The Mundakoupanishad : Post-57. - Swami Krishnananda

 

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Monday 29, Apr 2024. 06:30.
The First Mundaka: First Khanda
Mantras:1,2,3.
POST-57.

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The First Mundaka: First Khanda:

The Glory of Knowledge:

Knowledge is attained not so much by the effort of the individual as through the Sages who hand down this Knowledge. The characteristics of the ancient disciples were very marked. The aspiration, the sincere perseverance and the devotion they had to the ideal of Knowledge was exceptional. They attained the Knowledge with much difficulty, undergoing many hardships in the forms of austerity, service of the preceptor and practice of meditation. Knowledge is the ripe fruit of the fine flower of virtue. Righteousness practised without exceptions, to the very law, gives rise to the state of introversion and contemplation of consciousness. It is absolutely necessary that the aspirant or the disciple should be a contemplative so that he may be receptive to the Knowledge imparted to him. Knowledge is received by the internal nature and, hence, it is not properly received by extroverts.

In this Upanishad it is said that Knowledge was originally imparted by the Creator Himself to the representatives of Knowledge, the Sages and the Divine Beings.

Though everyone has the right for Knowledge, it is Knowledge that is connected with renunciation that becomes the means to liberation. Renunciation is the necessary implication of the attempt at an expansion into universality of nature. Knowledge cannot be expected to be co-existent with worldly activity. Love for the world is not consistent with love for the Absolute. Therefore, true spiritual Knowledge is found only in those who find no value in anything that is objective.

Mantram No. 1:

Brahma was the first among the divine beings. This Lord of all, the protector of all, imparted to his eldest son Atharva this Brahma-Vidya which is the basis of all sciences.

Brahma-Vidya is the fundamental science because it is the explanation and the very substance of all knowledge, the different aspects and branches of which are all lower forms of knowledge.

Mantram No. 2:

What Atharva was told by Brahma, Atharva told to Angi. Angi transmitted Brahma-Vidya to Satyavaha, the son of Bharadvaja, who gave this great science to Angiras

Mantram No. 3:

Saunaka, the great sacrificer, approached Angiras duly and with respect and asked: “What is that, O Bhagavan, through the knowledge of which everything becomes known?”

The knowledge of everything through the knowledge of one thing means that everything is made up of that same thing. Ordinarily the knowledge of one thing does not imply the knowledge of another thing. But Brahma-Vidya is not a knowledge which excludes other kinds of knowledge, but that which transmutes into itself all kinds of knowledge. Spiritual knowledge means the direct experience arrived at through the fusion of the essence of the object of knowledge into the essence of the subject of knowledge. Hence spiritual knowledge is indivisible experience, not divisible like intellectual knowledge. It is intuition which does not function on the basis of duality, but is essentially a self-identical, integral experience. Spiritual Knowledge means the essence of the knowledge of everything that exists in generality as well as in particularity. It is the Knowledge of the highest cause, the knowledge of which means the knowledge of all its effects also.

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Continued

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