Video 6

6. Katha Upanishad | Mantras 1.1.16 - 19 | Swami Sarvapriyananda

may he protect may the lord protect us both the teacher and the taught together by revealing knowledge may the lord protect us both by giving us the results of knowledge may we attain vigor together let what we know be we'll let what we study be illuminating may we not cavale at each other om peace peace peace so we are studying the cut open issue and it begins with a story the story of the little boy nachiketa who went to the house of death and was given three boons by yama the lord of death ever the good son the first boon he asked for was let my father his anger at me let it go you know his father was mad at him because he kept on asking these pesky questions about whom are you going to give me away to as part of your sacrifice and so on so he said let my father's anger pass let him attain peace of mind let him not be anxious about me when i go back he takes it for granted that yama is going to send him back when i go back let my father recognize me all of that in one boon so he takes care of you know the big picture is that he takes care of this world the worldly affairs he settles it in one booth the second one is going to heaven and for this the background i have told you already it is the ritualistic portion of the vedas so the conventional religion of the time at that time was the vedic religion and the bulk of the vedas are actually about various rituals various fire sacrifices which people who believed in the vedic religion like naji keta's community his his father and others they would perform these elaborate rituals for getting you know a good life here and a good life hereafter so i continue to be the same person there is no vedantic atman brahman pure consciousness enlightenment freedom from the cycle of birth and death no not at all we are going to hold on to the cycle of birth and death that is the reality and they're going to ensure that the life that we have is as pleasant as possible it can't be perfect because human life is not perfect but there is a perfect life possible that's in heaven and there are various grades of heaven and it all depends upon one's good karma so good karma is accumulated merit is accumulated by these vedic sacrifices so vedic sacrifices ensure a good life here going to heaven after death and also a good human birth once that um the tour of heaven is over the vacation in heaven is over remember they understood very well whatever is produced by karma is strictly limited so that which is produced will come to an end that which is generated by karma by action will come to an end um heaven is only relatively long-lasting it's often called eternal immortal but only in comparison to a short-lived human beings so but that also comes to an end and there's nothing particularly spiritual about these people those who perform these that they they will be ethical people upstanding in their society good people people of high character but they are not after enlightenment they are not after you know moksha nirvana whatever you call that they just want a better more moral more ethical much better life here and hereafter so najib asks about how do i go to heaven i see all people around me my father and others they're all interested in this and in fact the reason i've come here is because of that sacrifice my father was performing and the goal of that is also to go to heaven so what is the best possible sacrifice best possible ritual and yama teaches him this ritual uh by which nachi greta if he performs it he'll go to heaven remember ultimately we will see nashiketa he repudiates all of this he is actually a seeker of enlightenment he's the seeker of vedantic knowledge none of this is particularly vedantic this is vedic but not vedantic vedantic is the final spiritual teachings of the vedas found in the upanishads like this but because these upanishads are firmly set in the entire vedic literature you will find the influence of vedic ritualism here also that's why there is this talk of going to heaven performing vedic fire rituals and it's only people who are willing to renounce these goals that is trying to have a pleasant life here and going to heaven hereafter give the whole thing up and try to realize the truth the reality of that infinite reality brahman which the upanishads speak of and najib belongs to that category he he gets all this knowledge but later he will say i don't really want any of this so why did he ask probably because he wanted to transmit it to others and we will see that is the case also the vedic people they follow this sacrifice when we'll see the sacrifice this ritual nachiketa got from the lord of death we will see that it comes to be named after nachiketa though he himself wasn't interested so he probably came and he taught it to others and from that time onwards it's been known as the nachiketa sacrifice muchi keta's sacrifice nachi keta sacrifice in sanskrit so we were in the middle of the story on the 15th mantra where the lord of death was teaching all this to the boy nachiketa teaching the ritual the vedic ritualism the particular fire sacrifice 15 first we have done this but i'll just quickly touch upon it and then go ahead 15th mantra [Music] death that is the lord of death told him of the fire that is the source of the world the class and number of bricks as also the manner of arranging for the fire and he nachi keta he too repeated verbatim with understanding all these as they were spoken then death being satisfied with this said again so what did we see here first there is this term lokadi magnim so the fire which is the support or the source or at the beginning of the world so here the word fire does not literally mean the fire it does not even literally mean the ritual that particular ritual it refers to the deity who is being worshipped the deity is virat now you know from our vedantic studies that uh pure consciousness brahman limited by maya is called ishwara all of it you see why vedantisa is so useful now so pure consciousness limited by maya is ishvara the god of religion saguna brahman further limited by the cosmic mind is called hiranyakarba further limited by the physical cosmos limited means pure consciousness plus maya plus all the minds together plus the physical bodies this entire cosmos there's one consciousness which identifies itself with the entire universe living and non-living that is called virat literally meaning the vast that is what arjuna actually saw in the 11th chapter of the bhagavad-gita