The Kenopanishad: Commentary on Section - 1: Swami Krishnananda
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Wednesday 09, Sep 2026, 14:15.
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The Kenopanishad: Commentary on Section - 1:
Swami Krishnananda
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Invocation
āpyāyantu mamāṅgāni vāk prānaś cakṣuḥ śrotram atho balam indriyāṇi ca sarvāṇi. sarvam brahmopaniṣadam mā'ham brahma nirākuryām mā mā brahma nirākarot anirākaraṇam astu anirākaraṇam me'stu. tad ātmani nirate ya upaniṣatsu dharmās te mayi santu; aum śantiḥ, śantiḥ, śantiḥ.
Mantram 1
keneṣitam patati preṣitam manaḥ kena prāṇaḥ prathamaḥ praiti yuktaḥ,
keneṣitaṁ vācam imāṁ vadanti cakṣuh śrotraṁ ka u devo yunakti.
Thus begins the Kena Upanishad with a question: Who is the impeller and propeller of the mind, who is it that incites life into activity, propelled by whom does speech function properly, and who is the Divinity that harnesses the senses, such as the eyes and the ears?
The question implies that there is a directing principle behind the visible operation of the senses and the various faculties in the individual. Generally, such a question does not arise in ordinary life. We never put a question to our own self, 'Who is it that makes me work?' etc., because it is taken for granted that we have the capacity of agency in action. Never does a person question himself, 'Who is it that thinks through me,' and so on, because the accepted feeling is that each one thinks for himself or herself: 'I think, and there is no need for somebody else to make me think, and the like. There is no necessity for any direction from anyone for me to speak, to act, or to breathe.' But the Upanishad starts at the very outset with a query which impliedly means that the functions are different from that which causes the functions to be there at all. Some truth seems to be assumed here, and that is why the question arises suddenly. What is taken for granted is that the actions of the sense organs as well as of the mind, intellect, etc., are an expression or a manifestation of the powers of something, which is transcendent to these operations.
The Upanishad does not go into the detail of the meaning that is hidden behind this question. In the very first two mantras the whole of its significance is summed up, wherein it states that there is positively some superior principle surpassing the operations of the sense organs, mind, intellect, and the like. While the Upanishad is a revelation and can proclaim this certainty with confidence—the truth of there being a transcending principle superior to the operational activities of the senses and the mind—the sadhaka, the student of the Upanishad, is taken slowly by a teaching that takes the mind from the visible to the gradually realised invisible.
All that is said to be of the nature of a directive principle within is invisible. We never see any directing agent inside us, and if there had been any such directing agent inside us, of which we could be easily conscious, then there would be a dual consciousness in us: partially a consciousness being of the real agent inside and partially the consciousness being of what we think we are at the present moment. Now, such a double personality does not usually arise. We have a single consciousness, and we never seem to be maintaining a double consciousness of a bodily personality and the consciousness of the agent inside. This, perhaps, is exactly our folly. It is the purpose of this Upanishad to make a clear-cut distinction between the true agent of action and the apparent agent. If we had been conscious of this duality, if we were to be aware that the real agent in ourselves is something different from what we think we are, then we would not be living the life that we are living now, because it goes quite contrary to our natural inborn feeling that we are bodies and are agents in terms of the body. Naturally, and generally speaking, when we make statements as, 'I do', 'I think', 'I feel', etc., we attribute agency to our own bodily personality. This goes without saying, and it is simple to understand. 'I see', 'I hear', 'I think', 'I feel', and such statements of this nature are directly the outcome of a confidence that we are the body; otherwise, there would be no such thing as seeing through the eyes and affirming as 'I see'. The agent identifies himself with the organs of knowledge, the energies that operate in the body, and then there is a conglomerate experience of one's being this total complex called the body.
To cite instances, we are, bodily speaking, made up of parts. The eyes, the ears, etc., whose activities we are identifying with our real being, are isolated from one another. The eyes see and the ears hear. The eye may see when the ear may not be hearing. There may be a temporal gap between the functions of the eye and of the ear. Yet, this gap is bridged by a consciousness which affirms that one and the same element, one and the same being, one and the same self, has seen, or heard, and so on with the other principles which go by the name of the senses. The parts are thus brought together into a whole. We know very well that parts can never become a whole. They always remain parts. Whatever be the juxtaposition of the parts, they remain a mechanically connected linkage, and it is only for practical convenience that we regard an assemblage of parts as a whole. They never really become one. Two things broken up entirely cannot become one. They always remain two, whatever be the consolidating action of the parts. Though uniformity of the parts is likely to be mistaken for singularity of purpose and action, they are never truly single. Yet, our consciousness takes all these to be one unity.
The mental function that is the judging principle within us so mixes up sensory operations into an apparently single completeness that it never for a moment stops to think that the eyes and the ears and the other organs have not performed their functions at one and the same time. They are like many servants performing the injunctions of a single master. It is true that the servants are obedient to the master or are in harmony with the thought and feeling of the master; yet the servants cannot become the master. Not only that; all the servants need not work at the same time; they may be performing their duties at different times, in various manners. Yet the master integrates all these functions of the servants into his own will and he is likely to get the credit of his having done everything, as, for example, when we say that an army marches into a field and the soldiers have won the battle, the credit goes to the general: 'The general has won victory.' So is the case with this unifying principle of consciousness within us which, by an act of error in its judgment, mixes up parts into a conscious whole, and then there is what is called the jiva-consciousness in us, which is nothing but consciousness embedded in the body.
