SRI AUROBINDO

Hymns to the Mystic Fire

A Great God has been Released

Translation and Explanation: V. I

1. Agni by the fuel heaped by the peoples has awakened towards the coming Dawn as towards the sun-cow coming; like the waters spouting up for wide flowing, his flames move towards the heaven.

2. The Priest of the offering awoke for sacrifice to the gods, Agni stood up high in the dawn and perfect-minded; the gathered force of him was seen reddening when he was entirely kindled; a great god has been released out of the darkness.

3. When so he has put forth the tongue of his multitude, pure is the activity of Agni with the pure herd of his rays; then is the goddess discerning yoked to her works in a growing plenty; she upward-straining, he high-uplifted, he feeds on her with his flaming activities.

4. Towards Agni move the minds of the seekers after the Godhead, as their eyes move in the Surya; when the two unlike Dawns bring him forth, he is born a white steed of being in the van of the days¹.

5. He is born full of delight at the head of the days helpful in the helpful gods, active in those that take their joy; in each of our homes establishing his seven ecstasies Agni, Priest of the offering, takes seat in his might for the sacrifice.

6. Mighty for sacrifice Agni of the offerings takes his seat in the lap of the Mother, in that rapturous middle world, young and a seer, seated in many homes of his dwelling, full of the Truth, upholding our actions and therefore kindled in the mid-spaces.

7. Verily, it is this Agni, the illumined seer who perfects us in these lower activities, the master of offering, that they adore with obeisances and submission; who stretched out the double firmament by the force of the Truth, him they strengthen² with the rich droppings, the eternal master of substance.

8. Strong ever, he grows stronger housed in his own seat in us, and home, our guest auspicious to us; master-bull with the thousand horses of thy flame, strong with that Strength, O Agni, by thy might thou art in front of all others.

9. At once, O Agni, thou passest beyond all others in him to whom thou makest thyself manifest in thy splendid beauty, adorable and full of body and widely luminous, the beloved guest of the human peoples.

10. To thee, O vigorous Agni, the continents³ bring their oblation from near and bring from afar; perceive the perfected mind in one most happy, for wide and mighty is the blessed peace of thee, O Agni.

11. O luminous Agni, mount today thy perfect and luminous chariot with the masters of the sacrifice; thou knowest those paths, bring then hither through the wide mid-world the gods to eat of our offerings.

12. Utterance have we given to the word of our delight for the seer who hath understanding, for the lord who is mighty; firm in the light one by submission to him reaches in Agni a fixity, even as in heaven, so here golden bright and vast-expanding.

Explanation

The awakening of the divine Force and its action in a man is in this hymn rather indicated than described. The Sukta is purely lyric in its character, वचो वंदारु, an expression of delight and adoration, a stoma, or stabilising Mantra intended to fix in the soul the sevenfold delight of Agni, damedame sapta ratnā (Rik 5), and assure that state of perfected and happy mentality, pure in perception, light and calm in the emotional parts, bhandiṣṭhasya, the summation of the truth which the divine force dwelling in us abidingly assures to our conscious being. The image of the physical morning sacrifice is maintained throughout the first two Riks, but from its closing phrase, mahān devastamaso niramoci the Rishi departs from the ritualisitic symbol and confines himself to the purely psychological substance of his thought, returning occasionally to the physical aspects of Agni but only as a loose poetical imagery. There is nothing of the close symbolic parallelism which is to be found in some hymns of the Veda.

