The Mundaka Upanishad: 7 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Saturday 07, June 2025, 07:50.
Books
The Mundaka Upanishad: 7. 
First Khanda
Second Khanda
Mantras: 10,11,12
Swami Krishnananda

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Mantra No. 10:

Thinking that external sacrifices and charities are all, i.e., the best, these deluded ones do not know of anything better. Enjoying in heaven the fruits of meritorious deeds, at the end of it, they fall down to this world or even to a lower world.

Because of the lack of proper knowledge, ordinary people do not have the consciousness of the fact that there is a higher state of emancipation. Their lot is suffering alone because wherever there is lack of knowledge, there pain is the experience. A meritorious deed temporarily raises an individual to a region of enjoyment, because the effect of a deed is temporary. At the end of the momentum of the meritorious deed, the individual reverts to his native condition of imperfection and desire for action, i.e., he once again becomes what he was previously. No deed can permanently raise an individual to a high and glorious state, as every deed is only a phenomenon. And, further, due to the presence of passion and greed, the individual may even fall down to lower regions.

Mantra No. 11

Those people who have faith and practise austerity, who live in forests with calmness of mind and full with knowledge, living on alms, being freed from all desires, pass through the passage of the sun to where is that immortal and imperishable Purusha.

The Mantra refers to Krama-Mukti, or gradual liberation, attained by the Upasakas of Saguna Brahman. These Upasakas are the Vanaprasthas living in forests a life of austerity and devotion.

Mantra No. 12:

Examining the nature of the regions attained through action and finding out their worthlessness, a wise person should get totally disgusted with them, because that which is not made cannot be attained through what is made or done. For the sake of the knowledge of that (which is not made), one should approach, with Samit in his hand, a preceptor who is well-versed in scriptures and also established in Brahman.

The efforts of an individual are generally stained by ignorance, selfish desires and actions connected with those desires. Karmas are enjoined only on such people as cannot extricate themselves from the clutches of these fetters. The different regions and experiences which are accessible to these people, are also of the same nature as their causes. They give rise to such unpleasant experiences as rise and fall in different states. They are also dependent on and affected by the defects consequent upon the non-performance of what is enjoined and the performance of what is prohibited. People who revel in mere phenomenal selfish actions alone, get such births as those of beasts, demons, etc. These experiences should be properly analysed with the help of such proofs of knowledge as perception, inference, verbal testimony and comparison. The true nature of these experiences in the different worlds should be known in its essential form. These experiences are the different roads to Samsara. They extend from the unmanifest potentiality of beings to the lowest inanimate matter. They are either manifested or unmanifested, physical, astral or mental, objective or subjective. They are interdependent like the seed and the tree. They are the sources of extreme misery and are absolutely essenceless. They are illusory like a juggler's trick or water in the mirage or a city in the clouds or like objects in dream or like a breaking bubble. They are now seen and now not seen. Such experiences should be known to be the results of desires and actions belonging to the mind and senses. An aspirant should turn his back to all these and should come to the conclusion that the whole universe is produced by nescience and its undesirable consequences. The network of this universe is kept intact in the forms of pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, good and evil, etc.

A wise aspirant, therefore, should get disgusted with all these experiences beginning from Brahman down to a blade of grass. That which is not produced or created, is not attained through that which is produced or created. There can be relationship only between similar things, and not between two dissimilar things. A product has got non-eternal characteristics and, therefore, it will not be able to know the eternal as long as it is bound to such lower characteristics. Moreover, all effects or produced things can relate themselves to another thing only through a change or modification or an action. It is obvious that self-transformation is not the way of attaining true knowledge of any object. Since a transformation is transitory in nature, the knowledge that is effected by it would also be transitory. In this universe of manifestation, there is nothing that is not produced. Brahman is not something that is produced. Hence, the attainment of the knowledge of Brahman is not possible through a transitory process, which is the characteristic of produced things alone. Everything that is done leads only to what is done or produced. That which is eternal and not produced, is attained only through pure Knowledge which is not non-eternal or produced. Brahman is not subject to either producing or creating or obtaining or purifying or modifying in any way.

The highest Bliss which an aspirant seeks is found only in the immutable eternal Being. In the aspirant there is a consciousness of the difference between all non-eternal appearances and the eternal Being. This consciousness is called Viveka, which gives rise to Vairagya or the abandonment of the non-eternal. The aspirant begins to perceive the worthless nature of things and the possibility of the existence of a higher glorious being. For the sake of the knowledge of the Supreme Being, he approaches a spiritual preceptor who is rooted in the consciousness of Brahman. This Mantra points out that one will not be able to have intuitive knowledge without the help of an experienced teacher, even though one may be a very learned person.

Mantra No. 13:

To him who has duly approached (the Preceptor), who is of tranquil mind, whose mind is completely controlled, the wise Preceptor duly imparts the knowledge of Truth, the Brahma-Vidya, through which one is enabled to know the Imperishable Being.

The disciple should approach the teacher in a manner suited to the reception of the Knowledge of Brahman. The most important of all qualifications required of the disciple is thorough desirelessness. The forms of desires, whatever their nature or condition be, cover the purity of the mind and prevent the reception of the knowledge which is the opposite of any kind of desire. Even desire for life in the body should be got rid of when one approaches a preceptor for the sake of Knowledge. The disciple should have intelligently combined in himself the qualities of the head and the heart. He should have purity of feeling within coupled with subtle intelligence. The nature of Knowledge is first understood through the purified intellect and then felt within the purified heart. Viveka and Vairagya are respectively the qualities of the head and the heart, i.e., of the intellect and feeling. The preparations which an aspirant should make before receiving spiritual knowledge consist in the practice of the canons laid down in the Sadhana-Chatushtaya.

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Next

The Third Mundaka: First Khanda

Continued

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