The Secret of the Veda

The Four Kings

The creation of Surya Savitri starts from the repeated risings of the divine Dawn and grows by the constant nourishing of her spiritual gifts and possessions through the work in us of Surya Pushan. But the actual formation, the perfected fullness depend on the birth and growth in us of all the gods, the children of Aditi, the All-Gods (viśve devāḥ) and especially of the four great luminous Kings, Varuna, Mitra, Bhaga, Aryaman. Indra and the Maruts and the Ribhus, Vayu, Agni, Soma and the Ashwins are indeed the principal agents; Vishnu, Rudra, Brahmanaspati, the future mighty Triad, preside over the indispensable conditions,—for the one paces out the vast framework of the inner worlds in which our soul-action takes place, the other in his wrath and might and violent beneficence forces onward the great evolution and smites the opponent and the recusant and

Page 438

the ill-doer, and the third administers always the seed of the creative word from the profundities of the soul; so too Earth and Heaven and the divine Waters and the great goddesses and Twashtri the Fashioner of things on whom they attend, either provide the field or bring and shape the material; but over the utter creation, over its perfect vast space and pure texture, over the sweet and ordered harmony of its steps, over the illumined force and power of its fulfilment, over its rich, pure and abundant enjoyment and rapture the Sun-gods Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga cast the glory and protection of their divine gaze.

The sacred poems in which the All-Gods and the Adityas, the sons of the Infinite, and Aryaman, Mitra and Varuna are praised,—not the mere hymns of formal invocation to the sacrifice,—are among the most beautiful, solemn and profound that the imagination of man has conceived. The Adityas are described in formulas of an incomparable grandeur and sublimity. No mythic barbarian gods of cloud, sun and shower are these, no confused allegories of wonder-stricken savages, but the objects of worship to men far more inwardly civilised and profound in self-knowledge than ourselves. They may not have yoked the lightning to their chariots, nor weighed sun and star, nor materialised all the destructive forces in Nature to aid them in massacre and domination, but they had measured and fathomed all the heavens and earths within us, they had cast their plummet into the inconscient and the subconscient and the superconscient; they had read the riddle of death and found the secret of immortality; they had sought for and discovered the One and known and worshipped Him in the glories of His light and purity and wisdom and power. These were their gods, as great and deep conceptions as ever informed the esoteric doctrine of the Egyptians or inspired the men of an older primitive Greece, the fathers of knowledge who founded the mystic rites of Orpheus or the secret initiation of Eleusis. But over it all there was the "Aryan light", a confidence and joy and a happy, equal friendliness with the Gods which the Aryan brought with him into the world, free from the sombre shadows that fell upon Egypt from contact with the older races, Sons of deep-brooding Earth. These claimed

Page 439

Heaven as their father and their seers had delivered his Sun out of our material darkness.

The self-luminous One is the goal of the Aryan-minded; therefore the seers worshipped him in the image of the Sun. One existent, him have the seers called by various names, Indra, Agni, Yama, Matarishwan. The phrases "That One", "That Truth",¹ occur constantly in the Veda in connection with the Highest and with the image of His workings here, the Sun. In one sublime and mystic chant the refrain returns perpetually, "The vast mightiness of the Gods,—That One" (III.55.1). There is the goal of that journey of the Sun by the path of the Truth which we have seen to be also the journey of the awakened and illumined soul. "Concealed by this truth is that Truth of you," of Mitra and Varuna, "where they unyoke the horses of the Sun. The ten hundreds meet there together,—That One, I have seen the supreme God of the embodied gods" (V.62.1). But in itself the One is timeless and our mind and being exist in Time. "It is neither today nor tomorrow; who knoweth That which is transcendent? When it is approached, it vanishes from us" (I.170.1). Therefore we have to grow towards it by giving birth to the gods in ourselves,² increasing their strong and radiant forms, building up their divine bodies, and this new birth and self-building is the true nature of the sacrifice,—the sacrifice through which there is the awakening of our consciousness to immortality.³

The sons of the Infinite have a twofold birth. They are born above in the divine Truth as creators of the worlds and guardians of the divine Law; they are born also here in the world itself and in man as cosmic and human powers of the Divine. In the visible world they are the male and female powers and energies of the universe and it is this external aspect of them as gods of the Sun, Fire, Air, Waters, Earth, Ether, the conscious-forces ever present in material being which gives us the external or psycho-physical side of the Aryan worship. The antique view of the world as a psycho-physical and not merely a material

