In The Secret of
the Veda there is a chapter entitled The
Guardians of the Light in which Sri Aurobindo describes a few of the Vedic
gods, their characteristics and their functions in the transcendental scheme of
working. These gods of Truth and Light are there to support and take forward
the soul and the spirit of the mortal to the worlds of immortality with its plenty
of every kind in the divine expression and manifestation. They do so against
the forces of the Darkness and the Ignorance pulling him back into their
constant fold becoming thicker and thicker in the downward plunge. A darkness
wrapped in greater darkness is the exact opposite of the truth covered by the
greater truth and it is that greater truth which must enter into the greater
darkness of the divine unawareness. This manifesting Truth is the body of the
Sun-God or Savitŗ who is at once the True and the Right and the Vast. It is he
who loses forth in this creation.
“What does he create? First the worlds. ...” In the process we see him as Savitri the
Creator, Twashtri the Fashioner of things, Pushan the Nourisher and the
Increaser. “Savitri manifests himself through four great and active deities
Mitra, Varuna, Bhaga and Aryaman, the Lords of pure Wideness, luminous Harmony,
divine Enjoyment, exalted Power.” In The
Guardians of the Light Sri Aurobindo reveals the greatness of these four
luminous and mighty Lords which is freely paraphrased and rendered in the
following to get a general idea about the cosmic-transcendental working.
Varuna-Mitra-Aryaman-Bhaga—the
Four mighty and luminous Gods of the Veda
If Surya Savitri is the creator and Surya Pushan the
nourisher, there has to be birth and growth of all the gods in us for our
perfected fullness. Of these gods the four that stand out most prominently are:
Varuna, Mitra, Bhaga, Aryaman—the four great luminous Kings. What do these Great
do? There work in us is in relationship of That which we cannot know, That
which is transcendent, the One that is timeless and we existing in Time.
"It is neither today nor tomorrow; who knoweth That which is? When it is
approached, it vanishes from us." Therefore we have to grow towards it by
giving birth to the gods in ourselves, increasing their strong and radiant
forms, building up their divine bodies. This new marvellous birth and
self-building is the true nature of the sacrifice,—the sacrifice through which
there is the awakening of our consciousness to immortality, amŗtasya cetanam. These gods
perform the sacrifice for us and in us.
The sons of the Infinite have a twofold birth. They are
born above in the divine Truth as creators of the worlds and guardians of the
divine Law; they are born also here in the world itself and in man as cosmic
and human powers of the Divine. But in man himself the gods are conscious
psychological powers. "Will-powers, they do the works of will; they are
the thinkings in our hearts; they are the lords of delight who take delight;
they travel in all the directions of the thought." Without them the soul
of man cannot distinguish its right nor its left; it discerns not what is in
front of it nor what is behind, the things of foolishness or the things of
wisdom. Only if led by them can it reach and enjoy "the fearless
Light". For this the gods are constantly described as the "Men"
or human powers (mānuşāḥ, narāḥ); they are our "luminous
seers", "our heroes", "our lords of plenitude". They
conduct the sacrifice in their human capacity (manuṣvat) as well as receive it in their high divine being. Agni
is the priest of the oblation, Brihaspati the priest of the word.
But the nature of these inner powers is always divine
and therefore their tendency is upward to Light and immortality and infinity.
They are "the Sons of the Infinite, one in their will and work, pure,
purified in the streams, free from crookedness, free from defect, unhurt in
their being. Wide, profound, unconquered, conquering, with many organs of
vision, they behold within the crooked things and the perfect; all is near to
the Kings, even the things that are highest. Sons of the Infinite, they dwell
in the movement of the world and uphold it; gods, they are the guardians of all
that becomes as universe; far-thoughted, full of the Truth, they guard the
Might." They are kings of the universe and of man and of all its peoples (nŗpati, viśpati), self-emperors, world-emperors. They are the
"Immortals who know the Truth." Thus free from the falsehood and the
crookedness, these inner divinities rise in us to their natural level, home,
plane, world. "Of a double birth they are true in their being and lay hold
on the Truth, very vast and one in the Light and are possessed of its luminous
world."
