{"id":856,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=856"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:50","slug":"12-the-image-of-the-oceans-and-the-rivers-vol-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10\/12-the-image-of-the-oceans-and-the-rivers-vol-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","title":{"rendered":"-12_The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nC<\/font>HAPTER <\/font>
\nX <\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n


\nThe Image of the Oceans and the Rivers
\n<\/font><\/b>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n                T<\/font>HE <\/font><\/b>three Riks of the third hymn of
\nMadhuchchhandas in which Saraswati has been invoked, run as
\nfollows, in the Sanskrit: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPāvakā naḥ<\/span>
\nsarasvatī vājebhir vājinīvatī;<\/i> <\/p>\n

yaj\u00f1am vaṣ<\/span>tu dhiyāvasuḥ<\/span>. <\/i> <\/p>\n

\nCodayitrī sūnṛ<\/span>tānām,
\ncetantī sumatīnām;<\/i> <\/p>\n

yaj\u00f1am dadhe sarasvatī. <\/i>\n<\/p>\n

\nMaho arṇ<\/span>aḥ<\/span> sarasvatī, pra cetayati ketunā;<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

dhiyo viśvā vi rājati.<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The sense of the first two verses is clear enough when we know
\nSaraswati to be that power of the Truth which we call inspiration.
\nInspiration from the Truth purifies by getting rid of all falsehood,
\nfor all sin according to the Indian idea is merely falsehood,
\nwrongly inspired emotion, wrongly directed will and action. The
\ncentral idea of life and ourselves from which we start is a falsehood and all else is falsified by it. Truth comes to us as a light, a
\nvoice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a new discernment of ourselves
\nand all around us. Truth of thought creates
\ntruth of vision and truth of vision forms in us truth of being,
\nand out of truth of being (satyam)<\/i> flows naturally truth of emotion,
\nwill and action. This is indeed the central notion of the
\nVeda. <\/p>\n

Saraswati, the inspiration, is full other luminous plenitudes,
\nrich in substance of thought. She upholds the Sacrifice, the
\noffering of the mortal being’s activities to the divine by awakening his
\nconsciousness so that it assumes right states of emotion
\nand right movements of thought in accordance with the Truth
\nfrom which she pours her illuminations and by impelling in it
\nthe rise of those truths which, according to the Vedic Rishis, liberate <\/p>\n

\n

\nPage \u2013 95<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

the life and being from falsehood, weakness and limitation
\nand open to it the doors of the supreme felicity. <\/p>\n

By this constant awakening and impulsion, summed up in
\nthe word, perception, ketu,<\/i> often called the divine perception,
\ndaivya ketu,<\/i> to distinguish it from the false mortal vision of things,
\n\u2014 Saraswati brings into active consciousness in the human being
\nthe great flood or great movement, the Truth-Consciousness itself,
\nand illumines with it all our thoughts. We must remember that
\nthis Truth-Consciousness of the Vedic Rishis is a supramental
\nplane, a level of the hill of being (adreḥ<\/span> sānu)<\/i> which is beyond our
\nordinary reach and to which we have to climb with difficulty. It
\nis not part of our waking being, it is hidden from us in the sleep
\nof the superconscient. We can then understand what Madhuchchhandas means when
\nhe says that Saraswati by the constant
\naction of the inspiration awakens the Truth to consciousness in
\nour thoughts. <\/p>\n

But this line may, so far as the mere grammatical form of it
\ngoes, be quite otherwise translated; we may take maho arṇ<\/span>aḥ<\/span><\/i> in
\napposition to Saraswati and render the verse "Saraswati, the
\ngreat river, awakens us to knowledge by the perception and
\nshines in all our thoughts". If we understand by this expression,
\n"the great river", as Sayana seems to understand, the physical
\nriver in the Punjab, we get an incoherence of thought
\nand expression which is impossible except in a nightmare or a lunatic asylum. But
\nit is possible to suppose that it means the great flood of
\ninspiration and that there is no reference to the great ocean of the
\nTruth-Consciousness. Elsewhere, however, there is repeated reference to the
\ngods working by the vast power of the great flood,
\nmahnā mahato arṇ<\/span>avasya<\/i>
\n(X.67.12) where there is no reference to
\nSaraswati and it is improbable that she should be meant. It is
\ntrue that in the Vedic writings Saraswati is spoken of as the
\nsecret self of Indra, \u2014 an expression, we may observe, that is
\nvoid of sense if Saraswati is only a northern river and Indra the
\ngod of the sky, but has a very profound and striking significance
\nif Indra be the illumined Mind and Saraswati the inspiration that
\nproceeds from the hidden plane of the supramental Truth. But
\nit is impossible to give Saraswati so important a place with regard
\nto the other gods as would be implied by interpreting the phrase <\/p>\n

