PRASNOPANISHAD 2

                                                                   

Preceptor Pippalada answered the questions of his two disciples Kabandhi and Bhargava on the importance of the different organs of the body and the most important of all, PRANA the motivating force. In the next section, Kausalya, another disciple raises questions of tremendous significance. He wants to know from where Life is born, how it enters the body, how it distributes itself and establishes itself and how it finally exits. He wants to know its relationship to external and internal things of the body and also the spiritual. The teacher was very glad at these questions as they reflected his transcendental nature. He appreciated that his disciple was more devoted to Brahman.

          Life is born of the self and it is the relationship of the object and its shadow! It enters the body by the activity of the mind. Like the king commanding his officers to supervise a few villages, Life commands other vital breaths to their respective positions in the body. Pipplada points out that the “APANA’ vayu is in charge of excretion and reproduction; eyes, ears, mouth and nose contain life breath;  “ SAMANA” breath, placed in the middle, distributes equally the food supplied.  Seven fires emerge from this. “SELF “is centered in the heart with 101 blood vessels! Each blood vessel has a hundred smaller vessels branching out into 72000 vessels! “VYANA” breath  travels within these vessels!  UDANA breath rises up through one of them and is the cause of man’s birth according to his good or evil deeds!

           Sun rise is considered as external life breath that energizes the eye; the divinity in the earth helps the person’s APANA breath! The space between the two is the SAMANA breath and the air is the VYANA breath! Fire itself is UDANA breath. When this vital breath is quenched , man dies. The teacher continues and says that man takes rebirth according to the last thoughts he had before his death. A combination of Life, vital heat, and Self  leads to the world he has already planned! The person and all his progeny who know all about life, its coming, staying, its  fivefold extension, and its relation to the Self obtains immortality!                         (Continued)