In the conception of Madhva, salvation is the direct result of Vishnu prasada. Aparoxa jnana leads to Salvation.Salvation is the direct result of the grace of God and only the Sattwika type of souls can achieve it. The Sattwika souls ,due to their innate propensity woship Vishnu as the Independent Sovereign Reality and attain Release or Moksha
This in itself is a two-fold process. First there is the screen created by Prakriti whose modes of nature hold the entrapped Seeker in its tight embrace. The Seeker first rends this screen as a result of the Sadhana Process. After this there is yet another Screen created by Vishnu which separates the Seeker from the Supreme Divine. This final screen is removed by the grace of Vishnu and after this there is no going back. The Released Souls then cast of their Causal Bodies and enter into the Embrace of Vishnu in Vaikuntha as pure intelligence , having the characteristics of Sat (Existence) Chit(Intelligence) & Ananda(Bliss).
The fully realised Souls exist in Vaikuntha in their true forms. The differences between the souls remain as they are and the Souls exist as pure bliss. Salvation does not mean the negation of differences but rather a higher perception of differences and the realization of Integral Existence.
It is only in this liberated state , Liberated from the confines of Prakriti that the true nature of the Souls comes out.
It is only in this state that the true varna of the Souls are realized and in fact the differences become known with greater clarity. One finds the souls enjoying different amounts of Bliss but this does not lead to envy or jealousy as all those negative emotions have been completely gotten rid of prior to salvation. Each soul is satisfied with the amount of bliss it enjoys . Just like different men eat different amounts of food and yet all are fully satisfied , the same situation obtains.
Even in Salvation there is Gradation and Difference.
The Brahmanas among souls are forever guiding the liberated souls in the experience of bliss , for each according to thir intrinsic ability enjoy different amounts of bliss yet feel no jealousy. The souls perform different vedic rituals as an expression of their love for Vishnu but there is no compulsion to do so. The Shudra among souls , the ones with natural bias towards serving put their full trust in the brahmana and kshatriya among souls , as they know innately that they are always working for their betterment and will never exploit them. Thus we can see an ideal varna type society existing after liberation in Vishnu's Abode
In such a society there is brotherhood and love encompassing all the souls. There is also everpresent the love for Vishnu and in return the souls experience Vishnu's love for them. In such an ideal society difference and hierarchy exists but there is no exploitation. True equality exists as souls experience joy to the extent of their intrinsic ability. The society is founded upon the verse "Sarvadharmaan Parityajya" in BG and all systems of thought are abandoned and only there is the beautiful Surrender on the part of the souls, a surrender founded upon true knowledge and realisation of their intrinsic worth.
Such a society which has surrendered to the Lord exists in perfect harmony. Integralism is founded on the Love of the Lord. It is the synthesis of all apparently contradictory laws that we experience in this Earthly domain.All ideal laws of this earth find fulfillment and expression in such a society. The communist is very happy since there is no private property. The Capitalist is happy as he has the freedom to use wealth in the way he wants. The Anarchist is happy because there is no government , and everything happens harmoniously. The feminist is happy as women remain naked in such a society but there is nobody casting degrading glances at that time. The orthodox Madhva Brahmin is happy as there is heirarchy and gradation in the statuses of the Souls in that society.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Simultaneous Oneness and Difference
It is common in academic and yoga circles to regard Advaita as a monistic system which brings about the oneness experience to its practitioners. It is hailed as the philosophy which can revolutionize human consciousness and deliver us to a state of existence where there is no suffering - which is the creation of a dualistic mindset . Their proponents argue that the dualistic mindset that operates at the lower mental levels at which most of mankind exists can only bring about sorrow and suffering. And a solution to suffering can only be found by transcending that dualistic state , and experiencing the monistic state , and understanding that all these dualities do not really exist and are brought into existence as a result of our ignorance , avidya, at a lower state.
Dualism , the pairs of opposites , according to advaita are brought about by Maya. Maya is that principle which makes the one and only Nirguna Brahman appear as many and divided. The universe is the result of Maya and they say Maya is not illusion , and people who think advaita is illusionism have not understood it.
But whatever you may call it , Maya according to the advaitin is the principle that makes the unreal appear as real. Transcending Maya means the realization that all these things do not exist and realizing that only Brahman exists. Realized souls will see only the undivided Nirguna Brahman everywhere and not material objects which fill the consciousness of the ordinary man.
For Advaitins , Maya is not illusion. But whatever it is, its byproduct , the real universe which we perceive around us , does not exist. Maya makes the unreal world real. Advaitins juggle words to explain Maya and to tell you that the world around us is unreal but not an illusion. But whatever it is , its clear that advaitins do not ascribe the same level of reality to Brahman and the World around us. This is evident from that famous aphorism of Adi Shankara , "Brahman Sathyam , Jagan Mithyam" or "The Brahman alone is real , the World is only Mithya". One may ascribe different meanings to Mithya but clearly mithya is different from sathya and they are both not the same. Mithya is a different grade of reality compared to Sathya. If it was not so , advaitins would say "Brahman Sathyam , Jagan Sathyam" which they do not. Thus world exists in a non-real or unreal state for the Advaitin.
But is that all correct ? Do what the advaitins say , the real state of things , the true nature our experience ?
The Vaishnava schools of thought , which are many in number , take an entirely different stand. Especially if we study the system and the school of thought brought into existence by Madhva. For him the world is real and not only simply real but as real as Vishnu Himself. The world ontologically is of the same grade of reality as Brahman. The only difference being Brahman is self-conscious , self-luminous and has certain powers which we cannot ascribe to atoms and molecules that make the real world. Brahman and the souls have the power of will but matter does not. Souls are as real as atoms but they are constituted of a higher grade of reality on account of their powers of Volition. Brahman on the other hand , even though as real as atoms and souls , is a still higher grade of reality compared to the other two. Thus Brahman has the power to control the souls and matter who become subject to its Suzerainty.
The concept of Advaita or oneness exist in Madhva's system as well. Advaita is simply a Sanskrit word which means oneness and this word can be used by anybody and to refer to anything and is not the private property of the advaitins. The material scientists for example are advaitins as well. There are many places where Vishnu is referred to as Advaita by Madhva. Thus advaita is not the proper word to describe Shankara's philosophy. Since Madhva accepts the oneness of Vishnu we could say his followers are advaitins. The material scientists can also make similar claims.
Thus the correct word that can be used to describe advaitins is Mayavadins viz the ones who accept the doctrine of Maya , the principle that causes the unreal to appear as real. This would be the proper description for them. Any other description will not bring out the uniqueness of the philosophy or its theme accurately.
But how shall we describe the philosophy of Madhva ? Madhva himself used the word tattvavaada or the doctrine of reality to describe his system. From Madhva's point of view all nature was real and the differences we see around is in nature are real as well. Not only are differences real but they are also eternal. This may come as a shock for those who equated difference with Ignorance and considered the enlightened state as one where all differences cease to exist But for Madhva differences become even more pronounced and clear in the Realized state than the unrealized state in which most of mankind exist. Realization for Madhva is the enjoyment of bliss latent in the soul. The world is objectively real and it remains so for the Realized souls as well , though their perspective of the universe becomes different. And it is the proper understanding of the differences (there are five in number) that makes it possible for a soul to attain salvation.
There are two types of differences here which we should learn to become familiar with it. There is the difference or rather the dividedness which we perceive around us in this world caused by the ego and also the objective reality. Every inanimate object (jada) is different from the other and it is this difference which gives reality to it. In other words ,difference, we can say is the essence of reality. Nay , its very foundation. Recognizing this difference actually reduces suffering in the world. And leads one to salvation. The second is the divided-ness brought about by the rajasic ego in us. We perceive this dividedness in the use of such words , you, I , they , them. These differences are the result of lower consciousness , brought about by the rajasic ego which is the station of identity for the Lower Man . Such a discrimination while useful in real life is also the source of much suffering as well. Wars for example are the result of the rajasic ego which has gone out of control. But this is only one reason for Wars. Madhva asks us to get rid of this rajasic ego. In asking us to get rid of this , he does not mean that the differences in the world outside should also be rejected. These are real and out there and they cannot be gotten rid off by any amount of Yoga. Getting rid of rajasic ego puts an end to the divisive consciousness and brings us into the unity consciousness. The difference is still there in the real world , but what has gone out is the dividedness which covered our consciousness , clouded our consciousness and made us vulnerable to certain lower forces which wanted to keep us in a state of Ignorance. When the rajasic ego is gotten rid of the person then tends to live most of his life in the sattvic ego station and that life is certainly a better one as it opens up the potential for Joy, Bliss and Knowledge. But then wasn't Yoga supposed to get rid of all the differences ? Haven't all those great Yogis from past and present asked us to get rid of all differences ?
We must realize that the experience of oneness that most Yogis talk about (from Adi Shankara to Ramana Maharishi) is merely one such experience. In fact it is one of the lowest levels of realization that anybody can achieve. It is directly above the Buddhist state of realization. Buddhist realization itself just above the realization that scientists experience. In that state of Spiritual Advaitic realization , the world appears as merely a projection of the Nirguna Brahman , having no reality of itself , a mere shadow play of the Attributeless Absolute Consciousness. Most Yogis stop after reaching this stage, out of conviction born out of subscription to standard authority. They then assume the responsibility of saving the world or teaching the method to others and often tour around the world , giving lectures and acting as a conduit for those aiming for self-fulfillment. Each advaitin reinforces the idea to himself and others that this is the highest realization that is possible and becomes a famous Guru the world over.
But there have been a few great souls who have labored past this experience, pushed the limits of knowledge and endurance and reached a state of existence that is superior to this Advaitic experience. Foremost among them was Ramanuja , an Acharya born in the state of Tamil Nadu and famous for his socialistic attitude and also for the Vishista Advaita school of thought. Vishista Advaita means Qualified Monism. That name is given to his philosophy because while he accepted Advaita as propounded by Shankara , he also made some modifications to it . The state of yogic experience which corresponds to his intellectual philosophy is just above the yogic experience of Absolute Attributeless Nirguna Brahman experienced by the Pure Advaitin. Ramanuja went further and discovered a state of realization in which the world does not appear to be a mere illusion and the Brahman a mere attributeless absolute passive entity. Rather the One Divine appears in this state to manifest as the Many and the whole world seems to be nothing but the interplay of the One and the Many. This state is dynamic compared to the Advaitic experience which is primarily static in nature. Here the One Lord appears to take the form of the Many entities in the universe , not merely supporting them from behind but also taking an active part in them. This state is called as the Dynamic Cosmic in the Aurobindoan tradition. The Lord in this state is no longer a passive entity to be realized. But He appears to partake in the many aspects of the universe , retaining His identity , which is that of a Person , and also mingling with one and all in a great sport of the Divine. The World is no purposeless illusion and the Lord is seen to be everywhere and everywhen and the World appears to be a part of the lord , even constituted of the Lord , the World is the Lord. One who has reached this state cannot help making the welfare of the citizens of this world a matter of priority and see the service to the humanity as service to the Lord , for the Lord is the World , the Lord is Humanity. Ramanuja's efforts to unite the caste-ridden hindu society and also help it tide over the crises springing from the threat of Islam is the direct result of this level of Realization. His reforms were largely responsible for the hindu society's continued existence from the dual threat of the arrogant advaitin and the aggressive Muslims. Ramanuja brought the knowledge of the Soul and the Divine Lord down to the lowest of the people. Many of his followers wrote works in the tamil language and eschewed Sanskrit which was known only to a few. He helped the masses to grasp the difficult vedic concepts and also made possible unity and brotherhood in the hindu society.
The third of the great poises of the Supermind is Madhva's realization of Krishna. The Individual is the last and also the nearest and most intimate realization of the Divine. In this level of realization , the Lord is seen from the most intimate point of view. The Lord is the Person who is closest to his devotees and loves him intimately , while also partaking the love of the bhaktha This state of realization is the highest and achieving it is also the rarest. It is beyond the realization of Ramanuja , but includes it as well. This state does not negate the realization of Shankara or Ramanuja but includes it and goes beyond it. A person in this state of realization can easily come down and experience the other two states of realization. He can partake of it and return to the highest realization of the Individual.
Dualism , the pairs of opposites , according to advaita are brought about by Maya. Maya is that principle which makes the one and only Nirguna Brahman appear as many and divided. The universe is the result of Maya and they say Maya is not illusion , and people who think advaita is illusionism have not understood it.
But whatever you may call it , Maya according to the advaitin is the principle that makes the unreal appear as real. Transcending Maya means the realization that all these things do not exist and realizing that only Brahman exists. Realized souls will see only the undivided Nirguna Brahman everywhere and not material objects which fill the consciousness of the ordinary man.
For Advaitins , Maya is not illusion. But whatever it is, its byproduct , the real universe which we perceive around us , does not exist. Maya makes the unreal world real. Advaitins juggle words to explain Maya and to tell you that the world around us is unreal but not an illusion. But whatever it is , its clear that advaitins do not ascribe the same level of reality to Brahman and the World around us. This is evident from that famous aphorism of Adi Shankara , "Brahman Sathyam , Jagan Mithyam" or "The Brahman alone is real , the World is only Mithya". One may ascribe different meanings to Mithya but clearly mithya is different from sathya and they are both not the same. Mithya is a different grade of reality compared to Sathya. If it was not so , advaitins would say "Brahman Sathyam , Jagan Sathyam" which they do not. Thus world exists in a non-real or unreal state for the Advaitin.
But is that all correct ? Do what the advaitins say , the real state of things , the true nature our experience ?
The Vaishnava schools of thought , which are many in number , take an entirely different stand. Especially if we study the system and the school of thought brought into existence by Madhva. For him the world is real and not only simply real but as real as Vishnu Himself. The world ontologically is of the same grade of reality as Brahman. The only difference being Brahman is self-conscious , self-luminous and has certain powers which we cannot ascribe to atoms and molecules that make the real world. Brahman and the souls have the power of will but matter does not. Souls are as real as atoms but they are constituted of a higher grade of reality on account of their powers of Volition. Brahman on the other hand , even though as real as atoms and souls , is a still higher grade of reality compared to the other two. Thus Brahman has the power to control the souls and matter who become subject to its Suzerainty.
The concept of Advaita or oneness exist in Madhva's system as well. Advaita is simply a Sanskrit word which means oneness and this word can be used by anybody and to refer to anything and is not the private property of the advaitins. The material scientists for example are advaitins as well. There are many places where Vishnu is referred to as Advaita by Madhva. Thus advaita is not the proper word to describe Shankara's philosophy. Since Madhva accepts the oneness of Vishnu we could say his followers are advaitins. The material scientists can also make similar claims.
Thus the correct word that can be used to describe advaitins is Mayavadins viz the ones who accept the doctrine of Maya , the principle that causes the unreal to appear as real. This would be the proper description for them. Any other description will not bring out the uniqueness of the philosophy or its theme accurately.
But how shall we describe the philosophy of Madhva ? Madhva himself used the word tattvavaada or the doctrine of reality to describe his system. From Madhva's point of view all nature was real and the differences we see around is in nature are real as well. Not only are differences real but they are also eternal. This may come as a shock for those who equated difference with Ignorance and considered the enlightened state as one where all differences cease to exist But for Madhva differences become even more pronounced and clear in the Realized state than the unrealized state in which most of mankind exist. Realization for Madhva is the enjoyment of bliss latent in the soul. The world is objectively real and it remains so for the Realized souls as well , though their perspective of the universe becomes different. And it is the proper understanding of the differences (there are five in number) that makes it possible for a soul to attain salvation.
There are two types of differences here which we should learn to become familiar with it. There is the difference or rather the dividedness which we perceive around us in this world caused by the ego and also the objective reality. Every inanimate object (jada) is different from the other and it is this difference which gives reality to it. In other words ,difference, we can say is the essence of reality. Nay , its very foundation. Recognizing this difference actually reduces suffering in the world. And leads one to salvation. The second is the divided-ness brought about by the rajasic ego in us. We perceive this dividedness in the use of such words , you, I , they , them. These differences are the result of lower consciousness , brought about by the rajasic ego which is the station of identity for the Lower Man . Such a discrimination while useful in real life is also the source of much suffering as well. Wars for example are the result of the rajasic ego which has gone out of control. But this is only one reason for Wars. Madhva asks us to get rid of this rajasic ego. In asking us to get rid of this , he does not mean that the differences in the world outside should also be rejected. These are real and out there and they cannot be gotten rid off by any amount of Yoga. Getting rid of rajasic ego puts an end to the divisive consciousness and brings us into the unity consciousness. The difference is still there in the real world , but what has gone out is the dividedness which covered our consciousness , clouded our consciousness and made us vulnerable to certain lower forces which wanted to keep us in a state of Ignorance. When the rajasic ego is gotten rid of the person then tends to live most of his life in the sattvic ego station and that life is certainly a better one as it opens up the potential for Joy, Bliss and Knowledge. But then wasn't Yoga supposed to get rid of all the differences ? Haven't all those great Yogis from past and present asked us to get rid of all differences ?
We must realize that the experience of oneness that most Yogis talk about (from Adi Shankara to Ramana Maharishi) is merely one such experience. In fact it is one of the lowest levels of realization that anybody can achieve. It is directly above the Buddhist state of realization. Buddhist realization itself just above the realization that scientists experience. In that state of Spiritual Advaitic realization , the world appears as merely a projection of the Nirguna Brahman , having no reality of itself , a mere shadow play of the Attributeless Absolute Consciousness. Most Yogis stop after reaching this stage, out of conviction born out of subscription to standard authority. They then assume the responsibility of saving the world or teaching the method to others and often tour around the world , giving lectures and acting as a conduit for those aiming for self-fulfillment. Each advaitin reinforces the idea to himself and others that this is the highest realization that is possible and becomes a famous Guru the world over.
But there have been a few great souls who have labored past this experience, pushed the limits of knowledge and endurance and reached a state of existence that is superior to this Advaitic experience. Foremost among them was Ramanuja , an Acharya born in the state of Tamil Nadu and famous for his socialistic attitude and also for the Vishista Advaita school of thought. Vishista Advaita means Qualified Monism. That name is given to his philosophy because while he accepted Advaita as propounded by Shankara , he also made some modifications to it . The state of yogic experience which corresponds to his intellectual philosophy is just above the yogic experience of Absolute Attributeless Nirguna Brahman experienced by the Pure Advaitin. Ramanuja went further and discovered a state of realization in which the world does not appear to be a mere illusion and the Brahman a mere attributeless absolute passive entity. Rather the One Divine appears in this state to manifest as the Many and the whole world seems to be nothing but the interplay of the One and the Many. This state is dynamic compared to the Advaitic experience which is primarily static in nature. Here the One Lord appears to take the form of the Many entities in the universe , not merely supporting them from behind but also taking an active part in them. This state is called as the Dynamic Cosmic in the Aurobindoan tradition. The Lord in this state is no longer a passive entity to be realized. But He appears to partake in the many aspects of the universe , retaining His identity , which is that of a Person , and also mingling with one and all in a great sport of the Divine. The World is no purposeless illusion and the Lord is seen to be everywhere and everywhen and the World appears to be a part of the lord , even constituted of the Lord , the World is the Lord. One who has reached this state cannot help making the welfare of the citizens of this world a matter of priority and see the service to the humanity as service to the Lord , for the Lord is the World , the Lord is Humanity. Ramanuja's efforts to unite the caste-ridden hindu society and also help it tide over the crises springing from the threat of Islam is the direct result of this level of Realization. His reforms were largely responsible for the hindu society's continued existence from the dual threat of the arrogant advaitin and the aggressive Muslims. Ramanuja brought the knowledge of the Soul and the Divine Lord down to the lowest of the people. Many of his followers wrote works in the tamil language and eschewed Sanskrit which was known only to a few. He helped the masses to grasp the difficult vedic concepts and also made possible unity and brotherhood in the hindu society.
The third of the great poises of the Supermind is Madhva's realization of Krishna. The Individual is the last and also the nearest and most intimate realization of the Divine. In this level of realization , the Lord is seen from the most intimate point of view. The Lord is the Person who is closest to his devotees and loves him intimately , while also partaking the love of the bhaktha This state of realization is the highest and achieving it is also the rarest. It is beyond the realization of Ramanuja , but includes it as well. This state does not negate the realization of Shankara or Ramanuja but includes it and goes beyond it. A person in this state of realization can easily come down and experience the other two states of realization. He can partake of it and return to the highest realization of the Individual.
The Psychic Being and Madhva's Concept of the Soul
One of the breakthrough concepts one finds in the works of Sri Aurobindo is the concept of the "Psychic Being". It is one of those concepts which, typical of Aurobindo's ideas, is at once both easy and difficult to understand.
According to Aurobindo he had to expound this concept as the word "soul" was being used loosely to mean so many things to so many people and there a big confusion about what it actually meant. He says that most people use the word soul to refer what is actually the "desire-soul" and others use to with regards to all forms of psychic phenomenon. Hence the new definition.
Before we proceed further let us have a look at the concept of the soul as expounded by Madhva. According to Madhva , the soul is that entity which is unborn,eternal,unchanging (ajo,nityo,sashvato) and is the locus of both good and evil. It is different from inanimate(jada) in that it possess volition and independent will. It is self-conscious and is that entity that knows itself as "I am" in states of both bondage and liberation , happiness and sorrow.
