Discoveries of The Vedic Rishis - Discoveries of The Vedic Rishis 502

Now if you read the Veda very carefully you will find this described in one way or the other. And Mother adds that when this happened, the Divine Mother, who is known as Aditi in the Veda, went to the Supreme Lord, the Origin of Origins, and said, “An accident has occurred. So much darkness has come about, it has to be repaired! What is to be done?” So the Lord said, “Now you will emanate other beings, who will not sever their relationship with the Origin.” These beings are called gods; this is the origin of the gods.

But even that was not sufficient. And so the Divine Mother, threw out her love and delight, and all the crystals of her love and delight fell upon the Inconscience. With the help of these crystals of divine Love, with the help of the gods, in battle with the darkness, the entire world began to move forward, and Matter came, and Life came, and Mind came, and that is where we are now.

Now, out of this story, which you can find in the Veda, many consequences can be derived about the whole world. First, that gods were not present at the origin of the world. This is a very important statement. Gods don’t know everything. In the Veda there is a very beautiful verse, the Verse of Creation, it is called, Nasadiya Sukta. It is a Hymn of Creation. It is so-called because the very first words are na asat, it says that in the beginning there was no Being and no Non-being, there was only One. And then the whole world came out of it, but who knows really the story of the whole creation? Even the gods do not know, - this is what it says, - even the gods do not know the secret of creation, because they were not there at that time.

This is a very important sentence because, if you read the very first line of Savitri in The Book of Beginnings, it is written, “It was the hour before the gods awake.” What does this mean? That it was a time when the gods were not there as yet. So when you read Savitri this will be a very helpful indication. Sri Aurobindo describes the world as it was before the gods were created. They had not yet come, and Sri Aurobindo describes the darkness that was enveloped in darkness, so much Inconscience. The whole beginning of Savitri starts with this. This was discovered by the Vedic Rishis, that in the beginning there was this Inconscience, tato ratryajayata tatah samudro arnavah, “From there arose the Night, and from there arose a complete Inconscience.” It is that Inconscience that is described by Sri Aurobindo in The Book of Beginnings, at the very beginning of Savitri.

There is in the Veda a very interesting story, where it is said that the gods “were not the first born,” that they were created later. And when the gods were created, they were told by the Supreme, “Now you go down into the Inconscience and repair it. Bring the Light there.” And the gods said, “It is too dark! We won’t be able to do anything there!” Then they found that in Aditi, in the Divine Mother, there was something that they called Agni, fire. They found in her a divine element of Agni, of fire, and they said, “If that is put there, that will be able to repair the darkness.” Then Agni was brought out and put into the Inconscience. This is in the Veda, there is a whole Sukta on this subject.

There is another story where all the gods summon Agni, summon fire, and they say, “Oh please do this other work that must be done.” And Agni says, “Once upon a time, you summoned me, and I obeyed you and went into the Inconscience, and this work is so difficult that I will not do any other work for you!”

Fire is something that is born out of the Divine. This is the fire which becomes in us what we call our soul. That is why Sri Aurobindo says that the soul is a spark coming directly from the Divine. It is from that spark that the psychic being in us grows, it guides our movements, it is the leader of the sacrifice, it is the purohita, it is a priest, the forerunner of our journey. This is the discovery that the Vedic Rishis made, and this is why they gave so much importance to Agni, to fire. Why should we tend to the fire? Because it is the one element that has been put into the Inconscience to repair it. Its function is to lead the human journey, and to bring from the Divine directly all that is needed to repair the Inconscience. The purpose of our being on the earth is only this: The Inconscience has to be repaired. We are here to repair the Inconscience, and we can do it with the help of Agni. What we are is this aspiration of fire. That is why we are required to fight the battle. That is why this world is a battle, why our life is a battle. We could have easily gone away from this world, but because our task is to cure this Inconscience, it is not allowed to us to go away. We remain in the world, we fight in the world; and even if you lift yourself from the world, it is only to come back to this world. Even if you go into the highest, loftiest realization, you come back with it and put it into the Inconscience to awaken it.

Connected with this is the last point. As a result of all this knowledge, what is the highest thing they achieved? They discovered the Inconscience, but did they cure the Inconscience?

This is the answer we find in the Veda: They found out that you cannot cure the Inconscience unless you enter into Supermind. That is a very important condition. So the entire process was to enter into Supermind, but entering into it was not enough the Inconscience is down here. So there was also the process of descent. To arrive at Supermind there is a process of ascent, you go upwards. But even that movement is not a straight ascent. There are ascents and descents of various kinds. You go upward, you come down, you go up and come down again. You rise up and you distribute whatever you’ve gained, you share with everybody; then you go upward again and again distribute. Sri Aurobindo calls it the law of ascent and integration: You ascend, then you come down, give the benefit of your ascent to the lower levels, and again lift them up to the higher level. Therefore, the whole history of the world is not a straight line going upwards, it is cyclical, but like a spiral.

There is a legend in the Veda of the Angirasas, it was a group of seven Rishis who went in search of the lost cows. Now I told you last time that “cow” is an algebraic term in the Veda, and that it stands for Light. They were in search of the lost Light. The Angirasa Rishis stand for all of us, we are all Angirasa Rishis because we are all seekers. You might say that we are all in search of the lost cows. We are seeking all the time, and if you ask yourself what we are seeking? We are seeking something that we once had but that we have lost.

This idea was taken up by Plato in the West. He said that all seeking is a seeking for knowledge, and that all knowledge is remembrance. You remember what you knew, but have forgotten. When you gain knowledge, it is not a new thing, you knew it already somehow. You were originally full of knowledge, but somehow you have lost it. Then you seek out what you have lost, and then you remember. “Oh yes, I knew it already!” In fact, all process of true knowledge is of this kind. When true knowledge dawns, you recall that you knew it. You had forgotten, now you have regained it.

Such was the movement of the Angirasa Rishis described in the Vedas. They had lost the cows. They had possessed them at one time, they had Light in them, but now that Light is lost. Where has it gone? Where have the cows gone? Where are they hidden? Are they hidden? Are they destroyed? One doesn’t know. But it is very important to find out.