The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad : 2-3

30/10/2018
The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad : 2-3
Chapter 2: Nachiketas’ First Two Boons : 3.

In a reverse process, we can dissolve everything into space. Earth can become water, water can become fire, fire can become air, and air can become space. So space, which is apparent emptiness before us, is capable of containing within itself the entire physical cosmos. Therefore, space is not non-material. It is nothing but material substance. For one reason, it is an object of perception. We can see space. Anything that is visualised or capable of being contacted by any sense organ is physical, and space is such.

Hence, the final condition of the world seems to be only space-time. We are using two words, ‘space’ and ‘time’, for want of better expression. Actually, space and time are not two things. It is one peculiar, indescribable something which is, for want of better words, called a space-time complex. It is better to call it a compound because it is an indivisible something. We can call it only ‘something’ because we do not know what it is. Hence, the dream world, or the waking world, or any world for the matter of that, is a particular organisation of the space-time complex or continuum.

Thus, when we are in one realm, we are only in that realm as distinguished from another realm in a sense comparable to the distinction we draw between the space-time experience of dream and the space-time experience of waking. As we know very well, there is a tremendous difference between what we saw in dream and what we see in waking. There is no comparison whatsoever between the two. Yet they are in the same spot.

For instance, we are sleeping on the bed. That very spot or location was the world of dream. That also is the world of waking. Yet, they are totally different realms. Thus, all worlds can be in the same place. We can have hell here in this hall; we can also have heaven here. In this little hall, this Samadhi Shrine, we have Vaikuntha, Kailasha, Brahmaloka, the Garden of Eden, and Patala; we have every country here, and all nationalities compressed in this little one cubic centimetre of space – because the world is non-spatial, finally.

These are marvels which our mind cannot understand, and is not expected to understand. No man can understand what this mystery is because if we can gain an entry into this mystery we will suddenly be shaken up, and we will not see anything in front of us. Like a madman becoming sane, a blind man gaining sight, a sleeping man waking up, or a fool becoming a genius, such a difference will take place if this mystery can be understood. But we cannot understand it, for reasons we all know.

“When I return to this world, may I be received well,” said Nachiketas. The great geniuses of the spirit, jivanmuktas as they are sometimes called, who return from death and are reborn in the spirit, are received by the world once again in a different way altogether. The prophets and the incarnations are received by the world in a different manner from which we are received by shopkeepers, governmental officials, income tax officers, etc. The great geniuses and the incarnations are received as the soul of humanity, whereas we are received as external bodies, foreign elements, treated with suspicion and not with due regard and friendliness.

To be continued ...