🌷 Katho Upanishad 🌷
Chapter 2
Beyond death
🌻 Day 12 🌻
यस्मिन्निदं विचिकित्सन्ति मृत्यो
यत्साम्पराये महति ब्रूहि नस्तत् ।
योऽयं वरो गूढमनुप्रविष्टो
नान्यं तस्मान्नचिकेता वृणीते ॥
Nachiketa said, “I won’t go for anything less than this. It is a rare opportunity that I have come face to face with you. Now, please teach me.”
What happens just before death – sense of touch, taste and smell, these three things go away. The mind has shrunk already. It carries along with it two senses which are still active – sound and sight. When people are in coma, they are still listening, but they can’t act. Sense of action is completely frozen. Body is frozen, but you can hear what people are saying. They want to respond, but they can’t respond. Have you had the experience when you are in deep sleep and someone is asking
something or calling you, and you are saying, “Aah, ooh” but you are unable to get up and do anything! This is very close to the experience of death. Consciousness is alive, awareness is there but it is not able to respond. Then it snaps out of the body. A little bit of sense of sound and sight still exists. The last rites in Hindu tradition are fantastic. Because the departed person can still hear, they tell him, “You have lived a grand life. Your body is made up of five elements. Let the earth element go to earth. Let the water element go to water. Let the fire be consumed by fire, and the air element go back to air. You are light. Merge in the universal Light. This is where you have come from you have no blemish. You have no sin. You have no impression. You are just pure joy. You are love incarnate. Go back to your source. Bless the whole creation from there. You need nothing now. Go. May you be free, may you be free, may you be free.” This is what the mantras that are chanted mean. Unfortunately nobody understands what they are chanting. Nobody explains to them in the language they can understand. They simply chant, do the ritual and go back home without understanding what they are saying. With the hope that perhaps the soul understands that language. It is a very beautiful ritual. “Your body dissolved in the creation where it came from. You are free, you are a part of the Divine Light. You merge into the light.” It is the
instruction given to the soul. It is such a relief that somebody at that time says, “You are not the mind, you are not the intellect, you are not the thoughts. You are neither this, nor that. Go to a place of total freedom.” There is no guarantee that just by listening to this, in the last minute, they get liberated, because cravings and aversions are so strong in the mind – “But my grandson is there. My son has cheated me. My daughter has not done this to me.” The mind can still latch on to this. Cravings and aversions still remain in seed form to take birth again. Do you know why people give their ancestor’s names to their children? This is there even in the British tradition. Kings usually give the name of grandfather to the child, George V, Edward III etc. this tradition has come from Vedic times. The biggest attachment for a person is in the old age to their grandchildren. More than parents, grandparents are attached with the children. They might be born to them. This happens many times. You are born in the same family, because your world is limited. The attachment is strong and that’s why they keep the same name also. If someone has a deep aversion to somebody, they are born to them. Your strongest craving, your strongest fear and aversion determines your next life. Rats are born as cats. They are not born as dogs.
There is a whole psychology about species. You can analyse it so well – it’s just the fear. Some animals are afraid of only certain other animals. What animals they are afraid of is the next body to them. The strongest fear is the last impression in the mind. It gives rise to the next birth. Do you think you are meeting me for the first
time? Don’t you think you have met me before? Somewhere you feel familiarity , there is no new interaction. That’s it. Listen to your mind.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji
Katho Upanishad
