The Chhandogya Upanishad - 77: Swami Krishnananda

 

=======================================================================================

Wednesday 29, January 2025. 10:00.

The Chhandogya Upanishad - 77: 

Swami Krishnananda.

Appendix 2: Samvarga-Vidya

Post-77.

======================================================================================

Section-3 (Continued).

2.

Yadapa ucchusyanti, vayum-evapiyanti, 

vayur-hyevaitan sarvan samvrnkte, 

ity-adhidaivatam.

When the water dries up, it goes there. It is this Being which absorbs the water into itself and makes water vanish into nothing, as it were. From the objective universal side, this is how the great deity, the cosmic air which blows everything into itself, is described.

Now from the internal microcosmic side also, it is being described.

3.

Athadhyatam prano vava samvargah, 

sa yada svapiti pranam eva vag-apyeti, 

pranam caksuh pranam srotram pranam 

manah prano hyevaitan sarvan samvrnkte iti.

Just as in the universal it is called air which absorbs everything into itself and dries up every effect into itself as the cause, so in the individual also it works in a similar manner, and it is called prana. When you go to sleep the mind is withdrawn by the action of the prana. The prana draws the mind into itself. The speech and the senses are all drawn into it. Every organ, whether it is eye, or ear, or any other which operates in the waking condition, is also withdrawn. All these are regulated by this Supreme Principle which works as prana inside. It controls everything and draws everything into itself. So it works outside and also inside. It is the brahmanda and the pindanda. It is the macrocosm and also the microcosm.

4.

Tau va etau dvau samvargau, 

vayur-eva devesu, pranah pranesu.

These are the two great absorbents in the whole cosmos. Inwardly it is the prana that works as the absorbent of all effects into itself, and outwardly it is air, the cosmic prana, the sutratman, hiranyagarbha which absorbs everything into itself. These two have to be brought together in conjunction in this meditation, as is the case with the Sandilya-Vidya to which we have made reference earlier. The inward and outward have to come together in meditation and be envisaged as one single Reality. Among the gods it is Vayu and among the senses and the internal functionaries it is the prana. This is the initiation.

The initiation is now over and Janasruti must have understood the import of it, as we are told nothing further as to what happened to him later on.

*****

Continued

================================================================================