The temptations which the scriptures speak of in our search for reality are nothing but the reactions set up by the desires of the mind and the senses. The desires are not exhausted even if there is a tentative discriminative faculty arisen in us. You may be aware of the existence of a higher reality which you have to aspire for—vivekashakti might have dawned in your mind, a sense of vairagya or dispassion for appearances also might be there—but this will not do. The personality of the human individual is deep, far deeper than what it appears on the surface. A withdrawal of oneself from physical contact with objects of sense does not mean renunciation, totally. If you abstain from physical contact with objects by living in a sequestered place, the desire for them will still remain. The liking for the objects of sense is a mental condition which is different from actual physical contact with the objects, so that even if you are in a holy place like Badrinath or Kedarnath, you may be contemplating in the mind the old pleasures that you have experienced and inwardly dream, “Oh! I am far from them”. The rasa or the taste for enjoyment does not cease, even if you are physically weaned away from objects. This is condemned in the Bhagavadgita as hypocrisy:

karmendriyᾱṇi saṁyamya ya ᾱste manasᾱ smaran
indriy ᾱrthᾱn vimῡḍhᾱtmᾱ mithᾱchᾱrᾱḥ sa ucyate.

Futile is the attempt of that seeker who withdraws his physical senses from contact with objects in the name of vairagya or austerity, but allows the mind inwardly to contemplate them in some form or the other. He will not succeed. A husband may be away from his wife, but thinking of his wife. The mother may be away from her son, but the mind is thinking of her son. This will not yield any benefit in the way of virtue. What you think in the mind is more important than what you physically come in contact with. Yoga is a mental process, a psychological effort; it is not a physical activity of the body. So, let us not mistake physical conduct for virtue or the otherwise of it. Man is mind, and mind is man. The study of mind is the study of man, and the study of man is the study of mind. Your physical features do not represent you wholly. A mere assessment of what takes place on the conscious level of our personality will not give us the knowledge of what we are essentially. The desires of the human being are buried deep beneath the conscious level. So, even if you are consciously free from desires, you cannot be free from them subconsciously. The subconscious seeds of an urge for sensory gratification set up reactions in the counterpart of the cosmos outside and come as temptations. What happened to Nachiketas will happen to everybody. What happened to Buddha will be our experience also, and everyone has to pass through the same ‘strait gate’ as the Christ put it.

Narrow is the passage to the Eternal. You cannot take your bag and baggage with you when you go there. You cannot take your purse with you. You cannot take your clothing, even. You cannot take even this body through that narrow gate. You have to drop everything. Such is the subtlety, such is the narrowness, such is the sharpness of that path—kshurasya dhara, as the Katha Upanishad would tell us. Like the sharp edge of a razor or the cutting point of a sword is the path of spirituality. Therefore, the more cautious you are in the understanding of your own nature, the better it is for you. The less arrogant you are, the better it is for you. An assumption of knowledge on the part of the human individual or a seeker of Truth is not going to help him in his pursuits. Humility is the first prerogative of a true search for knowledge. Vidya (knowledge) and vinaya (humility) go together, says the Bhagavadgita. But, unfortunately, the more is the learning, the more is also the arrogance of man today. You want a pedestal, a higher seat, because you are learned; but the path of God is different from the way of the world. Study the lives of great saints like St. Francis of Assisi, the great masterminds like the Alvars and Nayanars of our own country, great saints like Purandaradas, Tukaram—how they lived. They possessed nothing. They wanted nothing. They never craved for position and prestige or name, not even a thanking word from anybody. They were the lowest of individuals from the point of view of the human evaluation of values, but they were the greatest persons from the point of view of the higher values of life. It is difficult to tread the path of yoga. Nothing can be more difficult than this arduous struggle of the soul.

