-09_15th February 1915.htm

THE LIFE DIVINE

CHAPTER VII

THE EGO AND THE DUALITIES.

    The soul seated on the same tree of Nature is absorbed and deluded and has sorrow because it is not the Lord, but when it sees and is in union with that other self and greatness of it which is the Lord, then sorrow passes away from it.

Swetacwatarea Upanishad

If all is in truth Sachchidananda, death, suffering, evil, limitation can only be the creations, positive in practical effect, negative in essence, of a distorting consciousness which has fallen from the total and unifying knowledge of itself into some error of division and partial experience. This is the fall of man typified in the poetic parable of the Hebrew Genesis. That fall is his deviation from the full and pure acceptance of God and himself, or rather of God in himself, into a dividing consciousness which brings with it all the train of the dualities, life and death, good and evil, joy and pain, completeness and want, the fruit of a divided being. This is the fruit which Adam and Eve, Purusha and Prakriti, the soul tempted by Nature, have eaten. The exemption comes by the recovery of the universal in the individual and of the spiritual term in the physical consciousness. Then alone the soul in Nature can be allowed to partake of the fruit of the tree of life and be as the Divine and live for ever. For then only can the purpose of its descent into material consciousness be accomplished, when the knowledge of good and evil, joy and suffering, life and death has been accomplished through the recovery

Page-385

by the human soul of a higher knowledge which reconciles and identifies these opposites in the universal and transforms their divisions into the image of the divine Unity.

    To Sachchidananda extended in all things in widest commonalty and impartial universality, death, suffering, evil and limitation can only be at the most reverse terms, shadow-forms of their luminous opposites. As these things are felt by us, they are notes of a discord. They formulate separation where there should be a unity, miscomprehension where there should be an understanding, an attempt to arrive at independent harmonies where there should be a self-adaptation to the orchestral whole. All totality, even if it be only in one scheme of the universal vibrations, even if it be only a totality of the physical consciousness without possession of all that is in movement beyond and behind, must be to that extent a reversion to harmony and a reconciliation of jarring opposites. On the other hand to Sachchidananda transcendent of the forms of the universe the dual terms themselves, even so understood, can no longer be justly applicable. Transcendence transfigures ; it does not reconcile, but rather transmutes opposites into something surpassing them that effaces their oppositions.

    At first, however, we must strive to relate the individual again to the harmony of the totality. There it is necessary for us—otherwise there is no issue from the problem—to realise that the terms in which our present consciousness renders the values of the universe, though practically justified for the purposes of human experience and progress, are not the sole terms in which it is possible to render them and may not be the complete, the right, the ultimate formulas. Just as there may be sense-organs or formations of sense-capacity which see the physical world differently and it may well be better, because more completely, than our sense-organs and sense-capacity, so there may be other mental and supra-mental envisaging of the universe which surpass our own. States of consciousness there are in which Death is only a change in immortal Life, pain a violent backwash of the waters of

Page-386

universal delight, limitation a turning of the Infinite upon itself, evil a circling of the good around its own perfection ; and this not in abstract conception only, but in actual vision and in constant and substantial experience. To arrive at such states of consciousness may, for the individual, be one of the most important and indispensable steps of his progress towards self-perfection.

    Certainly, the practical values given us by our senses and by the dualistic sense-mind must hold good in their field and be accepted as the standard for ordinary life-experience until a larger harmony is ready into which they can enter and transform themselves without losing hold of the realities which they represent. To enlarge the sense faculties without the knowledge that would give the old sense-values their right interpretation from the new stand-point might lead to serious disorders and incapacities, might unfit for practical life and for the orderly and disciplined use of the reason. Equally, an enlargement of our mental consciousness out of the experience of the egoistic dualities into an unregulated unity with some form of total consciousness might easily bring about a confusion and incapacity for the active life of humanity in the established order of the world’s relativities. This, no doubt, is the root of the injunction imposed in the Gita on the man who has the knowledge not to disturb the life-basis and thought-basis of the ignorant ; for, impelled by his example but unable to comprehend the principle of his action, they would lose their own system of values without arriving at a higher foundation.

    Such a disorder and incapacity may be accepted personally and are accepted by many great souls as a temporary passage or as the price to be paid for the entry into a wider existence. But the right goal of human progress must be always an effective and synthetic reinterpretation by which the law of that wider existence may be represented in a new order of truths and in a more just and puissant working of the faculties on the life-material of the universe. For the senses the sun goes round the earth ; that was for them the centre of existence and the motions

Page-387

of life are arranged on the basis of a misconception. The truth is the very opposite, but its discovery would have been of little use if there were not a science that makes the new conception the centre of a reasoned and ordered knowledge putting their right values on the perceptions of the senses. So also for the mental consciousness God moves round the personal ego and all His works and ways are brought to the judgment of our egoistic sensations, emotions and conceptions and are there given values and interpretations which, though a perversion and inversion of the truth of things, are yet useful and practically sufficient in a certain development of human life and progress. They are a rough practical systematisation of our experience of things valid so long as we dwell in a certain order of ideas and activities. But they do not represent the last and highest state of human life and knowledge. *’ Truth is the path and not the falsehood. " The truth is not that God moves round the ego as the centre of existence and can be judged by the ego and its view of the dualities, but that the Divine is itself the centre and that the experience of the individual only finds its own true truth when it is known in the terms of the universal and the transcendent. Nevertheless, to substitute this conception for the egoistic without an adequate base of knowledge may lead to the substitution of new but still false and arbitrary ideas for the old and bring about a violent instead of a settled disorder of right values. Such a disorder often marks the inception of new philosophies and religions and initiates useful revolutions. But the true goal is only reached when we can group round the right central conception a reasoned and effective knowledge in which the egoistic life shall rediscover all its values transformed and corrected. Then we shall possess that new order of truths which will make it possible for us to substitute a more divine life for the existence which we now lead and to effectually a more divine and puissant use of our faculties on the life-material of the universe.

    That new life and power of the human integer must necessarily repose on a realisation of the great verities

Page-388

which translate into our mode of conceiving things the nature of the divine existence. It must proceed through a renunciation by the ego of its false stand-point and false certainties, through its entry into a right relation and harmony with the totalities of which it forms a part and with the transcendences from which it is a descent, and through its perfect self-opening to a truth and a law that exceed its own conventions, —a truth that shall be its fulfilment and a law that shall be its deliverance. Its goal must be the abolition of those values which are the creations of the egoistic view of things ; its crown must be the transcendence of limitation, ignorance, death, suffering and evil.

    The transcendence, the abolition are not possible here on earth and in our human life if the terms of that life are necessarily bound to our present egoistic valuations. If life is in its nature individual phenomenon and not representation of a universal existence and the breathing of a mighty Life-Spirit, if the dualities which are the response of the individual to its contacts are not merely a response but the very essence and condition of all living, if limitation is the inalienable nature of the substance of which our mind and body are formed, disintegration of death the first and last condition of all life, its end and its beginning, pleasure and pain the inseparable dual stuff of all sensation, joy and grief the necessary light and shade of all emotion, truth and error the two poles between which all knowledge must eternally move, then transcendence is only attainable by the abandonment of human life in a Nirvana beyond all existence or by attainment to another world, a heaven quite otherwise constituted than this material universe.

