The Secret of the Katha Upanishad -31. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Wednesday 12, February 2025, 09:30.

Upanishads:

The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 

Discourse No. 6:

Swami Krishnananda.

Post - 31.

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There is something more than Universality. What could it be? If the mind is to contemplate it, the heart would give way, the brain would cease to function. Every cell of the body will melt, and it is this condition, indescribable, inscrutable, that made saints and sages dance in ecstasy. You must have heard of Mira dancing, Tukaram dancing—all these saints danced. And why did they? They were not crazy people. It was the bursting experience of a supernatural delight that entered them. They could not explain it. They could not express it in words. They could not even contain it within themselves. It could be expressed only in an ecstasy of a supernormal behaviour. The individual is invaded by the Absolute.

The Shanta-atman is the Peace that prevails when even the Universality of the Mahat becomes an inadequate experience. It is inadequate because the notion of a universe subtly persists even in the Mahat. In the language of the yoga of Patanjali, we may compare it to the last verge of savikalpa or sabija samadhi, where a vestige of the Universal experience persists, but it is not perception of the universe. What happens to the soul beyond the fifth stage of Knowledge, no one can say. These are merely language and words for us, which will convey no sense, practically speaking. But something exists beyond the Mahat. There is something beyond the Universal also. What could it be? 

The Katha Upanishad tells us: astiti bruvato'nyatra katham tad upalabhyate.

How can one say anything about it except that it is? It is not the Universal, it is not Virat, it is not Hiranyagarbha, it is not Ishvara. How can one attain it except by accepting that it simply is. It was jnani said that it can only be called 'That which is'. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less; and centuries before Augustine was born, the Katha Upanishad had already said it—asti, astitva. Not even asmita, Self-consciousness, can explain the nature of Truth.

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, we are told that the Creative Will felt, 'I am', 'Aham asmi'. But Pure Being is something beyond the state of 'Aham asmi'. It is Kevala-astitva—Absolute Existence. 'Tathata' is the term used for it in Buddhist philosophy. They also call it Bhutatathata—'Thatness' or 'Suchness'. These are the attempts of language to express the inexpressible. Bhutatathata or Astitva, Kevalata, or Be-ness as they put it in English, is the Shanta-atman which is experienced, realised as the Inner Soul of even the Universal Mahat.

 

The yoga that is the means to this realisation, if we can call it a means, is as difficult to comprehend as the goal itself. Gaudapada, in his Karika, says it is asparsa yoga. It is not yoga in the sense of union or contact of one thing with another. Generally we define yoga as union. Here, in this Experience-Whole, one thing does not become another thing. As a matter of fact, one thing cannot become another thing. Everything maintains its own substantiality. It is not sparsa yoga or the yoga of contact or union, but asparsa yoga or the yoga of non-contact. As a baby cries in fear when it is placed in an atmosphere where it can see nothing outside, not because it is afraid of anything that it sees, but because it does not see anything, the soul trembles, shivers, quakes and is taken aback when it gains entry into That wherein it cannot see anything external. It cannot contact anything. Do you know what you will feel when you are absolutely alone? Something more indescribable and miraculous than this takes place here, where the soul perceives nothing outside it, because it begins to get absorbed into That which it sees.

This is also described in one of the sutras of Patanjali, where he says that the meditating consciousness slowly gets tinged with the nature of the object, and the object gets tinged with the nature of the subject. The objects in the world begin to speak to you in their own language, by recognising you: “My dear friend, you have come!” The mask which covers the objects is lifted. The world is no more a stranger to you. The world begins to speak to you as your dear and near friend, kith and kin of the family to which you belong. Originally you belonged to it, but now you have forgotten it.

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Continued

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