Commentary on the Katha Upanishad–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri

To Know The Self

Defining the Self

Recently I read of a yogi who was asked, “What is the Self?” The yogi answered: “The one who knows the mind.” How simple! And the answer to the query, “Who/What is God?” is equally simple: The one who enables the Self to know the mind and Who knows the Self as its Self.

“He through whom man sees, tastes, smells, hears, feels, and enjoys, is the omniscient Lord.”1 All the doors of perception function through the Divine Presence, not just the Divine Power. Our consciousness is the Consciousness of God, the finite drawn from the Infinite, as the wave draws its existence from the ocean. It is a grave error to decry the experience of our senses as either illusory or somehow degrading. It is our response to sensory experience that is often illusory or degrading. But we are at every moment living in and by God.

But God is not just the Power by which “we live, and move, and have our being.”2 “He, verily, is the immortal Self. Knowing him, one knows all things.”3 He is the all-embracing Consciousness within our consciousness and within all things. If we come to know–enter into the being of–that Infinite One we shall know with His knowing, and therefore know all things. As Saint Paul said: “Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”4 This is the inmost meaning of Saint John’s statement: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”5

“He through whom man experiences the sleeping or waking states is the all-pervading Self. Knowing him, one grieves no more.”6 All states of consciousness are directly rooted in the Self, individual and universal. When through yoga this is truly known, all grief ceases, for the yogi identifies with his all-perceiving Self.

He transcends fear as well, for “He who knows that the individual soul, enjoyer of the fruits of action, is the Self–ever present within, lord of time, past and future–casts out all fear. For this Self is the immortal Self.”7 What an incredible statement! We are thinking that we are poor, mortal beings swept along by forces alien to us and totally beyond our control, when all the time we are the masters of past and future. All our fear comes from our unawareness of this glorious fact. By turning inward and discovering the truth of ourself we will pass beyond fear. The message of the upanishads is inseparably bound up with the necessity for sadhana if it is not to be no more than dead words on a dead page.

Seeing truly

“He who sees the First-Born—born of the mind of Brahma, born before the creation of waters–and sees him inhabiting the lotus of the heart, living among physical elements, sees Brahman indeed. For this First-Born is the immortal Self.”8 The only way to “see true” is to see The True.

When we turn within, to the core of our being, there we will not only find the individual self, the jiva or atman, but we will find its origin, the Supreme Self, the Paramatman, the eternal Brahman. This is the true vision of God–that in which the two are seen to be One, although their distinction is eternal. The word “born” is misleading, for the Self is never born. There does come a time when it becomes manifest in relative creation, but it existed before that “birth.” It is not even right to say that God is our “origin,” for the Self is co-eternal with God. As Krishna told Arjuna: “There was never a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be.”9

The all-embracing Self

It is no news to us that God not only is within all things but in an ineffable way IS all things. But there is a further fact: We, too, embrace all the levels of being on the finite level, just as does God on the infinite level. So the upanishads further says: “That being who is the power of all powers, and is born as such, who embodies himself in the elements and in them exists, and who has entered the lotus of the heart, is the immortal Self.”10 Again, this refers to both the finite and the Infinite spirits.

Therefore we see that in the vision of the upanishadic sages we are not abstract spirits with no connection whatever with the energies of prakriti. Rather, as with God, those energies are our own expanded and “frozen” energies that in time are to be revealed as consciousness and assimilated into our Self–from which they have never really been separate. Everything is consciousness. In the final sense there is no matter or energy at all. Yet, at the moment we find ourselves in the seemingly manifold condition that is necessary for our evolution and ultimate freedom.

We not only mistake our own nature, we mistake the nature of God as well. We are ourselves “the power of all powers,” having willingly embodied ourselves in subtle and gross matter while still living essentially in “the lotus of the heart.” How then can we consider ourselves the servants or slaves of any being–including God? There is no “work of God” in this world for us to do–only our work, the ascension to perfect freedom. There is a theism that is bondage and a theism that is freedom. We must discriminate between the two.

The source

Because it fits better with the foregoing, let us skip a verse and read: “That in which the sun rises and in which it sets, that which is the source of all the powers of nature and of the senses, that which nothing can transcend–that is the immortal Self.”11

The Self and the Supreme Self are both the Chidakasha, the Sky or Ether of Consciousness in which the sun of manifested life rises and sets. The waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states take place within the consciousness that is the Self. The experience of birth and death likewise take place within the Self.

The Self is, like the Supreme Self, the source of the energies that manifest as the various levels of the subtle and gross bodies which we are presently evolving until they manifest as the spirit-self. Nothing is ever destroyed, but is resolved back into its origin, the spirit. This is the great and awesome assertion of the upanishads.

