The Polyphase Conceptualism of Hindu Mysticism

Transcription

1 6,000 BC 2,000 AD The Polyphase Conceptualism of Hindu Mysticism by Sriman Prajapati Das (Caiyros Arlen Strang) Contageous Invocations Series No. 6 AmunCine /Wells-Pierce Boston, Massachusetts

2 All Rights Reserved Copyright 2011, 2015 by Sriman Prajapati Das (C.A.Strang) Dedicated to ALL Rishis Everywhere 2

3 FORWARD: IN THE BEGINNING WERE VEDAS - The Beginning of Hindu Metaphysics Come now Indra, in Your rich lustres, These Soma-juices desire Thee. They are purified by the subtle desires and by an extension of body. Come now Indra, impelled by the mind, Driven forward by the illumined thinker, To my innermost and personal thoughts, I pour out my Soma-juice and seek full expression from speech itself. Come now Indra, use Your own forceful speed to reach my innermost personal thoughts. As Lord of the Bright Racing Horses, hold firm all delights gained within the Soma-juices. Rg Veda I In the Hindu religious world, the concept of Shiva and Shakti is ancient and Shiva and Shakti are mentioned in the hymns of the Rg Veda. The Vedic hymns display a mentality very concerned with subordination and helplessness and in an attempt to deal with these feelings, these Vedic hymns led people to propose and act upon a glorification of nature and the various physical subgroups (Sun, Moon, etc) and the various physical and mental elements that were directly experienced and/or consciously and immediately within human awareness. One is led to believe that one important factor (among many others now unknown) was the oral tradition of memory which preserved the experiences of earth changes, physical cataclysm, ice ages, and the mental anxiety of creating a culture with no previous standards upon which to relie. The people who first began writing down and preserving these ideas were the Rishis. The Rishis were those people who felt that they were fully living their life and within their own intellect, mentality, emotions, and 3

4 spirituality, were experiencing the various forms of highest truth. They had transcended the basic limitations of day-to-day unenlightened behaviour. When they spoke or wrote, they acted with Sruti, which is a divine rhythm of the Universal Being, heard within the inner ear. It appears that their oral metaphysical tradition dates back at least as early as 4,200 BC. The existing forms of the Vedas have been dated through linguistic analysis to be from the period 1500 to 900 BC. Claims have been made that the Vedas date as early as 12,000 BC. The actual Vedic manuscripts date from the period 100BC. The word Veda is a derivitive of the word Vid meaning to know. The eartliest and most well known Veda is the Rg Veda. Rg means humans. It consists of 28 hymns, most of which are divided into 10 mandalas or "books", and each mandala is attached to the name of a specific rishi to whom the hymns were spiritually, mystically, or divinely revealed. It is important to realize that these ancient Aryans (Northern Hindus) while composing the Vedas believed it was imperative to include reference to the attitudes, abilities, and spiritual subtleties of painting, sculpture, music, and dance within their writing; and that all of these were seen as deeply and fundamentally embedded within human sexuality and the understanding of this process was necessary for the spiritual development of the everyday person. The Rishis held that their Vedic tribal group were Aryans, which meant that they (The tribal group) were/are that section of humanity which finds the sacred word of illumination and is increased within one's own personal existence by use of god and goddess forms, as well as respecting and even worshiping these forms. The Aryans were those people who felt that they themselves were involved in the great educational struggle of humanity to replace ordinary unilluminated thought with fully illuminated thought and perception, and, ultimately, to come into perceptual contact with one's own immortality which is beyond explanation. Veda has been and is considered a living system of knowledge approach and usage, that accepts limitations as an integral part of the ongoing 4

5 process of renewel and movement towards immortality. Everything exists as a duality of symbol and actuality. A core idea within the Vedas is that the human soul goes from a state of living death to a state of immortality by the individual's personal exchange of unknowing for knowing. The birth of man is a way for a human to become more awake to greater profoundities within life itself. At the moment of each internal birth, actual new worlds open to the human being and his/her actual field of vision and experience becomes greater. The sense of "home" begins to reveal vast implications and the human begins to sense that a greater and greater aspect/area of the universe is his/her actual home. Three other Vedas were appended to the Rg Veda. They are: The Sama Veda: A compilation of verses from the Rg Veda, rearranged for ritual purposes. Some of these rituals are still known, while others are lost. The Yazur Veda: A compilation of sacrificial formulae. The Arthaya Veda: A compilation of magical spells Within these Vedas, there is the perception of a force or a series of forces "behind", "above", and/or "beyond" all physical cause and result. Divine power was both loved and feared. This primal love-fear of Unknown Power or Powers has remained an intrinsic aspect of the human mentality. By studying the Vedas, we can relive the experience of this (one of many) primal moments in the development of the human race. This love-fear mentality can be very basic or "primitive" and it can be very elaborated, and finally, it can become subtle and transcendent as we approach the enlightened adulthood of the human race. So, at a very early period in human development, the human race became consciously aware of its own polarity-consciousness of love-fear, causeeffect, and matter-spirit. Awareness was seen as mind. The awareness of awareness was seen as spirit. These polar entities have not changed or 5

