Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

The Search For Soma

It is legitimate for scholars to seek the identity of the marvellous Soma of the Rigveda. Their efforts claim justification from the fact that an actual plant was used in rituals of the times succeeding those of the ancient scripture which had made Soma famous. But, as the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement¹ of R. Gordon Wasson's monumental study, Soma, the Divine Mushroom of Immortality,² clearly tells us, the plant in question was acknowledged to be a substitute. The fundamental fact, as pointed out by the reviewer, is: nobody could tell, even in antiquity, what plant the original Soma had been. Surely, therefore, it is legitimate for one to counter the scholars by asking: "Was the Rigvedic Soma ever a plant at all?"

This question is supported by the reviewer's words: "... the Vedic Indians and the pre-Zoroastrian Iranians worshipped a plant called soma (Avestan haoma) which was at the same time a god." There is also the information to be derived from the reviewer that even in later times Soma was more than a mere plant: it was "firmly identified with the moon". A sense of the deific, the numinous, in the "high-lights", so to speak, of Nature is evident here, taking us beyond a mere earth-plant and indicating much more than the reviewer's inference that the original plant must have had not only the colour but also the shape of the moon. An esoteric tradition seems to have persisted from the Rigvedic time into a later period, a lingering remembrance of the usages natural to an age of spiritual symbolism. The Sun and the Moon are obvious symbols of Divine Knowledge and Divine Delight. Identification of the God Soma with the moon argues for more than a plant's colour and shape — more even than for the urge of Nature-worship. It harks back to the psychology of the cult of "Mysteries" — the ancient mind's resort to a set of symbols which, to the adept, signified realities and realisations of the inner mystical or Yogic life while to the

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commoner it stood for external objects and forces and a religious ritual, a sacrifice at which professional priests officiated.

The unearthliness of the Rigveda's Soma is hinted even by the account of it as if it were a plant of the earth. The reviewer writes: "It was golden-red in appearance, grew on high mountains, its stalks were crushed to extract the intoxicating juice, but there is no reference to roots or leaves, blossom or seed." The lack noted in the last two phrases is puzzling indeed for an earthly plant. The growing on high mountains is extremely suggestive too — and when we find, in Rigveda X.34,1, Soma described as coming especially from the mountain named Mujavant the suggestion acquires extra concreteness, for no mountain of that name has ever been identified. Zimmer³ tried to equate it with one of the lower hills on the south-west of Kashmir, but, as Hillebrandt⁴ has asserted, the equation lacks evidence. We can conjecture a connection with a people designated as Mujavants in the Atharvaveda (V.22) and the Yajurveda Samhitas (e.g. Tait-tiriya Samhita, 1.8.6,2) and considered as dwelling far away and typifying distant folk. Such a connection can only convey a vague remoteness for the provenance of Soma, agreeing with the total blur in the minds of both the Indians and the Iranians about the identity of the scriptural plant.

What clinches the unearthliness of Soma is the manner in which the supposed "sieve" purifying it — pavitra, as the Rigveda (e.g. 1.28,9) terms it — is spoken of. We have to take into account two points about it.

First, its "material." No doubt, it is said to be made of a ram's or sheep's wool (IX.75,4). But we have to weigh Sri Aurobindo's gloss:⁵ "The strainer in which the Soma is purified is made of the fleece of the ewe. Indra is the Ram [1.10,2; 51,1; 52,1 & VIII. 2,40; 87,12]; the Ewe must therefore be an energy of Indra, probably the divinised sense-mind, indriyam." Such a psycho-spiritual view is natural if we look at what the Aitareya Upanishad has to say. To quote Sri Aurobindo⁶ again: "In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the

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lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d'etre of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of the physical consciousness. But in that consciousness, — often figured as adri, the hill, stone, or dense substance, — divine light and divine delight are both of them concealed and confined, and have to be released or extracted. Ananda [the divine principle of Bliss] is retained as rasa, the sap, the essence, in sense-objects and sense-experiences, in the plants and growths of the earth-nature, and among these growths the mystic Soma-plant symbolises that element behind all sense-activities and their enjoyments which yields the divine essence. It has to be distilled and, once distilled, purified and intensified until it has grown luminous, full of radiance, full of swiftness, full of energy, gomat, asu, yuvaku. It becomes the chief food of the gods who, called to the Soma-oblation, take their share of the enjoyment and in the strength of that ecstasy increase in man, exalt him to his highest possibilities, make him capable of the supreme experiences. Those who do not give the delight in them as an offering to the divine Powers, preferring to reserve themselves for the sense and the lower life, are adorers not of the gods, but of the Panis, lords of the sense-consciousness, traffickers in its limited activities, they who press not the mystic wine, give not the purified offering, raise not the sacred chant."