    It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances. "We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his in-

Page-389

estimative arboreal life in primeval forests to conceive that there would be one day an animal on the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature’s forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such a conception had been possible for the Ape-mind, it would still have been difficult for him to imagine that by any progress of Nature or long effort of Will and tendency he himself could develop into that animal. Man, because he has acquired reason and still more because he has indulged his power of imagination and intuition, is able to conceive an existence higher than his own and even to envisage his personal elevation beyond his present state into that existence. His idea of the supreme state is an absolute of all that is positive to his own concepts and desirable to his own instinctive aspiration,—Knowledge without its negative shadow of error, Bliss without its negation in experience of suffering, Power without its constant denial by incapacity, purity and plenitude of being without the opposing sense of defect and limitation. It is so that he conceives his gods ; it is so that he constructs his heavens. But it is not so that his reason conceives of a possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of God and Heaven is really a dream of his own perfection ; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realisation here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral Ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future Man. His imagination, his religious aspirations may hold that end before him ; but when his reason asserts itself, rejecting imagination and transcendent intuition, he puts it by as a brilliant superstition contrary to the hard facts of the material universe. It becomes then only his inspiring vision of the impossible. All that is’ possible is a conditioned, limited and precarious knowledge, happiness, power and good.

Page-390

    Yet in the principle of reason itself there is the assertion of a Transcendence. For reason is in its whole aim and essence the pursuit of Knowledge, the pursuit, that is to say, of Truth by the elimination of error. Its view, its aim is not that of a passage from a greater to a lesser error, but it supposes a positive, pre-existent Truth towards which through the dualities of right knowledge and wrong knowledge we can progressively move. If our reason has not the same instinctive certitude with regard to the other aspirations of humanity, it is because it lacks the same essential illumination inherent in its own positive activity. We can just conceive of a positive or absolute realisation of happiness, because the heart to which that instinct for happiness belongs has its own form of certitude, is capable of faith, and because our minds can envisage the elimination of unsatisfied want which is the apparent cause of suffering. But how shall we conceive of the elimination of pain from nervous sensation or of death from the life of the body ? Yet the rejection of pain is a sovereign instinct of the sensations, the rejection of death a dominant claim inherent in the essence of our vitality. But these things present themselves to our reason as instinctive aspirations, not as realisable potentialities.

    Yet the same law should hold throughout. The error of the practical reason is an excessive subjection to the apparent fact which it can immediately feel as real and an insufficient courage in carrying profounder facts of potentiality to their logical conclusion. What is, is the realisation of an anterior potentiality; present potentiality is a clue to future realisation. And here potentiality exists; for the mastery of phenomena depends upon a knowledge of their causes and processes and if we know the causes of error, sorrow, pain, death, we may labour with some hope towards their elimination. For knowledge is power and mastery.

    In fact, we do pursue as an ideal, so far as we may, the elimination of all these negative or adverse phenomena. We seek constantly to minimise the causes of error, pain and suffering. Science, as its knowledge increases, dreams

Page-391

of regulating birth and of indefinitely prolonging life, if not of effecting the entire conquest of death. But because we envisage only external or secondary causes, we can only think of removing them to a distance and not of eliminating the actual roots of that against which we struggle. And we are thus limited because we strive towards secondary perceptions and not towards root-knowledge, because we know processes of things, but not their essence. We thus arrive at a more powerful manipulation of circumstances, but not at essential control. But if we could grasp the essential nature and the essential cause of error, suffering and death, we might hope to arrive at a mastery voice them which should be not, relative but entire. We might hope even to eliminate them altogether and justify the dominant in it in  of our nature by the conquest of that absolute good, bliss, knowledge and immortality which our intuitions perceive as the true and ultimate condition of the human being .

    The ancient Vedanta presents us with such a solution in the conception and experience of Bra human as the one universal and essential fact and of the nature of Brahman as Sachchidananda.

    In this view the essence of all life is the movement of a universal and immortal existence, the essence of all sensation and emotion is the play of a universal and self-existent delight in being, the essence of all thought and perception is the radiation of a universal and all-pervading truth, the essence of all activity is the progression of a universal and self-effecting good.

    But the play and movement embodies itself in a multiplicity of forms, a variation of tendencies, an interplay of energies. Multiplicity permits of the interference of a determinative and temporarily de formative factor, the individual ego; and the nature of the ego is a self-limitation of consciousness by a willed ignorance of the rest of its play and its exclusive absorption in one form, one combination of tendencies, one field of the movement of energies. Ego is the factor which determines the reactions of error, sorrow, pain, evil, death ; for it gives these values to move-

Page-392

merits which would otherwise be represented in their right relation to the one existence, Bliss, Truth and Good. By recovering the right relation we may eliminate the egcdetermined reactions, reducing them eventually to their true values; and this recovery can be effected by the right participation of the individual in the consciousness of the totality and in the consciousness of the transcendent which the totality represents.

    Into later Vedanta there crept and arrived at fixity the idea that the limited ego is not only the cause of the dualities, but the essential condition for the existence of the universe. By getting rid of the ignorance of the ego and its resultant limitations we do indeed eliminate the dualities, but we eliminate along with them our existence in the cosmic movement. Thus we return to the essentially evil and illusory nature of human existence and the vanity of all effort after perfection in the life of the world. A relative good linked always to its opposite is all that here we can seek. But if we adhere to the larger and profounder idea that the ego is only an intermediate representation of something beyond itself, we escape from this consequence and are able to apply Vedanta to fulfilment of life and not only to the escape from life. The essential cause and condition of universal existence is the Lord, Ishwara or Purusha, manifesting and occupying individual and universal forms. The limited ego is only an intermediate phenomenon of consciousness necessary for a certain line of development. Following this line the individual can arrive at that which is beyond himself, that which he represents, and can yet continue to represent it, no longer as an obscured and limited ego, but as a centre of the divine and the universal consciousness embracing, utilising and transforming into harmony with the divine all individual determinations.

    We have then the manifestation of the divine Conscious Being in the totality of physical Nature as the foundation of human existence in the material universe. We have the emergence of that Conscious Being in an involved and inevitably evolving Life, Mind and Supermind as the condition of our activities ; for it is this evolution which

Page-393

has enabled man to appear in Matter and it is this evolution which will enable him progressively to manifest God in the body,—the universal Incarnation. We have in egoistic formation the intermediate and decisive factor which allows the One to emerge as the conscious Many out of that indeterminate totality general, obscure and formless which we call the subconscient,—hridya samudra, the ocean-like heart in things of the Rig-Veda. We have the dualities of life and death, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, truth and error, good and evil as the first formations of egoistic consciousness, the natural and inevitable outcome of its attempt to realise unity in an artificial construction of itself exclusive of the total truth, good, life and delight of being in the universe. W^e have the dissolution of this egoistic construction by the self-opening of the individual to the universe and to God as the means of that supreme fulfilment to which egoistic life is only a prelude even as animal life was only a prelude to the human. We have the realisation of the All in the individual by the transformation of the limited ego in to a conscious centre of the divine unity and freedom as the term at which the fulfilment arrives. And we have the out flowing of the infinite and absolute Existence, Truth, Good, and Delight of being on the Many in the world as the divine result towards which the cycles of our evolution move. This is the supreme birth which maternal Nature holds in herself; of this she strives to be delivered.