5.1.1

अबो॑ध्य॒ग्निः स॒मिधा॒ जना॑नां॒ प्रति॑ धे॒नुमि॑वाय॒तीमु॒षासं॑ ।

य॒ह्वा इ॑व॒ प्र व॒यामु॒ज्जिहा॑नाः॒ प्र भा॒नवः॑ सिस्रते॒ नाक॒मच्छ॑ ॥

ábodhi agníḥ sam-ídhā jánānām práti dhenúm-iva ā-yatī́m uṣásam ǀ

yahvā́ḥ-iva prá vayā́m ut-jíhānāḥ prá bhānávaḥ sisrate nā́kam áccha ǁ

Force, pure, supreme and universal, has in man awakened; divine power is acting, revealed, in the consciousness of the creature born into matter, janānām. It wakes when the fuel has been perfectly heaped, abodhi samidhā,— that power, plenty and richness of being on which this cosmic force in us is fed and which minister to intensity and brightness. It wakes towards the coming dawn of illumination, as to the Sun-cow, the cow of Surya, the illumination of the ideal life and the ideal vision entering the soul that works imprisoned in the darkness of Matter. The flames of the divine activity in us are pointing upwards towards heaven, mounting up from the lower levels of our being to the heights of the pure mind, sisrate nākam accha, and their rising is like the wide gushing up into manifestation of waters that have been hidden. For it is a great god that has been released out of the darkness, mahān devastamaso niramoci.

The two familiar images in dhenu and in yahvā are intended to convey directly in one, suggest obliquely by the simile in the other, the inseparable companionship of divine power with the divine light and the divine being. All the gods are indeed uṣarbudhaḥ; with the morning of the revelation all divine faculties in us arise out of the night in which they have slept. But the figure here is that of awakening towards the coming dawn. The illumination has not touched the mortal mind, it is on its way, approaching, āyatīm, like a cow coming from a distance to its pasture; it is then that the power divine stirs in its receptacle, seizes upon all that is available in the waking consciousness of the creature and, kindled, streams up towards the altitudes of the pure mind in the face of the coming divine knowledge which it rises to meet. Divine knowledge, revealing, inspiring, suggesting, discerning, calls up the godlike ideal activity in us which exceeds man’s ordinary motions,— wakes it even before it actually occupies this mortal system by its far-off touch and glimmer on the horizon; so too divine, inspired and faultless activity in us rises heavenward and calls down God’s dawn on His creature.

This great uprush of force is in its nature a great uprush of divine being; for force is nothing but the power of being in motion. It is the secret waters in us that, released, gush up openly and widely from their prison and their secrecy in our mortal natures; for in vitalised matter, in mind enmeshed in material vitality, the ideal and spiritual self are always concealed and await release and manifestation; in this mortal that immortal is covered and curtained in and lives and works behind the veil, martyeṣu devam amartyam. Therefore is the uprush of divine force in the great release felt to be the wide uprush of divine being and consciousness, yahvā iva pra vayām ujjihānāḥ.

5.1.2

अबो॑धि॒ होता॑ य॒जथा॑य दे॒वानू॒र्ध्वो अ॒ग्निः सु॒मनाः॑ प्रा॒तर॑स्थात् ।

समि॑द्धस्य॒ रुश॑ददर्शि॒ पाजो॑ म॒हांदे॒वस्तम॑सो॒ निर॑मोचि ॥

ábodhi hótā yajáthāya devā́n ūrdhváḥ agníḥ su-mánāḥ prātáḥ asthāt ǀ

sám-iddhasya rúśat adarśi pā́jaḥ mahā́n deváḥ támasaḥ níḥ amoci ǁ

The purpose of the waking is next emphasised. It is for divine action in man that God’s force awakes in us. It is the divine priest of the offering who stands up in the dawn of the illumination to offer to the gods, to each great god his portion, to Indra a pure and deified mentality, to Vayu a pure and divine vital joy and action, to the four great Vasus, Varuna, Mitra, Bhaga and Aryaman the greatnesses, felicities, enjoyments and strengths of perfected being, to the Ashwins the youth of the soul and its raptures and swiftnesses, to Daksha and Saraswati, Ila, Sarama and Mahi the activities of the Truth and Right, to the Rudras, Maruts and Adityas the play of physical, vital, mental and ideative activities. Agni has stood up in the dawning illumination high uplifted in the pure mentality, ūrdhva, with a perfected mind, sumanāḥ. He purifies in his rising the temperament and fixes on it the seal of peace and joy; he purifies the intellectuality and makes it fit to receive the activity of the illuminating Truth and Infinite Rightness which is beyond intellect. Great is the god who has been released out of the darkness of this Avidya, out of this our blind bodily matter, out of this our smoke-enveloped vital energy, out of this our confused luminous murk of mortal mind and sense-enslaved intelligence. Mahān devastamaso niramoci. For now that he has been perfectly kindled, it is no longer God’s occasional flamings that visit our nature, but His collected and perfect force, pājaḥ, that is seen reddening in our heavens.

