kathopanishad-2-1-12-aṅguṣṭhamātraḥ

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Aṅguṣṭha-mātraḥ puruṣo madhya ātmani tiṣṭhati: īśāno bhūta-bhavyasya na tato vijigupsate: etad vai tat (2.1.12): This Atman looks like a small flame in the cave of the heart. The vast range of the light of the sun pervading the whole sky looks like a little twinkling streak when it passes through a small aperture of a screen on the window of our house. The vast space, which is endless in its expanse, looks like a tiny spot when it is seen inside a little tube. Likewise, the universal Atman may appear to be like a little speck of radiance within the heart of a person, sometimes considered as the lotus of the heart.

The body is the outermost crust of human personality. Inside the body is the subtle body, consisting of the mind, intellect, sense organs and prana. Then there is the karana sharira, or the causal body, which envelops the soul. This soul, which is otherwise everywhere, manifests itself in the human being only through that instrument which is capable of revealing it, or manifesting it, in the same way as the vast sunlight can manifest itself only as a little beam because of the smallness of the aperture through which it passes, and the vast space may look very little in quantity and expanse on account of its being imagined to be contained within a small container. Likewise, there is a little sattvika aperture, as it were, in the heart of a person. The heart is described in multifarious ways in the scriptures of all the religions of the world. Especially in the Eighth Chapter of the Chhandogya Upanishad, we find a special elucidation of the heart, which is called there as the city of Brahman, the abode of God.

The abode of God is our own heart, but when that infinite God occupies a space that the human understanding can occupy, He looks like a little thumb-like flame. Aṅguṣṭha-mātraḥ puruṣaḥ: So small He is. We sometimes compare the soul of a person to a little flame, which at the time of death is said to leave the body and fly. You must have seen pictures drawn by artists of the way in which the soul is said to depart from the body. Actually, the soul does not depart; it is the body that departs. The body is shed by the soul. As we cast off a cloth that is old and worn out, so does the soul shed and cast off the body, the apertures, the encrustations and the sheaths that are not anymore of utility to it. It stands isolated.

Nevertheless, generally in the case of people in the world, the soul does not become a universal expanse after death. It does not mean that the space becomes vast. In the case of the soul of the individual, there is a marked difference. If the walls of a pot are broken, the little space appearing to be inside it assumes a universal shape at once; and if the curtain is removed, the sun assumes its original expansive form of radiance. But the soul does not become universal when the body is cast off. It maintains its limited, isolated individuality in a subtle form. That is to say, death of the physical body does not mean liberation of the soul. The soul is not automatically liberated when the body is cast off. The attachment which it had to the body through the mind and the sense organs continues to be there because of the fact that, at the time of death, the mind follows the soul. Manaḥṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇi prakṛtisthāni karṣati (B.G. 15.7), says the Bhagavad Gita. The soul drags with it by force, as it were, the mind and the potentials of the senses, and as it is even then attached to them, the limitedness of the soul continues. The jivahood is still there after the passing of the body, the leaving of the body. The misery of the individual continues even if the body is thrown out.

The idea is that the soul appears to be limited and small, as a thumb-like structure, on account of its apparent association with the limited aperture-like manifestation of human understanding through the intellect and the mind, principally the heart. Madhya ātmani tiṣṭhati: In the centre of our being it is located. The heart is the centre of our personality. Īśāno bhūta-bhavyasya: Otherwise, this great Lord, who is parading as a little soul in our own heart, is the master of all that is past and future. Na tato vijigupsate: Knowing this, nobody will shrink from anything. Etad vai tat: “This verily is that, Nachiketas. Here is an answer to your question of what happens to the soul,” says Yama.