The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad - 5.7 : Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, November 13, 2020. 11:12.  AM.

Chapter-5.  Sannyasa – The Renunciation of Erroneous Notions - 7.

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Renunciation is a difficult thing to understand because it is an operation of concepts. It is a wholly internal operation that is taking place within us. As the Bhagavadgita says in the Second Chapter, whatever the renunciation be that we practise physically, the taste for the objects may continue – rasavarja?. Vi?aya vinivartante niraharasya dehina? rasavarja? (Gita 2.59). Though we may not be emperors, kings, presidents, prime ministers, the taste for status may be present in our minds. What do we lose if we become the president of a large country? Do we think it is an abominable thing? We may say it is useless because we know we cannot get it. We know very well it is impossible to get, and so it is a useless thing for us. This is called the philosophy of sour grapes. We are like the jackal. We cannot get the grapes, and so they are sour; we do not want them. On Mt. Everest we cannot get milk, so we have renounced milk.

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The taste for an object cannot leave a person as long as the interpretation of things in a particular manner continues. A taste for an object is nothing but an interpretation of an object. A visualisation of a thing in a particular manner is what is called a taste. Whether the object is there or not is a different matter. What is our opinion about that object? How do we understand a thing, and what does it mean to us? That meaning that we read into a particular thing is our connection with that thing. If there is absolutely no meaning at all, like the absence of meaning in dream objects when we are awake, that would be wonderful.

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But do we look upon objects from which we have withdrawn ourselves as dream objects? They are not like dream objects. We have come to a temple or a church or an ashram, and we have left our relations. They have no contact with us. We do not even write letters to them. But do we regard them as unsubstantial as dream objects? No, they are not like that. They are realities. Though we may not have a physical, social relationship with them, the psychic interpretation of the reality of those persons continues, and then there will be some movement of our mind when something happens to them.

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Thus, the control of the senses has to be understood in a purely spiritual manner, and not in a social sense. Spirituality is not social activity; it is transmutation of the very conscious outlook of life. All this is a training that one has to undergo by service to a great Master. Tad viddhi pra?ipatena pariprasnena sevaya, upadek?yanti te jñana? jñaninas tattvadarsina? (Gita 4.34). By an academic certificate or reading in a library, this knowledge cannot come.

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To be continued ...

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