where he wanted to see vishwaroopa darshana the the universal form of krishna that's what krishna showed him and that terrified arjun actually he got we used to ask when we studied the gita we used to ask our masters that what kind of spirituality is this he just got terrified and and they said that that if you think about it that that probably would be the case if you are confronted with something so vast the descriptions of this viratas what is arjuna's experience what one of the commentators says we all are experiencing this universe in slices in slices of time and space and people some people right now for example we have this little slice of space wherever you are and virtually you are meeting with all these people on the computer this is one slice of reality before this something else after this something else in a different place some other things you will see other people you will meet so time and space and people we are experiencing the universe in this way now imagine if we you were to somehow see um all the universe somehow in one place all time eternity from beginning of the universe till the end of the universe all at the same time and all beings billions billions imagine all the seven billion human beings who are alive now and the billions who have lived earlier and the billions are going to live later all of them together and and all other living beings too all together and this and this whole amazing unity this being this called the vast the virat it appears before you and then notices you and looks at you what would you feel arjuna says every hair of my body is standing on end it's like a thousand uh sons have risen in the sky openheimer quoted that after the explosion of the first atomic bomb i i have come i am time the destroyer of words as if the rising of a thousand suns in the sky and that's just one nuclear bomb so that is virat and that is to be worshipped now this birat the god of fire agni is a part of all gods are part of this virat as are all beings so god of fire agni is also part of it so that's why virat is called agni but to make sure we understand what is being made what is being implied here lokadi magnim a very evocative phrase the fire that was at the beginning of the words lokadim at the beginning of the worlds the fire that shown at the beginning of the worlds we can call it the fire of creation the deity who was at the beginning of the worlds as the entire universe emerged again the vedic vedantic cosmology we remember vedanta they're supposed to be 14 worlds or 14 universes basically this is one of them what we are seeing now this physical universe all of this at the beginning of all of this is virat who identifies with the entire physical universe and the subtle universe and the causal universe so that tremendous deity is being worshipped how to worship through this fire with this ritual and that was told by that was that secret was imparted by the lord of death to nachi keta ya ishtaka what kind of bricks are necessary yaavati irva so how many are necessary how many bricks i think it's going to be 720 big bricks one of the commentators says and of a particular kind and how are you going to arrange them is a particular um the the sacrificial fire pit the homa kunda has to be arranged in a particular way the fire altar has to be arranged in a particular way all every step accompanied by the chanting of mantras and so on so it's a very complicated um ritual and then what did nasi keta do he was not overwhelmed by all this these days it will be called an info dump information dump um so the assignment heavy assignment i remember in my little jaunt at harvard couple of years back so at this age and that to some place like harvard enormous amounts of reading some professors for example i had this professor professor garfield jay garfield who is a professor of buddhism tibetan buddhism one of the leading scholars of tibetan buddhism today so he used to give enormous amounts of reading 400 500 pages each week for for each particular class nowadays you can actually look up and all this must be common knowledge to you but it was new to me you can actually look up the professors on in the internet so i looked him up i said so i was thinking what's his deal this is too much how can you read so much and there are other classes too and it's not just once every week and and and lo and behold i saw his uh um students were saying that he's beware he is known for his super dense readings this was not ordinary reading just imagine what nagarajuna taught two thousand years ago and the commentators like chandra kitty all of that in old sanskrit technical buddhist philosophy sanskrit in those days commented upon by tibetans in tibetan a thousand years ago all of that translated into almost incomprehensible english and then 300 or 400 pages of that every week i think you have to be young to do that as to see the students young people so smart and so they don't get these enormous piles of books and sit and read and they had their computers all these things on the computers and they they would go through it and i had to struggle at this age to read all that stuff but what the what about nachiketa he's young he absorbed the whole thing somebody compared it to drinking from a fire hose and drink from so far the enormous amount of water is coming they're trying to drink from that nasi keta not only absorbed it but yet he repeated it back last time i mentioned how the traditional teaching goes that you are supposed to memorize whatever the material whichever is whatever is taught in each class and you're supposed to repeat it back had told him in the same way repeated it back and the commentator says with understanding just not wrote memorization with understanding we see something like this in number of spiritual masters there's some connection between spirituality and extraordinary memory also a very cl a very clear memory clear powerful memory recall is connected to concentration and concentration definitely is connected to spiritual life the ability to focus one's attention for long periods of time on one object with with one mind um the danish philosopher kierkegaard had said very incisive observation he said purity of mind is to desire one thing only i was listening to this folk song by the the bowel singers of of bengal so there's a very syncretic tradition in bengal of um these singers who are like monks they are folk singers but all the songs are very mystical and so those songs have hindu elements buddhist elements islamic