The Secret of the Katha Upanishad : 5.1. Swami Krishnananda.

Swami Swaroopananda

Chinmaya Tapovan Ashram is located in the idyllic valley of Sidhbari, where this great institution was founded by Pujya Gurudev, to impart in-depth learning of the Gita and the Vedantic scriptures. 

Seekers can find themselves within the heart of nature, surrounded by majestic Himalayan peaks, imbibing knowledge at the various camps and discourses conducted at the Sandeepan HIM.

The entire campus has a positive, vibrating energy drawn from Gurudev’s samadhi alongside the Shri Rama and Shri Hanuman temples.

========================================================================

Wednesday, March 15, 2023. 07:00

Discourse No. 5-1.

Post -25

========================================================================

The path of the soul to its supreme destination is explained in the Katha Upanishad through a description of the chariot of the body. How does this chariot move? What is the methodology involved in the progress of the individual to its goal? This inner process of the movement of the individual to the Absolute is what we know as the practice of sadhana, or yoga. While there are elaborate textbooks on this subject, the Upanishad touches upon the point in a single mantra, as follows:

The way of yoga is a process of gradual ascent and illumination. It is also a systematised process of achieving freedom by stages. Our bondage is not of a uniform character. The way in which we are tied down to mortal experience is a complicated structure. You are not tied with one rope to a single peg, as a cow is tied, for example. The bondage of samsara is of a different nature from the way in which we usually understand bondage or suffering to be. Our sufferings are very peculiar. Because of the peculiarity of this suffering of ours, we sometimes do not know that we are suffering. There are people who will be ill for years together and be accustomed to that sort of life. That itself becomes a normality for them. In the beginning, it comes like an inconvenience. Later on, it is a natural life. Aeons must have passed since we have entered this plane of samsara. We have passed through various kinds of birth. We have moved through different species and organisms, and are said to have now reached this level of the human being. 

We have had experiences in every kind of life that we lived, and all these experiences were peculiar to the particular species into which we were born. But, rarely do we realise that life can be a bondage. We, as human beings, today living in this world, this earth plane, at this moment of time, do not consider the fact of the bondage involved in our life. Are we always conscious that we are bound, or are in an unfortunate state of existence? We have occasions for rejoicing, exultation and delights of various kinds. Life is a pleasure to most people, and the bitterness that is hidden beneath it comes to the surface only occasionally, under certain circumstances. Our consciousness gets accustomed to conditions of experience to which we are habituated. This habituation of the consciousness to certain states is the reason why we mistake pain for pleasure. The life of a human being—life in general, for the matter of that—is an involvement of such a complicated nature that our ignorance of it is indeed very serious. To regard this ignorance itself as a source of enjoyment is the worst that can befall a created being.

This is what is known as avidya—nescience. Avidya, ignorance, does not necessarily mean oblivion or total torpidity of mind. The ignorance in which we are shrouded is not an abolition of all understanding or mentation. It is something worse than that. It is not a sleepy state of the mind where it knows nothing at all, but it is a positive error of perception. One thing is mistaken for another, and that another which is erroneously superimposed on what actually is, is regarded as reality. The impermanent, transient, momentary structure of the universe is mistaken for a permanent, stable abode of enjoyment. This is one form of ignorance, because it contradicts Truth. The bodily encasement, the physical personality, the social circumstances under which we live, are all considered by us as sources of pleasure, and our body itself is worshipped as an object of beauty, a piece of art which we daily look at in the mirror, if possible; and we embellish it in every possible manner, not knowing what it is really made of. The experiences of our life are not really pleasurable. 

The conditions through which we pass in mind and intellect from morning to evening are not ones of happiness; but we try to make the best of this suffering itself, and we try to create a heaven out of hell. This is to mistake pain for pleasure. And the greatest error which tops all the list is the mistaking of the non-Atman for the Atman, the object for the subject, the external for the Universal, the perishable for the permanent, the material for the conscious. This is, truly speaking, the state in which we are. From this kind of bondage, which is of such a difficult make-up, we have to free ourselves, step by step. This is the aim of yoga. From ignorance and its offshoots we have to gain freedom, and simultaneously gain mastery over our own self.

*****

To be continued

=========================================================================