{"id":1896,"date":"2013-07-13T01:38:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:38:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:09","slug":"35-xii-vishnu-the-all-pervading-godhead-vol-15-the-secret-of-veda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/15-the-secret-of-veda\/35-xii-vishnu-the-all-pervading-godhead-vol-15-the-secret-of-veda","title":{"rendered":"-35_XII Vishnu, the All-Pervading Godhead.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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XII <\/b>
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Vishnu, the All-Pervading Godhead
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Rig Veda I.154 <\/b>
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1. Of Vishnu now I declare the mighty works, who has measured out the earthly worlds and that higher seat of our self-accomplishing he supports, he the wide-moving, in the
\nthreefold steps of his universal movement.
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2. That Vishnu affirms on high by his mightiness and he is like
\na terrible lion that ranges in the difficult places, yea, his lair is on the mountain-tops, he in whose three wide movements
\nall the worlds find their dwelling-place.
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3. Let our strength and our thought go forward to Vishnu the
\nall-pervading, the wide-moving Bull whose dwelling-place is on the mountain, he who being One has measured all
\nthis long and far-extending seat of our self-accomplishing by only three of his strides.
\n  
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4. He whose three steps are full of the honey-wine and they perish not but have ecstasy by the self-harmony of their
\nnature; yea, he being One holds the triple principle and earth and heaven also, even all the worlds.
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5. May I attain to and enjoy that goal of his movement, the Delight, where souls that seek the godhead have the rapture;
\nfor there in that highest step of the wide-moving Vishnu is that Friend of men who is the fount of the sweetness.
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6. Those are the dwelling-places of ye twain which we desire as the goal of our journey where the many-horned herds of
\nLight go travelling; the highest step of wide-moving Vishnu shines down on us here in its manifold vastness.
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COMMENTARY <\/b>
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The deity of this hymn is Vishnu the all-pervading, who in
\nthe Rig Veda has a close but covert connection and almost an identity with the other deity exalted in the later religion,
\nRudra. Rudra is a fierce and violent godhead with a beneficent aspect which approaches the supreme blissful reality of Vishnu;
\nVishnu’s constant friendliness to man and his helping gods is shadowed by an aspect of formidable violence,
\n\t\t\t—”like a terrible
\nlion ranging in evil and difficult places”, —which is spoken of in terms more ordinarily appropriate to Rudra. Rudra is the
\nfather of the vehemently-battling Maruts; Vishnu is hymned in the last Sukta of the fifth Mandala under the name of Evaya
\nMarut as the source from which they sprang, that which they become and himself identical with the unity and totality of their
\nembattled forces. Rudra is the Deva or Deity ascending in the   <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage – 344<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\ncosmos, Vishnu the same Deva or Deity helping and evoking the powers of the ascent.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt was a view long popularised by European scholars that the greatness of Vishnu and Shiva in the Puranic theogonies was
\na later development and that in the Veda these gods have a quite minor position and are inferior to Indra and Agni. It has even
\nbecome a current opinion among many scholars that Shiva was a later conception borrowed from the Dravidians and represents
\na partial conquest of the Vedic religion by the indigenous culture it had invaded. These errors arise inevitably as part of the total
\nmisunderstanding of Vedic thought for which the old Brahmanic ritualism is responsible and to which European scholarship by
\nthe exaggeration of a minor and external element in the Vedic mythology has only given a new and yet more misleading form.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe importance of the Vedic gods has not to be measured by the number of hymns devoted to them or by the extent to
\nwhich they are invoked in the thoughts of the Rishis, but by the functions which they perform. Agni and Indra to whom the
\nmajority of the Vedic hymns are addressed, are not greater than Vishnu and Rudra, but the functions which they fulfil in the
\ninternal and external world were the most active, dominant and directly effective for the psychological discipline of the ancient
\nMystics; this alone is the reason of their predominance. The Maruts, children of Rudra, are not divinities superior to their
\nfierce and mighty Father; but they have many hymns addressed to them and are far more constantly mentioned in connection
\nwith other gods, because the function they fulfilled was of a constant and immediate importance in the Vedic discipline. On the
\nother hand, Vishnu, Rudra, Brahmanaspati, the Vedic originals of the later Puranic Triad, Vishnu-Shiva-Brahma, provide the
