Kathopanishad : ( 04/03/2013. )

 ============================================================== ============================================================== Wednesday, March 1130,  2022. 19:00. Discourse -2.  Post -8. =============================================================== Nachiketas is the seeking soul, and the three fasts are the threefold discipline of the human individuality. The entire yoga is here given in a nutshell. The three levels of the human individuality, corresponding to the three levels of the cosmos outside, are to be disciplined. They should not be given a vent or a long rope for indulgence externally. The physical, represented by sensory activity, the psychological, constituting emotion, will, etc., and the spiritual, are the fundamental stages of the ascent for which sake Nachiketas, the individual soul seeking Reality or Truth, observed a fast. What is a fast? It is withdrawal from indulgence—the gradual subdual of the sensory powers. The bodily individuality is represented...

 =============================================================== ============================================================== Tuesday, March 29, 2022. 21:00 12.ADDITIONAL EXHORTATIONS FROM THE MUNDAKOPANISHAD. ============================================================== The Mundakopanishad, as far as its contents are concerned, is, in many respects, a sequel to the teachings of the Kathopanishad. The one supplements the other, the Katha furnishing information on the earlier stages of spiritual endeavour and the practice of Sadhana and Yoga, and the Mundaka going further into the details of the practice and the nature of final liberation in the Absolute. The initial instruction in the Mundaka is that a search for Truth should be launched upon after one carefully examines the character of the world of sense and of works, whereby a distaste for objects spontaneously arises in the mind on the knowledge of the fact that nothing of the realm of impermanence can be an adequate means t...

 ============================================================== =============================================================== Friday, March 11,  2022. 20:00. Chapter -2.  Post -7. ============================================================== Narrow is the passage to the Eternal. You cannot take your bag and baggage with you when you go there. You cannot take your purse with you. You cannot take your clothing, even. You cannot take even this body through that narrow gate. You have to drop everything. Such is the subtlety, such is the narrowness, such is the sharpness of that path—kshurasya dhara, as the Katha Upanishad would tell us. Like the sharp edge of a razor or the cutting point of a sword is the path of spirituality. Therefore, the more cautious you are in the understanding of your own nature, the better it is for you. The less arrogant you are, the better it is for you. An assumption of knowledge on the part of the human individual or a seeker of Truth is not go...

 ============================================================ ============================================================= Thursday, March 10, 2022. 20:00 11. THE PRACTICE OF YOGA : ============================================================ THE PRACTICE OF YOGA : This Atman is not seen through the eyes, nor is it perceived through any of the other senses, as it never becomes an object of itself. It is known only when the centre of personality is dissolved through the absorption of the factors causing individuality, viz., the mind and the intellect, into the Atman. Equanimity of inner vision is the same as spiritual knowledge, and it cannot be had as long as the mind and the intellect function in their own fashion. The Atman cannot be sought in external conditions, but it can be known and realised through a reverting from externals to eternal being. It is this introversion that enables one to enter into the very substance of being. This state of spiritual equilibrium is attained ...

 =============================================================== ============================================================= Friday, February 181,  2022. 19:00. Chapter -2.  Post -6. ============================================================== Nachiketas, a first-rate student of yoga, was not given this knowledge, what to talk of second class and third class students! We are much below that; and Nachiketas was a superlatively good student, and yet Yama said, “Don't ask, don't talk.” And, what was given to him? The wealth of the whole world—temptation! Buddha was tempted. Christ was tempted. None will be free from these temptations. And it does not mean that all the students of yoga will have to pass through the same kind of temptation, so that you can catalogue the temptations and keep them in your mind. No! They come in different forms, though the background of the temptations is one and the same. Just as, though everyone has the same kind of hunger every day, everyo...

 =============================================================== ============================================================= Thursday,February 10, 2022. 20:30 1.INTRODUCTION :  10. THE TREE OF SAMSARA ============================================================= The tree of life has its roots upwards in the unmanifest, which, again, is rooted in the Divine Being; its branches spread below as the manifested universe. This tree is inclusive of great miseries like birth; old age, grief and death. It appears to be of a different nature every moment. It is now seen and now not seen, like a jugglery or water in the mirage, or the city of the clouds. It can be felled down like a tree, and it has a beginning and an end, like a tree.  It is peepal tree. It is the cause of great doubts and confusions in the minds of the non-discriminating. Its true nature is not ascertained even by aspirants after knowledge. Its meaning is found in the original essence of Brahman which is ascerta...

 ============================================================= ============================================================= Friday, February 11,  2022. 20:30. Chapter -2.  Post -5. ============================================================== The first stage is the exoteric approach of the human mind to the values of the world—the mistaking of the external for the ultimate, which is represented by the sacrifice of Vajasravasa Gautama. The world is a real presentation as it is in its crass form, and the after-death experiences are supposed to be merely a copy of the present life experiences, only in a more rarefied form, so that the popular conception of heaven after death is of a magnified form of the pleasures of sense that we have in this earthly world. If you get kheer only occasionally here, you will get kheer every day there! This is the type of joy that we seem to aspire for in the sensory world of the gods. We have no concept of God or the Creator, or the hereaft...