elements very philosophical um and always elusive they are they point to something they don't say it outright very poetical also and these bowels those who are from bengal they know they have this instrument called dotara which is like a stringed instrument and you strum it and they will dance and sing sometimes you see them on trains performing and um especially if you're going to shantini ketan where ravindranath tagore established his school and university so that's the area this particular bowl was singing i still remember a very beautiful song um that if you want to be admitted to the presence of gura caitanya mahaprabhu you know great master of the vaishnavas that means you have to be of one mind you have to be of one mind and the next line was if you are of two minds or more you will be trapped in samsara so you have to be of one mind that means you have to want god in god only and nothing else then you go through you will be admitted into the divine presence otherwise no otherwise you're trapped in the bazaar of samsara if you have more than one mind one means your mind is scattered focus srirama krishna himself had an extraordinarily absorbent memory he wouldn't read books he was barely literate but he would listen people like plays and songs and he would listen once or twice and he would remember the whole thing swami vivekananda of course there are those famous incidents um once he went he was in meerut which is north of india he was traveling with swami akanda his brother disciple and the story goes that they were staying in a hut and meditating studying and he sent swami akandananda to pick up books for him from the local public library and these book their books are natural science multi-volume book so one after another volumes akananji would go and return the earlier one and pick up the next one bring it back to vivekananda and vivekan they would consume that in one or two days and return that so the librarian said to a countdown on the swami you are not reading these books you're just borrowing them for effect you know you're just showing off you just you can't read all these dense volumes so fast then i can download the said it's not for me it's for my monastic brother vivekananda and uh the librarian said whoever it is is not reading it so canada went and reported that to vivek and viveka and they said let's go and meet the librarian and so they went they met the librarian and they said that i have read all of it and he asked the librarian to bring out those books and ask questions from anywhere and he answered the questions to the satisfaction of the librarian that particular incident i remember because um about a couple of decades back there was a professor who had come from a university in meerat who was visiting our university at belur our college our teacher education college and this lady she said that library is still there and on top of the librarian's chair there's a there's a portrait of vivekananda so vivekananda was here you know and there's a the other well known story in belur mutt itself vivekananda sitting and you know he had this set of encyclopedia britannica in those days i think 10 or 12 volumes that used to be leather bound and forbiddable looking nowadays it's not so impressive you know in a dvd it's all on the clouds so nobody you can't see how impressive the whole thing is unless you put it together in one place um so his disciple sharat chandra comes into the room and asks swami vivekananda i don't think a human being can read all these volumes in one lifetime and vivekananda said what are you saying i have read nine volumes and i'm the tenth you can ask me anything from those nine volumes and charging actually did in the he notes it in his direct his his diary that he picked up volumes at random open pages at random asked those questions and just like najib in many cases he repeated back in the same language he answered all the questions and sometimes in the same language down to the comma and the full stop and so um he was stunned he said how is this possible and we very understand anybody can do it with purity and concentration purity of mind and concentration anybody can do it um by the way there are there have been other people who have famously read the entire encyclopedia elon musk is supposed to have read it when he was a school kid in south africa um so nachiketa repeated the whole thing back to yama yamaraja and memory i remember when we were novices one of our the senior monk the abbot of our monastery told us i still remember one day one night we were walking and he said there are four kinds of memory there's an old sanskrit saying four kinds of memory so cheera vega vega cheera vega vega what does it mean um so cheer up vega this is the worst kind of memory it takes you a long time to memorize and you forget almost instantly afterwards and then there is the opposite um the best kind cheera vega cheer that means you learn fast and you remember it something like vivekananda or others you know and you remember it for a very very long time and then there is the veiga vega learn fast forget fast and then there is the um cheer achiever it takes a lot of time to learn but you do retain what you have learned so these four kinds naji keta obviously was the best kind who absorbed it he was able to drink from the fire hose he absorbed it very fast and uh he was in a he was able to repeat it back to yama and obviously he remembered it because he transmitted it back to humanity when he went back then yama is so happy with him because he was able to repeat back all of that faultlessly 16th verse 16th mantra tama the translation is feeling delighted that high soul one said to him that i sold one is yama and him is naji keta out of favor towards you i now grant you again another boon this fire will be known by your name indeed and accept this multi-form necklace as well okay so yama is very happy with his young disciple and he says i'm going to give you a bonus three boons plus one and this is not to be counted as your third boon since i'm giving it from my uh this is on from my account and what is that boon actually it has two parts one is from now on this fire sacrifice is the best of all fire sacrifices it will be known by your name and that actually happened because in the vedas you find reference of nachi ketagni uh more than once multiple times you have nachiket agni the the fire sacrifice of nachiketa that's what it means or the nachiketa fire um so it existed before him this knowledge existed before