Hymns to the Mystic Fire

[31]

RV V.10

[.....] - word(s) lost through damage to the manuscript.

[word] - word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to the manuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors.

[?word] - doubtful reading.

Gaya Atreya's Hymn to Agni—

1) O Agni, Light of our embodied being, bring to us an illumination most full of force; do thou by power of an all-environing felicity cleave for us towards the goal of possession our path in front.

2) Thou, O wonderful Agni, becomest by the Will the fullness in us of discernment and in thee the doer climbeth up to the might divine as Mitra of the sacrifice.

3) Do thou for us, O Agni, increase attainment and plenty in these who by the confirming mantras of praise, as Purushas of the Sun, enjoy the fullnesses.

4) They, O Agni rapturous, who by delight of the Steed of Life have joy of the words, are Purushas strong in all energies for whom even in heaven the full perfection of the vaster Being awakens of itself.

5) These, O Agni, are thy burning rays that go violently like lightnings that pervade, like a chariot sounding towards the goal.

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6) Now do thou prepare, O Agni, us hampered & opposed for having, for delight and may our Powers of Light pass beyond all desires (or overpass all the regions).

7) Thou, O Agni, lord of might, confirmed by praise and while yet we hymn thee bring to us felicity that bears the pervading god, let it be for firm-establishment to those who establish thee with the hymn. And do thou flourish in our battles for our growth.

Gaya, the Rishi, prays to Agni, Lord of Tapas, the representative in Nature of the Divine Power that builds the worlds & works in them towards our soul's fulfilment in and beyond heaven—Agni, as játavedas, the self-existent luminosity of knowledge in this Cosmic Force—for Force is only Chitshakti, working power of the Divine Consciousness & therefore Cosmic Force is always self-luminous, all-knowing force. Agni Jatavedas then is the ray of divine knowledge in this embodied state of existence;—he is Adhrigu—the Light in our embodied being. For this reason all action offered by us to Agni as a work of divine tapas becomes in its nature a self-luminous activity guiding itself whether consciously in our minds or super-consciously, guháhitam, to the divine goal. All Tapas is self-effective and God-effective. As Adhrigu, the divine Light in our embodied being, Agni is to bring to us an illumination of knowledge in our mentality which is ojistha, most full of ojas, superabundant in effective puissance. By God-directed action our heart & intellect become suffused with power & light, or rather with light that is power and power that is light, since knowledge & force are in the divine nature one entity. Agna ojistham á bhara dyumnam asmabhyam adhrigo.

This puissant light brought to us by Agni is attended with the other divine phenomenon or manifestation (vayunam, vayas), bliss, felicity, Ananda.Divine Ananda is the inseparable companion of the divine strength and divine knowledge; Chit, Tapas & Ananda constitute the nature of Sat, the divine Being. The state of divine being is one & infinite embracing all existences, sarva-bhútáni, in one unifying self-consciousness, Atmani; therefore,

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divine bliss also is infinite & embracing, ráyá paríṇasá. It environs all our sensations, states & actions, it environs also for us all the vishayas of our sensations, all the beings who come into contact with our soul states, all the objects & fields of our action.We come to take in all these equally the same pure & divine delight. Because the Lord of Tapas brings to us this wonderful felicity, he is called in this hymn "Agne chandra", Agni rapturous, Agni delightful, and in other hymns ratnadhátama, utter disposer of delight, or madhuhastya, he who brings wine of sweetness in his hand. In this puissant light, by this all-environing felicity Agni is to cleave for us through the darknesses & obstructions of this world of Avidya a path towards our goal. Vája means in Veda either possession or having, plenty or a goal; we find it in this latter sense in such expressions as raghavo na vájam, like swift horses to a goal or, in this very Sukta, ratho na vájayuh, like a chariot that moves towards its goal. Here, as often in the Vedic language which uses freely the devices of symbolism, involved double metaphor and double suggestion, the sense is goal, but there is intended to be some suggestion of the other idea of vája, possession. The path is action of knowledge, the goal is vája, possession or plenteous having, magha, fullness or plenty, of Asurya, the divine might, Force or Tapas of the divine Nature,—magha & vája, full & assured having as opposed to the partial visitations which we receive in this mortal state & mortal nature and cannot invariably use or certainly hold. And this path Agni is to cleave for us, pra, in front of us. The Might of God goes before us on its Tapasya, not remaining content with any limited realisation but pressing forwards towards [.....] consciousness & knowledge, [.....] force & an infinite joy. It dispels the darkness in front & lights, [as] it advances, new reaches of thought, consciousness & knowledge to which our minds were blinded; it scatters spiritual foes ambushed in front; it creates footholds for us in the pathless void, apade pádá. We follow & enjoy its fruits, magháni ánaśuh. Pra no ráyá paríṇasá ratsi vájáya panthám.