The first verse is preoccupied with the idea of the self-illumination of Agni, the bhānavaḥ, the flames of Force manifesting Knowledge as its essential nature — for Force is nothing but Knowledge shaped into creative energy and the creations of energy, and veiled by its shape, as a man’s soul is veiled by his mind and body which are themselves shapes of his soul. In the words abodhi, vayām, nākam, in the relation of Agni to Usha and the emphasis on the illuminative character of Usha as the Sun-Cow, this aspect of illumination and manifestation is stressed and enlarged. In the second verse the native aspect of the divine Force as a mighty power of action consummating and purifying is brought out with an equal force and insistence. It is as the Hota that Agni awakes; in this illumination of the dawn that comes with him to man, prātaḥ, he stands up with the intellect and emotional temperament perfected and purified, sun for the great offering of man’s whole internal and external life and activity to God in the gods, yajathāya devān, fulfilling the upward impulse, ūrdhva, which raises matter towards life, life towards mind, mind towards ideality and spirit, and thus consummating God’s intention in the creature. In the next verse the nature of this human uplifting, this upward straining of the mind through heart and intellect to ideal Truth and Love and Right, is indicated and particularised in an image of great poetical force and sublimity.

5.1.3

यदीं॑ ग॒णस्य॑ रश॒नामजी॑गः॒ शुचि॑रंक्ते॒ शुचि॑भि॒र्गोभि॑र॒ग्निः ।

आद्दक्षि॑णा युज्यते वाज॒यंत्यु॑त्ता॒नामू॒र्ध्वो अ॑धयज्जु॒हूभिः॑ ॥

yát īm gaṇásya raśanā́m ájīgaríti śúciḥ aṅkte śúci-bhiḥ góbhiḥ agníḥ ǀ

ā́t dákṣiṇā yujyate vāja-yántī uttānā́m ūrdhváḥ adhayat juhū́bhiḥ ǁ

When so he has put forth the tongue of enjoyment of his host, yadīm gaṇasya raśanām ajīgaḥ, Agni has put forth his powers for an uplifted and perfect activity, ruśad adarśi pājaḥ,— for redness is always the symbolic colour of action and enjoyment. This pājas, Agni’s force or massed army, is again described in the gaṇasya raśanām, but while the idea in the second verse is that of their indistinctive mass, here the gaṇaḥ or host of Agni’s powers, the Devatas of his nature who apply themselves to his particular works, are represented as brought out in their individuality collected in a mass,— for this is always the fire of gaṇaḥ,— each with his tongue of flame licking the mid-air, (surabhā u loke — madhye iddhaḥ in Verse 6), enjoying that is to say the vital energies and vital pleasure (aśva and ghṛta), which support this higher action. Supported by this vital joy and force Agni acts, aṅkte agniḥ; but the enjoyment is not impure and unilluminated enjoyment of the unuplifted creature,— he is śuciḥ, purely bright, not smoky with unpurified Pranic impulses, and his flames of action are in their nature pure flames of illumination, śucibhiḥ gobhiḥ. In modern diction, when the divine force has so far purified us, our activities and enjoyments are not darkened and troubled with striving and clouded vital desires which strain dimly towards a goal, but, not being ṛtajā, know not what they should seek, how they should seek it, in what force and by what methods and stages, our action becomes a pure illumination, our enjoyment a pure illumination; by the divine illuminations as their motive force, essence and instrument, our actions and enjoyments are effected. We see just the curious and delicate literary art of the Vedic style in its symbolism, by this selection of the great word, go, in this context, in preference to any other, to describe the flames of Agni. In the next line, with an equally just delicacy of selection juhū is used for the same flames instead of bhānu or go.

