On one hand It is unknowable and on the other hand, if you don’t know it then life is good for nothing. It is not straight mathematics.
🌷 Katho Upanishad 🌷
Chapter 4
Beyond the layers of existence
🌻 Day 35 🌻
यस्य ब्रह्म च क्षत्रं च उभे भव ओदनः ।
मृत्युर्यस्योपसेचनं क इत्था वेद यत्र सः ॥
None else can know the omnipresent Self whose glory sweeps away the rituals of the priests and the powers of the warriors and puts death itself to death! To which the knowledge and activity both are food, death eats away that life. Death eats away all events. Death takes time in its lap. In Indian languages, if somebody dies, they say, they have been taken away by time. In Tamil they say kalamaita – they merged into time. Death eats away all the impressions, eats all forms. And this Self, this Brahman eats death itself! You can neither acquire the Self by knowledge nor by action. Nor can death deny it. Because, death, knowledge and actions are food for the Self. It eats them away. It is much bigger than them.
When you eat something that means it is smaller than you. You obviously can’t swallow an elephant. You can only swallow something which is smaller than you. This is to say, death is very small in front of the Self. The Self eats death itself. Neither through action, nor knowledge, can you get the Self. When that is the case, who can ever claim that they know the vastness of the Self?
The inner journey is so delicate that it needs some skill. It is a bundle of opposites.
On one hand they say – there is no point in living if you don’t know the truth. On the other hand they say – you cannot know the truth. It is so contradictory.
When British came to India and looked into the scriptures, they got so confused.
They said – this is bunch of nonsense. Their scholars, the theologists could not accept what was being said in them. They said, it must have been written by bunch of crazy people. They completely discredited the whole knowledge. In the last century, some brilliant scientist read them and said, “Wow!” on one hand they felt, It is unknowable and on the other hand, if you don’t know it then life is good for nothing. It is not straight mathematics.
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