Commentary on the Kathopanishad

by Swami Krishnananda

Discourse 9: What Happens to the Liberated Soul After Death

This is a series of instructions to Nachiketas as a sort of answer to his query as to what happens to the soul finally. Through various analogies, illustrations, images, comparisons, etc., the point of the circumstance of the soul in the state of liberation is emphasised. Questions of this kind are not easy to answer, because all questions and all answers are involved in certain categories of the world of substances and attributes, and the soul is neither a substance nor an attribute. Qualities and relations do not apply to it, but we can think only in terms of qualities and relations; therefore, any amount of exposition of the nature of the soul is impossible of comprehension finally. That is why great Masters and teachers take to methods of illustration, analogy, comparison, artistic presentation, etc., instead of argument. The Upanishad has already said naiṣā tarkeṇa matir āpaneyā (1.2.9): By logic and argument this Atman cannot be known.

Aṅguṣṭha-mātraḥ puruṣo madhya ātmani tiṣṭhati: īśāno bhūta-bhavyasya na tato vijigupsate: etad vai tat (2.1.12): This Atman looks like a small flame in the cave of the heart. The vast range of the light of the sun pervading the whole sky looks like a little twinkling streak when it passes through a small aperture of a screen on the window of our house. The vast space, which is endless in its expanse, looks like a tiny spot when it is seen inside a little tube. Likewise, the universal Atman may appear to be like a little speck of radiance within the heart of a person, sometimes considered as the lotus of the heart.

The body is the outermost crust of human personality. Inside the body is the subtle body, consisting of the mind, intellect, sense organs and prana. Then there is the karana sharira, or the causal body, which envelops the soul. This soul, which is otherwise everywhere, manifests itself in the human being only through that instrument which is capable of revealing it, or manifesting it, in the same way as the vast sunlight can manifest itself only as a little beam because of the smallness of the aperture through which it passes, and the vast space may look very little in quantity and expanse on account of its being imagined to be contained within a small container. Likewise, there is a little sattvika aperture, as it were, in the heart of a person. The heart is described in multifarious ways in the scriptures of all the religions of the world. Especially in the Eighth Chapter of the Chhandogya Upanishad, we find a special elucidation of the heart, which is called there as the city of Brahman, the abode of God.

The abode of God is our own heart, but when that infinite God occupies a space that the human understanding can occupy, He looks like a little thumb-like flame. Aṅguṣṭha-mātraḥ puruṣaḥ: So small He is. We sometimes compare the soul of a person to a little flame, which at the time of death is said to leave the body and fly. You must have seen pictures drawn by artists of the way in which the soul is said to depart from the body. Actually, the soul does not depart; it is the body that departs. The body is shed by the soul. As we cast off a cloth that is old and worn out, so does the soul shed and cast off the body, the apertures, the encrustations and the sheaths that are not anymore of utility to it. It stands isolated.

Nevertheless, generally in the case of people in the world, the soul does not become a universal expanse after death. It does not mean that the space becomes vast. In the case of the soul of the individual, there is a marked difference. If the walls of a pot are broken, the little space appearing to be inside it assumes a universal shape at once; and if the curtain is removed, the sun assumes its original expansive form of radiance. But the soul does not become universal when the body is cast off. It maintains its limited, isolated individuality in a subtle form. That is to say, death of the physical body does not mean liberation of the soul. The soul is not automatically liberated when the body is cast off. The attachment which it had to the body through the mind and the sense organs continues to be there because of the fact that, at the time of death, the mind follows the soul. Manaḥṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇi prakṛtisthāni karṣati (B.G. 15.7), says the Bhagavadgita. The soul drags with it by force, as it were, the mind and the potentials of the senses, and as it is even then attached to them, the limitedness of the soul continues. The jivahood is still there after the passing of the body, the leaving of the body. The misery of the individual continues even if the body is thrown out.

The idea is that the soul appears to be limited and small, as a thumb-like structure, on account of its apparent association with the limited aperture-like manifestation of human understanding through the intellect and the mind, principally the heart. Madhya ātmani tiṣṭhati: In the centre of our being it is located. The heart is the centre of our personality. Īśāno bhūta-bhavyasya: Otherwise, this great Lord, who is parading as a little soul in our own heart, is the master of all that is past and future. Na tato vijigupsate: Knowing this, nobody will shrink from anything. Etad vai tat: “This verily is that, Nachiketas. Here is an answer to your question of what happens to the soul,” says Yama.