Our feelings, thoughts and emotions connected with the body go by the name of jiva's functions. We become so engrossed in the activities of the body that the one is not differentiated from the other. The Upanishad questions: Is there really something which is distinct from these parts called the senses and their operations or can we say that the senses themselves are the Self? Can we regard the eye as the Self, the ear as the Self, the speech as the Self? Not possible, is the answer, because their functions are heterogeneous. There is no harmony among their activities. One sense may perform one function, the other another, quite distinct in time from the operation of the former, and if there is no unifying agent inside, there would always be a heterogeneity of sensory functions. The eye would be seeing something, the ear would be hearing another thing at a different time, and there would be no union of purpose and significance among the sensory operations. They would be like scattered parts with no purpose behind them. There would be no 'I'-ness at all. It would only be parts thrown hither and thither. There would be none to affirm a singleness of consciousness and experience.
Now, who is this singleness which seems to be there in spite of the partiteness of the sensory and bodily functions? The Upanishad is full of hidden significance when it poses this question. Who is this directive principle behind the operational activities of the senses, the mind and the intellect? We have generally no time to think along these lines because we always think in terms of the body and senses. The thinking of the human being is always a bodily thinking, a sensory thinking. The Upanishad is a little higher level of thinking, where a question is raised whether this is permissible, justifiable, valid, and has a meaning at all. This question has arisen on account of a suspicion that perhaps we are not right in assuming agency in our actions. The whole of the philosophy of the Kena Upanishad is a disillusionment of our consciousness as to our agency in any kind of action, whatsoever, in this world. Not all the gods can be said to be agents in any action. This the Upanishad is going to tell us. Thus, the pose that is before us at the commencement of the Upanishad is in the form of the possibility of there being a unifying reality independent of and transcending the sensory segregatedness of activity. Who is it that propels your mind, who sees through your eyes and who hears through your ears, who breathes through your breath, is the question of the first mantra.
Those who have been students of the Mandukya Upanishad and the Bhagavadgita would have had enough occasion to learn that on a careful analysis of human experience it becomes quite clear that we are really something different from what we outwardly think we are. The three states of experience, viz. waking, dream and sleep, are daily demonstrations of the fact that we are not what we usually think ourselves to be. The eyes, the ears etc., which seem to be our agents in procuring knowledge of the world, are almost dead in the state of sleep. They can give us no knowledge when we are fast asleep. The needs that we feel in the waking life are no more felt when we are asleep. Even hunger and thirst are not felt there. We do not know whether we are unhappy or happy. All agonies of life are abolished when we are in sleep. That which we regard as ours does not anymore exist when we are asleep. That which we regard as indispensable in our life also does not exist in sleep. Look! Even that which is regarded as indispensable, without which we cannot live, even such things do not exist when we are asleep. Yet, we seem to be there, somehow, hanging on, living . How we live there, how we exist, it is difficult to explain. It shows, at least, that the state of sleep proves that we can exist in spite of there being not even the indispensables. There is no one to protect us, no government, no policeman. Nobody can help us because there is nobody there. We are alone and there is nothing which we can enjoy. There is nothing about which we can complain. There is nothing on which we can make any remark. There is nothing that we can say. And, what are we there? We are 'somehow', 'something' there, and though such a state in which we seem to be is indescribable, we know very well that it is something worthwhile. No person with sense would say that what he was in the state of sleep was not worthwhile. So important it is that it seems to be giving us a greater joy than all the joys of the world put together. These are facts which do not need any external proof. We seem to be privately something when we are asleep. We seem to be in such a deep privacy in our own Self, inaccessible to the things of the world, so single, so independent, so blissful, that all the world's possessions do not look valuable there. An analysis of sleep alone will do to make obvious the truth of what we essentially are and also the truth of what we ultimately seek.
The state of sleep is an answer to two questions: what we are and what we want. We know what we are in the state of sleep. We are there neither men nor women. We are neither rich nor poor, and we have nothing, really speaking, to call our own. This is what we really are. This is one answer to the question of what our essential nature is. The other thing is that what we actually seek we find in sleep alone and not anywhere else. What do we seek in life? That we find in sleep; not in the waking life. We are unnecessarily racking our brains in search of pleasure in the waking life, but we do not find it there. This is why we get tired and go to sleep. We are fed up with all the search of the waking experience. The senses get worn out, almost, and we are no more in a position to continue this search in the waking life. We then go back to our home. When we are tired of all the warfare of the world we enter our home, and there we find a peace that we never saw in the battlefield of life. It was that which we saw there. But, unfortunately we missed the point. We sought a peace which we could get only in sleep, not in the waking life, obtained it, but got blindfolded when we reached this realm. And, we seek aloneness. That also we find in sleep. So, our real nature is discovered in sleep, and our real quest is also fulfilled in sleep—pure being, aloneness.
There is, however, a snag in going to sleep, on account of which we come out from it no better than what we were earlier. This is a different question, quite apart, but as I mentioned, the sleep condition gives us a hint as to what we are and what we are in need of. Though it is not an actual realisation, it is an indication, a demonstration of what our essential nature is and what the essential nature of what we want also is. What is that, is the question of the Kena Upanishad, with which it begins its enquiry. What is it that is inside, and we seem to be really? Is there anything like that? Who it is that really wishes, and whose wish it is that is carried out through the mind and the senses in the form of cognitional and perceptional activity? This is the first mantra, a question, merely. The answer to this question is given in the second mantram.
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Next
Mantram 2
Continued
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