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The Fourth Hymn to Agni
THE DIVINE WILL, PRIEST, WARRIOR AND LEADER OF OUR JOURNEY
[The Rishi hymns the Divine Force that knows all the successive births of the soul on its ascending planes of existence and as priest of his upward and onward-journeying sacrifice gives him the purity, the power, the knowledge, the increasing riches, the faculty of new formation and spiritual productiveness by which the mortal grows into immortality. It destroys the enemy, the assailants, the powers of evil, enriches the soul with all they try to withhold, gives the triple peace and the triple fulfilment of the mental, vital and physical being and, labouring in the light of the supramental Truth, leads beyond, creating in us the world of immortal felicity.]
1. Strength, master over the lords of substance, towards thee I direct my delight in the march of my sacrifices. O King, by thee, increasing thy plenitudes, may we conquer our plenty and overcome the embattled assaults of mortal powers.
2. Strength unaging that bears the oblation is the Father of us, he in us pervades in being and is extended in light and is perfect in vision. Kindle altogether thy strengths of impulsion
Page – 405 that belong perfectly to the Master in our dwelling,1 form altogether thy inspirations of knowledge and turn them towards us.
3. Will that is the Seer and Lord of the creature in the human peoples, that is pure and purifies, with his surface of the mind's clarities, Will omniscient hold in you as the priest of your oblations, for this is he that wins for you your desirable boons in the godheads.
4. Becoming of one heart with the goddess of Truth-vision,2 labouring by the rays of the Sun of Light, cleave to us with love, O Strength: accept in heart thy fuel in us, O Knower of the Births, and bring to us the gods that they may eat of our offering.
5. Domiciled in our gated dwelling, the Guest loved and accepted, come to this our sacrifice in all thy knowledge; all these energies slay that set themselves to attack us and bring to us their enjoyments who make themselves our enemies.3
1 Agni is here the supreme Will dwelling in us, Father and Lord of our being; he is to act in us entirely by the divine will and knowledge. 2 Ila. 3 All hostile energies that attack the soul of man possess certain riches which he needs and has to wrest from them in order to arrive at his perfect plenitude.
Page – 406 6. Chase from us with thy blow the Divider, make a free space for thine own body! When, O Son of Force, thou art carrying the gods over to their goal,4 protect us in the plenitude of our possession, O Strength, O mightiest Deity.
7. May we order aright for thee our sacrifice by our words and by our offerings, O Will that purifiest, O happy flame of purity; in us pervade a felicity of all desirable boons, in us confirm all substance of our riches.
8. O Will, O Son of Force who dwellest in the three worlds5 of our session, cleave in heart to our sacrifice, cleave to our oblation. May we become perfect in our works in the godheads; protect us by thy peace triple-armoured.6
9. O Knower of the Births, bear us over every difficult crossing, yea, over all stumblings into evil as in a ship that travels over the waters. O Will, expressed by us with our obeisance of submission as the Eater of things, awake in us, be the fosterer of our embodyings.7
4 The divine powers in us are carried to their goal in the Truth and Bliss by the force of the Divine Will working in man. 5 Mental, vital, physical, the lower "births" all the knowledge of which the Divine Will, knower of our Births, possesses and through which it has to lead the ascending sacrifice to the supramental. 6 The peace, joy and full satisfaction in the mental, vital and physical being. 7 Not only the physical body, but the vital and mental sheaths, all the embodied states or forms of the soul.
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10. I meditate on thee with a heart that does the Work and, mortal, I call to the Immortal. O Will, O Knower of the Births, confirm victory in us; by the children of my works may I enjoy immortality.
11. O Knower of the Births, the man perfect in his works for whom thou createst that other blissful world,8 reaches a felicity that is peopled happily with his life's swiftnesses, his herds of Light, the children of his soul, the armies of his energy.9
8 The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting. 9 The constant Vedic symbols of the Horse, Cow, Son, Hero. The sons or children are the new soul-formations which constitute the divine Personality, the new births within us. The heroes are the mental and moral energies which resist the assaults of ignorance, division, evil and falsehood. The vital powers are the motive forces that bear us on our journey and are therefore symbolised by the Horse. The herds are the illuminations that come to us from the supramental Truth, herding rays of the sun of Light.
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