There is always the image of the path and the journey,
the Path of the Truth on which we are led forward by a divine leading.
"Easy of going is your path, O Aryaman, O Mitra, it is thornless, O
Varuna, and perfect." Always the goal is the felicity, the wide bliss and
peace, the unbroken Light, the vast Truth, the Immortality.
It is in the image of Swar, the world of the divine
Truth that the goal is figured. The aspiration is, "Let us reach the Light
that is of Swar, the Light which none can tear asunder." Swar is the
great, inviolable birth of Mitra, Varuna, Aryaman which is contained in the
luminous heavens of the soul. That is the triple world in which the uplifted
consciousness of man reflects the three divine principles of being, its
infinite existence, its infinite conscious-force, its infinite bliss, tridhātu.
Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman with Bhaga as a consummating
fourth,—they dominate the thought of the Vedic Rishis in their culminant
aspiration to the perfect truth and infinity. They have one light, one work;
they perfect in us one indivisible Truth. It is this union of all the godheads
in our consenting universality, vaiśvadevyam,
that is the objective of the Vedic thought. Still the union comes about by a
combination of their powers and therefore each has in it his own proper nature
and function. The function of the Four is to build up the whole divine state
into its perfection by the natural interaction of its four essential elements.
The Divine is existence all-embracing, infinite and pure; Varuna brings to us
the infinite oceanic space of the divine soul and its ethereal, elemental
purity. The Divine is boundless consciousness, perfect in knowledge, pure and
therefore luminously right in its discernment of things, perfectly harmonious
and happy in its concordance of their law and nature; Mitra brings us this
light and harmony, this right distinction and relation and friendly concord,
the happy laws of the liberated soul concordant with itself and the Truth in
all its rich thought, shining actions and thousandfold enjoyment. The Divine is
in its own being pure and perfect power and in us the eternal upward tendency
in things to their source and truth; Aryaman brings to us this mighty strength
and perfectly-guided happy inner upsurging. The Divine is the pure, the
faultless, the all-embracing, the untroubled ecstasy that enjoys its own
infinite being and enjoys equally all that it creates within itself; Bhaga
gives us sovereignly that ecstasy of the liberated soul, its free and unfallen
possession of itself and the world.
This quaternary is practically the later essential
trinity of Sachchidananda,—Existence, Consciousness, Bliss with self-awareness
and self-force. Chit and Tapas, for double terms of Consciousness; but it is
here translated into its cosmic terms and equivalents. Varuna the King has his
foundation in the all-pervading purity of Sat; Mitra the Happy and the Mighty,
most beloved of the Gods, in the all-uniting light of Chit; many-charioted
Aryaman in the movement and all-discerning force of Tapas; Bhaga in the
all-embracing joy of Ananda. Yet as all these things form one in the realised
godhead.
This nature of the difference between the Four explains
their varying prominence in the Veda. Varuna is easily the first and most
considerable of them all, for realisation of infinite existence is the basis of
the Vedic perfection. Mitra is generally hymned in union with Varuna. The power
of Aryaman is hardly viewed as an independent principle. He is invoked always
in conjunction with other gods. Bhaga on the other hand is the crown of our
movement to the possession of the hidden divine Truth of our existence. Bhaga
is Savitri himself; the All-Enjoyer is the Creator fulfilled in the divine
purpose of his creation. Therefore he is the result more than the agent, or
else the last agent of all, the possessor more than the giver of our spiritual
plenitude.
The word Varuna is from a root which means to surround,
cover or pervade. From these significances of the name there emerged before the
poetic eye of the ancient mystics images that are our nearest concrete
representation of the Infinite. They saw God as a highest covering Heaven, felt
divine existence an encompassing ocean, lived in its boundless presence as in a
pure and pervading ether. Varuna is this highest heaven, this soul-surrounding
ocean, this ethereal possession and infinite pervasion.