Page-394

The Wherefore

of the Worlds

CHAPTER VI

THE PRIMARY DATA OF BEING.

    The manifested being appears under the two categories of Space and Time. The origin of these categories must therefore be found in that of the being itself and their principles in the essential characteristic of the desire by which the being has been formed.

    It is only through desire as intermediary that a connection can be established between these relative categories and the category of the Absolute. For in the Absolute Space and Time have to be denned by contradictory terms, absolute Space being infinite and indivisible and absolute Time being permanence, immutability, pure duration, eternity without change or succession. For the manifested being Space is extent essentially divisible and Time is essential variability, continuous succession,—it is in a word, becoming.

    But if we refer the fundamental categories to the principle of desire, it is then possible to understand how they derive from the very character of that desire.

    The desire to be implies, in fact, a tendency towards the being’s particular affirmation. towards the distinction of itself from the Absolute. It contains in this tendency a first principle of activity which is the very principle of Time.

    Of the two categories, Time and Space, that of Time

Page-395

appears then to be the more necessary of the two, the more inseparable from the notion of being.

    In proportion as the being dissociates itself from the Absolute, there intervene at once the series of terms of progressive distinction which constitute it and the series of terms of continuous succession which form Time.

    The Absolute though itself beyond the series of successions, beyond Time, yet becomes nevertheless the first term of that series the moment the second term intervenes, —as soon, that is to say, as something relative appears.

    Time and the being have one and the same origin.

    Outside the immutable and permanent there can be nothing but becoming, tendency, succession of ephemeral and relative states; and each relativity being but a relation, no moment, no term of the succession exists except by virtue of the others, no state has any reality by itself. The separate being cannot be anything more than a changing ; it is an illusion which renews itself and persists only by constant transformation, an illusion which perpetuates and by the very perpetuation realises itself.

    If the desire to be, the formative condition of the being, had not the possibility of clothing itself incessantly in different modes and renewing its contents at each moment, the being would have been a fugitive appearance vanishing as soon as it was born. Nothing can subsistent out a continual new creation into something else. But for that it is necessary that an indefinite series of possibilities should be able to awake successively into action.

    And how could that be if the universe did not plunge all its roots into the fathomless ocean of the unmanifest-ed, if after emerging itself like an island on its surface it could not draw incessantly on its depths for the elements of a perpetual transformation ?

    The being, even though foreign to the principle of the Absolute by its will to distinct existence, is yet in its essence, apart from all its relative determinations, that Absolute, and from its own depths it can draw incessantly new manifestations representing all the possibilities of the desire to be.

Page-396

    Thus is explained its becoming in Time; Time is the very stuff of its existence. It exists only by working incessantly to substitute its modes of being one in the place of the other, by replacing itself by itself, by building upon two Nothings, two negations, on that which is not yet and that which no longer is, the exclusive affirmation of its being, by creating the moment in the very bosom of eternity.

    It is, then, by multiplying itself in a continual succession that it persists in its character of definite unity emergent out of the infinite One.

    The permanence of the eternal is for the manifest being transformed into a perpetual becoming.

* * *

    From the principle of the being, one with that of Time, is derived the principle of Space.

    The law which distinguishes the manifested being from the Absolute, applies also to its potential elements. The desire by which it is formed individualises in it by a progressive differentiation each of these elements. For- nothing is simple in the relative ; pure unity belongs only to the Absolute. The manifested being is in its essence multiplicity.

    If subjective unity becomes by its repetition successive plurality, Number formative of Time, it becomes also by its division objective simultaneity, the relativity of Space.

    The manifested being is essentially differentiation and potential divisibility. This divisibility defines Space and distinguishes it from Time.

    For Time translates into the manifested world the Absolute’s .character of unity, of identity. It is the category of the being in itself considered in its subjective unity apart from the potential multiplicity of its elements.

    Space on the contrary translates into the manifested world the permanent infinity of the possibilities of the Absolute. It is the category of the being considered in the simultaneous complexity of its elements and of their objective relations apart from their perpetually changing individual unity.

Page-397

    This is the reason why one cannot divide Time without bringing into it the notion of Space so as to be able to discern in it spaces of time.

    But each of these spaces of Time is common to all beings; they exist in them simultaneously. On the contrary each of the possible divisions of Space relates exclusively to a particular being and can only be successively occupied by several, not simultaneously.

    It is only by bringing the notion of Time into Space that we can take account of changes produced in Space.

    It is in the movement that we have the mingling and the becoming concrete of these two abstractions, one of pure extent and the other of duration, one of simultaneity and the other of becoming, one of concomitance and the other of succession. Mingling and becoming concrete they form the very substance of all reality.

    What abstract movement in Time is for indivisible unity,—the condition of its subjective manifestation,— concrete movement in Space is for the multiple and divisible,—the condition of objective manifestation.

    Thus the analysis of the essential categories of being enables us to understand how the identity of principles in the Absolute is represented in the relative by the synthesis of movement.

    If desire is the first cause of the being, movement is the being itself.

*    *

    If we wish to carry farther that play of mind which consists in representing symbolically by means of abstract notions the very life of the essential and untranslatable Reality, it can be shown how all relative notions are attached to absolute categories and how from the fundamental principles of unity and immutability the mind can deduce its most general concepts.

    Inseparable, indiscernable in their origin these principles of the Absolute can only be disjoined and dissociated if they exclude each other by a mutual opposition of their contraries.

Page-398

    We have seen that the possibility of their disjunction is involved in the possibility of the desire to be which breaks the unity and interrupts the immutability of the Absolute so as to give birth to multiple and changing relativities, to becoming of indivisible Time and divisibility of immobile Space.

    From these oppositions of contraries are born the four terms which constitute all relativity. On the manner in which they combine and react on each other depend the diverse forms of that relativity.

    Two of these terms, the Immutable and the Indivisible, represent in a negative form the unknowable of the Absolute, and their opposites, the divisible and the mutable, represent in a positive form the very essence of the relative.

    Joined in pairs, each negative to a positive, the mutable to the indivisible, the immutable to the divisible, they form productive couples which are the parent roots of all our categories. For the character of mutable indivisibility which belongs to Time, belongs also to Quality, to pure Force, to Mind, as opposed to the character of divisible Immobility which belongs to Space, to Quantity, to Matter properly so called.

    One might define these two groups of opposite categories as belonging the one to masculine activities abstract, synthetic, evaluative, productive of transformation, the other to feminine passivity concrete, analytic, evolutionary, powerful for conservation.

    From their union all relative objectivities are born.

    For just as the intervention of Time in Space creates the movement, so also the intervention of Force in Substance, of Quality in Quantity, of Mind in Matter creates form, body, the individualisation of Life, the act of Will.

*  *  *

    If the tendency to division which belongs to the relative and derives from the desire to be, determines an always increasing fragmentation of substances and pro-

Page-399

aggressive multiplication of elements, the law of unity, on the contrary, which belongs to the Absolute, is rendered everywhere in the relative by the tendency to synthesis and integration.

    The same principle of individualisation which enables the being to detach itself from the Impersonal, determines in it a progressive differentiation of all the hitherto indistinguishable elements which constitute its existence. Each of these elements becomes as it were, a little world in the great and in its turn divisible.