nachiketa but afternoon it came to be known by nachiketa's name and the second part of the bonus was shrink now this is a word which is a little puzzling it literally means a necklace so did yama give him a necklace he says this this multicolored sparkling necklace accept this as a special gift so yama i suppose he was bedecked with ornaments and jewels and he pulled out his best necklace and he gave it to nachiketa maybe but it has puzzled commentators it seems slightly inconsequential why would he give a necklace to nachiketa he could have but so shankaracharya for example says it may mean the the entire range of rituals so a variety of rituals that is what this variety of multi-colored you know like multiple gems with various colors a necklace with multiple gems maybe the entire ritualism of the vedas is being referred to referred to here and i'm giving you all this knowledge about the ritualistic part of the vedas the karma kanda various rituals of various times types with various results so these multiple results are the multiple colors of these maybe so or maybe just gave him a necklace that's all what is the result of all of these rituals this kind of ritualism um just a comment here remember here um it may sound non-vedantic because it is non-vedantic it is pre-vedantic so all of this what we are reading here you are not the goal is not enlightenment the goal is not liberation the goal is not to realize that my nature is brahman even god is not the goal nor is devotion the goal the goal is ritualism and through ritualism um the results of these rituals good life here and a good life uh postmortem and the whole thing is somebody was asking well these are just beliefs yes they are beliefs that's conventional religion any kind of conventional religion is basically religion is basically faith a belief system that's why it's called a faith so these are all beliefs that's the uniqueness of advaita vedanta and the vedantic portion which will come later which is directly knowledge we connected to a teaching connected to an to an experience which is constantly available to us are pointing out to a constantly available experience that's very unique it's not dependent on a particular belief but this is definitely dependent on particular belief the vedic people strongly believed in the possibility of these rituals leading to a better life here and to attainment of heaven after death so what is the result of all of this what is the ideal life vedic life but not vedantic life pre-vedantic vedic life a devout follower of vedic rituals what kind of life was this person looking at or desiring or visualizing this is said now this is the best that can be attained through the karma kanda ritualistic portion of the vedas so this is verse number mantra number 17. and even if you don't know the sanskrit you can you notice the vigor of the language the rhythm of the language the figure of the language so the vedic language was pretty fresh at that time became much more complex and elaborated later on but at this period it's simple powerful poetic direct so what is said here one who is connected with the three who performs the nachiketa fire thrice and undertakes three kinds of work crosses over death getting knowledge of that omniscient one who is born of brahma and is the praiseworthy deity and realizing him he attains this this peace fully this piece fully so lots of trees here what do these threes mean and trina performing the naji keta sacrifice which has been taught to perform it thrice so let me start at the beginning the threes have to be rearranged three nachiketa sacrifices connection with the three three kinds of work to be done um so what are these threes there are three pairs three triplets of threes here the first three trivia one must come in contact with three one have a three relationships are necessary for any kind of good life whether vedantic life that's much later much higher even a good fulfilling life in this world in your professional life family life personal mental health all of that so this is a very good psychology a very deep psychology depth psychology is given here three relationships are absolutely necessary and these three relationships have to be healthy what are these three relationships the first one is with the mother so the newborn child and to a at least the child the infant um the the newborn child the infant and the young child up to that extent at least at least up to the teenage years the relationship with the mother is extremely important upanishad says here this just says three but radharani copenhagen makes it very clear matrimon the first one you must have mother you see everybody has a mother that's true but again not true one must have that relationship with the mother in the first several years of one's life and that must be a healthy relationship that must be a nourishing relationship an ideal relationship um that cannot be overstressed nowadays it psychologists have fully accepted this you know child psychology i talk about nurture and nature how much of it depends on genetics how much of it depends on the environment that is set up by the parents or the caregivers there are psychologists now development and psychologists who minimize actually the effect of the you know genetic background the nature part of it most of it is nurture they are saying so a vast amount of it is the effect of the mother swami vivekananda also mentioned this that how much he owes to his mother so a mother who is loving nourishing stable structured strong giving deeply ethical so it this is these are transmitted um almost i would say effortlessly to the child through the mother so matrimony upanishadic says you want enlightenment well you better have a good relationship with your mother when you are when you were young that's very important some psychologist i was reading um an expert on trauma recently very well known gabor mate i think so a tremendous importance on the relationship with mother in early childhood and the opposite can be devastating and not having a mother or having a mother who is not stable not nourishing um not mature enough unfortunately it seems to piling on too much pressure on mothers and it's also unfortunate because mothers are young people when they have children there's unfortunately no training at all for parents there's so much training for every little thing in this world and for parenthood almost no training at all the most sophisticated most demanding kind of job but no training at all so that's mother first