The Kathopanishad: 4 - Swami Krishnananda.

===================================================================================

Thursday 21, November 2024, 06:30.
Article: 
Scriptures:
The Kathopanishad: 
Swami Krishnananda
Post-4.

===================================================================================

A vague answer comes forth in the Kathopanishad to this great question. A complete, satisfying answer can be found in certain other Upanishads, such as the Chhandogya and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads. Tentatively Yama tells Nachiketas that when the body is shed, one takes rebirth. One can become anything according to the thoughts and the feelings entertained by the person during the tenure of this life. Our thoughts and feelings will congeal into a solid substance, as it were, of the personality which we will assume in the next incarnation. The process of incarnation is actually the process of the evolution of things. As I mentioned sometime earlier, the evolutionary process is the process of the cessation of one condition to bring about the birth of the subsequent condition. Something has to die in order that something may be born. If nothing dies, nothing will be born. There will be no transformation and no improvement of any kind if death does not take place. Many parts of the body have died in order that we could become this adult personality that we are now. If evolution is something worthwhile, death is also worthwhile. Unless some previous condition dies, the new condition cannot be born. So everyone will be reborn because of the fact that the birth of a body, such as this body of ours which is now with us, is the instrument manufactured by the psychological organ within us for the fulfilment of its needs, desires and wants.

Our desires have no end. We cannot count our desires. Though today, at this moment, we may feel that our desires are half a dozen, when these half a dozen desires are fulfilled we will find that another half a dozen will present themselves forth, and there will never be an end to this. Infinite are the desires of man because of the infinitude that is hidden in the recesses of the being of man. Inasmuch as the longings, desires and needs of the mind are infinite, a finite body cannot be a suitable instrument for the fulfilment of all these desires. An infinite series of incarnations may be necessary in order that infinite desires may be fulfilled through these instruments. What are the instruments? This body. What kind of body will we assume in the next birth? It will be exactly commensurate with the thoughts and desires that we entertain at this moment. 

Yam yam vapi smaran bhavam tyajaty ante kalevaram, 
tam tam evaiti kaunteya sada tadbhavabhavitah (B.G. 8.6) - 

is the famous doctrine, the teaching of the Bhagavadgita.

Whatever thought enters our mind at departure, at the time of death, that will concretise itself and will be extracted out of our personality like butter being sucked out of milk. Will we be entertaining a hope that at the last moment we entertain have a suitable thought, and now we can think whatever we like? No. The last thought is the fruit of the tree of life that we have lived in this world. We cannot have one kind of tree and another kind of fruit. So, whatever kind of life that we have lived through this body in this sojourn of our existence in this world, that will become the solid substance of the thought that will occur to our mind at the time of departure of this body. So do not be foolish enough to imagine that now we can live a merry life, and there is no need to bother as to what will happen to us because the time for the passing has not come – there are many years remaining, so we shall think a good thought at the time of going.

Two mistakes are committed by this kind of imagination. Firstly, it is not true that many years are ahead of us – no one can say that. So no one should entertain the idea that only after fifty years we shall have the need to think a good thought, because it is said that the last thought determines our future. But who tells us that we will be living for another fifty years? It may be another fifty minutes, or even less. The second mistake about this thought is that the last thought is nothing but the essence of all the thoughts entertained in this life, so a person cannot be a good person at the time of dying and a bad person previously. Whatever goodness that we entertained in our thoughts and feelings will congeal – as whatever was in the milk, that alone will come out as butter. We cannot get butter from a substance other than milk.

So, Yama, in one sentence, says that everybody will take birth if Self-realisation does not take place before passing. If we realise the Self before the end of this life, no birth will take place. Why? Because the need for birth will not arise. Why do we take birth? Because we have a necessity to fulfil the desires that we could not fulfil through this tabernacle. The desires were many, the body was feeble and finite, and an infinite number of desires cannot be fulfilled through a finite, feeble instrument such as the body. So another body, another series of bodies has to be undergone. But in the realisation of the Self, which is universal in its nature, desires get extinguished. There is the nirvana that people speak of. Nirvana is the extinguishing of the flame of life. This flame, which is the transitory movement of the succession of human desire, vanishes; it is extinguished completely. This is nirvana that is taking place.

*****

Continued

======================================================================================