The Secret of the Katha Upanishad : 1.5. Swami Krishananda.

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Sunday, December 12, 2021. 7:00.PM.
The Secret of the Katha Upanishad : 1.5.
Chapter -1. 
Discourse No - 5.

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But, we have something inside us, an urge that propels us in some other direction, apart from this exoteric urge which directs us to the enjoyment of the objects of sense. This something peculiar within us is the Nachiketas. The son of Vajasravasa Gautama, the progeny of the sage, is the conscience of the sage, which spoke out his heart. In the mythical terminology of the Upanishad, the conscience of Gautama speaks in the language of his son, Nachiketas. While we are after the enjoyment of life, rulership, authority, prestige and power and whatnot, we have also a subtle voice speaking from within us, every now and then, pestering us, as it were, sometimes annoying us with its demands, telling us something quite different from what we are thinking in our mind. “Are you going to enjoy the pleasures of the world? Are you going to perform deeds and actions for this sake alone?” What are the kinds of action that we perform? They are selfish to the core. They are utterly related to our bodily personality. Though we have heard much of what is known as unselfish action, it is something quite strange to our bodily individuality.

All the deeds of our day-to-day life are remotely connected with our personal pleasures known as egoistic enjoyments. As the enjoyments are brittle, short-lived, with a beginning and an end, so are the actions which engender these pleasures. Our deeds have a beginning and an end. They started sometime and they shall end also sometime. Similarly, that fruit which accrues out of these actions also has a perishable constitution. Our longing shall never be quenched by the brittle, dry, momentary objects of the world.

Sometimes, in certain persons, almost every day, there is a shake-up of the personality from within, which tells us that we are not entirely what we appear to be. We are not the Mr. and Mrs. that we are now. We are not the boss or the servant that we appear to be. We are not the man or the woman or the child that people call us. We seem to be in possession of something, a little different from all these things which are the ultimate values of earthly existence. That something seems to speak to us from within, oftentimes, and makes us restless. If at all we are restless in our day-to-day existence, it is because we are made up of something which is a little different from what we are constituted of in our physical existence. If our physical personality and our social relationships in the world are to be the all, then there would be no uneasiness in life. Our unhappiness, our sorrow— whatever be the kind of that sorrow—our insecurity, whatever be its character, is born of a stuff of which we are made in the deepest recesses of our being, which boils up to the surface and struggles to gain access into the surface of consciousness. But we stifle its words, we hush it down and curse it to death, as Vajasravasa Gautama did to his son. “You go on speaking again and again. You go to hell!” This is what we tell our conscience. If our subtle conscience begins to give us a wise advice occasionally—“Friend, you are going wrong!”—you stifle it, cut its throat, and curse it to hell. “Speak not again,” do we tell it; and we make it blunt, and it cries within us. Our real nature within is weeping, “Oh, what is my fate!” We have layers of personality, a description of which is given beautifully in this Upanishad, about which we shall speak on the succeeding days.

To be continued ...

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