second he says the second connected relationship is with the father so uh a male role model of a father in uh in one's life very very important to further development of one's personality and capacities and the third um important relationship is with the teacher acharya one so the video says you need these three relationships good relationships in your life you not only have to have these absolutely and these have to be good really good relationships you must have a wonderful mother a wonderful father and a wonderful inspiring teacher the third part of it the inspiring teacher unfortunately in modern times we have lost track of that even psychologists don't make much of it now unfortunately the reason being that we don't expect the teacher to have any kind of deep relationship with the student nor the teacher to be anything more than teaching you a particular subject alfred north whitehead mathematician philosopher educationist also um he said that he he said that he called it the historic failure of education historic failure of education he said in ancient greece in ancient india in ancient china young people went to teachers to learn about life not just get knowledge about different subjects that too but learn about life what is good what is bad what is the goal of life meaning purpose all of this character and they were inspired every culture has this you know ideal teachers in india of course this went to another extreme altogether guru the guru is very very important in spiritual life but then this has effects across society so the guru who is your teacher in every other aspect maybe your maths teacher your physics teacher or your literature teachers they are also revered in india even down to today uh we those who are from india we know we not only spiritual teachers but even our teachers of secular subjects we bow down to them they touch their feet so that is a very common thing there [Music] so the relationship with the guru though modern psychology doesn't make much of it because today the teacher is not supposed to teach you about life alfred not whitehead says this is a historic failure we have been drawn from that position over the centuries now schools and colleges are not places you would expect they don't think of themselves as places where they teach you about life nor do students go to a professor or teacher expecting to learn about philosophy about the purpose of life or the goal what is right and wrong no somehow education has withdrawn itself from that sphere and it's a huge huge failure he calls it the historic failure of education but upanishad says that's the third relationship and it's true really i mean even though psychology has sort of forgotten that part of it modern psychology doesn't i mean it recognizes the importance of parents very much but not so much a teacher but we all know all of us we still remember that inspiring school teacher in grade school that um that amazing professor we had at uh you know in college we all remember and we were inspired by that so uh in the indian education system at least at the vedic time the idea was you would have apprenticeship you would go not just attend a class and come back you would stay with the teacher and not only learn what is taught in the class but learn from the life of the teacher it's like staying near a fire and being warmed by that fire you absorb in fact is reading somewhere the most the best form the most sophisticated and effective form of education is the apprentice system there was some discussion about that in a textbook i think or a paper wherever you want some high level of expertise to be transmitted not just some basic stuff but high level of expertise to be transmitted you want we would want the student to be apprenticed to the expert so for example you want to learn tennis at you know at the championship level then you don't just go to an ordinary school with everybody else you would also work with some champion or some top-level coach you'll be apprenticed you'd work with them and that's how education was in ancient india you would be apprenticed to a rishi a sage and you would absorb that system of knowledge but also character values morals you'd absorb you'd build up a character there's a saying the children do not listen children do not listen um they they imitate children do not listen they imitate and that goes not only for children for teenagers for young people also grown-up people also it's much easier to download by watching and imitating that which we find inspiring so the teacher that's the third relationship matriman bhavati the student must have nourishing relation with the mother with pitrim nourishing relationship with the father and then acharya one bhavati must have a spiritual a teacher i mean spiritual teacher of course but even before that teacher such a person can benefit from vedic ritualism so uh you must be a very wholesome character a wholesome person in life and then only these things will work for you then what else do you do what do you practice trikar makrit three kinds of work out to be done before you practice these before you start these ritualism so three kinds of work are daily worship of god and um in those days the vedic gods then um swat the regular study of the scriptures and donna philanthropy giving you know nourishing society so and all of these are regular duties so there must be some so many hindu households had at one time it's going away now they had deities at home which were worshiped so that is part of your duty that's one second is study systematic study not just for vedanta students everybody was supposed to systematically study these texts and third would be giving you know giving to the needy giving to good causes philanthropy volunteering which you see a lot of in america for example so this is a sign of a healthy society which has a religion which has education which has philanthropy and every person is supposed to cultivate that such a person would is being asked to perform this nachiketa ritual at least thrice or three times over his lifetime so you perform it three times then you are assured of going to heaven what is the result um you not only perform this you also associate it with meditation on virat who is virat brahmaja i am giving you the meanings of these words brahmaja literally born of brahma not drawn of brahman brahma what is meant here again vedanta is very useful where does god come from in um you know in vedantic uh understanding the ultimate reality is one brahman limited by associated