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Kathopanisad

Chapter 2 Valli 3 Mantra 13

Mantra

astī̍ty e̱vopa̍labdhavyas ta̱ttva-bhā̍vena̱ cobha̍yoḥ |
astī̍ty e̱vopa̍labdhasya ta̱ttva-bhā̍vaḥ pra̱sīda̍ti ||

asti iti eva upalabdhavyaḥ = It should be apprehended as simply existent then; tattva-bhāvena = its true nature [is realized] ubhayoḥ = of the two aspects, conditioned and unconditioned, immanent and transcendent; tattva-bhāvaḥ = the true essential aspect; asti iti eva upalabdhasya = of that very self which was earlier accepted as immanent; prasīdati = becomes favorably disposed for Self-revelation.

He should be known to exist as ‘Be’ (Asti) and also as He really is. Of these two, to him (the seeker), who knows Him to exist, His true nature becomes manifest.

by Swami Chinmayananda:

Though the stanza will read as a riddle to the not well­ initiated, it is a direct statement to all those who know the Sastra; and this Sadhu is sure that all of you in this Yagnasala are today really full-blown Vedantins to whom this passage must be auto­matically clear.

The Atma-chaitanya can be realized either as conditioned in Its manifestations, or in Itself and as such without any of Its attributes and therefore as a Pure Witness of all the states of consciousness. At many places during His discourses lord Death had already pointed out to Nachiketa that a meditator meditating upon the symbol of Truth, OM, considering it to represent the lower Brahman, shall attain the joys of the Hiranyagarbha; and if, on the other hand, one meditates upon ‘OM’ as a symbol of the attributeless, Pure Consciousness, the practitioner fulfills his meditations and actually realizes in him the Absolute and the All-pervading Reality. Sree Sankara in his commentary comments upon this stanza in the true spirit of the very text-book.

Many of you might find if you are following the Ramakrishna Math edition or the Yoga Vedanta Forest University Publication of Rishikesh, that both of them had felt almost an unnecessary urge to find a defect in Sree Sankara’s commentary! We, however, find it difficult to accept this amendment which they have suggested.

Sree Sankara comments upon this Mantra and says that the Sruthi is here warning the seekers against meditating upon Truth as manifested with attributes and that she is vigorously advocating the meditation upon the Absolute Truth, unmanifest and attributeless.

According to the above textbooks, Sankara’s commentary falls short of the mark, and a closer hit would have been· gained by directly explaining the Mantra to hint at a warning that the meditator should meditate upon Truth as Existence (Asti) and not as Non-existence (Nasti) as some of the Buddhistic schools of philosophers maintain along with a section of the Indian Logicians (Naiyyaikas).

He who realizes the Atman as the very Essence of Existence has realized the Atman. In this realization, the successful seeker in his meditation comes to contact himself with a plane of cons­ciousness, wherein, he realizes the Source of all Life to be Pure Existence alone. “Existence-in-Itself” is a term used to differentiate the existence of a thing from the existence as such. “Exis­tence of a thing” is well known to us, but here the existence is known in its qualified or conditioned state.

Truth is the subjective knowledge of Existence as such to be the very nature of the knowledge Absolute. The pure state of ‘being’ (Kevala Astitva Bhava) is declared in the Upanishads as the essence of the Self-realization-moment. He who reaches this state of Knowledge reaches the Supreme Goal of life and rises from the seat of meditation, not as the very same mortal who went to it, but as a God-man upon earth.

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