It is because of the spiritual nature of Soma that it is "called sometimes amrta, the Greek ambrosia, as if it were itself the substance of immortality".⁷ And this nature stands out in Rigveda IX.83,2, where the true sense of pavitra emerges beyond a doubt. In the course of commenting on that hymn, Sri Aurobindo writes: "This strong and fiery wine has to be purified and the strainer for its purifying has been spread out wide to receive it in the seat of heaven, tapos-pavitram vitatam devaspade; its threads or fibres are all of pure

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light and stand out like rays, Scanto asya tantavo vyasthiran. Through these fibres the wine has to come streaming. The image evidently refers to the purified mental and emotional consciousness, the conscious heart; chetas, those thoughts and emotions are the threads or fibres. Dyau or Heaven is the pure mental principle not subjected to the reactions of the nerves and the body. In the seat of Heaven, — the pure mental being as distinguished from the vital and physical consciousness, — the thoughts and emotions become pure rays of true perception and happy psychical vibration instead of the troubled and obscured mental, emotional and sensational reactions that we now possess. Instead of being contracted and quivering things defending themselves from pain and excess of the shocks of experience they stand out free, strong and bright, happily extended to receive and turn into divine ecstasy all possible contacts of universal existence. Therefore it is divaspade, in the seat of Heaven, that the Soma-strainer is spread out to receive the Soma."

Surely such a strainer cannot be the seive for the juice of any actual plant. True, the hymn in question "begins with an imagery which closely follows the physical facts of the purifying of the wine and its pouring into the jar".⁸ But even here we get hints that what appears like a wine used in an external sacrifice is a symbol of a deity who is the supernal wine of Bliss and Immortality. Soma "is pressed out by the pressing-stone (adri, gravan) which has a close symbolic connection with the thunderbolt, the formed electric force of Indra also called adri. The Vedic hymns speak of the luminous thunders of this stone as they speak of the light and sound of Indra's weapon. Once pressed out as the delight of existence Soma has to be purified through a strainer (pavitra) and through the strainer he streams in his purity into the wine bowl (camu) in which he is brought to the sacrifice, or he is kept in jars (kalasa) for Indra's drinking. Or, sometimes, the symbol of the bowl or the jar is neglected and Soma is simply described as flowing in a river of delight to the seat of the Gods, to the home of Immortality. That these things are

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symbols is very clear in most of the hymns of the ninth Mandala which are all devoted to the God Soma. Here, for instance, the physical system of the human being is imaged as the jar of the Soma-wine...."⁹

Sri Aurobindo¹⁰ continues: "But it is not every human system that can hold, sustain and enjoy the potent and often violent ecstasy of that divine delight. Ataptatanur na tad amo asnute, he who is raw and his body not heated does not taste or enjoy that; srtasa id vahantas tat samasata, only those who have been baked in the fire bear and entirely enjoy that. The wine of the divine Life...cannot be held in the system unprepared for it by strong endurance of the utmost fires of life and suffering and experience. The raw earthen vessel not baked to consistency in the fire of the kiln cannot hold the Soma-wine; it breaks and spills the precious liquid. So the physical system of the man who drinks this strong wine of Ananda must by suffering and conquering all the torturing heats of life have been prepared for the secret and fiery heats of the Soma; otherwise his conscious being will not be able to hold it; it will spill and lose it as soon as or even before it is tasted or it will break down mentally and physically under the touch."