Gaya, the Rishi, then proceeds to describe the path & the goal. He addresses the god as Agne adbhuta, O marvellous Agni

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or O Supreme Agni; for adbhuta means that which stands out from other things, is different from them, superior or wonderful. This is the marvellous or supreme nature of Agni that by will in action he becomes in us the fullness & force of discernment in knowledge. We have here two capital terms of the Veda, kratu and daksha. Kratu has several shades of significance, action or activity, more especially, the yajna or action of sacrifice; power that expresses itself in action, the Greek kratos; & power as a mental force corresponding very nearly to the European conception of Will. We have in our philosophy no exact synonym of the English word Will, because Will to us, as opposed to mere wish, ichchhá, is simply Conscious Force; it is Shakti or, more precisely, Chit-shakti, & its nature in action is Tapas or the concentration of consciousness on action & its object or its results. Now the nature of Agni, kratu or active power is precisely this Tapas or Chit-shakti, Conscious Being in concentration of action. It is then by Tapas or Will that Agni creates in us Knowledge. But how can Action be said to transform itself into Knowledge, kriyáshakti into jnánashakti?We can see dimly this transmutation in our ordinary psychological experience; for we know that each time we act, bodily or mentally, the action is automatically registered in us as an experience and by the accumulation of experiences transforms itself into state of knowledge. But in mortal knowledge & mortal nature the act & the knowledge are separated from each other and can be joined or disjoined; in divine knowledge & divine nature the two go always together and are one entity. When God acts, each act is a play of effective self-knowledge. When He creates Light, He conceives of Himself as a Light & Light becomes. The action of creation is really a play of self-conception. He knows at the same time the whole conception of Light, its nature, properties, possibilities, functionings; when therefore He acts or creates, the process of action is a process of conception, the result of action is a result of conception. For this reason when a tree grows out of a seed, the evolution of the right tree out of the right seed is as inevitable as Fate, although the tree has no knowledge and control of its own growth; but the evolution

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& the form of the tree evolved are merely manifestations of the divine conception. The Cosmic Self-Consciousness knows itself in the form of a Tree & that vijnána or typal idea is manifested by the sure action of the nature or swabhava attached to the conception. This sureness of self-fulfilment based on a secret self-knowledge is the kratu or action of Agni, the divine Power in things. It is a secret Will in things fulfilling itself in motion of activity & in form. But though Agni in the tree knows, the tree knows nothing. When man comes in with his mind, he still does not know but only seeks to know,—for he feels that attached to every object is a right knowledge of that object & in every action is a right knowledge of that action. This knowledge he seeks to bring out, to make conscious in his mind. But mortal knowledge is sense knowledge, a deduction from forms of things; divine knowledge is self-existent knowledge, spontaneously manifested by the identity in consciousness of the knower with the thing known. Mortal knowledge is derived in nature, deferred in time, indirect in means; divine knowledge is spontaneous, direct and self-manifesting.Mortal knowledge is like hearing of aman from others & inferring many things about him which may & must, indeed, be largely or wholly incorrect; divine knowledge is the seeing & hearing of the man himself & knowledge of him by personal experience. Mortal knowledge is crooked, hvára or vrijina; divine knowledge is straight, riju. Mortal knowledge proceeds from & by limitation, by getting hold of & adding up details, dwayena, by duality; divine knowledge is comprehensive & unifying, containing subordinates in the principal, details in the whole, attributes in the thing itself. Mortal knowledge advances step by step over uneven ground in a jungle where it does not know the way; divine knowledge advances over straight & open levels, vítáni prishth áni, where it sees the whole prospect before it, its starting-point, its way & its goal. Mortal knowledge bases itself on martya or mánasa ketu, sense perception or intelligence; divine knowledge bases itself upon daivya ketu, self-perception. Mortal knowledge is manas, divine knowledge is vijnána, self-true ideation or soul-knowledge. Even when Agni works from below upward, from