The same root had given them an appellation for the
dark Coverer, the adversary Vritra; to obstruct and resist, screen or hedge,
besiege and hem in are also some of its many kindred senses. But dark Vritra is
the thick cloud and the enveloping shadow. His knowledge—and he too has a
knowledge, a Maya,—is the sense of limited being and the hiding away in
subconscient Night all the rest of the rich and vast existence that should be
ours. For this negation and contrary power of creative knowledge he stands up
stiffly against the Gods. Varuna by his wide being and ample vision rolls back
these limits. Surrounding us with light his possession reveals what dark
Vritra's obsession had withheld and obscured.
Varuna is the highest covering ether and all oceans, all
expanses are his; every infinity is his property and estate. The ancient
concept of creation conceived of the stuff of things as a formless expanse
of waters covered over in the beginning by darkness out of which day and night
and heaven and earth and all worlds have emerged. "Darkness," says
the Hebrew Genesis, "was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God
moved on the waters." By the word he divided the waters with Heaven, the
firmament; so that now there are two waters, one earthly below the firmament,
the other heavenly above. The mystics seized on this universal image and
crowded into it their opulent psychological values. Instead of one firmament
they saw two, the earthly and the celestial; instead of two oceans, three
spread out before their unsealed vision.
Below them they looked down on an unfathomable night
and surging obscurity, darkness hidden within darkness, the inconscient waters
from which by the mighty energy of the One their existence had arisen. Above
them they beheld a remote ocean of light and sweetness, a highest ether. One of
these was the dense dark ether, an unformed material inconscient Non-existence;
the other a luminous ethereal All-conscient and the absolute of existence.
These two were the dark and the shining extension of the One.
Between these two unknown infinities, they saw around
them, before their eyes, below, above, a third sea of ever-developing conscious
being, a sort of boundless wave. Of it
they spoke by a hardy metaphor as climbing up or flowing up beyond heaven to
the supreme seas. It is this perilous ocean which we have to navigate.
Varuna must teach with his Right and Truth our limited
will and judgment, if we would escape such perils: we must "ascend the
divine ship, the blameless and well-oared vessel that sinketh not, by which may
we voyage safe beyond sin and evil". Into this intermediate ocean, above
our earth, the sun of Knowledge rises out of the inconscient cave and voyage
led by the seers. Here is ocean superimposed upon ocean, this world a series of
heights that are depths and a mutual involution and evolution of vastnesses
that have no ending: ether below rises to ever more luminous ether above, every
stratum of consciousness rests upon many inferior and aspires to many higher
strata.
But beyond our farthest skies is the supreme ocean of
light and expanse of the highest superconscient ether. That is the truth of
Varuna.
All these oceans are his, even to the Inconscient and
its nights so opposite in their seeming to his nature which is that of the
extended radiance of one eternal, vast sun of happy light and truth.
"Luminous Varuna has embraced the nights; he holds the Dawns within him by
his creative knowledge; visioned, he is around every object."
Ignorance has in its substantial effect the appearance
of a triple cord of limited mind, inefficient life, obscure physical animality,
the three ropes with which Shunahshepa in the parable was bound as a victim to
the sacrificial post. When Varuna comes and sunders this threefold restraint,
we are freed towards riches and immortality. Uplifted, the real man arises to
his true kingship in the undivided being. The upper cord flies upward releasing
the wings of the Soul into superconscient heights; the middle cord parts both
ways and all ways, the constrained life breaking out into a happy breadth of
existence; the lower cord collapses downward taking with it the alloy of our
physical being to disappear and be dissolved in the stuff of the Inconscient.
Varuna has a manifold energy, the hero's, and wide
expression, the thinker's; he comes to us as a godhead of force and in the same
movement we find in him a soul of wide vision. He is svarāṭ and samrāṭ,
self-ruler and emperor. Varuna is described in the Vedic symbol as a vast
thinker and guardian of the Truth. He is the ethereal, oceanic, infinite King
of wide being, wide knowledge and wide might, a manifestation of the one God's
active omniscience and omnipotence, a mighty guardian of the Truth, punisher
and healer. Earth and heaven and every world are only his provinces.
