The Secret of the Katha Upanishad -33. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday 07, March 2025, 11:30.
Upanishads:
The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 
Discourse No. 6:
Swami Krishnananda.
Post - 33.

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yatheha kshudhita balah mataram paryupasate;

evam sarvani bhutani agnihotram upasate.

As hungry children sit around their mother asking for bread, cringing for a little food from the mother, loving her, jumping on her lap, so does the world cringe for you, crave for you, come round you, sit on your lap, fall at your feet, when you realise this Stupendous Reality. This is what will happen to you when you practise this yoga of the communion of the vijnana with the Mahat and the absorption of the Mahat into the Shanta-atman.

The Upanishad gives us this wonderful message, the glorious message of eternity to all mankind, enough to fill us all with unbounded joy for all times to come. But the Upanishad is also cautious in giving us sufficient advice of a motherly character, when we tread the path. It is the path of the sword, the path of the razor's edge—kshurasya dhara. Who will try to walk on the edge of a sword? But this is the path of true yoga. The tests you have to pass through, the various disciplines one has to undergo before this yoga becomes successful, are indeed difficult to explain. The whole body, the mind and the senses have to be chastened simultaneously. How this is done is also hinted at towards the end of the third chapter of the Bhagavadgita, where we are told that it is only with the strength and the power and the grace of the Atman that the senses and the mind can be controlled—buddheh param buddva.

In the Gita, immediately preceding these verses, we have the advice given that the senses have to be controlled. But how can the senses be controlled? Who is to control the senses? We are wedded to the senses in such a way that we have no power over them. We work in terms of the senses, according to their demands and their interpretation of the nature of things. How can we exert any kind of pressure on the senses without utilisation of a higher power? Morality, truly speaking, is the interpretation of the lower in terms of the higher. This is the principle of all ethics. All success depends upon the extent to which we can utilise the resources of the higher when we deal with a lower principle. Unless we draw sustenance from the higher forces for our progress in the path of yoga, let alone in our efforts in the ordinary activities of life, there would be the least chance of success. Where God is forgotten, success is far to seek. Everything is done by the Absolute, Universal Ishvara, God Himself. All actions are His actions. He hears through the ears, sees through the eyes, speaks through the tongues of all beings. Our sight, our hearing, our taste, our action, our thought, our intellection, our very existence, is His existence and His action.

When this yoga takes possession of us, the world takes care of us. We are no more in poverty, we are no more in fear, we have no more any kind of insecurity around us. We are well guarded by the police of the whole cosmos. The Yogavasishtha has this comforting message for us all. The guardians of the quarters themselves begin to take care of us. Why should we worry about our daily meal? It is a pittance and a poor thing to think of. You shall be filled with the ambrosia of the Eternal. Everything will be supplied to you in the proper manner, at the proper time, to your fullest satisfaction. These implications and consequences naturally follow from the practice of this majestic yoga.

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Next

Discourse No. 7

Continued

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