kathopanishad-1-1-14-pra te bravīmi

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Pra te bravīmi tad u me nibodha svargyam agniṁ naciketaḥ prajānan, anantalokāptim atho pratiṣṭhāṁ viddhi, tvam etaṁ nihitaṁ guhāyām (1.1.14): The great Master speaks, “I shall gladly give it to you. Take it. My dear boy, listen carefully to what I am saying. This heavenly universal fire is now the object of your quest, and I know what it is. I shall grant this boon to you in the form of instruction in this knowledge. What happens if you gain this knowledge? Do you know? Endless will be the suzerainty that you will gain. Power unlimited will be in your possession, and you will be established in the very root of the world—pratistha.”

Actually, according to the commentaries, this pratistha, or the root of the world, is the Virat, or the Vaishvanara-tattva, which is also known as the Vaishvanara-agni, details of which meditation are described in the Fifth Chapter of the Chhandogya Upanishad. This great root of the world, the knowledge of which will make one endowed with immense power and endless suzerainty, is not just spread out outside. It is also in the deepest recesses of one’s heart.

The secret of this wisdom is indirectly revealed, though not clearly and publicly, when it is told to us that this universal root of the world is also in the heart of every person. The secret lies here, that the attainment of this universal suzerainty is tantamount to acquiring control over one’s own self because it is the essence of our own being, while it is also the essence of the whole world outside. How would we envisage it? The difficulty is in the method of adjusting our mind, or consciousness, for the purpose of this great meditation.

As I mentioned, the Chhandogya Upanishad goes into great detail in regard to this subject. Some learned people, six in number, went to Ashvapati, a great Master, who was the king of that country. They were all already well learned, in a way they were brahmasrotriyas, but they had great difficulties. They had doubts in their minds as to what this universal Atman is. How would we think the universal Atman in the mind? When we use the word ‘universal’, we imply that it is as large as the whole of creation, or even larger than that. This means to say that is very, very far from us, unimaginably remote. But at the same time, it is said that this unimaginably distant so-called something, dimensionless infinity, we may say, is inside us. This is a startling feature of this instruction. “If you say it is within me, I understand something is inside me. Or if you say it is everywhere, I also understand that. But if you bring these two features together, I cannot understand.” So these great men had to go to Master Ashvapati, and he gave them the secret of this meditation. Yama, the Master who teaches Nachiketas here in this Upanishad, mentions once again that the root of the world—which is the cause of unlimited rulership of the whole world, of the cosmos—this root is within us.