The Secret of the Katha Upanishad : 3.6. Swami Krishnananda.
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Monday, November 07, 2022. 07:00.
Discourse -3.
Post -17.
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Having guarded ourselves adequately with a knowledge of the difficulty of acquiring this mystery of mysteries in our experience, we try to understand what the Lord Yama, the great teacher of the Katha Upanishad, must have spoken as the final word to Nachiketas. Even when Yama comes to the main point in question, he does not hit it directly. He tries to approach it gradually. This is the technique of the teaching of any science or art. When you speak on any subject or teach a particular branch of learning, you should not forthwith go to the subject at the very beginning itself. That would be difficult for the student to comprehend. You must follow what they call the Socratic method of teaching.
You speak as if you are on the level of the student, and assume a form of humility which immediately attracts the attention of the student. You take the standpoint of the student and not your own standpoint, when you speak or teach. Immediately you attract the students. If you assume an importance and superiority of your own and speak as if you know a lot, then you are not a good psychologist, and you are not going to be a successful teacher in the school. A successful teacher is one who understands the student or the disciple, who takes the standpoint of the student and not his own, though he is driving the mind of the student to his own standpoint, finally. Yama follows this wonderful educational psychology of gradually moving towards the ultimate meaning of things, taking the mind of Nachiketas systematically from the lower to the higher, a process which is expressed in a few verses of the Katha Upanishad.
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Mantram :
"indriyebhyaḥ parā hyarthā arthebhyaśca param manaḥ;
manasaś ca parā buddhir buddher ātmā mahān paraḥ;
mahataḥ param avyaktam avyaktāt puruṣaḥ paraḥ;
puruṣān na paraṁ kiñcit sā kāṣṭhā, sā parā gatiḥ."
We have, in Indian logic, what is known as arundhati-darshana-nyaya. Arundhati is a star in the sky. It is a small star somewhere. Suppose I want to tell you or point out to you where that star is, I tell you, “There, you see a star,” you will not be able to decipher that star on account of there being many stars in the sky. You will say, “Which one are you pointing out?” So, what I do is to explain thus, “You look at that tree there, in front. Do you see that tree?” “Yes.” “Do you see a branch of that tree shooting to the Northern direction?” “Yes.” “Do you see a star directly at the top of that branch?” “Yes, I see. That is very correct.” “Do you see a star that is immediately to the right of that star?” “Yes.” “Do you see a small twinkle just near it? That is Arundhati!” So, now, you understand where Arundhati is. If I had directly told you, “Here is Arundhati,” you would not have understood me.
This arundhati-darshana-nyaya is applied here by Yama. What do you see first of all? Yama tells Nachiketas, “What do you see?” “A world.” “All right!” “Let us take the world as a stand for the sake of convenience of teaching for the present.” But who knows this world? Who is the knower of this world? The senses are the knowers of the world. What do you mean by the knowledge of the world through the senses? The senses are in a position to gather information about the qualities of things outside, known as the world. How do the senses gather this information? By direct contact. They do not necessarily come in physical contact with the objects. For example, when I look at a tree, my senses do not come in physical contact, they are so many yards away from the physical object called the tree. So, by some other means do the senses come to have a knowledge of the object outside.
They have a power, a capacity of their own, an endowment by which they can grasp the knowledge of an existent object outside even without physically coming in contact with that object. If the senses are feeble, the knowledge would be defective. If the senses are powerful, acute, if you have an eagle's sight, you will have a clear perception of things. And the senses, therefore, should be regarded as more important aspects in the process of the knowledge of an object than the object itself. But the senses are not the physical organs. The eyeballs are not the eyes. The eardrums are not the ears. The tongue is not the taste-principle. The nose is not what smells. The principle behind the sensory action, the sensory cognition or perception, is different from the organ as such. You can open your eyes and yet see nothing if your mind is withdrawn. You may be concentrating your mind on something and hear not even a gunshot, because you have been fixing your mind on something else. The senses are not really the physical organs of action or perception. There are other things, beyond.
These are called the arthas or rudimentary principles, known also as tanmatras, in Sanskrit, superior to the sensory powers, of which the sensory powers are constituted. From the world we have come to the senses, from the senses we have come to the powers that constitute the sensory powers. Beyond these is the mind, because, when the mind does not work, the senses also will not give us any kind of information. Suppose, the mind is out of order—what will happen? One will be seeing things but will not understand them. Yama says the mind is superior to the senses. Its importance is much more than that of the other instruments which are the senses, and even the location or the definitive character of an object outside. But, even if the mind is present and the intellect is not working, you will not have a correct judgement of things. You may look at an object like a cow or a sheep, which also see objects that you see. They have no proper judgement of the pros and cons of the perceptions of objects as a human being has. Therefore, the intellect should be regarded as superior to the mind.
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To be continued
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