Aṅguṣṭha-mātraḥ puruṣo jyotir ivādhūmakaḥ: īśāno bhūta-bhavyasya sa evādya sa u śvaḥ: etad vai tat (2.1.13): The flame of the soul in the heart is like a flame without smoke. Generally, when we light a lamp there is a flame, no doubt, and there is also a little smoke. But here is a smokeless flame which is the light of the soul in the deepest recesses of the heart. Ivādhūmakaḥ: without smoke; īśāno bhūta-bhavyasya: the Lord of all, past and future; sa evādya sa u śvaḥ: it is today just as it was earlier also, and what it is today, it shall be tomorrow also. There shall be no distinction between past and future for the soul. Its dramatic departure from the body, and its movement through space for the purpose of reincarnation and rebirth, all this is the consequence that follows from attachment. Consciousness is stuck to the body, stuck to the mind and the intellect and the sense organs. How it is stuck is a mystery by itself. We cannot say how the Universal can implant itself by attachment to the particular parts of its own self. Somehow it has taken place.

Yathodakam durge vṛṣṭam parvateṣu vidhāvati, evaṁ dharmān pṛthak paśyaṁs tān evānuvidhāvati (2.1.14): When rain falls, water is poured on the peak of a mountain. If there is a large depression, like a valley on a mountain of great height, the rainfall will channelise itself through that valley, and there will be a concentrated rush of water in one direction only. But if there are many such little crevices and cracks on the mountain, the downpour of water that falls as rain will be distracted in many directions. Some water will flow here, some water will flow there. Everywhere there will be a scattered movement of the water from the rainfall.

In the case of a distracted mind, this is what happens. The rain of wisdom, which actually falls from the essential soul of man, is distracted in many ways, as the water on a mountain is split in different ways, because of the movement of the five sense organs and the millions of thoughts and feelings. Endless thoughts and endless feelings are the channels through which consciousness manifests itself, so that there is a tremendous inconceivable multiplicity of the manifestation of the soul consciousness when it actually reveals itself through the conditioning factors of the mind and the sense organs. When a person sees many things, thinks many things, feels many things, the consciousness will also be diverted along the same channel of diversity in a manifold manner, so that there would be no concentration in life. There will be no sense of unity in personality. There will be no alignment of the psychic modes of operation. There will be unhappiness and a kind of impossibility to choose even what is good and proper, or is the aim of one's life.

Yathodakaṁ śuddhe śuddham āsiktaṁ tādṛg eva bhavati, evaṁ muner vijānata ātmā bhavati gautama (2.1.15): Suppose water is poured on water. If heavy rain pours on a lake or on the ocean, what happens? Water becomes water. It does not move hither and thither. Like merges in like, and friends unite in a communion of inseparability of substance and character. Milk poured on milk, or water poured on water, is the example of concentratedness and communion where the parts are completely inseparable, and they stand not merely united as two parts, but as one indivisible being; so does the Atman become.

“You asked me what happens to the Atman. This happens to the Atman. It stands united with that from where it came, of which it is a part, from which it is inseparable, and which is itself basically, essentially eternal. Hey Gautama!” Nachiketas Gautama is the rishi whose descendent was Vajasravasa, the father of Nachiketas. Therefore, Nachiketas is also called Gautama by descent. “O Gautama Nachiketas, listen to me. The Atman, the soul, becomes one with its original universal nature in the case of a saint and sage who has realised it. This is the answer to your question, the third boon that you wanted me to grant. Here it is. Take it!” says Yama. Here we conclude this section.

Now begins the next section. Every little thing is said here and there, like varieties of diet served in a good meal.

Puram ekādāśa-dvāram ajasyāvakra-cetasaḥ, anuṣṭhāya na śocati vimuktasca vimucyate: etad vai tat (2.2.1). Puram ekādāśa-dvāram: This city of the human individual has eleven openings. This city of the body has eleven gates, openings, doors or windows, as they may be called: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and a mouth make seven, the navel makes eight, the apertures of excretion and generation make ten, and the central brahmarandra, or the crown of the head, is also considered as an aperture. So there are eleven passages through which something can enter, and also through which something can go out.

