When The Sunrises…..

Will there be life without the phenomenon of sunrise and sunset? No isn’t it? Wonder how God has arranged all that! With extra features such as refraction of light during Dawn and Dusk! What if there is no refraction of light? Very difficult for people getting up early in the morning!

The eye’s pupil has the role of expanding and contracting the muscles to control the amount of light entering the retina. What happens to us when we leave the cinema hall?? Pupils contract to minimum size to allow minimum amount of light. This is because we might have probably been in the dark for a very long time and when we are suddenly exposed to the powerful sunlight.

But nature has overcome this problem by the phenomenon of “refraction”. Even before the actual sunrise, we are able to see shades of certain colours due to “Rayleigh’s scattering”. What if we do not have this phenomenon? Supposing the sunrise is at 6.33 am, then till 6:22:59 am, it would only be dark, and at the strike of 6.33 am, we are suddenly exposed to all the sunlight. Thus, this before-sunrise-scattering benefits us a lot. And this is the reason why we are advised to get up early in the morning, before dawn!

Thus, Sunrise is the instant at which the upper edge of the Sun appears above the horizon in the east. Sunrise should not be confused with dawn, which is the point at which the sky begins to lighten, some time before the sun itself appears, ending twilight.

Gone are the days when sun was helping people to distinguish mornings and evenings. And gone are the days when sun was the source of most intense light on earth. It is now called “LASER”. However intense LASER may be, Sun is not replaceable by artificial ones. Also, it is obviously impossible to produce a source with lasing action, of diameter of that of the sun. Thus, God’s creations are always unmatchable.

There is an interesting and a small episode in Mahabharata in Aranya Parva (The book of the forest) where there is a discussion about sunrise. It is called the “Yaksha-Prasnam” (Questions of Yaksha). It is a dialogue between Yudhishthira and Yama, the lord of Death who disguises as a Yaksha. In this Yudhishthira gives amazing and enlightening answers to very difficult questions asked by Yama.

In the very first question (out of 124), Yaksha questions about sunrise. The question is “What is the cause for sunrise?”, and the reply is “Brahmam (God) is the cause for sunrise”. The meaning is that, God is the ultimate, sunrise and sunset are under his control and so is any other natural phenomenon. It is said that, Lord Rama wanted to kill Ravana just for the reason that Ravana had taken the control of sunrise and sunset and created nuisances to the worldly beings.

However, the above explanation is not given always. The correct explanation goes here. When Yaksha talks about sunrise, it is the not the actual sunrise that is being talked about, but it refers to the rise of knowledge within us. In the answer, as Brahmam is being referred to, it is not the actual Brahmam, but the Vedas that are being called as Brahmam. Thus, what makes the knowledge within us to rise? They are the Vedas that make the real knowledge in each person to rise.

It is up to each person to make the sun within him to rise. As Swamy Vivekananda said, “AWAKE, ARISE AND ACHIEVE”.

Cheers ;)

- ∫.∫rikrishnan