Vedic and Philological Studies

Appendix to Part Two

Sri Aurobindo selected and translated these verses along with others from the Veda, Upanishads and Gita which he revised and used as mottoes at the beginnings of chapters in the revised edition of The Life Divine(1939–40). Verses from the Rig and Yajur Vedas not included in The Life Divine are reproduced here from the manuscript, arranged in the order of the hymns.

Selected Verses

Rig Veda

This is the most adorable work, the loveliest deed of the Wonderful that the higher streams have fed us in the crookedness, even the four rivers of the Sea of sweetness. [I.62.6]

I purify earth and heaven with the Truth and burn the Great Forces of Harm that possess it not. [I 133.1]

They uphold three earths and three heavens, and within them are their ways of action in the knowledge three. By the Truth that greatness is great and beautiful. Three divine worlds of light they uphold—golden and pure and sleepless and invincible giving voice to the wideness for the mortal who is upright.... May I attain to that wide and fearless Light, may not the long nights of darkness come upon us. [II.27.8,9,14]

When the world of Truth became visible by the words of Truth, when they kindled the Great Light in the Night the blind darknesses were shaken that there might be vision. [IV.16.4]

Up the iron-pillar, grown golden of form in the light of the Dawn, in the rising of the Sun, you ascend to the Lair and behold from thence the Infinite Mother and the Finite. [V.62.8]

They approach the secret knowledge with its thousand branchings by the intuitions of the heart. [VII.33.9]

In these there is not the Wonder nor the Might; for the harms of things cleave to the falsehoods of mortals, and your occult truths exist not for their ignorance. [VII.61.5]

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Three Words that carry the Light in their front and milk the teat of the honey of delight; a triple refuge, a triple way of then Light. [VII.101.1,2]

He discovered and drove upward the herds of light that were in the Secrecy and cast downward Vala; the luminous planes of heaven were fixed and fortified, made firm so as never to be thrust away. [VIII.14.8,9]

O Soma, ascending beyond the three luminous worlds thou blazest. [IX.17.5]

In his flow he begets the vast and brilliant Truth-Light and smites away the darknesses. [IX.66.24]

Thrice seven the Milch cows that gave him their milk of Truth in the supreme ether; he cast into form four other worlds of beauty when he grew by the Truths. [IX.70.1]

One sea that holds all the streams of Energy,—one who has many births sees the world from our heart. In the lap of the two secret ones (mystic Mothers) is the hidden plane of the Being. [X.5.1]

The Seers guard the plane of the Truth and there they hold their supreme and secret Names. [X.5.2]

The ancient movements and energies of the Truth cleave to him who has come to a perfect birth. [X.5.4]

Desiring the seven luminous sisters the Knower upholds the sweetnesses for the vision of the Bliss. [X.5.5]

One part of him is all these beings, three parts of him are that which is Immortality in heaven. [X.90.3]

Truth and the Law of Truth were born from the kindled flame of

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Energy, thence Night was born and the flowing Ocean of being, from the Ocean Time arose controller of all that lives and sees, the Creator (ordered) heaven and earth and the mid-world and the world of Light. [X.190.1–3]

Yajur Veda

When he arises and builds a perfect world on earth let us then dig out the Fire in its perfect image and climb to the supreme heaven, the world of Light. [XI.22]

He saw That hidden in the secret heart of things where all lives in a single nest, in Whom all this converges and diverges and he is the Lord self-aware in creatures. . . . He encompassed all beings and worlds and approached the first born of the Truth, he tied together the extended thread of action done, he saw That; he became That; he was That. [XXXII.8,11,12]

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