The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad - 5.6 : Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, November 04, 2020. 12:00.  PM.

Chapter-5.  Sannyasa – The Renunciation of Erroneous Notions - 6.

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When this independent status rules the world, and not relations rule the world, we are in the kingdom of heaven in one second. Brahmaloka, the kingdom of heaven, the golden age when government does not exist, is that circumstance where each one is what one is and no relation is necessary. Each one knows one’s own dharma, duty – which is to visualise everything from its own point of view as substances, originals, archetypes, not shadows, not locations of things, substances in the principle of externality called space, and in time. If each one is what one is and there is no relationship, space vanishes. In Brahmaloka, there is no space-time. In God’s kingdom it is eternity and infinity, non-spatial and non-temporal. It is from this point of view that the world is to be viewed for spiritual practice. Then the very samsara that you are afraid of becomes the heaven which you are willing to commune yourself with.

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There is, therefore, a dual duty on our part as spiritual seekers in the practice of yoga: a withdrawal, and a bouncing back to the very thing from which we withdrew ourselves. We have to withdraw ourselves from our notions about things, and not from the things themselves. The things themselves are not visualised by us. As some philosophers say, the thing in itself cannot be contacted. We see only the appearance of the thing in itself in space and in time through conditions of the mind.

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So when we practise renunciation, when we take to sannyasa, when we become monks and nuns, when we abandon this world for the sake of God, when we practice austerity, self-restraint, sense control, what are we doing? We cannot run away from this world, because we are in the world wherever we go. Even the person who has renounced the world is in the world only. He is not hanging in the sky. Even if we are in the sky, it is in the world. We cannot go out of the world even if we think that we have renounced the world. But the world has to be renounced in one special sense.

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As I mentioned on an earlier occasion, the world is an idea finally, not a thing or a substance. I need not repeat this point again and again. Finally, it is a concept that is the ruling principle, that is the reality. Idea is the reality, concept is the reality, consciousness is the reality, finally. Chit is sat, consciousness is being. The substance, the reality of anything, is consciousness, and not tangibility, sensibility, etc. This is why the senses have to be withdrawn.

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When we say the senses have to be withdrawn, self-control has to be practised, what do we actually mean from a purely spiritual point of view? Do we mean that we close our eyes, plug our ears, and desensitise our sense organs? We get benumbed completely and call it sense control. Are we going to paralyse our senses with an anaesthetic? Can we call that renunciation?

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To be continued ...


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