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mind up to vijnána, & the daivya ketu has to follow the action of mind & act partially & in details, it does not lose its characteristics of self-existence, self-truth & direct perception. When therefore vijnána acts in the human mind, he associates every action, every will with the knowledge that is the core of the action & the true substance of the will, but this he does at first dimly & obscurely in the nervous impressions, the emotional response, the sense knowledge, as in a smoke-obscured flame. He has then archayo dhúminah, smoky rays; he acts as a force in Avidya, putro hváryáṇám, a son of the crookednesses although always rijúyuh, moving towards the straightnesses. But when he can get beyond the sense mind into pure mind, then he begins to show his true nature entirely & the higher knowledge begins; he has his archayo bhrájantah, his intense clear burning rays, he drives his straight-muscled steeds, rijumushkán ashwán. Then every act of will is attended with right discernment, with daksha & transmutes itself into right knowledge.

Vijnana, true ideation, called ritam, truth or vedas, knowledge in the Vedas, acts in human mind by four separate functions; revelation, termed drishti, sight; inspiration termed sruti, hearing; and the two faculties of discernment, smriti, memory, which are intuition, termed ketu, and discrimination, termed daksha, division, or viveka, separation. By drishti we see ourselves the truth face to face, in its own form, nature or self-existence; by sruti we hear the name, sound or word by which the truth is expressed & immediately suggested to the knowledge; by ketu we distinguish a truth presented to us behind a veil whether of result or process, as Newton discovered the law of gravitation hidden behind the fall of the apple; by viveka we distinguish between various truths and are able to put them in their right place, order and relation to each other, or, if presented with mingled truth & error, separate the truth from the falsehood. Agni Jatavedas is termed in the Veda vivichi, he who has the viveka, who separates truth from falsehood; but this is only a special action of the fourth ideal faculty & in its wider scope, it is daksha, that which divides & rightly distributes truth in its multiform aspects. The ensemble of the four faculties is Vedas

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or divine knowledge. When man is rising out of the limited & error-besieged mental principle, the faculty most useful to him, most indispensable is daksha or viveka. Drishti of Vijnana transmuted into terms of mind has become observation, sruti appears as imagination, intuition as intelligent perception, viveka as reasoning & intellectual judgment and all of these are liable to the constant touch of error. Human buddhi, intellect, is a distorted shadow of the true ideative faculties. As we return from these shadows to their ideal substance viveka or daksha must be our constant companion; for viveka alone can get rid of the habit of mental error, prevent observation being replaced by false illumination, imagination by false inspiration, intelligence by false intuition, judgment & reason by false discernment. The first sign of human advance out of the anritam of mind to the ritam of the ideal faculty is the growing action of a luminous right discernment which fixes instantly on the truth, feels instantly the presence of error. The fullness, the manhaná of this viveka is the foundation & safeguard of Ritam or Vedas. The first great movement of Agni Jatavedas is to transform by the divine will in mental activity his lower smoke-covered activity into the bright clearness & fullness of the ideal discernment. Agne adbhuta kratwá dakshasya manhaná.

This, then, is the path. It is the development by divine Tapas in the mind of Ritam or Vedas, the supra-intellectual knowledge or unveiled face of Truth, Ritasya panthá—the path of Truth is always in Veda the road which the Ancestors, the Pitris, the great forefathers, the Ancients, pratnásah, purátanáh, have trodden before us & their descendants, the new seers, have to follow after them. What then is the goal? It is Asuryam, the might of the divine Nature. In thee, says Gaya, the doer,—krán. á, the sádhaka, the seeker after perfection, who conducts or for whom Agni conducts the inner sacrifice,—ascends to the divineMight as Mitra of the sacrifice. Asuryam is the principle of divine Power, Chit-Shakti or Tapas in which divine Being or Sat formulates itself for cosmic activity;Mitra is the Lord of Love who with Bhaga, the Lord of Enjoyment, most intimately represents in human temperament the principle of Ananda, which is the