The urges within our personality come as temptations of various kinds and types. When you tread the path of yoga, the first thing that you will face or encounter is a temptation which you cannot resist. No one can resist temptations, because temptations come not as temptations. The devil does not come in the form of a devil; otherwise you will recognise it. The devil comes as a saint, and you mistake the devil for the saint. The urge for sensory gratification, the urge for satisfying the ego comes as a necessity of life. “Oh, it is a necessity,” is what you argue within yourself. It is a need. It is not a temptation. It is a virtue. Attachment will be mistaken for compassion. Passion and greed will be mistaken for the needs of life. Egoism will be mistaken for altruistic activity. One thing can be mistaken for another. The world will be mistaken for God. Pain can be mistaken for pleasure. Illusion can be mistaken for realisation. All these are encounters on the path.

This is why we say a Guru is necessary. The Guru will tell you where you stand and what is happening to you. One cannot know what will happen to oneself the next moment, and when an encounter comes, one cannot know what is actually before him—whether it is a Ravana or a sannyasin. You cannot find out. He was Ravana himself but he appeared as a sannyasin and poor Sita got entrapped. So Yama tempts Nachiketas, and we shall also be tempted. We are being tempted even today, and just now also, and we do not know what is happening to us. It is only when we refuse the temptations set before us that illumination dawns and practical discrimination between appearance and reality arises within us. Then it is that we begin to accept the existence of a value and a reality beyond what is presented to the senses.

The stage of withdrawal and experience described in the Katha Upanishad includes at least three fundamental levels of the passage of the soul. The lowest and the first experience is the world of perception through the senses, which is represented by the sacrifice of Vajasravasa Gautama. The second is the rise of aspiration within the individual, symbolised in the search for Truth in the mind of Nachiketas. Then comes the temptation, and then comes the revelation of knowledge. This knowledge of reality also comes by stages. It does not come suddenly like the rise of the sun at six o’clock in the morning. It has stages, and it comes very gradually; as they say in a proverb, while knowledge comes, wisdom lingers. It does not come as quickly as ordinary scientific knowledge comes. From the external, the souls gradually rise to greater and greater approximation to reality by self-discipline, tapas or austerity, represented in the three fasts observed by Nachiketas. Nachiketas fasted for three days and nights.

Nachiketas is the seeking soul, and the three fasts are the threefold discipline of the human individuality. The entire yoga is here given in a nutshell. The three levels of the human individuality, corresponding to the three levels of the cosmos outside, are to be disciplined. They should not be given a vent or a long rope for indulgence externally. The physical, represented by sensory activity, the psychological, constituting emotion, will, etc., and the spiritual, are the fundamental stages of the ascent for which sake Nachiketas, the individual soul seeking Reality or Truth, observed a fast. What is a fast? It is withdrawal from indulgence—the gradual subdual of the sensory powers.