Madhva also states that Soul is pure and divine and is unsullied by outward imperfections. It is full of delight and has knowledge. The Soul perceives the world through its internal sense organs and it is what exactly sees and hears the world through the medium of sense organs. The soul also possess its own sense organs. He also introduces the concept of Sakshi or the inner organ which is able to perceive truth as it is without any mistakes. In fact Madhva asks us many times to make a judgement on the basis of Sakshi or inner intuition as well, for logic and sense organs can be imperfect many times. Infact the Sakshi or Witness is nothing but the Soul itself and it can perceive things flawlessly.The Soul is also eternally inferior and dependent on the Lord and in Moksha this state of dependence is perfectly known and true devotion flows out as result of this realisation. This realisation of dependence is according to Madhva is the direct result of the realisation of one's true nature and technically accurate and is not born out of humility or emotionalism.
Let us now have a look at the concepts of the Psychic Being as expounded by Aurobindo
I mean by the Psychic being the inmost soul-being and the soul-nature.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 1605
What is meant in the terminology of the yoga by the psychic is the soul element in the nature, the pure psyche or divine nucleus which stands behind mind, life and body (it is not the ego) but of which we are only dimly aware. It is a portion of the Divine and permanent from life to life, taking the experience of life through its outer instruments. As this experience grows it manifests a developing psychic personality which insisting always on the good, true and beautiful, finally becomes ready and strong enough to turn the nature towards the Divine. It can then come entirely forward, breaking through the mental, vital and physical screen, govern the instincts and transform the nature. Nature no longer imposes itself on the soul, but the soul, the Purusha, imposes its dictates on the nature.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 288
The psychic is not by definition,* Footnote: Someone had asked what the psychic being was, whether it could be defined as that part of the being which is always in direct touch with the supramental. I replied that it could not be so defined. For the psychic being in animals or in most human beings is not in direct touch with the supramental�therefore it cannot be so described, by definition. But once the connection between the supramental and the human consciousness is made, it is the psychic being that gives the readiest response�more ready than the mind, the vital or the physical. It may be added that it is also a purer response; the mind, vital and physical can allow other things to mix with their reception of the supramental influence and spoil its truth. The psychic is pure in its response and allows no such mixture. The supramental change can take place only if the psychic is awake and is made the chief support of the descending supramental power.
that part which is in direct touch with the supramental plane,�although, once the connection with the supramental is made, it gives to it the readiest response. The psychic part of us is something that comes direct from the Divine and is in touch with the Divine. In its origin it is the nucleus pregnant with divine possibilities that supports this lower triple manifestation of mind, life and body. There is this divine element in all living beings, but it stands hidden behind the ordinary consciousness, is not at first developed and, even when developed, is not always or often in the front; it expresses itself, so far as the imperfection of the instruments allows, by their means and under their limitations. It grows in the consciousness by Godward experience, gaining strength every time there is a higher movement in us, and, finally, by the accumulation of these deeper and higher movements, there is developed a psychic individuality,�that which we call usually the psychic being. It is always this psychic being that is the real, though often the secret cause of man's turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it. It is therefore that which we have to bring from behind to the front in the yoga.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 288
The psychic being is quite different from the mind or vital; it stands behind them where they meet in the heart. Its central place is there, but behind the heart rather than in the heart; for what men call usually the heart is the seat of emotion, and human emotions are mental-vital impulses, not ordinarily psychic in their nature. This mostly secret power behind, other than the mind and the life-force, is the true soul, the psychic being in us. The power of the psychic, however, can act upon the mind and vital and body, purifying thought and perception and emotion (which then becomes psychic feeling) and sensation and action and everything else in us and preparing them to be divine movements.
The psychic being may be described in Indian language as the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha; but the inner or secret heart must be understood, h\,rdaye guh\=ay\=am, not the outer vital-emotional centre. It is the true psychic entity (distinguished from the vital desire-mind)�the psyche�spoken of in the page of the Arya to which you make reference.
The psychic being in the old systems was spoken of as the Purusha in the heart (the secret heart�h\,rdaye guh\=ay\=am) which corresponds very well to what we define as the psychic being behind the heart centre. It was also this that went out from the body at death and persisted�which again corresponds to our teaching that it is this which goes out and returns, linking a new life to former life. Also we say that the psychic is the divine portion within us�so too the Purusha in the heart is described as Ishwara of the individual nature in some place.
Here Aurobindo defines the place where the Psychic Being exists , in the inner heart centre. This corresponds well with the location Madhva gives for the Soul (inside the heart). The purifying potential is another thing wherein there is an agreement between Madhva and Aurobindo. Madhva asks to trust the movements of the Psychic Being as it never makes a mistake when it comes to perceiving things. It can also influence the outer personality of the subject.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 289
The Chitta and the psychic part are not in the least the same. Chitta is a term in a quite different category in which are co-ordinated and put into their place the main functionings of our external consciousness, and to know it we need not go behind our surface or external nature. 'Category' means here another class of psychological factors, tattva-vibh\=aga. The psychic belongs to one class�supermind, mind, life, psychic, physical�and covers both the inner and the outer nature. Chitta belongs to quite another class or category�buddhi, manas, chitta, prana, etc.�which is the classification made by ordinary Indian psychology; it covers only the psychology of the external being. In this category it is the main functions of our external consciousness only that are co-ordinated and put in their place by the Indian thinkers; chitta is one of these main functions of the external consciousness and, therefore, to know it we need not go behind the external nature.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 291
The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is that spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical as the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into Prakriti of knowledge. These things are not in the Gita, but we cannot limit our knowledge by the points in the Gita.
But these things are accepted by Madhva and that is sufficient.
The soul and the psychic being are not exactly the same thing, although their essense is the same. The soul is the divine spark that dwells at the centre of each being;it is identical with its Divine Origin;it is the divine in man
The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine centre, the soul, in the course of its innumerable lives in the terrestrial evolution,until the time comes when the psychic being, fully formed and wholly awakened,becomes the conscious sheath of the soul around which it is formed. And thus identified with the divine, it becomes His perfect instrument in the world. ---- The Mother
The Psychic Being takes the position of the Bhaktha and can carry out all its activities in accordance with the divine will.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 265
The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the Child, the Son of God, the Bhakta; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference. The Jivatman, on the contrary, lives in the essence and can merge itself in identity with the Divine; but it too, the moment it presides over the dynamics of the manifestation, knows itself as one centre of the multiple Divine, not as the Parameshwara. It is important to remember the distinction; for, otherwise, if there is the least vital egoism, one may begin to think of oneself as an Avatar or lose balance like Hridaya with Ramakrishna.
Here Aurobindo reveals to us another aspect of the Psychic Being. Its natural predisposition to be a bhaktha. He also lays emphasis on the identity in difference which is another feature of the Soul. Thus while souls are identical in their essence with the Divine, it also has an individuality which shows up in the manifestation. He also warns of the danger of the soul identifying itself with the divine and considering itself to be the divine itself. The similarity of the above teachings to that of Madhva are too well known and needs no elaboration.
The statements of Aurobindo make it clear to us that the psychic being that he talks about is no different from that of the concept of Antaryamin,Sakshi,Atman as expounded by Madhva.
There is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura;there can be none in a god who does not need one for his existence. But what the god has is a Purusha and a Prakriti or energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to evolve, he has to come down to earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution. It is because they do not want to do this that the vital beings try to possess men so that they may enjoy the materialities of physical life without having the burden of the evolution or the process of conversion in which it culminates. A distinction has to be made between the soul in essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of divine --- none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.
The postulation above is quite interesting and has an important truth in it. It appears that Aurobindo accepts the existence of beings which have no potential for evolution. . He gives the Asuras as an example of that kind of being. Thus he seems to accept the existence of tamasic souls , mentioned by Madhva , who go down and down but never upward as they lack the potential for it.These beings while being one with the divine essence , lack a Psychic being , the individual which is turned toward the divine. It is not as if Aurobindo propounds or postulates the existence of the tamsic souls, as they are always existing. But as an aparoxin,Aurobindo points to the existence of such souls, like a scientist who will objectively acknowledge material truths.
Since he mentions that not all souls have a Psychic Being and Asuras don't have one ,and it is of the nature of Bhaktha, we can be sure that when Aurobindo talks about the Psychic being , he is talking about the Sattvika type of souls in Madhva's categorization.
We can carry this study forward and note the congruence of ideas between them when it comes to describing the tamasic category of souls. Madhva states that the tamasic souls who are enemies of the devatas and Vishnu are of the nature of suffering. Their salavation is to experience the suffering latent in them. Aurobindo gives a surprisingly similar description of the Asuric souls in The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds , Book II of his epic poem Savitri in the chapter The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness.
There suffering was Nature's daily food
Alluring to the anguished heart and flesh,
And torture was the formula of delight,
Pain mimicked the celestial ecstasy.
A seeking Mind replaced the seeing Soul:
Life grew into a huge and hungry death,
The Spirit's bliss was changed to cosmic pain
Adepts of the illusion and the mask,
The artificers of Nature's fall and pain
Have built their altars of triumphant Night
In the clay temple of terrestrial life.
Night is their refuge and strategic base.
Against the sword of Flame, the luminous Eye,
Bastioned they live in massive forts of gloom,
Calm and secure in sunless privacy:
No wandering ray of Heaven can enter there.
This too the traveller of the worlds must dare.
A warrior in the dateless duel's strife,
He entered into dumb despairing Night
Challenging the darkness with his luminous soul.
Alarming with his steps the threshold gloom
He came into a fierce and dolorous realm
Peopled by souls who never had tasted bliss;
Ignorant like men born blind who know not light,
They could equate worst ill with highest good,
Virtue was to their eyes a face of sin
And evil and misery were their natural state.
A dire administration's penal code
Making of grief and pain the common law,
Decreeing universal joylessness
Had changed life into a stoic sacrament
And torture into a daily festival.
An act was passed to chastise happiness;
Laughter and pleasure were banned as deadly sins:
A questionless mind was ranked as wise content,
A dull heart's silent apathy as peace:
Sleep was not there, torpor was the sole rest,
Death came but neither respite gave nor end;
Always the soul lived on and suffered more.
Ever he deeper probed that kingdom of pain;
Around him grew the terror of a world
Of agony followed by worse agony,
And in the terror a great wicked joy
Glad of one's own and others' calamity.
There thought and life were a long punishment
The breath a burden and all hope a scourge,
The body a field of torment, a massed unease;
Repose was a waiting between pang and pang.
This was the law of things none dreamed to change:
A hard sombre heart, a harsh unsmiling mind
Rejected happiness like a cloying sweet;
Tranquillity was a tedium and ennui:
Only by suffering life grew colourful;
It needed the spice of pain, the salt of tears.
If one could cease to be, all would be well;
Else only fierce sensations gave some zest:
It was a world of sorrow and of hate,
Sorrow with hatred for its lonely joy,
Hatred with others' sorrow as its feast;
A bitter rictus curled the suffering mouth;
A tragic cruelty saw its ominous chance.
Hate was the black archangel of that realm;
According to Aurobindo he had to expound this concept as the word "soul" was being used loosely to mean so many things to so many people and there a big confusion about what it actually meant. He says that most people use the word soul to refer what is actually the "desire-soul" and others use to with regards to all forms of psychic phenomenon. Hence the new definition.
Before we proceed further let us have a look at the concept of the soul as expounded by Madhva. According to Madhva , the soul is that entity which is unborn,eternal,unchanging (ajo,nityo,sashvato) and is the locus of both good and evil. It is different from inanimate(jada) in that it possess volition and independent will. It is self-conscious and is that entity that knows itself as "I am" in states of both bondage and liberation , happiness and sorrow.
Madhva also states that Soul is pure and divine and is unsullied by outward imperfections. It is full of delight and has knowledge. The Soul perceives the world through its internal sense organs and it is what exactly sees and hears the world through the medium of sense organs. The soul also possess its own sense organs. He also introduces the concept of Sakshi or the inner organ which is able to perceive truth as it is without any mistakes. In fact Madhva asks us many times to make a judgement on the basis of Sakshi or inner intuition as well, for logic and sense organs can be imperfect many times. Infact the Sakshi or Witness is nothing but the Soul itself and it can perceive things flawlessly.The Soul is also eternally inferior and dependent on the Lord and in Moksha this state of dependence is perfectly known and true devotion flows out as result of this realisation. This realisation of dependence is according to Madhva is the direct result of the realisation of one's true nature and technically accurate and is not born out of humility or emotionalism.
Let us now have a look at the concepts of the Psychic Being as expounded by Aurobindo
I mean by the Psychic being the inmost soul-being and the soul-nature.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 1605
What is meant in the terminology of the yoga by the psychic is the soul element in the nature, the pure psyche or divine nucleus which stands behind mind, life and body (it is not the ego) but of which we are only dimly aware. It is a portion of the Divine and permanent from life to life, taking the experience of life through its outer instruments. As this experience grows it manifests a developing psychic personality which insisting always on the good, true and beautiful, finally becomes ready and strong enough to turn the nature towards the Divine. It can then come entirely forward, breaking through the mental, vital and physical screen, govern the instincts and transform the nature. Nature no longer imposes itself on the soul, but the soul, the Purusha, imposes its dictates on the nature.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 288
The psychic is not by definition,* Footnote: Someone had asked what the psychic being was, whether it could be defined as that part of the being which is always in direct touch with the supramental. I replied that it could not be so defined. For the psychic being in animals or in most human beings is not in direct touch with the supramental�therefore it cannot be so described, by definition. But once the connection between the supramental and the human consciousness is made, it is the psychic being that gives the readiest response�more ready than the mind, the vital or the physical. It may be added that it is also a purer response; the mind, vital and physical can allow other things to mix with their reception of the supramental influence and spoil its truth. The psychic is pure in its response and allows no such mixture. The supramental change can take place only if the psychic is awake and is made the chief support of the descending supramental power.
that part which is in direct touch with the supramental plane,�although, once the connection with the supramental is made, it gives to it the readiest response. The psychic part of us is something that comes direct from the Divine and is in touch with the Divine. In its origin it is the nucleus pregnant with divine possibilities that supports this lower triple manifestation of mind, life and body. There is this divine element in all living beings, but it stands hidden behind the ordinary consciousness, is not at first developed and, even when developed, is not always or often in the front; it expresses itself, so far as the imperfection of the instruments allows, by their means and under their limitations. It grows in the consciousness by Godward experience, gaining strength every time there is a higher movement in us, and, finally, by the accumulation of these deeper and higher movements, there is developed a psychic individuality,�that which we call usually the psychic being. It is always this psychic being that is the real, though often the secret cause of man's turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it. It is therefore that which we have to bring from behind to the front in the yoga.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 288
The psychic being is quite different from the mind or vital; it stands behind them where they meet in the heart. Its central place is there, but behind the heart rather than in the heart; for what men call usually the heart is the seat of emotion, and human emotions are mental-vital impulses, not ordinarily psychic in their nature. This mostly secret power behind, other than the mind and the life-force, is the true soul, the psychic being in us. The power of the psychic, however, can act upon the mind and vital and body, purifying thought and perception and emotion (which then becomes psychic feeling) and sensation and action and everything else in us and preparing them to be divine movements.
The psychic being may be described in Indian language as the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha; but the inner or secret heart must be understood, h\,rdaye guh\=ay\=am, not the outer vital-emotional centre. It is the true psychic entity (distinguished from the vital desire-mind)�the psyche�spoken of in the page of the Arya to which you make reference.
The psychic being in the old systems was spoken of as the Purusha in the heart (the secret heart�h\,rdaye guh\=ay\=am) which corresponds very well to what we define as the psychic being behind the heart centre. It was also this that went out from the body at death and persisted�which again corresponds to our teaching that it is this which goes out and returns, linking a new life to former life. Also we say that the psychic is the divine portion within us�so too the Purusha in the heart is described as Ishwara of the individual nature in some place.
Here Aurobindo defines the place where the Psychic Being exists , in the inner heart centre. This corresponds well with the location Madhva gives for the Soul (inside the heart). The purifying potential is another thing wherein there is an agreement between Madhva and Aurobindo. Madhva asks to trust the movements of the Psychic Being as it never makes a mistake when it comes to perceiving things. It can also influence the outer personality of the subject.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 289
The Chitta and the psychic part are not in the least the same. Chitta is a term in a quite different category in which are co-ordinated and put into their place the main functionings of our external consciousness, and to know it we need not go behind our surface or external nature. 'Category' means here another class of psychological factors, tattva-vibh\=aga. The psychic belongs to one class�supermind, mind, life, psychic, physical�and covers both the inner and the outer nature. Chitta belongs to quite another class or category�buddhi, manas, chitta, prana, etc.�which is the classification made by ordinary Indian psychology; it covers only the psychology of the external being. In this category it is the main functions of our external consciousness only that are co-ordinated and put in their place by the Indian thinkers; chitta is one of these main functions of the external consciousness and, therefore, to know it we need not go behind the external nature.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 291
The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is that spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical as the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into Prakriti of knowledge. These things are not in the Gita, but we cannot limit our knowledge by the points in the Gita.
But these things are accepted by Madhva and that is sufficient.
The soul and the psychic being are not exactly the same thing, although their essense is the same. The soul is the divine spark that dwells at the centre of each being;it is identical with its Divine Origin;it is the divine in man
The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine centre, the soul, in the course of its innumerable lives in the terrestrial evolution,until the time comes when the psychic being, fully formed and wholly awakened,becomes the conscious sheath of the soul around which it is formed. And thus identified with the divine, it becomes His perfect instrument in the world. ---- The Mother
The Psychic Being takes the position of the Bhaktha and can carry out all its activities in accordance with the divine will.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 265
The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the Child, the Son of God, the Bhakta; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference. The Jivatman, on the contrary, lives in the essence and can merge itself in identity with the Divine; but it too, the moment it presides over the dynamics of the manifestation, knows itself as one centre of the multiple Divine, not as the Parameshwara. It is important to remember the distinction; for, otherwise, if there is the least vital egoism, one may begin to think of oneself as an Avatar or lose balance like Hridaya with Ramakrishna.
Here Aurobindo reveals to us another aspect of the Psychic Being. Its natural predisposition to be a bhaktha. He also lays emphasis on the identity in difference which is another feature of the Soul. Thus while souls are identical in their essence with the Divine, it also has an individuality which shows up in the manifestation. He also warns of the danger of the soul identifying itself with the divine and considering itself to be the divine itself. The similarity of the above teachings to that of Madhva are too well known and needs no elaboration.
The statements of Aurobindo make it clear to us that the psychic being that he talks about is no different from that of the concept of Antaryamin,Sakshi,Atman as expounded by Madhva.
There is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura;there can be none in a god who does not need one for his existence. But what the god has is a Purusha and a Prakriti or energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to evolve, he has to come down to earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution. It is because they do not want to do this that the vital beings try to possess men so that they may enjoy the materialities of physical life without having the burden of the evolution or the process of conversion in which it culminates. A distinction has to be made between the soul in essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of divine --- none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.
The postulation above is quite interesting and has an important truth in it. It appears that Aurobindo accepts the existence of beings which have no potential for evolution. . He gives the Asuras as an example of that kind of being. Thus he seems to accept the existence of tamasic souls , mentioned by Madhva , who go down and down but never upward as they lack the potential for it.These beings while being one with the divine essence , lack a Psychic being , the individual which is turned toward the divine. It is not as if Aurobindo propounds or postulates the existence of the tamsic souls, as they are always existing. But as an aparoxin,Aurobindo points to the existence of such souls, like a scientist who will objectively acknowledge material truths.
Since he mentions that not all souls have a Psychic Being and Asuras don't have one ,and it is of the nature of Bhaktha, we can be sure that when Aurobindo talks about the Psychic being , he is talking about the Sattvika type of souls in Madhva's categorization.
We can carry this study forward and note the congruence of ideas between them when it comes to describing the tamasic category of souls. Madhva states that the tamasic souls who are enemies of the devatas and Vishnu are of the nature of suffering. Their salavation is to experience the suffering latent in them. Aurobindo gives a surprisingly similar description of the Asuric souls in The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds , Book II of his epic poem Savitri in the chapter The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness.
There suffering was Nature's daily food
Alluring to the anguished heart and flesh,
And torture was the formula of delight,
Pain mimicked the celestial ecstasy.
A seeking Mind replaced the seeing Soul:
Life grew into a huge and hungry death,
The Spirit's bliss was changed to cosmic pain
Adepts of the illusion and the mask,
The artificers of Nature's fall and pain
Have built their altars of triumphant Night
In the clay temple of terrestrial life.
Night is their refuge and strategic base.
Against the sword of Flame, the luminous Eye,
Bastioned they live in massive forts of gloom,
Calm and secure in sunless privacy:
No wandering ray of Heaven can enter there.
This too the traveller of the worlds must dare.
A warrior in the dateless duel's strife,
He entered into dumb despairing Night
Challenging the darkness with his luminous soul.
Alarming with his steps the threshold gloom
He came into a fierce and dolorous realm
Peopled by souls who never had tasted bliss;
Ignorant like men born blind who know not light,
They could equate worst ill with highest good,
Virtue was to their eyes a face of sin
And evil and misery were their natural state.
A dire administration's penal code
Making of grief and pain the common law,
Decreeing universal joylessness
Had changed life into a stoic sacrament
And torture into a daily festival.