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base of the divine Being & divine Power in world-manifestation. Sat, Chit, Ananda (for Chit & Tapas are one) are the Vedic formula of divine Existence. By the action of Agni, kratwá, the soul achieving Truth merges itself in the divine principle of Love poured out into the offering to God of human life, Mitro na yajniyah, and with it in that principle, realising throughout our consciousness the divine Beatitude, rises into the free play of the infinite Tapas of the divine Existence. In that Tapas the sacrificial activity of Agni in man, the kratu, becoming Godward will finds its manhaná, its absolute fullness & fulfilment. Sat, Tapas, Ananda, Vijnana, Manas—this is the Indian ladder of Jacob by which one descends & ascends again to heaven. Man the Doer, the Manu, the Krana, perfecting himself by works, is lifted by the divine will to Vijnana, to the ideal self of true knowledge & right action & emotion, attains by Truth to Divine Love & Bliss, Mayas, the dháma or seat ofMitra, and thus ascends to the Tapas where Agni is [.....]. This ascension Gaya, the Rishi, is enabled by the fixed symbolic style of the Veda, to express with a masterly economy of words in the second rik of this Sukta.

Agne adbhuta,
    kratwá dakshasya manhaná;
Tve asuryam áruhat,
    kráṇá mitro na yajniyah.

The Rishi next proceeds to dwell on this Ritam or Truth which is the path in order that he may return again to the goal with a greater fullness of significance. We have seen that as the divine Tapas Agni is typified in the symbol of the sacrificial flame, so his activities are typified in the flames or rays of that fire, jwálá or archis, and these rays or brightnesses [are] of two kinds, dhúminah, smoke-enveloped in the heart & sense mind & burning & brilliant, bhrájantah in the pure mind. The stage now considered is that of Agni in the pure mind awakening in it the activities of the vijnána. The god of the vijnána, its Nri or Purusha, is the Lord of the Sun, Sur or Surya. Those who possess the illumination of the vijnána are called, therefore, súrayah, the Illuminati, and the word may be applied to either class of

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Nri (Purushas), the human Purushas who evolve upwards by the Vedic sacrifice or the luminous gods of the vijnána, the solar gods, the host of Surya, súrayo narah, who aid him in his ascent. It is these Solar Purushas who are the archayo bhrájantah, the bright-burning brilliances of Agni. The divine Tapas entering the vijnána manifests itself in Surya & his hosts, in the powers, faculties & activities of the self-luminous & self-true ideal mind. The Rishi occupies himself with these luminous Powers in his next three verses.

"O Agni," cries the Rishi, "increase in us the attainment of light & the full plenty of these active gods of the solar illumination." Gayam pushtim cha. The word gaya, Sayana tells us, means that which is reached or attained; it is dhanam, wealth. But gaya, as is usually the case with these early Sanscrit vocables, is capable of several shades of significance. It may mean the act or process of attaining; it may mean the thing reached or attained, whether material wealth or spiritual attainment, & especially it signifies knowledge, just as ritam from the word ri to go signifies truth or rishi, similarly derived, signifies the seer or knower; or it may signify the knower himself, the Rishi. It certainly bears the latter sense in the name Gaya which is borne by the Rishi of this súkta; the habits of style of the Vedic seers justify us even in seeing a covert introduction of his own name by the Seer in the choice of this word Gaya. In any case Gaya here can no more mean material wealth than pushti can mean corporeal fatness; it implies spiritual gain or attainment &, occurring in close connection with the s úrayo narah and recalling the name of the Rishi, may be taken in this passage as specially signifying Knowledge. Agni has already established the fullness of the viveka. He has now to increase in Gaya & his fellow worshippers the light of knowledge & the full growth of all the powers of the vijnána; he has to help in man the gods of revelation, inspiration & intuition as well as of viveka. How is this to be done? By the mantras of the hymn of praise, stomebhih.

The importance & effectiveness, psychological, spiritual, even physical, of the Word, Vachas, Gih, Uktha, may almost

