The Secret of the Katha Upanishad -30. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Thursday 30, January 2025, 08:30.

Upanishads:

The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 

Discourse No. 6:

Swami Krishnananda.

Post - 30.

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The most consequent and difficult part of yoga commences when we try to rise beyond the vijnana-atman or the intellectual personality. That stage whereby the human individual struggles to attune itself to the Universal is the hardest one in yoga. There are difficulties of various kinds in one's attempt on the path of Spirit, but these difficulties can be classified into two groups—the natural and the supernatural.

The natural difficulties are, to some extent, conceivable by the human mind, and these are those which we have to confront until we reach that level of concentration and meditation wherein the intellect reaches its limits. When the limit of the intellect is reached, we also reach the limit of our powers. Our capacities get exhausted. All that we had with us, we have already spent. The reserve forces have been employed and further effort is unthinkable. The human individual has its ultimate fortress in the power of the rational faculty, which the Upanishad calls the vijnana-atman, or simply vijnana. But how can the vijnana rise to the Mahat-atman? Here, ordinary human effort is not of much avail, because the very act of the entry of the individual into the Universal is equivalent to the cessation of all the possibilities of conceivable human effort. We have an idea of effort, which is always in terms of the organs or the limbs of the body and the senses of knowledge and action. Whenever we speak of effort of any kind, we always think in terms of the body and our individuality. But what is the kind of effort that we are supposed to put forth when our individuality begins to melt in the menstruum of the Universal which we seek in the higher reaches of meditation? Here, it is not the mind that functions, not the intellect, not anything that we can think of normally in our life. Some unusual, unthinkable, supernormal element begins to operate. In one or two passages of the Chhandogya and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads we are told that, during the passage of the soul to Brahmaloka, through the Archiradi-Marga or the Northern path, as they call it, a stage is reached when human effort ceases, and symbolically the Upanishad points out what happens to the soul when it cannot anymore put forth personal effort. Effort is possible only as long as there is consciousness of personality. When I exist, or you exist, or this or that exists, there is the chance of exertion in the relativistic or empirical sense. But a stage is reached, says the Upanishad, in the ascent of the soul, where it ceases to be an isolated individual. That is, it is no more a spark of light seeking access into the reality of the higher light. The Upanishad, metaphorically, tells us that a superhuman being comes and leads the soul from that point onwards, taking it by hand, as it were, to the higher destination. An amanava purusha, someone who is not a human being, comes there. No one has been able to make out who this superhuman being is. There are those who think it is the Guru that comes there in his supernormal personality. The relationship between the Guru and the disciple does not break with the body. Even if the Guru dies physically, or the disciple passes away from this physical world, the relationship between them does not cease, because the Guru-disciple relationship is not merely physical or social. It is a spiritual bond which persists till the individuality melts into the Absolute. So it is opined by some that this superhuman amanava purusha is the Guru himself, who comes there taking the soul along the path that leads to the Absolute. Others think that it is God himself appearing in one form.