Sri Aurobindo¹¹ also elucidates the Godhead of Soma in IX 83: "Aruruchad usasah prsnir agriyah, the supreme dappled One, he makes the dawns to shine: uksa bibharti bhuvanani vajayuh, he, the Bull, bears the worlds, seeking the plenitude. The word prsnih, dappled, is used both of the Bull, the supreme Male, and of the Cow, the female Energy; like all words of colour, sveta, sukra, hari, harit, krsna, hiranyaya, in the Veda it is symbolic; colour, varna, has always denoted quality, temperament, etc., in the language of the Mystics. The dappled Bull is the Deva in the variety of his manifestation, many-hued. Soma is that first supreme dappled Bull, generator of the world of the becoming, for from the Ananda, from the all-blissful One they all proceed; delight is the parent of the variety of existences.... He makes the Dawns shine out, — the dawns of illumination, mothers of

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the radiant herds of the Sun; and he seeks the plenitude, that is to say the fullness of being, force, consciousness, the plenty of the godhead which is the condition of divine delight...."

To complete the picture we may cull from Sri Aurobindo¹² a few more passages about the same hymn. Now the last two verses (4 and 5) are under comment. They begin with the mention of "Gandharva". The name is additional testimony to the unearthly status of Soma. It first occurs in the Rigveda in 1.22,14. In the well-known translation of Ralph T. H. Griffith, which seeks no esoteric sense, we have the sufficiently esoteric pointer¹³ in a note to the phrase "the Gan-dharva's steadfast place": "Though in later times the Gan-dharvas are regarded as a class, in the Rigveda more than one Gandharva is seldom mentioned. He is commonly designated as 'the heavenly Gandharva', whose habitation is the sky, and whose especial duty is to guard the heavenly Soma, which the Gods obtain through his permission." In the hymn under comment, Griffith¹⁴ proposes the Sun as the Gandharva, while in hymn 85,12 his note¹⁵ says: "here Soma, the Moon." But his translation¹⁶ of the relevant phrase in 83,4, where so far only Soma has been mentioned, indicates the same meaning: "Gandharva verily protects his dwelling-place; Wondrous, he guards the generations of the Gods." In any case we are clearly directed towards Heaven and not Earth for Soma's original status. Sri Aurobindo's comment on the two concluding verses runs:

"Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva ittha padam asya raksati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhutah, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the birth of the gods, pati devanam janimani adbhutah. The 'birth of the gods' is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of

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the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being. In the last verse [3] the Rishi spoke of the Deva as the divine child preparing for birth, involved in the world, in the human consciousness. Here he speaks of Him as the transcendent guarding the world of the Ananda formed in man and the forms of the godhead born in him by the divine knowledge against the attacks of the enemies, the powers of division, the powers of undelight (dvisah aratih), against the undivine host with their formations of a dark and false creative knowledge, Avidya, illusion (adevir may ah).

"For he seizes these invading enemies in the net of the inner consciousness; he is the master of a profounder and truer setting of world-truth and world-experience than that which is formed by the senses and the superficial mind. It is by this inner setting that he seizes the powers of falsehood, obscurity and division and subjects them to the law of truth, light and unity; grbhnati ripum ridhaya nidhapatih. Men therefore protected by the lord of the Ananda governing this inner nature are able to accord their thoughts and actions with the inner truth and light and are no longer made to stumble by the forces of the outer crookedness; they walk straight, they become entirely perfect in their works and by this truth of inner working and outer action are able to taste the entire sweetness of existence, the honey, the delight that is the food of the soul. Sukrttama madhuno bhaksam asata.

"Soma manifests here as the offering, the divine food, the wine of delight and immortality, havih and as the Deva, lord of that divine offering (havismah), above as the vast and divine seat, the superconscient bliss and truth, brhat, from which the wine descends to us. As the wine of delight he flows about and enters into this great march of the sacrifice which is the progress of man from the physical to the superconscient. He enters into it and encompasses it wearing the cloud of the heavenly ether, nabhas, the mental principle, as his robe and veil. Havir havismo mahi sadma daivyam, nabho

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vasanah pari yasi adhvaram. The divine delight comes to us wearing the luminous-cloudy veil of the forms of mental experience.

"In that march or sacrificial ascent the all-blissful Deva becomes the King of all our activities, master of our divinised nature and its energies and with the enlightened conscious heart as his chariot ascends into the plenitude of the infinite and immortal f a victorious king, sunlike in force and glory, conquering a wide territory. It is the immortality that he wins for man in the vast Truth-Consciousness, sravas, upon which is founded the immortal state. It is his own true seat, ittha padam asya, that the God concealed in man conquers ascending out of the darkness and the twilight through the glories of the Dawn into the solar plenitudes."