It is in this state of pure activity and enjoyment that the characteristic uplifting action of Agni is exercised, for then, āt, the discriminative intellect, dakṣiṇā, growing in the substance of its content and havings, vājayantī, is yoked or applied to its work under these new conditions. Dakshina, the discriminative intellect is the energy of dakṣa, master of the works or unerring right discernment but unerring in the ideality, in mahas or vijñāna, his and her own home, not unerring in the intellect, but only straining towards hidden truth and right out of the mental dualities of right and wrong, truth and falsehood. This deputy and messenger of the Ritam Brihat seated in manas as reason, discernment, intellect, can only attain its end and fulfill its mission when Agni, the divine Force, manifests in the Prana and Manas and uplifts her to the ideal plane of consciousness. Therefore in this new activity she is described as straining and extending herself upwards, uttānām, to follow and reach Agni where are his topmost planes, ūrdhva, in the ideal being. From there he leans down and feeds on her, adhayat, through the flames of the divine activity, juhūbhiḥ, burning in the purified and upward aspiring activities of the intellectual mind. This essential relation of the divine force and the purified mind is brought out in a more general thought and figure in the first line of the succeeding Rik.

5.1.4

अ॒ग्निमच्छा॑ देवय॒तां मनां॑सि॒ चक्षूं॑षीव॒ सूर्ये॒ सं च॑रंति ।

यदीं॒ सुवा॑ते उ॒षसा॒ विरू॑पे श्वे॒तो वा॒जी जा॑यते॒ अग्रे॒ अह्नां॑ ॥

agním áccha deva-yatā́m mánāṃsi cákṣūṃṣi-iva sū́rye sám caranti ǀ

yát īm súvāte␣íti uṣásā vírūpe␣íti␣ví-rūpe śvetáḥ vājī́ jāyate ágre áhnām ǁ

Iva in the Veda is not always a particle of similitude and comparison. Its essential meaning is truly, verily, so thus, and it is from this sense that it derives its conjunctive uses, sometimes meaning “and” or “also”, sometimes “as”, “like”. Its force here is to distinguish between the proper activity of Agni and Surya, of manas and cakṣus, and to confine the latter to their proper sphere and thus by implication to confine the former also. When we are mortals content with our humanity, then we are confused in our functions; the manas or sense-mind attempts to do the work of the mahas or idea-mind, to effect original knowledge, to move in Surya, in the powerful concrete image of the Veda. The ideal also confuses itself with sense and moves in the sense-forces, the indriyas, instead of occupying itself in all purity with its own function. Hence the confusions of our intellect and the stumblings of our mental activity in its grappling with the contacts of the outer world. But when we rise from our mortal nature to the nature of godhead, devayantaḥ, amṛtam sapantaḥ, then the first change is the passage from mortal impurity to immortal purity, and the very nature of purity is a clear brightness and rightness, in which all our members work perfectly in God and the gods, each doing its own function and preserving its right relation with its superior and inferior fellows. Therefore in those who are attaining this nature of godhead, devayatām, their sense-minds strain towards Agni, the divine force of Right Being and Right Action, satyam ṛtam,— they tend, that is to say, to have the right state, bhāva or temperament, out of which the right action of the indriyas spontaneously proceeds; the seeings of the Yogin who attains, move in Surya, the god of the ideal powers, all that he perceives, creates, distinguishes, is worked out by the pure ideal mentality which then uses its four powers of self-revelation, self-inspiration, self-intuition, self-discernment, without suffering obscuration by the clouds of vital desire and impulse or deflection by the sense-impacts and sense-reactions. The sensational mind confines itself then to its proper work of receiving passively the impacts of the vital and material and mental outer world and the illuminations of Surya and of pouring out on the world in its reaction to the impacts, not its own hasty and distorted responses, but the pure force and action of Agni which works in the world, pure, right and unerring, and seizes on it to possess and enjoy it for God in the human being. This is the goal towards which Dakshina is striving in her upward self-extension which ends by her taking her place as viveka or right discernment in the kingdom of Surya, and this she begins already in her new activity by discerning the proper action of the mind from the proper action of idea in the mind. The purified intellect liberates itself from the obscurations of desire, the slavery to vital impulse, and the false reports and false values of the matter-besieged sense-powers.