    But if all substance tends to be decomposed into more and more simple elements, everywhere also these elements grouped and organised attempt to recover their primal unity. And each group, each aggregation becomes a sort of collective entity with its own proper soul in which that unity is affirmed. For each of these individual egos its conscious subjectivity depends entirely on the wealth of the elements and the perfection of the relations which have gone to make up its synthesis.

    Hence a double current in things. All substance tends towards organisation of life and the synthesis of the conscious ego; all form is ephemeral and all life returns towards death.

    Because the relative is precisely the result of a dissociation between the two principles of permanence and unity in which each allies itself to the contrary of the other, it seams as if all that tends towards unity by the way of synthesis must by that very fact lose in potentiality of duration. All aggregates are impermanent.

    But on the other hand, because permanence and unity are inseparable in the Absolute, the more the characteristics of unity are perfected in the synthesis, the more its stability increases.

    The permanence of the divisible is represented for each element by a sort of inertia, of fixity, of invariability in its nature. But in proportion as the indivisibility of the element is emphasised, the mutability of this indivisible is manifested objectively by a greater mobility and an increasing swiftness of the elementary movements.

Page-400

    In the synthetic unity, in the indivisibility of the conscious ego the same characteristic is represented on the contrary by pure internal movement and by an increasing mutability of the subjective states of the being, a succession of more and more rapid movements in its becoming.

    Finally, in the moral characteristics of the individual being, the two dissociated principles of the Absolute are diversely affirmed, that of unity by the exclusive and egoistic oneness of the personal " I ", that of permanence by a sort of fixity, of inertia, of resistance to the universal movement, a refusal unceasingly opposed to the powers of evolution and progress.

    All life in the relative thus pursues its vain dream and tends towards a sort of personal Absolute which the experience of the reason must one day transform for each being into an endeavour towards the absolute consciousness of the Impersonal.

*  *  *

    It is not only with regard to the Absolute that the relativity of the manifested being affirms itself.

    In the relative all is relative. When we speak of Space and Time, we are under these abstractions defining the most general categories to which all the possible modes and forms of simultaneity and succession can be reduced.

    To these abstract modes there correspond, in the objective world, concrete states of substance and of being, states which extend in an indefinite series from the first transcendences to our own physical domain.

    In each of these states Space and Time find a real content which forms the stuff of their weaving.

    Time has more reality to the being in proportion as it takes cognizance with more precision and detail of its uninterrupted changes. In the states in which the consciousness of these changes is uniform, vague, taken in the mass, Time passes by without being perceived . For the subconscient forces of the universe a thousand years are as one day.

Page-401

    Similarly the concreteness of Space increases in proportion as the divisibility of substance grows by a more complex differentiation of its elements. This substance be comes the more material, the more it lends itself by its very complexity to richer and more numerous combinations.

    What we call Matter is the pure possibility of these combinations; it is the abstract multiplicity of the elements whose active organisation constitutes life.

    To each degree of divisibility in substance there corresponds a certain state of Matter and a certain domain of Life which is a field of operation for less and less simple syntheses of form and of activity.

    Thus are constituted the successive orders of reality by which cosmic growth is accomplished.

    The universe enlarges itself ; by a sort of progressive blossoming and production it increases at once the domain of its extent and the reach of its depths.

    By an ever more detailed, precise and individual differentiation of its elements, it constitutes for itself one after another the successive states of an increasing materiality, that is to say, of an increasing complexity in its substance. And in each of these states the objective forms of the being become more concrete, rich and real.

    It is therefore by the simple prolongation in its effect of the desire for individual manifestation according to the sole law of a rigorously egoistic affirmation that universal being unrolls the whole process of its material evolution.

    Arisen from the formidable inconscience of its origin, it manifests itself progressively to itself. And the Matter in which it appears at the term of its successive self-integrations becomes the mirror which accurately reflects its own image . It finds there at once the evidence of all the imperfections it bore unknowingly in itself and the field of experience, of trial and atonement in which it undergoes their evil consequences and redeems them.

Page-402

The Secret

of the Veda

CHAPTER VI

AGNI AND THE TRUTH.

    The Rig-Veda is one in all its parts. Whichever of its ten Mandala we choose, we find the same substance, the same ideas, the same images, the same phrases. The Rishis are the seers of a single truth and use in its expression a common language. They differ in temperament and personality; some are inclined to a more rich, subtle and profound use of Vedic symbolism; others give voice to their spiritual experience in a barer and simpler diction, with less fertility of thought, richness of poetical image or depth and fullness of suggestion. Often the songs of one seer vary in their manner, range from the utmost simplicity to the most curious richness. Or there are risings and fallings in the same hymn ; it proceeds from the most ordinary conventions of the general symbol of sacrifice to a movement of packed and complex thought. Some of the Suktas are plain and almost modern in their language; others baffle us at first by their semblance of antique obscurity. But these differences of manner take nothing from the unity of spiritual experience, nor are they complicated by any variation of the fixed terms and the common formulae. In the deep and mystic style of Dirghatamas Auchathya as in the melodious lucidity of Medhatithi Kanwa, in the puissant and energetic hymns of Viswamitra as in Vasishtha’s even harmonies we have the same firm

Page-403

foundation of knowledge and the same scrupulous adherence to the sacred conventions of the Initiates.

    From this peculiarity of the Vedic compositions it results that the method of interpretation which I have described can be equally well illustrated from a number of scattered Suktas selected from the ten Mandala or from any small block of hymns by a single Rishi. If my purpose were to establish beyond all possibility of objection the interpretation which I am now offering, a much more detailed and considerable work would be necessary. A critical scrutiny covering the whole of the ten Mandala would be indispensable. Xo justify for instance the idea I attach to the Vedic term Ritam, the Truth, or my explanation of the symbol of the Cow of Light, I should have to cite all passages of any importance in which the idea of the Truth or the image of the Cow are introduced and establish my thesis by an examination of their sense and context. Or if I wish to prove that Indra in the Veda is really in his psychological functions the master of luminous mind type feed by Dyads, or Heaven, with its three shining realms, Rochana, I should have to examine similarly the hymns addressed to Indra and the passages in which there is a clear mention of the Vedic system of worlds. Nor could this be sufficient, so intertwined and interdependent are the notions of the Veda, without some scrutiny of the other Gods and of other important psychological terms connected with the idea of the Truth and of the mental illumination through which man arrives at it. I recognise the necessity of such a work of justification and hope to follow it out in other studies on the Vedic Truth, on the Gods of the Veda and on Vedic symbols. But a labour of this scope would be beyond the range of the present work, which is confined merely to an illustration of my method and to a brief statement of the results of my theory.

    In order to illustrate the method I propose to take the first eleven Suktas of the first Mandala and to show how some of the central ideas of a psychological interpretation arise out of certain important passages or single hymns

Page-404

and how the surrounding context of the passages and the general thought of the hymns assume an entirely new appearance in the light of this profounder thinking.

