Canto 3The Doctrine of the Mystics

Book 2. cover for HMF=16.pdf

HE IMAGE of this sacrifice is sometimes that of a journey

or voyage; for it travels, it ascends; it has a goal — the

vastness, the true existence, the light, the felicity — and it

5is called upon to discover and keep to the good, the straight and

the happy path to the goal, the arduous yet joyful road of the

Truth. It has to climb, led by the flaming strength of the divine

will, from plateau to plateau as of a mountain, it has to cross

as in a ship the waters of existence, traverse its rivers, overcome

10their deep pits and rapid currents; its aim is to arrive at the

far-off ocean of light and infinity.

And this is no easy or peaceful march; it is for long seasons

a fierce and relentless battle. Constantly the Aryan man has to

labour and to fight and conquer; he must be a tireless toiler and

15traveller and a stern warrior, he must force open and storm and

sack city after city, win kingdom after kingdom, overthrow and

tread down ruthlessly enemy after enemy. His whole progress is

a warring of Gods and Titans, Gods and Giants, Indra and the

Python, Aryan and Dasyu. Aryan adversaries even he has to face

20in the open field; for old friends and helpers turn into enemies;

the kings of Aryan states whom he would conquer and overpass

join themselves to the Dasyus and are leagued against him in

supreme battle to prevent his free and utter passing on.

But the Dasyu is the natural enemy. These dividers, plun-

25derers, harmful powers, these Danavas, sons of the Mother

of division, are spoken of by the Rishis under many general

appellations. There are Rakshasas; there are Eaters and Devour-

ers, Wolves and Tearers; there are hurters and haters; there are

dualisers; there are confiners or censurers. But we are given also

301 This excerpt is reproduced from the 1946 edition of Hymns to the Mystic Fire. The

complete essay which appeared in the Arya is published in The Secret of the Veda with

Selected Hymns, Part Three. — Ed.

The Doctrine of the Mystics

many specific names. Vritra, the Serpent, is the grand Adversary;

35for he obstructs with his coils of darkness all possibility of divine

existence and divine action. And even when Vritra is slain by

the light, fiercer enemies arise out of him. Shushna afflicts us

with his impure and ineffective force, Namuchi fights man by

his weaknesses, and others too assail, each with his proper

40evil. Then there are Vala and the Panis, miser traffickers in

the sense-life, stealers and concealers of the higher Light and

its illuminations which they can only darken and misuse, —

an impious host who are jealous of their store and will not

offer sacrifice to the Gods. These and other personalities — they

45are much more than personifications — of our ignorance, evil,

weakness and many limitations make constant war upon man;

they encircle him from near or they shoot their arrows at him

from afar or even dwell in his gated house in the place of the

Gods and with their shapeless stammering mouths and their

50insufficient breath of force mar his self-expression. They must

be expelled, overpowered, slain, thrust down into their nether

darkness by the aid of the mighty and helpful deities.

The Vedic deities are names, powers, personalities of the uni-

versal Godhead and they represent each some essential puissance

55of the Divine Being. They manifest the cosmos and are manifest

in it. Children of Light, Sons of the Infinite, they recognise in

the soul of man their brother and ally and desire to help and

increase him by themselves increasing in him so as to possess his

world with their light, strength and beauty. The Gods call man

60to a divine companionship and alliance; they attract and uplift

him to their luminous fraternity, invite his aid and offer theirs

against the Sons of Darkness and Division. Man in return calls

the Gods to his sacrifice, offers to them his swiftnesses and his

strengths, his clarities and his sweetnesses, — milk and butter of

65the shining Cow, distilled juices of the Plant of Joy, the Horse

of the Sacrifice, the cake and the wine, the grain for the God-

Mind’s radiant coursers. He receives them into his being and

their gifts into his life, increases them by the hymns and the

wine and forms perfectly — as a smith forges iron, says the Veda

70— their great and luminous godheads.

All this Vedic imagery is easy to understand when once we

have the key, but it must not be mistaken for mere imagery. The

Gods are not simply poetical personifications of abstract ideas

or of psychological and physical functions of Nature. To the

75Vedic seers they are living realities; the vicissitudes of the human

soul represent a cosmic struggle not merely of principles and

tendencies but of the cosmic Powers which support and embody

them. These are the Gods and the Demons. On the world-stage

and in the individual soul the same real drama with the same

80personages is enacted.

To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be in-

voked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing

85godhead?

Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn

on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued

power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This

conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality,

90a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth

and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and

brings back in return their force and light and joy into our

humanity.

Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence

95self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force

instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth

to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force

which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our

world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and

100division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly

waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or

hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the

heaven of our mentality.

Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, —

105truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act

and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or

rather the manifester of all things — for creation is out-bringing,

The Doctrine of the Mystics

expression by the Truth and Will — and the father, fosterer, en-

110lightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds

of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and

releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to

the highest Beatitude.

Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine

115of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of

existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising

juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods;

for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.

Each of these primary deities has others associated with

120him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the

truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature,

there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast

purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked

falsehood, — and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love

125and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all

our thoughts, acts and impulses, — this is Mitra; an immortal

puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, — this

is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all

things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering,

130— this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya.

For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in

our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition

of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given

to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light,

135drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of

maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts

of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for

an easy and victorious ascension.

Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has

140for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who

by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high

dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help

mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind

Indra’s horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the

145Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver

of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the

Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force

that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of

self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its

150impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of

the supreme Consciousness.

There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and

Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively

executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the

155Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truth-

consciousness, — Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings

us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal

word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati,

its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama,

160the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern

of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations;

Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action

and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead

its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.

165All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by

Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods,

who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the

physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condi-

tion of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together

170by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other

deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan,

the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the

Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence

consummates our triple being; and more besides.

175The development of all these godheads is necessary to our

perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels,

— in the wideness of earth, our physical being and conscious-

ness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and

nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought

180forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the

heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind

throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming

The Doctrine of the Mystics

of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining

185Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes

to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable

surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute

being.

Three great Gods, origin of the Puranic Trinity, largest

190puissances of the supreme Godhead, make possible this devel-

opment and upward evolution; they support in its grand lines

and fundamental energies all these complexities of the cosmos.

Brahmanaspati is the Creator; by the word, by his cry he cre-

ates — that is to say he expresses, he brings out all existence

195and conscious knowledge and movement of life and eventual

forms from the darkness of the Inconscient. Rudra, the Violent

and Merciful, the Mighty One, presides over the struggle of

life to affirm itself; he is the armed, wrathful and beneficent

Power of God who lifts forcibly the creation upward, smites all

200that opposes, scourges all that errs and resists, heals all that is

wounded and suffers and complains and submits. Vishnu of the

vast pervading motion holds in his triple stride all these worlds;

it is he that makes a wide room for the action of Indra in our

limited mortality; it is by him and with him that we rise into

205his highest seats where we find waiting for us the Friend, the

Beloved, the Beatific Godhead.

Our earth shaped out of the dark inconscient ocean of exis-

tence lifts its high formations and ascending peaks heavenward;

heaven of mind has its own formations, clouds that give out

210their lightnings and their waters of life; the streams of the clarity

and the honey ascend out of the subconscient ocean below and

seek the superconscient ocean above; and from above that ocean

sends downward its rivers of the light and truth and bliss even

into our physical being. Thus in images of physical Nature the

215Vedic poets sing the hymn of our spiritual ascension.

That ascension has already been effected by the Ancients, the

human forefathers, and the spirits of these great Ancestors still

assist their offspring; for the new dawns repeat the old and lean

forward in light to join the dawns of the future. Kanwa, Kutsa,

220Atri, Kakshiwan, Gotama, Shunahshepa have become types of

certain spiritual victories which tend to be constantly repeated

in the experience of humanity. The seven sages, the Angirasas,

are waiting still and always, ready to chant the word, to rend the

cavern, to find the lost herds, to recover the hidden Sun. Thus

225the soul is a battlefield full of helpers and hurters, friends and

enemies. All this lives, teems, is personal, is conscious, is active.

We create for ourselves by the sacrifice and by the word shining

seers, heroes to fight for us, children of our works. The Rishis

and the Gods find for us our luminous herds; the Ribhus fashion

230by the mind the chariots of the gods and their horses and their

shining weapons. Our life is a horse that neighing and galloping

bears us onward and upward; its forces are swift-hoofed steeds,

the liberated powers of the mind are wide-winging birds; this

mental being or this soul is the upsoaring Swan or the Falcon

235that breaks out from a hundred iron walls and wrests from the

jealous guardians of felicity the wine of the Soma. Every shining

godward Thought that arises from the secret abysses of the heart

is a priest and a creator and chants a divine hymn of luminous

realisation and puissant fulfilment. We seek for the shining gold

240of the Truth; we lust after a heavenly treasure.

The soul of man is a world full of beings, a kingdom in

which armies clash to help or hinder a supreme conquest, a

house where the gods are our guests and which the demons

strive to possess; the fullness of its energies and wideness of its

245being make a seat of sacrifice spread, arranged and purified for

a celestial session.

Such are some of the principal images of the Veda and a very

brief and insufficient outline of the teaching of the Forefathers.

So understood the Rig Veda ceases to be an obscure, confused

250and barbarous hymnal; it becomes the high-aspiring Song of

Humanity; its chants are episodes of the lyrical epic of the soul

in its immortal ascension.

This at least; what more there may be in the Veda of ancient

science, lost knowledge, old psycho-physical tradition remains

255yet to be discovered.