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be described as the fundamental thought of the Vedic seers, and this initial psychic perception of our forefathers has dominated Indian religious thought & discipline ever since. The name of God, the mantra, is still the keystone of all Indian yoga. We shall not realise the full bearing & rationale of this great Vedic conception unless we first impress on our minds the Vedic idea of existence & creation, for Vak, the Word, is in that idea the effective agent of creation. All created existence is in the Vedic philosophy a formation by force of consciousness, Chit-shakti, not, as modern thought supposes it to be, a formation by Force of unconscious inanimate Being. Creation itself is only a manifestation, phenomenon or appearing in form, vayas, vayunam, víti, [of] that which is already existent as consciousness, but latent as form in universal Being. It is srishti, a loosing forth, vachas, vyachas or shasti, an expressing or bringing out, not a creation in the modern sense, not a new manufacture of that which never before had any sort of existence. Sat or Being in the universe contains all forms as things in themselves in its Chit or self-consciousness, but for all cosmic purposes avyakta, unexpressed, undefined. To define it is first necessary that the general undifferentiated self-consciousness should dwell by particular concentration of consciousness, by Tapas or Force of self-knowledge, on the thing in itself latent in undifferentiated Cosmic Being. This self-dwelling of Tapas is, first, an act of seeing, íkshanam, drishti. "The Being saw, Let me bring forth worlds", as the Aitareya Upanishad expresses the original Will to create. But a second agent is also needed, Ananda or delight of creation & in the thing created, for without this creative Delight in conscious things nothing could come into existence or once being created remain in existence. "Who could exist or live" asks the Taittiriya Upanishad "if there were not this all-pervading & all-supporting ethereal atmosphere of the divine Bliss around it?"—yad esha ákásha ánando na syát. Therefore as Tapas or Will is the working principle of cosmic Consciousness, (therefore the divine world in which infinite Consciousness is the basic factor is called by the Puranic writers, Tapoloka), so Jana, Birth or Joy of Procreation is the working principle of cosmic Bliss,

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(therefore the divine world in which infinite Bliss is the basic factor is called by the Puranic writers, Janaloka). But even so the agents are not sufficient; for Being, Consciousness, Bliss are universal & infinite in nature, indivisible & undividing realities. [There] is a particular faculty of Consciousness, Vijnana, which brings in the element of differentiation. Vijnana, pure Idea, is that which perceives the thing itself as thing in itself, as a whole & in its parts. It introduces the element of Nama, name. The Vedic word Nama connotes definition, distribution & law, (cf from nam, Greek nomos, law, nemo, to distribute, Latin numerus, number) & is, in its nature, defining idea. The Nama, the name of a thing, the defining idea about it, is both its nomen & numen, & carries in itself the swabhava of the thing, its nature or self-being and prakriti or natural working; as soon as thing in itself gets its náma, it gets also its swáhá & swadhá—swáhá, self-luminous self-existence manifested in self-force & swadhá, self-fixity in that self-being; & these two, the self-force & the self-fixity, produce naturally & inevitably all the workings of the thing-in-itself, its vrat áni, by the guna or gana, quality or number (ratio) of the nature, the swadhá. The Nature works out by three processes, Manas, the measuring or limiting of thing in itself in consciousness by the number or ratio, the gana, Prana (Ashwa, the Horse) the energy of the swáhá, movement of consciousness accommodating itself to the limitations of the Idea & confining itself to an action appropriate to the single form of the Idea which has been separated by distributing Manas & numbering Ratio, and Annam, existence in form of substance created by the limitingMind & the self-confining energy of the Prana. This form of substance presents itself to the human mind as Matter; cosmic energy of being working in form of substance presents itself to us most strikingly in the phenomenon of animate Life but is also present in what we see as inanimate forms; Manas working through the nervous Life-energies & their organs, the senses, presents itself to us as human & animal Mind, but is a constant force by other workings & other instruments even in lifeless forms which have not organised nervous energies. These seven principles constitute the world, & are known in Veda as

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theápas or sapta sindhavah, the waters of creative being, the seven elements of one ocean, the sapta dhenavah or sapta gávah, the seven fostering forms of divine consciousness and each of them forms for itself a separate world in which it predominates &is the governing principle of consciousness & existence but to which it necessarily admits its six sisters. These seven worlds are the sapta dhámáni or padáni, seven established places or seats of being, the seven footholds or goals of existence, with the sapta ratnáni, the seven forms of [delight]; five of them give entrance to the human soul in its present workings and are the pancha janáh or pancha kshitayah, five births or five inhabitable worlds & their peoples.

