{"id":886,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=886"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:01","slug":"40-agni-the-divine-will-force-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\/40-agni-the-divine-will-force-vol-10-the-secret-of-the-veda-volume-10","title":{"rendered":"-40_Agni the Divine Will Force.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nHYMNS TO AGNI <\/font> <\/b><\/font>
\n 
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\nAGNI, THE DIVINE WILL-FORCE <\/b><\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n            T<\/b>he name of this flaming godhead, Agni, derives from a root
\nwhose quality of significance is a pre-eminent force or intensity
\nwhether in state, action, sensation or movement; but the
\nqualities of this essential significance vary. It means a burning
\nbrightness, whence its use for fire; it means movement and
\nespecially a curving or serpentine movement; it means strength
\nand force, beauty and splendour, leading and pre-eminence; it
\ndeveloped also certain emotional values which have perished in
\nSanskrit, but remain in Greek, angry passion on one side, on
\nthe other delight and love.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Vedic deity Agni is the first of the Powers, the pristine
\nand pre-eminent, that have issued from the vast and secret
\nGodhead. By conscious force of the Godhead the worlds have
\nbeen created and are governed from within by that hidden and
\ninner Control; Agni is the form, the fire, the forceful heat and flaming will of
\nthis Divinity. As a flaming Force of knowledge he descends to build up the
\nworlds and seated within them, a secret deity, initiates movement and action.
\nThis divine Conscious Force contains all the other godheads in itself as the nave
\nof a wheel contains its spokes. All puissance of action, strength
\nin the being, beauty of form, splendour of light and knowledge,
\nglory and greatness are the manifestation of Agni. And when he
\nis entirely delivered and fulfilled out of the envelope of the
\nworld’s crookednesses this deity of flame and force is revealed as
\nthe solar godhead of love and harmony and light, Mitra, who
\nleads men towards the Truth.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut in the Vedic cosmos Agni appears first as a front of
\ndivine Force compact of burning heat and light which forms,
\nassails, enters into, envelops, devours, rebuilds all things in
\nMatter. He is no random fire; his is a flame of force instinct
\nwith the light of divine knowledge. Agni is the seer-will in the
\nuniverse unerring in all its works. Whatever he does in his<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n

\npassion and power is guided by the light of the silent Truth within
\nhim. He is a Truth-Conscious soul, a seer, a priest and a worker,
\n\u2014 the immortal worker in man. His mission is to purify all that
\nhe works upon and to raise up the soul struggling in Nature from
\nobscurity to the light, from the strife and the suffering to love
\nand joy, from the heat and the labour to the peace and the bliss.
\nHe is then, the Will, the Knowledge-Force of the Deva; secret
\ninhabitant of Matter and its forms, visible and beloved guest of
\nman, it is he that guards the law of the Truth of things in the
\napparent aberrations and confusions of the world. The other
\ngods awake with the Dawn, but Agni wakes also in the Night;<\/font>
\n<\/font>he keeps his divine vision even in the darkness where there is
\nneither moon nor star; the flame of the divine will and know-
\nledge is visible even in the densest obscurity of inconscient or
\nhalf-conscient things. The infallible worker is there even when
\nwe see nowhere the conscious light of the guiding mind.<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nNo sacrifice is possible without Agni. He is at once the flame
\non the altar and the priest of the oblation. When man, awakened
\nfrom his night, wills to offer his inner and outer activities to the
\ngods of a truer and higher existence and so to arise out of mortality into the far-off immortality, his goal and his desire, it is this
\nflame of upward aspiring Force and Will that he must kindle;<\/font>
\n<\/font>into this fire he must cast the sacrifice. For it is this that offers
\nto the gods and brings down in return all spiritual riches, \u2014
\nthe divine waters, the light, the strength, the rain of heaven.
\nThis calls, this carries the gods to the house of the sacrifice.
\nAgni is the priest man puts in front as his spiritual representative
\n(purohita),<\/i> a Will, a Force greater, higher, more infallible than his
\nown, doing for him the works of the sacrifice, purifying the materials of the
\noblation, offering them to the gods whom it has summoned to the divine ritual,
\ndetermining the right order and season of its works, conducting the progress,
\nthe march of the sacrificial development. These and other various functions of
\nthe symbolic priesthood, represented in the outward sacrifice by different officiating priests, are discharged by the single Agni.<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAgni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great
\njourney against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and
\npurpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 359<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods.