The essential nature of Agni’s manifestation which is at the root of this successful distinction, is then indicated. Night and Dawn are the two unlike mothers who jointly give birth to Agni, Night, the avyakta, unmanifest state of knowledge and being, the power of Avidya, Dawn, the vyakta, manifest state of knowledge and being, the power of Vidya. They are the two dawns, the two agencies which prepare the manifestation of God in us, Night fostering Agni in secret on the activities of Avidya, the activities of unillumined mind, life and body by which the god in us grows out of matter towards spirit, out of earth up to heaven, Dawn manifesting him again, more and more, until he is ready here for his continuous, pure and perfect activity. When this point of our journey towards perfection is reached he is born, sveto vājī, in the van of the days. We have here one of those great Vedic figures with a double sense in which the Rishis at once revealed and concealed their high knowledge, revealed it to the Aryan mind, concealed it from the un-Aryan. Agni is the white horse which appears galloping in front of the days,— the same image is used with a similar Vedantic sense in the opening of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad; but the horse here is not, as in the Upanishad, aśva, the horse of vital and material being in the state of life-force, but vājī, the horse of Being generally. Being manifested in substance whether of mind, life, body or idea or the three higher streams proper to our spiritual being. Agni therefore manifests as the fullness, the infinity, the bṛhat of all this sevenfold substantial being that is the world we are, but white, the colour of illumined purity. He manifests therefore at this stage primarily as that mighty wideness, purity and illumination of our being which is the true basis of the complete and unassailable siddhi in the yoga, the only basis on which right knowledge, right thinking, right living, right enjoyment can be firmly, vastly and perpetually seated. He appears therefore in the van of the days, the great increasing states of illuminated force and being,— for that is the image of ahan,— which are the eternal future of the mortal when he has attained immortality.

In the next Rik the idea is taken up, repeated and amplified to its final issues in that movement of solemn but never otiose repetition which is a feature of Vedic style.

