Birth of the World and The Consciousness

Here we are with the Mundaka Upanishad of Atharva Veda. The name is interesting: Mundaka Upanishad. It is surmised that ‘muṇdaka’ comes from ‘muṇda’, and ‘muṇda’ points towards the shaven head of the Brahmins who would practice austerity, the disciples of old carrying bald heads. We have seen those images. So, that is called a muṇda. From there comes the name Mundaka.

This Upanishad throws light on the path of knowledge. We call the Upanishads as belonging to the path of knowledge, Jñānamārga, and then we say the Bhaktimārga is the mārga of love, the path of devotion is synonymous with love. One should refuse to buy that distinction. The Upanishads are overflowing with love. If love is real, it can’t be sans discrimination or knowledge. And if you really have knowledge, you would be a very loving person. It’s just that your love would not be of the type you see all around.

After reading Mundaka Upanishad one can say poets are at work here. In fact, the Upanishads several times call the Rishis as kavis, poets. Not without reason: they are bringing to words that which is very abstract, and that is what a poet does; they are giving a face to that which is very conceptual, that is what a painter does. And then, when you give it a face, obviously you also give it a name, and that becomes the name of a god. So, those gods don’t really exist. They are names of something virtuous within.

In this course we will explore following topics in-depth:
The Desire that gives birth to the worlds- The force of desire, that makes the imperceptible, complete, formless, intangible Brahman assume tangible proportions. It all starts from that fundamental desire. That desire is Maya. So, Brahman grows into something very subtle, and then from that subtle something comes gross material, matter, which has been referred to as anna, and from that arise all the worlds, the various universes.

The Four Yugas- In the Vedic tradition those are Satyayuga, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kaliyuga. Now, what do they represent? Do they represent the passage of time? Do they represent something historical? We have been led to believe that way, right? We believe that time is something external that happens to us, it is something happening in the clock or in the watch, and it is happening in spite of us or outside of us.