On Mundaka Upanishad: The ones glad with the fullness of Knowledge

Acharya Prashant
13 min readFeb 6, 2022

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

संप्राप्यैनमृषयो ज्ञानतृप्ताः कृतात्मानो वीतरागाः प्रशान्ताः ।
ते सर्वगं सर्वतः प्राप्यधीरा युक्तात्मानः सर्वमेवाविशन्ति ॥

saṃprāpyainamṛṣayo jñānatṛptāḥ kṛtātmāno vītarāgāḥ praśāntāḥ
te sarvagaṃ sarvataḥ prāpyadhīrā yuktātmānaḥ sarvamevāviśanti

Attaining to Him, seers glad with fullness of knowledge, perfected in the Self, all passions cast from them, tranquilised, these, the wise, come to the all-pervading from every side, and, uniting themselves with Him, enter utterly the All.

~ Verse 3.2.5

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Acharya Prashant (AP): “Attaining to Him, seers glad with fullness of knowledge, perfected in the Self, all passions cast from them, tranquilised, these, the wise, come to the all-pervading from every side, and, uniting themselves with Him, enter utterly the All.”

“Attaining to Him” — having attained That — ”seers glad with fullness of knowledge” — seers joyful in the fullness of Truth — ”perfected in the Self — the pūrṇatā of Ātman — ”all passions cast from them” — free from trivial desires — “tranquilized” — ‘tranquilized’ is a bad word. The word used here is ‘praśānt’: in deep peace, not tranquilized.

“These, the wise, come to the all-pervading from every side” — no, they don’t come to the all-pervading from every side, they receive the all-pervading from every side. This has to be corrected. You cannot come to the all-pervading from every side. The all-pervading is not a limited entity that you can approach from this and that side.

“…and, uniting themselves with Him, enter utterly the All.” They unite themselves totally with the Truth and enter the Ultimate in a final sense.

So, this is a description of the process, the experience, and the joy of the seers, how they let the…

Acharya Prashant