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Kathopanisad

Chapter 2 Valli 1 Mantra 5

Mantra

ya i̱mam madhva̍daṁ ve̱da̱ ā̱tmāna̍ṁ jīva̱m anti̍kāt |
ī̱śānam bhūta̍-bhavya̱sya̱ na̱ tato viju̍gupsate |
e̱tad vai tat ||

yaḥ = anyone who; veda = knows; antikāt = proximity; imam = this; ātmānaṁ = Self; jīvam = the sustainer of the vital energies; madhvadaṁ = the enjoyer of the results of actions; īśānam = the ruler; bhūta-bhavyasya = of the past and the future [and also the present]; tataḥ = thereafter [knowing which]; na vijugupsate = fears nothing (shrinks away from); etat vai tat = this is indeed that.

He who knows this Atman, the enjoyer of honey, the sustainer of life and the lord of the past and the future, as very near he fears! no more thereafter. This is verily That.

by Swami Chinmayananda:

Not only does such a perfected one go beyond the source of sobs and tears, but shall, says this Mantra, reach the Domain of Fearlessness.

Madhvadam (the enjoyer of honey) – Honey here stands for the good fruits of meritorious acts performed by the ego-centric Jivas. The Atman, Pure Consciousness, is said to be here the cater of honey; meaning that He is the enjoyer of all the good luck that accrues to one as a result of noble acts of kindness, mercy and love, performed in earlier states of existence.

This statement, in fact, if understood literally, would go against the grains of the very philosophy of Vedanta, as Atman is neither an enjoyer nor a doer. In case we accept the Atman to be an enjoyer, in Pure Consciousness which is One-without-a-second, how can there be the ‘enjoyed’ and the ‘enjoying’ separate from the eternal Enjoyer?

Aman is the Intelligence that illumines for us both the acts of commissions and omissions, meritorious or otherwise. It is again the Light Principle that illumines for us both our joys and sorrows. The sun may illumine equally a scene of murder at one place and-a scene of a great Yagna at another place; but the sun never gets defiled by he blood nor purified by the Mantras. Similarly, the Atma-Chaitanya is only a Witnessing Light of Pure Intelligence lending Its consciousness to all acts committed by the ego-centric vain Jiva during itself forgetful, delusory transactions in life. But here the Upanishad calls the Atman as an enjoyer of the fruits of the good acts, only in its conditioned aspect. We have already found that the body-mind-intellect-equipment in itself has no life of its own, it being made up of mere dead matter. It is the spirit in us that lends to these overrings a simulacrum of life.

To make this point clearer let us take an example. The glass bulb or the filament has no capacity in itself to illumine objects in a dark room. But when a required quantity of electricity is allowed to flow through the same filament, the bulb gains a special capacity to illumine the objects of the room. In fact electricity as such does not illumine the room; it is the glowing filament in the bulb that gives us the light. Yet, don’t we in our transactions say that the room is lit by electricity? It is exactly in a similar way we have here the statement that Atman is the enjoyer of the fruits of actions; Atman as conditioned by the mind, intellect, and body, is actually what is meant here.

One who realizes his Atman “henceforward fears no more”. Where there is Raga (attachment) there Bhaya (fear) and Krodha (anger) co-exist. When, as we have seen in the last Mantra, a barbecued soul has reached the State of Desire lessness he has no more attachments with any particular objects of the world, and, naturally, there cannot be in him any sense of fear. He has in his true wisdom realized the shadow-nothingness of his dream body, and so does not fear even death which to him is only an escape from his own self-created body cocoon!’! He has no attachments even with his body, He is perfectly above all body consciousness. This verily is that Brahman, which thou hast asked for.

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