    The Sanhita of the Rig-Veda, as we possess it, is arranged in ten books or Mandalas. A double principle is observed in the arrangement. Six of the Mandalas are given each to the hymns of a single Rishi or family of Rishis. Thus the second is devoted chiefly to the Suktas of th–Rishi Gritsamada, the third and the seventh similarly to the great names of Visvamitra and Vasistha respectively, the fourth to Vamadeva, the sixth to Bharadwaja . The fifth is occupied by the hymns of the house of Atri. In each of these Mandalas the suktas addressed to Agni are first collected together and followed by those of which Indra is the deity; the invocations of other gods, Brihaspati, Surya, the Ribhus, Usha etc close the Mandala . A whole book, the ninth, is given to a single god, Soma. The first, eighth and tenth Mandalas are collections of Suktas by various Rishis, but the hymns of each seer are ordinarily placed together in the order of their deities, Agni leading, Indra following, the other gods succeeding. Thus the first Mandala opens with ten hymns of the seer Madhuchchandas, son of Visvamitra, and an eleventh ascribed to Jetri, son of Madhuchchhandas . This last Sukta, however, is identical in style, manner and spirit with the ten that precede it and they can all be taken together as a single block of hymns one in intention and diction.

    A certain principle of thought-development also has not been absent from the arrangement of these Vedic hymns. The opening Mandala seems to have been so designed that the general thought of the Veda in its various elements should gradually unroll itself under the cover of the established symbols by the voices of a certain number of Rishis who almost all rank high as thinkers and sacred singers and are, some of them, among the most famous names of Vedic tradition. Nor can it be by accident that the tenth or closing Mandala gives us, with an even greater miscellanies of authors, the last developments of the thought of the Veda and some of the most modern in language 

Page-405

of its Suktas. It is here that we find the Sacrifice of the Purusha and the great Hymn of the Creation. It is here also that modern scholars think they discover the first origins of the Vedantic philosophy, the Brahmavada.

    In any case, the hymns of the son and grandson of Visvamitra with which the Rigveda opens strike admirably the first essential notes of the Vedic harmony. The first hymn, addressed to Agni, suggests the central conception of the Truth which is confirmed in the second and third Suktas invoking Indra in company with other gods. In the remaining eight hymns with Indra as the sole deity, except for one which he shares with the Maruts, we find the symbols of the Soma and the Cow, the obstructer Vritra and the great role played by Indra in leading man to the Light and overthrowing the barriers to his progress. These hymns are therefore of crucial importance to the psychological interpretation of the Veda.

There are four verses in the Hymn to Agni, the fifth to the ninth, in which the psychological sense comes out with a great force and clearness, escaping from the veil of the symbol.

Agnir hota kavikratuh, satyac chitracravastamah,

devo devebhir agamat.

Yad anga dacushe twara, agne bhadram karishyasi,

tavet tat satyam angirah.

Upa twagne dive dive, doshavastar dhiya vayam,

namo bharanta emasi.

Rajantam adhwaran’ am, gopam r’itasya dfdivim,

vardhaminam swe dame. *

    In this passage we have a series of terms plainly bearing or obviously capable of a psychological sense and giving their colour to the whole context. Sayana, however, insists on a purely ritual interpretation and it is interesting

* The limitations under which the Review labours at Pondicherry compel me to give the citations from the Sanskrit in Roman characters, nor Is it possible to adhere to the exact transliteration demanded by a scrupulous scholarship. Long letters are represented by a superimposed accent, palatal s by o as in the French system, the cerebral n and the vowel ri by inserting an apostrophe after the n and r.

Page-406

to see how he arrives at it. In the first phrase we have the word kavi meaning a seer and, even if we take kratu to mean work of the sacrifice, we shall have as a result, "Agni, the priest whose work or rite is that of the ser" , a turn which at once gives a symbolic character to the sacrifice and is in itself sufficient to serve as the seed of a deeper understanding of the Veda . Sayana feels that he has to turn the difficulty at any cost and therefore he gets rid of the sense of seer for kavi and gives it another and unusual significance. He then explains that Agni is satya, true, because he brings about the true fruit of the sacrifice. CV avas Sayana renders "fame," Agni has an exceedingly various renown. It would have been surely better to take the word in the sense of wealth so as to avoid the incoherency of this last rendering. We shall then have this result for the fifth verse, "Agni the priest, active in the ritual, who is true (-in its fruit)—for his is the most varied wealth,—let him come, a god with the gods."

    To the sixth Rik the commentator gives a very awkward and abrupt construction and trivial turn of thought which breaks entirely the flow of the verse . " That good (in the shape of varied wealth) which thou shalt effect for the giver, thine is that. This is true, O Angiras," that is to say, there can be no doubt about this fact, for if Agni does good to the giver by providing him with wealth, he in turn will perform fresh sacrifices to Agni, and thus the good of the sacrificer becomes the good of the god. Here again it would be better to render , "The good that thou wilt do for the giver, that is that truth of thee , O Angiras," for we thus get at once a simpler sense and construction and an explanation of the epithet, satya, true, as applied to the god of the sacrificial fire. This is the truth of Agni that to the giver of the sacrifice he surely gives good in return.

    The seventh verse offers no difficulty to the ritualistic interpretation except the curious phrase, " we come bearing the prostration." Sayana explains that bearing here means simply doing and he renders, "To thee day by day we, by night and by day, come with the thought perform-

Page-407

ing the prostration." In the eighth verse he takes r’itasya in the sense of truth and explains it as the true fruit of the ritual. "To thee shining, the protector of the sacrifices, manifesting always their truth (that is, their inevitable fruit), increasing in thy own house." Again, it would be simpler and better to take ritam in the sense of sacrifice and to render " To thee shining out in the sacrifices, protector of the rite, ever luminous, increasing in thy own house " . The ** own house " of Agni, says the commentator, is the place of sacrifice and this is indeed called frequently enough in Sanskrit, " the house of Agni."

    We see, therefore, that with a little managing we can work out a purely ritual sense quite empty of thought even for a passage which at first sight offers a considerable wealth of psychological significance. Nevertheless, however ingeniously it is effected, flaws and cracks remain which betray the artificiality of the work. We have had to throw overboard the plain sense of kavi which adheres to it throughout the Veda and foist in an unreal rendering. We have either to divorce the two words satya and rita which are closely associated in the Veda or to give a forced sense to rita. And throughout we have avoided the natural suggestions pressed on us by the language of the Rishi.

    Let us now follow instead the opposite principle and give their full psychological value to the words of the inspired text. Kratu means in Sanskrit work or action and especially work in the sense of the sacrifice ; but it means also power or strength (the Greek kratos) effective of action. Psychologically this power effective of action is the will. The word may also mean mind or intellect and Sayana admits thought or knowledge as a possible sense for kratu. Qravas means literally hearing and from this primary significance is derived its secondary sense, " fame". But, psychologically, the idea of hearing leads up in Sanscrit to another sense which we find in gravana, gruti, gruta,— revealed knowledge, the knowledge which comes by inspiration. Drishti and gruti, sight and hearing, revelation and inspiration are the two chief powers of that supra-mental

Page-408

fatuity which belongs to the old Vedic idea of the Truth, the Ritam. The word graves is not recognised by the lexicographers in this sense, but it is accepted in the sense of a hymn,— the inspired word of the Veda . This indicates clearly that at one time it conveyed the idea of inspiration or of something inspired, whether word or knowledge. This significance, then, we are entitled to give it, provisionally at least, in the present passage ; for the other sense of fame is entirely incoherent and meaningless in the context. Again the word namas is also capable of a psychological sense; for it means literally "bending down" and is applied to the act of adoring submission to the deity rendered physically by the prostration of the body. When therefore the Rishi speaks of "bearing obeisance to Agni by the thought" we can hardly doubt that he gives to namas the psychological sense of the inward prostration, the act of submission or surrender to the deity.