If the purity, infinity, strong royalty of Varuna are
the framework and substance of the divine being, Mitra is its beauty and
perfection. To be infinite, pure, and a master-soul must be the nature of the
divine man because so he shares in the nature of God. But the Vedic ideal
envisions noble and rich contents in this vast continent; these have to be
ordered by Mitra in the right harmony of its utility and its equipment.
Varuna is the godhead of plenitude as well as infinity.
Still he acts as the guardian of the Truth rather than constitutes it, or
constitutes rather through the action of other godheads who avail themselves of
his wideness and surging force. Of this Mitra is the harmoniser, the builder,
the constituent Light, the god who effects the right unity of which Varuna is
the substance and the infinitely self-enlarging periphery. In them we find and
by them we gain harmony in largeness. Madhuchchhandas gives us the keynote of
their united divinity. "Mitra I call, the pure in judgment, and Varuna,
devourer of the foe. By Truth, Mitra and Varuna, Truth-increasers who get to
the touch of Truth, you attain to a vast working of the will. Seers, dwellers
in the wideness, born with many births they uphold the judgment at its
works."
The name Mitra comes from a root which has given us the
ordinary Sanskrit word for friend, mitra,
as well as the archaic Vedic word for bliss, mayas. Upon the sense of the word mitra, the Friend, the Vedic
poets continually rely for their covert key to the psychological function of
this god. For them Mitra was essentially the Lord of Love, a divine friend, a
kindly helper of men and immortals, he the most beloved of the gods.
The Vedic seers looked at Love from above, from its
source and root, and saw it and received it in their humanity as an outflowing
of the divine Delight. The Taittiriya Upanishad expounding this spiritual and
cosmic bliss of the godhead, Vedantic Ananda, Vedic Mayas, says of it,
"Love is its head". But the word it chooses for Love, priyam, means properly the
delightfulness of the objects of the soul's inner pleasure and satisfaction.
The Vedic singers used the same psychology. They couple mayas and prayas,—mayas, the principle of inner felicity
independent of all objects, prayas,
its outflowing as the delight and pleasure of the soul in objects and beings.
This divine felicity brings with it the boon of a pure possession and sinless
pleasure in all things founded upon the Truth and Right in the freedom of a
large universality.
Mitra is the most beloved of the gods because he brings
within our reach this divine enjoyment and leads us to happiness. Varuna makes
for strength; we discover a force and a will vast in purity; Aryaman the
Aspirer is secured in the amplitude of his might by Varuna's infinity; he does
his works and effects his movement by the power of Varuna's universality. Mitra
makes for bliss,—Bhaga the Enjoyer is established in a divine enjoyment by the
harmony of Mitra, by his purifying light of right discernment, his law. It is
said of Mitra that all perfected souls adhere or are firmly fixed "to the
bliss of this Beloved in whom there is no hurt". All mortal delight has
its mortal danger; but the immortal light and law secures the soul of man in a
fearless joy. That mortal, says Vishwamitra, is possessed of prayas, the soul's satisfaction in its
objects; such a soul cannot be slain, no evil can take possession of it from
near or from afar.
Mitra's is the principle of harmony by which the
manifold workings of the Truth agree together in a perfectly wedded union. He
is born in us as a blissful ordainer of things. Mitra holds up heaven and earth
and looks sleeplessly upon the worlds and the peoples, and his vigilant and
perfect ordinances create in us a happy rightness of mind and feeling,—sumati, a state of grace,—which becomes
for us an unhurt abiding-place.
Mitra possesses a light which is full of a varied
inspiration, a richly diversified hearing of the knowledge. In the wideness of
existence which he enjoys in common with Varuna, he acquires possession of
heaven by the greatness of the being of the Truth and enlarges his conquering
mastery over the earth by these inspirations or hearings of its Knowledge. He
fulfils his harmony in the wideness and purity of Varuna. Theirs are the
supreme statuses or planes of the soul; it is the bliss of Mitra and Varuna
that has to increase in us. They are the two Sons perfect in their birth from
of old who support the law of our action. They are the guardians of Truth,
possessed of its law in the supreme ether. Swar is their golden home and
birth-place.
