Katha on the Secret Cave of the Heart

Katha Upanishad · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages giving a short passage from the Katha Upanishad, I, iii, 1-2, in a version modified from Easwaran's translation, printed as verse with the source in a footnote.

The image is of two figures seated together in the secret cave of the heart, beside the fountain of life. They differ in how they drink. The separate ego drinks of the sweet and the bitter, liking the one and disliking the other, while the supreme Self drinks both, neither liking this nor disliking that — the whole doctrine of the two selves compressed into the difference between a drinker who prefers and a drinker who does not. The second stanza states the consequence plainly: the ego gropes in darkness while the Self lives in light, and this is said to be declared alike by the illumined sages and by the householders who worship the sacred fire in the name of the Lord. The closing lines turn from description to petition, asking that the fire of Nachiketas be lit — the fire that burns out the ego and allows a passage from fearful fragmentation to fearless fullness in the changeless Whole.

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