Page 440

reality is at the root of the ancient ideas about the efficacy of the mantra and the relation of the gods to the external life of man; hence the force of prayer, worship, sacrifice for material ends; hence the use of them for worldly life and in so-called magic rites which comes out prominently in the Atharva Veda and is behind much of the symbolism of the Brahmanas.⁴ But in man himself the gods are conscious psychological powers. "Will-powers, they do the works of will; they are the thinkings in our hearts; they are the lords of delight who take delight; they travel in all the directions of the thought." Without them the soul of man cannot distinguish its right nor its left, what is in front of it nor what is behind, the things of foolishness or the things of wisdom; only if led by them can it reach and enjoy "the fearless Light". For this reason Dawn is addressed "O thou who art human and divine" and the gods constantly described as the "Men" or human powers (mānuṣāḥ, narāḥ); they are our "luminous seers", "our heroes", "our lords of plenitude". They conduct the sacrifice in their human capacity (manuṣvat) as well as receive it in their high divine being. Agni is the priest of the oblation, Brihaspati the priest of the word. In this sense Agni is said to be born from the heart of man; all the gods are thus born by the sacrifice, grow and out of their human action assume their divine bodies. Soma, the wine of the world-delight, rushing through the mind which is its "luminous wide-extended" strainer of purification, cleansed there by the ten sisters, pours forth giving birth to the gods.

But the nature of these inner powers is always divine and therefore their tendency is upward to Light and immortality and infinity. They are "the Sons of the Infinite, one in their will and work, pure, purified in the streams, free from crookedness, free from defect, unhurt in their being. Wide, profound, unconquered, conquering, with many organs of vision, they behold within the crooked things and the perfect; all is near to the Kings, even the things that are highest. Sons of the Infinite, they dwell in the movement of the world and uphold it; gods, they are the guardians of all that becomes as universe; far-thoughted, full of

Page 441

the Truth, they guard the Might" (II.27.2-4). They are kings of the universe and of man and of all its peoples (nṛpati, viśpati), self-emperors, world-emperors, not as the Titans strive to be in the falsehood and the division, but because they are kings of the Truth. For their mother is Aditi "in whom there is no duality", Aditi "the luminous undivided who upholds the divine habitation that is of the world of Light" and to her her sons "cleave ever waking". They are "most straight" in their being, will, thought, delight, action, movement, they are "thinkers of the Truth whose law of nature is the law of the Truth", they are "seers and hearers of the Truth". They are "charioteers of the Truth, whose seat is in its mansions, purified in discernment, unconquerable, the Men wide-visioned". They are the "Immortals who know the Truth". Thus free from the falsehood and the crookedness, these inner divinities rise in us to their natural level, home, plane, world. "Of a double birth they are true in their being and lay hold on the Truth, very vast and one in the Light and are possessed of its luminous world."

In this upward movement they cleave away from us the evil and the ignorance. These are they who "cross beyond into the sinlessness and the undivided existence". Therefore they are "the gods who deliver". For the enemy, the assailant, the doer of harm their knowledge becomes as if snares widespread, for to him light is a cause of blindness, the divine movement of good an occasion of evil and a stumbling-block; but the soul of the Aryan seer passes beyond these dangers like a mare hastening with a chariot. In the leading of the gods he avoids all stumblings into evil like so many pitfalls. Aditi, Mitra and Varuna forgive him whatever sin he may have committed against their vast oneness, purity, harmony so that he can hope to enjoy the wide and fearless Light and the long nights shall not come upon him. That the Vedic gods are no mere physical Nature-powers, but the psychic conscious forces behind and within all cosmic things, is made clear enough by the connection between their cosmic character and this deliverance from sin and falsehood, "Since ye are they who rule over the world by the power of their mind of knowledge, thinkers of all that is stable and mobile, therefore, O gods, carry us beyond the sin of that which we have done and

Page 442

that which we have not done to the felicity" (X.63.8).