\n

\nPage \u2013 96<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\nmahnā mahato arṇ<\/span>avasya<\/i>
\nin the sense "by the greatness of
\nSaraswati". The gods act, it is continually stated, by the power of
\nthe Truth, ṛ<\/span>tena<\/span>,<\/i> but Saraswati is only one of the deities of the
\nTruth and not even the most important or universal of them.
\nThe sense I have given is, therefore, the only rendering consistent
\nwith the use of the phrase in other passages. <\/p>\n

Let us then start from this decisive fact put beyond doubt by
\nthis passage \u2014 whether we take the great stream to be Saraswati
\nitself or the Truth-ocean \u2014 that the Vedic Rishis used the image
\nof water, a river or an ocean, in a figurative sense and as a psychological symbol, and let us see how far it takes us. We notice first
\nthat existence itself is constantly spoken of in the Hindu writings,
\nin Veda, Purana and even philosophical reasoning and illustration as an ocean. The
\nVeda speaks of two oceans, the upper
\nand the lower waters. These are the oceans of the subconscient,
\ndark and inexpressive, and the ocean of the superconscient,
\nluminous and eternal expression but beyond the human mind.
\nVamadeva in the last hymn of the fourth Mandala speaks of these
\ntwo oceans. He says that a honeyed wave climbs up from the
\nocean and by means of this mounting wave which is the Soma
\n(amśu)<\/i> one attains entirely to immortality; that wave or that
\nSoma is the secret name of the clarity (ghṛ<\/span>tasya,<\/i> the symbol of the
\nclarified butter); it is the tongue of the gods; it is the nodus
\n(nābhi)<\/i> of immortality. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSamudrād ūrmir madhumān udārad,<\/i> <\/p>\n

upāmśunā sam amṛ<\/span>tatvam ānaṭ<\/span>;<\/i> <\/p>\n

ghṛ<\/span>tasya nāma
\nguhyam yad asti,<\/i> <\/p>\n


\njihvā
\ndevānām amr<\/span>̣<\/span>tasya nābhih<\/span>̣<\/span>.<\/span><\/i> (IV.58.1)<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I presume there can be no doubt that the sea, the honey, the
\nSoma, the clarified butter are in this passage at least psychological
\nsymbols. Certainly, Vamadeva does not mean that a wave or
\nflood of wine came mounting up out of the salt water of the Indian Ocean or of the Bay of Bengal
\nor even from the fresh
\nwater of the river Indus or the Ganges
\nand that this wine is a
\nsecret name for clarified butter. What he means to say is clearly
\nthat out of the subconscient depths in us arises a honeyed wave of <\/p>\n

\n

\nPage \u2013 97<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Ananda or pure delight of existence, that it is by this Ananda
\nthat we can arrive at immortality; this Ananda is the secret being,
\nthe secret reality behind the action of the mind in its shining
\nclarities. Soma, the god of the Ananda, the Vedanta also tells us,
\nis that which has become mind or sensational perception; in other
\nwords, all mental sensation carries in it a hidden delight of existence and
\nstrives to express that secret of its own being. There-
\nfore Ananda is the tongue of the gods with which they taste the
\ndelight of existence, it is the nodus in which all the activities of
\nthe immortal state or divine existence are bound together. Vamadeva goes on to
\nsay, "Let us give expression to this secret name of
\nthe clarity, \u2014 that is to say, let us bring out this Soma-wine, this
\nhidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice
\nby our surrenderings or submissions to Agni, the divine Will or
\nConscious-Power which is the Master of being. He is the four-horned Bull of the worlds and when he listens to the soul-thought
\nof man in its self-expression, he ejects this secret name of delight
\nfrom its hiding-place." <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nVayam nāma pra. bravama ghṛ<\/span>tasya,<\/i> <\/p>\n

