The Secret of the Katha Upanishad : 2.9. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, May 08, 2022. 21:00.

Discourse -2. 

Post -9.

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"āpῡryamāṇam acala-pratiṣṭhaṁ samudram āpaḥ praviśanti yadvat;

tadvat kāmā yam praviśanti sarve sa śāntim āpnoti na kāma-kāmī."


says the Bhagavadgita. As rivers enter the ocean from all sides, all that you need will come to you like a flood coming from different directions. You need not run after the world; the world will run after you. You need not ask for anything from the world; it will come to you automatically, without your asking for it. This is the first boon, due to the first tapas of Nachiketas.


The second tapas is of a psychological character. This second day's fast of Nachiketas represents the subdual of the mind, not merely of the senses. When the mind is disciplined properly, it gradually gets attuned to the cosmos. This is the secret of the Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya which came to Nachiketas as a boon from Yama. While the control of the senses physically makes you a friend of the physical universe and all material things flow to you in abundance, and you become the richest of persons, literally, you become a master of the psychological world also—not merely of the physical world or of material things—in the higher stage of mind-control. The second fast of Nachiketas is therefore a psychological fast of the mind and all that constitutes the psychological stuff—mano-buddhi-ahamkara-chitta, as it's called. All the aspects of the psychological organs are disciplined in the second form of tapas. While the physical body is estranged from the physical world on account of the activity of the senses, the mind is estranged from the Cosmic Mind on account of the spatio-temporal linkage. You think in terms of space and time, objectivity or externality, and therefore you are estranged from the Cosmic Mind. In such a condition, even God does not seem to help you. Your prayers do not seem to reach Him at all. Why? Because you have cut yourself off from the source of cosmic energy by thinking individually, by the egoistic affirmation of personality. The second tapas or discipline of Nachiketas, the seeking soul, means, thus, the uniting of the individual mind with the Universal Mind, the result of which is the second boon bestowed by the Master of yoga, Yama.


Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya represents the knowledge of the cosmic fire. In certain philosophies, fire is regarded as the Ultimate Reality. For example, there was a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus by name, who considered cosmic truth as a form of fire. This is not an original thought of Heraclitus alone. In India also we regard agni, fire, as the symbol of the Ultimate Will. The very first mantra of the Rig Veda is an invocation of this fire, not the physical fire with which you cook your meal but the universal fire which is a representation of cosmic energy—the Vaishvanara-Agni. Aham vaisvanaro bhutva praninam deham asritah—“I, the Supreme Soul, work as the Vaishvanara-Agni within the individual,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Bhagavadgita. A knowledge of this Vaishvanara-Agni, which is the cosmic form of the Creator, brings universal abundance. This knowledge of the supreme creative principle came to Nachiketas as a result of the fast of the psychological personality. From the external, you go to the inward, and then to the universal.


The external world has become your friend. Now the inner world also becomes your friend. Wonderful is this experience. Sometimes, this inner experience of the universal is mistaken for the ultimate realisation itself. But it is not the ultimate, really. There is one more step, which was the point of the third question of Nachiketas, which comes later on, about which Yama was very reluctant to speak—and so rightly.


To be continued ......



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