Now, the mind and the senses are incapable of perceiving objects because they are inert, should be the attitude of the intellect. Thus: “The mind should be offered into the intellect like the senses into the mind.” The mind does not cognise objects, as we can see in sleep. It is the judgment of the intellect acting as an intermediary between the atman and the mind, which is responsible for individual perception. The senses and the mind are wholly dependent on the intellect, it being the nearest to Reality. The intellect affirms itself, and everything depends upon it, finally. In this meditation in which the senses and the mind and intellect come together, one stage of the meditative process is achieved. It should not be mistaken for the whole of yoga, as is often done in the West. Peace of mind brought about by this stage is not yoga. It is only coming back to yourself, from the empirical point of view. This success is not final and is not yoga-sakshatkara. Sense-control is not over here, according to the Kathopanishad, though you may no longer have gross passions, and may be a highly cultured person.

Now, we come to a bottleneck; we cannot go beyond this stage. “He should restrain the intellect in the Great Self and That in Tranquillity.” All are held up here, because the passage becomes narrow and only one person can go through. Not even your Guru can be taken. You have to go alone. Strait is the way of the Spirit. Even your body is too big and you will have to shed it. Every student of yoga fails when he comes to this point, because he has a tendency to look upon what he has left, and his heart goes back to all of it, and this thought is enough to bring him back. This is the state of a yoga bhrashta. It seems that no one is fit for yoga. This leaving the body is not killing it, but transcendence. It is a spiritual activity that we are concerned with here. To leave the world and body is to be dissociated in consciousness with them, but we cannot do this. Things persist in the form of memories. This is especially true for householders, for whom it is hard to become real yogins. How hard it is will be told in the next mantras which are the heart of the Upanishad. If you are fortunate enough to understand them, you are blessed.

The difficulty is to turn from the particular to the Universal, which man has not seen, or understood, nor can hope to understand. While it is difficult enough to turn from the objects to the senses, from the senses to the mind and to the intellect, it is far more difficult to turn to the Universal. But this is what is needed. Here it is that we require initiation. Up to the stage of the intellect, you may practice yoga without it, but after that it gets difficult because you cannot find the next one explained in any book, nor can you find a Guru who has attained it; only a few get that far. How the individual buddhi can be attuned to the Cosmic Intellect is the higher yoga of the Spirit. An initiation from a proper Guru is essential; and no true initiation is possible unless your passions are subdued. The senses have to be controlled, and the mind merged in the intellect. Otherwise, it is like touching dynamite. You should not go with passion to the Guru for initiation.

You should have transcended even the intellect. Pratyahara is over; the individual intellect has to be reabsorbed into the Cosmic Intellect or mahat-tattva. A further description is not needed here. We will know what to do when we get to this point. However, the Upanishad gives a hint: from mahat-tattva, which is hiranyagarbha, you go to ishvara, the shant atman. While the intellect is the connection of consciousness with a particular point of view, that which is higher is the association of consciousness with all points of view. You have no point of view when you get to that stage. Instead, the points of view of all objects are yours. Instead of visualising one object, you will visualise all objects. You will say: ‘All are mine’, instead of saying ‘this is mine’. It is the shifting of the mind from one thing, one body, one object, one point of view, to all things, all bodies, all objects, all points of view. The buddhi has to be transmuted in the realm of mahat-tattva.

Hence, yoga here is sometimes called other-worldliness. It is other-worldly in the sense that it is a science which takes the mind from the particular to the universal, and if the universal can be regarded as other-worldly, so can yoga. But the Universal is not other-worldly, because it is here and everywhere.

uttiṣṭhata jᾱgrata prᾱpya varᾱn nibodhata:
kṣurasya dhᾱrᾱ niśitᾱ duratyayᾱ; durgam pathas tat kavayo vadanti. (14)

My dear children, do not think it is easy! Do not sleep and try to get this atman. “Stand up, be awake, be conscious; obtain wisdom properly by being initiated from a competent Guru – understand this. Sharp it is, and cutting, as the edge of a razor, and hard to cross.” ‘Sharp’ and ‘cutting’ are the two epithets of the sword. The edge of a sword is cutting, so sharp is it. Such is the sharpness of this yoga – so subtle that you cannot even see it. The path of the Spirit is invisible. You cannot open your eyes and see it. It is like the track of the birds in the air, or the fish in water: they are there but cannot be seen. This path of supreme wisdom is subtle in the sense that it is a balance of everything. The Spirit is balance. And no one in this world can maintain a balance. We either fall this way or that. We go to either extreme but never are in the middle. ‘Balance is yoga—samatvam yoga uchyate.’

