kathopanishad-1-1-6-anupaśya

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Anupaśya yathā pūrve pratipaśya tathāpare, sasyam iva martyaḥ pacyate sasyam ivajāyate punaḥ (1.1.6): So does the boy Nachiketas speak here. “Father, stick to your word. Do not withdraw the idea that was behind the words that you spoke. I shall go to death. Remember how ancient people stuck to their truth; pratipaśya tathāpare: how people who came afterwards also stuck to truth. Once you utter a word, it has to be stuck to forever. Do not withdraw that word. So please remember how ancient people behaved, and how people who follow the ancient ones also behave. After all, what is there in dying? There is nothing surprising in it, and nothing to fear. Like corn, human beings shrivel, and like corn, human beings rise up into action. When the harvest dries up and is cut, the corn falls on the field. Likewise, decrepit old age catches hold of every human being and compels the body to shrivel to death. As corn is cooked, human beings are also cooked by the power of death. Sasyam iva martyaḥ pacyate sasyam ivajāyate punaḥ: Even if dried-up grain falls on the ground dead, as it were, it is not really dead. It has to rise again into action when it germinates. So is the case with people. People die only to be reborn. After all, what is there if I go to death? I shall lose nothing. I shall be born once again, perhaps as a better man. Therefore, Father, stick to your word, knowing that truth has to be followed, and also knowing that death is not to be feared because death necessarily leads to rebirth, possibly in a better state of affairs.” Either Nachiketas actually spoke these words or he mentally thought them, as the case may be.

There is a linguistic gap between the verse that I read just now and the verse that follows, either due to a lacuna in the redaction of the text, or the original text propounded by the ancient Master has been kept as a guarded secret in certain ways so that everything is not told, while something necessary is told. Secrets of spiritual life are, no doubt, taught by Gurus, but they do not teach every blessed thing. Something they withhold because students are not always ready to receive everything that the Guru knows. In a similar manner, perhaps some little thing between the two verses is kept secret. What seems to be there as the point that is to be read between the two lines is that the soul of Nachiketas leaves the body.

In another edition of this Upanishad that occurs in the Taittiriya Brahmana, the same story is told in a different way. A voice from the sky speaks.

Nachiketas went to the abode of the Lord of Death, and passed three nights in the absence of Yama. He went there when Yama was not at home, and stood outside, starving.

After three days, when the lord of the house came,

he asked, “You have been here for three nights. What did you eat?”

“On the first day, your cattle,” so goes the reply.

“What did you eat on the second day?”

“Your progeny.”

“What did you eat on the third day?”

“All your good works.”

The word used in the Sanskrit language for an uninvited guest is atithi. Atithi is one who comes uninvited. The uninvited comers are sometimes considered as God coming because anything that happens without our knowledge and without our interference should be considered as the work of God, especially if the atithi is a knower of Brahman, a Brahmana. In Nachiketas’ case he was such. He was a Brahmin boy, and very self-controlled and, therefore, very powerful. If such a person arrives at the gates of the house of a person and is not properly received, he shall destroy all the good works of the lord of that house. Like a fire does the atithi come. As a burning flame does the atithi enter the house.