\nconditions of the Vedic work and assist it from behind the more present and active gods, but are less close to it and in appearance
\nless continually concerned in its daily movements. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBrahmanaspati is the creator by the Word; he calls light
\nand visible cosmos out of the darkness of the inconscient ocean and speeds the formations of conscious being upward to their
\nsupreme goal. It is from this creative aspect of Brahmanaspati   <\/span> <\/p>\n

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that the later conception of Brahma the Creator arose.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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For the upward movement of Brahmanaspati’s formations
\nRudra supplies the force. He is named in the Veda the Mighty One of Heaven, but he begins his work upon the earth and gives
\neffect to the sacrifice on the five planes of our ascent. He is the Violent One who leads the upward evolution of the conscious
\nbeing; his force battles against all evil, smites the sinner and the enemy; intolerant of defect and stumbling he is the most
\nterrible of the gods, the one of whom alone the Vedic Rishis have any real fear. Agni, the Kumara, prototype of the Puranic
\nSkanda, is on earth the child of this force of Rudra. The Maruts, vital powers which make light for themselves by violence, are
\nRudra’s children. Agni and the Maruts are the leaders of the fierce struggle upward from Rudra’s first earthly, obscure creation to the heavens of thought, the luminous worlds. But this violent and mighty Rudra who breaks down all defective formations and groupings of outward and inward life, has also a benigner aspect. He is the supreme healer. Opposed, he destroys;
\ncalled on for aid and propitiated he heals all wounds and all evil and all sufferings. The force that battles is his gift, but also
\nthe final peace and joy. In these aspects of the Vedic god are all the primitive materials necessary for the evolution of the
\nPuranic Shiva-Rudra, the destroyer and healer, the auspicious and terrible, the Master of the force that acts in the worlds and
\nthe Yogin who enjoys the supreme liberty and peace. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

For the formations of Brahmanaspati’s word, for the actions
\nof Rudra’s force Vishnu supplies the necessary static elements, —Space, the ordered movements of the worlds, the ascending
\nlevels, the highest goal. He has taken three strides and in the space created by the three strides has established all the worlds.
\nIn these worlds he the all-pervading dwells and gives less or greater room to the action and movements of the gods. When
\nIndra would slay Vritra, he first prays to Vishnu, his friend and comrade in the great struggle, “O Vishnu, pace out in thy
\nmovement with an utter wideness,” and in that wideness he destroys Vritra who limits, Vritra who covers. The supreme step
\nof Vishnu, his highest seat, is the triple world of bliss and light,  
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\n priyam padam<\/i>, which the wise ones see extended in heaven like
\na shining eye of vision; it is this highest seat of Vishnu that is the goal of the Vedic journey. Here again the Vedic Vishnu is the
\nnatural precursor and sufficient origin of the Puranic Narayana, Preserver and Lord of Love.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n In the Veda indeed its fundamental conception forbids the Puranic arrangement of the supreme Trinity and the lesser
\ngods. To the Vedic Rishis there was only one universal Deva of whom Vishnu, Rudra, Brahmanaspati, Agni, Indra, Vayu,
\nMitra, Varuna are all alike forms and cosmic aspects. Each of them is in himself the whole Deva and contains all the other
\ngods. It was the full emergence in the Upanishads of the idea of this supreme and only Deva, left in the Riks vague and undefined
\nand sometimes even spoken of in the neuter as That or the one sole existence, the ritualistic limitation of the other gods and the
\nprogressive precision of their human or personal aspects under the stress of a growing mythology that led to their degradation
\nand the enthronement of the less used and more general names and forms, Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra, in the final Puranic
\nformulation of the Hindu theogony. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n In this hymn of Dirghatamas Auchathya to the all-pervading
\nVishnu it is his significant activity, it is the greatness of Vishnu’s three strides that is celebrated. We must dismiss from our minds
\nthe ideas proper to the later mythology. We have nothing to do here with the dwarf Vishnu, the Titan Bali and the three divine
\nstrides which took possession of Earth, Heaven and the sunless subterrestrial worlds of Patala. The three strides of Vishnu in the
\nVeda are clearly defined by Dirghatamas as earth, heaven and the triple principle, tridhā<\/font>tu<\/i>. It is this triple principle beyond Heaven
\n\t\t\t or superimposed upon it as its highest level, nā<\/font>kasya pr<\/font>s<\/font>t<\/font>he<\/i>, which is the supreme stride or supreme seat of the all-pervading deity.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Vishnu is the wide-moving one. He is that which has gone abroad —as it is put in the language of the Isha Upanishad,
\n\t\t\t sa paryagat<\/i>, —triply extending himself as Seer, Thinker and
\nFormer, in the superconscient Bliss, in the heaven of mind, in the earth of the physical consciousness,
\n\ttredhā vicakramānah<\/i>.