This is an exposition as well as guidance on the path of inward sadhana. The great method of meditation has been explained as the gradual self-withdrawal, not only in the realm of world-perception, but also beyond. It may look magnificent, but the Upanishad warns us of its difficulty. It may oftentimes look impossible. Hence, we are cautioned to be careful in every single day of practice. But this is extremely hard to do because, as the verse describing karta and bhokta states, our consciousness gets commingled with the mind and senses in every one of their activities. We as persons do not stand as atman, as mind or as senses only, but all these blend and act as a focus, in which not only they, but we ourselves, become conscious of the world. We do not say ‘the senses see, the eyes see, the mind sees’; we say ‘I see the world’. This is so because the light of the atman moves through the senses to the objects, as discussed earlier. Hence, the process of self-withdrawal is not merely of the senses. They are not the only culprits, and are not wholly responsible. Meditation of consciousness demands its extrication firstly from objects, then from the senses, and finally from the mind and intellect.

Consciousness passes through the intellect, mind and then the senses. And in a secondary connection, we are not only attached to our body, but through it to many objects outside, and to those they are connected to. This is samsara-chakra, due to the original sin of consciousness getting identified with buddhi. So is the psychological creation of the universe, what is called jiva-srishti, the world of bondage, distinguished from ishvara-srishti. The yoga of the Upanishad is not any attempt at interfering with ishvara-srishti, but an honest attempt to withdraw from our own creation which has made a mess and not added a cubit to God’s doing. We have created many kinds of entanglements, consciously and unconsciously, all which add to our difficulties. Our objects may vary from day to day, but the way of perception is the same throughout our life. Yoga is a system of disentanglement of consciousness from its attachments. Hence, a seeker should be a very good analyst and psychologist.

We have a false notion that the mind is inside our body, not knowing it is elsewhere. It is not always limited to the operation within. It has relations to circumstances, events and objects exterior to its own body, and hence we do not concentrate or meditate well. It may be working in a far-off land, while a part of it is in meditation. It works subconsciously also, without coming within the purview of the conscious mind. The mystery of the mind is that it can work doubly—the subconscious in object-thought, and the conscious in God-thought. The working in the subconscious level is such that even the conscious level may not be aware of it. This makes our meditation unsuccessful.

The mind has subterranean realms. While the intellect may be connected to the conscious level, the feelings will be in the subconscious level, without connection to reason. So, yoga is a failure, and there is no joy in it. This knowledge is very essential in pratyahara. The process is not an ordinary psychological action. It is to be undergone with a simultaneous awareness of the internal psyche and the outer intellectual consciousness. Intellect alone cannot succeed in meditation. We have to attempt it with our total personality. It, therefore, is not the work of one of our faculties, but of our whole self as a unit of spiritual consciousness. The atman will be revealing Himself in Himself only when the whole personality is withdrawn in all its aspects. We often believe that we are happy, not knowing the subconscious working of the mind. Man falsely thinks that he is all right.

The yoga psychology is far deeper than the usual perceptual psychology of the West, because the student is a psychologist of himself, and not of things and persons of the world. The turnings of the mind to observe itself, is the unique step taken in yoga. You begin to study yourself instead of others. This is the difference. Because you are both the student and the teacher here, the Upanishad advises you to approach men of wisdom who have insight into the truth, to obtain knowledge from them and be cautious and vigilant, because this invisible track of the bird of consciousness is subtle and cutting, like the edge of a razor. It is so even to the intellect—let alone the mind and senses.

The path of the spirit is balance, harmony; not a beaten path on which you can walk blindfolded. It is a subtle path which you alone can tread. And every individual has a path of his own. Though, broadly speaking, yoga may be one, subtly, there are as many paths as there are individuals, with difficulties different from person to person. Hence the need for a Guru who can solve your personal problems which you cannot probe into alone. Thus it is said: prapya varan nibodhata—know It by approaching the Great Ones.

Impregnable is this fort, inaccessible is this path; hard to tread because of the subtlety of the edge. The advancing sadhaka faces many difficulties. Insignificant questions, silly things, will appear large and important to hinder your advance. The subtle body will begin to operate more and more. Now we are on the physical level only. But when we become more subtle in thought, more self-controlled, more weaned from objects, the subtle body begins to work in an intense manner. Then we face disturbances of a peculiar nature. We do not know the troubles of the subtle body as long as consciousness is lodged in the physical one, but when we advance, the subtle body vibrates not only when we act physically, but also when we think and feel. Later, we begin to see it as we see the outer body and its activities now. We become so sensitive that we cannot bear any disorder.