Mitra and Varuna in their Knowledge are seers of Swar.
They proclaim the vast Truth of which they are possessed. By Truth they come to
the Truth, they nourish our thoughts, they open the eye of consciousness to all
wisdom. Thus all-seeing and all-knowing they by the law, by the Maya of the
mighty Lord, guard our actions, even as they govern the whole world in the
power of the Truth. That Maya is established in the heavens, it ranges there as
a Sun of light. They make heaven to rain down by the Maya of the Mighty Lord.
And that celestial rain, vŗştim vām,
is the wealth of the spiritual felicity which the seers desire; it is the
immortality.
Aryaman is the third of the four great solar godheads.
No separate hymn is addressed to him and, if his name occurs not frequently, it
is in scattered verses. Most often he is invoked by his bare name along with
Mitra and Varuna or in the larger group of other kindred deities. Still, his
one chief and characteristic action emerges accompanied by the epithets of the
Lords of the Truth, expressive of Knowledge, Joy, Infinity, Power.
Aryaman is the Force of sacrifice, aspiration, battle,
journey towards perfection and light and celestial bliss by which the path is
created, travelled, pursued beyond all resistance and obscuration to its
luminous and happy goal. In consequence, the action of Aryaman takes up the
attributes of Mitra and Varuna as leaders of the Path. This Force fulfils the
happy impulsions of that Light and Harmony and the movement of infinite
knowledge and power of that pure Vastness. One who seeks the straightness of
Mitra's and Varuna's workings and by the force of the word and the affirmation
embraces their law with all his being, is guarded in his progress by Aryaman.
Here is the most distinctive Rik which describes the
function of Aryaman: "Aryaman of the unbroken path, of the many chariots,
dwells as the sevenfold offerer of sacrifice in births of diverse forms."
He is the deity of the human journey who carries it forward in its irresistible
progress. The journey is effected through a manifold movement of our evolution,
the many chariots of Aryaman. It is the journey of the human sacrifice which
has a sevenfold energy of its action because there is a sevenfold principle in
our being which has to be fulfilled in its integral perfection; Aryaman is the
master of the sacrificial action who offers this sevenfold working to the
godheads of the Divine Birth. Aryaman within us develops our various forms of
birth in the ascending planes of our existence by which the Fathers climbed,
travellers on his path, and by which it must be the aspiration of the Aryan soul
to climb to the highest summit of Immortality.
Aryaman sums up in himself the whole aspiration and
movement of man in a continual self-enlargement and self-transcendence to his
divine perfection. By his continuous movement on the unbroken path the great
gods fulfil themselves in the human birth.
The goal of the path is the joy of the Truth, of the
infinity of our being. Bhaga is the godhead who brings this joy and supreme
felicity into the human consciousness; he is the divine enjoyer in man.
"On Bhaga the strong calls for his increasing, on Bhaga he who has not the
strength; then he moves towards the Delight." "Let it be the divine
Enjoyer who possesses the enjoyment and by him let us be its possessors; to
thee every man calls, O Bhaga; do thou become, O Enjoyer, the leader of our
journey." An increasing and victorious felicity of the soul rejoicing in
the growth of its divine possessions, this is the sign of the birth of Bhaga in
man and this his divine function.
All enjoyment comes from Bhaga Savitri, the mortal as well
as the divine; "creating a wide and vast force he brings forth for men
their mortal enjoyment." But the Vedic ideal is the inclusion of all life
and all joy, divine and human, the wideness and plenty of earth and the
vastness and abundance of heaven, the treasures of the mental, vital, physical
existence uplifted, purified, perfected in the form of the infinite and divine
Truth. It is this all-including felicity which is the gift of Bhaga. It is by
creating in us "the wide and vast force," that divine felicity comes
to us in its fullness. Vasishtha cries to him, "O Bhaga, our leader, Bhaga
who hast the wealth of the Truth, giving unto us, raise up and increase, O
Bhaga, this thought in us,"—the Truth-thought by which the felicity is
attained.