\nasmin yaj\u00f1e dhārayāmā namobhiḥ<\/span>;<\/i> <\/p>\n

upa brahmā śṛ<\/span>ṇ<\/span>avac
\nchasyamānam,<\/i> <\/p>\n

catuḥś<\/span>ṛ<\/span>ngo
\navamīd gaura etat.<\/i> (IV.58.2)\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let us note, in passing, that since the wine and the clarified butter
\nare symbolic, the sacrifice also must be symbolic. In such hymns
\nas this of Vamadeva’s the ritualistic veil so elaborately woven by
\nthe Vedic mystics vanishes like a dissolving mist before our eyes
\nand there emerges the Vedantic truth, the secret of the Veda. <\/p>\n

Vamadeva leaves us in no doubt as to the nature of the
\nOcean of which he speaks; for in the fifth verse he openly describes it as the
\nocean of the heart, hṛ<\/span>dyāt
\nsamudrāt,<\/i> out of which
\nrise the waters of the clarity, ghṛ<\/span>tasya dhārāḥ<\/span>;<\/i> the flow he says,
\nbecoming progressively purified by the mind and the inner heart,
\nantar hṛ<\/span>dā
\nmanasā pūyamānāḥ<\/span>.<\/i> And in the closing verse he speaks
\nof the whole of existence being triply established, first in the seat
\nof Agni \u2014 which we know from other Riks to be the Truth-
\nConsciousness, Agni’s own home, svam damam, ṛ<\/span>tam bṛ<\/span>hat, \u2014<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n
\n

\nPage \u2013 98<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

secondly, in the heart, the sea, which is evidently the same as
\nthe heart-ocean,\u2014thirdly, in the life of man. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nDhāman te viśvam bhuvanam adhiśritam, <\/i> <\/p>\n

\nantaḥ<\/span> samudre hṛ<\/span>dyantar āyuṣ<\/span>i.<\/i> (IV.58.11) <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The superconscient, the sea of, the subconscient, the life of the
\nliving being between the two, \u2014this is the Vedic idea of existence. <\/p>\n

The sea of the superconscient is the goal of the rivers of
\nclarity, of the honeyed wave, as the sea of the subconscient in
\nthe heart within is their place of rising. This upper sea is spoken
\nof as the Sindhu, a word which may mean either river or ocean; but in this hymn it clearly means ocean. Let us observe the remarkable
\nlanguage in which Vamadeva speaks of these rivers
\nof the clarity. He says first that the gods sought and found the
\nclarity, the ghṛ<\/span>tam,<\/i>
\ntriply placed and hidden by the Panis in the
\ncow, gavi.<\/i> It is beyond doubt that gauḥ<\/span><\/i> is used in the Veda in the
\ndouble sense of Cow and Light; the Cow is the outer symbol,
\nthe inner meaning is the Light. The figure of the cows stolen and
\nhidden by the Panis is constant in the Veda. Here it is evident that
\nas the sea is a psychological symbol \u2014 the heart-ocean, samudre
\nhṛ<\/span>di, \u2014<\/i> and
\nthe Soma is a psychological symbol and the clarified butter is a psychological
\nsymbol, the cow in which the gods
\nfind the clarified butter hidden by the Panis must also symbolise
\nan inner illumination and not physical light. The cow is really
\nAditi, the infinite consciousness hidden in the subconscient, and
\nthe triple ghṛ<\/span>tam<\/i>
\nis the triple clarity of the liberated sensation
\nfinding its secret of delight, of the thought-mind attaining to
\nlight and intuition and of the truth itself, the ultimate supramental vision. This
\nis clear from the second half of the verse
\n(IV.58.4) in which it is said, "One Indra produced, one Surya,
\none the gods fashioned by natural development out of Vena"; for Indra is the Master of the thought-mind, Surya of the supra-
\nmental light, Vena is Soma, the master of mental delight of existence, creator
\nof the sense-mind. <\/p>\n

We may observe also in passing that the Panis here must
\nperforce be spiritual enemies, powers of darkness, and not Dravidian <\/p>\n