Consciousness is the base of all world existence, but consciousness develops itself in two forms, manifestion & non-manifestation, Dawn & Night, or from our point of view, Knowledge&Ignorance, Chittam&Achittam,Vidya & Avidya, consciousness illumined in the form it has taken as in the seer, consciousness dark & involved in the form it has taken as in the clod & less rigidly in the tree. For it is evident that in the highest principles of Sat, Chit, Ananda, there is universal knowledge, unlimited, inherent in the self-luminous unity of the Cosmic Being; even in Vijnana the element of limitation or bheda has not really entered, for differentiation by Vijnana exists in the cosmic sense of oneness as a play of oneness & is not a real difference; the knowledge of the many is illumined always by the knowledge of the one. The Gods of Sat, Tapas & Jana know themselves as one, Agni there is Varuna & Varuna is Agni; even in Mahas or Brihat, the uru loka, the wide & vast world, the world of Vijnana, the devas know themselves as one even in their multitude. There, however, the first possibility of limitation in consciousness is adumbrated. But it is not till Manas gets full play that limitation sets in, but so long as Manas is pure rishimedhá, not separated from Vijnana, [the] movement from [..............................] Therefore in Swar, the world of pure Mind [..............................] the stress is not yet a bondage. There is a limited working of being, knowledge & power, which may ignore for the time being

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the wider being, knowledge & action & thus generate ignorance, but is not fatally ignorant of it & is not therefore bound by its self-chosen ignorance. The gods know themselves as one, as Purushas of the universal Deva even when they act as if they were entirely different personalities. In this world, therefore, there is no real birth & death, no real day & night, but only the taking & putting off [of] forms, the bringing forward & the putting back of Light from the frontal outward action of the consciousness. In Bhuvar, the worlds of Prana, the conscious energy put out seems to be really absorbed in her outward workings only, in the energy itself, in the form of her own works & to forget her own more universal reality; a veil falls between manas & vijnána, the veil of Achitti or ignorance. In Bhu, the world of Matter, this movement is complete. Consciousness is involved in its forms & has to be rescued out of it by beings who bring conscious life & mind into the mechanism of its formal energies & the inertia of its substantial forms. Man is the nodus, the agent & instrument of the gods for the full recovery of Consciousness in material Energy, universal being in particular Form. Man, the mental being in Bhu, shares with the Gods the appellation, Nri, the Purusha; he too is a guiding Soul of consciousness & not the mere gana, formal executive energy & mechanical ratio of things which is the outward aspect of Nature.

Man is able to bring out, to express the divine consciousness & nature in the prison of matter or, as the Vedic hymns express it, to manifest the gods—he is devavyacháh, effects by the yajna the devavíti, god-manifestation, in himself, because he is able to use fully the principle of Mind with its powers of mental realisation and verbal expression, manma & vachas, mati & gíh. In the lower forms of life this is not possible. Mind there is dumb or only partly vocal; it is therefore unable to bring into expression, into shansa, the secret name of things, their guhyam náma; he first is able to define them in mind by speech & to arrive from this mental definition to the divine idea in them and from the divine idea to the one truth of which all ideas are expressions. By vachas in mati one arrives at Nama in vijnánam.

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For all sound has a creative & expressive power; each activity of sound in existence creates its corresponding physical & mental forms; all activity of forms in their turn creates a corresponding vibration of sound. But human speech informed with mind is the highest creative & expressive power of sound. It tends to bring about in life & being that which it expresses in thought. We can see this easily enough in psychological phenomena. By dwelling on an idea, by tapas on it, we can create not only the image of that idea in our minds, but its form in emotion, its truth in quality of character, its experience in terms of inner being. By dwelling with the will on the idea of courage or virtue it has been found that we can create courage or virtue in ourselves where they were formerly wanting. By brooding on an object with the will in mind in a state of masterful concentration it has been found that we can command the knowledge we need about the object. But the Indian theory of concentration goes farther & asserts that even events, things, objects can be controlled by this inner Tapas & brought about or reduced to subjection without any ostensible material means. This concentration in mind is the manma of the Vedic rishis. The concentration may be on the object or idea itself or on the name of the object or on some form of words which expresses the idea. But even when the concentration is on idea or object & not on name or word, there is still, in all mental concentration, a silent or halfexpressed word or vák by which the idea or object is brought before mind. The vák may be repeated aloud and then it becomes the hymn, s úkta or rik of the Vedic Rishi, or the námakírtana of the modern devotee; or it may be repeated only by subtle sound in the subtle matter of mind, then it is the mantra of the silent Yogin; or it may be involved and silent at the back of the image, object or unexpressed idea in the mind. The Vedic manma or mantra is of the first variety,—although we need not assume that the Rishis were ignorant of the more silent forms of meditation. Nevertheless, they attached a preeminent importance to the vák, the expressed mental realisation.

