“Tell me the truth: what happens when life leaves this body?” (1:20)

 

Śrī Yama doesn’t immediately answer the question. Instead, he offers inducements that might distract Nachiketas from his purpose.

 

“Think of some other wish
Which has an equal value to you and ask that.
Wealth perhaps,
Or to become a mighty king…” (1:24)

 

“You know these things are difficult to get.
Maybe you would like the company of beautiful women,
Fine chariots and heavenly music…” (1:25)

 

Here we have the God Beyond Death offering a young seeker sex, fast cars and rock ‘n’ roll!

 

I have heard many commentators say Nachiketas is being ‘tested’. That makes of Śrī Yama a teacher without vision! Standing before him is a young man, exiled by his own father, of calm and serious demeanour, showing no signs of irresolution or equivocation ~ why would this great god need to test him?

 

To be ‘tested’ is the process of proving ourselves to the one doing the testing. Śrī Yama is a god, he is the god who saw death as our human destiny, even when it wasn’t his, and paved a way for us into immortality². Are we really to believe that he cannot see into the heart of young Nachiketas?

 

Rather, I suspect, Śrī Yama is giving Nachiketas an opportunity to be in touch with himself. He speaks to him from an entirely different set of values and consciousness, inviting Nachiketas to enter that consciousness. But Nachiketas must first discover where his own heart and mind have placed value. He must be in touch with his own readiness for the journey.

 

Nachiketas stands before Yama for all of us. Not being tested, he is being given an opportunity for self-discovery. What is it he/we really, really want?

 

For this journey inward, he/we must be laid bare before our own vision.

 

Our minds, our human consciousness, has been tamed and co-opted by whatever prevailing culture we are born into. Nachiketas must now face that part of himself which is ready to leave that prevailing consciousness behind... or not. Śrī Yama says tantalisingly in 1:25:

 

“…do not ask about life beyond life ~ it is something you will not understand…”

 

The job of the teacher at this critical moment is to provoke an alternative consciousness from the seeker so that we see all that we are rather than just the small self-image we have created. Now the awareness is being freed from its old mechanical reactions. Now we can learn ~ we can be healed ~ as we begin the journey inward, towards The Mystery.

 

“You know all there is to know about the great beyond.
O Yama, penetrate its mystery now and reveal it to me.
I have no other question and I choose no other wish.” (1:23)

 

There we have it: finally all the things that our prevailing social order told us to cherish are as nothing when the search for the Truth awakens in our hearts. Śrī Yama knew this of his young disciple, and now the disciple knows it of himself.

 

The Crossroads

 

But before Śrī Yama teaches Nachiketas anything about the path of Yoga, he makes him aware of what has just been revealed ~ Nachiketas made a choice:

 

“Yama answers, “

 

There are two paths, Nachiketas, one path leads outward and the other inward. You can walk the way outward that leads to a certain kind of pleasure,
Or the way inward that leads to grace.
Of these two it is the path of grace, though concealed, that leads to the Self.” (2:1)

 

“Both of these paths lie before each person eternally.
It is the way of things.
Day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment,
The wise must distinguish one from the other ~
And then choose which to walk...” (2:2)

 

Two paths: Śhreyas and Preyas. Preyas means ‘that which is pleasurable’ and Śhreyas means ‘that which is auspicious’.

 

That is the crossroads each of us stands at, every moment of our lives.

 

Each day, hour by hour, we are faced with ‘events’ ~ things happen. And we humans are creatures of habit ~ called samskara-s by the ancients. When any event happens, we react. And we react out of habit. Habit is the path of preyas; it is our ordinary, everyday reflex reaction to the stuff of life.

 

Preyas gives us a certain pleasure: we react to an event, and in that habitual reaction there is some kind of reward. Even if our reaction is wholly uncreative and unhelpful ~ like flying off the handle or getting irritable but not showing it ~ we are ‘rewarded’ simply by the act of doing it the way we have always done it!

 

We make a judgement in response to certain stimuli, and if our judgement is based only on past events that were similar, then we react in the same old way we always have. It’s like scratching an itch even when we know it will make us bleed!

 

And we repeat it: day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.

 

But, Yama is saying, there is another way ~ the path of Śhreyas. This path requires that I allow for something new to emerge before reacting, I hesitate.

 

Śhreyas does NOT mean that from the moment I choose the path of the spiritual search life is going to be smooth sailing. We truly must understand this. On so many occasions I have heard the cry, ‘But why did this happen to me/her/him? I am/he is/she is trying to live a spiritual life...!’ The spiritual journey doesn’t remove the obstacles and challenges, but it does offers us new and creative ways of responding to them.

 

Śhreyas ~ this ‘most auspicious’path ~ is the hidden path, not easy to rush down like reactive old preyas. It is more difficult even to see because we have to bring a new vision to it. Preyas is the immediate reaction; Śhreyas is the deeper response.

 

Śhreyas requires that in the face of an event ~ any event ~ we stop and become the witness. And what I am witness to is my own reactions. I do not act on them and nor do I suppress them (which is an action). Instead, I watch myself in stillness ~ I witness the reactions and the turmoil, the judgements and the confusion. I become naked to myself ~ my stillness, my hesitation, allows for a deeper response to emerge.

 

Up until this moment Nachiketas had lived as we all live: a life in which we react to events. Śrī Yama insists that from now on, as his young student is clearly serious about this journey, he must live more consciously and be prepared to seek always the ‘Path of Śhreyas’~ so much less straightforward than our ordinary, everyday, knee-jerk reactions.

 

Yama said,
“The path of grace does not reveal itself to one who blunders through this world Totally committed to it and its limitation.

 

It is a subtle, hidden path never revealed to one who thinks that this world is all that there is…” (2:6)

 

It is not an easily discerned path. So often when people are groping their way to eternal truths, one hears the cry, “I just want the simple answer!” Śrī Yama makes it clear to his young student right at the outset that the danger in this is that it reduces great truths to such a degree that we distort them.

 

Śhreyas is the path of waiting in stillness for the deeper response: the response to the situation we find ourselves in that comes from a deeper self, a Self closer to the Mystery.

 

References:

 

‘Two Paths’photo taken by Anita Habig.

1. Katha Upaniṣhad translation by Swami Ambikananda, publ. by Frances Lincoln 2001.
2. Yama and Yami were brother and sister, and their story appears in the most ancient portion of both the Rig and Atharva Veda Both were born human at a time of immortality. But Yama sees the future of the humans that would come after him: death. So he sacrifices himself to it to make a way through it to immortality.

 

 

 

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©Swami Ambikananda, October 2024