The bodily individuality is represented by sensory activity. Our bodies are weak, incapable of meeting the onslaught of natural forces on account of our yielding to the urges of sense. We cannot bear heat, we cannot bear cold, we cannot bear hunger, we cannot bear thirst, we cannot bear a strong wind, we cannot bear a flood. Natural forces are uncontrollable. Nature in its physical form has been estranged from the human personality on account of the yielding of the individual to the senses. The senses create a gap between the individual and the world outside. They tell you that the world is outside you, unconnected with you and you have to dread it, and sometimes cringe before it. You know that the world is more powerful than you in every way. We seem to be a nobody before it. We are afraid of all kinds of natural forces. So the fast of the senses, which represents the first discipline of a level of the human personality, releases such energy that you master the physical forces of nature. That is the first boon granted to Nachiketas: “When you return to the world, you will go as a master and not as a servant.” The world will recognise you as its friend and not as its enemy. The realised soul can come back to the world after a type of realisation, and when the realised soul comes back to the world, the world receives that soul in a different way from what it did earlier. The world treats you in a particular way now, in your state of ignorance, but will treat you differently when you meet it with knowledge. That is why Nachiketas asked, “When I go back to the world, may I be greeted with recognition and not with wrath and anger.” “Yes, may it be so,” said Yama, the Lord of Death. This means to say that even by the reception of a single boon, let alone the other two, you will become a master of the physical forces. The world will not threaten you any more. It will become your friend. At present the world is not our friend. That means we are afraid of it. The world is not our friend today, at this present moment of time, because the senses have created an attitude of estrangement between us and the world. “If you come to my residence and I treat you as a stranger, you will also treat me as a stranger; but if I treat you as a friend, as if I know you from eternity, you will be so immensely pleased and will treat me as your friend.” The world will treat you in the same way as you treat it. If you regard it as external to you, it will also treat you as external to it. If you say you are a foreigner, the world will tell you, “You are also a foreigner, come with a visa and passport, as you have no place for me. You get out,” it says, and you get out afterwards, one day or the other. You die because of estrangement of personality from the world—otherwise there would be no birth and death. If you unite yourself with the forces of the world, there will be no birth and death. Births and deaths are the consequence of estrangement of personality from natural forces. So the first day’s fast of Nachiketas, physically through the withdrawal of the senses, created a reaction from the master of yoga, Yama, in the form of bestowal of a boon with such energy that it received the world as an organic part of its own self. The physical world became a friend of Nachiketas. This will happen to us, also. We are also Nachiketas, individually. Everyone is a Nachiketas, because Nachiketas is only a representation of a seeking soul. So when you control your senses, what will happen to you? The world will receive you as its friend and well-wisher. The consequence of sense-control is abundance in every way. You will not lack anything in this world, afterwards. All things will flow to you like rivers entering the ocean.

ᾱpῡryamᾱṇam acala-pratiṣṭhaṁ samudram ᾱpaḥ praviśanti yadvat
tadvat kᾱmᾱ yam praviśanti sarve sa śᾱntim ᾱpnoti na kᾱma-kᾱmī

says the Bhagavadgita. As rivers enter the ocean from all sides, all that you need will come to you like a flood coming from different directions. You need not run after the world; the world will run after you. You need not ask for anything from the world; it will come to you automatically, without your asking for it. This is the first boon, due to the first tapas of Nachiketas.

The second tapas is of a psychological character. This second day’s fast of Nachiketas represents the subdual of the mind, not merely of the senses. When the mind is disciplined properly, it gradually gets attuned to the cosmos. This is the secret of the Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya which came to Nachiketas as a boon from Yama. While the control of the senses physically makes you a friend of the physical universe and all material things flow to you in abundance, and you become the richest of persons, literally, you become a master of the psychological world also—not merely of the physical world or of material things—in the higher stage of mind-control. The second fast of Nachiketas is therefore a psychological fast of the mind and all that constitutes the psychological stuff—mano-buddhi-ahamkara-chitta, as it’s called. All the aspects of the psychological organs are disciplined in the second form of tapas. While the physical body is estranged from the physical world on account of the activity of the senses, the mind is estranged from the Cosmic Mind on account of the spatio-temporal linkage. You think in terms of space and time, objectivity or externality, and therefore you are estranged from the Cosmic Mind. In such a condition, even God does not seem to help you. Your prayers do not seem to reach Him at all. Why? Because you have cut yourself off from the source of cosmic energy by thinking individually, by the egoistic affirmation of personality. The second tapas or discipline of Nachiketas, the seeking soul, means, thus, the uniting of the individual mind with the Universal Mind, the result of which is the second boon bestowed by the Master of yoga, Yama.

Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya represents the knowledge of the cosmic fire. In certain philosophies, fire is regarded as the Ultimate Reality. For example, there was a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus by name, who considered cosmic truth as a form of fire. This is not an original thought of Heraclitus alone. In India also we regard agni, fire, as the symbol of the Ultimate Will. The very first mantra of the Rig Veda is an invocation of this fire, not the physical fire with which you cook your meal but the universal fire which is a representation of cosmic energy—the Vaishvanara-Agni. Aham vaisvanaro bhutva praninam deham asritah—“I, the Supreme Soul, work as the Vaishvanara-Agni within the individual,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Bhagavadgita. A knowledge of this Vaishvanara-Agni, which is the cosmic form of the Creator, brings universal abundance. This knowledge of the supreme creative principle came to Nachiketas as a result of the fast of the psychological personality. From the external, you go to the inward, and then to the universal.