\n

\nPage \u2013 99<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

gods or Dravidian tribes or Dravidian merchants. In the
\nnext verse Vamadeva says of the streams of the ghṛ<\/span>tam<\/i> that they
\nmove from the heart-ocean shut up in a hundred prisons (pens)
\nby the enemy so that they are not seen. Certainly, this does not
\nmean that rivers of ghee \u2014 or of water, either \u2014 rising from the
\nheart-ocean or any ocean were caught on their way by the wicked
\nand unconscionable Dravidians and shut up in a hundred pens
\nso that the Aryans or the Aryan gods could not even catch a
\nglimpse of them. We perceive at once that the enemy, Pani,
\nVritra of the hymns is a purely psychological conception and not
\nan attempt of our forefathers to conceal the facts of early Indian
\nhistory from their posterity in a cloud of tangled and inextricable
\nmyths. The Rishi Vamadeva would have stood aghast at such an
\nunforeseen travesty of his ritual images. We have not even
\nhelped if we take ghṛ<\/span>ta<\/i>
\nin the sense of water, hṛ<\/span>dya
\nsamudra<\/i> in
\nthe sense of a delightful lake, and suppose that the Dravidians
\nenclose the water of the rivers with a hundred dams so that the
\nAryans could not even get a glimpse of them. For even if the
\nrivers of the Punjab all flow out of one heart-pleasing lake, yet
\ntheir streams of water cannot even so have been triply placed in
\na cow and the cow hidden in a cave by the cleverest and most
\ninventive Dravidians. <\/p>\n

"These move", says Vamadeva, "from the heart-ocean,
\npenned by the enemy in a hundred enclosures they cannot be
\nseen; I look towards the streams of the clarity, for in their midst
\nis the Golden Reed. Entirely they stream like flowing rivers
\nbecoming purified by the heart within and the mind; these move,
\nwaves of the clarity, like animals under the mastery of their
\ndriver. As if on a path in front of the Ocean (sindhu,<\/i> the upper
\nocean) the mighty ones move compact of forceful speed but limited by the vital
\nforce (vāta, vāyu),<\/i> the streams of clarity; they are
\nlike a straining horse which breaks its limits, as it is nourished
\nby the waves". (IV.58.5-7) On the very face of it this is the
\npoetry of a mystic concealing his sense from the profane under
\na veil of images which occasionally he suffers to grow transparent to the eye
\nthat chooses to see. What he means is that the
\ndivine knowledge is all the time flowing constantly behind our
\nthoughts, but is kept from us by the internal enemies who limit <\/p>\n

\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 100<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

our material of mind to the sense-action and sense-perception
\nso that though the waves of our being beat on banks that border
\nupon the superconscient, the infinite, they are limited by the
\nnervous action of the sense-mind and cannot reveal their secret.
\nThey are like horses controlled and reined in; only when the
\nwaves of the light have nourished their strength to the full does
\nthe straining steed break these limits and they flow freely towards
\nThat from which the Soma-wine is pressed out and the sacrifice
\nis born. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYatra somaḥ<\/span> sūyate yatra yaj\u00f1o<\/i> <\/p>\n

ghṛ<\/span>tasya
\ndhārā abhi tat pavante.<\/i> (IV.58.9) <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This goal is, again, explained to be that which is all honey,
\n\u2014ghṛ<\/span>tasya dhārā
\nmadhumat pavante<\/i> (IV.58.10); it is Ananda,
\nthe divine Beatitude. And that this goal is the Sindhu, the superconscient
\nocean, is made clear in the last Rik, where Vamadeva
\nsays, "May we taste that honeyed wave of thine" \u2014 of Agni,
\nthe divine Purusha, the four-horned Bull of the worlds \u2014 "which
\nis borne in the force of the Waters where they come together". <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nApām anīke samithe ya ābhṛ<\/span>taḥ<\/span>,<\/i> <\/p>\n

