KENOPANISHAD -13: ( END ) Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday 27, September 2024, 06:10.
Article
Scriptures
Kenopanishad
Commentary on Section 1
Mantras -  6,7,8, and 9. (Continued)  
Post-13.

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In the Katha Upanishad also, we learn a similar thesis, where it is said that it is not because of the prana and the apana that we are alive, but because of something else, upon which even the prana and the apana depend. We live by something else, a third element upon which are dependent even the prana and the apana, and all their subsidiaries. What are these forces on which we seem to be depending for our existence? Seeing, hearing, breathing, digesting and so on—what are these functions? Does life as pure existence depend on these operations? Naturally, existence cannot depend upon any kind of operation, function or activity, because activity of any type proceeds from an impulse which is to be explained first before we speak of functions or activities. All function is of something, and therefore there is no point in emphasising too much the function itself without first knowing this 'something'. The functions of seeing, hearing, and the like, are an expression of something else. This something is the explanation of these functions. The functions themselves cannot explain that something which is precedent to them. Hence the Upanishad in this section concludes by saying that what the senses regard as their support is really not their support. They are mistaken in their opinion that what is seen, heard or sensed otherwise is in any manner a support for their existence.

It is because of this erroneous notion that the senses go towards the objects. The eyes feel that they are dependent on colours and visual perception. The ears and the other organs of sense also are under a similar misapprehension of value. All activity is an expression of one's inadequacy. Every effort is a manifestation of a shortcoming in ourselves, and it is to make good this shortcoming that we exert ourselves in various directions. The senses are the means of activity for the purpose of effecting a riddance of the defects we perceive in our own selves. Everything that is located in space and time, everything that is individual is dissatisfied with its own nature because of a cognition of what is outside it and a feeling that an absorption of values or characteristics from outside into itself would be a completion of its being. The reason why the senses are so active is that they feel a constraint for absorption of values from outside into their own constitution and that this achievement would be an explanation of their satisfaction. What we lack and what we need is to be supplied. If this is done, we are perfect persons. This is the logic of the senses, but it is defective logic, because the need of the senses cannot be supplied by anything that is outside. The senses are under a wrong notion in holding that their needs are limited. Hence they imagine that limited objects can be sources of their satisfaction, but the needs of the senses are really unlimited. They are under a wrong apprehension that they are limited because they forget that they are conduit pipes connected to the illimitable ocean of all existence. 'We have a few things that we need' is all that they say, but it is not true that their needs are only a few things. The few things are only a beginning of the asking for more and more of things endlessly. There can never be an end for this asking, and the more is the asking granted, the further is the asking, because the asking is not done by the senses. There is the ocean behind them! This is the mystery behind our unsatisfied desires.

Which is the principle that is asking for? It is not any limited sense that asks for the satisfaction. If the source of this asking had been a limited principle, limited objects would have been perhaps an answer to the question. But, unfortunately, the asker is an infinite background. It is the ocean that asks for a quenching of its thirst, and no river in the world can satisfy the thirst of the ocean. Such is the background inside us which keeps on desiring. Though we look little, puny, small, limited in body and restricted to the operations of the sense organs only, from outside, for all practical purposes, really at the background we are deep and infinite. We are like the tunnel connected to the Pacific Ocean. The tunnel may be very small in width, but that it is connected to the ocean is what is not to be forgotten. Thus are our psychological askings, our urges of various types, and our seekings through the senses. What we seek through the senses is not the objects. What we really seek is a satisfaction which should be an answer to all the limitations that we feel within us. We do not know what our limitations are, for they are infinite. That is all we can say about them. Infinite are our limitations, and these infinite limitations cannot be set right or given a proper answer or satiated by any limited object. We see through the senses and then imagine that our needs are limited, but the limited desires which look temporarily restricted to certain objects are really an outpouring of an inward urge which knows no end. It is not the senses that ask. It is the Universal self within us that does the asking. And who can satisfy it? We have in ourselves an essential Being with which we identify our dearest and nearest of possessions, and this innermost principle in us gets forgotten in the knowledge of the senses and the busy life that we lead in our work-a-day world. The senses keep us active throughout the day until we get fatigued in the night, and it is on account of this immense activity of the senses that the real purport of the asking behind is forgotten and misinterpreted.

End.

Next: Article: Scriptures:

The Kathopanishad: Swami Krishnananda

Continued

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