The external world has become your friend. Now the inner world also becomes your friend. Wonderful is this experience. Sometimes, this inner experience of the universal is mistaken for the ultimate realisation itself. But it is not the ultimate, really. There is one more step, which was the point of the third question of Nachiketas, which comes later on, about which Yama was very reluctant to speak—and so rightly.

The second boon represents the cosmical identification of the individual psychological unit. You become cosmically aware of things. While in the first stage of your union with the physical forces of nature—the result of the first tapas, the first fast, the effect of your attunement with the physical universe—you become abundant in material possession, rich in every sense of the term, now, in the second stage, you become rich in knowledge, also. A yogi is rich physically, and also psychologically. A yogi is not a poor person. He has everything with him. Even the richest man of the world cannot be equal to the yogi in the wealth of possession. He can command everything in the world. H. H. Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to say, in a humorous way, that a sannyasin has no bank balance, but he can operate upon the bank balance of every person. A sannyasin has no motor car, but he can travel in anybody’s car. Well, in this humour he gave out a great truth. The yogi lacks nothing, even materially. Do not think that when a yogi aspires for only moksha, he is poverty-stricken in the world. Not so. He is rich even materially, physically. He is alive to every value in life. He is not dead to anything. The first fast of Nachiketas through the control of the senses, made him physically, visibly, healthy and rich in every sense of the term. Now, the second fast of the psychological organs makes him rich in the wisdom of cosmic existence. Both material prosperity and the prosperity of knowledge are bestowed upon the individual. You have everything visible, as also invisible. Lakshmi and Saraswati are under your control, as it were. Lakshmi represents material prosperity, and Saraswati the prosperity of wisdom, knowledge, learning, scholarship— omniscience itself. So a yogin becomes a master of the physical forces. All abundance is poured upon the yogin from all sides of the cosmos, and he begins to know all things. Knowledge and power are the immediate results of the practice of yoga. You become abundant in knowledge and wisdom, and abundant in power and control over the nature of things. A yogin is immensely powerful and immensely wise.

So, the first two stages of the experience in the practice of yoga are thus described as physical mastery and psychological mastery, attunement of the physical and the attunement of the psychological. Now comes the spiritual. This is the most difficult part to understand. To some extent you may appreciate what is told to you up to this time, but what is going to be told in future is hard for the mind to stomach. That is why the great master, Yama, said that even the gods cannot understand it properly.

devair atrᾱpi vicikitsitam purᾱ

na hi suvijñeyam, aṇur eṣa dharmaḥ.

“Nachiketas! Subtle is this thing that you are asking for. The whole universe can be under you and all the knowledge of the world, omniscience itself, can be bestowed upon you; but the other thing that you are asking for—what happens to the soul after it leaves this body and attains to universality—this is something which even the celestials cannot explain and, therefore, I request you not to insist upon the answer to this question of yours. But you are not leaving me. All right! I shall tell you something about it, but difficult it is to understand.” Not even the best of yogins of the world can realise what it means. We have many yogins in this world, but how many have really absorbed the import of this teaching, it is difficult to say. Well! Such a great aspirant as Nachiketas is shooed off by Yama; but we say, “Oh! I will tell you, come, come!” We want more and more disciples. International yoga organisations are plenty. Wonderful! This yoga will take us nowhere. We should not become a laughing stock. The forces of nature will laugh at us when we practise this hypocritical yoga of advertisement and publicity. Yoga is not publicity. Nachiketas himself must have known it much better than we do. He said, “No. Thank God. You take it back.” Suppose we are told, “All the three worlds are yours, take them,” we would naturally not allow this ‘yoga’ to bother us then. Three worlds! It is unthinkable! Even such a thing as that, Nachiketas did not wish. We are every day praying to God, “Please bestow long life on my child!” You want five years increase in your life! But Nachiketas said, “The longest life, I do not want. One may live as long as the universe lasts; I am not interested. What does it matter to me?”

