तस्मादग्निः समिधो यस्य सूर्यः
सोमात् पर्जन्य ओषधयः पृथिव्याम् ।
पुमान् रेतः सिञ्चति योषितायां
बह्वीः प्रजाः पुरुषात् सम्प्रसूताः ॥ ५॥
tasmādagniḥ samidho yasya sūryaḥ
somāt parjanya oṣadhayaḥ pṛthivyām .
pumān retaḥ siñcati yoṣitāyāṃ
bahvīḥ prajāḥ puruṣāt samprasūtāḥ .. 5..
From Him comes the Fire whose fuel is the sun; from the moon comes rain; from rain, the herbs that grow on the earth; from the herbs, the seminal fluid which a man pours into a woman. Thus many living beings are born of the Purusha.
Commentary:
The creation process is described here in terms of the Panchagni Vidya, which is described in more detail in the Chhandogya Upanishad. This is a very interesting concept that we have in the Upanishads—the Panchagni Vidya, the fivefold descent through which any event in the world can be imagined
to take place. Events do not take place merely on Earth; they take place in heaven first. A vibration takes place in the highest heaven, and here this heavenly vibration is called Agni, or the supreme fire of the original cosmic activity.
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.
Oṣadhayaḥ pṛthivyām: 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.
Putmān retas siñcati yoṣitāyām bahvīḥ prajāḥ puruṣāt samprasūtāḥ: 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.
But inside the prana there is the thought which causes the prana to operate in that particular manner. When we walk, the prana will not impel the legs to move unless there is thought behind it. The mind wants the prana to work in such a way that it moves the legs. Within the mind there is reason, which says that it is necessary to move the legs. The mind is only a connecting link between the reason on one side and the prana on the other side. But there is something behind reason—namely, the very fact of our being individuals in this world. Why should there be a necessity to move the limbs? It arises on account of a certain kind of finitude in which we are involved. The jivatatva is the cause; and the jiva is nothing but a concentrated point of the Atman consciousness. Thus, the tapas of Brahman created the world, says the Upanishad in one of its passages: tapasā cīyate brahma tato’nnam abhijāyate (1.1.8).
Anna is the product of this concentration of the will of Brahman. All that is produced can be regarded as anna and, in this sense, the finitude itself is a product. It is anna for the concentrated will of the Atman to manifest itself as an individual. And the finitude causes another product which is its anna—namely, the reason or the intellect. The mind is the anna, or the product of the reason; the prana is the anna, or the product of the mind; the physical body is the anna, or the product of the prana. As it happens in this manner in an individual case, so is it that everything happens in the world. The Panchagni Vidya of the Chhandogya Upanishad is a cosmological iteration of the very same process that takes place in our own individuality, through which it is that we are what we are in this body.
The causes behind the causes is the story of creation, especially the Panchagni Vidya Tattva. There is a cause for the body, which is the prana. There is a cause for the prana, which is the mind. There is a cause for the mind, which is the reason. There is a cause for the reason, which is the jivatatva, or finitude. And there is a cause for that, which is the will of the Atman. So is this production of things and events in this world, which are occasioned by certain vibrations. The vibrations are one behind the other. In the beginning, originally there is the tattva, or the tapas concentration of Brahman itself, which gyrates and produces Hiranyagarbha tattva, Virat tattva, space-time. After that there are the tanmatras—shabdha, sparsa, rupa, rasa, gandha—then the five elements, and all things down to the very earth from where there is the harvest of diet, food, which when eaten produces vitality in the system, causing further enlargement of the species.