The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 25 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 03, December 2024, 06:10.
Upanishads:
The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 
Swami Krishnananda.
Discourse No. 4 (continued)
Post - 24.

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atmaiva hyatmano bandhur atmaiva ripur atmanaḥ.

The Atman is your friend. The Atman also is your enemy. How could Atman be an enemy? But so says Bhagavan Sri Krishna. All law is a terror when we do not want to obey it. But law is a protector when we participate in its requirements. The world is the law of God. The principle of Reality, as Rita, manifests itself as this creation. God speaks to us through the various things of the world. He smiles at us through all things. He also frowns at us when occasion demands. The myriad objects, colours and sounds that we see in the world are the various ways in which we confront God in our daily life. These are the lessons God imparts to us through his Virat-Svarupa—Cosmic Form. When we gaze, we gaze at the face of God. There are no objects of sense. They do not exist. When the senses behave in a manner of their own, when the Spirit within us gets externalised through the activity of the senses, it appears as objects. The objects are nothing but Spirit, projected in space and time. God sensualised is the world. The Absolute spatialised and temporalised is this creation. There is no separate world. There is no separate creation. There are no separate objects of sense. They are only names that we have given to the very same truths that we are going to realise ultimately through the practice of yoga. We detest the world as we hang a dog by calling it a bad name. We curse the world because we see it differently from what it is. The objects of sense, according to this Upanishad, are the roads for our movement towards Godhood, which means to say that we have neither to be repelled by them nor to be attracted by them. The world should neither tempt us nor reject us. Neither should we shun the world nor should the world shun us. This point is emphasised in the twelfth chapter of the Bhagavadgita, also. Very difficult, indeed, is this attitude to be developed. You should not shrink away from things, and you should also not conduct yourself in such a way that the world shrinks away from you. This itself is yoga, and this is possible only when the goal is clear before our eyes. Many of us, seekers, aspirants, have not the goal of our life clearly pictured before our minds. We do not know whether we have to realise God first, or serve the world first, to give you only one instance of our quandary and problem. Many seekers think that service of humanity is to come first, and realisation of God afterwards. Sometimes we think that mankind itself is God, and service of man is service of God, and so we begin to identify the goal of our life with the activities of our daily life. This is a wonderful peculiarity of our attitude by which the goal can be interpreted in a dexterous fashion, so that we appear to be pursuing the goal while we are actually pursuing what is pleasant to the deeper needs of this bodily and ego-ridden personality. No one, ordinarily speaking, can aspire for God wholly. It is impossible to truly aspire for God from the entirety of our being. Though we may all regard ourselves as aspirants after God, it is impossible to wholly think of God or love God, because there are other presentations before us which can take the place of God and make us mistake them for God, interpret them as God, put the cart before the horse, and define our conduct and behaviour in a way that appeals to mankind and the world. Many a time we judge our progress from the admirations that we receive from people. If the whole world proclaims you as great, you think that you are progressing in the path of yoga. If all the newspapers publicise you as the leader of mankind, you have a feeling, perhaps, that you are on the right path. Otherwise, why should all people adulate you? “The world regards me, loves me, adores me, publicises me; this means God is blessing me; God's grace is upon me.” You can think like that, but to understand what God is and what love of God is, God's grace alone is necessary. The Guru has to bless you. It requires much effort.

The concept of God, the notion of the goal of life before us, is the ultimate determining factor in the success of our practice of yoga, and the Kathopanishad, in this passage on self-control—atmanam rathinam viddhi, etc.—makes it clear that this chariot of the body can go hither and thither if the charioteer lets loose the reins and allows the horses to move according to their whims and fancies. Our intellect can be blurred and clouded by the force exerted upon it by the senses. The senses are very powerful and their power is such that their activities can produce an impact on the mind and the intellect to such an extent that the mind can think and the intellect can understand things only in terms of the senses. The Upanishad warns us against this fall. The Atman, the mind and the senses should be in unison— atmendriyamanoyukta. They should not work in their own way, independently. That is, the activity of the senses, the thoughts of the mind and the needs of the Spirit should be in conformity with one another. They should not be at variance with each other. How is this possible? This is precisely the practice involved in yoga. Yoga is nothing but the conformity of the Spirit, the mind and the senses, together. The perceptions of the senses, the thoughts of the mind and the characteristics of the Spirit should coincide. What are the characteristics of the Spirit? Indivisibility of substance, universality of character, non-objectivity of nature, intelligence and subjectivity as different from externality or objectivity are the essential features of the supreme Spirit, which should influence the thoughts of the mind and the activities of the senses. This is the foundation of the karma yoga of the Bhagavad-Gita. Karma yoga or spiritualised activity is that conduct of life externally, which is guided by the nature of the Atman within and not directed by the desires of the senses.

The Atman wants nothing. It has known everything. Therefore to desire anything through our actions will be contrary to the requirements of the Atman. While there is nothing wrong with action as such, there is something seriously wrong with action done with a motive behind it, because the Atman has no motive. So, if the Atman is to be the basis of our actions, the goal of our deeds and works, naturally, they should not be directed to an ulterior purpose other than the Atman itself. Though the actions are directed outwardly, their aim is the inward realisation of the Atman. Wonderful is this yoga! The movement is outward through action, but the goal is inward which is the Self. Though you are running outward, you are actually moving inward. That is karma yoga. It looks as if you are working in a spatial world, externally directed towards other persons and things, but you are really converging to the point of the Atman that is present hiddenly in the objects. The Atman is not merely within. It is also without. The Atman has, really, no within and without. When it is said that the Atman is also without, and it is this Atman without that is pursued by the activities through karma yoga, what we mean is that whether you run forward, backward, inward or outward into the world of objects, you are directed to the same point. Extremes meet at the same focus. Geometricians tell us that parallel lines also can meet at infinity. Parallel lines, generally, do not meet, but it is said that they can meet if they are stretched to infinitude. The expert performance of karma yoga is identical with the expert meditation on the Absolute. But it should be expert. This is the crucial issue about it. This is the condition to be underlined. When you move to the Infinite outwardly, you reach also the Infinite which is inward. This yoga of the Katha Upanishad is not jnana yoga; it is not bhakti yoga; it is not karma yoga; it is not any kind of known yoga. It is the yoga of the Infinite, the secret way, of which these are aspects. The so-called yogas known as karma, bhakti, jnana, etc. are ramifications of this mysterious technique which Yama describes to Nachiketas.

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Next

Discourse No. 5.

Continued

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