The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad - 3.6 Swami Krishnananda

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28/11/2019.
 Chapter 3: Nachiketas’ Third Boon-6.
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Much worse, we cannot even distinguish between what is good and what is not. We have been educated in a wrong way, due to which reason we confuse the good with the pleasant, and vice versa, and we ask for immediate satisfactions, though in the long run they may bring us untold sorrow and suffering. We would not mind going to hell tomorrow if today our ego is to be scratched to its own satisfaction. Tomorrow will be hell, but it does not matter if today I am happy.

The great Master Yama initiated Nachiketas into the mystery of the discrimination between the real and the unreal, that is, the capacity to know what is and what is not.

Actually, the question was: What is finally?

 Astity eke nayam astiti caike (Katha 1.1.20): Some say something is, some say nothing is.

There are people who say something is. There are people who say nothing is.

What is the truth?

How can this question be answered?

But truth is in the middle. The truth is not that everything is, and the truth is not that nothing is. Something is. That something is the great mystery of the Upanishad. It is not exactly what we are, and also not quite different from what we are. Such a thing is, and one has to develop that endowment to distinguish between this so-called something which really is and the other things which are not – the distinction between the true good and the opinionated sense objects.

To be continued ...


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