An act was passed to chastise happiness;
Laughter and pleasure were banned as deadly sins:
A questionless mind was ranked as wise content,
A dull heart's silent apathy as peace:
Sleep was not there, torpor was the sole rest,
Death came but neither respite gave nor end;
Always the soul lived on and suffered more.
Ever he deeper probed that kingdom of pain;
Around him grew the terror of a world
Of agony followed by worse agony,
And in the terror a great wicked joy
Glad of one's own and others' calamity.
There thought and life were a long punishment
The breath a burden and all hope a scourge,
The body a field of torment, a massed unease;
Repose was a waiting between pang and pang.
This was the law of things none dreamed to change:
A hard sombre heart, a harsh unsmiling mind
Rejected happiness like a cloying sweet;
Tranquillity was a tedium and ennui:
Only by suffering life grew colourful;
It needed the spice of pain, the salt of tears.
If one could cease to be, all would be well;
Else only fierce sensations gave some zest:
It was a world of sorrow and of hate,
Sorrow with hatred for its lonely joy,
Hatred with others' sorrow as its feast;
A bitter rictus curled the suffering mouth;
A tragic cruelty saw its ominous chance.
Hate was the black archangel of that realm;
The Three Poises of the Supermind
Aurobindo posits three different poises of the Supermind.The Supermind is capable of existing in all three poises simultaneously.
"We, human beings, are phenomenally a particular form of consciousness, subject to Time and Space, and can only be, in our surface consciousness which is all we know of ourselves, one thing at a time, one formation, one poise of being, one aggregate of experience; and that one thing is for us the truth of ourselves which we acknowledge; all the rest is either not true or no longer true, because it has disappeared into the past out of our ken, or not yet true, because it is waiting in the future and not yet in our ken. But the Divine Consciousness is not so particularised, nor so limited; it can be many things at a time and take more than one enduring poise even for all time. We find that in the principle of supermind itself it has three such general poises or sessions of its world-founding consciousness. The first founds the inalienable unity of things, the second modifies that unity so as to support the manifestation of the Many in One and One in Many; the third further modifies it so as to support the evolution of a diversified individuality which, by the action of Ignorance, becomes in us at a lower level the illusion of the separate ego."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.146
He then goes on to state :
"Obviously, these three poises would be only different ways of dealing with the same Truth; the Truth of existence enjoyed would be the same, the way of enjoying it or rather the poise of the soul in enjoying it would be different. The delight, the Ananda would vary, but would abide always within the status of the Truth-Consciousness and involve no lapse into the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For the secondary and tertiary supermind would only develop and apply in the terms of the divine multiplicity what the primary supermind had held in the terms of the divine unity. We cannot stamp any of these three poises with the stigma of falsehood and illusion."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.148
Also :
Sri Aurobindo associates each of three poises with each of the three main vedantic philosophies (the Advaita Vedanta or NonDualism of Shankara, the Visishtadvaita or qualkified Nondualism (theistic monism) of Ramanuja, and the Dvaita or theistic dualism of Madhva) which are each seen as a valid but partial understanding, and that it is-
"...only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our all-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.149
Sri Aurobindo explains-
"...emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness [the First Poise], we observe the play of the divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of real difference..[so that it is considered]...the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the One in the Many [the Second Poise], we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would...deny altogether the experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness. Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish that difference. But ...we see that there is a truth behind all these affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.149
To be fair Madhvas also accept the validity of Advaita and Vishistaadvaita as lower and limited truths.Thus for example scientific materialism is considered the lowest elucidation of the universal truth.Above that we have Buddhism, the result of a greater exploration to find out what lies behind the phenomenal universe.Buddhists on the basis of their yogic experience conclude that all this is shunyata , a vast emptiness , out of which this whole universe has emerged.Over and above the buddhist experience is the Advaitic experience.Here the world is seen as a mere play , a shadow of the omnipresent Brahman and to merge into this brahman is salvation.Rising higher above this we come across the VA experience of the world as the body of the Brahman , the world is the body of and related to the Brahman and therefore real too.In this experience the One Vishnu has become Many and manifests as the universe and the Many universes become One in the body of the Brahman.The highest realisation is that of Madhva in which the individual soul comes into prominence as the servitor of the Lord existing in a real universe which is insentient and the material cause of the world around us.Nevertheless this universe and the individual soul is supported by the Omnipresent Vishnu who is responsible for their being and becoming.
Thus the three poises are accepted by Madhvas as equaly valid , the third poise being the highest realisation , a realisation that does not negate but exceeds the experience of A and VA.
The mutually destructive schools of thought necome necessary because the A and VA have indulged in "an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation" and therefore hold themselves to be the final truths.It then becomes necessary for the tattvavaadin to denounce them , especially when they are presented in an intellectual format.
Many advaitins however posit a different relationship between the three schools of thought with dualism occupying the lowest levels and then we get to VA and finally to Advaita.
Aurobindo has made it clear that the third poise corresponding to the dualism of Madhva is not the dualism brought out by the ignorance of the lower selves , but rather the highest of the divine experiences in the following paragraph.
He further elaborates on the Third Poise :
"A third poise of the supermind would be attained if the supporting concentration were no longer to stand at the back, as it were, of the movement, inhabiting it with a certain superiority to it and so following and enjoying, but were to project itself into the movement and to be in a way involved in it. Here, the character of the play would be altered, but only in so far as the individual Divine would so predominantly make the play of relations with the universal and with its other forms the practical field of its conscious experience that the realisation of utter unity with them would be only a supreme accompaniment and constant culmination of all experience; but in the higher poise unity would be the dominant and fundamental experience and variation would be only a play of the unity. This tertiary poise would be therefore that of a sort of fundamental blissful dualism in unity -- no longer unity qualified by a subordinate dualism -- between the individual Divine and its universal source, with all the consequences that would accrue from the maintenance and operation of such a dualism.
It may be said that the first consequence would be a lapse into the ignorance of Avidya which takes the Many for the real fact of existence and views the One only as a cosmic sum of the Many. But there would not necessarily be any such lapse. For the individual Divine would still be conscious of itself as the result of the One and of its power of conscious self-creation, that is to say, of its multiple self-concentration conceived so as to govern and enjoy manifoldly its manifold existence in the extension of Time and Space; this true spiritual individual would not arrogate to itself an independent or separate existence. It would only affirm the truth of the differentiating movement along with the truth of the stable unity, regarding them as the upper and lower poles of the same truth, the foundation and culmination of the same divine play; and it would insist on the joy of the differentiation as necessary to the fullness of the joy of the unity."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , pp.147-8
"We, human beings, are phenomenally a particular form of consciousness, subject to Time and Space, and can only be, in our surface consciousness which is all we know of ourselves, one thing at a time, one formation, one poise of being, one aggregate of experience; and that one thing is for us the truth of ourselves which we acknowledge; all the rest is either not true or no longer true, because it has disappeared into the past out of our ken, or not yet true, because it is waiting in the future and not yet in our ken. But the Divine Consciousness is not so particularised, nor so limited; it can be many things at a time and take more than one enduring poise even for all time. We find that in the principle of supermind itself it has three such general poises or sessions of its world-founding consciousness. The first founds the inalienable unity of things, the second modifies that unity so as to support the manifestation of the Many in One and One in Many; the third further modifies it so as to support the evolution of a diversified individuality which, by the action of Ignorance, becomes in us at a lower level the illusion of the separate ego."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.146
He then goes on to state :
"Obviously, these three poises would be only different ways of dealing with the same Truth; the Truth of existence enjoyed would be the same, the way of enjoying it or rather the poise of the soul in enjoying it would be different. The delight, the Ananda would vary, but would abide always within the status of the Truth-Consciousness and involve no lapse into the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For the secondary and tertiary supermind would only develop and apply in the terms of the divine multiplicity what the primary supermind had held in the terms of the divine unity. We cannot stamp any of these three poises with the stigma of falsehood and illusion."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.148
Also :
Sri Aurobindo associates each of three poises with each of the three main vedantic philosophies (the Advaita Vedanta or NonDualism of Shankara, the Visishtadvaita or qualkified Nondualism (theistic monism) of Ramanuja, and the Dvaita or theistic dualism of Madhva) which are each seen as a valid but partial understanding, and that it is-
"...only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our all-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.149
Sri Aurobindo explains-
"...emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness [the First Poise], we observe the play of the divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of real difference..[so that it is considered]...the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the One in the Many [the Second Poise], we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would...deny altogether the experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness. Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish that difference. But ...we see that there is a truth behind all these affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , p.149
To be fair Madhvas also accept the validity of Advaita and Vishistaadvaita as lower and limited truths.Thus for example scientific materialism is considered the lowest elucidation of the universal truth.Above that we have Buddhism, the result of a greater exploration to find out what lies behind the phenomenal universe.Buddhists on the basis of their yogic experience conclude that all this is shunyata , a vast emptiness , out of which this whole universe has emerged.Over and above the buddhist experience is the Advaitic experience.Here the world is seen as a mere play , a shadow of the omnipresent Brahman and to merge into this brahman is salvation.Rising higher above this we come across the VA experience of the world as the body of the Brahman , the world is the body of and related to the Brahman and therefore real too.In this experience the One Vishnu has become Many and manifests as the universe and the Many universes become One in the body of the Brahman.The highest realisation is that of Madhva in which the individual soul comes into prominence as the servitor of the Lord existing in a real universe which is insentient and the material cause of the world around us.Nevertheless this universe and the individual soul is supported by the Omnipresent Vishnu who is responsible for their being and becoming.
Thus the three poises are accepted by Madhvas as equaly valid , the third poise being the highest realisation , a realisation that does not negate but exceeds the experience of A and VA.
The mutually destructive schools of thought necome necessary because the A and VA have indulged in "an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation" and therefore hold themselves to be the final truths.It then becomes necessary for the tattvavaadin to denounce them , especially when they are presented in an intellectual format.
Many advaitins however posit a different relationship between the three schools of thought with dualism occupying the lowest levels and then we get to VA and finally to Advaita.
Aurobindo has made it clear that the third poise corresponding to the dualism of Madhva is not the dualism brought out by the ignorance of the lower selves , but rather the highest of the divine experiences in the following paragraph.
He further elaborates on the Third Poise :
"A third poise of the supermind would be attained if the supporting concentration were no longer to stand at the back, as it were, of the movement, inhabiting it with a certain superiority to it and so following and enjoying, but were to project itself into the movement and to be in a way involved in it. Here, the character of the play would be altered, but only in so far as the individual Divine would so predominantly make the play of relations with the universal and with its other forms the practical field of its conscious experience that the realisation of utter unity with them would be only a supreme accompaniment and constant culmination of all experience; but in the higher poise unity would be the dominant and fundamental experience and variation would be only a play of the unity. This tertiary poise would be therefore that of a sort of fundamental blissful dualism in unity -- no longer unity qualified by a subordinate dualism -- between the individual Divine and its universal source, with all the consequences that would accrue from the maintenance and operation of such a dualism.
It may be said that the first consequence would be a lapse into the ignorance of Avidya which takes the Many for the real fact of existence and views the One only as a cosmic sum of the Many. But there would not necessarily be any such lapse. For the individual Divine would still be conscious of itself as the result of the One and of its power of conscious self-creation, that is to say, of its multiple self-concentration conceived so as to govern and enjoy manifoldly its manifold existence in the extension of Time and Space; this true spiritual individual would not arrogate to itself an independent or separate existence. It would only affirm the truth of the differentiating movement along with the truth of the stable unity, regarding them as the upper and lower poles of the same truth, the foundation and culmination of the same divine play; and it would insist on the joy of the differentiation as necessary to the fullness of the joy of the unity."
The Life Divine (10th ed.), , pp.147-8
The Architectonic Unity of the Scriptures
One of the unique things about Madhva's interpretations is the architectonic unity of all the scriptures that he maintains.It is the general opinion that amongst the Indian Scriptures , the Vedas and the Upanishads come the first and afterwards the Puranas and the Shastra.The former is claimed as Sruti and the latter as Smirti , the former a divine revelation , the latter not so great as the former , and meant for the lesser folk who could not understand , and was something that was "remembered" , and merely a record of the customs and traditions.It is even held by most indians that in case of a contradiction between the Purana and the Veda , the latter overrides the former and the same school also holds the idea that the Vedas , especially the karmakanda contain rituals for the satisfaction of the lower impulses and it is in the Upanishads the highest of the spiritual ideas are found.We were even told once that Vedanta means the "end of the Vedas" and therefore refers to the Upanishads and the Upanishads are "Vedanta" or the conculsion fo the Vedas.It is held that the Upanishads are the conclusion of the Vedic teachings and represent the Highest Knowledge.
This view is mainly due to two people.Firstly it was Shankara who held the karmakanda as merely ritualistic and rejected that part as inferior.The second are the European Scholars who ahev held it to be the work of primitive nature worshipping tribes who were in later times superceded by the highly enlightened Rishis.
Madhva on the other hand makes no such difference of the karmakanda and the jnanakanda.He has shown both to contain the same spiritual truth and has given the adhyatmika interpretions of the KK rituals.He has held the latter as also dedicated to the worship of Sri Hari , and the Deity worshipped is none other Vishnu himself.The KK rituals are like the sugar coated pills given to a sick person to encourage him to take the medicine that will relieve him of suffering.Its of the same high spiritual sense as the jnanakanda rituals.
Madhva also sees no difference between the Vedas and the Puranas.He says both represent the same truth only teh language and symbolism is different.What is represented in high flown sanskrit in words pregnant with spiritual meanings , the same is represented in the fables and stories of the Puranas.Thus he places both on the same pedestal.
To give an example , when the Rishis of ancient India intoned "Indra" , it was at once known to the disciple that it refers not jsut to the chief of the Heavens Indra , but also to Vishnu the father of the Universe , and that the former was the energizer of the latter and its to him all worship is to be directed.
But in later times this knowledge was lost ,and people started worshiping Indra without realsing it also represents Vishnu.So an enlightened sage composed the fable of Krishna lifting the mountains.Thus when Krishna sees the people of Vrindavana worshipping Indra for rains , he asks them to worship him as it is He who sends forth rains.And when Indra reacts angrily by flooding Vrindavana , Krishna protects the people by lifting the mountains for seven days until Indra relents.This fable dileanates the taratamya and also the fact that Krishna is Supreme.
The contradictions between various Indian Scriptures and the Vedas and the Puranas vanishes once the adhyatmica interpretation of the Vedas given by Madhva is accepted.Then we see in the light of true divine knowledge that there is no difference between the Vedas and the Puranas and in fact they are one and the same , there is no question of one overriding the other , for it is the One that has Become the Many.
Infact Madhva says that the Mahabharata contains even greater truths than the Vedas.There are ten meanings for every verse of the Mahabharata whereas there are only 3 meanings for every vedic verse.And add to that Vishnu as Veda Vyasa added even more truths in the Mahabharata that are not found in the Vedas.For this reason Madhvas hold the Mahabharata superior to the Vedas.
Again, I certainly did not intend to express my own idea in the description of the Upanishads as a revolt of philosophic minds against the ritualistic materialismof the Vedas. If I held that view, I could not regard the earlier Sruti as an inspired scripture or the Upanishads as Vedanta and I would not have troubled myself about the secret of the Veda. It is a view held by European scholars and I accepted it as the logical consequence, if the ordinary interpretations of the hymns, whether Indian or European, are to be maintained. If the Vedic hymns are, as represented by Western scholarship, the ritualistic compositions of joyous and lusty barbarians the Upanishads “have then to be conceived as a revolt . . . against the ritualistic materialism of the Vedas.” From both premiss and conclusion I have dissented and I have finally described, not only the Upanishads, but all later forms, as a development from the Vedic religion and not a revolt against its tenets. Our Indian doctrine avoids the difficulty in another way, by interpreting the Veda as a book of ritual hymns and revering it as a book of knowledge. It puts together two ancient truths without reconciling them effectively. In my view, that reconciliation can only be effected by seeing even in the exterior aspect of the hymns not a ritualistic materialism, but a symbolic ritualism. No doubt the karmakanda was regarded as an indispensable stepping-stone to the knowledge of the Atman. That was an article of religious faith, and as an article of faith I do not dispute its soundness. But it becomes valid for the intellect—and in an intellectual inquiry I must proceed by intellectual means,—only if the karmakanda is so interpreted as to show how its performance assists, prepares or brings about the higher knowledge. Otherwise, however much the Veda may be revered in theory, it will be treated in practice as neither indispensable nor helpful and will come in the end to be practically set aside—as has actually happened.
Volume: 15 [CWSA] (The Secret of the Veda), Page: 594
I am aware that some hymns of the Veda are interpreted in a sense other than the ritualistic; even the European scholars admit higher religious and spiritual ideas in the “later hymns” of the Vedas. I am aware also that separate texts are quoted in support of philosophical doctrines. My point was that such exceptional passages do not alter the general tone and purport given to the hymns in the actual interpretations we possess. With those interpretations, we cannot use the Rig Veda as a whole, as the Upanishads can be used as a whole, as the basis of a high spiritual philosophy. Now, it is to the interpretation of the Veda as a whole and to its general character that I have addressed myself. I quite acknowledge that there has always been a side-stream of tendency making for the adhyatmic interpretation of the Veda even as a whole. It would be strange if in a nation so spiritually minded such attempts had been entirely lacking. But still these are side-currents and have not received general recognition. For the Indian intellect in general, there are only two interpretations, Sayana's and the European. Addressing myself to that general opinion, it is with these two that I am practically concerned.
Volume: 15 [CWSA] (The Secret of the Veda), Page: 595
I am still of the opinion that the method and results of the early Vedantins differed entirely from the method and results of Sayana, for reasons I shall give in the second and third numbers of “Arya”. Practically, not in theory, what is the result of Sayana's commentary? What is the general impression it leaves on the mind? Is it the impression of “Veda”, a great Revelation, a book of highest knowledge? Is it not rather that which the European scholars received and from which their theories started, a picture of primitive worshippers praying to friendly gods, friendly but of a doubtful temper, gods of fire, rain, wind, dawn, night, earth and sky, for wealth, food, oxen, horses, gold, the slaughter of their enemies, even of their critics, victory in battle, the plunder of the conquered? And if so, how can such hymns be an indispensable preparation for the Brahmavidya? Unless, indeed, it is a preparation by contraries, by exhaustion or dedication of the most materialistic and egoistic tendencies, somewhat as the grim old Hebrew Pentateuch may be described as a preparation for the mild evangel of Christ. My position is that they were indispensable not by a mechanical virtue in the sacrifice, but because the experiences to which they are the key and which were symbolised by the ritual, are necessary to an integral knowledge and realisation of Brahman in the universe and prepare the knowledge and realisation of the transcendent Brahman. They are, to paraphrase Shankara's description, mines of all knowledge, knowledge on all the planes of consciousness, and do fix the conditions and relations of the divine, the human and the animal element in the being.I do not claim that mine is the first attempt to give an adhyatmic interpretation of the Veda. It is an attempt—the first or the hundredth matters little—to give the esoteric and psychological sense of the Veda based throughout on the most modern method of critical research. Its interpretation of Vedic vocables is based on a re-examination of a large part of the field of comparative Philology and a reconstruction on a new basis which I have some hope will bring us nearer to a true science of Language. This I propose to develop in another work, the “Origins of Aryan Speech”. I hope also to lead up to a recovery of the sense of the ancient spiritual conceptions of which old symbol and myth give us the indications and which I believe to have been at one time a common culture covering a great part of the globe with India, perhaps, as a centre. In its relation to this methodical attempt lies the only originality of the “Secret of the Veda”.
This view is mainly due to two people.Firstly it was Shankara who held the karmakanda as merely ritualistic and rejected that part as inferior.The second are the European Scholars who ahev held it to be the work of primitive nature worshipping tribes who were in later times superceded by the highly enlightened Rishis.
Madhva on the other hand makes no such difference of the karmakanda and the jnanakanda.He has shown both to contain the same spiritual truth and has given the adhyatmika interpretions of the KK rituals.He has held the latter as also dedicated to the worship of Sri Hari , and the Deity worshipped is none other Vishnu himself.The KK rituals are like the sugar coated pills given to a sick person to encourage him to take the medicine that will relieve him of suffering.Its of the same high spiritual sense as the jnanakanda rituals.
Madhva also sees no difference between the Vedas and the Puranas.He says both represent the same truth only teh language and symbolism is different.What is represented in high flown sanskrit in words pregnant with spiritual meanings , the same is represented in the fables and stories of the Puranas.Thus he places both on the same pedestal.
To give an example , when the Rishis of ancient India intoned "Indra" , it was at once known to the disciple that it refers not jsut to the chief of the Heavens Indra , but also to Vishnu the father of the Universe , and that the former was the energizer of the latter and its to him all worship is to be directed.
But in later times this knowledge was lost ,and people started worshiping Indra without realsing it also represents Vishnu.So an enlightened sage composed the fable of Krishna lifting the mountains.Thus when Krishna sees the people of Vrindavana worshipping Indra for rains , he asks them to worship him as it is He who sends forth rains.And when Indra reacts angrily by flooding Vrindavana , Krishna protects the people by lifting the mountains for seven days until Indra relents.This fable dileanates the taratamya and also the fact that Krishna is Supreme.