Bhaga is Savitri the Creator, he who brings forth from
the unmanifest Divine the truth of a divine universe, dispelling from us the
evil dream of this lower consciousness in which we falter amidst a confused
tangle of truth and falsehood, strength and weakness, joy and suffering. An
infinite being delivered out of imprisoning limits, an infinite knowledge and
strength receiving in thought and working out in will a divine Truth, an
infinite beatitude possessing and enjoying all without division, fault or sin,—this
is the creation of Bhaga Savitri, this that greatest Delight. "This
creation of the divine Creator goddess Aditi speaketh forth to us, this the
all-kings Varuna and Mitra and Aryaman with one mind and heart." The four
Kings find themselves fulfilled with their infinite Mother by the delightful
perfection in man of Bhaga the Enjoyer, the youngest and greatest of them all.
Thus is the divine creation of the fourfold Savitri founded on Varuna, combined
and guided by Mitra, achieved by Aryaman, enjoyed in Bhaga: Aditi the infinite
Mother realises herself in the human being by the birth and works of her
glorious children.
In his article Yoga and
Skill in Works which originally appeared
in the July 1916 issue of the Arya,
Sri Aurobindo writes:
...the greatest skill in works of Yoga is that which to the animal man seems its greatest ineptitude. The object of all skill in works must be evidently to secure the best welfare either of ourselves or of others or of all. The ordinary man calls it welfare. The greatest cunning of Yoga is to have detected this cheat of the mind and its desires and dualities and to have found the way to an abiding peace, a universal delight and an all-embracing satisfaction, which can not only be enjoyed for oneself but communicated to others. That too arises out of the change of our being; for the pure truth of existence carries also in it the unalloyed delight of existence, they are inseparable in the status of the infinite. To use the figures of the Vedic seers, by Yoga Varuna is born in us, a vast sky of spiritual living, the Divine in his wide existence and infinite truth; into that wideness Mitra rises up, Lord of Light and Love who takes all our activities of thought and feeling and will, links them into a Divine harmony, charioteers our movement and dictates our works; called by this wideness and this harmony Aryaman appears in us, the Divine in its illumined power, uplifted force of being and all-judging effective will; and by the three comes the indwelling Bhaga, the Divine in its pure bliss and all-seizing joy who dispels the evil dream of our jarring and divided existence and possesses all things in the light and glory of Aryaman’s power, Mitra’s love and light, Varuna’s unity. This divine Birth shall be the son of our works; and than creating this what greater skill can there be or what more practical and sovereign cunning?
The Four mighty
luminous Gods and the Mother’s Story of Creation
With the description of the four mighty and luminous
gods as given by Sri Aurobindo we might conceivably connect them with the four
powers in the Mother’s story of creation, the powers that separated themselves
from the divine Source and became their opposites. This they did in the act of
new manifestation out of the Non-manifest transcendental Reality, the Absolute
the Perfect, the Alone, the Alone who willed to be many, bahu, in the play of vast possibilities. Here is the Mother’s
story.
In answer to a question on 24 March 1951, the Mother said the following. The question was if there were beings before the descent of the divine Love. (Q & A, CWM, Vol. 4)
The first manifestation of the creative Consciousness was just an emanation of consciousness—of conscious light—and when this emanation separated itself from its origin, the Inconscient was born, through opposition (how to put it?) yes, really through opposition. Consequently, the birth of the Inconscient is prior to the formation of the world, and it was only when the perception came that the whole universe was going to be created uselessly that there was a call and Divine Love plunged into the Inconscient to change it into consciousness. Therefore, it can be said that the formation of the material worlds as we know them is the result of the descent of the supreme Consciousness into the Inconscient. It cannot be said that there was something prior to that, things as we know them in the material world.
The formation of the earth as we know it, this infinitesimal point in the immense universe, was made precisely in order to concentrate the effort of transformation upon one point; it is like a symbolic point created in the universe to make it possible, while working directly upon one point, to radiate it over the entire universe.