6 disappeared since thet were first realized and exist in all cultures at all times. We have learned special ways to emphasize aspects of these polarities. For instance, by emphasizing spirit, we can create ways of training or yoking (sanskrit: yoga) ourselves into some form of personal transcendence in which we are not at the effect of these polarities, but are using them as tools for our personal and cultural development. By doing this, we begin to understand the idea of holiness or nearness-to-a Supreme-Power. Within holiness love becomes heartfelt compassion, fear becomes the understanding of the relativity of power, cause becomes hierarchical cause and primal cause, cause-effect becomes one - karma, and the elaboration of time itself and movement existing within time, and matter becomes the play of spirit and spirit becomes, ultimately an expansion into the Infinite. These aspects of the human consciousness cannot be changed, merely modified or elaborated. Within the Vedic practices, there were certain clearly stated or clearly implied concepts. Will is an aspect of knowledge taking the form of force. Aryaman is the light energy of Divine Consciousness working as force. Divine Consciousness is the force of continual-self enlargement and a continuous self-transcendence. Aspiration is the enlargement and expansion of the sentient beings' Being - the increase of force, truth, joy, and light - all of which become interdependent working powers, increasing in abilities until they enlarge and stimulate ever-opening worlds of its own being - ultimately endless. The Day is the same as Extra-Consciousness. The Night is the same as Intra- Consciousness. All truth for humanity exists somewhere within one or both of these two primary aspects of one full rotation of the planet Earth. Chandras is rhythm. Later this concept was expanded and made more detailed by the Kashmir Shivites as their concept of Spanda (which is dealt with in the chapter on Vedic Revival). Ultimately, Chandras (while, at the same time,remaining in its primal form) becomes Devatati or the selfextension of what we might call the Godhead, and this equals Parama Paravat - the supreme of the superconsciousness -and Paramam Vyoma - the supreme ether, the infinity of being at superconsciousness. 6

7 All the created forms in the universe, have their own intimate basis in the infinite, which is always above mind, life, and matter, and are reconstructed or misconstructed from the infinitesmal. All created forms come from the void, moving through various forms which are less and less insubstantial - and at some variable point this process, itself is reversed. This is known as the Gradation of Worlds. Here, we understand all creation to be a formation or formations of Chandras or Spanda. Every external system of worlds in each of its planes, must be in material correspondence with some power or rising degree of consciousness of which it is an objective symbol and therefor, contains a relational internal order of objects, forces, consciousness, and a large number of finite possibilities, including the possibilities of chang, both sudden and gradual, as well as parallel and contradictory possibilities. All forms, ultimately, come from a realm of complete Beatitude, and, periodically, all forms return to the realm of complete Beatitude within which they temporarily disappear, before this process recycles again, much in the same way that they ocean tides advance and receed. Within the Gradation of Worlds are 3 generalized subsets: 1.) Sat-Chit-Ananda: A triple divine world consisting of Energy (Sat), Wisdom (Chit), and Bliss (Ananda). 2.) Superconsciousness: The Highest Vastness. The Ultimate Truth. The Realm of Linkages. 3.) The Triple Manifested World: 1.) Pure Mind - Heaven. 2.) Life-Force - Antarisha (the mid-world between Heaven and Earth) 3.) Matter - Earth. In Vedic thought, all forms and aspects of being are flowing in and out of continual synthesis; either with full consciousness (very rare) or with some aspect of limited consciousness ( very common). Brahman is the source and object of the most profound aspects of soundbecome-word. Sound-become-word is the expression of the human 7

8 intuition arising out of pure being. It is the voice of the primal rhythm of being, where Conscious Being luminously manifests its contents within itself, and ultimately, is the expression of Atman. Atman is Ultimate Source. Atman is ultimate source. Brahamanaspati is the creator of the Primal Word - OM or AUM which gives birth to all words. The primal word brings into consciousness, light and visibility, and speed. Brihaspati is the master of the creative word which manifests seven different, interrelated rays which illuminate the self-expressed thought, Itself. Prajapati is The divine Hermaphrodite, and Lord of the instinct for procreation. Hymn to Agni: The great fire at the beginning of dawn has sprung to the above. It issues forth from darkness and has come with radiance. Agni, the bright-bodied, at its birth, fills all our dwellings with shining light. O Agni, when you are born, You art the embryo of heaven and earth. You are beautiful, carried within the plants, Varied, of infancy, Thou disperses the glooms in night, You roar loudly from all maternal sources. May He, quickly at manifestation is vastness and wisdom, Pervading all, defend me (his 3rd manifestation). When worshippers use their mouth to ask for His own water, Animated by one purpose, These worshippers praise Him in this world. Rg Veda X.1.1 8