\nEven for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the
\ndarkness of the human ignorance, this flame is a light which, when
\nit is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and
\nhigher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming
\nupward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the
\nvital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and
\nenters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above
\nwhere joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation
\nof the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial
\nsessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is true that here the light is concealed. Agni, like other
\ngods, figures here as a child of the universal parents. Heaven
\nand Earth, Mind and Body, Soul and material Nature. This
\nearth holds him concealed in her own materiality and does not
\nrelease him for the conscious works of the Father. She hides him
\nin all her growths, her plants, herbs, trees \u2014the forms full of her
\nheats, the objects that keep for the soul its delights. But at last
\nshe shall yield him up; she is the lower tinder, the mental being
\nis the upper tinder; by the pressure of the upper on the lower
\nthe flame of Agni shall be born. But it is by pressure, by a sort of
\nchurning that he is born. Therefore he is called the Son of Force.<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nEven when Agni emerges, he is outwardly obscure in his
\nworkings. He becomes, first, not a pure Will, though really he is
\nalways pure, but a vital Will, the desire of the Life in us, a smoke-obscured flame, son of our crookednesses, a Beast grazing in its
\npasture, a force of devouring desire that feeds upon earth’s
\ngrowths, tears and ravages all upon which it feeds and leaves a
\nblack and charred line to mark its path where there was the joy
\nand glory of earth’s woodlands. But in all this there is a work of
\npurification, which becomes conscious for the man of sacrifice.
\nAgni destroys and purifies. His very hunger and desire, infinite
\nin its scope, prepares the establishment of a higher universal
\norder. The smoke of his passion is overcome and this vital Will,
\nthis burning desire in the Life becomes the Steed that carries us
\nup to the highest levels, \u2014 the white Steed that gallops in the
\nfront of the Dawns.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nDelivered from his smoke-enveloped activity he burns high<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 360<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nin our skies, scales the ether of the pure mind and mounts upon
\nthe back of heaven. There on that rarer level its god Trita Aptya takes this
\nhigh-flaming force and forges it into a weapon of sharp- ness that shall destroy
\nall evil and ignorance. This Seer-Will becomes the guardian of the illuminations
\nof knowledge\u2014 herds of the Sun that graze in the pastures of life secure from
\nthe Sons of division and darkness, protected by the warrior force of the Will
\nthat knows. He attains the immortality and maintains unhurt its law of truth and joy in the human creature. In
\nthe end we overpass all crookednesses of falsehood and error, emerge from the
\nlow and broken and devious ground to the straight path and the high and open
\nlevels. Will and Knowledge become one; every impulse of the perfected soul
\nbecomes conscious of the essential truth of its own self-being, every act fulfils
\nit consciently, joyously, victoriously. Such is the godhead to
\nwhich the Vedic Fire exalts the Aryan who does the sacrifice.