    We get then this rendering of the four verses :—

    " May Agni, priest of the offering whose will towards action is that of the seer, who is true, most rich in varied inspiration, come, a god with the gods.

    ”The good that thou wilt create for the giver, that is that truth of thee, O Angiras.

    "To thee day by day, O Agni, in the night and in the light we by the thought come bearing our submission,—

    "To thee who shiniest out from the sacrifices (or, who governess the sacrifices), guardian of the Truth and its illumination, increasing in thy own home."

    The defect of the translation is that we have had to employ one and the same word for satyam and ritam whereas, as we see in the formula satyam ritam brihat, there was a distinction in the Vedic mind between the precise significances of the two words.

    Who, then, is this god Agni to who mlanguage of so mystic a fervour is addressed, to whom functions so vast and profound are ascribed ? W^ho is this guardian of the Truth, who is in his act its illumination, whose will in the act is the will of a seer possessed of a divine wisdom governing his richly varied inspiration ? What is the Truth that

Page-409

he guards ? And what is this good that he creates for the giver who comes always to him in thought day and night bearing as his sacrifice submission and self-surrender ? Is it gold and horses and cattle that he brings or is it some diviner riches ?

    It is not the sacrificial Fire that is capable of these functions, nor can it be any material flame or principle of physical heat and light. Yet throughout the symbol of the sacrificial Fire is maintained. It is evident that we are in the presence of a mystic symbolism to which the fire, the sacrifice, the priest are only outward figures of a deeper teaching and yet figures which it was thought necessary to maintain and to hold constantly in front.

    In the early Vedantic teaching of the Upanishads we come across a conception of the Truth which is often expressed by formulas taken from the hymns of the Veda, such as the expression already quoted, satyam ritam bri-hat,—the truth, the right, the vast . This Truth is spoken of in the Veda as a path leading to felicity, leading to immortality . In the Upanishads also it is by the path of the Truth that the sage or seer, Rishi or Kavi, passes beyond. He passes out of the falsehood, out of the mortal state into an immortal existence. We have the right therefore to assume that the same conception is in question in both Veda and Vedanta.

    This psychological conception is that of a truth which is truth of divine essence, not truth of mortal sensation and appearance. It is satyam, truth of being ; it is in its action Ritam , right ,— truth of divine being regulating right activity both of mind and body ; it is brihat, the universal truth proceeding direct and unreformed out of the Infinite. The consciousness that corresponds to it is also infinite, brihat, large as opposed to the consciousness of the sense-mind which is founded upon limitation. The one is described as bhuma, the large, the other as alpa, the little. Another name for this supramental or truth consciousness is Mahas which also means the great, the vast. And as for the facts of sensation and appearance which are full of falsehoods (anritam, not-truth or wrong

Page-410

application of the satyam in mental and bodily activity), we have for instruments the senses, the sense-mind (ntanas) and the intellect working upon their evidence, so for the truth-consciousness there are corresponding faculties,— drishti, gruti, viveka, the direct vision of the truth, the direct hearing of its word, the direct discrimination of the right. Whoever is in possession of this truth-consciousness or open to the action of these faculties, is the Rishi or kavi , sage or seer. It is these conceptions of the truth, satyam and ritam, that we have to apply in this opening hymn of the Veda.

    Agni in the Veda is always presented in the double aspect of force and light . He is the divine power that builds up the worlds, a power which acts always with a perfect knowledge, for it is Jatavedas, knower of all births, veshdtn vayundni vidvdn,—it knows all manifestations or phenomena or it possesses all forms and activities of the divine wisdom . Moreover it is repeatedly said that the gods have established Agni as the immortal in mortals, the divine power in man, the energy of fulfilment through which they do their work in him. It is this work which is symbolise by the sacrifice.

    Psychologically, then, we may take Agni to be the divine will perfectly inspired by divine Wisdom, and indeed one with it, which is the active or effective power of the Truth-consciousness . This is the obvious sense of the word kavikratuh, he whose active v/ill or power of affectivity is that of the seer,— works, that is to say, with the knowledge which comes by the truth-consciousness and in which there is no misapplication or error . The epithets that follow confirm this interpretation . Agni is satyi , true in his being; perfect possession of his own truth and the essential truth of things gives him the power to apply it perfectly in all act and movement of force. He has both the satyam and the ritam. Moreover, he is chitragravas tamah; from the Ritam there proceeds a fullness of richly luminous and varied inspirations which give the capacity for doing the perfect work . For all these are epithets of Agni as the hotri, the priest of the sacrifice, he who per-

Page-411

forms the offering. Therefore it is the power of Agni to apply the Truth in the work (karma or apas ) symbolised by the sacrifice, that makes him the object of human invocation . The importance of the sacrificial fire in the outward ritual corresponds to the importance of this inward force of unified Light and Power in the inward rite by which there is communication and interchange between the mortal and the Immortal. Agni is elsewhere frequently described as the envoy, duta, the medium of that communication and interchange.

    We see, then, in what capacity Agni is called to the sacrifice. "Let him come, a god with the gods." The emphasis given to the idea of divinity by this repetition, devo devebhir, becomes intelligible when we recall the standing description of Agni as the god in human beings, the immortal in mortals, the divine guest. We may give the full psychological sense by translating, "Let him come, a divine power with the divine powers." For in the external sense of the Veda the Gods are universal powers of physical Nature personified; in any inner sense they must be universal powers of Nature in her subjective activities, Will, Mind, etc. But in the Veda there is always a distinction between the ordinary human or mental action of these Puissances, mxnushvat, and the divine. It is supposed that man by the rig ht use of their mental action in the inner sacrifice to the gods can convert them into their true or divine nature, the mortal can become immortal. Thus the Ribhus, who were at first human beings or represented human faculties, became divine and immortal powers by perfection in the work, duratyayd, svapasyayd . It is a continual self-offering of the human to the divine and a continual descent of the divine into the human which seems to be symbolise in the sacrifice.

    The state of immortality thus attained is conceived as a state of felicity or bliss founded on a perfect Truth and Right, satyam ritam. We must, I think, understand in this sense the verse that follows . "The good (happiness) which thou wilt create for the giver, that is that truth of thee , O Agni ." In other words, the essence of

Page-412

this truth, which is the nature of Agni, is the freedom from evil, the state of perfect good and happiness which the Ritam carries in itself and which is sure to be created in the mortal when he offers the sacrifice by the action of Agni as the divine priest. Bhadram means anything good, auspicious, happy and by itself need not carry any deep significance. But we find it in the Veda used, like ritam, in a special sense. It is described in one of the hymns ( V-82) as the opposite of the evil dream ( duhswa-pnyam), the false consciousness of that which is not the Ritam, and of duritam, false going, which means all evil and suffering. Bhadram is therefore equivalent to Suvitam, right going, which means all good and felicity belonging to the state of the Truth, the Ritam . It is Mayas, the felicity, and the gods who represent the Truth-consciousness are described as mayobhuvah , those who bring or carry in their being the felicity . Thus every part of the Veda, if properly understood, throws light upon every other part. It is only when we are misled by its veils that we find in it an incoherence.