5.1.5

जनि॑ष्ट॒ हि जेन्यो॒ अग्रे॒ अह्नां॑ हि॒तो हि॒तेष्व॑रु॒षो वने॑षु ।

दमे॑दमे स॒प्त रत्ना॒ दधा॑नो॒ऽग्निर्होता॒ नि ष॑सादा॒ यजी॑यान् ॥

jániṣṭa hí jényaḥ ágre áhnām hitáḥ hitéṣu aruṣáḥ váneṣu ǀ

dáme-dame saptá rátnā dádhānaḥ agníḥ hótā ní sasāda yájīyān ǁ

This divine force is born victorious by its very purity and infinity over all the hostile forces that prevent, obstruct, limit or strive to destroy our accomplished freedoms, powers, illuminations and widenesses; by his victory he ushers in the wide days of the siddha, for which these nights and dawns of our human life are the preparatory movements. He is effective and helpful in the effective powers that work out for our good the movements of this lower life towards immortal strength and power, he is active and joyous, aruṣaḥ, in those that take the delight of these movements and to prepare us for the immortal bliss and ecstasy of the divine nature. Manifesting progressively that Ananda, he the force of God establishes and maintains in each house of our habitation, in each of our five bodies, in each of our seven levels of conscious existence, the seven essential forms of Ananda, the bliss of body, the bliss of life, the bliss of mind, the senses, the bliss of ideal illumination, the bliss of pure divine universal ecstasy, the bliss of cosmic Force, the bliss of cosmic being. For although we tend upwards immediately to the pure Idea, yet not that but Ananda is the goal of our journey; the manifestation in our lower members of the divine bliss reposing on the divine force and being is the law of our perfection. Agni, whether he raises us to live in pure mind or yet beyond to the high plateaus of the pure ideal existence, adhi ṣṇunā bṛhatā vartamānam, establishes and supports as the divine force that divine bliss in its seven forms in whatever houses of our being, whatever worlds of our consciousness have been already possessed by our waking existence, life, body and mind, or life, body, mind and idea, dame-dame dadhānaḥ. Thus manifesting God’s bliss in us he takes his seat in those houses, domiciled, damūnāḥ, as we have it in other Suktas, and in those worlds, to perform as the hotā in his greater might for the sacrifice, greater than the might of other gods or greater than he has hitherto possessed, the offering of human life into the immortal being, ā daivyam janam, yajathāya devān.

In a culminating Rik which at once completes the first half of the Sukta and introduces a new movement, the Rishi once more takes up the closing thought of this verse and carries it out into a fuller conclusion.

5.1.6

अ॒ग्निर्होता॒ न्य॑सीद॒द्यजी॑यानु॒पस्थे॑ मा॒तुः सु॑र॒भा उ॑ लो॒के ।

युवा॑ क॒विः पु॑रुनि॒ष्ठ ऋ॒तावा॑ ध॒र्ता कृ॑ष्टी॒नामु॒त मध्य॑ इ॒द्धः ॥

agníḥ hótā ní asīdat yájīyān upá-sthe mātúḥ surabháu ūṃ␣íti loké ǀ

yúvā kavíḥ puruniḥ-stháḥ ṛtá-vā dhartā́ kṛṣṭīnā́m utá mádhye iddháḥ ǁ

Agni thus takes his seat in us and because it is through human activity that he is to fulfil the sacrifice, because the ascending movement is not completed, he takes it in the lap of his mother in that rapturous middle world. For the middle world, the Bhuvah, including all those states of existence in which the mind and the life are interblended as the double medium through which the Purusha acts and connects Heaven and Earth, is the proper centre of all human action. Mind blended with the vital energies is our seat even here in the material world. The Bhuvah or middle regions are worlds of rapture and ecstasy because life-energy and the joy of life fulfil themselves there free from the restrictions of the material world in which it is an exile or invader seeking to dominate and use the rebellious earthly material for its purposes. Agni sits in the lap of the mother, on the principle of body in the material human being, occupying there the vitalised mind consciousness which is man’s present centre of activity and bringing into it the mightier bliss of the rapturous middle world to support and enlarge even the vital and physical activities and enjoyments of our earthly existence. He sits there in the human sacrifice, full of eternal youth and vigour, yuvā, in possession of the ideal truth and knowledge, in possession of the unerring rightness of the liberated pure ideal life and consciousness, kaviḥ ṛtāvā, and releasing that truth and right in many purposes and activities, puruniḥṣṭhaḥ, for he works all these results as the upholder of men in their actions and efforts and labours, dharta kṛṣṭīnām,— he is that in all his forms of force from the mere physical heat in earth and in our bodies to the divine Tapas in us and without us by which God affects and supports the existence of the cosmos; and because he is thus supremely the upholder of human life and activity, therefore he is kindled in the mid-space; the seat is on the fullness of the realised mind-consciousness in the microcosm, in the rapturous mid-world of fulfilled life-energy in the macrocosm. There kindled, awakened and manifested in man, samidhā abodhi, samiddhaḥ, he does his work for upward-climbing humanity. Thus by the return in iddhaḥ to the words and the idea with which he started, the Rishi marks the close of the first movement of thought.

¹ Or, at the head of our forces.

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² Or, brighten

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³ Or, the peoples

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