THE NINTH HYMN TO AGNI  

DIVINE WILL ASCENDENT FROM THE ANIMAL TO MENTALITY

[The Rishi speaks of the birth of the divine Will by the working of the pure mental on the material consciousness, its involved action in man's ordinary state of mortal mind emotional, nervous, passionate marked by crooked activities and perishable enjoyments and its emergence on the third plane of our being where it is forged and sharpened into a clear and effective power for liberation and spiritual conquest. It knows all the births or planes of our existence and leads the sacrifice and its offerings by a successive and continuous progress to the divine goal and home.]

1. Thee the godhead mortals with the oblation seek, O Will; on thee I meditate who knowest the births; therefore thou earnest to the goal our offerings without a break.

2. Will is the priest of the oblation for man who gives the offering and forms the seat of sacrifice and attains to his home; for in him our works of sacrifice converge and in him our plenitudes of the Truth's inspirations.

3. True too it is that thou art born from the two Workings¹ like a new-born infant, thou who art the upholder of the human peoples. Will that leads aright the sacrifice.

4. True too it is that thou art hard to seize as a son of crookednesses² when thou devourest the many growths of delight like an Animal that feeds in his pasture.

5. But afterwards thy fiery rays with their smoky passion meet

¹The two Aranis or tinders by which the fire is struck out; the word can also mean workings and is related to arya. Heaven and Earth are the two Aranis which produce Agni; Heaven his father. Earth his mother.

²Literally, of the crooked ones, possibly the seven rivers or movements of our being winding through the obstructions of our mortal existence.

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together entirely; oh then, the third Soul¹ forges him in our heavens like a smith in his smithy; 'tis as if in the smith him- self that he whets him into a weapon of sharpness.²

6. O Will, may I by thy expandings and thy expressings of the Lord of Love, — yea, may we, as men assailed by enemies, so besieged by discords, pass through and beyond these stumblings of mortals.

7. Bring to us human souls that felicity, O Will, thou forceful one! May he shoot us forward on our path, may he nourish and increase us and be in us for the conquest of the plenitude. March with us in our battles that we may grow.

¹Trita āptya, the Third or Triple, apparently the Purusha of the mental plane. In the tradition he is a Rishi and has two companions significantly named eka, one or single, and dvita, second or double, who must be the Purushas of the material and the vital or dynamic consciousness. In the Veda he seems rather to be a god.

²The original is very compressed in style and suggestion beyond even the common Vedic pregnancy of structure and phrase, "When, oh, him Trita forges in heaven like a smith, sharpens as in the smith". In English we have to expand in order to bring out the meaning.

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