with maya ishwar further that saguna brahman alone becomes hiranyakarpa when it's associated with the entire subtle universe all mines together the cosmic mind another name for hiranya garbha is brahma then that hiranya garbha brahma itself appears as or within quotes born as virat when the physical universe appears so who is born of brahma virat gyaram the word means brahma-jagyam the omniscient virat viratas has all the omniscience of saguna brahman of god so just as god is omniscient so is the cosmic mind omniscient so is this cosmic being virat omniscient devam the lord the lord god idiom praiseworthy to whom you sing hymns or to whom you pray with it learning the meditation on virat nichaya having meditated on virat so you meditate on virat and perform this ritual three times with all the qualifications with the qualifications you must be a person who has had these three nourishing relationships with mother father and teacher and a person who is regularly devout given to the pursuit of knowledge and philanthropic such a person chanti matyam tamethi attains the highest peace again this highest p sounds very vedantic you become enlightened the jihad mukta no be very clear here or it all means goes to heaven after death then 18 he goes on talking about the results of uh vedic ritualism especially the this particular ritual the nachi keta ritual vedic [Music] the translation is one who performs the nachiketa sacrifice the nachiketa sacrifice thrice after having known about the three factors and he who having known thus accomplishes the nachiketa sacrifice casts up the snares of death even earlier and crossing over sorrow rejoices in heaven okay more trees here so one who performs the this sacrifice three times knowing about the three which three is being mentioned here which threes are they referring to the three things which yama told nachiketa what are the three things how many bricks there are what kind of bricks and how to arrange them so that means this person knows how to perform the ritual properly the person who such a person who performs this ritual three times in his lifetime time with one the knowledgeable one here it with one means there's a technical meaning the one who meditates also on bira not only performs the ritual also meditates on virat result he overcomes death and um overcomes sorrow and enjoys himself in the world in the heavenly worlds in swartz in the world a heavenly world here there is this language pura having given up death even before dying so what is giving up death even before dying so the commentator helps us here shankaracharya he says the kind of person we are talking about nourished by a good family of mother and father taught ethics and moral life inspired by a good teacher practicing morality philanthropy and so on in his life and devout worshiping god and all of that such a person overcomes wise by the sense of adharma sin um you know the don'ts in life the things which are not not supposed to be done by an ethical person unethical life is overcome unethical life immoral life is death so for the vedic people physical death is one kind of death but immoral life is another kind of death why would that be equal to death practically it results in that because immoral life deprives us not only of spirituality but of any chance of going to heaven after death so the result is one either goes to one of those lower hills or one is born and reborn again and again rajikita pointed it out to his father if you remember he says why are you cheating yourself father by not giving away the good cows you're giving away the the ones you don't want remember look people are born and they die like um the corn in the field they're born and they die and they're reborn again that means quickly being born and dying jayaswamriyaswa languages being constantly whirled around in the cycle of birth and death not a you know like a breather a breathing space in heaven no die be a ghost for some time and you know scare people on halloween then reborn again so i'm joking but the idea is that one may be whirled around very quickly in the cycle of birth and death if that shows we don't have enough good karma to go to heaven so you overcome death one kind of death is immoral life unethical life um overcoming desire hatred rag advaisha whether this is overcome when you lead a strictly ethical life but then you don't act according to your likes and dislikes i'm not going to go into it but a lot of what's going on on campuses now this is a political dynamite so i'm non-political so that's why i can say it a little bit i have actually seen this with my own eyes during my time at harvard and also i've talked to um you know students in universities here in new york and other parts of america this you know feeling that suddenly i belong to this gender and i make the transition into that gender then i feel again no i the other gender was all right i transitioned back into that all through actually surgery and all of that um how do i put it it's i'm following momentary impulses in my mind a strong feeling that i am like this and then and this is all coming from young people who are in in the campuses now so then there's a whole group of people little political things going on there group of people who will come and encourage you oh make the transition change from male to female or female to male or whatever and then all these people it's you know young people so the peer pressure is tremendous it has a huge effect you will say that do i detect a disapproving tone and not disapproving it's not leading to happiness the whole goal was it would lead to happiness a better life it's not and it's not coming from me it's coming from people who are right now in the midst of all of this and they are saying we see that our friends our classmates who have gone through this not happy so overcoming strong likes and dislikes not being swept away by powerful likes and dislikes in the mind when you have when you build your life around a core set of principles so your decisions are taken not by what i like or dislike at that particular moment but what is my core set of values um so this is that's overcoming another kind of death and he sees upanishadic language is you overcome death before dying so these are the deaths which are overcome before dying and then of course after physical death one goes to heaven and as nachiket has pointed out heaven is a fun place to be in all of this by the way bhaji keta will cast overboard he'll dump the whole thing criticize it sharply