There is always the image of the path and the journey, the Path of the Truth on which we are led forward by a divine leading. "O Sons of the Infinite, effect for us the fearless peace, make us good paths of an easy going to the felicity" (X.63.7). "Easy of going is your path, O Aryaman, O Mitra, it is thornless, O Varuna, and perfect" (II.27.6). "They whom the Sons of Infinity lead with good leadings pass beyond all sin and evil to the felicity" (X.63.13). Always that goal is the felicity, the wide bliss and peace, the unbroken Light, the vast Truth, the Immortality. "O ye gods, put far from us the hostile (dividing) force, give us wide peace for the felicity" (X.63.12). "The Sons of Infinity give us the imperishable Light." "Create the Light, O ye minds of knowledge of our sacrifice." "That increasing birth of you we would know today, O Sons of the Infinite, which creates, O Aryaman, even in this world of fear the beatitude." For it is the "fearless Light" that is created, where there is no peril of death, sin, suffering, ignorance,—the light of the undivided, infinite, immortal, rapturous Soul of things. For "these are the rapturous lords of Immortality, even Aryaman and Mitra and Varuna all-pervading".

Still, it is in the image of Swar, the world of the divine Truth that the goal is concretely figured. "Let us reach," is the aspiration, "the Light that is of Swar, the Light which none can tear asunder." Swar is the great, inviolable birth of Mitra, Varuna, Aryaman which is contained in the luminous heavens of the soul. The all-ruling Kings, because they grow perfectly and there is no crookedness in them, hold our habitation in heaven. That is the triple world in which the uplifted consciousness of man reflects the three divine principles of being, its infinite existence, its infinite conscious-force, its infinite bliss.⁵ "Three earths they hold, three heavens, three workings of these gods in the Knowledge within; by the Truth, O Sons of the Infinite, great is that vastness of yours, O Aryaman, O Mitra, O Varuna, great and beautiful. Three heavenly worlds of light they hold, the gods golden-shining who are pure and purified in the streams; sleepless, unconquerable they close not their lids, they express the

Page 443

wideness to the mortal who is straight" (II.27.8,9). These all-purifying streams are those of the rain, the abundance, the rivers of the heaven of Truth. "Charioted in light are they, aggressive in knowledge, sinless and they clothe themselves in the rain and abundance of heaven for the felicity" (X.63.4). By the pouring out of that abundance they prepare our souls to ascend to its source, the higher ocean from which the luminous waters descend.

It will be seen how largely the great triad, Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman figure in the hymns to the All-Gods and to the Sons of the Infinite Mother. With Bhaga as a consummating fourth they dominate the thought of the Rishis in their culminant aspiration to the mass and apex of the perfect truth and infinity. This pre-eminence they owe to their particular character and functions which appear, not often indeed with any great prominence, but as a background to their common action, their united nature of light, their undifferentiated achievement. For they have one light, one work, they perfect in us one indivisible Truth; and it is this union of all the godheads in our consenting universality⁶ that is the objective of the Vedic thought in these Aditya hymns. Still the union comes about by a combination of their powers and therefore each has in it his own proper nature and function. That of the Four is to build up the whole divine state into its perfection by the natural interaction of its four essential elements. The Divine is existence all-embracing, infinite and pure; Varuna brings to us the infinite oceanic space of the divine soul and its ethereal, elemental purity. The Divine is boundless consciousness, perfect in knowledge, pure and therefore luminously right in its discernment of things, perfectly harmonious and happy in its concordance of their law and nature; Mitra brings us this light and harmony, this right distinction and relation and friendly concord, the happy laws of the liberated soul concordant with itself and the Truth in all its rich thought, shining actions and thousandfold enjoyment. The Divine is in its own being pure and perfect power and in us the eternal upward tendency in things to their source and truth; Aryaman brings to us this mighty strength and perfectly-guided happy inner upsurging.

Page 444

The Divine is the pure, the faultless, the all-embracing, the untroubled ecstasy that enjoys its own infinite being and enjoys equally all that it creates within itself; Bhaga gives us sovereignly that ecstasy of the liberated soul, its free and unfallen possession of itself and the world.