Such is the significance of the earth, what Sri
Aurobindo calls a “significant centre”, of Bhumi of the Purusha Sukta, bhūmī,
one who expands, grows in the possibilities of the spirit, the Lord of
Manifestation himself being described as bhūmā. He the Virat comes in
the cosmic operation with his fourfold power of manifestation.
But a major step was taken when the Will to Manifest
became operative. On another occasion the Mother elaborated it as follows:
(CWM, Vol. 9, 1957)
When the Supreme decided to exteriorise Himself in
order to be able to see Himself, the first thing in Himself which He
exteriorised was the Knowledge of the world and the Power to create it. This
Knowledge-Consciousness and Force began its work; and in the supreme Will there
was a plan, and the first principle of this plan was the expression of both the
essential Joy and the essential Freedom, which seemed to be the most
interesting feature of this creation. So intermediaries were needed to express
this Joy and Freedom in forms. And at first four Beings were emanated to start
this universal development which was to be the progressive objectivisation of
all that is potentially contained in the Supreme. These Beings were, in the principle
of their existence: Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love, and Truth.
You can easily imagine that they had a sense of great power, great strength, of
something tremendous, for they were essentially the very principle of these
things. Besides, they had full freedom of choice, for this creation was to be
Freedom itself.... As soon as they set to work—they had their own conception of
how it had to be done—being totally free, they chose to do it independently.
Instead of taking the attitude of servant and instrument… they naturally took
the attitude of the master, and this mistake—as I may call it—was the first
cause, the essential cause of all the disorder in the universe. As soon as
there was separation—for that is the essential cause, separation—as soon as
there was separation between the Supreme and what had been emanated,
Consciousness changed into inconscience, Light into darkness, Love into hatred,
Bliss into suffering, Life into death and Truth into falsehood. And they
proceeded with their creations independently, in separation and disorder. The
result is the world as we see it. It was made progressively, stage by stage,
and it would truly take a little too long to tell you all that, but finally,
the consummation is Matter—obscure, inconscient, miserable.... The creative
Force which had emanated these four Beings, essentially for the creation of the
world, witnessed what was happening, and turning to the Supreme she prayed for
the remedy and the cure of the evil that had been done. Then she was given the
command to precipitate her Consciousness into this inconscience, her Love into
this suffering, and her Truth into this falsehood. And a greater consciousness,
a more total love, a more perfect truth than what had been emanated at first,
plunged, so to say, into the horror of Matter in order to awaken in it
consciousness, love and truth, and to begin the movement of Redemption which
was to bring the material universe back to its supreme origin. So, there have
been what might be called ‘successive involutions’ in Matter, and a history of
these involutions. The present result of these involutions is the appearance of
the Supermind emerging from the inconscience; but there is nothing to indicate
that after this appearance there will be no others... for the Supreme is
inexhaustible and will always create new worlds. That is my story.
The plan is based on the essential Joy and the
essential Freedom. It is in the greatness of this Joy and this Freedom that the
universal development began, of progressive objectivisation of all that is
potentially contained in the Supreme. In the formulation of Sat-Chit-Ananda-Vijnana
or of Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love, and Truth the four aspects
set themselves to bring about a creation out of that unitary state. Soon they
set to work independently and got separated from their Origin. “As soon as there
was separation—for that is the essential cause, separation—as soon as there was
separation between the Supreme and what had been emanated, Consciousness
changed into inconscience, Light into darkness, Love into hatred, Bliss into
suffering, Life into death and Truth into falsehood. And they proceeded with
their creations independently, in separation and disorder.” In Savitri also we have this account of
creation in several places given in different contexts.
