kathopanishad-1-1-1-oṃ uśan ha

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Uśan ha vai vājaśravasaḥ sarva-vedasaṁ dadau: tasya ha naciketā nāma putra āsa (1.1.1). This is the first mantra of the Kathopanishad. The meaning of this passage is that a sage, a holy man called Vajasravasa, wanting to reach heaven, desiring the joys of the celestial kingdom, performed a sacrifice called Sarvavedas, also known as Vishvajit. The condition of this particular kind of sacrifice, which is performed for the attainment of heaven after death, is that the person aspiring for this joy of the celestial world should offer in charity everything that he has. Whatever one considers as one’s belonging should be offered in gift, in charity, so that after this performance of the sacrifice one has nothing to call one’s own. One remains stripped of all possessions and the consciousness of having any kind of belonging.

This is a very difficult situation to imagine. Many of us may not be able to summon to our own mental imagination how it would look if we were stripped of every idea of possession and belonging. “I have no house, I have no land, I have no money. There is nothing with me that I can call my possession.” That circumstance in life is a very interesting theme for study in spiritual psychology. The spiritual method of approach to life is specifically a way of placing oneself in a condition in which one is not actually now, but in which one can find oneself some day or the other. It requires a power of imagination. One can imagine that one is a king. It is not merely a joke. The mind can enjoy in sheer imagination the powers and glories of an emperor or it can imagine the tragedy and grief of a beggar because, after all, human experience, whatever be its nature, is a mental operation in the end. All our experiences in life are psychological, a kind of position that the mind occupies in the structure of individual existence, by which experiences follow. Usually, the buffeting of the individual by outer circumstances in the world causes experience. Inner conditions of the body may also cause certain experiences, but we can summon an experience even without anything happening outside or inside us.

Actually, the way of meditation, the principal occupation of the yoga student, is nothing but a circumstance that we are creating in our own mind which does not physically exist in the world. In a similar manner is the purpose of this sacrifice called Vishvajit, wherein one frees oneself from every kind of attachment. This was attempted by the great sage Vajasravasa, who had a son called Nachiketas. This is what the first mantra, the first passage, the first sloka, the first verse of the Kathopanishad tells us: uśan ha vai vājaśravasaḥ sarva-vedasaṁ dadau: tasya ha naciketā nāma putra āsa.