    In the next verse there seems to be stated the condition of the effective sacrifice. It is the continual resort day by day, in the night and in the light, of the thought in the human being with submission, adoration, self-surrender, to the divine Will and Wisdom represented by Agni. Night and Day, Naktoshdsd, are also symbolical, like all the other gods in the Veda, and the sense seems to be that in all states of consciousness, whether illumined or obscure, there must be a constant submission and reference of all activities to the divine control.

    Poor whether by day or night Agni shines out in the sacrifices; he is the guardian of the Truth, of the Ritam in man and defends it from the powers of darkness ; he is its constant illumination burning up even in obscure and besieged states of the mind . The ideas thus briefly indicated in the eighth verse are constantly found throughout the hymns to Agni in the Rig Veda.

    Agni is finally described as increasing in his own home. We can no longer be satisfied with the explanation of the

Page-413

own home of Agni as the " fire-room " of the Vedic householder. We must seek in the Veda itself for another interpretation and we find it in the 75th hymn of the first Mandala.

    Yaja no mitravarun’au, Yaja devan ritam brihat, agne sakshi svam damam. "Sacrifice for us to Mitra and Varuna, sacrifice to the gods, to the Truth, the Vast; O Agni, sacrifice to thy own home."

    Here ritam brihat and svam dam am seem to express the goal of the sacrifice and this is perfectly in consonance with the imagery of the Veda which frequently describes the sacrifice as traveling towards the gods and man himself as a traveler moving towards the truth, the light or the felicity. It is evident, the fore that, the Truth, the Vast and Agni’s own home are identical . Agni and other gods are frequently spoken of as being born in the truth, dwelling in the wide or vast. The sense, then, will be in our passage that Agni the divine will and power in man increases in the truth-consciousness , its proper sphere, where false limitations are broken down, urdv anibddhe, in the wide and the limitless.

    Thus in these four verses of the opening hymn of the Veda we get the first indications of the principal ideas of the Vedic Rishis,— the conception of a Truth-consciousness supramental and divine, the invocation of the gods as powers of the Truth to raise man out of the falsehoods of the mortal mind, the attainment in and by this Truth of an immortal state of perfect good and felicity and the inner sacrifice and offering of what one has and is by the mortal to the Immortal as the means of the divine consummation. All the rest of Vedic thought in its spiritual aspects is grouped around these central conceptions.

Page-414

Selected Hymns

VAYU THE MASTER OF THE LIFE ENERGIES.

R1GVEDA IV. 48

1. Do thou manifest the sacrificial energies that are unmanifested, even as a revealer of felicity and doer of the work ; O Vayu, come in thy car of happy light to the drinking of the Soma wine.

2. Put away from thee all denials of expression and with thy steeds of the yoking, with Indra for thy charioteer come, O Vayu, in thy car of happy light to the drinking of the Soma wine.

8. The two that, dark, yet hold all substances, shall observe thee in their labour, they in whom are all forms. O Vayu, come in thy car of happy light to the drinking of the Soma wine.

4. Yoked let the ninety and nine bear thee, they who are yoked by the mind . O Vayu, come in thy car of happy light to the drinking of the Soma wine.

5. Yoke, O Vayu, thy hundred brilliant steeds that shall increase, or else with thy thousand let thy chariot arrive in the mass of its force.

Page-415

    The psychological conceptions of the Vedic Rishis have often a marvellous profundity and nowhere more than when they deal with the phenomenon of the conscious activities of mind and life emerging out of the subconscient. It may be said, even, that this idea is the whole basis of the rich and subtle philosophy evolved in that early dawn of know-^x ledge by these inspired Mystics. Nor has any other expressed it with a greater subtlety and felicity than the Rishi Vamadeva, at once one of the most profound seers and one of the sweetest singers of the Vedic age. One of his hymns, the last of the fourth Mandala, is indeed the most important key we possess to the symbolism which hid behind the figures of the Sacrifice those realities of psychological experience and perception deemed so sacred by the Aryan forefathers.

    In that hymn Vamadeva speaks of the ocean of the subconscient which underlies all our life and activities. Out of that ocean rises " the honeyed wave " of sensational existence with its undelivered burden of unrealised delight climbing full of the "Ghrita" and the " Soma", the clarified mental consciousness and the illumined Ananda that descends from above, to the heaven of Immortality. The " secret Name’" of the mental consciousness, the tongue with which the gods taste the world, the nexus of Immortality, is the Ananda which the Soma symbolises. For all this creation has been, as it were, ejected into the subconscient by the four-horned Bull, the divine Purusha whose horns are infinite Existence, Consciousness, Bliss and Truth. In images of an energetic incongruity reminding us of the sublime grotesques and strange figures that have survived from the old mystic and symbolic art of the prehistoric world, Vamadeva describes the Purusha in the figure of a man-bull, whose four horns are the four divine principles, his three feet or three legs the three human principles, mentality, vital dynamism and material substance, his two heads the double consciousness of Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, his seven hands the seven natural activities corresponding to the seven principles . " Triply bound " _bound in the mind, bound in the life-energies, bound in the body—"the Bull roars aloud ; great is the Divinity that has entered into mortals.’

Page-416

    For the " ghritam," the clear light of the mentality re -fleeting the Truth, has been hidden by the Panis, the lords of the lower sense-activity, and shut up in the subconscient; in our thoughts, in our desires, in our physical consciousness the Light and the Ananda have been triply established, but they are concealed from us. It is in the cow, symbol of the Light from above, that the gods find the "clarified streams of the ‘ghritam." These streams, says the Rishi, rise from the heart of things, from the ocean of the subconscient, hridydt samudrdt, but they are confined in a hundred pens by the enemy, Vritra, so that they may be kept from the eye of discernment, from the knowledge that labours in us to enlighten that which is concealed and deliver that which is imprisoned. They move in the path on the borders of the subconscient, dense if impetuous in their movements, limited by the nervous action, in small formations of the life-energy Vayu, vdtaprantiyah. Purified progressively by the experiences of the conscious heart and mind, these energies of Nature become finally capable of the marriage with Agni, the divine "Will-force, which breaks down their boundaries and is himself nourished by their now abundant waves. That is the crisis of the being by which the mortal nature prepares its conversion to immortality.

    In the last verse of the hymn Vamadeva describes the whole of existence as established above in the seat of the divine Purusha, below in the ocean of the subconscient and in the Life, antar samudre hridi antar Ayushi. The conscious mind is, then, the channel through which there is communication between the upper ocean and the lower, between super-conscient and subconscient, the light divine and the original darkness of Nature.

    Vayu is the Lord of Life. By the ancient Mystics life was considered to be a great force pervading all material existence and the condition of all its activities. It is this idea that was formulated latter on in the conception of the Plana, the universal breath of life. All the vital and nervous activities of the human being fall within the definition of Prana, and belong to the domain of Vayu. Yet this great deity has comparatively few hymns to his share in the Rig Veda and even in those Suktas in which he is prominently invoked, does not usually figure alone but in company with others and

Page-417

as if dependent on them. He is especially coupled with Indra and it would almost seem as if for the functionings demanded from him by the Vedic Rishis he needed the aid of the superior deity. When there is question of the divine action of the Life-forces in man, Agni in the form of the Vedic Horse, Aowa, Dahika&van, takes usually the place of Vayu.