Ajasyāvakra-cetasaḥ: This otherwise indivisible, undis-torted intelligence, immortal though it is, appears to be confined within the eleven-gated city of this body. Concentrating on this, meditating on this great truth, the great Lord, ruling from the city of the heart, is so near us that it is not difficult for us to meditate or fix our attention on Him. The moment we are absorbed in the feeling of our unity with the remotest and the nearest Lord seated in the heart, we are immediately liberated: vimuktasca vimucyate. The words used here are vimuktasca vimucyate: The liberated one is liberated. Vimukta is 'liberated one'; vimucyate means 'becomes liberated'. What is this two times liberation? Why is it said that there is liberation to the liberated one?

There are two types of liberation, usually known as jivanmukti and videha mukti. Jivanmukti is the liberation one attains even while this body is alive. The connection of consciousness with ignorance is snapped in the case of a jivanmukta purusha, or a being who is liberated in the sense that the person has God-consciousness even if the body is lingering. Due to the prarabdha karma persisting for a while, the body of even a liberated spirit may continue for some time.

There are three kinds of karma, known as sanchita, prarabdha and agami. All the karmas, the potential impressions of the actions that we performed in all the incarnations that we took earlier, are stored in the recesses of the unconscious, which is the anandamaya kosha, the dark causal sheath of our personality. The part of that storehouse intended for experience through a particular incarnation, or a body, is separated from the storehouse, as a merchant who has a grocery shop takes some commodity for retail selling out of the large storehouse that he has got at the back of his shop. This particular body cannot experience all the consequences of every deed that we performed in previous lives. If the pressure of the consequence of everything that we did in all the incarnations were to be exerted upon this body, it would crack in one second. But the intention of the karma is not to break the body. All the potentials of karma should be experienced as pleasure and pain; therefore, certain types of results of action are intelligently separated from the storehouse of sanchita, the vast reservoir of karma, and only that kind of body is manifest by the mind in rebirth which can tolerate the manifestation of that set portion of karma called the prarabdha.

There is another kind of karma, called agami karma. After having been born into this body due to the pressure of prarabdha karma, we again perform new actions. We do some good things, and also some bad things. So further potential impressions created by these new actions are added to the existing storehouse. It is something like a person withdrawing from their bank account, thereby diminishing the balance, but at the same time adding something to it, so that whatever be the quantity taken from it, the storehouse is never exhausted. Thus, there will be no hope of liberation if the process of continuously adding potential karmas to the storehouse goes on and on, endlessly.

Well, the point now, in this context, is that the jivanmukta, who is liberated, has no sanchita karma. The storehouse is burnt up by the wisdom of the Supreme Being. But he has a body which has been given to him for the purpose of experiencing that little portion of karma called prarabdha, and until the momentum or the force of the expression of that prarabdha exhausts itself, the body will continue. A jivanmukta is such a person who has a body because of the continuance of the prarabdha karma for a while, until the exhaustion of the force of the prarabdha, but he will not be taking birth again because the storehouse of potential is destroyed, burnt by the fire of wisdom. Thus, vimuktasca vimucyate: The person who is so liberated individually as the jivanmukta purusha again becomes liberated as a disembodied videha mukta purusha. When the prarabdha karma is over, the body is cast off. He is not a person moving as a knower of Brahman; he becomes Brahman itself. That is the implication of these two words, vimuktasca vimucyate: The liberated one is also liberated. That is, liberated while in the body, he is afterwards liberated without the body. Embodied salvation becomes, in the end, disembodied salvation, which is the final goal. Etad vai tat: “This is the answer to your question, Nachiketas.” Yama is driving the point again and again.