The third asking of Nachiketas is a wondrous asking. Wonderful is the asker of this question! Wonderful is the answer to this question! The answer was given to Nachiketas finally, because Nachiketas was made of such a stern stuff within him. He rejected all the tempting objects of the world. Even universal knowledge was not sufficient to Nachiketas. The Vaishvanara-Agni-Vidya was not adequate. And what is this question of Nachiketas, the third question?

ye-yam prete vicikitsᾱ manuṣye ystī-tyeke nᾱyam astīti caike;

“Does the soul exist, or does the soul not exist? What is it? Is it, or is it not? What do you mean by the soul?” The question whether the soul exists or not can be answered only when we know what the soul is. Without knowing what it is, how can we say if it is or not? The science of the soul is the science of the Upanishad. We have also a concept of soul. We speak of it almost every day, and our notion of the soul is one of a child, an untutored baby speaking of a soul as if it is a spark of vital activity within our individual body. There are some people who call it elan vital, a vital energy that is urging us to act from within us. The soul is generally taken to be an existence within us. We say the Atman is within, the soul is within. This word ‘within’ is hammered upon us again and again. Why do we say that the soul is within, is one question. And what does it actually mean when we say that the soul exists within the body? What is the soul? All this has been explained in this Upanishad in a symbolic manner, though not pointedly and explicitly. Yama does not give a clear-cut answer to the question of Nachiketas, though indirectly he comes to the point. As a matter of fact, you will never find a clear answer to this question anywhere in the Katha Upanishad. The teaching goes round and round, beating about the bush, as it were, finally not telling anything clearly in respect of this last question of Nachiketas. But the secret is hidden between the lines of these sonorous mantras of the text, if we study them with a philosophical inquisitiveness of insight. The more elaborate answers are to be found in the other Upanishads, like the Brihadaranyaka and to some extent the Chhandogya. If you want to know the entire implications of the teachings of the Katha Upanishad as an answer to the third question of Nachiketas, you may have to read the Brihadaranyaka and the Chhandogya Upanishads, because you cannot clearly understand as to what was the meaning of this last question of Nachiketas. What did he mean by asking about the character of the soul when it goes to the ‘Beyond’? ‘Mahati samparaye’ is the word used by Nachiketas. Samparaya is the ‘hereafter’. That which is ‘beyond’ this visible world is the samparaya. It is not merely the ‘after death’ of the physical body. He is not asking what happens to the soul after physical death, though many commentators seem to interpret it in this manner. A wise person like Nachiketas must have known what happens to the soul after physical death, but that was not the issue. He had added a qualification, mahati to samparaye, meaning the Great Beyond and not the ordinary beyond. The ordinary beyond is that which immediately follows the physical death of the personality, but the Great Beyond is the condition of the soul which transcends the universe. What happens to the soul, ultimately? Where does it exist? There was a teacher, perhaps a clergyman, who told before an audience: “God created the heaven and the earth,” in a biblical fashion. One of the listeners stood up: “Sir; where does God exist?” The clergyman said: “God is in heaven.” “Who created heaven?” “God created even heaven.” “But where did God exist before He created heaven? God is in heaven, and if He created heaven, He must have existed even before heaven was created. Where, then, did He exist? Where does God exist before He creates the world? You say God is everywhere, which means to say, everywhere in the world. But if the world itself was not there before creation, where did He exist, then?” The answer to this question cannot be given easily. You cannot say that God is all-pervading, because that implies the world. You cannot say God is all-knowing, for that implies the world. You cannot say God is all-powerful— that, again, implies the world. What is God, when the world is not there? This is the question of Nachiketas, when it is boiled down to its quintessence.