The contradictions between various Indian Scriptures and the Vedas and the Puranas vanishes once the adhyatmica interpretation of the Vedas given by Madhva is accepted.Then we see in the light of true divine knowledge that there is no difference between the Vedas and the Puranas and in fact they are one and the same , there is no question of one overriding the other , for it is the One that has Become the Many.
Infact Madhva says that the Mahabharata contains even greater truths than the Vedas.There are ten meanings for every verse of the Mahabharata whereas there are only 3 meanings for every vedic verse.And add to that Vishnu as Veda Vyasa added even more truths in the Mahabharata that are not found in the Vedas.For this reason Madhvas hold the Mahabharata superior to the Vedas.
Again, I certainly did not intend to express my own idea in the description of the Upanishads as a revolt of philosophic minds against the ritualistic materialismof the Vedas. If I held that view, I could not regard the earlier Sruti as an inspired scripture or the Upanishads as Vedanta and I would not have troubled myself about the secret of the Veda. It is a view held by European scholars and I accepted it as the logical consequence, if the ordinary interpretations of the hymns, whether Indian or European, are to be maintained. If the Vedic hymns are, as represented by Western scholarship, the ritualistic compositions of joyous and lusty barbarians the Upanishads “have then to be conceived as a revolt . . . against the ritualistic materialism of the Vedas.” From both premiss and conclusion I have dissented and I have finally described, not only the Upanishads, but all later forms, as a development from the Vedic religion and not a revolt against its tenets. Our Indian doctrine avoids the difficulty in another way, by interpreting the Veda as a book of ritual hymns and revering it as a book of knowledge. It puts together two ancient truths without reconciling them effectively. In my view, that reconciliation can only be effected by seeing even in the exterior aspect of the hymns not a ritualistic materialism, but a symbolic ritualism. No doubt the karmakanda was regarded as an indispensable stepping-stone to the knowledge of the Atman. That was an article of religious faith, and as an article of faith I do not dispute its soundness. But it becomes valid for the intellect—and in an intellectual inquiry I must proceed by intellectual means,—only if the karmakanda is so interpreted as to show how its performance assists, prepares or brings about the higher knowledge. Otherwise, however much the Veda may be revered in theory, it will be treated in practice as neither indispensable nor helpful and will come in the end to be practically set aside—as has actually happened.
Volume: 15 [CWSA] (The Secret of the Veda), Page: 594
I am aware that some hymns of the Veda are interpreted in a sense other than the ritualistic; even the European scholars admit higher religious and spiritual ideas in the “later hymns” of the Vedas. I am aware also that separate texts are quoted in support of philosophical doctrines. My point was that such exceptional passages do not alter the general tone and purport given to the hymns in the actual interpretations we possess. With those interpretations, we cannot use the Rig Veda as a whole, as the Upanishads can be used as a whole, as the basis of a high spiritual philosophy. Now, it is to the interpretation of the Veda as a whole and to its general character that I have addressed myself. I quite acknowledge that there has always been a side-stream of tendency making for the adhyatmic interpretation of the Veda even as a whole. It would be strange if in a nation so spiritually minded such attempts had been entirely lacking. But still these are side-currents and have not received general recognition. For the Indian intellect in general, there are only two interpretations, Sayana's and the European. Addressing myself to that general opinion, it is with these two that I am practically concerned.
Volume: 15 [CWSA] (The Secret of the Veda), Page: 595
I am still of the opinion that the method and results of the early Vedantins differed entirely from the method and results of Sayana, for reasons I shall give in the second and third numbers of “Arya”. Practically, not in theory, what is the result of Sayana's commentary? What is the general impression it leaves on the mind? Is it the impression of “Veda”, a great Revelation, a book of highest knowledge? Is it not rather that which the European scholars received and from which their theories started, a picture of primitive worshippers praying to friendly gods, friendly but of a doubtful temper, gods of fire, rain, wind, dawn, night, earth and sky, for wealth, food, oxen, horses, gold, the slaughter of their enemies, even of their critics, victory in battle, the plunder of the conquered? And if so, how can such hymns be an indispensable preparation for the Brahmavidya? Unless, indeed, it is a preparation by contraries, by exhaustion or dedication of the most materialistic and egoistic tendencies, somewhat as the grim old Hebrew Pentateuch may be described as a preparation for the mild evangel of Christ. My position is that they were indispensable not by a mechanical virtue in the sacrifice, but because the experiences to which they are the key and which were symbolised by the ritual, are necessary to an integral knowledge and realisation of Brahman in the universe and prepare the knowledge and realisation of the transcendent Brahman. They are, to paraphrase Shankara's description, mines of all knowledge, knowledge on all the planes of consciousness, and do fix the conditions and relations of the divine, the human and the animal element in the being.I do not claim that mine is the first attempt to give an adhyatmic interpretation of the Veda. It is an attempt—the first or the hundredth matters little—to give the esoteric and psychological sense of the Veda based throughout on the most modern method of critical research. Its interpretation of Vedic vocables is based on a re-examination of a large part of the field of comparative Philology and a reconstruction on a new basis which I have some hope will bring us nearer to a true science of Language. This I propose to develop in another work, the “Origins of Aryan Speech”. I hope also to lead up to a recovery of the sense of the ancient spiritual conceptions of which old symbol and myth give us the indications and which I believe to have been at one time a common culture covering a great part of the globe with India, perhaps, as a centre. In its relation to this methodical attempt lies the only originality of the “Secret of the Veda”.
Three Kinds of Souls
Madhva holds that salvation is only for the few.In his ontology , there are 3 kinds of souls
In reality , the souls are eternal and the nature(svabhava/svarupa) of the souls are inseperable from the soul itself , just as sweetness and sugar are inseparable.
The satvikka category of souls by their very nature are God lovers , and have proper knowledge of God , though it is dormant and needs to be awakened.Their very nature is that of bliss.
The Rajasika souls by their very nature are ignorant of the nature of God and have neutral attitude towards God.They don't care about him , immersed as they are in worldy pleasures.Their nature is a combination of bliss and suffering.
The Tamasika category of the souls by their very intrinsic nature are haters of God , and also have delusion about Maha Vishnu.They think he is just a supernatural person who can be overcome by obtaining supernatural powers or through technological means.Their very nature is that of suffering.
Vishnu rewards the souls according to their intrinsic natures.
Salvation is defined as realsing ones bliss latent within oneself and naturally only the sattvika souls are capable of doing it.They alone are inclined to Sadhana and realise bliss latent within them.They are eventually transported to Vaikuntha.
Rajaskika souls keep going around the middle planes of existence.
Tamaskia souls are despatched to andham tamas , blinding darkness , where they realise ther intrinsic nature , one of suffering.
Tamasika souls prefer suffering to surrendering to Lord Vishnu.
Thus the souls despatched to andham tamas , also realise their own nature and the performance of the evil acts is the sadhana for them to attain their destination.
The Lord is ever impartial.
"When there is the contracted movement of knowledge, the yogins in India withdraw from the world and practise yoga for their own liberation and delight or for the liberation of a few disciples; but when the movement of knowledge again expands and the soul of India expands with it, they come forth once more and work in the world and for the world. Yogins like Janaka, Ajatashatru and Kartavirya once more sit on the thrones of the world and govern the nations."
Session on: 1/12/2007 at 12:47:30 PM Volume: 13 [CWSA] (Essays in Philosophy and Yoga), Page: 72
While translating the Gita verses Chapter 16 "Deva & Asura" verse number 19 & 20 , only aurobindo translates the verse as :
"These proud haters (of good and of God), evil, cruel, vilest among men in the world, I cast down continually into more and more Asuric births.
Cast into Asuric wombs, deluded birth after birth, they find Me not (as they do not seek Me) and sink down into the lowest status of soul-nature."
Its worthwhile to note the "as they do not seek me" in the brackets.It is tacit acknowledgement of the tamasic category of souls.Prabhupada explains this verse as the souls being lucky to be killed by the Lord as they ultimately obtain salvation. But only aurobindo has interpreted it correctly.It is Aurobindo and not Chaitanya who is in the disciplic succession of Madhva.
In reality , the souls are eternal and the nature(svabhava/svarupa) of the souls are inseperable from the soul itself , just as sweetness and sugar are inseparable.
The satvikka category of souls by their very nature are God lovers , and have proper knowledge of God , though it is dormant and needs to be awakened.Their very nature is that of bliss.
The Rajasika souls by their very nature are ignorant of the nature of God and have neutral attitude towards God.They don't care about him , immersed as they are in worldy pleasures.Their nature is a combination of bliss and suffering.
The Tamasika category of the souls by their very intrinsic nature are haters of God , and also have delusion about Maha Vishnu.They think he is just a supernatural person who can be overcome by obtaining supernatural powers or through technological means.Their very nature is that of suffering.
Vishnu rewards the souls according to their intrinsic natures.
Salvation is defined as realsing ones bliss latent within oneself and naturally only the sattvika souls are capable of doing it.They alone are inclined to Sadhana and realise bliss latent within them.They are eventually transported to Vaikuntha.
Rajaskika souls keep going around the middle planes of existence.
Tamaskia souls are despatched to andham tamas , blinding darkness , where they realise ther intrinsic nature , one of suffering.
Tamasika souls prefer suffering to surrendering to Lord Vishnu.
Thus the souls despatched to andham tamas , also realise their own nature and the performance of the evil acts is the sadhana for them to attain their destination.
The Lord is ever impartial.
"When there is the contracted movement of knowledge, the yogins in India withdraw from the world and practise yoga for their own liberation and delight or for the liberation of a few disciples; but when the movement of knowledge again expands and the soul of India expands with it, they come forth once more and work in the world and for the world. Yogins like Janaka, Ajatashatru and Kartavirya once more sit on the thrones of the world and govern the nations."
Session on: 1/12/2007 at 12:47:30 PM Volume: 13 [CWSA] (Essays in Philosophy and Yoga), Page: 72
While translating the Gita verses Chapter 16 "Deva & Asura" verse number 19 & 20 , only aurobindo translates the verse as :
"These proud haters (of good and of God), evil, cruel, vilest among men in the world, I cast down continually into more and more Asuric births.
Cast into Asuric wombs, deluded birth after birth, they find Me not (as they do not seek Me) and sink down into the lowest status of soul-nature."
Its worthwhile to note the "as they do not seek me" in the brackets.It is tacit acknowledgement of the tamasic category of souls.Prabhupada explains this verse as the souls being lucky to be killed by the Lord as they ultimately obtain salvation. But only aurobindo has interpreted it correctly.It is Aurobindo and not Chaitanya who is in the disciplic succession of Madhva.
Experience & Philosophy
Madhva's unique position with regards to pramanas resulted in himgiving a lot of weight to individual experiences.For Madhva philosophy without experience does not make any sense whatsoever and philosophy should be corroborated with everday experiences.Experiences often end up teaching more about life than philosophy does.
"In Madhva's view, Advaita's denial of the innate validity of knowledge acquired through sense perception completely undermines our ability to know anything since we must always question the content of our knowledge. This questioning would encompass our knowledge of the sacred canon, which is accessible to us only through our ability to perceive it and to draw inferences from it. Madhva argues that perception and inference must be innately valid and the reality they present us with must be actually and ultimately real since such a position is the only one that allows us to know the content of the Vedas. The Vedas alone are responsible for teaching us about the nature of the self and brahman.
This aspect of Madhva's realist epistemology is important not only because it bolsters Madhva's claim that the atman and brahman are permanently distinct as revealed to us by experience, but because it means that the sacred texts must be read in consonance with the data we receive from our everyday experience, even though the Vedas present us with knowledge of a supra-sensible realm. Madhva argues that the Vedas cannot teach non-difference between the atman and brahman or a lack of true plurality since this would directly contradict our experience."
(Valerie Stoker , Wright State University , from the internet encyclopedia of philosophy)
"Sri Madhva defines philosophy as the determination of things as they are in themselves, Tatva Nirnaya. Experience or anubhava plays a vital role in the process. Experience is the most secure foundation for philosophical speculation. Philosophy not based on experience is barren and experience not inferred by philosophical enquiry is blind and has no significance. Experience possesses the hallmark of personal conviction. Pure experience, shorn of the interpretation due to the active perceiving mind and the ever-present tendency to infer cannot be self-contradictory. Every aspect of experience has been shown to have its proper place in the evaluation of experience."
( C A P Vittal)
"They proved to me by convincing reasons that God does not exist; Afterwards I saw God, for he came and embraced me. And now what am I to believe- the reasoning of others or my own experience? Truth is what the soul has seen and experienced; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion." -From the Hour of God
"In Madhva's view, Advaita's denial of the innate validity of knowledge acquired through sense perception completely undermines our ability to know anything since we must always question the content of our knowledge. This questioning would encompass our knowledge of the sacred canon, which is accessible to us only through our ability to perceive it and to draw inferences from it. Madhva argues that perception and inference must be innately valid and the reality they present us with must be actually and ultimately real since such a position is the only one that allows us to know the content of the Vedas. The Vedas alone are responsible for teaching us about the nature of the self and brahman.
This aspect of Madhva's realist epistemology is important not only because it bolsters Madhva's claim that the atman and brahman are permanently distinct as revealed to us by experience, but because it means that the sacred texts must be read in consonance with the data we receive from our everyday experience, even though the Vedas present us with knowledge of a supra-sensible realm. Madhva argues that the Vedas cannot teach non-difference between the atman and brahman or a lack of true plurality since this would directly contradict our experience."
(Valerie Stoker , Wright State University , from the internet encyclopedia of philosophy)
"Sri Madhva defines philosophy as the determination of things as they are in themselves, Tatva Nirnaya. Experience or anubhava plays a vital role in the process. Experience is the most secure foundation for philosophical speculation. Philosophy not based on experience is barren and experience not inferred by philosophical enquiry is blind and has no significance. Experience possesses the hallmark of personal conviction. Pure experience, shorn of the interpretation due to the active perceiving mind and the ever-present tendency to infer cannot be self-contradictory. Every aspect of experience has been shown to have its proper place in the evaluation of experience."
( C A P Vittal)
"They proved to me by convincing reasons that God does not exist; Afterwards I saw God, for he came and embraced me. And now what am I to believe- the reasoning of others or my own experience? Truth is what the soul has seen and experienced; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion." -From the Hour of God
Karma & Bondage
Another major point in which Madhva differs from the traditional scholars of India is on his views on Karma & rebirth.The general view on this subject is karma is the cause of bondage and rebirth is result of karma.And the way to escape rebirth is to perform disinterested action , working without attachment to the fruits of action and thereby be untouched by karma and remain unbound even while performing action.
Madhva on the other hand does not consider karma as the cause for bondage.Karma is jada , insentient , and as such incapable of having any sort of influence on the sentient soul which is a higher grade of reality.So karma does not bind us to this world.It is the ignorance of the soul that is the cause of bondage.Because of its ignorance it is attracted to matter and revels in sense enjoyment , using the senses as the primary source of pleasure instead of discovering the bliss within the soul.It develops a close association with the body as a result of its ignorance which leads to ego and a separative and disjointed understanding of its surroundings.Out of this ego and separative understanding is born all misery.The soul thus attracted to matter is repeatedly born to enjoy what it wants.Karma has no role to play here , it is the desire of the soul to enjoy the eartly life which brings it back.Those souls who worships Yakshas and others Rajasic deities go to their worlds naturally and those that wish for the company of ghouls and ghosts go to those worlds.Souls which are attracted to Shiva and Skandha go to their respective worlds.Thsoe that are devoted to Narayana reach Him.
Madhva is in full agreement with the Seer of the Isha Upanishad when he declares "na karma lipyate nare" , work does not bind man.
The full verse says:
kurvanneveha karmani jijivisecchatam samah |
evam tvayi nanyatheto'sti na karma lipyate nare
Thus the process of ending rebirth according Madhva lies in what he calls nishkamyam jnanottaram karma or enlightened action born of devotion.Madhva does not accept separate paths like karma yoga , jnana yoga and bhakthi yoga but enunciates a path that has come to be called as Integral Yoga.One first has proper knowledge regarding who he is , his relation to the Supreme who is the actual doer and the field of knoweldge.This proper knowledge leads to bhakthi , or love for the Lord.The sadhaka then performs actions as an offering to the lord and this leads to gradual enlightenment.
Even after enlightenment one performs actions , muktasya karma ,but this does not bind.The liberated soul may even be sent back to earth to guide others even after his salvation and this karma after enlightenment actually enhances the bliss in salvation.
Since it was Vishnu who first put the souls into the created worlds to attain their destination , and He can command a soul to enter these worlds once again to act as the guiding light for other sadhakas or the whole of humanity , He is sometimes , by rigorous logic , considered the source of both bondage and liberation.
Sri Aurobindo is perhaps the only other philosopher to hold similar views on karma , bondage and salvation :
Not action but our past soul-states are the womb of our future; not action but desire, attachment and self-immersion of the individualized Soul in mind in a limited stream of tbe workings of its own executive Nature form the knot in the bondage of rebirth; action, whetber of the thought, the speech or tbe body, is only by an outward mechanical process by which the soul-state shadows out or symbolizes itself in material life. It has no essential value of its own, but only the value of what it expresses; it can therefore have no binding power upon tbe soul which originates and determines it. What it does and can help to alter, are merely the mental and emotional values and terms in which soul-state expresses itself and even this function it performs as a partial agent and not as the real determining factor.
and ,
lf that be true, then we have been grossly exaggerating the power of our actions over our souls, grossly and wilfully accepting in our mental and outward life the tyranny claimed over us by our individual nature, when our hidden relation to it and God's open ultimate intention in us is the very opposite of such a submission to the despotic control of Matter. The relation of the Swarat to his being, of the Samrat to his environment is our secret and true [illegible word]. To conquer one's own nature and fulfil God in world-nature, standing back from her in the soul, free and desireless, but not turning utterly away from her, is the true divine impulse of God in humanity. Life of Nature is intended to be to the soul of man as the Indian wife to her husband, not all in all, for it is to God that he should turn supremely and live in God perpetually, but yet always the half of himself through whose help alone as his sahadharmini, his comrade in works, he can fulfil the divine purpose of his living. The soul to Prakriti is intended to be as the Indian husband to his wife, the image of God in life, for whom she lives and through whom she arrives at the Divinity. We should seek first and live always in God beyond Nature, but God as Nature we should also cherish and enjoy as His symbol of that which is beyond and the appointed means of His active self-manifestation.
[In] Vedanta, therefore, the true and early Vedanta, the practical freedom of the soul is not to be gained as in Buddhism by self-abolition, -for the ego alone can be abolished, the soul is eternal, began not and cannot end, -nor, as in Mayavada, only by extinction of its activities in actionless self-knowledge, -for God expresses Himself in action no less than in rest; -but rather the soul is eternally free in its nature and its freedom has only to be entirely realised by the mind in all its parts in order to be possessed, whether in action or in inaction, in withdrawal from life or possession and mastery of life, by this outer consciousness which we call our waking self as it is eternally possessed in our wide and true effulgent spiritual being, which lives concealed behind the clouded or twilit shiftings of our mental nature and our bodily existence.
(Chapter IV , Isha Upanishad)
Integral Yoga
Madhva , the founder of Integral Yoga.
Prior to the coming of Madhva , three paths were recognised as leading to God-consciousness.They were Karma Yoga , Jnana Yoga and Bhakthi Yoga.The former referred to the performance of karma kanda rituals and , the next one was the path of acquisition of knowledge and the last one Bhakthi was the emotional love for God.All three were considered as separate paths , independent of each other and people were free to choose anyone of them according to their mental orientation.
Infact , even today , people who do not follow Madhva hold such views.
Most schools of Vedanta regard Karma Yoga in the narrow sense of pravritti-marga , as defined by the mimamsakas , consisting of the faithful performance of vedic sacrifies and ritualistic rites prescribed by srutis and smritis with the expectation of reward in this world or the next and the adherence to the duties of varna and ashrama.
In his commentary on the Gita Sankara systematically denounces any possibility of synthesis between karma and jnana and defines karma only as kamya karma.He hardly envisages a possiblity of true synthesis between even nishkamya karma and atma-jnana.Infact he even refuses to give the name karma to teh works performed by the enlightened souls for Lokasangraha or to the work of Krishna himself in upholding kshatriya dharma. But as Dr.B.N.K. Sharma says "the whole emphasis of the karma yoga of gita is on recognising the need for giving a reorientation to the concept of karma and redeeming it from the spell of rewards and fruits and making it possible for blending such exalted form of karma with jnana.Sankara is hardly fair to the spirit of Gita in denying the possiblity of the syntheis of even such exalted form of nishkamyakarma with atmajnana of whihc Krishna himself and persons like Janaka and Priyavrata were standing examples.
Madhva resolves this apparent conflict between the so-called Jnana and Karma Margas , by enlarging the scope of karma margas as understood by shankara and and raising it to the level of an enlightened action nishkama jnanapurvam karma.He makes a vigorous plea for enlightened spiritual activity by all , which cannot be binidng in its consequences.There can be no true wisdom without suh activity , at least for all of us mortals and no true karma without enlightenment and devotion to god.
But this karma is not to be viewed in the narrow hedonistic sense or ritualistic sense of the mimamsakas.Madhva overcomes the difficulty here , by distinguishing the karma yoga of the Gita from what other philoosphers call the pravritti marga of the Vedas.He points out on sound textual authority that the latter is deservedly censured in the Gita and otehr shastras and that true nivritti Marga is not what the other commentatators think it to be viz. , the abandonment of all karmas , but its active performance in the spirit of devotiona nd dispassion.
