before heaven was created. Where, then, did He exist? Where does God exist before He creates the world? You say God is everywhere, which means to say, everywhere in the world. But if the world itself was not there before creation, where did He exist, then?” The answer to this question cannot be given easily. You cannot say that God is all-pervading, because that implies the world. You cannot say God is all-knowing, for that implies the world. You cannot say God is all-powerful— that, again, implies the world. What is God, when the world is not there? This is the question of Nachiketas, when it is boiled down to its quintessence.

Discourse - No. 2 Ends

Nest

Discourse No. 3

Continued

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