Haṁsaś śuciṣat, vasur antarikṣasat hotā vediṣat, atithir duroṇasat, nṛṣat, varasat, ṛtasat, vyomasat, abjā, gojā, ṛtajā, adrijā, ṛtam bṛhat (2.2.2). This is a Rigvedic mantra quoted here. It is not an ordinary passage. It is lifted from the Rigveda Samhita, and it has a way of pronunciation as a Veda mantra. This is a prayer to the sun, incidentally, a prayer or a description of Brahman, the Absolute, manifest as the sun in the firmament. Haṁsaḥ: This is the luminous sun of Consciousness. Śuciṣat: This is the pure Radiance dwelling in the heart of all. Vasuḥ: This is the Spirit that is moving in the air that blows everywhere. Antarikṣasat: This is the Great Being that appears as the vast expanse of space. Hotā: This is the Consciousness that appears as the performer of a sacrifice. Vediṣat: This is the Consciousness that appears as the altar of the sacrifice. Atithi: This is the Consciousness that appears as the guest that comes to one's door. Duroṇasat: This is the Consciousness that appears as the vessels, the sanctified pots that are used in the sacrifice. Nṛṣat: This is the Consciousness that appears as human beings moving around us. Varasat: This is the Supreme Consciousness appearing as the gods in heaven. Ṛtasat: This is the Consciousness appearing as the rule and law operating in the cosmos. Vyomasat: This is the Consciousness appearing as the white space. Abjā: This is the Consciousness appearing as the waters of the ocean. Gojā: This is the Consciousness appearing as the very earth. Ṛtajā: This is the Consciousness appearing as the ultimate Truth. Adrijā: This is the Consciousness appearing as the hills and mountains. Ṛtam: This is the Truth. Bṛhat: This is the greatest Reality. Wonderful statement! Haṁsaś śuciṣat, vasur antarikṣasat hotā vediṣat, atithir duroṇasat, nṛṣat, varasat, ṛtasat, vyomasat, abjā, gojā, ṛtajā, adrijā, ṛtam bṛhat. This is a great mantra from the Rigveda Samhita, which you can repeat every day as your japa. This particular mantra has left nothing unsaid. Everywhere everything is. The Great One is pervading all things. Brahman is the Atman.

Ūrdhvam prāṇam unnayaty apānam pratyag asyati, madhye vāmanam āsīnaṁ viśve devā upāsate (2.2.3): The prana is thrown out when we exhale our breath. Who is throwing it out? Somebody is there inside who pushes the breath out. Apānam pratyag asyati: When we inhale the breath, it is pulled in. Who is it that pulls it? There is somebody sitting in between the prana and the apana. The most glorious Being, beautiful, radiant, that Being expels the breath as prana, and inhales the breath as apana. This Great Being sitting inside and silently making this subtle act of throwing out and bringing in, this Great One is the most adorable of all the gods in heaven. Daily worship it, adore it, and be aware of it.

Asya visraṁsamānasya śarīrasthasya dehinaḥ, dehād vimucyamānasya kim atra pariśiṣyate: etad vai tat (2.2.4): When this consciousness is separated from the body, what remains? That is the Reality. Ordinarily, the mind and the sense organs remain in the case of the death of a person who is not liberated, but in the case of the death of a person who is liberated, the mind and the organs of sense do not go with the soul. They dissolve here itself, together with the body dissolving. The brahmanista purusha, the knower of Brahman, does not depart from the body. He dissolves himself there. The drop in the ocean does not have to move in any direction to dissolve itself in the ocean. It sinks into the ocean then and there. The departure from the body is only a way of speaking in the case of people who are ignorant, who are not realised. But in the case of those who are realised, who are God-conscious always, in their case the pranas do not depart, the mind and the senses do not depart. There is nothing that departs; the body is simply cast out. The bubble sinks into the body of the ocean, and the thing that was apparently in one place at once becomes that which is everywhere. That is final liberation. Etad vai tat: “This is the answer to your question, Nachiketas,” says Yama.

Na prāṇena nāpānena martyo jīvati kaś cana, itareṇa tu jīvanti, yasminn etāv upāśritau (2.2.5): We sometimes believe that we are living because of the breath, that if the breath stops, we are no more. But actually, we do not live by breathing; we live by that which causes the breathing. If that propulsion to breathe inwardly and outwardly is not to be there, if that billowing action of the coming and going of the breath is not to be there, if somebody inside is not working this incessant operation of the breathing process, exhalation and inhalation, there would be no life at all. We are not living by our breathing process. Itareṇa tu jīvanti: We are living by something which is other than the breathing process, on which the prana and apana are dependent, on which the fivefold prana is fixed. Breath is not the source of our life; that which causes the breathing process, which is very important indeed, which is invisible to the eyes, that is what is to be considered as the source.

When the body is cast off in the case of a person who is ignorant, how he takes rebirth is explained in the following verses.