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In those three strides he has measured out, he has formed in all their extension the earthly worlds; for in the Vedic idea the
\nmaterial world which we inhabit is only one of several steps leading to and supporting the vital and mental worlds beyond.
\nIn those strides he supports upon the earth and mid-world, —the earth the material, the mid-world the vital realms of Vayu,
\nLord of the dynamic Life-principle, —the triple heaven and its \t\t\t three luminous summits,
\ntrīni rocanā<\/font><\/i>. These heavens the Rishi
\ndescribes as the higher seat of the fulfilling. Earth, the mid-world and heaven are the triple place of the conscious being’s
\nprogressive self-fulfilling, trisadhastha<\/i>, earth the lower seat, the <\/p>\n

vital world the middle, heaven the higher. All these are contained in the threefold movement of Vishnu.1<\/font><\/sup>
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\n

But there is more; there is also the world where the
\nself-fulfilment is accomplished, Vishnu’s highest stride. In the second
\nverse the seer speaks of it simply as “that”; “that” Vishnu, moving yet forward in his third pace affirms or firmly establishes,
\npra stavate<\/i>, by his divine might. Vishnu is then described in language which hints at his essential identity with the terrible
\nRudra, the fierce and dangerous Lion of the worlds who begins in the evolution as the Master of the animal, Pashupati, and moves
\nupward on the mountain of being on which he dwells, ranging through more and more difficult and inaccessible places, till he
\nstands upon the summits. Thus in these three wide movements of Vishnu all the five worlds and their creatures have their habitation. Earth, heaven and “that” world of bliss are the three strides. Between earth and heaven is the Antariksha, the vital
\nworlds, literally “the intervening habitation”. Between heaven and the world of bliss is another vast Antariksha or intervening
\nhabitation, Maharloka, the world of the superconscient Truth of things.2<\/font><\/sup>
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The force and the thought of man, the force that proceeds from Rudra the Mighty and the thought that proceeds from
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1 Visnor nu kam vīryāni pra vocam, yah<\/i><\/font><\/font><\/i>
\np<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>rthiv<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>ni
\nvimame raj<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>msi;
\nyo askabhāyad<\/i> uttaram sadhastham, vicakramānas tredhorugāyah <\/i>
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2 \t\t\tPra tad visnuh stavate vīryena, mrgo na bh<\/i><\/font>ī<\/font><\/i>mah kucaro
\ngiristhāh; yasyorusu trisu vikramanesu, adhīksiyanti bhuvanāni vi<\/I><\/font>ś<\/font><\/i>v<\/I><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i> <\/I>
\n   <\/font>
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\nBrahmanaspati, the creative Master of the Word, have to go forward in the great journey for or towards this Vishnu who
\nstands at the goal, on the summit, on the peak of the mountain. His is this wide universal movement; he is the Bull of the world
\nwho enjoys and fertilises all the energies of force and all the trooping herds of the thought. This far-flung extended space
\nwhich appears to us as the world of our self-fulfilment, as the triple altar of the great sacrifice has been so measured out, so
\nformed by only three strides of that almighty Infinite.3<\/font><\/sup>
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n All the three are full of the honey-wine of the delight of
\nexistence. All of them this Vishnu fills with his divine joy of being. By that they are eternally maintained and they do not waste
\nor perish, but in the self-harmony of their natural movement have always the unfailing ecstasy, the imperishable intoxication
\nof their wide and limitless existence. Vishnu maintains them unfailingly, preserves them imperishably. He is the One, he alone
\nis, the sole-existing Godhead, and he holds in his being the triple divine principle to which we attain in the world of bliss, earth
