kathopanishad-2-1-11-manasaivedamāptavyaṃ

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Manasaivedam āptavyaṁ neha nānāsti kiñ cana: mṛtyos sa mṛtyuṁ gacchati ya iha nāneva paśyati (2.1.11): It is not possible to envision this integral reality by ordinary means. It requires a great effort on the part of every one of us to chasten ourselves in order that we may become fit instruments for the vision of this glory. Otherwise, the little comforting sadhana that we may be performing in our daily life may not be sufficient. With all the effort of our mind and intellect, we will not be able to behold the unity behind things. We see only duality, duplicity, multiplicity. All unwanted things are seen in this world. What do we see when we read a newspaper, for instance, every day in the morning? All unwanted things, all useless stuff, all dirt and garbage, all horrible things are what we see, and where is the instrument in our personality that can behold the unity behind them?

The perception of the ugliness of the world is the effect of the operation of a lower instinct operating in us, the lower self, as they call it, which works through the sense organs that are our taskmasters in misguiding the jiva. They are dacoits of the first water. These are the friends that we have. Tasmat jagrata, jagrata, says Sankaracharya. There are thieves here in the form of the sense organs, and they want to deprive us of the treasure of our wisdom by compelling us to see what is not there through the distorted sense organs. And what do we see in the world? We see the world exactly as it is not. It is the topsy-turvy, erroneous vision of the sense organs that makes us feel that the world is wretched. God has never created a wretched world, because if the effect, which is God’s operation, is so bad, God should also be a little bad indeed because whatever is in the effect should also be in the cause. If God is perfection, glory, wonder, honey and milk, eternity and infinity, how could such a Being create a dirty world full of evil? Such a thing is impossible. It only shows that our mind is not prepared for the insight that is necessary to behold the glory in this otherwise wretched world. Wretchedness is not actually of the world; it is the wretchedness of the process of perception.

Hence, a faculty of subtle, purified, concentrated means is necessary in order that the depth of unity can be seen in the midst of the diversity of otherwise unwanted things in the world, as it were. Actually, many things do not exist here. Neha nānāsti kiñcana. The Upanishad tells us the multiplicity that we perceive in the world is a false perception. Many things do not exist. There is only one thing. As a unity, as a blend, as a totality, as a oneness that the world is, we have to see it, but not behold it as a distracted, isolated, fractional, divided world, because the world is not so divided as we wrongly perceive it through the senses. But if we persist in seeing the world as so divided, and cannot visualise the unity behind these things if we are not endowed with that insight which is supreme and superb, what will happen to us? From death to death we go: mṛtyos sa mṛtyuṁ gacchati. Who goes from death to death? Ya iha nāneva paśyati: He who sees variety, multiplicity, and absence of unity. Therefore, may one be guarded.