tam aśyāma madhumantam ta ūrmim.<\/i> (IV.58.11) <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We find this fundamental idea of the Vedic Rishis brought
\nout in the Hymn of Creation (X. 129.3-5) where the subconscient is thus
\ndescribed. "Darkness hidden by darkness in the
\nbeginning was this all, an ocean without mental consciousness
\n… out of it the One was born by the greatness of Its energy. It
\nfirst moved in it as desire which was the first seed of mind. The
\nMasters of Wisdom found out in the non-existent that which
\nbuilds up the existent; in the heart they found it by purposeful
\nimpulsion and by the thought-mind. Their ray was extended
\nhorizontally; there was something above, there was something
\nbelow." In this passage the same ideas are brought out as in
\nVamadeva’s hymn but without the veil of images. Out of the
\nsubconscient ocean the One arises in the heart first as desire; he moves there
\nin the heart-ocean as an unexpressed desire of<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\nPage \u2013 101<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

the delight of existence and this desire is the first seed of what
\nafterwards appears as the sense-mind. The gods thus find out a
\nmeans of building up the existent, the conscious being, out of the
\nsubconscient darkness; they find it in the heart and bring it out
\nby the growth of thought and purposeful impulsion, pratīṣ<\/span>yā,<\/i> by
\nwhich is meant mental desire as distinguished from the first
\nvague desire that arises out of the subconscient in the merely
\nvital movements of nature. The conscious existence which they
\nthus create is stretched out as it were horizontally between two
\nother extensions; below is the dark sleep of the subconscient,
\nabove is the luminous secrecy of the superconscient. These are
\nthe upper and the lower ocean. <\/p>\n

This Vedic imagery throws a clear light on the similar symbolic images of
\nthe Puranas, especially on the famous symbol of
\nVishnu sleeping after the pralaya<\/i><\/span>
\non the folds of the snake Ananta
\nupon the ocean of sweet milk. It may perhaps be objected that
\nthe Puranas were written by superstitious Hindu priests or poets
\nwho believed that eclipses were caused by a dragon eating the
\nsun and moon and could easily believe that during the periods
\nof non-creation the supreme Deity in a physical body went to
\nsleep on a physical snake upon a material ocean of real milk and
\nthat therefore it is a vain ingenuity to seek for a spiritual meaning
\nin these fables. My reply would be that there is in fact no need
\nto seek for such meanings; for these very superstitious poets
\nhave put them there plainly on the very surface of the fable for
\neverybody to see who does not choose to be blind. For they have
\ngiven a name to Vishnu’s snake, the name Ananta, and Ananta
\nmeans the Infinite; therefore they have told us plainly enough
\nthat the image is an allegory and that Vishnu, the all-pervading
\nDeity, sleeps in the periods of non-creation on the coils of the
\nInfinite. As for the ocean, the Vedic imagery shows us that it
\nmust be the ocean of eternal existence and this ocean of eternal
\nexistence is an ocean of absolute sweetness, in other words, of
\npure Bliss. For the sweet milk (itself a Vedic image) has,
\nevidently, a sense not essentially different from the madhu,
\n<\/i>honey or sweetness, of Vamadeva’s hymn. <\/p>\n

Thus we find that both Veda and Purana use the same symbolic images; the
\nocean is for them the image of infinite and eter<\/span>nal <\/p>\n

\n
\n

\nPage \u2013 102<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

existence. We find also that the image of the river or flowing
\ncurrent is used to symbolise a stream of conscious being. We
\nfind that Saraswati, one of the seven rivers, is the river of inspiration
\nflowing from the Truth-Consciousness. We have the right
\nthen to suppose that the other six rivers are also psychological
\nsymbols. <\/p>\n

But we need not depend entirely on hypothesis and inference,
\nhowever strong and entirely convincing. As in the hymn of
\nVamadeva we have seen that the rivers, ghṛ<\/span>tasya dhārāḥ<\/span>,<\/i> are
\nthere not rivers of clarified butter or rivers of physical water,
\nbut psychological symbols, so we find in other hymns the same
\ncompelling evidence as to the image of the seven rivers. For this
\npurpose I will examine one more hymn, the first Sukta of the
\nthird Mandala sung by the Rishi Vishwamitra to the God Agni; for here he speaks of the seven rivers in language as remarkable
\nand unmistakable as the language of Vamadeva about the rivers
\nof clarity. We shall find precisely the same ideas recurring in
\nquite different contents in the chants of these two sacred singers. <\/p>\n

Page \u2013 103<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER X The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers                   THE three Riks of the third hymn of Madhuchchhandas in which Saraswati has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","wpcat-17-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","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=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}