This is indeed the true spirit of sanyaasa and naiskarma , inculcated in the Gita.Hence it is that Madhva propounds a new theory of typical vedic injunctions which are almost invariably followed by goodly promise of attractive rewards to come.He suggests that the purpose of these prescriptions is , paradoxically enough to wean us away from attractions of perishable rewards and pull us up gradually to a life of disinterested action (Niskama Karma) , even as a child is induced by its mother to take a medicinal does of castor oil , by the tempting offer of sweets in reward.
Karma Yoga is then not at all a spiritual stumbling block to spiritual progress.It is not by itself binding in its effects as it depends on the motive behind it and the end in view with which it is performed.That is why Madhva maintains that every approved activity after the dawn of aparoksha has its reward in the form of a welling up spiritual bliss and never goes in vain.
Madhva has blazed a new trail in interpreting the message of Karma Yoga of Isha Upanishad 2 and Gita 3.20 by bringing jnanottarakarma back to its rightful place in the spiritual life of man at its highest stage of realization.He is the first Indian Philosopher to use the significant expression "Janottarakarma".He is also the first to unequivocally and wholeheartedly give the clarion call of service to fellowmen as the greatest moral responsibility of the Jnani.
He insists that such service to one's fellowmen is a moral obligation , a categorical imperative , laid upon all right thinking pesons like the obligation to pay taxes to one's legally established government.Social abd moral philosophy can hardly claim to haev attained to a more salutary conception of service to one's fellowmen.Commentator Jayathirtha explains that Nana-Jana includes all categories of fellowmen - uttama , madhyama and adhama , the nature and complexion of service to each differing accordingly.
Now let us look at the views of Aurobindo in regards to the above.
The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is Jnanayoga, the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world; and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues and the path of Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the path of Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit still placed before the seeker, is attained, union with the divine Being and oneness with the supreme divine nature. above from , Essays on The Gita First series Chapter IV - The Core of the Teaching (in 'Arya', November 1916)
Prior to the coming of Madhva , three paths were recognised as leading to God-consciousness.They were Karma Yoga , Jnana Yoga and Bhakthi Yoga.The former referred to the performance of karma kanda rituals and , the next one was the path of acquisition of knowledge and the last one Bhakthi was the emotional love for God.All three were considered as separate paths , independent of each other and people were free to choose anyone of them according to their mental orientation.
Infact , even today , people who do not follow Madhva hold such views.
Most schools of Vedanta regard Karma Yoga in the narrow sense of pravritti-marga , as defined by the mimamsakas , consisting of the faithful performance of vedic sacrifies and ritualistic rites prescribed by srutis and smritis with the expectation of reward in this world or the next and the adherence to the duties of varna and ashrama.
In his commentary on the Gita Sankara systematically denounces any possibility of synthesis between karma and jnana and defines karma only as kamya karma.He hardly envisages a possiblity of true synthesis between even nishkamya karma and atma-jnana.Infact he even refuses to give the name karma to teh works performed by the enlightened souls for Lokasangraha or to the work of Krishna himself in upholding kshatriya dharma. But as Dr.B.N.K. Sharma says "the whole emphasis of the karma yoga of gita is on recognising the need for giving a reorientation to the concept of karma and redeeming it from the spell of rewards and fruits and making it possible for blending such exalted form of karma with jnana.Sankara is hardly fair to the spirit of Gita in denying the possiblity of the syntheis of even such exalted form of nishkamyakarma with atmajnana of whihc Krishna himself and persons like Janaka and Priyavrata were standing examples.
Madhva resolves this apparent conflict between the so-called Jnana and Karma Margas , by enlarging the scope of karma margas as understood by shankara and and raising it to the level of an enlightened action nishkama jnanapurvam karma.He makes a vigorous plea for enlightened spiritual activity by all , which cannot be binidng in its consequences.There can be no true wisdom without suh activity , at least for all of us mortals and no true karma without enlightenment and devotion to god.
But this karma is not to be viewed in the narrow hedonistic sense or ritualistic sense of the mimamsakas.Madhva overcomes the difficulty here , by distinguishing the karma yoga of the Gita from what other philoosphers call the pravritti marga of the Vedas.He points out on sound textual authority that the latter is deservedly censured in the Gita and otehr shastras and that true nivritti Marga is not what the other commentatators think it to be viz. , the abandonment of all karmas , but its active performance in the spirit of devotiona nd dispassion.
This is indeed the true spirit of sanyaasa and naiskarma , inculcated in the Gita.Hence it is that Madhva propounds a new theory of typical vedic injunctions which are almost invariably followed by goodly promise of attractive rewards to come.He suggests that the purpose of these prescriptions is , paradoxically enough to wean us away from attractions of perishable rewards and pull us up gradually to a life of disinterested action (Niskama Karma) , even as a child is induced by its mother to take a medicinal does of castor oil , by the tempting offer of sweets in reward.
Karma Yoga is then not at all a spiritual stumbling block to spiritual progress.It is not by itself binding in its effects as it depends on the motive behind it and the end in view with which it is performed.That is why Madhva maintains that every approved activity after the dawn of aparoksha has its reward in the form of a welling up spiritual bliss and never goes in vain.
Madhva has blazed a new trail in interpreting the message of Karma Yoga of Isha Upanishad 2 and Gita 3.20 by bringing jnanottarakarma back to its rightful place in the spiritual life of man at its highest stage of realization.He is the first Indian Philosopher to use the significant expression "Janottarakarma".He is also the first to unequivocally and wholeheartedly give the clarion call of service to fellowmen as the greatest moral responsibility of the Jnani.
He insists that such service to one's fellowmen is a moral obligation , a categorical imperative , laid upon all right thinking pesons like the obligation to pay taxes to one's legally established government.Social abd moral philosophy can hardly claim to haev attained to a more salutary conception of service to one's fellowmen.Commentator Jayathirtha explains that Nana-Jana includes all categories of fellowmen - uttama , madhyama and adhama , the nature and complexion of service to each differing accordingly.
Now let us look at the views of Aurobindo in regards to the above.
The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is Jnanayoga, the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world; and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues and the path of Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the path of Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit still placed before the seeker, is attained, union with the divine Being and oneness with the supreme divine nature. above from , Essays on The Gita First series Chapter IV - The Core of the Teaching (in 'Arya', November 1916)
Interpretation of the Rig Veda
Madhva gives a threefold interpretaion of the Rig Veda.According to him every suktha can be interpreted in three ways --- adhidhaiva , adhibhautika and adhyatmika --- that is physical , psyhcological and philosophical.In this way he considerably differs from Sayana who gives a ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas.Thus for example the word Indra that appears in the Rig Veda refers to both the devatha Indra , the ruler of heavenly realms and also Vishnu.Likewise the Agni in the Rig Veda refers to both the devatha Agni as well as Vishnu.Thus we are expected to worship Agni who resides in Vayu through Agni in whom Vayu resides , it means we must worship Vishnu who resides in Vayu through Agni (devatha) in whom Vayu resides.Agni devatha is the designated carrier of all sacrifices.He is the lowest among devathas and Vishnu is the highest.
Aurobindo too gives a two-fold interpretation of the Vedas and he has stressed , very much like Madhva on the philosophical aspect over and above the ritualistic aspect as given by Sayana.He reveals this insight of his in his Magnum Opus , The Secret of the Veda.
Below is reproduced some of the views of Aurobindo :
First he refutes the interpretation of Sayana and the European Scholars.Then he goes on to unravel the hidden meanings behind the words
Sayana, the great commentator, gives us a ritualistic and where necessary a tentatively mythical or historical sense to the Riks, very rarely does he put forward any higher meaning though sometimes he lets a higher sense come through or puts it as an alternative as if in despair of finding out some ritualistic or mythical interpretation.
Men set up an authority and put it between themselves and knowledge. The orthodox are indignant that a mere modern should presume to differ from Shankara in interpreting the Vedanta or from Sayana in interpreting the Veda. They forget that Shankara and Sayana are themselves moderns, separated from ourselves by some hundreds of years only, but the Vedas are many thousands of years old. The commentator ought to be studied, but instead we put him in place of the text. Good commentaries are always helpful even when they are wrong, but the best cannot be allowed to fetter inquiry. Sayana's commentary on the Veda helps me by showing what a man of great erudition some hundreds of years ago thought to be the sense of the Scripture. But I cannot forget that even at the time of the Brahmanas[3] the meaning of the Veda had become dark to the men of that prehistoric age.... I find that Shankara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark to him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise. Aptavakyam, authority, is one kind of proof; it is not the only kind: pratyaksa [direct knowledge] is more important.
But to me the ingenious guesses of foreign grammarians are of no more authority than the ingenious guesses of Sayana. It is irrelevant to me what Max Müller thinks of the Veda or what Sayana thinks of the Veda. I should prefer to know what the Veda has to say for itself and, if there is any light there on the unknown or on the infinite, to follow the ray till I come face to face with that which it illumines.25
I believe the Vedas to hold a sense which neither mediaeval India nor modern Europe has grasped, but which was perfectly plain to the early Vedantic thinkers. Max Müller has understood one thing by the Vedic mantras, Sayana has understood another, Yaska had his own interpretations of their antique diction, but none of them understood what Yajñavalkya and Ajatashatrou understood.... It is because we do not understand the Vedas that three fourths of the Upanishads are a sealed book to us. Even of the little we think we can understand, much has been insecurely grasped and superficially comprehended.... For want of this key profound scholars have fumbled and for want of this guidance great thinkers gone astray,—Max Müller emitted his wonderful utterance about the “babblings of humanity's nonage,”[6] Shankara left so much of his text unexplained or put it by as inferior truth for the ignorant, Vivekananda found himself compelled to admit his non-comprehension of the Vedantin's cosmological ideas and mention them doubtfully as curious speculations.... Only when we thoroughly know the great Vedic ideas in their totality shall we be able entirely to appreciate the profound harmonious and grandiose system of thought of our early forefathers.27
Either the Veda is what Sayana says it is, and then we have to leave it behind for ever as the document of a mythology and ritual which have no longer any living truth or force for thinking minds, or it is what the European scholars say it is, and then we have to put it away among the relics of the past as an antique record of semi-barbarous worship; or else it is indeed Veda, a book of divine knowledge, and then it becomes of supreme importance to us to know and to hear its message.
... Dayananda's view is quite clear, its foundation inexpugnable. The Vedic hymns are chanted to the One Deity under many names, names which are used and even designed to express His qualities and powers. Was this conception of Dayananda's an arbitrary conceit fetched out of his own too ingenious imagination? Not at all; it is the explicit statement of the Veda itself: “One existent, sages”—not the ignorant, mind you, but the seers, the men of knowledge,—“speak of in many ways, as Indra, as Yama, as Matarishwan, as Agni” [Rig-Veda, I.164.46]. The Vedic Rishis ought surely to have known something about their own religion, more, let us hope, than Roth or Max Müller, and this is what they knew.
We are aware how modern scholars twist away from the evidence. This hymn, they say, was a late production, this loftier idea which it expresses with so clear a force rose up somehow in the later Aryan mind or was borrowed by those ignorant fire-worshippers, sun-worshippers, sky-worshippers from their cultured and philosophic Dravidian enemies. But throughout the Veda we have confirmatory hymns and expressions: Agni or Indra or another is expressly hymned as one with all the other gods. Agni contains all other divine powers within himself, the Maruts are described as all the gods, one deity is addressed by the names of others as well as his own, or, most commonly, he is given as Lord and King of the universe attributes only appropriate to the Supreme Deity. Ah, but that cannot mean, ought not to mean, must not mean, the worship of One; let us invent a new word, call it henotheism[15] and suppose that the Rishis did not really believe Indra or Agni to be the Supreme Deity but treated any god or every god as such for the nonce, perhaps that he might feel the more flattered and lend a more gracious ear for so hyperbolic a compliment? But why should not the foundation of Vedic thought be natural monotheism rather than this new-fangled monstrosity of henotheism? Well, because primitive barbarians could not possibly have risen to such high conceptions and, if you allow them to have so risen, you imperil our theory of the evolutionary stages of the human development and you destroy our whole idea about the sense of the Vedic hymns and their place in the history of mankind. Truth must hide herself, commonsense disappear from the field so that a theory may flourish! I ask, in this point, and it is the fundamental point, who deals most straightforwardly with the text, Dayananda or the Western scholars? ...
Dayananda goes farther; he affirms that the truths of modern physical science are discoverable in the hymns.... The ancient civilisations did possess secrets of science some of which modern knowledge has recovered, extended and made more rich and precise but others are even now not recovered. There is then nothing fantastic in Dayananda's idea that Veda contains truth of science as well as truth of religion. I will even add my own conviction that Veda contains other truths of a science the modern world does not at all possess, and in that case Dayananda has rather understated than overstated the depth and range of the Vedic wisdom.46
The Hidden Meanings
For instance, the word, asva, usually signifying a horse, is used as a figure of the Prana, the nervous energy, the vital breath, the half-mental, half-material dynamism which links mind and matter. Its root is capable, among other senses, of the ideas of impulsion, force, possession, enjoyment, and we find all these meanings united in this figure of the Steed of Life to indicate the essential tendencies of the Pranic energy. Such a use of language would not be possible if the tongue of the Aryan forefathers obeyed the same conventions as our modern speech or were in the same stage of development. But if we can suppose that there was some peculiarity in the old Aryan tongue as it was used by the Vedic Rishis by which words were felt to be more alive, less merely conventional symbols of ideas, more free in their transitions of meaning than in our later use of speech, then we shall find that these devices were not at all artificial or far-fetched to their employers, but were rather the first natural means which would suggest themselves to men anxious at once to find new, brief and adequate formulae of speech for psychological conceptions not understood by the vulgar and to conceal the ideas contained in their formulae from a profane intelligence
"Chanas" meant food but also it meant "enjoyment, pleasure"; therefore it could be used by the Rishi to suggest to the profane mind only the food given at the sacrifice to the gods, but for the initiated it meant the Ananda, the joy of the divine bliss entering into the physical consciousness and at the same time suggested the image of the Soma-wine, at once the food of the gods and the Vedic symbol of the Ananda.We see everywhere this use of language dominating the Word of the Vedic hymns. It was the great device by which the ancient Mystics overcame the difficulty of their task. Agni for the ordinary worshipper may have meant simply the god of the Vedic fire, or it may have meant the principle of Heat and Light in physical Nature, or to the most ignorant it may have meant simply a superhuman personage, one of the many "givers of wealth", satisfiers of human desire. How suggest to those capable of a deeper conception the psychological functions of the God? The word itself fulfilled that service. For Agni meant the Strong, it meant the Bright, or even Force, Brilliance. So it could easily recall to the initiated, wherever it occurred, the idea of the illumined Energy which builds up the worlds and which exalts man to the Highest, the doer of the great work, the Purohit of the human sacrifice. Or how keep it in the mind of the hearer that all these gods are personalities of the one universal Deva? The names of the gods in their very meaning recall that they are only epithets, significant names, descriptions, not personal appellations. Mitra is the Deva as the Lord of love and harmony, Bhaga as the Lord of enjoyment, Surya as the Lord of illumination, Varuna as the all-pervading Vastness and purity of the Divine supporting and perfecting the world. "The Existent is One," says the Rishi Dirghatamas, "but the sages express It variously; they say Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni; they call It Agni, Yama, Matariswan." [Rv. I.164.46.] The initiate in the earlier days of the Vedic knowledge had no need of this express statement. The names of the gods carried to him their own significance and recalled the great fundamental truth which remained with him always. But in the later ages the very device used by the Rishis turned against the preservation of the knowledge. For language changed its character, rejected its earlier pliability, shed off old familiar senses; the word contracted and shrank into its outer and concrete significance. The ambrosial wine of the Ananda was forgotten in the physical offering; the image of the clarified butter recalled only the gross libation to mythological deities, lords of the fire and the cloud and the storm-blast, godheads void of any but a material energy and an external luster. The letter lived on when the spirit was forgotten; the symbol, the body of the doctrine, remained, but the soul of knowledge had fled from its coverings. Taken from the Foreword of Hymns to the Mystic Fire There can be no doubt that in the beginning there was a worship of the Powers of the physical world, the Sun, Moon, Heaven and Earth, Wind, Rain and Storm etc., the Sacred Rivers and a number of Gods who presided over the workings of Nature. That was the general aspect of the ancient worship in Greece, Rome, India and among other ancient peoples. But in all these countries these gods began to assume a higher, a psychological function; Pallas Athene who may have been originally a Dawn-Goddess springing in flames from the head of Zeus, the Sky-God, Dyaus of the Veda, has in classical Greece a higher function and was identified by the Romans with their Minerva, the Goddess of learning and wisdom; similarly, Saraswati, a River Goddess, becomes in India the goddess of wisdom, learning and the arts and crafts: all the Greek deities have undergone a change in this direction -- Apollo, the Sun-God, has become a god of poetry and prophecy, Hephaestus the Fire-God a divine smith, god of labour. In India the process was arrested half-way, and the Vedic Gods developed their psychological functions but retained more fixedly their external character and for higher purposes gave place to a new pantheon. They had to give precedence to Puranic deities who developed out of the early company but assumed larger cosmic functions, Vishnu, Rudra, Brahma, -- developing from the Vedic Brihaspati, or Brahmanaspati, -- Shiva, Lakshmi, Durga. Thus in India the change in the gods was less complete, the earlier deities became the inferior divinities of the Puranic pantheon and this was largely due to the survival of the Rig-veda in which their psychological and their external functions co-existed and are both given a powerful emphasis; there was no such early literary record to maintain the original features of the Gods of Greece and Rome. This change was evidently due to a cultural development in these early peoples who became progressively more mentalised and less engrossed in the physical life as they advanced in civilisation and needed to read into their religion and their deities finer and subtler aspects which would support their more highly mentalised concepts and interests and find for them a true spiritual being or some celestial figure as their support and sanction. But the largest part in determining and deepening this inward turn must be attributed to the Mystics who had an enormous influence on these early civilisations; there was indeed almost everywhere an age of the Mysteries in which men of a deeper knowledge and self-knowledge established their practices, significant rites, symbols, secret lore within or on the border of the more primitive exterior religions. This took different forms in different countries; in Greece there were the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their occult lore and magic, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis. The preoccupation of the Mystics was with self-knowledge and a profounder world-knowledge; they found out that in man there was a deeper self and inner being behind the surface of the outward physical man, which it was his highest business to discover and know. "Know thyself" was their great precept, just as in India to know the Self, the Atman became the great spiritual need, the highest thing for the human being. They found also a Truth, a Reality behind the outward aspects of the universe and to discover, follow, realise this Truth was their great aspiration. They discovered secrets and powers of Nature which were not those of the physical world but which could bring occult mastery over the physical world and physical things and to systematise this occult knowledge and power was also one of their strong preoccupations. But all this could only be safely done by a difficult and careful training, discipline, purification of the nature; it could not be done by the ordinary man. If men entered into these things without a severe test and training it would be dangerous to themselves and others; this knowledge, these powers could be misused, misinterpreted, turned from truth to falsehood, from good to evil. A strict secrecy was therefore maintained, the knowledge handed down behind a veil from master to disciple. A veil of symbols was created behind which these mysteries could shelter, formulas of speech also which could be understood by the initiated but were either not known by others or were taken by them in an outward sense which carefully covered their true meaning and secret. This was the substance of Mysticism everywhere. For it is a fact that the tradition of a secret meaning and a mystic wisdom couched in the Riks of the ancient Veda was as old as the Veda itself. The Vedic Rishis believed that their Mantras were inspired from higher hidden planes of consciousness and contained this secret knowledge. The words of the Veda could only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld their hidden knowledge. In one of Vamadeva's hymns in the fourth Mandala (IV.3.16) the Rishi describes himself as one illumined expressing through his thought and speech words of guidance, "secret words" -- ninya vacamsi -- "seer-wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer" -- kavyani kavaye nivacana. The Rishi Dirghatamas speaks of the Riks, the Mantras of the Veda, as existing "in a supreme ether, imperishable and immutable in which all the gods are seated", and he adds "one who knows not That what shall he do with the Rik?" (I.164.39) He further alludes to four planes from which the speech issues, three of them hidden in the secrecy while the fourth is human, and from there comes the ordinary word; but the word and thought of the Veda belongs to the higher planes (I.164.46). Elsewhere in the Riks the Vedic Word is described (X.71) as that which is supreme and the topmost height of speech, the best and the most faultless. It is something that is hidden in secrecy and from there comes out and is manifested. It has entered into the truth-seers, the Rishis, and it is found by following the track of their speech. But all cannot enter into its secret meaning. Those who do not know the inner sense are as men who seeing see not, hearing hear not, only to one here and there the Word desiring him like a beautifully robed wife to a husband lays open her body. Others unable to drink steadily of the milk of the Word, the Vedic cow, move with it as with one that gives no milk, to him the Word is a tree without flowers or fruits. This is quite clear and precise; it results from it beyond doubt that even then while the Rig-veda was being written the Riks were regarded as having a secret sense which was not open to all. There was an occult and spiritual knowledge in the sacred hymns and by this knowledge alone, it is said, one can know the truth and rise to a higher existence. This belief was not a later tradition but held, probably, by all and evidently by some of the greatest Rishis such as Dirghatamas and Vamadeva. The tradition, then, was there and it was prolonged after the Vedic times. Yaska speaks of several schools of interpretation of the Veda. There was a sacrificial or ritualistic interpretation, the historical or rather mythological explanation, an explanation by the grammarians and etymologists, by the logicians, a spiritual interpretation. Yaska himself declares that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge, a knowledge of the gods and finally a spiritual knowledge; but the last is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. It is this spiritual sense that saves and the rest is outward and subordinate. He says further that "the Rishis saw the truth, the true law of things, directly by an inner vision"; afterwards the knowledge and the inner sense of the Veda were almost lost and the Rishis who still knew had to save it by handing it down through initiation to disciples and at a last stage outward and mental means had to be used for finding the sense such as Nirukta and other Vedangas. But even then, he says, "the true sense of the Veda can be recovered directly by meditation and tapasya", those who can use these means need no outward aids for this knowledge. This also is sufficiently clear and positive. But even if an element of high spiritual knowledge, or passages full of high ideas were found in the hymns, it might be supposed that those are perhaps only a small factor, while the rest is a sacrificial liturgy, formulas of prayer and praise to the Gods meant to induce them to shower on the sacrificers material blessings such as plenty of cows, horses, fighting men, sons, food, wealth of all kinds, protection, victory in battle, or to bring down rain from heaven, recover the sun from clouds or from the grip of Night, the free flowing of the seven rivers, recovery of cattle from the Dasyus (or the Dravidians) and the other boons which on the surface seem to be the object of this ritual worship. The Rishis would then be men with some spiritual or mystic knowledge but otherwise dominated by all the popular ideas proper to their times. These two elements they would then mix up intimately in their hymns and this would account at least in part for the obscurity and the rather strange and sometimes grotesque jumble which the traditional interpretation offers us. But if, on the other hand, a considerable body of high thinking clearly appears, if there is a large mass of verses or whole hymns which admit only of a mystic character and significance, and if finally, the ritualistic and external details are found to take frequently the appearance of symbols such as were always used by the mystics, and if there are many clear indications, even some explicit statements in the hymns themselves of such a meaning, then all changes. We are in the presence of a great scripture of the mystics with a double significance, one exoteric the other esoteric, the symbols themselves have a meaning which makes them a part of the esoteric significance, an element in the secret teaching and knowledge. The whole of the Rig-veda, a small number of hymns perhaps excepted, becomes in its inner sense such a Scripture. At the same time the exoteric sense need not be merely a mask; the Riks may have been regarded by their authors as words of power, powerful not only for internal but for external things. A purely spiritual scripture would concern itself with only spiritual significances, but the ancient mystics were also what we would call occultists, men who believed that by inner means outer as well as inner results could be produced, that thought and words could be so used as to bring about realisations of every kind, -- in the phrase common in the Veda itself, -- both the human and the divine. But where is this body of esoteric meaning in the Veda? It is only discoverable if we give a constant and straightforward meaning to the words and formulas employed by the Rishis, especially to the key-words which bear as keystones the whole structure of their doctrine. One such word is the great word, Ritam, Truth; Truth was the central object of the seeking of the Mystics, a spiritual or inner Truth, a truth of ourselves, a truth of things, a truth of the world and of the gods, a truth behind all we are and all that things are. In the ritualistic interpretation this master word of the Vedic knowledge has been interpreted in all kinds of senses according to the convenience or fancy of the interpreter, "truth", "sacrifice", "water", "one who has gone", even "food", not to speak of a number of other meanings; if we do that, there can be no certitude in our dealings with the Veda. But let us consistently give it the same master sense and a strange but clear result emerges. If we apply the same treatment to other standing terms of the Veda, if we give them their ordinary, natural and straightforward meaning and give it constantly and consistently not monkeying about with their sense or turning them into purely ritualistic expressions, if we allow to certain important words, such as sravas, kratu, the psychological meaning of which they are capable and which they undoubtedly bear in certain passages as when the Veda describes Agni as kratur hrdi, then this result becomes all the more clear, extended, pervasive. If, in addition, we follow the indications which abound, sometimes the explicit statement of the Rishis about the inner sense of their symbols, interpret in the same sense the significant legends and figures on which they constantly return, the conquest over Vritra and the battle with the Vritras, his powers, the recovery of the Sun, the Waters, the Cows from the Panis or other Dasyus, the whole Rig-veda reveals itself as a body of doctrine and practice, esoteric, occult, spiritual, such as might have been given by the mystics in any ancient country but which actually survives for us only in the Veda. It is there deliberately hidden by a veil, but the veil is not so thick as we first imagine; we have only to use our eyes and the veil vanishes; the body of the Word, the Truth stands out before us. Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form of speech, have an inner meaning. When the seer speaks of Agni as "the luminous guardian of the Truth shining out in his own home", or of Mitra and Varuna or other gods as "in touch with the Truth and making the Truth grow" or as "born in the Truth", these are words of a mystic poet, who is thinking of that inner Truth behind things of which the early sages were the seekers. He is not thinking of the Nature-Power presiding over the outer element of fire or of the fire of the ceremonial sacrifice. Or he speaks of Saraswati as one who impels the words of Truth and awakes to right thinkings or as one opulent with the thought: Saraswati awakes to consciousness or makes us conscious of the "Great Ocean and illumines all our thoughts". It is surely not the River Goddess whom he is thus hymning but the Power, the River if you will, of inspiration, the word of the Truth, bringing its light into our thoughts, building up in us that Truth, an inner knowledge. The Gods constantly stand out in their psychological functions; the sacrifice is the outer symbol of an inner work, an inner interchange between the gods and men, -- man giving what he has, the gods giving in return the horses of power, the herds of light, the heroes of Strength to be his retinue, winning for him victory in his battle with the hosts of Darkness, Vritras, Dasyus, Panis. When the Rishi says, "Let us become conscious whether by the War-Horse or by the Word of a Strength beyond men", his words have either a mystic significance or they have no coherent meaning at all. In the portions translated in this book we have many mystic verses and whole hymns which, however mystic, tear the veil off the outer sacrificial images covering the real sense of the Veda. "Thought," says the Rishi, "has nourished for us human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens; it is the milch-cow which milks of itself the wealth of many forms" -- the many kinds of wealth, cows, horses and the rest for which the sacrificer prays; evidently this is no material wealth, it is something which Thought, the Thought embodied in the Mantra, can give and it is the result of the same Thought that nourishes our human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens. A process of divinisation, and of a bringing down of great and luminous riches, treasures won from the Gods by the inner work of sacrifice, is hinted at in terms necessarily covert but still for one who knows how to read these secret words, ninya vacamsi, sufficiently expressive, kavaye nivacana. Again, Night and Dawn the eternal sisters are like "joyful weaving women weaving the weft of our perfected works into the form of a sacrifice". Again, words with a mystic form and meaning, but there could hardly be a more positive statement of the psychological character of the Sacrifice, the real meaning of the Cow, of the riches sought for, the plenitudes of the Great Treasure. Under pressure of the necessity to mask their meaning with symbols and symbolic words -- for secrecy must be observed -- the Rishis resorted to fix double meanings, a device easily manageable in the Sanskrit language where one word often bears several different meanings, but not easy to render in an English translation and very often impossible. Thus the word for cow, go, meant also light or a ray of light; this appears in the names of some of the Rishis, Gotama, most radiant, Gavishthira, steadfast in the Light. The cows of the Veda were the Herds of the Sun, familiar in Greek myth and mystery, the rays of the Sun of Truth and Light and Knowledge; this meaning which comes out in some passages can be consistently applied everywhere yielding a coherent sense. The word ghrta means ghee or clarified butter and this was one of the chief elements of the sacrificial rite; but ghrta could also mean light, from the root ghr to shine and it is used in this sense in many passages. Thus the horses of Indra, the Lord of Heaven, are described as dripping with light, ghrtasnu [[Sayana, though in several passages he takes ghrta in the sense of light, renders it here by `water'; he seems to think that the divine horses were very tired and perspiring profusely! A Naturalistic interpreter might as well argue that as Indra is a God of the sky, the primitive poet might well believe that rain was the perspiration of Indra's horses.]] -- it certainly does not mean that ghee dripped from them as they ran, although that seems to be the sense of the same epithet as applied to the grain of which Indra's horses are invited to partake when they come to the sacrifice. Evidently this sense of light doubles with that of clarified butter in the symbolism of the sacrifice. The thought or the word expressing the thought is compared to pure clarified butter, expressions like dhiyam ghrtacim, the luminous thought or understanding occur. There is a curious passage in one of the hymns translated in this book calling on Fire as priest of the sacrifice to flood the offering with a mind pouring ghrita, ghrtaprusa manasa and so manifest the Seats ("places, or planes"), the three heavens each of them and manifest the Gods. [[This is Sayana's rendering of the passage and rises directly from the words.]] But what is a ghee-pouring mind, and how by pouring ghee can a priest manifest the Gods and the triple heavens? But admit the mystical and esoteric meaning and the sense becomes clear. What the Rishi means is a "mind pouring the light", a labour of the clarity of an enlightened or illumined mind; it is not a human priest or a sacrificial fire, but the inner Flame, the mystic seer-will, kavikratu, and that can certainly manifest by this process the Gods and the worlds and all planes of the being. The Rishis, it must be remembered, were seers as well as sages, they were men of vision who saw things in their meditation in images, often symbolic images which might precede or accompany an experience and put it in a concrete form, might predict or give an occult body to it: so it would be quite possible for him to see at once the inner experience and in image its symbolic happening, the flow of clarifying light and the priest god pouring this clarified butter on the inner self-offering which brought the experience. This might seem strange to a Western mind, but to an Indian mind accustomed to the Indian tradition or capable of meditation and occult vision it would be perfectly intelligible. The mystics were and normally are symbolists, they can even see all physical things and happenings as symbols of inner truths and realities, even their outer selves, the outer happenings of their life and all around them. That would make their identification or else an association of the thing and its symbol easy, its habit possible. Other standing words and symbols of the Veda invite a similar interpretation of their sense. As the Vedic "cow" is the symbol of light, so the Vedic "horse" is a symbol of power, spiritual strength, force of tapasya. When the Rishi asks Agni for a "horse-form cow-in-front gift" he is not asking really for a number of horses forming a body of the gift with some cows walking in front, he is asking for a great body of spiritual power led by the light or, as we may translate it, "with the Ray-Cow walking in its front." [[Compare the expression which describes the Aryan, the noble people as led by the light -- jyotir-agrah.]] As one hymn describes the recovery from the Panis of the mass of the rays (the cows, -- the shining herds, gavyam), so another hymn asks Agni for a mass of abundance or power of the horse -- asvyam. So too the Rishi asks sometimes for the heroes or fighting men as his retinue, sometimes in more abstract language and without symbol for a complete hero-force -- suviryam; sometimes he combines the symbol and the thing. So too the Rishis ask for a son or sons or offspring, apatyam,as an element of the wealth for which they pray to the Gods, but here too an esoteric sense can be seen, for in certain passages the son born to us is clearly an image of some inner birth: Agni himself is our son, the child of our works, the child who as the Universal Fire is the father of his fathers, and it is by setting the steps on things that have fair offspring that we create or discover a path to the higher world of Truth. Again, "water" in the Veda is used as a symbol. It speaks of the inconscient ocean, salilam apraketam, in which the Godhead is involved and out of which he is born by his greatness; it speaks also of the great ocean, maho arnah, the upper waters which, as one hymn says, Saraswati makes conscious for us or of which she makes us conscious by the ray of intuition -- pra cetayati ketuna. The seven rivers seem to be the rivers of Northern India but the Veda speaks of the seven Mighty Ones of Heaven who flow down from Heaven; they are waters that know, knowers of the Truth -- rtajna -- and when they are released they discover for us the road to the great Heavens. So, too, Parashara speaks of Knowledge and universal Life, "in the house of the waters". Indra releases the rain by slaying Vritra, but this rain too is the rain of Heaven and sets the rivers flowing. Thus the legend of the release of the waters which takes so large a place in the Veda puts on the aspect of a symbolic myth. Along with it comes the other symbolic legend of the discovery and rescue, from the dark cave in the mountain, of the Sun, the cows or herds of the Sun, or the Sun-world -- svar -- by the Gods and the Angiras Rishis. The symbol of the Sun is constantly associated with the higher Light and the Truth: it is in the Truth concealed by an inferior Truth that are unyoked the horses of the Sun, it is the Sun in its highest light that is called upon in the great Gayatri Mantra to impel our thoughts. So, too, the enemies in the Veda are spoken of as robbers, dasyus, who steal the cows, or Vritras and are taken literally as human enemies in the ordinary interpretation, but Vritra is a demon who covers and holds back the Light and the waters and the Vritras are his forces fulfilling that function. The Dasyus, robbers or destroyers, are the powers of darkness, adversaries of the seekers of Light and the Truth. Always there are indications that lead us from the outward and exoteric to an inner and esoteric sense. In connection with the symbol of the Sun a notable and most significant verse in a hymn of the fifth Mandala may here be mentioned; for it shows not only the profound mystic symbolism of the Vedic poets, but also how the writers of the Upanishads understood the Rig-veda and justifies their belief in the inspired knowledge of their forerunners. "There is a Truth covered by a Truth", runs the Vedic passage, "where they unyoke the horses of the Sun; the ten hundreds stood together, there was That One; [[Or, That (the supreme Truth) was one;]] I saw the greatest (best, most glorious) of the embodied gods." [[Or, it means, "I saw the greatest (best) of the bodies of the gods."]] Then mark how the seer of the Upanishad translates this thought or this mystic experience into his own later style, keeping the central symbol of the Sun but without any secrecy in the sense. Thus runs the passage in the Upanishad, "The face of the Truth is covered with a golden lid. O Pushan, that remove for the vision of the law of the Truth. [[Or, for the law of the Truth, for vision.]] O Pushan (fosterer), sole seer, O Yama, O Sun, O Child of the Father of beings, marshal and gather together thy rays; I see the Light which is that fairest (most auspicious) form of thee; he who is this Purusha, He am I." The golden lid is meant to be the same as the inferior covering truth, rtam, spoken of in the Vedic verse; the "best of the bodies of the Gods" is equivalent to the "fairest form of the Sun", it is the supreme Light which is other and greater than all outer light; the great formula of the Upanishad, "He am I", corresponds to That One, tad ekam, of the Rig- vedic verse; the "standing together of the ten hundreds" (the rays of the Sun, says Sayana, and that is evidently the meaning) is reproduced in the prayer to the Sun "to marshal and mass his rays" so that the supreme form may be seen. The Sun in both the passages, as constantly in the Veda and frequently in the Upanishad, is the Godhead of the supreme Truth and Knowledge and his rays are the light emanating from that supreme Truth and Knowledge. It is clear from this instance -- and there are others -- that the seer of the Upanishad had a truer sense of the meaning of the ancient Veda than the mediaeval ritualistic commentator with his gigantic learning, much truer than the modern and very different mind of the European scholars. There are certain psychological terms which have to be taken consistently in their true sense if we are to find the inner or esoteric meaning. Apart from the Truth, Ritam, we have to take always in the sense of "thought" the word dhi which constantly recurs in the hymns. This is the natural meaning of dhi which corresponds to the later word Buddhi; it means thought, understanding, intelligence and in the plural 'thoughts', dhiyah. It is given in the ordinary interpretation all kinds of meanings; "water", "work", "sacrifice", "food", etc. as well as thought. But in our search we have to take it consistently in its ordinary and natural significance and see what is the result. The word ketu means very ordinarily "ray" but it also bears the meaning of intellect, judgment or an intellectual perception. If we compare the passages in the Veda in which it occurs we can come to the conclusion that it meant a ray of perception or intuition, as for instance, it is by the ray of intuition, ketuna, that Saraswati makes us conscious of the great waters; that too probably is the meaning of the rays which come from the Supreme foundation above and are directed downwards; these are the intuitions of knowledge as the rays of the Sun of Truth and Light. The word kratu means ordinarily work or sacrifice but it also means intelligence, power or resolution and especially the power of the intelligence that determines the work, the will. It is in this latter sense that we can interpret it in the esoteric rendering of the Veda. Agni is a seer-will, kavikratu, he is the "will in the heart",kratur hrdi. Finally the word sravas which is constantly in use in the Veda means fame, it is also taken by the commentators in the sense of food, but these significances cannot be fitted in everywhere and very ordinarily lack all point and apposite force. But sravas comes from the root sru to hear and is used in the sense of ear itself or of hymn or prayer -- a sense which Sayana accepts -- and from this we can infer that it means the "thing heard" or its result knowledge that comes to us through hearing. The Rishis speak of themselves as hearers of the Truth, satyasrutah, and the knowledge received by this hearing as Sruti. It is in this sense of inspiration or inspired knowledge that we can take it in the esoteric meaning of the Veda and we find that it fits in with a perfect appositeness; thus when the Rishi speaks of sravamsi as being brought through upward and brought through downward, this cannot be applied to food or fame but is perfectly apposite and significant if he is speaking of inspirations which rise up to the Truth above or bring down the Truth to us. This is the method we can apply everywhere, but we cannot pursue the subject any further here. In the brief limits of this Foreword these slight indications must suffice; they are meant only to give the reader an initial insight into the esoteric method of interpretation of the Veda. But what then is the secret meaning, the esoteric sense, which emerges by this way of understanding the Veda? It is what we would expect from the nature of the seeking of the mystics everywhere. It is also, as we should expect from the actual course of the development of Indian culture, an early form of the spiritual truth which found its culmination in the Upanishads; the secret knowledge of the Veda is the seed which is evolved later on into the Vedanta. The thought around which all is centred is the seeking after Truth, Light, Immortality. There is a Truth deeper and higher than the truth of outward existence, a Light greater and higher than the light of human understanding which comes by revelation and inspiration, an immortality towards which the soul has to rise. We have to find our way to that, to get into touch with this Truth and Immortality, sapanta rtam amrtam, [[I.68.2.]] to be born into the Truth, to grow in it, to ascend in spirit into the world of Truth and to live in it. To do so is to unite ourselves with the Godhead and to pass from mortality into immortality. This is the first and the central teaching of the Vedic mystics. The Platonists, developing their doctrine from the early mystics, held that we live in relation to two worlds, -- a world of higher truth which might be called the spiritual world and that in which we live, the world of the embodied soul which is derived from the higher but also degraded from it into an inferior truth and inferior consciousness. The Vedic mystics held this doctrine in a more concrete and pragmatic form, for they had the experience of these two worlds. There is the inferior truth here of this world mixed as it is with much falsehood and error, anrtasya bhureh, [[VII.60.5.]] and there is a world or home of Truth, sadanam rtasya, [[I.164.47; also IV.21.3.]] the Truth, the Right, the Vast, satyam rtam brhat, [[Atharva XII.I.I.]] where all is Truth-Conscious, rtacit. [[IV.3.4.]] There are many worlds between up to the triple heavens and their lights but this is the world of the highest Light -- the world of the Sun of Truth, svar, or the Great Heaven. We have to find the path to this Great Heaven, the path of Truth, rtasya panthah, [[III.12.7; also VII.66.3.]] or as it is sometimes called the way of the gods. This is the second mystic doctrine. The third is that our life is a battle between the powers of Light and Truth, the Gods who are the Immortals and the powers of Darkness. These are spoken of under various names as Vritra and Vritras, Vala and the Panis, the Dasyus and their kings. We have to call in the aid of the Gods to destroy the opposition of these powers of Darkness who conceal the Light from us or rob us of it, who obstruct the flowing of the streams of Truth, rtasya dharah, [[V.12.2; also VII.43.4.]] the streams of Heaven and obstruct in every way the soul's ascent. We have to invoke the Gods by the inner sacrifice, and by the Word call them into us, -- that is the specific power of the Mantra, -- to offer to them the gifts of the sacrifice and by that giving secure their gifts, so that by this process we may build the way of our ascent to the goal. The elements of the outer sacrifice in the Veda are used as symbols of the inner sacrifice and self-offering; we give what we are and what we have in order that the riches of the divine Truth and Light may descend into our life and become the elements of our inner birth into the Truth, -- a right thinking, a right understanding, a right action must develop in us which is the thinking, impulsion and action of that higher Truth, rtasya presa, rtasya dhitih, [[I.68.3.]] and by this we must build up ourselves in that Truth. Our sacrifice is a journey, a pilgrimage and a battle, -- a travel towards the Gods and we also make that journey with Agni, the inner Flame, as our path-finder and leader. Our human things are raised up by the mystic Fire into the immortal being, into the Great Heaven, and the things divine come down into us. As the doctrine of the Rig- veda is the seed of the teaching of the Vedanta, so is its inner practice and discipline a seed of the later practice and discipline of Yoga. Finally, as the summit of the teaching of the Vedic mystics comes the secret of the one Reality, ekam sat, [[1.164.46.]] or tad ekam, [[X.129.2.]] which became the central word of the Upanishads. The Gods, the powers of Light and Truth are powers and names of the One, each God is himself all the Gods or carries them in him: there is the one Truth, tat satyam, [[III.39.5; also IV.54.4 and VIII.45.27.]] and one bliss to which we must rise. But in the Veda this looks out still mostly from behind the veil. There is much else but this is the kernel of the doctrine. The interpretation I have put forward was set out at length in a series of articles with the title "The Secret of the Veda" in the monthly philosophical magazine, Arya, some thirty years ago; written in serial form while still developing the theory and not quite complete in its scope or composed on a preconceived and well-ordered plan it was not published in book-form and is therefore not yet available to the reading public. It was accompanied by a number of renderings of the hymns of the Rig-veda which were rather interpretations than translations and to these there was an introduction explanatory of the "Doctrine of the Mystics". Subsequently there was planned a complete translation of all the hymns to Agni in the ten Mandalas which kept close to the text; the renderings of those hymns in the second and sixth Mandalas are now published in this book for the first time as well as a few from the first Mandala. But to establish on a scholastic basis the conclusions of the hypothesis it would have been necessary to prepare an edition of the Rig-veda or of a large part of it with a word by word construing in Sanskrit and English, notes explanatory of important points in the text and justifying the interpretation both of separate words and of whole verses and also elaborate appendices to fix firmly the rendering of keywords like rta, sravas, kratu, ketu,} etc. essential to the esoteric interpretation. This also was planned, but meanwhile greater preoccupations of a permanent nature intervened and no time was left to proceed with such a considerable undertaking. For the benefit of the reader of these translations who might otherwise be at a loss, this Foreword has been written and some passages [[In the present edition the entire essay has been reproduced. - Ed.]] from the unpublished "Doctrine of the Mystics" have been included. The text of the Veda has been given for use by those who can read the original Sanskrit. These translations however are not intended to be a scholastic work meant to justify a hypothesis; the object of this publication is only to present them in a permanent form for disciples and those who are inclined to see more in the Vedas than a superficial liturgy and would be interested in knowing what might be the esoteric sense of this ancient Scripture. This is a literary and not a strictly literal translation. But a fidelity to the meaning, the sense of the words and the structure of the thought, has been preserved: in fact the method has been to start with a bare and scrupulously exact rendering of the actual language and adhere to that as the basis of the interpretation; for it is only so that we can find out the actual thoughts of these ancient mystics. But any rendering of such great poetry as the hymns of the Rig-veda, magnificent in their colouring and images, noble and beautiful in rhythm, perfect in their diction, must, if it is not to be a merely dead scholastic work, bring at least a faint echo of their poetic force, -- more cannot be done in a prose translation and in so different a language. The turn of phrase and the syntax of English and Vedic Sanskrit are poles asunder; to achieve some sense of style and natural writing one has constantly to turn the concentrated speech of the Veda into a looser, more diluted English form. Another stumbling- block for the translator is the ubiquitous double entendre marking in one word the symbol and the thing symbolised, Ray and Cow, clear light of the mind and clarified butter, horses and spiritual power; one has to invent phrases like the "herds of the light" or "the shining herds" or to use devices such as writing the word horse with a capital H to indicate that it is a symbolic horse that is meant and not the common physical animal; but very often the symbol has to be dropped, or else the symbol has to be kept and the inner meaning left to be understood ; [[The Rishis sometimes seem to combine two different meanings in the same word; I have occasionally tried to render this double sense.]] I have not always used the same phrase though always keeping the same sense, but varied the translation according to the needs of the passage. Often I have been unable to find an adequate English word which will convey the full connotation or colour of the original text; I have used two words instead of one or a phrase or resorted to some other device to give the exact and complete meaning. Besides, there is often a use of antique words or turns of language of which the sense is not really known and can only be conjectured or else different renderings are equally possible. In many passages I have had to leave a provisional rendering; it was intended to keep the final decision on the point until the time when a more considerable body of the hymns had been translated and were ready for publication; but this time has not yet come.