\nwhere we have our foundation and heaven also which we touch by the mental person within us. All the five worlds he upholds.4
\n\t\t\t The tridhatu<\/i>, the triple principle or triple material of existence,
\nis the Sachchidananda of the Vedanta; in the ordinary language of the Veda it is vasu<\/i>, substance,
\n\tūrj<\/i>, abounding force of our being,
\npriyam <\/i>or mayas<\/i>, delight and love in the very essence of
\nour existence. Of these three things all that exists is constituted and we attain to their fullness when we arrive at the goal of our
\njourney.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n That goal is Delight, the last of Vishnu’s three strides. The
\nRishi takes up the indefinite word “tat<\/i>” by which he first vaguely indicated it; it signified the delight that is the goal of Vishnu’s
\nmovement. It is the Ananda which for man in his ascent is a world in which he tastes divine delight, possesses the full energy
\nof infinite consciousness, realises his infinite existence. There is
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n 3 Pra visnave śūsam etu manma, giriksita urugāyāya
\n\tvrsne; ya idam dīrgham prayatam<\/i>
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\n .. sadhastham, eko vimame tribhir it padebhih <\/font><\/i>
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\n
\n 4 Yasya tr<\/font>ī<\/font> p<\/font>ū<\/font>rn<\/font>ā<\/font>
\n\tmadhun<\/font>ā<\/font> padāni, aks<\/font>ī<\/font>yam<\/font>ā<\/font>n<\/font>ā<\/font>
\n\tsvadhay<\/font>ā<\/font> madanti; ya u tridh<\/font>ā<\/font>tu pr<\/font><\/font>thiv<\/font>ī<\/font>m uta dy<\/font>ā<\/font>m, eko d<\/font>ā<\/font>dh<\/font>ā<\/font>ra
\n\tbhuvanāni vi<\/font>ś<\/font>v<\/font>ā<\/font>.
\n  
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that high-placed source of the honey-wine of existence of which the three strides of Vishnu are full. There the souls that seek
\nthe godhead live in the utter ecstasy of that wine of sweetness. There in the supreme stride, in the highest seat of wide-moving
\nVishnu is the fountain of the honey-wine, the source of the divine sweetness, —for that which dwells there is the Godhead,
\nthe Deva, the perfect Friend and Lover of the souls that aspire to him, the unmoving and utter reality of Vishnu to which the
\nwide-moving God in the cosmos ascends.5<\/font><\/sup>
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

These are the two, Vishnu of the movement here, the eternally stable, bliss-enjoying Deva there, and it is those supreme dwelling-places of the Twain, it is the triple world of Sachchidananda which we desire as the goal of this long journey, this great upward movement. It is thither that the many-horned herds of
\nthe conscious Thought, the conscious Force are moving —that is the goal, that is their resting-place. There in those worlds, gleaming down on us here, is the vast, full, illimitable shining of the supreme stride, the highest seat of the wide-moving Bull, master
\nand leader of all those many-horned herds, —Vishnu the all-pervading, the cosmic Deity, the Lover and Friend of our souls,
\nthe Lord of the transcendent existence and the transcendent delight.6<\/font><\/sup>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

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5 Tad asya priyam abhi pātho aśyām, naro yatra devayavo madanti; urukramasya sa<\/i>
\nhi bandhur itth<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>,
\nvisnoh pade parame madhva utsah <\/i><\/font>
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6 T<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i> v<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>m
\nvāstūni uśmasi gamadhyai, yatra g<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>vo
\nbhūriśrngā ayāsah; atrāha tad<\/i>  <\/font>urugāyasya
\nvrsnah, paramam padam ava bhāti bh<\/font>ū<\/font>ri<\/font><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tPage – 350<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XII   Vishnu, the All-Pervading Godhead   Rig Veda I.154     1. Of Vishnu now I declare the mighty works, who has measured out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-the-secret-of-veda","wpcat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}