In the sun there is a golden person. In the heart there is a golden person. They are the same. The Muṇḍaka's description of Brahman as the inner light that illumines both the cosmos and the individual simultaneously.
The sun blazes. Within the sun — within the blazing source of all light and heat — there is a golden person. Every detail is golden: the hair, the beard, the nails, the eyes. He is entirely composed of the light he illumines everything with.
And in the heart — the innermost point of the individual person, the locus of awareness — there is also a golden person. Equally golden, equally composed entirely of light. Seen by the mind when the mind is quiet enough to look inward rather than outward.
The Muṇḍaka's teaching is in the juxtaposition: the golden person in the sun is the golden person in the heart. The consciousness that illumines the cosmos — by which the sun shines, by which awareness in the cosmos is possible — is the same consciousness that is your own innermost awareness. The same. Not similar. Not related. The same light in both places, because it is not actually in either place — it is the ground of both.
This is one of the Upanishads' most direct statements of what the Mahāvākya Aham Brahmāsmi means experientially: the awareness that makes you able to say "I" is the same awareness that makes the cosmos what it is. The universe does not contain you as one of its objects. You and the universe appear within the same consciousness — and that consciousness is Brahman.
The golden person (hiraṇmayaḥ puruṣaḥ) image appears in three Upanishads: the Muṇḍaka, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (5.15.1), and the Īśā (16). In all three, the golden form is explicitly described as identical with the person who sees it — the observer and the observed converge. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka version is the most direct: "The face of truth is covered with a golden disc. Remove it, O Pūṣan, for I who am devoted to truth to see."
The Muṇḍaka's version adds the inward dimension: the golden person in the sun is seen with the outer eye (the sun is visible); the golden person in the heart is seen by the mind (manasā vyavaseyaḥ). The path from the first to the second is the path of the inquiry. What makes the sun blaze is the same as what makes awareness blaze — the conscious ground is one, appearing in two apparently different locations.
Śaṅkara's Bhāṣya on this verse explains the gold metaphor: gold is the most refined, the most luminous of ordinary metals, associated in the tradition with both purity and incorruptibility. The "golden" descriptor is not cosmological decoration — it is pointing at the self-luminous nature of consciousness (svaprakāśatva): consciousness requires nothing to illuminate it, the way gold reflects the ambient light rather than requiring its own external source.
The golden person passage is one of Śaṅkara's key exhibits for the doctrine of antaryāmin (inner controller) as identical with Ātman. The same passage appears in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka's antaryāmin section (3.7): Brahman is the consciousness within each element — within the sun, within water, within fire — that makes it what it is. The Muṇḍaka adds the personal dimension: the consciousness within the sun is the consciousness within you. Not analogous to the consciousness within you — the same consciousness, the same golden person.
This convergence — the cosmic and the individual recognising themselves as the same light — is precisely what the Mahāvākya Tat Tvam Asi is pointing at. Tat (the cosmic Brahman, the golden person in the sun) and Tvam (the individual self, the golden person in the heart) are not united by the word Asi (are). They are revealed by the word Asi to have always been one. The Muṇḍaka 2.2.7 is thus a visual, non-discursive presentation of the Chāndogya 6.8.7's verbal statement.