Aurobindo too gives a two-fold interpretation of the Vedas and he has stressed , very much like Madhva on the philosophical aspect over and above the ritualistic aspect as given by Sayana.He reveals this insight of his in his Magnum Opus , The Secret of the Veda.
Below is reproduced some of the views of Aurobindo :
First he refutes the interpretation of Sayana and the European Scholars.Then he goes on to unravel the hidden meanings behind the words
Sayana, the great commentator, gives us a ritualistic and where necessary a tentatively mythical or historical sense to the Riks, very rarely does he put forward any higher meaning though sometimes he lets a higher sense come through or puts it as an alternative as if in despair of finding out some ritualistic or mythical interpretation.
Men set up an authority and put it between themselves and knowledge. The orthodox are indignant that a mere modern should presume to differ from Shankara in interpreting the Vedanta or from Sayana in interpreting the Veda. They forget that Shankara and Sayana are themselves moderns, separated from ourselves by some hundreds of years only, but the Vedas are many thousands of years old. The commentator ought to be studied, but instead we put him in place of the text. Good commentaries are always helpful even when they are wrong, but the best cannot be allowed to fetter inquiry. Sayana's commentary on the Veda helps me by showing what a man of great erudition some hundreds of years ago thought to be the sense of the Scripture. But I cannot forget that even at the time of the Brahmanas[3] the meaning of the Veda had become dark to the men of that prehistoric age.... I find that Shankara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark to him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise. Aptavakyam, authority, is one kind of proof; it is not the only kind: pratyaksa [direct knowledge] is more important.
But to me the ingenious guesses of foreign grammarians are of no more authority than the ingenious guesses of Sayana. It is irrelevant to me what Max Müller thinks of the Veda or what Sayana thinks of the Veda. I should prefer to know what the Veda has to say for itself and, if there is any light there on the unknown or on the infinite, to follow the ray till I come face to face with that which it illumines.25
I believe the Vedas to hold a sense which neither mediaeval India nor modern Europe has grasped, but which was perfectly plain to the early Vedantic thinkers. Max Müller has understood one thing by the Vedic mantras, Sayana has understood another, Yaska had his own interpretations of their antique diction, but none of them understood what Yajñavalkya and Ajatashatrou understood.... It is because we do not understand the Vedas that three fourths of the Upanishads are a sealed book to us. Even of the little we think we can understand, much has been insecurely grasped and superficially comprehended.... For want of this key profound scholars have fumbled and for want of this guidance great thinkers gone astray,—Max Müller emitted his wonderful utterance about the “babblings of humanity's nonage,”[6] Shankara left so much of his text unexplained or put it by as inferior truth for the ignorant, Vivekananda found himself compelled to admit his non-comprehension of the Vedantin's cosmological ideas and mention them doubtfully as curious speculations.... Only when we thoroughly know the great Vedic ideas in their totality shall we be able entirely to appreciate the profound harmonious and grandiose system of thought of our early forefathers.27
Either the Veda is what Sayana says it is, and then we have to leave it behind for ever as the document of a mythology and ritual which have no longer any living truth or force for thinking minds, or it is what the European scholars say it is, and then we have to put it away among the relics of the past as an antique record of semi-barbarous worship; or else it is indeed Veda, a book of divine knowledge, and then it becomes of supreme importance to us to know and to hear its message.
... Dayananda's view is quite clear, its foundation inexpugnable. The Vedic hymns are chanted to the One Deity under many names, names which are used and even designed to express His qualities and powers. Was this conception of Dayananda's an arbitrary conceit fetched out of his own too ingenious imagination? Not at all; it is the explicit statement of the Veda itself: “One existent, sages”—not the ignorant, mind you, but the seers, the men of knowledge,—“speak of in many ways, as Indra, as Yama, as Matarishwan, as Agni” [Rig-Veda, I.164.46]. The Vedic Rishis ought surely to have known something about their own religion, more, let us hope, than Roth or Max Müller, and this is what they knew.
We are aware how modern scholars twist away from the evidence. This hymn, they say, was a late production, this loftier idea which it expresses with so clear a force rose up somehow in the later Aryan mind or was borrowed by those ignorant fire-worshippers, sun-worshippers, sky-worshippers from their cultured and philosophic Dravidian enemies. But throughout the Veda we have confirmatory hymns and expressions: Agni or Indra or another is expressly hymned as one with all the other gods. Agni contains all other divine powers within himself, the Maruts are described as all the gods, one deity is addressed by the names of others as well as his own, or, most commonly, he is given as Lord and King of the universe attributes only appropriate to the Supreme Deity. Ah, but that cannot mean, ought not to mean, must not mean, the worship of One; let us invent a new word, call it henotheism[15] and suppose that the Rishis did not really believe Indra or Agni to be the Supreme Deity but treated any god or every god as such for the nonce, perhaps that he might feel the more flattered and lend a more gracious ear for so hyperbolic a compliment? But why should not the foundation of Vedic thought be natural monotheism rather than this new-fangled monstrosity of henotheism? Well, because primitive barbarians could not possibly have risen to such high conceptions and, if you allow them to have so risen, you imperil our theory of the evolutionary stages of the human development and you destroy our whole idea about the sense of the Vedic hymns and their place in the history of mankind. Truth must hide herself, commonsense disappear from the field so that a theory may flourish! I ask, in this point, and it is the fundamental point, who deals most straightforwardly with the text, Dayananda or the Western scholars? ...
Dayananda goes farther; he affirms that the truths of modern physical science are discoverable in the hymns.... The ancient civilisations did possess secrets of science some of which modern knowledge has recovered, extended and made more rich and precise but others are even now not recovered. There is then nothing fantastic in Dayananda's idea that Veda contains truth of science as well as truth of religion. I will even add my own conviction that Veda contains other truths of a science the modern world does not at all possess, and in that case Dayananda has rather understated than overstated the depth and range of the Vedic wisdom.46
The Hidden Meanings
For instance, the word, asva, usually signifying a horse, is used as a figure of the Prana, the nervous energy, the vital breath, the half-mental, half-material dynamism which links mind and matter. Its root is capable, among other senses, of the ideas of impulsion, force, possession, enjoyment, and we find all these meanings united in this figure of the Steed of Life to indicate the essential tendencies of the Pranic energy. Such a use of language would not be possible if the tongue of the Aryan forefathers obeyed the same conventions as our modern speech or were in the same stage of development. But if we can suppose that there was some peculiarity in the old Aryan tongue as it was used by the Vedic Rishis by which words were felt to be more alive, less merely conventional symbols of ideas, more free in their transitions of meaning than in our later use of speech, then we shall find that these devices were not at all artificial or far-fetched to their employers, but were rather the first natural means which would suggest themselves to men anxious at once to find new, brief and adequate formulae of speech for psychological conceptions not understood by the vulgar and to conceal the ideas contained in their formulae from a profane intelligence
"Chanas" meant food but also it meant "enjoyment, pleasure"; therefore it could be used by the Rishi to suggest to the profane mind only the food given at the sacrifice to the gods, but for the initiated it meant the Ananda, the joy of the divine bliss entering into the physical consciousness and at the same time suggested the image of the Soma-wine, at once the food of the gods and the Vedic symbol of the Ananda.We see everywhere this use of language dominating the Word of the Vedic hymns. It was the great device by which the ancient Mystics overcame the difficulty of their task. Agni for the ordinary worshipper may have meant simply the god of the Vedic fire, or it may have meant the principle of Heat and Light in physical Nature, or to the most ignorant it may have meant simply a superhuman personage, one of the many "givers of wealth", satisfiers of human desire. How suggest to those capable of a deeper conception the psychological functions of the God? The word itself fulfilled that service. For Agni meant the Strong, it meant the Bright, or even Force, Brilliance. So it could easily recall to the initiated, wherever it occurred, the idea of the illumined Energy which builds up the worlds and which exalts man to the Highest, the doer of the great work, the Purohit of the human sacrifice. Or how keep it in the mind of the hearer that all these gods are personalities of the one universal Deva? The names of the gods in their very meaning recall that they are only epithets, significant names, descriptions, not personal appellations. Mitra is the Deva as the Lord of love and harmony, Bhaga as the Lord of enjoyment, Surya as the Lord of illumination, Varuna as the all-pervading Vastness and purity of the Divine supporting and perfecting the world. "The Existent is One," says the Rishi Dirghatamas, "but the sages express It variously; they say Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni; they call It Agni, Yama, Matariswan." [Rv. I.164.46.] The initiate in the earlier days of the Vedic knowledge had no need of this express statement. The names of the gods carried to him their own significance and recalled the great fundamental truth which remained with him always. But in the later ages the very device used by the Rishis turned against the preservation of the knowledge. For language changed its character, rejected its earlier pliability, shed off old familiar senses; the word contracted and shrank into its outer and concrete significance. The ambrosial wine of the Ananda was forgotten in the physical offering; the image of the clarified butter recalled only the gross libation to mythological deities, lords of the fire and the cloud and the storm-blast, godheads void of any but a material energy and an external luster. The letter lived on when the spirit was forgotten; the symbol, the body of the doctrine, remained, but the soul of knowledge had fled from its coverings. Taken from the Foreword of Hymns to the Mystic Fire There can be no doubt that in the beginning there was a worship of the Powers of the physical world, the Sun, Moon, Heaven and Earth, Wind, Rain and Storm etc., the Sacred Rivers and a number of Gods who presided over the workings of Nature. That was the general aspect of the ancient worship in Greece, Rome, India and among other ancient peoples. But in all these countries these gods began to assume a higher, a psychological function; Pallas Athene who may have been originally a Dawn-Goddess springing in flames from the head of Zeus, the Sky-God, Dyaus of the Veda, has in classical Greece a higher function and was identified by the Romans with their Minerva, the Goddess of learning and wisdom; similarly, Saraswati, a River Goddess, becomes in India the goddess of wisdom, learning and the arts and crafts: all the Greek deities have undergone a change in this direction -- Apollo, the Sun-God, has become a god of poetry and prophecy, Hephaestus the Fire-God a divine smith, god of labour. In India the process was arrested half-way, and the Vedic Gods developed their psychological functions but retained more fixedly their external character and for higher purposes gave place to a new pantheon. They had to give precedence to Puranic deities who developed out of the early company but assumed larger cosmic functions, Vishnu, Rudra, Brahma, -- developing from the Vedic Brihaspati, or Brahmanaspati, -- Shiva, Lakshmi, Durga. Thus in India the change in the gods was less complete, the earlier deities became the inferior divinities of the Puranic pantheon and this was largely due to the survival of the Rig-veda in which their psychological and their external functions co-existed and are both given a powerful emphasis; there was no such early literary record to maintain the original features of the Gods of Greece and Rome. This change was evidently due to a cultural development in these early peoples who became progressively more mentalised and less engrossed in the physical life as they advanced in civilisation and needed to read into their religion and their deities finer and subtler aspects which would support their more highly mentalised concepts and interests and find for them a true spiritual being or some celestial figure as their support and sanction. But the largest part in determining and deepening this inward turn must be attributed to the Mystics who had an enormous influence on these early civilisations; there was indeed almost everywhere an age of the Mysteries in which men of a deeper knowledge and self-knowledge established their practices, significant rites, symbols, secret lore within or on the border of the more primitive exterior religions. This took different forms in different countries; in Greece there were the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their occult lore and magic, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis. The preoccupation of the Mystics was with self-knowledge and a profounder world-knowledge; they found out that in man there was a deeper self and inner being behind the surface of the outward physical man, which it was his highest business to discover and know. "Know thyself" was their great precept, just as in India to know the Self, the Atman became the great spiritual need, the highest thing for the human being. They found also a Truth, a Reality behind the outward aspects of the universe and to discover, follow, realise this Truth was their great aspiration. They discovered secrets and powers of Nature which were not those of the physical world but which could bring occult mastery over the physical world and physical things and to systematise this occult knowledge and power was also one of their strong preoccupations. But all this could only be safely done by a difficult and careful training, discipline, purification of the nature; it could not be done by the ordinary man. If men entered into these things without a severe test and training it would be dangerous to themselves and others; this knowledge, these powers could be misused, misinterpreted, turned from truth to falsehood, from good to evil. A strict secrecy was therefore maintained, the knowledge handed down behind a veil from master to disciple. A veil of symbols was created behind which these mysteries could shelter, formulas of speech also which could be understood by the initiated but were either not known by others or were taken by them in an outward sense which carefully covered their true meaning and secret. This was the substance of Mysticism everywhere. For it is a fact that the tradition of a secret meaning and a mystic wisdom couched in the Riks of the ancient Veda was as old as the Veda itself. The Vedic Rishis believed that their Mantras were inspired from higher hidden planes of consciousness and contained this secret knowledge. The words of the Veda could only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld their hidden knowledge. In one of Vamadeva's hymns in the fourth Mandala (IV.3.16) the Rishi describes himself as one illumined expressing through his thought and speech words of guidance, "secret words" -- ninya vacamsi -- "seer-wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer" -- kavyani kavaye nivacana. The Rishi Dirghatamas speaks of the Riks, the Mantras of the Veda, as existing "in a supreme ether, imperishable and immutable in which all the gods are seated", and he adds "one who knows not That what shall he do with the Rik?" (I.164.39) He further alludes to four planes from which the speech issues, three of them hidden in the secrecy while the fourth is human, and from there comes the ordinary word; but the word and thought of the Veda belongs to the higher planes (I.164.46). Elsewhere in the Riks the Vedic Word is described (X.71) as that which is supreme and the topmost height of speech, the best and the most faultless. It is something that is hidden in secrecy and from there comes out and is manifested. It has entered into the truth-seers, the Rishis, and it is found by following the track of their speech. But all cannot enter into its secret meaning. Those who do not know the inner sense are as men who seeing see not, hearing hear not, only to one here and there the Word desiring him like a beautifully robed wife to a husband lays open her body. Others unable to drink steadily of the milk of the Word, the Vedic cow, move with it as with one that gives no milk, to him the Word is a tree without flowers or fruits. This is quite clear and precise; it results from it beyond doubt that even then while the Rig-veda was being written the Riks were regarded as having a secret sense which was not open to all. There was an occult and spiritual knowledge in the sacred hymns and by this knowledge alone, it is said, one can know the truth and rise to a higher existence. This belief was not a later tradition but held, probably, by all and evidently by some of the greatest Rishis such as Dirghatamas and Vamadeva. The tradition, then, was there and it was prolonged after the Vedic times. Yaska speaks of several schools of interpretation of the Veda. There was a sacrificial or ritualistic interpretation, the historical or rather mythological explanation, an explanation by the grammarians and etymologists, by the logicians, a spiritual interpretation. Yaska himself declares that there is a triple knowledge and therefore a triple meaning of the Vedic hymns, a sacrificial or ritualistic knowledge, a knowledge of the gods and finally a spiritual knowledge; but the last is the true sense and when one gets it the others drop or are cut away. It is this spiritual sense that saves and the rest is outward and subordinate. He says further that "the Rishis saw the truth, the true law of things, directly by an inner vision"; afterwards the knowledge and the inner sense of the Veda were almost lost and the Rishis who still knew had to save it by handing it down through initiation to disciples and at a last stage outward and mental means had to be used for finding the sense such as Nirukta and other Vedangas. But even then, he says, "the true sense of the Veda can be recovered directly by meditation and tapasya", those who can use these means need no outward aids for this knowledge. This also is sufficiently clear and positive. But even if an element of high spiritual knowledge, or passages full of high ideas were found in the hymns, it might be supposed that those are perhaps only a small factor, while the rest is a sacrificial liturgy, formulas of prayer and praise to the Gods meant to induce them to shower on the sacrificers material blessings such as plenty of cows, horses, fighting men, sons, food, wealth of all kinds, protection, victory in battle, or to bring down rain from heaven, recover the sun from clouds or from the grip of Night, the free flowing of the seven rivers, recovery of cattle from the Dasyus (or the Dravidians) and the other boons which on the surface seem to be the object of this ritual worship. The Rishis would then be men with some spiritual or mystic knowledge but otherwise dominated by all the popular ideas proper to their times. These two elements they would then mix up intimately in their hymns and this would account at least in part for the obscurity and the rather strange and sometimes grotesque jumble which the traditional interpretation offers us. But if, on the other hand, a considerable body of high thinking clearly appears, if there is a large mass of verses or whole hymns which admit only of a mystic character and significance, and if finally, the ritualistic and external details are found to take frequently the appearance of symbols such as were always used by the mystics, and if there are many clear indications, even some explicit statements in the hymns themselves of such a meaning, then all changes. We are in the presence of a great scripture of the mystics with a double significance, one exoteric the other esoteric, the symbols themselves have a meaning which makes them a part of the esoteric significance, an element in the secret teaching and knowledge. The whole of the Rig-veda, a small number of hymns perhaps excepted, becomes in its inner sense such a Scripture. At the same time the exoteric sense need not be merely a mask; the Riks may have been regarded by their authors as words of power, powerful not only for internal but for external things. A purely spiritual scripture would concern itself with only spiritual significances, but the ancient mystics were also what we would call occultists, men who believed that by inner means outer as well as inner results could be produced, that thought and words could be so used as to bring about realisations of every kind, -- in the phrase common in the Veda itself, -- both the human and the divine. But where is this body of esoteric meaning in the Veda? It is only discoverable if we give a constant and straightforward meaning to the words and formulas employed by the Rishis, especially to the key-words which bear as keystones the whole structure of their doctrine. One such word is the great word, Ritam, Truth; Truth was the central object of the seeking of the Mystics, a spiritual or inner Truth, a truth of ourselves, a truth of things, a truth of the world and of the gods, a truth behind all we are and all that things are. In the ritualistic interpretation this master word of the Vedic knowledge has been interpreted in all kinds of senses according to the convenience or fancy of the interpreter, "truth", "sacrifice", "water", "one who has gone", even "food", not to speak of a number of other meanings; if we do that, there can be no certitude in our dealings with the Veda. But let us consistently give it the same master sense and a strange but clear result emerges. If we apply the same treatment to other standing terms of the Veda, if we give them their ordinary, natural and straightforward meaning and give it constantly and consistently not monkeying about with their sense or turning them into purely ritualistic expressions, if we allow to certain important words, such as sravas, kratu, the psychological meaning of which they are capable and which they undoubtedly bear in certain passages as when the Veda describes Agni as kratur hrdi, then this result becomes all the more clear, extended, pervasive. If, in addition, we follow the indications which abound, sometimes the explicit statement of the Rishis about the inner sense of their symbols, interpret in the same sense the significant legends and figures on which they constantly return, the conquest over Vritra and the battle with the Vritras, his powers, the recovery of the Sun, the Waters, the Cows from the Panis or other Dasyus, the whole Rig-veda reveals itself as a body of doctrine and practice, esoteric, occult, spiritual, such as might have been given by the mystics in any ancient country but which actually survives for us only in the Veda. It is there deliberately hidden by a veil, but the veil is not so thick as we first imagine; we have only to use our eyes and the veil vanishes; the body of the Word, the Truth stands out before us. Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form of speech, have an inner meaning. When the seer speaks of Agni as "the luminous guardian of the Truth shining out in his own home", or of Mitra and Varuna or other gods as "in touch with the Truth and making the Truth grow" or as "born in the Truth", these are words of a mystic poet, who is thinking of that inner Truth behind things of which the early sages were the seekers. He is not thinking of the Nature-Power presiding over the outer element of fire or of the fire of the ceremonial sacrifice. Or he speaks of Saraswati as one who impels the words of Truth and awakes to right thinkings or as one opulent with the thought: Saraswati awakes to consciousness or makes us conscious of the "Great Ocean and illumines all our thoughts". It is surely not the River Goddess whom he is thus hymning but the Power, the River if you will, of inspiration, the word of the Truth, bringing its light into our thoughts, building up in us that Truth, an inner knowledge. The Gods constantly stand out in their psychological functions; the sacrifice is the outer symbol of an inner work, an inner interchange between the gods and men, -- man giving what he has, the gods giving in return the horses of power, the herds of light, the heroes of Strength to be his retinue, winning for him victory in his battle with the hosts of Darkness, Vritras, Dasyus, Panis. When the Rishi says, "Let us become conscious whether by the War-Horse or by the Word of a Strength beyond men", his words have either a mystic significance or they have no coherent meaning at all. In the portions translated in this book we have many mystic verses and whole hymns which, however mystic, tear the veil off the outer sacrificial images covering the real sense of the Veda. "Thought," says the Rishi, "has nourished for us human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens; it is the milch-cow which milks of itself the wealth of many forms" -- the many kinds of wealth, cows, horses and the rest for which the sacrificer prays; evidently this is no material wealth, it is something which Thought, the Thought embodied in the Mantra, can give and it is the result of the same Thought that nourishes our human things in the Immortals, in the Great Heavens. A process of divinisation, and of a bringing down of great and luminous riches, treasures won from the Gods by the inner work of sacrifice, is hinted at in terms necessarily covert but still for one who knows how to read these secret words, ninya vacamsi, sufficiently expressive, kavaye nivacana. Again, Night and Dawn the eternal sisters are like "joyful weaving women weaving the weft of our perfected works into the form of a sacrifice". Again, words with a mystic form and meaning, but there could hardly be a more positive statement of the psychological character of the Sacrifice, the real meaning of the Cow, of the riches sought for, the plenitudes of the Great Treasure. Under pressure of the necessity to mask their meaning with symbols and symbolic words -- for secrecy must be observed -- the Rishis resorted to fix double meanings, a device easily manageable in the Sanskrit language where one word often bears several different meanings, but not easy to render in an English translation and very often impossible. Thus the word for cow, go, meant also light or a ray of light; this appears in the names of some of the Rishis, Gotama, most radiant, Gavishthira, steadfast in the Light. The cows of the Veda were the Herds of the Sun, familiar in Greek myth and mystery, the rays of the Sun of Truth and Light and Knowledge; this meaning which comes out in some passages can be consistently applied everywhere yielding a coherent sense. The word ghrta means ghee or clarified butter and this was one of the chief elements of the sacrificial rite; but ghrta could also mean light, from the root ghr to shine and it is used in this sense in many passages. Thus the horses of Indra, the Lord of Heaven, are described as dripping with light, ghrtasnu [[Sayana, though in several passages he takes ghrta in the sense of light, renders it here by `water'; he seems to think that the divine horses were very tired and perspiring profusely! A Naturalistic interpreter might as well argue that as Indra is a God of the sky, the primitive poet might well believe that rain was the perspiration of Indra's horses.]] -- it certainly does not mean that ghee dripped from them as they ran, although that seems to be the sense of the same epithet as applied to the grain of which Indra's horses are invited to partake when they come to the sacrifice. Evidently this sense of light doubles with that of clarified butter in the symbolism of the sacrifice. The thought or the word expressing the thought is compared to pure clarified butter, expressions like dhiyam ghrtacim, the luminous thought or understanding occur. There is a curious passage in one of the hymns translated in this book calling on Fire as priest of the sacrifice to flood the offering with a mind pouring ghrita, ghrtaprusa manasa and so manifest the Seats ("places, or planes"), the three heavens each of them and manifest the Gods. [[This is Sayana's rendering of the passage and rises directly from the words.]] But what is a ghee-pouring mind, and how by pouring ghee can a priest manifest the Gods and the triple heavens? But admit the mystical and esoteric meaning and the sense becomes clear. What the Rishi means is a "mind pouring the light", a labour of the clarity of an enlightened or illumined mind; it is not a human priest or a sacrificial fire, but the inner Flame, the mystic seer-will, kavikratu, and that can certainly manifest by this process the Gods and the worlds and all planes of the being. The Rishis, it must be remembered, were seers as well as sages, they were men of vision who saw things in their meditation in images, often symbolic images which might precede or accompany an experience and put it in a concrete form, might predict or give an occult body to it: so it would be quite possible for him to see at once the inner experience and in image its symbolic happening, the flow of clarifying light and the priest god pouring this clarified butter on the inner self-offering which brought the experience. This might seem strange to a Western mind, but to an Indian mind accustomed to the Indian tradition or capable of meditation and occult vision it would be perfectly intelligible. The mystics were and normally are symbolists, they can even see all physical things and happenings as symbols of inner truths and realities, even their outer selves, the outer happenings of their life and all around them. That would make their identification or else an association of the thing and its symbol easy, its habit possible. Other standing words and symbols of the Veda invite a similar interpretation of their sense. As the Vedic "cow" is the symbol of light, so the Vedic "horse" is a symbol of power, spiritual strength, force of tapasya. When the Rishi asks Agni for a "horse-form cow-in-front gift" he is not asking really for a number of horses forming a body of the gift with some cows walking in front, he is asking for a great body of spiritual power led by the light or, as we may translate it, "with the Ray-Cow walking in its front." [[Compare the expression which describes the Aryan, the noble people as led by the light -- jyotir-agrah.]] As one hymn describes the recovery from the Panis of the mass of the rays (the cows, -- the shining herds, gavyam), so another hymn asks Agni for a mass of abundance or power of the horse -- asvyam. So too the Rishi asks sometimes for the heroes or fighting men as his retinue, sometimes in more abstract language and without symbol for a complete hero-force -- suviryam; sometimes he combines the symbol and the thing. So too the Rishis ask for a son or sons or offspring, apatyam,as an element of the wealth for which they pray to the Gods, but here too an esoteric sense can be seen, for in certain passages the son born to us is clearly an image of some inner birth: Agni himself is our son, the child of our works, the child who as the Universal Fire is the father of his fathers, and it is by setting the steps on things that have fair offspring that we create or discover a path to the higher world of Truth. Again, "water" in the Veda is used as a symbol. It speaks of the inconscient ocean, salilam apraketam, in which the Godhead is involved and out of which he is born by his greatness; it speaks also of the great ocean, maho arnah, the upper waters which, as one hymn says, Saraswati makes conscious for us or of which she makes us conscious by the ray of intuition -- pra cetayati ketuna. The seven rivers seem to be the rivers of Northern India but the Veda speaks of the seven Mighty Ones of Heaven who flow down from Heaven; they are waters that know, knowers of the Truth -- rtajna -- and when they are released they discover for us the road to the great Heavens. So, too, Parashara speaks of Knowledge and universal Life, "in the house of the waters". Indra releases the rain by slaying Vritra, but this rain too is the rain of Heaven and sets the rivers flowing. Thus the legend of the release of the waters which takes so large a place in the Veda puts on the aspect of a symbolic myth. Along with it comes the other symbolic legend of the discovery and rescue, from the dark cave in the mountain, of the Sun, the cows or herds of the Sun, or the Sun-world -- svar -- by the Gods and the Angiras Rishis. The symbol of the Sun is constantly associated with the higher Light and the Truth: it is in the Truth concealed by an inferior Truth that are unyoked the horses of the Sun, it is the Sun in its highest light that is called upon in the great Gayatri Mantra to impel our thoughts. So, too, the enemies in the Veda are spoken of as robbers, dasyus, who steal the cows, or Vritras and are taken literally as human enemies in the ordinary interpretation, but Vritra is a demon who covers and holds back the Light and the waters and the Vritras are his forces fulfilling that function. The Dasyus, robbers or destroyers, are the powers of darkness, adversaries of the seekers of Light and the Truth. Always there are indications that lead us from the outward and exoteric to an inner and esoteric sense. In connection with the symbol of the Sun a notable and most significant verse in a hymn of the fifth Mandala may here be mentioned; for it shows not only the profound mystic symbolism of the Vedic poets, but also how the writers of the Upanishads understood the Rig-veda and justifies their belief in the inspired knowledge of their forerunners. "There is a Truth covered by a Truth", runs the Vedic passage, "where they unyoke the horses of the Sun; the ten hundreds stood together, there was That One; [[Or, That (the supreme Truth) was one;]] I saw the greatest (best, most glorious) of the embodied gods." [[Or, it means, "I saw the greatest (best) of the bodies of the gods."]] Then mark how the seer of the Upanishad translates this thought or this mystic experience into his own later style, keeping the central symbol of the Sun but without any secrecy in the sense. Thus runs the passage in the Upanishad, "The face of the Truth is covered with a golden lid. O Pushan, that remove for the vision of the law of the Truth. [[Or, for the law of the Truth, for vision.]] O Pushan (fosterer), sole seer, O Yama, O Sun, O Child of the Father of beings, marshal and gather together thy rays; I see the Light which is that fairest (most auspicious) form of thee; he who is this Purusha, He am I." The golden lid is meant to be the same as the inferior covering truth, rtam, spoken of in the Vedic verse; the "best of the bodies of the Gods" is equivalent to the "fairest form of the Sun", it is the supreme Light which is other and greater than all outer light; the great formula of the Upanishad, "He am I", corresponds to That One, tad ekam, of the Rig- vedic verse; the "standing together of the ten hundreds" (the rays of the Sun, says Sayana, and that is evidently the meaning) is reproduced in the prayer to the Sun "to marshal and mass his rays" so that the supreme form may be seen. The Sun in both the passages, as constantly in the Veda and frequently in the Upanishad, is the Godhead of the supreme Truth and Knowledge and his rays are the light emanating from that supreme Truth and Knowledge. It is clear from this instance -- and there are others -- that the seer of the Upanishad had a truer sense of the meaning of the ancient Veda than the mediaeval ritualistic commentator with his gigantic learning, much truer than the modern and very different mind of the European scholars. There are certain psychological terms which have to be taken consistently in their true sense if we are to find the inner or esoteric meaning. Apart from the Truth, Ritam, we have to take always in the sense of "thought" the word dhi which constantly recurs in the hymns. This is the natural meaning of dhi which corresponds to the later word Buddhi; it means thought, understanding, intelligence and in the plural 'thoughts', dhiyah. It is given in the ordinary interpretation all kinds of meanings; "water", "work", "sacrifice", "food", etc. as well as thought. But in our search we have to take it consistently in its ordinary and natural significance and see what is the result. The word ketu means very ordinarily "ray" but it also bears the meaning of intellect, judgment or an intellectual perception. If we compare the passages in the Veda in which it occurs we can come to the conclusion that it meant a ray of perception or intuition, as for instance, it is by the ray of intuition, ketuna, that Saraswati makes us conscious of the great waters; that too probably is the meaning of the rays which come from the Supreme foundation above and are directed downwards; these are the intuitions of knowledge as the rays of the Sun of Truth and Light. The word kratu means ordinarily work or sacrifice but it also means intelligence, power or resolution and especially the power of the intelligence that determines the work, the will. It is in this latter sense that we can interpret it in the esoteric rendering of the Veda. Agni is a seer-will, kavikratu, he is the "will in the heart",kratur hrdi. Finally the word sravas which is constantly in use in the Veda means fame, it is also taken by the commentators in the sense of food, but these significances cannot be fitted in everywhere and very ordinarily lack all point and apposite force. But sravas comes from the root sru to hear and is used in the sense of ear itself or of hymn or prayer -- a sense which Sayana accepts -- and from this we can infer that it means the "thing heard" or its result knowledge that comes to us through hearing. The Rishis speak of themselves as hearers of the Truth, satyasrutah, and the knowledge received by this hearing as Sruti. It is in this sense of inspiration or inspired knowledge that we can take it in the esoteric meaning of the Veda and we find that it fits in with a perfect appositeness; thus when the Rishi speaks of sravamsi as being brought through upward and brought through downward, this cannot be applied to food or fame but is perfectly apposite and significant if he is speaking of inspirations which rise up to the Truth above or bring down the Truth to us. This is the method we can apply everywhere, but we cannot pursue the subject any further here. In the brief limits of this Foreword these slight indications must suffice; they are meant only to give the reader an initial insight into the esoteric method of interpretation of the Veda. But what then is the secret meaning, the esoteric sense, which emerges by this way of understanding the Veda? It is what we would expect from the nature of the seeking of the mystics everywhere. It is also, as we should expect from the actual course of the development of Indian culture, an early form of the spiritual truth which found its culmination in the Upanishads; the secret knowledge of the Veda is the seed which is evolved later on into the Vedanta. The thought around which all is centred is the seeking after Truth, Light, Immortality. There is a Truth deeper and higher than the truth of outward existence, a Light greater and higher than the light of human understanding which comes by revelation and inspiration, an immortality towards which the soul has to rise. We have to find our way to that, to get into touch with this Truth and Immortality, sapanta rtam amrtam, [[I.68.2.]] to be born into the Truth, to grow in it, to ascend in spirit into the world of Truth and to live in it. To do so is to unite ourselves with the Godhead and to pass from mortality into immortality. This is the first and the central teaching of the Vedic mystics. The Platonists, developing their doctrine from the early mystics, held that we live in relation to two worlds, -- a world of higher truth which might be called the spiritual world and that in which we live, the world of the embodied soul which is derived from the higher but also degraded from it into an inferior truth and inferior consciousness. The Vedic mystics held this doctrine in a more concrete and pragmatic form, for they had the experience of these two worlds. There is the inferior truth here of this world mixed as it is with much falsehood and error, anrtasya bhureh, [[VII.60.5.]] and there is a world or home of Truth, sadanam rtasya, [[I.164.47; also IV.21.3.]] the Truth, the Right, the Vast, satyam rtam brhat, [[Atharva XII.I.I.]] where all is Truth-Conscious, rtacit. [[IV.3.4.]] There are many worlds between up to the triple heavens and their lights but this is the world of the highest Light -- the world of the Sun of Truth, svar, or the Great Heaven. We have to find the path to this Great Heaven, the path of Truth, rtasya panthah, [[III.12.7; also VII.66.3.]] or as it is sometimes called the way of the gods. This is the second mystic doctrine. The third is that our life is a battle between the powers of Light and Truth, the Gods who are the Immortals and the powers of Darkness. These are spoken of under various names as Vritra and Vritras, Vala and the Panis, the Dasyus and their kings. We have to call in the aid of the Gods to destroy the opposition of these powers of Darkness who conceal the Light from us or rob us of it, who obstruct the flowing of the streams of Truth, rtasya dharah, [[V.12.2; also VII.43.4.]] the streams of Heaven and obstruct in every way the soul's ascent. We have to invoke the Gods by the inner sacrifice, and by the Word call them into us, -- that is the specific power of the Mantra, -- to offer to them the gifts of the sacrifice and by that giving secure their gifts, so that by this process we may build the way of our ascent to the goal. The elements of the outer sacrifice in the Veda are used as symbols of the inner sacrifice and self-offering; we give what we are and what we have in order that the riches of the divine Truth and Light may descend into our life and become the elements of our inner birth into the Truth, -- a right thinking, a right understanding, a right action must develop in us which is the thinking, impulsion and action of that higher Truth, rtasya presa, rtasya dhitih, [[I.68.3.]] and by this we must build up ourselves in that Truth. Our sacrifice is a journey, a pilgrimage and a battle, -- a travel towards the Gods and we also make that journey with Agni, the inner Flame, as our path-finder and leader. Our human things are raised up by the mystic Fire into the immortal being, into the Great Heaven, and the things divine come down into us. As the doctrine of the Rig- veda is the seed of the teaching of the Vedanta, so is its inner practice and discipline a seed of the later practice and discipline of Yoga. Finally, as the summit of the teaching of the Vedic mystics comes the secret of the one Reality, ekam sat, [[1.164.46.]] or tad ekam, [[X.129.2.]] which became the central word of the Upanishads. The Gods, the powers of Light and Truth are powers and names of the One, each God is himself all the Gods or carries them in him: there is the one Truth, tat satyam, [[III.39.5; also IV.54.4 and VIII.45.27.]] and one bliss to which we must rise. But in the Veda this looks out still mostly from behind the veil. There is much else but this is the kernel of the doctrine. The interpretation I have put forward was set out at length in a series of articles with the title "The Secret of the Veda" in the monthly philosophical magazine, Arya, some thirty years ago; written in serial form while still developing the theory and not quite complete in its scope or composed on a preconceived and well-ordered plan it was not published in book-form and is therefore not yet available to the reading public. It was accompanied by a number of renderings of the hymns of the Rig-veda which were rather interpretations than translations and to these there was an introduction explanatory of the "Doctrine of the Mystics". Subsequently there was planned a complete translation of all the hymns to Agni in the ten Mandalas which kept close to the text; the renderings of those hymns in the second and sixth Mandalas are now published in this book for the first time as well as a few from the first Mandala. But to establish on a scholastic basis the conclusions of the hypothesis it would have been necessary to prepare an edition of the Rig-veda or of a large part of it with a word by word construing in Sanskrit and English, notes explanatory of important points in the text and justifying the interpretation both of separate words and of whole verses and also elaborate appendices to fix firmly the rendering of keywords like rta, sravas, kratu, ketu,} etc. essential to the esoteric interpretation. This also was planned, but meanwhile greater preoccupations of a permanent nature intervened and no time was left to proceed with such a considerable undertaking. For the benefit of the reader of these translations who might otherwise be at a loss, this Foreword has been written and some passages [[In the present edition the entire essay has been reproduced. - Ed.]] from the unpublished "Doctrine of the Mystics" have been included. The text of the Veda has been given for use by those who can read the original Sanskrit. These translations however are not intended to be a scholastic work meant to justify a hypothesis; the object of this publication is only to present them in a permanent form for disciples and those who are inclined to see more in the Vedas than a superficial liturgy and would be interested in knowing what might be the esoteric sense of this ancient Scripture. This is a literary and not a strictly literal translation. But a fidelity to the meaning, the sense of the words and the structure of the thought, has been preserved: in fact the method has been to start with a bare and scrupulously exact rendering of the actual language and adhere to that as the basis of the interpretation; for it is only so that we can find out the actual thoughts of these ancient mystics. But any rendering of such great poetry as the hymns of the Rig-veda, magnificent in their colouring and images, noble and beautiful in rhythm, perfect in their diction, must, if it is not to be a merely dead scholastic work, bring at least a faint echo of their poetic force, -- more cannot be done in a prose translation and in so different a language. The turn of phrase and the syntax of English and Vedic Sanskrit are poles asunder; to achieve some sense of style and natural writing one has constantly to turn the concentrated speech of the Veda into a looser, more diluted English form. Another stumbling- block for the translator is the ubiquitous double entendre marking in one word the symbol and the thing symbolised, Ray and Cow, clear light of the mind and clarified butter, horses and spiritual power; one has to invent phrases like the "herds of the light" or "the shining herds" or to use devices such as writing the word horse with a capital H to indicate that it is a symbolic horse that is meant and not the common physical animal; but very often the symbol has to be dropped, or else the symbol has to be kept and the inner meaning left to be understood ; [[The Rishis sometimes seem to combine two different meanings in the same word; I have occasionally tried to render this double sense.]] I have not always used the same phrase though always keeping the same sense, but varied the translation according to the needs of the passage. Often I have been unable to find an adequate English word which will convey the full connotation or colour of the original text; I have used two words instead of one or a phrase or resorted to some other device to give the exact and complete meaning. Besides, there is often a use of antique words or turns of language of which the sense is not really known and can only be conjectured or else different renderings are equally possible. In many passages I have had to leave a provisional rendering; it was intended to keep the final decision on the point until the time when a more considerable body of the hymns had been translated and were ready for publication; but this time has not yet come.
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