The Mundakoupanishad : Post-17. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, November 10, 2022. 08:30.

Chapter-1, Section-2, Mantram-11..

POST-17.

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Mantram-11.

"Tapaḥ śraddhe ye hy upavasanty araṇye śāntā vidvāṁso bhaikṣācaryāṁ carantaḥ, 

sūrya-dvāreṇa te virajāḥ prayānti yatrāmṛtaḥ sa puruṣo hy avyayātmā." (1.2.11). 

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Commentary :

Those blessed souls, seekers of Truth, who lead a life of simplicity, austerity, tapas and internal devotion, live in seclusion, and do not want to live in large cities. They feel happier to be alone to themselves than to be in the midst of families and large crowds of people. The progress in the spiritual path can be gauged by the extent of satisfaction and joy that you feel in your own self when you are alone. The more are you alone, the more are you happy. But if you feel miserable when you are alone, and want to open your doors and run out of the house to find some friends on the street, or go to a shop or a club so that you may have a distraction and a diversion—you are miserable when you are alone, and you are happy in the midst of people—if that is the case, far, far are you from the true goal of life.

But it is difficult to appreciate how it is possible for a person to be happy when he is alone. Is he not a social outcast? He is a person with nothing to call his own. He has nothing of his own. He has no friends. He is sitting alone somewhere in a corner, under a tree in a forest or in his own house, wanting to speak to none, doing his study and meditation. What kind of person is he?

It will be difficult for a socially oriented mind to understand how aloneness can be a spiritual condition, and how social relations are the contrary of it, because a spiritual outlook is actually a manifestation of the intentions of the soul of man. The indivisibility of the soul is contrary to the relationship one psychologically establishes with the outer world. The soul is not related to anything. It is totally unrelated. Therefore, the desire to be related, the desire to be in the midst of people—that is, to be externally conditioned in one's own life—is to limit the longings of the soul and to manifest an unspiritual outlook rather than a purely religious one, whereas the desire to be alone is a manifestation of the inner longings of the soul, which is alone by itself. The soul has no friends, it has no family, it has no father and mother, it has nothing whatsoever. It is poor in spirit. As the great statement of Christ says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The poorest in spirit is the soul of man. It wants to be alone because it cannot be anything more than what it is in itself. The soul cannot be other than what it is. But we want to be other than what we are by running about here and there in search of things and people, by contacting them artificially in relations that will break one day. These are the unsafe boats which the Upanishad referred to earlier.

Those people who, by an austere life and devotional worship, live in seclusion, wanting nothing from the world, are calm and quiet in their minds, very learned, intelligent, discriminating and wise in themselves, live on meagre sustenance, even on alms. As we say, simple living and high thinking. The thinking is very lofty and high, but the living is very simple. Such people, when they depart from this body, are received by the solar orb. The role that the Sun plays in the movement of the soul after death has been variously described in spiritual scriptures, especially in mystical texts, implying perhaps that the Sun, astronomically considered as the centre of the solar system, is somehow or other connected with the soul of the individual. Astrologers tell us that the Moon conditions the mind, and the Sun conditions the soul. Surya, the Sun, is considered as Atmakaraka. The first verse of the great astrological work known as Brihat Jataka by Varahamihira is a touching invocation of the Sun as the passage of the soul to immortality.

The externality of the Sun is a misnomer. We are not outside the Sun, and the solar system is not standing outside us so that we may gaze at it with our physical eyes. It is a big circle, inside which we also are. If the nose had consciousness, or if it had eyes to see, it would look at this body as an outside object. But actually the nose, notwithstanding the fact that it can behold the body as an outside object, is not outside the body. It is a part and parcel, integrally related to the entire organism of which it is a limb. We are wrongly imagining that the Sun above us is outside. Soul-like, the Sun controls the destiny of all things in the world, not only of human beings but everything that is living and even non-living and, therefore, cosmically the Sun is supposed to represent the Atman, or the soul of man. Surya atma jagats tathasthuscha is a mantra in the Rigveda: Of all things moving and non-moving, living and non-living, the very soul and substance is Surya. Through him we pass through the gates of immortality. Sūrya-dvāreṇa te virajāḥ prayānti: Free from passion, greed and anger, and all the dross of the mind, these great souls, who are devoted to the highest call of spiritual experience, pierce through the Sun, as it were, and the Sun opens the gates. Yatrāmṛtaḥ sa puruṣo hy avyayātmā: Through the passage of the Sun, the blessed soul reaches the realm which is the abode of the Immortal Being.

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Next-Mantram-12.

To be continued

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