kathopanishad-2-2-1-puramekādaśa

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Puram ekādāśa-dvāram ajasyāvakra-cetasaḥ, anuṣṭhāya na śocati vimuktasca vimucyate: etad vai tat (2.2.1). Puram ekādāśa-dvāram: This city of the human individual has eleven openings. This city of the body has eleven gates, openings, doors or windows, as they may be called: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and a mouth make seven, the navel makes eight, the apertures of excretion and generation make ten, and the central brahmarandra, or the crown of the head, is also considered as an aperture. So there are eleven passages through which something can enter, and also through which something can go out.

Ajasyāvakra-cetasaḥ: This otherwise indivisible, undis-torted intelligence, immortal though it is, appears to be confined within the eleven-gated city of this body. Concentrating on this, meditating on this great truth, the great Lord, ruling from the city of the heart, is so near us that it is not difficult for us to meditate or fix our attention on Him. The moment we are absorbed in the feeling of our unity with the remotest and the nearest Lord seated in the heart, we are immediately liberated: vimuktasca vimucyate. The words used here are vimuktasca vimucyate: The liberated one is liberated. Vimukta is ‘liberated one’; vimucyate means ‘becomes liberated’. What is this two times liberation? Why is it said that there is liberation to the liberated one?

There are two types of liberation, usually known as jivanmukti and videha mukti. Jivanmukti is the liberation one attains even while this body is alive. The connection of consciousness with ignorance is snapped in the case of a jivanmukta purusha, or a being who is liberated in the sense that the person has God-consciousness even if the body is lingering. Due to the prarabdha karma persisting for a while, the body of even a liberated spirit may continue for some time.

There are three kinds of karma, known as sanchita, prarabdha and agami. All the karmas, the potential impressions of the actions that we performed in all the incarnations that we took earlier, are stored in the recesses of the unconscious, which is the anandamaya kosha, the dark causal sheath of our personality. The part of that storehouse intended for experience through a particular incarnation, or a body, is separated from the storehouse, as a merchant who has a grocery shop takes some commodity for retail selling out of the large storehouse that he has got at the back of his shop. This particular body cannot experience all the consequences of every deed that we performed in previous lives. If the pressure of the consequence of everything that we did in all the incarnations were to be exerted upon this body, it would crack in one second. But the intention of the karma is not to break the body. All the potentials of karma should be experienced as pleasure and pain; therefore, certain types of results of action are intelligently separated from the storehouse of sanchita, the vast reservoir of karma, and only that kind of body is manifest by the mind in rebirth which can tolerate the manifestation of that set portion of karma called the prarabdha.

There is another kind of karma, called agami karma. After having been born into this body due to the pressure of prarabdha karma, we again perform new actions. We do some good things, and also some bad things. So further potential impressions created by these new actions are added to the existing storehouse. It is something like a person withdrawing from their bank account, thereby diminishing the balance, but at the same time adding something to it, so that whatever be the quantity taken from it, the storehouse is never exhausted. Thus, there will be no hope of liberation if the process of continuously adding potential karmas to the storehouse goes on and on, endlessly.

Well, the point now, in this context, is that the jivanmukta, who is liberated, has no sanchita karma. The storehouse is burnt up by the wisdom of the Supreme Being. But he has a body which has been given to him for the purpose of experiencing that little portion of karma called prarabdha, and until the momentum or the force of the expression of that prarabdha exhausts itself, the body will continue. A jivanmukta is such a person who has a body because of the continuance of the prarabdha karma for a while, until the exhaustion of the force of the prarabdha, but he will not be taking birth again because the storehouse of potential is destroyed, burnt by the fire of wisdom. Thus, vimuktasca vimucyate: The person who is so liberated individually as the jivanmukta purusha again becomes liberated as a disembodied videha mukta purusha. When the prarabdha karma is over, the body is cast off. He is not a person moving as a knower of Brahman; he becomes Brahman itself. That is the implication of these two words, vimuktasca vimucyate: The liberated one is also liberated. That is, liberated while in the body, he is afterwards liberated without the body. Embodied salvation becomes, in the end, disembodied salvation, which is the final goal. Etad vai tat: “This is the answer to your question, Nachiketas.” Yama is driving the point again and again.