very soon then 19 yama brings the whole this whole second boom thing to a close now 19th mantra is [Music] so yama is speaking again and he's saying that o nachiketa this is for you the boon about the fire that leads to heaven for which you prayed through the second boom people will speak of this fire as yours indeed ask for the third boon so the only takeaway here is that it brings this topic to a conclusion and uh clearly nachiketa must have transmitted this to a human beings when he came back to the world of the living because people do talk about nachiketa fire and now the third tomb the third moon is you ask for something else nachiketa this is where the point of the whole story the third wound will be a question naji keta wants to know the secret of atman now what really happens what is our real nature um note that he is very much in the way the vedic culture so he is he buys into the whole thing about multiple lives after death we are not gone yet he obviously sees i've come to the land of death i'm still alive so i even after death we exist so his question is not really what happens after death what's our real nature who am i or what am i what is this thing which is going through births and deaths and what's the point of all of this what's the point of all of this um of this entire game of life and death that will be the question and that's the that's the cue for yama to teach him vedanta which is why we are all here actually so it was a long story and he'll continue because for a quite several mantras yama will test nachiketa whether he's ready and those tests and the qualifications of vedanta are serious we will feel impatient get on with it come on tell us about brahman atman meditation and things the good stuff you're just telling us the boring stuff that be a good boy don't be naughty but that first part is very important otherwise it is a question of what do we really want and we have to be honest within ourselves just really seriously ask ourselves one may have desires but if one makes up one's mind that those desires are petty they will not really lead to lasting fulfillment that much understanding if one has and one makes a decision i'm going to move on even if these desires lurk in my mind the desires will not disappear so fast because the mind has been conditioned for years and by society by lifetime lifetimes so the conditioning is still there but the decision god realization is my goal enlightenment is my goal nirvana moksha the highest thing spoken of by our civilization not just the indian ancient indian civilization every civilization everywhere in the world ultimately they speak about this different names whether moksha salvation nirvana kaivalya men many terms are there in india this sort of became the project of the indian civilization their civilization obsessed with enlightenment and freedom from the cycle of birth and death so that will be the topic that will come from the next class onwards all right quick look at what's there in the chat or peter says congratulations on the book launch yes um thank you although all the credit really goes to [Music] one of our volunteers nikita who is in mumbai now she worked very hard to get those books done those are like long reads they are available on on amazon and by the way somebody asked me i don't have a kindle what do i do you don't have to have a kindle these are free apps you can read it on your computer or your phone you just download the app from from the website it's all free but these are basically the talks which i've given they are being converted by this publication house in india called juggernaut books into these booklets basically ebooks cordelia says your name means virat vishwaroop yes vishwaroop means virat it literally means the world form or there's a 11th chapter of bhagavad gita is the fish darshan shubhadeep says what is the meaning of the word this interesting one i had briefly mentioned this at the beginning of our class the qatar open issue class one meaning would be i who do not know that's one meaning actually so like i am the student i am asking chinoti the word means to know to select to decide to discern vivek also has a similar meaning so scholars have debated about this what is the meaning of the word naji keta but it's a very popular name in india a very popular name for boys rick says are these two statements synonymous pure consciousness limited by maya becomes ishwara pure intelligence limited by maya becomes intelligent and assumes the role of creative intelligence good i don't know where the second one comes from but it's just exactly the first one pure consciousness is brahman limited by maya associated by maya becomes or appears as ishvar ishwara means the god of religion and that's further expanded nicely by this statement on pure intelligence subrata says any reason shankara did not recognize sarvam kalvidham brahman as mahavakya so what is mahavakya those are the great sentences like tattwa massey mahasami that thou art i am brahman um this very self ayam atma brahman is very selfish brahman and one more prajanam brahma this consciousness which we have now this awareness this itself if you know it truly it is brahman this is one from each veda rigveda vedas [Music] literally means great sentence or profound sentence and it summarizes the entirety of vedanta of advaita vedanta all right now this particular statement sarvam kalvidham brahma everything is brahman sounds cool very nice so why isn't this a mahabhakya do you know why what is the definition of a maha the definition of a mahabhakya it must talk about the identity of the jiva in brahman you are brahmana it must tell you that i am brahmana it must tell you tell me that so look at these these mahavakyas tattwa masih that thou art you and brahman are the same reality i'm brahmasmi i am brahman i am atma brahma this very selfish brahman exactly the same meaning the stream of consciousness which you have right now the all the you know the conscious events which are taking place which con which constitute your life that when properly understood is none other than drama so what you understand yourself as in a deep sense that when investigated will reveal your infinitude the infinitude of the individual must be revealed by the mahabharata now what does this statement say this wonderful statement everything is brahman well great but it doesn't tell me directly that i am brahman and therefore it's not not to be counted as a maha kill rick says rain man who's based on a real person named