This quaternary is practically the later essential trinity of Sachchidananda,—Existence, Consciousness, Bliss with self-awareness and self-force, Chit and Tapas, for double terms of Consciousness; but it is here translated into its cosmic terms and equivalents. Varuna the King has his foundation in the allpervading purity of Sat; Mitra the Happy and the Mighty, most beloved of the Gods, in the all-uniting light of Chit; many-charioted Aryaman in the movement and all-discerning force of Tapas; Bhaga in the all-embracing joy of Ananda. Yet as all these things form one in the realised godhead, as each element of the trinity contains the others in itself and none of them can exist separately from the rest, therefore each of the Four also possesses by force of his own essential quality every general attribute of his brothers. For this reason if we do not read the Veda as carefully as it was written, we shall miss its distinctions and see only the indistinguishable common functions of these luminous Kings,—as indeed throughout the hymns the unity in difference of all the gods makes it difficult for the mind not accustomed to the subtleties of psychological truth to find in the Vedic divinities anything but a confused mass of common or interchangeable attributes. But the distinctions are there and have as great a force and importance as in the Greek and Egyptian symbolism. Each god contains in himself all the others, but remains still himself in his peculiar function.

This nature of the difference between the Four explains their varying prominence in the Veda. Varuna is easily the first and most considerable of them all, for realisation of infinite existence is the basis of the Vedic perfection: the wideness and purity of the divine being once attained, all the rest comes inevitably contained in it as possession and power and attribute. Mitra is seldom hymned except in union with Varuna or else as a name and form of the other gods,—oftenest of the cosmic worker Agni,—when arriving in their action to the harmony and the light they

Page 445

reveal in themselves the divine Friend. To the twin-power Mitra-Varuna the greater number of the hymns to the luminous Kings are addressed, a certain number to Varuna separately or to Varuna-Indra, one to Mitra, two or three to Bhaga, none at all to Aryaman. For the infinite wideness and purity being founded, the luminous harmony of the workings of the gods by the correlated laws of the different planes of our being from the spiritual to the material has to be realised in that continent and on that foundation; and this is the combination Mitra-Varuna. The power of Aryaman is hardly viewed as an independent principle,—just as force in the world is only a manifestation, movement or dynamic value of existence, is only a working out, a liberation of consciousness, of knowledge, of the inherent Truth of things into stuff of energy and form of effect, or is only the effective term of the self-discovering and self-seizing movement by which Being and Consciousness realise themselves as Bliss. Therefore Aryaman is invoked always in conjunction with Aditi or Varuna or Mitra or in the great realising Triad or in the realised quaternary or in the general invocation of the All-Gods and the Adityas.

Bhaga on the other hand is the crown of our movement to the possession of the hidden divine Truth of our existence; for the essence of that Truth is beatitude. Bhaga is Savitri himself; the All-Enjoyer is the Creator fulfilled in the divine purpose of his creation. Therefore he is the result more than the agent, or else the last agent of all, the possessor more than the giver of our spiritual plenitude.

The hymn of the Rishi Vamadeva to the All-Gods shows with a clear lucidity the high-aspiring hope which these Vedic deities were invoked to favour and bring to a happy culmination:

Who of you is our deliverer? who our defender? O Earth and Heaven, free from division, deliver us; rescue, O Mitra, O Varuna, from the mortality that is too strong for us! Who of you, O gods, confirms for us the supreme good in the march of the sacrifice? They who illumine our high original seats, they

Page 446

who limitless in knowledge dawn out putting away our darkness, it is they, imperishable all-ordainers, who order them for us; thinkers out of the Truth, they shine forth in light, achievers. I seek for my companion by the words illumining the flowing river Aditi, she who is the divine felicity. O Night and Dawn unconquerable, so do ye make it that both the Days shall utterly protect us. Aryaman and Varuna distinguish the Path, and Agni lord of the impulsion, the path of the happy goal. O Indra and Vishnu, affirmed, extend to us perfectly the peace in which are the Powers, the mighty protection. I embrace the increasings of Parvata and of the Maruts and of Bhaga, our divine deliverer. May the master of things protect us from the sin of the world and Mitra keep us far from the sin against Mitra. Now shall one affirm the goddesses Earth and Heaven with the Dragon of the foundation by all the things desired that we must obtain; as if to possess that Ocean by their wide ranging they have uncovered the (hidden) rivers that are voiceful with the burning Light. May goddess Aditi with the gods protect us, may the divine Deliverer deliver us, unremitting; let us not diminish the foundation of Mitra and Varuna and the high level of Agni. Agni is the lord of that vast substance of riches and perfected enjoyment; he lavishes on us those abundances. O Dawn, voice of the Truth, queen of plenitude, bring to us the many desirable boons, thou who hast in thee all their plenty. To that goal may Savitri, Bhaga, Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, Indra, move aright for us with riches of our felicity" (IV.55).