The Mundakoupanishad : Post-13. Swami Krishnananda.

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Greetings to all from Chinmaya Vibhooti for Ganesh Chaturthi!

Shri Pranav Ganesh Bhagwan ki Jai!

Shri Sadhgurunath Maharaj ki Jai!

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Tuesday, September 06, 2022. 06:55.
Chapter-1, Section-2, Mantram-6.
POST-13.

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Mantram-6 : Attainment of heaven by performing Agnihotra ritual properly.

Ehy-ehīti tam-āhutayas suvarcasaḥ 

sūryasya raśmibhir-yajamānaṁ vahanti, 

priyāṁ vācam-abhivadantyo'rcayantya, 

eṣa vaḥ puṇyas sukṛto brahma-lokaḥ (1.2.6). 

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The Sun's rays, as the flames of fire, are not dead things; they are consciousness. They speak to you: “Come. Glorious man, here are the flames. Come, come.” The oblations, when offered properly with the recitation of the mantras correctly pronounced, create a situation wherein the oblations start assuming life. We have heard that, in ancient days, divinities used to rise up from the fire, bringing some offering. The nectarine pudding which was brought by a divinity in the sacrifice performed by Dasharatha is one of many instances. The living voice of the flames of fire in the sacrifice, and the glorious rays of the Sun, join together and speak very delightful words. Priyāṁ vācam abhivadantyo'rcayantya: “How blessed you are. How good it is of you to have done the sacrifice. Glory is awaiting you. Indra is wanting to see you. Blessedness shall be your future. We are here at your service. Come on, sit in this chariot of the rays of the Sun. Rise up and be eternally blessed.” These flames and the rays speak gloriously in a melodious, loving voice to the yajamana, the performer of the sacrifice, who has succeeded in conducting it systematically, perfectly.

Eṣa vaḥ puṇyas sukṛto brahma-lokaḥ: 

“We shall take you to Brahmaloka.” The glory of spiritual experience is supposed to reach its upper limits in a realm that is described in the scriptures as Brahmaloka. This is a word we have heard many a time. Literally it means the loka, or the world of Brahman. It is not the Absolute Brahman that is referred to here, but the Creative Principle. Brahma in Sanskrit is in the masculine form. It is a state of affairs where the world melts into a state of intermingling activity of waves of consciousness.

There are some mystics who have gone into ecstasy over the description of what this so-called penultimate state of the liberation of the soul actually is, where the sea of radiance billows, as it were, with its ripples and waves dashing one over the other, where every wave is like every other wave, where each reflects the other, each is mirrored in the other, and everything is found everywhere. Each one is everything else also, and everything else is also each one. The general is the particular, the particular is the general.

Some of the touching and most eloquently described passages on subjects of this kind can be found in the writings of Plotinus, a great mystic of Alexandria, who wrote a masterly treatise called the Enneads, which means ‘the book of nine sections', just as the name of the book Panchadasi is the number of the chapters of the book. Panchadasa means fifteen. A book that has fifteen chapters is called Panchadasi. A book that has nine chapters is called Enneads. Similarly, there are some German mystics like Eckhart, and Indian mystics such as the Alvaras, who wrote the Nalayira Divya Prabandham. They are all astounding proclamations of the rapture of the soul in an experience which should be considered as entry into Brahmaloka itself. They were all masters of language who used words in order to break through the words and find the very soul in the essence of language itself. Mystical literature is actually the voice of the soul expressed in human tongue. Such is called Brahmaloka. It will simply shake your soul even to imagine what that experience could be. Anyway, the solar rays tell the yajamana, the performer of the sacrifice, “Come. We shall take you to the glorious realm of Indra, and to Brahmaloka itself.”

But the Upanishad now turns the table around, like a clever advocate. They argue on behalf of somebody, and suddenly change the whole argument against that person on whose behalf he was appearing to be arguing. It appeared as if up to this time the Upanishad was arguing on behalf of the Mimamsa ritualists, or the performers of the sacrifice, glorifying the end and the result of the sacrifices as Brahmaloka, Indraloka, etc. Now, suddenly, a bolt from the blue comes.

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Next-Mantram-7. Criticism of rituals-devoid of knowledge (upasana)

To be continued ....

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