The Mundakoupanishad : Post-25. Swami Krishnananda.

Chinmaya Mission :

The last week of February, the Chinmaya International Foundation (CIF) campus hosted two camps. 

The first, Narada Bhakti Sutra Camp, was facilitated by Br. Anand Chaitanya for participants from Chinmaya Mission Vellore and Chinmaya Mission Chennai. 

They enjoyed the sessions and also learned more about the history of Adi Sankara Nilayam while visiting various temples in Ernakulam. 

The second camp was an orientation workshop conducted by the Youth Alliance team from Uttaranchal for young participants from the Southern zone. 

Although the CIF campus was always bustling with activity, the serene silence of divinity at its heart remained true for those who tuned in.

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Thursday, March 16,  2023. 07:00.

Chapter 2: Section 1 : 

Mantram-6&7. (Rituals and means to perform them are also born from the imperishable.) continued

POST-25.

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Mantram-7.

Tasmac-ca deva bahudha samprasutah

sadhya manusyah pasavo vayamsi

prana-panau vrihiyavau tapas-ca

sraddha satyam brahma-caryam vidhis-ca.

The Sun may be regarded as a representative of heaven. The heat and light of the Sun are responsible for everything that happens on all the planets, including Earth. Any event that takes place in the world is caused by the Sun. You must have heard that sunspots sometimes occur and create catastrophes in the world, and their positions cause a sudden rise or fall in the cost of materials. It depends upon the manner in which the sunspot affects the Earth.

There are also indications of the Moon acting in the same way. If we observe the Moon two or three days after the new moon, amavasya, we will find a crescent visible on the horizon. This crescent is sometimes slanting, and not straight like a cup. Either it is slanting to the left side or it is slanting to the right side, but very rarely is it straight. The belief is, astronomically, that if it is slanting to the left, prices of commodities will fall in the direction where it is slanting, and where it is rising up—north or south, as the case may be—the prices of commodities will rise.

Can we imagine this mystery, how the Sun and the Moon can control us? Someone has written a beautiful book called Super Nature. Moonlight does not penetrate deep into the waters of the ocean, but there are little molluscs living deep in the ocean that arrange their activities according to the movement of the moonlight, though the moonlight does not reach them. They must be great mystical astronomers indeed! The effect that is produced by the Sun and the Moon, and even by the interstellar cosmic rays that impinge upon the Earth and affect us in multifarious ways, is a wonder.

This heavenly vibration, therefore, is the cause of everything that is taking place here. The vibrations created by the solar orb produce such an impact upon the atmosphere that the heat of the Sun sucks the water of the oceans and converts it into vapour which forms clouds, and by the action of wind blowing in various directions according to the circumstances of nature, rain falls. Somāt parjanya: Rain falls.

When rain falls, plants grow. There is harvest in the fields, and vegetables and all edibles in the world become available to us. But how does rain fall? A great activity is taking place in the sky, over which we have no control. We cannot create rain, and we will all perish if there is no rain. These vegetables and foodstuffs are eaten by man and are finally converted into the bloodstream, and then into the essences which are responsible for the production of children while living a married life.

In this manner, the heavenly Purusha is causing, by his own vibration of will, the creation of every little thing in this world. Even the little crawling insects are created by the Supreme Purusha. Creation takes place in a variety of ways, which is only one illustration of the manner of the relation of cause and effect, highlighting how we, in our crude form of understanding, imagine how something could have come from something else. Why should anything come from something else? If something is not there which is causeless, and if the ultimate cause also has a cause, there would be a logical regression and the argument will break. A meaningful argument should have an end. Endless arguments are no arguments. And so, the argument in respect of the effect coming from a cause should lead to a cause which itself has no further cause.

This causeless cause must also be an intelligent cause. Therefore, this ultimate cause is, firstly, without any cause behind it; there is no other cause for it. Secondly, it is intelligent because it is purposive and knows what to create. And thirdly, it is all-pervading because if it is located in one place only, it will be a perishable object. Thus, the Supreme Purusha is indivisible consciousness, all-pervading, and causative of everything in this world.

This is one answer of the Guru in reply to the disciple's question of how things have come at all. Generally, when disciples go to Gurus, this is the first question they put. Why was this world created, and who created it? They have many other questions, no doubt, but the first question that generally arises in the mind of a student is how this world has come. And here is a tentative answer, according to the understanding of the disciple for the time being.

These passages of the Mundaka Upanishad that we are presently studying deal with the creative process of the Universe—the cause producing the effect, and the cause persisting to have influence over the effect continuously until the very end. The verse concerning the Panchagni Vidya is an astounding doctrine of not only there being causes behind causes, an endless series of connections and concatenations, but also one thing influencing the other. The Upanishad is a knowledge that cuts off all attachments. It is the secret wisdom that severs the tree of bondage. One of the ways it adopts is to instil into the minds of the students the nature of the world, so that when it is properly understood, or investigated into, it will no more be a source of attraction and repulsion, love and hatred.

The occurrences in the world, the events taking place in space and time, the very historical process of mankind—all these are certain occurrences first taking place in the worlds that are above this Earth, just as the manifestation of our own physical body is not a sudden occurrence or an abrupt manifestation from nowhere but a gradual concretisation of impulsions and intentions coming from within.

For instance, in order that the physical body may shape itself into this particular form that we see, it has first of all to be vitalised by the prana which is within. The within-ness of the prana is the reason why there appears to be life and vitality in the physical body. In a similar way, activities in this world, all the processes of human history, have a cause behind the physical realm. There is a superphysical cause for all that happens in the physical world.

The way in which the prana operates in the body determines the condition of its health. The prana decides whether we are healthy or sick. It is very important to know that life and prana are identical. If prana is harmoniously distributed in the body, there is a pacified state of mind also, at the same time, and there is lightness of body, buoyancy of spirit, and quickness in the ability to grasp things mentally. Therefore, internal to the body there is a prana that causes the so-called activities of the body. If the hands and the feet move, it is because the prana moves inside. The prana exerts pressure on a limb in a particular direction, and then it starts moving.

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To be continued

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