The process of the Vedic mantra involves three movements, corresponding to three psychological activities necessary to the

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act of meditation or realisation, a movement from soul into mind, a movement from mind into speech, & the movement of speech itself reacting on mind and soul. In all forms there is the soul or [.....] partially expressed in the two primary constituents [.....] & temperament sometimes called manyu or more widely mati, and [an] intellectual part, usually termed dhí or maníshá. The maníshá first brought out the Nama out of the soul in which all things are latent into the heart where the general bháva (character, temperament, sense & feeling) of the Nama manifested itself to the sensationally perceiving mind & then raised it by distinct concept into the thinking mind. The mind by dwelling on the vák brings out the thing defined by Nama into being in the experience of the thinker & there establishes it as a living & acting presence. The mantra then, when it is thought of as operating to bring out the ukthyam, the thing desired & to be expressed, out of the soul into the mind state, mati, is called brahma orángúsham brahma or, briefly, ángúsham; when it is thought of as mentalising the ukthyam, it is called manma or mantra, when it is thought of as expressing by speech the ukthyam in the thinker's practical experience it is called vachas or gir. Moreover, the vachasmay be either of the nature of prayer or praise; as prayer, it is called uktha; as praise it has two functions, the expression in the sádhaka of the divine activity, when it is termed shansa, and the confirmation or firm establishment of the activity once expressed, when it is termed stoma. All these expressions, brahma, manma, vachas, shansa, stoma, stava or stavas, can be and are often used to express the effect of the mantra no less than the mantra itself,—brahma then means the soul-movement or soul-state expressed in the heart or temperament, manma the mental realisation, vachas the expression of the god or his divine activities in the mortal nature, shansa the expression of the man's higher being which is brought about by the mantra, stoma the firm established condition of the manifest god in the man. Nor are these the only terms which are applied to the mantra in the Vedic s úktas. It is also called rik, gáyatram, gátha or sáma. It is the rik when it is considered as the mantra

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of realisation & the word arka is used to express the act of divine realisation by the mantra; gáyatram when it is considered as the means of attainment to the power, felicity or wideness of the divine being or nature through the path of the Truth or Ritam manifested by the mantra; sáma when it brings about the harmony or equality of the different constituents of our nature, body, life-energy, mind, pure ideation in one divine ánandamaya consciousness. By the mantra the god, entering into the speech and the thought, the soul-state, takes possession of his seat in man & makes manifest there his activities.

The Lords of Light, the Solar Purushas, are already active in the mind purified by the activities of Agni. They have there already not only their rare illuminations, but their established working and their increasing strength, gayam pushtim cha. The expression by vachas, by the girah has been attained. It is their fullnesses, magháni that the Rishi now covets, for the word magha in Veda means a full & copious state or satisfying and abundant possession as opposed to rare & exceptional visitations or enjoyments and to small & limited seeings. These fullnesses the Solar Purushas enjoy by means of the stomas, the mantras of praise which help to confirm the gods in possession of their manifested activities. The wide illuminations of the Ritam, the supra-intellectual revelatory, inspirational, intuitional truth come to man first by rare visitations as the purified mind meditates on the godhead above our mortal minds, above even the pure levels of Swar. These visitations increase in frequency and intensity and leave behind a store of ideal knowledge, of vision & inspiration, & an increasing power of the ideal faculties. By these increasing & repeated confirmations they arrive at an assured and abundant fullness of the divine faculty & its results in the human mind. Ye stomebhih pra súrayo naro magháni ánaśuh.

The Rishi proceeds to dwell more fully on the whole process by which the knowledge in man is changed & elevated from the mental or sensational to the ideal type. It is done by a process of natural awakening out of the joy & strength of the divine Tapas generated by the inner sacrifice. The joy of Agni by his

