kathopanishad-1-3-4-indriyāṇi

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Indriyāṇi hayān āhur viṣayāṁs teṣu gocarān, ātmendriya-mano-yuktam bhoktety āhur manīṣiṇaḥ (1.3.4). Indriyāṇi hayān āhuḥ: The sense organs are the horses of this body chariot; the jiva is the rider; the buddhi or intelligence, the reason, is the charioteer; the mind is the reins controlling the horses, which are the sense organs; the objects of the senses are the roads along which the chariot is driven. Ātmendriya-mano-yuktam bhoktety āhur manīṣiṇaḥ: The experiencer or the enjoyer of anything is not the Atman by itself, not the sense organs by themselves, not the mind by itself. The mind has no consciousness; it is like a mirror which by itself has no light in it. A mirror does not shine by itself. Only when light falls on the mirror does the mirror appear to shine. In a similar manner, the light of the Atman has to fall on the mind in order that it may work as an intelligent principle. Therefore, the enjoyer cannot be the mind.

How can one enjoy a thing unless there is intelligence, consciousness? Unconscious enjoyment is unthought of. As the mind has no consciousness of itself, it borrows consciousness from the Atman inside. The enjoyer cannot be regarded as the Atman. The senses are also not the enjoyers of anything, because they are insentient in their nature. The sense organs are there even when we are fast asleep, but none of the sense organs can operate—neither the eyes see, nor the ears hear. Even if we touch a person, he will not feel that we are touching him. The senses do not enjoy anything, the mind does not enjoy anything, and the Atman is also not the enjoyer, because it is all-pervading. Who enjoys? Not the Atman, not the sense organs, not the mind. But when we say “I enjoy”, who is speaking this? The Atman does not say it, because the Universal Being does not enjoy anything. The sense organs do not say it, because they have no consciousness, not even the mind. Who is speaking? A peculiar mixture, a blend or an alignment, we may say—a coming together in a peculiar manner of the Atman, the sense organs and the mind—this blend is called the experiencer. The experiencer is an illusion finally, inasmuch as it does not exist by itself. It is only a product by way of a combination of the characteristics of the Atman, the mind and the sense organs. The enjoyer does not exist by itself. Therefore, all enjoyment in the world is false, it is illusory, it is a metaphysical corollary that follows from this fact of there being no such person as an enjoyer except as a peculiar illusory product created by an apparent coming together of the Atman, the mind and the sense organs: ātmendriya-mano-yuktam bhoktety āhur manīṣiṇaḥ. So the wise man says.

The fact that the body is the chariot is to some extent intelligible, and we understand what it means. We also understand that the intellect is the charioteer because the body moves in the direction as prompted by the reason. We also understand, to some extent, that the mind controls the sense organs, the horses. But what is meant by saying that the road is the sense objects?

Usually the objects of the senses are connected very, very mysteriously with the sense organs. In spite of the fact that the objects are not directly connected with the sense organs, we know very well that the sense organs move along the direction of the objects. The objects here become a kind of help to us rather than a hindrance, because the path along which the chariot moves cannot be regarded as a hindrance. The objects become obstacles only when they are considered as things in which the senses have to indulge, but they become aspects of support and they become guiding factors when they are regarded as a manifestation of a hierarchy of guiding forces through whose assistance alone is it possible for us to ascend higher and higher. That the objects are the lowest support, from which lowest rung of the ladder we have to rise gradually higher and higher, is mentioned in the coming verse. The objects are not obstacles, spiritually viewed; but unspiritually viewed as things for indulgence, they are obstacles. Spiritually viewed as the lowest manifestation in the form of matter of the very same substance that constitutes the final universe, in that sense the objects are roads that take us higher and higher and enable us to drive our chariot along them.

The world is a bondage as well as a liberating principle. Wrongly viewed, it is a bondage. Rightly viewed, it is a help. The human being is an enemy when wrongly approached, but the human being is a friend when rightly approached. If we rub our shoulders against a person wrongly, that person is not a friend anymore. But if we humanely approach and compassionately encounter the person, that person becomes a friend. The world is a friend and a foe at the same time; so are the objects of the senses. Here the objects of the senses are not considered as hindrances. They are the manifestations of the lowest level of the descent of the Absolute in creation. This is the meaning that we have to draw from the significance of objects being the road along which the chariot of the body has to be driven by the charioteer, the buddhi.