The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 22 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 28, October 2024, 06:40.
Upanishads:
The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 
Swami Krishnananda.
Discourse No. 4 (continued)
Post - 22.

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The disturbances within our personalities are mostly due to our disagreement with the circumstances outside. We hate conditions now prevailing in the world. We hate persons who do not think as we think. We have a thorough resentment in respect of every event that takes place, which is not conducive to the pleasure of our physical personality.

This resentment is sometimes expressed in speech and action, but oftentimes it is hidden in the mind itself. We are always in a state of resentment. We have a mood of our own, which is not compatible with inner satisfaction, not conducive also to the pleasure or the good of other people. We put on what Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to call a castor oil face, always. We are not pleased. We are never pleased with anything. There is always a complaint regarding every thing that happens anywhere in the world. If it rains, we complain, “Oh, it is raining!” If it burns hot, we say, “Oh, the hell, how hot it is!” You cannot go forward, you cannot go backward, you cannot speak low, you cannot speak loud. Whatever you do is subject to criticism. This is a subtle mischief which the personality plays to defeat our purposes, so that we may remain where we are. It is said in a biblical context that Satan asked God, “Father, when will I have salvation?” Because Satan was damned to hell, it appears that God's reply was, “When people will resist your temptations, you shall have freedom.” So it is said that Satan weeps whenever we fall into his temptations. “Oh, I have no hope, because people have fallen into the temptations which I have spread before them.” Satan's work is to spread the net of temptation all around us, and his salvation seems to consist in our resisting it by knowing it, by being vigilant about it. But it is unfortunate that the world as a whole is a temptation before us, and this field of temptation that we call the world is itself also a field of training for us, because temptations are also lessons. And this Satan's force does not work only from outside. It has a place in our intellects. The central stronghold or fortress of the activity of Satan is the intellect of the human individual. Your rise or fall depends upon how you understand things. In the Mahabharata we have a passage:

“If the gods want to help us, they do not stand by us with a stick in their hands like a shepherd protecting his sheep. The blessings from the heavens come to us when our intellects are rightly directed.” And a curse is nothing but a misdirection of the understanding. When we cannot think rightly, that is the worst thing that can befall us. The assumptions of our personality may be regarded as the main obstacle to yoga. Our whole life is one of pre-conceived ideas. We are not and we cannot be free from these weaknesses, irrespective of our learning and our pedigree, etc. because this defect is ingrained in the very root of our personality. We are born with it. Perhaps this is what they call the original sin which is born with us, that with which we are born into this world and which is the limitation of our very being itself. 'Likes' and 'dislikes' are the common terms used to describe this defect in us. Misconception, wrong understanding, not knowing the truth of things before us is designated as ajnana, which is supposed to breed aviveka or the mistaking of one thing for another thing. Aviveka gives rise to ahamkara or egoism, the sense of importance of one's own self. Due to ahamkara there is the rise of raga and dvesha, or love and hatred. This pair, love and hate, like and dislike, breeds action, karma, of a selfish character, to gain what is wanted and to avoid what is not wanted. This karma, this selfish action, gives rise to future births and deaths in a series of transmigratory lives. This is the sorrow of life. This is called the chain or the linkage of the bondage of the individual.

The subdual of these impulses from within, leading us the wrong way, is called self-control. This is symbolically and picturesquely described in a passage of the Katha Upanishad. Here we have a presentation of the entire process of self-control, the pre-condition to the higher practices of yoga.

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Continued

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