The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad -1.9.

15/06/2018
Chapter 1: The World is an Arena of Sacrifice-9.

Often we can conduct ourselves very cleverly by engaging ourselves in the letter and very conveniently ignore the spirit. Sacrifices, performances, even religious attitudes may turn into a letter rather than a spirit if a long rope is given to the instinct in man, because though man has an aspiration for that which is superhuman, yet man is still man only. A human instinct works simultaneously with a superhuman aspiration in every one of us. We are two people at the same time, almost every minute of the day. We can behave as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in one second. Such a double attitude each person has in this world. So we agree with the noble aspiration that manifests itself in us in the direction of a larger dimension of existence which we may call the heavenly existence, yet the greed for physical existence persists.

People are thinking what will happen to their family – sons and daughters and property, etc. – after their death. They are worried even before they die. When I go to the other world, what will happen to the land? Who will take care of it? “What will happen to this house? Someone may grab it and take it. Or my children may become spendthrifts and exhaust all the wealth that I have earned with the sweat of my brow.” These anxieties are not uncommon in man. Though it is true that a person who is thinking thus is not going to have any relationship with what he is thinking of now after he sheds this body – he will be in a new space-time complex altogether, he will not have any kind of sensible contact with the things he is worrying about now – yet the worry continues. Human nature goes simultaneously with a transhuman aspiration.

So in the case of this sage Vajasravasa there was greed for satisfaction, joy in the heavenly empire after the passing from this world, but he was not prepared to entirely give up his possessions in this world in the true spirit of sacrifice. So he was evidently throwing off bad coins in the coffer of temples, torn notes which could not be used by anybody. God can take it because man cannot use it. This is sometimes the gesture of people like us. No one takes this torn note or some old coin which nobody will use today, every shopkeeper rejects it, so we throw it in some temple.

To be continued..