As long as the mind is living in the gross body, it is mostly on that level connected to others. But when it withdraws itself more, it receives subtle vibrations of other subtle bodies, and it can feel and recognise circumstances on a level which is not only conscious, but far deeper. In this state, it receives vibrations from the denizens of other worlds and laws operating in the different realms of being, the sthani-dharmas. In the earlier stages, it may become receptive to lower spirits; in the higher, to divine ones. You may be taken aback when these hindrances come, just as when, in amritamanthana, poison came, the devas withdrew. In the sadhaka, the devas and asuras also work together within to get nectar, and in this contest between the higher forces and the lower ones for a common objective—happiness—poison alone comes first from the internal practice of churning. Because like the asuras, the senses too want nectar, and so there is often a fall in the lower levels of the practice of yoga, when the instincts get stimulated and become passions.

Many students have fallen on account of not caring for this instruction: prapya varan nibodhata. The instincts get roused when we rise to the level of the swadhisthana chakra, according to Kundalini Yoga, and they become more active, just as after the churning, when nectar came, there was war between the gods and asuras. This war is mostly unknown to the seeker who has not been properly initiated, because the instruction given by the Guru is not merely into meditation, but of the difficulties on the way. He will tell you that at such and such a place there is a lion, then an elephant, then a pit, and so on, and this is known only to the preceptor who has already trodden the path. Sometimes we know what is in front of us by God’s grace.

Cutting, sharp and also invisible to perception; this is the meaning of the words: ksurasya dhara and kavayo vadanti.

aśabdam asparśam arῡpam avyayam tathᾱ arasaṁ nityam agandhavac ca yat
anᾱdy anantam mahataḥ paraṁ dhruvaṁ nicᾱyya tam mṛtyu-mukhᾱt pramucyate. (15)

My dear child, you cannot see anything there, because the Self is not an object of the senses. You cannot use the light of a torch and look.

“It is soundless, touchless, undecaying; without taste. It is formless; the presupposition of all change. Without beginning, without end, It is not anything that can be equated with the processes of time.”

All these are external to the Imperishable, and while the senses can grasp objects, It is imperceptible. Objects have a limitation of their own: a body—a location, and so you can observe them. But this Reality, which is beginningless, is raised above all empirical concepts. “It is ranging beyond the intellect, not merely the individual, but also the cosmic. Only after beholding the glory of this Infinite, one can be freed from the mouth of death.” We are in mrityu-loka, the world of death, where anything may go at any time. The next moment is not known. Can there be a more unfortunate thing than this! The soul may pass away any time and you do not know where it goes. Such is the uncertainty of this world with which we get involved, and it is most curious that our minds get attached to things which are tantalising, and that we go to the very same objects which have deceived others. Knowingly we enter the jaws of death in the form of this world. This mrityu, which is widespread, is everywhere—not only in one place. A person is born with his death.

The event of death is for all common perception a future one, but the cause or potential is born with us. It is only a gradual unfoldment towards the manifestation at a particular time. As all the details of a tree are potentially present in the seed, so are the sets of circumstances born with us. In such a world of death are we. And to be free from it, we have to realise the deathless Reality which is described as the transcendence of the senses, mind and intellect, and identification with our own Self.

nᾱciketam upᾱkhyᾱnam mṛtyu-proktaṁ sanᾱtanam
uktvᾱ śrutvᾱ ca medhᾱvī brahma-loka mahīyate. (16)

The first half of the Upanishad is over. Many think that, because it ends with a eulogy, the parts that follow now were added later. “This story of Nachiketas, this knowledge of the Universal Fire of the atman has been told to you in all detail. If a person speaks or receives this wisdom in honesty, he will reign supreme in the realm of the Creator, Brahma.”

ya imam paramaṁ guhyaṁ śrᾱvayed brahma-saṁsadi
prayataḥ śrᾱddha-kᾱle vᾱ tad ᾱnantyᾱya kalpate, tadᾱnantyᾱya kalpate. (17)

“This Upanishad, the secret of secrets, contains the most hidden knowledge, unavailable to people on this earth. Whoso shall cause its recital in an assembly of wise mentors at the ceremony called shraaddha, or any other form of worship, thus purifying all rituals and giving meaning to them, becomes fit for Immortality and becomes infinite in his knowledge.”