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self-expression in thought & verbal form of thought is the first necessary condition. Agne chandra te girah. When we feel the divine, the immortal force working in us & lifting us beyond mortality, the divine joy comes with it,—the joy that wakes in the poet, the artist, the saint, the seer, the hero, in all who have any sort of communion with the divine Nature & draw from it their force of vision or their force of being or their force of action. They are the girah of Agni, his self-expressions through the word into which human [.....] form themselves or from which our actions draw their force and inspiration. The second requisite is the joy of our nervous & vital parts in this divine activity. The Narah, the Purushas, must be aśwarádhasah. Aśwa, the Horse, the Steed, is the Vedic figure for the Prana, for the Life-Energy pouring itself through nature & through man's nervous activities, the strong impetuous swift galloper of the worlds that bears gods & men on the journey of life, up the ascent of spiritual evolution, through the battles of the great war which is the Cosmos. Without a strong & joyous vital energy to support it, human mind cannot bear the tremendous shocks of the divine activity, the divine knowledge, the divine [?vision]. The mortal system would break down under the intense touch of the immortal powers, [?sink] back into disintegration, darkness & suffering more intense than the ordinary [?conditions] of mortality. But with a strong & rapturous vital energy & activity supporting the play of a joyous divine energy in the mind, the Solar Purushas become strong with the strengths, mental & vital, which the expressions of Agni Chandra generate and are able to feel an unmixed sense of pleasure & well-being in all Agni's self-expressions in man,—this, I think, is the meaning of śumbhanti in this passage. Or, if it has an active sense, it must mean, as Sayana suggests, that they make those expressions entirely auspicious & pleasurable, śobhanáh kurvanti; free from the touch of pain & suffering or the ill-results which may come from a premature activity of the higher elements in an ill-prepared & unfit receptacle. Ye Agne chandra te girah śumbhanti aśwarádhasah. Śushmebhih śushmiṇo naro.

When there is this strong & blissful action, blissful in the

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vital energy supporting it, blissful in the divine force working in the mind, blissful in the easy & auspicious self-expressions of that force, then the perfection of the illuminative Powers awakes of itself or by the force of the Self in the pure mentality. This spontaneous self-action of the power, the knowledge, the being, the bliss of the Godhead in man, no longer secured or assured by struggle, no longer needing to be protected against legions of spiritual enemies who seek to perpetuate the reign of darkness, suffering, limitation & mortality, but assured & established, but easily, swiftly & mightily developing & reaching its glorious self-perfection, sukírtih, is the last stage of the Vedic Yoga and the desired state of the Vedic sádhaka. This natural awakening in the human consciousness of the perfected divine knowledge in the comprehensive wideness, brihat, natural to the Mahas, the vijnána, takes place divaś chid, even in the heaven of pure mind, even without man rising in himself to the plane of consciousness above pure mind, brihad div, mahas, vijnána. For if man were once on that plane, then there could be no question of struggle. There intellect & its hosts are quiescent, or have left their mortal parts and been transfigured back into the divine elements from which they came. Imagination is at rest or has been transfigured into inspiration, sense observation or insight of intelligence at rest or transfigured into revelation & luminous vision, judgment, reasoning & intelligent divination at rest or transfigured into sure intuition & illuminated discrimination. The Solar Purushas are there swe dame in their own home; the self-awakening of their perfect activity, sukírti, is there natural & inevitable. The necessity of struggle for man comes from this that he lives on the lower plane of mind and has to idealise & illumine his mental activities. The Purushas have to enter a foreign territory & conquer & hold it against its established inhabitants & natural possessors. But even in mind, not the sense mind, not Bhuvar in man, but in the purified mind, the pure self-intelligence this easy, natural & victorious awakening is possible under the conditions of a joyous & illuminated vitality, a joyous & illuminated action of Agni in the mind & the assured sense of ease & well-being brought into his activities in us by the delightful consciousness

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of a higher knowledge & illumination. Divaś chid yeshám brihat sukírtir bodhati tmaná.

The final movement of the Solar Purushas is then described by the Rishi, the movement which takes place when there is the awakening by self-action of its vast vijnánamaya perfection in the pure intelligence. These Solar Purushas, these bright illuminations of Vijnana, are the bright-burning flames of the divine Tapas. Agni, the Divine Being inHis aspect of Force, is masked in our nervous energies as the A´swa, in the mind takes the forms of the mental gods, in the activities of Surya, he is the divine Power expressed in Surya himself and these luminous hosts of the Sungod are his own brilliant liberated energies. Free from the smoke of the lower regions, free from the excitement and distress of his lower emotional & sensational movements, the thoughts of the Rishi, joyous & liberated, move freely in [the] whole heaven of mind boldly [..............................]

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