Nothing is beyond or higher than the Self–not even God, for God and the Self are essentially one, as are the ocean and the waves. As long as we dream of separation, so long will we continue to come and go, suffering the pain and fear of continual change. But when we awaken into Unity, all sorrow and fear cease forever.

More from the Upanishads: • An Introduction to the Upanishads
Selections from the Text of the Eleven Major Upanishads from The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal–translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester
• The Isha Upanishad • The Katha Upanishad • The Taittiriya Upanishad • The Aitareya Upanishad • The Chandogya Upanishad • The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad	• The Kena Upanishad • The Prashna Upanishad • The Mundaka Upanishad • The Mandukya Upanishad • The Shvetashvatara Upanishad
Commentaries on the Upanishads by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Katha Upanishad:
1. The Past is the Future 2. Seeing Death, Seeing Life 3. The Good and the Pleasant 4. The Way of Ignorance 5. The Mystery of the Self 6. How to Either Know or Not Know the Self 7. From the Unreal to the Real 8. Finding the Treasure 9. The Transcendent Reality of the Self 10. The Immortal Self 11. The Indwelling Self 12. The Omnipresent Self 13. The Sorrowless Self 14. Who Can Know the Self? 15. The All-Consuming Self	16. The Divine Indwellers 17. The Chariot 18. The Chariot's Journey 19. The Glorious Way 20. To Know The Self 21. The Power of Enlightenment 22. The Infinite Self 23. The Dweller in the Heart 24. The Birthless Self 25. The Shining Self 26. The Life-Giving Self 27. The Eternal Brahman–The Eternal Self 28. The Radiant Self 29. The Universal Tree 30. Hierarchy of Consciousness 31. From Mortality to Immortality
Isha Upanishad:	Kena Upanishad:
1. Seeing All Things in God 2. Living a Life Worth Living 3. Spiritual Suicides 4. The Undivided Unmoving Self 5. The Ever-Present Self 6. The All-Embracing Self 7. Perspective on Life 8. Seeing Beyond the Sun 9. The Final Aspiration	1. The Mover of the Moved 2. Knowing that is Ignorance, and Unknowing That is Knowing 3. The Blessed 4. Approaching Brahman
	Aitereya Upanishad:
	1. The Worlds and the Self
Prashna Upanishad:	Mundaka Upanishad:
1. The Right Beginning 2. The Father and Mother of All 3. The Powers That Make Us “Be” 4. Prana: Its History and Nature 5. The Witnessing Self 6. Meditation on Om 7. Where is the Self?	1. Knowing the ALL 2. Delusion and Ignorance 3. Wisdom and Truth 4. Getting in Perspective 5. Origin and Return 6. Knowing God 7. The Two Selves 8. The God Within, The Sage Without 9. Hail To the Sages!
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:
1. The World and the Self 2. Correcting Our Ideas About Brahman 3. The Dearness of the Self 4. Divine Sweetness 5. The Wisdom of the Wise 6. The Sutratman, the “Thread” Self	7. Janaka and Yajnavalkya–1 8. Janaka and Yajnavalkya–2 9. The Process of Reincarnation 10. The Path of Liberation 11. Some Final Words
Chandogya Upanishad:	Mandukya Upanishad:
1. The Glory of Om 2. The Gods and Om 3. The Sages and Om 4. Four Things God REALLY Wants You to Know 5. The Light Within 6. The Self Within 7. Satyakama 8. Upakosala 9. Svetaketu 10. The Essence of the Mind and Prana 11. Narada 12. Within the Lotus of the Heart 13. Crossing the Boundary 14. Devas and Demons Seeking the Self	1. The Shabda Brahman: Om
	Taittiriya Upanishad:
	1. Reflections On Brahman 2. Necessary Lessons 3. The Source and the Goal 4. Brahman, Creation, and Us 5. The Ladder of Understanding
	Shvetashvatara Upanishad:
	1. The Universe and Its Mystery 2. Realizing God 3. Brahman/Ishwara 4. The Upanishadic Seer Speaks of Ishwara 5. The Prayer of Liberation
PDF Downloads
• Full Commentary on the Upanishads, by Swami Nirmalananda Giri

2) Act 17:28 [Go back]

3) Katha Upanishad 2:1:3b [Go back]

4) I Corinthians 13:12 [Go back]

5) I John 3:2 [Go back]

6) Katha Upanishad 2:1:4 [Go back]

7) Katha Upanishad 2:1:5 [Go back]

8) Katha Upanishad 2:1:6 [Go back]

9) Bhagavad Gita 2:12 [Go back]

10) Katha Upanishad 2:1:7 [Go back]

11) Katha Upanishad 2:1:9 [Go back]