When the vijnana-atman tries to commune itself with the Mahat-atman, it does not have world-consciousness in the ordinary sense of the term. It does not see the world but it sees something else. This is the significance, perhaps, of what the Yoga Vasishtha calls padartha-bhavana-tyaga, one of the stages of knowledge or experience in spiritual life. In the language of the Yoga Vasishtha, padartha-bhavana-tyaga or padartha-abhavana, or to take it in another sense, padartha-bhavana, means the cognition of the substance of things. If we take the word as padartha-bhavana, we can interpret it as the cognition of the substantiality or the ultimate stuff of things, which begins at this stage. If we take it as padartha-abhavana, or padartha-bhavana-tyaga, it means the obliteration of the cognition of objectivity. This happens when the vijnana-purusha, the individual centre, communes itself with the Mahat. What happens? What takes you to the Mahat? Not your effort. But what else? Words fail, the mind gets hushed in its function, language becomes abortive and a new kind of silence prevails when one tries to comprehend what this mystery is. A pull is exerted on the soul. What is this pull? We may say it is the gravitational pull of the Centre of the Universe. When a stone is thrown into the sky, it falls back on the surface of the earth on account of the pull of the earth. However forcefully you may throw the stone above, it will come back to the earth by the force of gravitation. They also say that if you cross the gravitational barrier of the earth, there will not be any pull by the earth, but you will be pulled by some other planet, or star, or whatever there be, whose region the traveller in space may enter by chance. The pull of the earthly personality, the urge of individuality, the attraction towards objects it is that prevents us from going higher in our spiritual pursuit. Whatever be the strength and the power and the intensity of your meditation, you will see that the mind comes back to the earth. It will think of family, relations, office and many other earthly experiences. The individuality tries to have its say whatever be the attempt at a supersession of its calling or requisition. But by a chance, by a miracle, by the grace of God, if we try to overcome the urges of our personality, hard though it be to overcome them, we get into the gravitational region of the Universal. Then you are no more yourself. You are not a meditator, or a sadhaka, or a seeker. You appear to be nothing, because you are trying to become everything. The Mahat-atman takes you into its fold. You become a citizen of a different region of reality, altogether. A government of another type of existence will protect you and take charge of you. The Constitution of the Universe of the Mahat-tattva will govern the operations and the needs of the individual that has gained entry into that realm. Everything will be done of its own accord, and there is no need to do anything else there. All things spontaneously happen there. They are not done by any individual or person. We cannot use the word doing, or working, in that realm, because the doer himself ceases to be there. When the agent of action melts, gradually, like camphor exhausting itself by burning, the meditation with which our effort began ceases, and the individuality begins to evaporate. It gets consumed in the Fire of the Universal, and here effort becomes a part of the Universal Process. Action is absorbed into the Law of Being and everything becomes an operation of the Eternal. Eternity begins to work inexorably, and the seeker, the meditator, has nothing to say, and nothing to do there. May we add, to our own surprise and shock, that the Force exerted by that gravitational pull of the Universal is much more than any power that one can think of in this world. Not all the powers put together in the world can equal a jot of that Force. It is the Force that attracts the Universe towards itself. How does God pull the world towards Himself? Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, says in one place that the world is moved by God as the heart of the lover is moved by the beloved. It is an action which is no action. It is a movement which cannot be called movement. It is an event which is other than any temporal happening. Eternity working is unthinkable, inconceivable, because according to us, all working is temporal movement—but there is a kind of action which is Eternity keeping vigil. The power of the Eternal is not the power of the body, not the power of the elements, not a force which moves in the direction of objects, but is a power that becomes self-conscious. It is shakti that is identical with the shakta. That is the nature of Mahat, and when the vijnana-atman enters this realm, it sees a new light altogether, an entirely novel, sunlit day of Eternity. Eternal day prevails there, says the Chhandogya Upanishad—Sakrid vibhato hi brahmalokah. It does not mean that this sun of ours shines there. This sun does not shine there, nor the moon, nor the stars or this fire, says the Katha Upanishad. That One shines eternally, as if in perpetual day—That which illumines even the glorious light of the sun. That is the abode of Mahat-tattva which the vijnana-atman enters. Universality consumes particularity. You begin to be a member of the whole Universe. Every corner of Creation receives you with hospitality. Everything in the world begins to smile at you with a satisfaction of the deepest order. Wherever you go, you receive hospitality, kindness, sympathy and a loving goodness. Everyone begins to feel that you are his own or her own. Stones will melt and trees will bend before you. This is what happened in the case of Suka Maharshi. Such is the experience of that master yogin who is blessed or is fortunate enough to gain entry into the Mahat-tattva. 'Godman' is not the word that we can call him with. He is something more. You cannot explain what it is.

But is it all? The Upanishad goes still further. We become giddy even when we think of the Mahat. Is there something more than that? Yes, there is. Well! The mind cannot think. It is better it does not think. The Upanishad goes on, taking us above the Mahat.

tad yacchec shanta-atmani.

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Continued

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