If we consider the fundamental ideas of the Rishis, this position of Vayu becomes intelligible. The illumination of the lower being by the higher, the mortal by the divine, was their principal concept. Light and Force, Go and Aowa, the Cow and the Horse, were the object of the sacrifice. Force was the condition, Light the liberating agency; and Indra and Surya were the chief bringers of Light. Moreover the Force required was the divine Will taking possession of all the human energies and revealing itself in them ; and of this Will, this force of conscious energy taking possession of the nervous vitality and revealing itself in it, Agni more than Vayu and especially Agni Dashiki&van was the symbol. For it is Agni who is master of Tapas, the divine Consciousness formulating itself in universal energy, of which the Prana is only a representative in the lower being. Therefore in Vamadeva hymn, the fifty-eighth of the fourth Mandala, it is Indra and Surya and Agni who effect the great manifestation of the conscious divinity out of the subconscient. Vata or Vayu, the nervous activity, is only a first condition of the emergent Mind. And for man it is the meeting of Life with Mind and the support given by the former to the evolution of the latter which is the important aspect of Vayu. Therefore we find Indra, Master of Mind, and Vayu, Master of Life, coupled together and the latter always somewhat dependent on the former ; the Maruts, the thought-forces, although in their origin they seem to be as much powers of Vayu as of Indra ; are more important to the Rishis foam Vayu himself and even in their dynamic aspect are more closely associated with Agni Rudra than with the natural chief of the legions of the Air.

    The present hymn, the forty-eighth of the Mandala is the last of three in which Vamadeva invokes Indra and Vayu for the drinking of the Soma-wine. They are called in conjointly as the two lords of brilliant force, cavasaspati, as in another hyman, in a former Mandala, they are invoked as lord of

Page-418

thought, dhiyaspatl. Indra is the master of mental force Vayu of nervous or vital force and their union is necessary for thought and for action. They are invited to come in one common chariot and drink together of the wine of the Ananda which brings with it the divinising energies. Vayu, it is said, has the right of the first draught; for it is the supporting vital forces that must first become capable of the ecstasy of the divine action.

    In the third hymn, in which the result of the sacrifice is defined, Vayu is alone invoked, but even so his companionship with Indra is clearly indicated. He is to come in a chariot of happy brightness, like Usha in another hymn, to drink of the immortalising wine.* The chariot symbolises movement of energy and it is a glad movement of already illuminated vital energies that is invoked in the form of Vayu . The divine utility of this brightly happy movement is indicated in the first three verses.

    The god is to manifest —he is to bring into the light of the conscious activity sacrificial energies which are not yet manifested, t are yet hidden in the darkness of the subconscient. In the ritualistic interpretation the phrase may be translated, " Eat of offerings that have not been eaten " or, in another sense of the verb vi, it may be rendered «’ Arrive at sacrificial energies which have never been approached"; but all these renderings amount, symbolically, to the same psycho’ logical sense. Powers and activities that have not yet been called up out of the subconscient, have to be liberated from its secret cave by the combined action of Indra and Vayu and devoted to the work.

    For it is not towards an ordinary action of the nervous mentality that they are called. Vayu is to manifest these energies as would "a revealer of the felicity, a doer of the Aryan work", vipo na rdyo ay yah. These words sufficiently indicate the nature of the energies that are to be evoked. It is possible, however, that the phrase may have a covert reference to Indra and thus indicate what is afterwards clearly expressed, the necessity that Vayu’s action should be governed by the illumined and aspiring force of the more brilliant

* Vayava chandren’a rathena yahi sutasya pitaye.

+ Vihi hotra avita.

Page-419

god. For it is Indra’s enlightenment that leads to the secret of beatitude being revealed and he is the first labourers in the Work. Xo Indra, Agni and Surya among the gods is especially applied the term arya, which describes with an untranslatable compactness those who rise to the noble aspiration and who do the great labour as an offering in order to arrive at the good and the bliss.

    In the second verse the necessity of Indra’s guidance is affirmed expressly. Vayu is to come putting away all denials that may be opposed to the manifestation of the unmanifested, niryuvdno aoastih. The word aqastih means literally " not expressing" and describes the detention by obscuring powers like Vritra of the light and power that are waiting to be revealed, ready to be called out into expression through the influence of the gods and by the instrumentality of the Word. The Word is the power that expresses, qastram, gird, vachas. But it has to be protected and given its right effect by the divine Powers. Vayu is to do this office; he has to expel all powers of denial, of obscuration, of non-manifestation. To do this work he must arrive " with his steeds of the yoking and Indra for charioteer," niyutvdn indrasdrathih. the steeds of Indra, of Vayu, of Surya have each their appropriate name. Indra’s horses are hart or bathroom, red gold or tawny yellow ; Surry’s hart, indicating a more deep, full and intense luminousness; Vayu’s are niyata, steeds of the yoking, for they represent those dynamic movements which yoke the energy to its action. But although they are the horses of Vayu, they have to be driven by Indra, the movements of the Master of nervous and vital energy guided by the Master of mind.

    The third verse * would seem at first to bring in an unconnected idea; it speaks of a dark Heaven and Earth with all their forms obeying or following in their labour the movements of Vayu in his Indra-driven car. They are not mentioned by name but described as the two black or dark holders of substance or holders of wealth, vasudhiti ; but the latter word sufficiently indicates earth and by implication of the dual form Heaven also, its companion. We must note that it is not Heaven the father and Earth the mother that are indicated, but the two sisters, Roads, feminine forms of heaven and

* Anu krishna vasudhiti yemate vi vapecasa.

Page-420

    earth, who symbolise the general energies ot the mental and physical consciousness. It is their dark states—the obscured consciousness between its two limits of the mental and the physical,—which by the happy movement of the nervous dynamism begin to labour in accordance with the movement or under the control of Vayu and to yield up their hidden forms; for all forms are concealed in them and they must be compelled to reveal them. Thus we discover that this verse completes the sense of the two that precede. For always when the Veda is properly understood, its verses are seen to unroll the thought with a profound logical coherence and pregnant succession.

    The two remaining risk indicate the result produced by this action of Heaven and Earth and by their yielding up of hidden forms and unmanifested energies on the movement of Vayu as his car gallops towards the Ananda. First of all his horses are to attain their normally complete general number. "Let the ninety-nine be yoked and bear thee, those that are yoked by the mind." * The constantly recurring numbers ninety-nine, a hundred and a thousand have a symbolic significance in the Veda which it- is very difficult to disengage with any precision. The secret is perhaps to be found in the multiplication of the mystic number seven by itself and its double repetition with a unit added before and at the end, making altogether 1 + 49 + 49 + 1 = 100. Seven is the number of essential principles in manifested Nature, the seven forms of divine consciousness at play in the world. Each, formulated severally, contains the other six in itself; thus the full number is forty-nine, and to this is added the unit above out of which all develops, giving us altogether a scale of fifty and forming the complete gamut of active consciousness. But there is also its duplication by an ascending and descending series, the descent of the gods, the ascent of man. This gives us ninety-nine, the number variously applied in the Veda to horses, cities, rivers, in each case with a separate but kindred symbolism. If we add an obscure unit below into which all descends to the luminous unit above towards which all ascends we have the full scale of one hundred.

* vahantu twâ manoyujo yuktaso navatir nava.

Page-421