Having made out the case that the Rigveda is not merely religious ritualism directed at deified nature-forces but a spiritual cult aiming at the human soul's realisation of the Supreme Being by an inner Yogic process of deepening, widening and heightening theerstate. Like a Sun or a Fire, as Surya, as Agni, engirt with a thousand blazing energies he conquers the vast regions of the inspired truth, the superconscient knowledge; raja pavitraratho vajam aruhah, sahasrabhrstir jayasi sravo brhat. The image is th consciousness and that it has both an esoteric and an exoteric side and that its true understanding comes by a symbolic vision of it, we have still to ask: "If there are two sides, have we not to assume an actual plant whose juice represents the occult expat oience of the Divine Delight? Was there not a physically drinkable wine as a symbol of the Wine of Immortality with which the aspiring soul was filled when it invoked, under the particular name of Soma, the one Existent to whom the seers give different names (I.164,46), the timeless Unknowable beyond the mind (I.170,1), the Unmoving and Infinite which is the single mightiness of the Gods (III.55,1), the transcendent and universal Deva, "the Father of things who appears here as the Son in the human soul",¹⁷ "the Blissful One to whom the movement of the Gods ascends, manifest as at once the

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Male and the Female, vrsan, dhenu"?¹⁸

We can only answer: "There are hymns like IX.83 where the physical interpretation is impossible. There are no hymns where this interpretation alone stands forth. There are double-aspected hymns where, in spite of physical appearances, the spiritual-symbolic interpretation can be maintained. Therefore all the hymns are capable of such an interpretation and the sole logical course is to give it to them. Thus nowhere in the Rigveda can an actual plant be taken as intended." But this need not imply that no plant existed in the Rigveda's day by the name of Soma. Just as the fire, the clarified butter which was put into it, the cow, the horse, the wealth, the hills, the rivers existed as physical counterparts to their psycho-spiritual originals and served as symbols for the processes of the inner Yogic life, so too an actual plant whose juice was pressed out must have been present for the exoteric sense to have some bearing here as everywhere else. However, it would be a mistake to look for a sort of point-to-point correspondence with the divine amrta which was meant by Soma. We should not bother to search for some extraordinary herb whose extract, as Mr. Wasson's reviewer puts it, "was intoxicating, gave strength in battles as well as a widening of consciousness". The Rigveda (X.85,3,4)¹⁹ very clearly forbids any quest for point-to-point correspondence:

"One thinks, when they have brayed the plant, that he hath drunk the Soma's juice;

Of him whom Brahmans truly know as Soma no one ever tastes.

"Soma, secured by sheltering rules, guarded by hymns in Brihati,²⁰

Thou standest listening to the stones: none tastes of thee who dwells on earth."

Some sort of winy liquid was obtained, but it was not more unusual or in a class by itself than were all the other

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physical analogues of inner realities. The only thing we can affirm with certainty is that it differed from common "spirituous" drinks. The Rigveda calls these drinks Sura as distinguished from Soma and sometimes frowns upon them (e.g., VII.86,6) and twice (VIII.2,22; 21,14) regards them as causing broils. It is possible that its actual Soma was more or less like the creepers or grasses later epochs employed as substitutes. Perhaps those creepers or grasses were not really substitutes but believed to be so because the Rigvedic symbolism and esotericism were forgotten and the high qualities ascribed to Soma were taken literally to belong to an earthly plant.

Notes and References

1.May 5, 1969, p. 561, cols. 3-8.

2.New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1969, p. 381.

3.Altindisches Leben, 29.

4.Vedische Mythologie, I, 65.

5.The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971), p. 541, fn. 2.

6.Ibid., p. 249-50.

7.Ibid., p. 249.

8.Ibid., p. 343.

9.Ibid., pp. 342-3.

10.Ibid., p. 344.

11.Ibid., pp. 345-6.

12.Ibid., pp. 346-8.

13.The Hymns of the Rgveda, translated with a Popular Commentary (The Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, Varanasi, 1971), Vol. I, p. 26, note to line 14.

14.Ibid., p. 338, note to line 4.

15.Ibid., p. 342, note to line 12.

16.Ibid., p. 339.

17.Ibid., pp. 341-2.

18.Ibid., p. 342.

19.Griffith, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 501.

20.That is, by hymns in that metre.

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