\nThe Immortal conquers in the mortal and by his sacrifice. Man,
\nthe thinker, fighter, toiler, becomes a seer, self-ruler and king over
\nNature.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Veda speaks of this divine Flame in a series of splendid
\nand opulent images. He is the rapturous priest of the sacrifice,
\nthe God-Will intoxicated with its own delight, the young sage,
\nthe sleepless envoy, the ever-wakeful flame in the house, the
\nmaster of our gated dwelling-place, the beloved guest, the lord
\nin the creature, the seer of the flaming tresses, the divine child,
\nthe pure and virgin God, the invincible warrior, the leader on the
\npath who marches in front of the human peoples, the immortal
\nin mortals, the worker established in man by the gods, the un-
\nobstructed in knowledge, the infinite in being, the vast and flaming sun of the Truth, the sustainer of the sacrifice and discerner
\nof its steps, the divine perception, the light, the vision, the firm
\nfoundation. Throughout the Veda it is in the hymns which celebrate this strong and brilliant deity that we find those which are
\nthe most splendid in poetic colouring, profound in psychological
\nsuggestion and sublime in their mystic intoxication. It is as if
\nhis own flame and cry and light had seized with a burning ecstasy
\non the imagination of his poets.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAmid this crowd of poetical images there are some of a<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 361<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsymbolic character which describe the many births of the divine
\nFlame. They are recounted with an extraordinary variety. Sometimes he is the child of Heaven, the Father \u2014 Mind or Soul \u2014
\nand of Earth the Mother\u2014Body or material Nature; sometimes he is the flame born from these two tinders; sometimes
\nHeaven and Earth are called his two mothers, when the figure is
\nmore explicitly symbolic of the pure mental and psychical and
\nthe physical consciousness. He is also hymned as the child of
\nthe seven Mothers \u2014 for his complete birth is a result of the
\nmanifestation of seven principles which constitute our conscious
\nexistence \u2014 three spiritual of the infinite, three temporal of the
\nfinite, and one intermediate \u2014 and which are, respectively, the
\nfoundation of the seven worlds. Like other gods, he is said to be
\nborn of the Truth; the Truth is at once his birthplace and his
\nhome. Sometimes it is said that the Seven Beloveds brought
\nhim into birth for the Lord; and here the symbol seems to carry
\nback his source to that other principle of pure Bliss which is the
\noriginal cause of creation. He has one form of the solar light
\nand flame, another heavenly in the mind, a third which dwells
\nin the rivers. Night and Dawn are delivered of him, the Know-
\nledge and the Ignorance suckle alternately the divine Child in
\ntheir successive occupation of our heavens. And yet again it
\nis Matarishwan, Master of Life, who has planted him for the
\ngods secret in the growths of earth, secret in her creatures, man,
\nanimal and plant, secret in the mighty Waters. These Waters are
\nthe seven rivers of the luminous world that descend from heaven
\nwhen Indra, the God-Mind, has slain the enveloping Python;<\/font>
\n<\/font>they descend full of the light and
\nthe heavenly abundance, instinct with the clarity and the sweetness, the sweet milk and the
\nbutter and the honey. Agni’s birth here from these fostering
\nCows, these Mothers of Plenty, is the greatest of his terrestrial
\nbirths; fostered by them as the swift Mares of Life he grows at
\nonce to his divine greatness, fills all the planes with his vast and
\nshining limbs and forms their kingdoms in the soul of man into
\nthe image of a divine Truth.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe variety and flexible use of these images \u2014 they are
\nsometimes employed in a rapid succession in the same hymn \u2014
\nbelongs to a period of conscious symbolism in which the image<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 362<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhas not hardened and crystallised into the myth but is constantly
\na figure and a parable whose sense still lives and is still plastic in
\nthe originating imagination.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe actual legends about Agni, the developed parables as
\ndistinct from the less elaborate figure, are rare or non-existent \u2014
\nin remarkable contrast with the wealth of myth which crowds
\nabout the names of Indra and the Ashwins. He participates in
\nthe legendary actions of Indra, the Python-slaying, the recovery
\nof the herds, the slaying of the Dasyus; his own activity is universal but in spite of his supreme greatness or perhaps because of
\nit he seeks no separate end and claims no primacy over the other
\ngods. He is content to be a worker for man and the helpful
\ndeities. He is the doer of the great Aryan work and the pure and
\nsublime mediator between earth and heaven. Disinterested,
\nsleepless, invincible this divine Will-force works in the world as
\nan universal Soul of power housed in all beings, Agni Vaishwanara, the greatest, most powerful, most brilliant and most impersonal of all the cosmic Deities.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe name, Agni, is translated here Power, Strength, Will,
\nthe God-will, or the Flame according to the context. The names
\nof the Rishis are also given, wherever necessary, their significant
\nvalue, as in the first hymn Gavisthira which means the Steadfast
\nin the Light or the general name Atri. Atri means either the
\nEater or the Traveller; Agni himself is the Atri as he is also the
\nAngirasa; out of a devouring desire, experience and enjoyment of
\nthe forms of the world he advances to the liberated truth and
\ndelight of the soul in the possession of its infinite existence.<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 363<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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