kathopanishad-1-1-10-śāntasaṃkalpaḥ

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

We observed that the boy Nachiketas stood there at the gates of the palace of Yama for three days and nights without taking any food, and without even drinking water. The great Master speaks to Nachiketas: “Prostrations to you, O holy lad. As a recompense, as an expiation for all the mistakes that may be involved in not treating you properly, I offer you three boons.”

Nachiketas now speaks what he would like to have from Yama, the great Master: the first boon, the second boon, and the third boon. In asking, the boy is very logical. The easiest thing, which can be granted at once, he asks for initially. A more difficult thing he asks for as the second boon. The most difficult thing, surpassing the earlier two, he keeps for the last. Perhaps if he had mentioned the last at the beginning itself, it would not have succeeded, and it would have actually defeated the very purpose of the granting of the boons. Wise was this boy, very intelligent, and he knew what he was asking. So what did he say? The first boon is here in this verse.

Śānta-saṁkalpaḥ sumanā yathā syād vīta-manyur gautamo mābhi mṛtyo, tvat-prasṛṣṭam mābhivadet pratīta, etat trayāṇām prathamaṁ varaṁ vṛṇe (1.1.10): “When I return, freed from you, O Lord, to the world where my father lives, may he receive me with a calm and composed mind, free from the anger with which he sent me to you. When you release me from this place, let him recognise me and speak to me cordially, lovingly and affectionately. Of the three boons that you have been good enough to grant me, this is the first one. Please be good enough to give it to me,” says Nachiketas.

This is a single verse whose literal meaning is obvious and clear, and we know what is actually meant. It has a spiritual import. Actually, the Kathopanishad is a textbook for the highest kind of spiritual instruction, a mystical text even, and it has an outer meaning as well as an inner one. Nachiketas, who faced death, could not have been an ordinary person, as facing death is the last thing that anyone can do. Death is said to be the greatest instructor and educator of people. One who has faced it will, to a large extent, know the secret of life, because death is the secret that is hidden from our vision throughout our earthly sojourn. We live in this world minus the consciousness of death. We do not even imagine that such a thing exists in this world. What exists is a conglomeration of sense objects which are expected to give us physical satisfaction, and we consider that life is coeternal and coeval with the joys of life, not for a moment thinking about the possibility of our having to face a thing called death. Nobody thinks of it at any time in the day, though that is what rules the world. It is often said that what we call life in this world is only a camouflage which death has put on. It is an incessant dying that we are experiencing in this world, which we mistake for actual continuous life.

Little pieces of pictures totally different from one another give the impression, illusorily, of a motion picture, with people walking about, speaking, singing and dancing. It is an illusory presentation presented to our senses, which cannot catch up to the speed of the movement of the pictures. If the power of the eyes can be adjusted to the speed of the motion picture, we will see each picture moving separately. Inasmuch as our visual capacity is inferior to the velocity of the movement of the pictures in a cinema, we mistake the isolated bits for a continuous stream of motion.

In a similar manner, the ruling principle in this world is fluxation, which is the very structure of everything. Everything moves; everything is heading towards something else every moment of time. Nothing is; everything is becoming. If this is the law of life and this is what is actually happening in the world, death is actually what we call life, and our knowledge is nothing but a shadow of ignorance. One who has faced death, one who has actually encountered it, understood it and learnt a lesson from it, would not anymore be a human being. He would be a super-person, a superman.

When that person returns to the world, he would be received in a different manner altogether. The reception given by the world to a person who knows the world is like the reception given by a thief to a person who knows that he is a thief. If we mistake the person for somebody other than a dacoit, he will be treated differently. The world treats us as subjects, as servants, as it were, under the clutches of it being impossible to understand how the world is working. But a superman, or a Godman, is one who has insight into the very structure of things. We may call him a jivanmukta purusha if we like, in traditional language.

When we take a bath in the sea of death and come out drenched with it, we view things with a new perspective altogether that has been given to us by the bath of death. We will not be confined to the limitations of the world if we overcome death. When a person who has overcome the tribulations caused by the death principle visualises the world, the world shall receive that person quite differently from the manner in which it receives most of us ignorant persons. It will not anymore be a terrifying phantasm before us. The world will not anymore be a controlling power over us. We shall have no fear from anything in this world, because knowledge is also power. Knowledge of the world gives us power over the world.

At present we are ignorant people. We have no knowledge of things. Neither do we know how we are related to this world, nor do we know what the world is made of, what its internal constituents are. We are helplessly dragged by the whims and fancies of nature, we may say, or even granting they are not whims and fancies, by the laws of nature, of which we are totally ignorant. The days and the nights and the seasons, the heat and the cold and the rain and the drought, and the concomitant difficulties that arise from these events over which we have absolutely no control, make us subjects in this world. We are no more masters of the world, because these problems are the outcome of our not being able to understand how we stand in the context of this world.

When we return to this world after having faced death, it means to say, having plunged very deeply into the constituent death-like features of the world, it shall no more be a fearsome ogre before us. Calm and quiet will be the world before us. It will not be a terrifying medium of material presentations, as it is to us now. We will not be a servant of the world anymore; it shall be our servant. It shall not anymore be an object of our senses; it shall be our friend. Control over things follows from the inner knowledge of the constituents of the objects. Wherever there is insight, there is also strength over the things of which we have an insight.

So spiritually construed, this particular mantra, or verse, is also a hint into the manner in which a great genius, a spiritual stalwart in insight, lives in this world, and how the world reacts in respect of that person. The world is not anymore a snare to that person. All things will be smiling before us. They will not frown at us, as they are doing now. The things in the world will be our friends. The so-called inert matter of this earth stuff will assume an intelligence which will speak to us in the language of friendship and conformity, rather than difference and dissidence.

A superman’s return to the world is an inner significance of this verse, a secret meaning that is hidden here, while the outer meaning is just the literal dictionary meaning which I read out just now: “When I go back, may my father greet me with affection.” This world is our father; may it greet us with affection. May it not tantalise us, may it not subject us to its drama-creating activities. May it not subject us to death. We shall not be subject to death anymore, because we shall have the vision of death much before we return to the world. This is the meaning of Nachiketas having confronted death and wanting to come back to the world unscathed and unaffected by the turmoil characterising the world. This is an inner, secret, mystical meaning which may be read into this verse, apart from the exoteric meaning which is obvious to everybody.