But who could have been these four mighty powers that opted
to separate themselves from their supreme Origin, these beings if we have to go
by the Vedic description? According to this description, it is Savitŗ or Surya
Savitri or Supermind who is the Initiator of this movement of manifestation. It
is he who manifests himself through four great and active deities Mitra,
Varuna, Bhaga and Aryaman, the Lords of pure Wideness, luminous Harmony, divine
Enjoyment, and exalted Power. The divine creation of the fourfold Savitŗ
founded on Varuna, combined and guided by Mitra, achieved by Aryaman, enjoyed
in Bhaga could be linked up with the aspects of infinite Existence, Knowledge
or Vijnana as the guiding Light, the details and executive modes worked out by
the Consciousness-Force, and all done in the creative Delight or Ananda is thus
all set in the Vedic vision and reality. In the Story of Creation they have
become their own transcendental opposites, their own adversaries.
If Supermind is the faculty of knowledge by which
Sachchidananda knows himself as Sachchidananda and because of it nothing
escapes his grasp, then how could it bring about the strange mysterious
separation from himself? How did these four powers go far away to such an
extent that they lost contact with their Source? How could they become self-oblivious?
Didn’t Supermind recognize it? Perhaps the mystery lies in the Will itself, the
Will of the manifesting Spirit.
The Puranas say that Brahma gave rise to this Creation
by the power of concentration, by doing intense Tapas. Because nothing can be
achieved without Tapas, these four gods must have also got engaged in it,
undertaking Tapas in the Will of becoming many, bahu, the Will that has been set into motion. They had undertaken
the terrible task of separating themselves from the divine Origin, not in the
spirit of some negative delight but as a positive urge in the greatness of a
new creation. And the technique is Tapas, a concentrated will-force operating
in the depth of consciousness. Tapas is the sheer power of concentration into
which every extension is gathered in. In it Varuna gathered in his endless
viewless boundless Infinity of Dimensions,—gathered in till it became a
vanishing point that has no support to exist. In that dense in-gathering
everything that was outside disappeared, awareness of all that was outside of
it was totally lost, the awareness of the Reality from which he had come; a brilliant source of light, he
became a Black Hole from which nothing would escape, not even his light. That is the fiery power of
concentration and in it Varuna got immerged, got lost,—and so too the other three, Mitra
and Aryaman and Bhaga. They lost awareness of their divine Origin, they lost
contact with it. It is in that loss, in that separation were born their
Opposites—not born, rather they turned into their own opposites, because all they held back within themselves. The Fire of
Tapas, Tapas-Agni has consumed their entire being. Such is the power, the
efficacy of the intesest concentration, of drawing within oneself everything.
That is also the delight of total engrossment, of a kind of irresponsiveness that thus alone would come out new things, things of light and love and delight.
Indeed, what a sacrifice these luminous and mighty
ancient gods had made in their fierce and thorough and firm Awareness! This
self-effacement! It was such intensity of concentration of inward movement that
all contact with the outside was lost, all awareness of things, of the reality
itself, except the reality that is always there deep within. In this remarkable
Sacrifice, a sacrifice towards the fulfilment of the divinely willed Possibility,
in this Tapas-Yajna of self-loss the seeds of new creation got sown. But such
intense was the Tapas-Yajna, the Sacrifice of the mighty gods that from its
heat arose a quenchless Flame, bright and brilliant and golden in the full
meaning and content of that Possibility. The Sacrifice was an invocation for
the divine Power to enter into it, and it responded. From the Fire of the Altar
emerged the divine Shakti to take the movement forward. That is the first
Incarnation of the Divine and it is that which is evolutionarily aided by the
subsequent ones. Here is the first birth of the Avatar. Varuna and Mitra and
Aryaman and Bhaga sacrificed their Lordships and made it possible for the
Divine to incarnate in this world of death and suffering and falsehood and
incapacity, that these be changed, transformed into their authentic and
original elements of life and happiness and truth and conscient strength ever
growing in manifestation. When Narad sings of the demons weeping with joy that
soon in the work of the divine incarnate Power they will return into the One
from whom they had come, we have the fulfilment of the dreadful task they had
undertaken. (Savitri, p. 417) Such is the celebration of the four luminous and
mighty Powers the Vedic Rishis saw in Varuna and Mitra and Aryaman and Bhaga.
Glory to them! Glory to them!
