kathopanishad-2-3-14-yadā sarve

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Yadā sarve pramucyante kāmā ye’sya hṛdi śritāḥ, atha martyo’mṛto bhavaty atra brahma samaśnute (2.3.14): When all your desires are gone, you realise Brahman at once. How many days will you take to realise Brahman? So many days as you will take for eliminating all your desires. You have to make a list of all the desires that you have got, even if they are a hundred. Every day eliminate one of them—one, two, three, four. Finally, one or two or three or four may be remaining. They have to be handled like arch enemies, with proper equipment of confrontation, with great effort, perseverance, and love of God. When all the desires are plucked out from the heart, the mortal becomes immortal instantaneously. Waking up into God-consciousness does not take days and nights or months and years. It is an instantaneous illumination that takes place, as waking takes place when sleep ceases. Though the sleep may have been a very long darkness, the waking up is an instantaneous occurrence, and it is timeless. Waking does not take time at all.

Atra brahma samaśnute: Where do you realise Brahman? Do you go from here to a distant place? Atra: Here itself you realise Brahman, in this very place, at this very spot where you are sitting. In this very hall you realise Brahman, because it is not any distant place. The consciousness of the elimination of all desires connected with this body and relations with the world has to be the precondition for your acceptance of God as the only reality.