kim peak and that kind of memory he was artistic right rain man was autistic deepa and krishnan say some claim that's why we become that identic memory i'm not sure he doesn't say that he literally has a photographic memory but um she had prodigious memory no doubt about it leonardo da vinci and photographic memory swami vivek on this best believed an identic memories he could memorize a book just by going through it for a single time he could there are a number of such instances big weak papers he loved even charles dickens he read it once or twice i think and he could recite entire pages from the picnic papers mathematician john von neumann was able to memorize a column of the phone book at a single guy and he certainly won von neumann certainly wasn't autistic it was one of the monster brains of the 20th century um his output output was tremendous and very interesting you know this word is worth mentioning now i mentioned the importance of concentration focus of mind swami vivekananda said it is the key to all knowledge and that's the insight we get from patanjali yoga that concentration is the key to knowledge now i read somewhere that look this is not really true how does scientific knowledge come there is a scientific method and there are teams of people working on it and that generates knowledge people publish papers and all of that and finally that's that's how knowledge grows not concentration of mind that's a good thing but that doesn't really lead to knowledge well no i was uh startled to see i was reading a long article on john or von neumann and it said he had a phenomenal power of concentration and he was convinced that no problem could resist the power of concentration it's almost like vivekananda's words no problem could resist his powers of concentration he was convinced that if he just concentrated hard enough on a problem he would be able to crack it which is all just about exactly what vivekananda had said or what the patanjali yoga sutra says that it is concentration and this i found again and again at harvard also i i questioned my physicists i've watched students from grad students to undergrad to scholars at work one common thing i found throughout was exceptional powers of focus uh titanium upanishad expounds beautifully the guru shisha parampara yes the first chapter of the titanium initiative has three valleys sheikh shawwali brahmanandavalli and the um so the first world is about there is a lot about the teacher student relationship rick says so saguna brahman cosmic mind and birat are three different things no no more no three different no more different than us look at us what am i i am consciousness with the uh primaval ignorance which is my state in deep sleep and then the mind kicks in so that's my state in dream state and then i become aware of the body so right now there's the body the mind and the causal state this growth state subtle state causal state all together i the consciousness in association with these three i am this individual server priyananda exactly like that whatever is there in the microcosm is there in the macrocosm it is the same god brahman ishwara who is eternal when the universe is created he appears further as a cosmic mind and when the physical universe appears he appears further or he becomes further associated with the entire physical universe as the cosmic person virat only thing is because the universe goes through cycles ishwara that is consciousness with maya that is eternal but hiranya garbha and virat they are manifested and they disappear from cycle to cycle just like us you are always there but in deep sleep from your perspective there's no external world so there's no physical body there's no thoughts and dreams there's no mind also but you remain in a seed state so ishwar is eternal through time and hiranyakarbha and virat or brahma and virat they manifest in time as the universe subtle and physical and they disappear when the subtle and physical universes disappear but their essential nature is ishwara god and beyond all of this is the reality all of this is just an appearance the reality is brahman which is beyond time rita says carl jung has influenced western psychology long list of archetypes hero creator ruler caregiver unfortunately missed out on mother father and teacher though i mean any psychoanalysis the importance of mother and father are tremendously important teacher yes somehow this seems to be a gap she visited us uh yesterday actually um she's on the east coast now there's a wonderful article on the gap in jung salazar i didn't know that so please take a note of this young and indian thought jung visited bellard mutt by the way carl jung he went to india he met karaman marshi he visited balurmat at that time i think swami shivananda was the president of the order at that time and he has this wonderful dialogue with uh my predecessor here swami pavitranandaji so you can find that on the net jung and pavitra on the dialogue his mother do the chance of rudram purusha suktam come and vedic rituals yes gaurav says i don't i understand that we don't need to do anything to rest in awareness awareness always shines just like tying the donkey do you have any suggestion on how much meditation we don't think japa or other one should target these are big questions we'll have to see that later as the discussion comes there what split will you suggest if you suggested more than one meditation technique so i'm not going to prescribe uh how much japan you should do how much vedantic meditation you do that is very personal and we can see that separately prabhupada says do you have you dropped the idea of publishing drink rishabhi wake talks as a book no that's still there that's a much bigger thing the ones which have been published now are just individual lectures rig rishi viveka we will discuss it later and that's still in the works gloria says jung was very clear on the importance of the mother archetype yes he saw that one's inner image of god was predicated on the parental influences yes shweta says do we not have to use the power of concentration to be focused on the self sense of i am to the full realization yes one pointed on the sense of presence yes and that's an advanced meditation that is vedantic meditation sangeetha says one thing that certainly impressed jung was the stature statue of srama krishna at balurmat he later commented that whatever the word samadhi might mean exactly every indian would associate it with the image of a yogi in that state foreign [Music]