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Kathopanisad

Chapter 2 Valli 3 Mantra 9

Mantra

na sa̱ndṛśe̍ tiṣṭhati̱ rūpa̍m asya̱ na cakṣu̍ṣā paśyati̱ kaśca̱n-ainam̎ |
hṛ̱dā ma̍nī̱ṣā mana̍sā̱’bhiklṛ̍pto̱ ya e̍tad vi̱dur a̱mṛtā̱s te bha̍vanti ||

 

asya rūpam = His [Brahman’s or the Atman’s] form; na tiṣṭhati = does not exist; saṁdṛśe = as an object of vision or perception; na kaḥ cana = nobody; paśyati = perceives; enam = this {Self or Brahman] cakṣuṣā = with the physical eye or the other senses; hṛdā = by the heart; manīṣā = by the intellect, intuitive vision; manasā = by mind; abhiklṛptaḥ = when it is revealed or apprehended; ya etat viduḥ = those who know this fact; te = they; amṛtāḥ bhavanti = become deathless.

His form is not to be seen. No one beholds Him with the eye. By controlling the mind, by the intellect, and by incessant meditation, He is revealed. Those who know this (Brahman) become immortal.

 

by Swami Chinmayananda:

That the Self is beyond the fields of the sense-organs and the mind and the intellect has by now been very often repeated by the Smthi in different Mantras. If none of these instruments of cognition, feeling, and understanding is available for the seeker in realizing the Supreme, the ill-informed aspirant is apt to feel despaired and may throw up all his attempts to live the Life Divine, saying that the goal promised by the Smrthis is an im­possibility. Hence, this Mantra is explaining to us the last leap with which the seeker, during his meditation, crosses over the frontiers of his mind and intellect and reaches the Land of Truth.

Na Chakshushah Pashyati (None can sec Him with the eyes): Here the word eye is a representative word (Upalakshana) which in its true meaning in the Mantra indicates all the sense-­organs. The Upanishad is here clearly and pointedly making the daring statement that God will not present Himself to his devotees, for them to “see” Him with their naked limited sense-organs of vision. All visions are delusory hallucinations of the mind, however satisfying and gloriously divine they may seem to be.

The only method by which a seeker can realize his Self is through the faculty of intuition which is now lying dormant in man’s intellect. The intellect resides, according to the poetic Sruthi, in the cave-of-the-heart, aud from its glorious seat of activities, controls the workings of the mind. When the mind is silent, the intellect gains an inner peace. An intellect, thus, in complete peace itself dies away or disappears leaving behind, a newly born potency ill us called intuition. It is with this intuition that a seeker comes to realize his Self. Intuition is nothing but ” the capacity to know the knowledge “. And knowing the Self is but the Self-becoming aware of Itself.

For purposes of emphasis, Sruthi is again repeating that the one who has, during his sojourn here, come to rediscover himself to be nothing other than the Pure Consciousness, presiding in him as his own Self, shall himself become Immortal, and thus get away from the whirl of births and deaths.

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Index…

Kathopanisad

Chapter 2 Valli 3 Mantra 11

Mantra

tām yoga̍m iti manyante sthi̱rām i̍ndriya̱-dhāraṇām |
apra̍ma̱ttas ta̍dā bhavati yo̱go hi̍ prabha̱vāp-ya̍yau ||

tām = that state; sthirām indriya-dhāranam = the steady control of the 10 senses; iti = this; manyante = they consider; yogam = to be Yoga; bhavati = one becomes; apramattaḥ = undistracted; with careful concentration; tadā = then, at the time of yoga practice; yogaḥ hi prabhavā apyayau = expands and contracts, subject to growth and decay.

The firm control of the senses they regard as yoga. Then the yogin becomes free from all vagaries of the mind; for the yoga is subject to growth and decay.

 

by Swami Chinmayananda:

The method of practice, pursued by a Vedantic student, in order to develop his intuitive power and with that to conic to realize ultimately his own Self and thus become immortal is being explained here. The process of self-development and self-perfection is Yoga; if truly practiced, Yoga promises us its goal to be God-hood. Here, the scripture clearly exclaims that Yoga means, in its practical application, the firm control of the sense organs. A certain amount of sense control comes as a matter of habit to one who has come to live the discrete rules of decent life; such an individual will not like the barbarian in him to walk out of his form, to abscond, or to seduce, although his mind may get tempted by the charms of his neighbor!

An individual is helped much in his self-control, no doubt, if the spirit of his age is one that follows the Dharmas. If we are finding today a greater dose of barbarianism and cruelties among our children who are coming out of the universities, than it was among our forefathers of a couple of generations back, we know for certain the source for the low negativities among the modern educated class. These children, innocent victims of the spirit of the Age, are not to be condemned at all for the life of sensations they are seeking or the voluptuous excesses they are tempted to enjoy! If they are to be con­demned, much more shall we condemn ourselves, for, certainly, we have, through our own commissions and omissions, contri­buted much to the poisonous spirit of the present. Flouting truth and breaking the codes of morality and ethics in conscious acts of our own arrogance, we have allowed the Spirit of our times to fall so low from its ideal peak to reach the lowest depths of today’s desperations.

Fortunately, in the Vaidika Period, they maintained a strict code of the Dharmas. Sanathana dharma was the Spirit of that Age; and the descendants for a long time, till the recent present, have been, by a superfine system of communal living and through an ordered and rigid system of social values, trying to keep up the spirit of Sanathana dharma. If there is yet a greater dose of individual inner joy experienced by the millions in our Indian villages, in spite of their poverty, starvation, death, and disease, we have only to thank the ever-blessing time-tested system of happy living called the Sanathana dharma. Compared with a modern citizen in the greatest of our ·cities, New York, we can definitely say that mentally speaking, the poor Indian ryot, is any day enjoying a greater share of inward peace and joy than his American brother. Santi is the product of contentment and not the ghastly child born of sensuous flirtations with sense objects.

Apologies for this digression. The amount of sense control a man comes to enjoy, therefore, depends much upon the spirit of the very Age he is living in. In the penultimate state of self-­development the individual gains more and more control over his sense organs through his practice of self-control. Certainly, the final and total control, over the Indriyas, comes only from the moment of full realization of the Self (Param drstva Nivartate).

Yoga, to a student of Vedantha, starts with and is continued in self-control. To him, the extreme development of his powers of concentration through a successful achievement in the control of his sense organs is the greatest of Tapas (Eikagryam ParamamTapah).

Control of the sense organs does not merely mean the mere negative idea of taking our sense organs away from their sense­ objects. This is only half the battle. Success can be achieved in self-control only when our minds are fixed firmly in steady concentration and meditation upon the Atman.

At this time of his self-evolution, the Yogin becomes careful and does not allow his mind to fall back into its usual ruts of sensuous thinking. For, a true student of Vedanta knows fully well that unless he is very careful, the control gained over his senses, might at any time, get lost in the severe temptations of passing moments; especially so when the Yagin lives in the same accustomed plane of sense objects. Sruti kindly warns, in her own words, how easy it is even for the highly developed students of Yoga to get themselves lost, in the midst of their own successes, if even for a moment they become careless. Indeed, the Path of Knowledge, dangerous but the shortest, is a Razor Path wherein a slip means total annihilation.

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