The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad -1.1

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25/02/2018

The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad -1.1

Chapter 1: The World is an Arena of Sacrifice - 1.

1.1
The need we feel in life for mutual cooperation in all the enterprises in which we engage ourselves would perhaps reveal that we live in a world of sacrifice. If this had not been the case, it would have been easy for each person to live each for oneself and mind not the existence of other people in the world.

Though often we, as human beings, feel an impulse from inside to assert ourselves as independent beings, and this affirmation many a time takes a vehement form, landing even in clashes among people, there is a subtle undercurrent vibrating at the back of all this outward manifestation of disparity as an inclination towards cooperation and a wish for the welfare of all people.

In spite of a vicious impulse of a terrific self-affirmation of one’s individuality in an obviously selfish form, in spite of all this well-known fact in human nature, there seems to be another voice speaking within us that the welfare of others is a good thing, and it is not merely a good thing, but an unavoidable thing.

1.2
From one angle of vision it may appear that one is working for his own self or her own self, and there is some justification for this view considering the way in which people behave in the workaday life and the secret and the subtle motivations of personality hidden beneath outward enterprises in public existence.

This we see in political fields and in the communities of people. When we are rubbed very hard to an extent which we may consider as intolerable, we may manifest an utterly selfish attitude and stand only for ourselves as totally independent individuals, wishing that the world may go to the dogs.

This is not impossible for any person, and often it looks as if this is the true nature of man.

To be continued ..

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