9 Agni is the most important and universal of the Vedic gods. He is the fire, the heat which prepares, perfects, asimilates, and forms. He is the heat of life and creates the sap, the fluids, the semen, the essence of all substantial being and the essence of their delight. He is will contained within prana (life-energy). Agni is the will of the nervous system, purifying it by action. He leads all thinking to effective power. Agni leads all active energies into a condition of pure light. Agni exists within the Truth, Infinity, and Ultimate Intelligence which contain the container where knowledge and force are unified, where will is in harmony with all things, and therefore is a perfect regualtor of divine action. Agni, always, is represented as being in the double aspect of force and light. Agni gives to: Indra - pure and deified mentality Vayu - pure and divine vital joy and action The Four Great Vasus - greatnesses, enjoyments, nicetities, and strengths of perfected being: Varuna Mitra Bhaga Aryaman Ashwins - The youth of soul with raptures and swiftnesses. Daksha - actualities of truth and correctness. Saraswati- actualities of truth and correctness Ila- actualities of truth and correctness Sarama- actualities of truth and correctness Mahi- actualities of truth and correctness Rudras - the play of the physical, vital, mental, and ideational activities Maruts - the play of the physical, vital, mental, and ideational activitiesadityas Adityas - the play of the physical, vital, mental, and ideational activities Indra is the God -Ruler of Being. he is the power of pure existence selfmanifested as Divine Mind. Indra rains down the life-giving and heavenly 9

10 waters, recovers the lost or hidden illumination and raises the Sun-of-Truth high into the heaven of our own mentality. Indra is the master of Swar, the supreme heaven above heaven, the world of divine light. Swarajya is the perfect environment reachable by sentient beings through our ascensions beyond our mortal mentality to the luminous truth of our being and its supernatural infinities. Vayu is the God-Master of Life, source of dynamic breath energy called prana, which is a major contributing factor to the system of aggregate nervous activities which support the mental energies governed by Indra. Here we see some similarity to the Hebrew ruach (meaning breath) and a smattering of entimological relationship between the Sanskrit Vayu and the Hebrew YHVH. Varuna is the First Great Vasu and is the etherial, oceanic, the God-Infinite Ruler of Wide Knowledge, manifestation of active omniscience and omnipotence. Varuna is the organizational principle of all world and social systems and their areas, geometries, and images. Relational to Sat. The power of Surya of the vast, clear, wide, purity. Mitra is the Second Great Vasu and is the all-embracing harmony of the truth, and the God-Lord of Love who maintains all harmonies. He is the principle of harmony by which the many workings of truth agree into one perfected and unified whole. Mitra is the force which embraces, contains, and holds. Mitra is primordial linkage. Relational to Chit. The power of Surya of the luminousity of love, comprehension, and harmony. Bhaga is the Third Great Vasu and is the Godhead Who Brings Joy, the allemcompassing actual form of Ananda (=Ultimate Bliss). From Unmaifested Divinity, Bhaga brings forth the truth of a divine universe now manifested in physical actuality and delivers infinite being from imprisoning limits and creates form for pure infinite knowledge to relate consciously to form and manifest into will. At the same time, Bhaga works through the will to divine beatitude. Bhaga possesses all of this without division, sense of fault, or devolving structures of being which can be called sin. Literally, 10

11 Bhaga means Vagina. In a greater sense, it is the primordial force of the vagina. The power of Surya of happy sponteniety and enjoyment. Aryaman is the Fourth Great Vasu and is the aspirational power of the truth and the light of divine consciousness working as force. Aryaman is continual self-enlargement and self-transcendence. Aryaman's foundation is the movement and all discernning force of Tapas, the meaning of which is Transcendental Heat. The power of Surya of clear discernment, aspiration, and endeavor. Surya is the Godhead of Supreme Truth and Supreme Knowledge of this Truth and from all aspects of Surya's being this is emanated by means of light-rays. Surya is God-Master of the Truth of Being, Truth of Knowledge, Truth of Process, Truth of Movement, Truth of Act, and Truth of Function. Surya the Sun is the illuminator of all other gods and goddesses. In His active power, he is addressed as Savitri (from the same Sanskrit root as Surya) The Creator or as Twashtri, the Fashioner of Things, or Pushan, the Increaser. The name Surya is used for His passive aspects as the Body of Infinite Light and the Body of All Revaltion. The Rudras are the violent ones who lead the upward evolution of the conscious being. The Rudras force battles against evil - the hostile powers who try top break up the unity and completeness of our being. The violent and mighty Rudra breaks down all defective formations and groupings of outward or inward life. He is the supreme healer. Opposed, he destroys. Called upon for aid and propitiated, he heals all wounds and all evil and all sufferings. The force that battles is his gift, but also, it is the final peace and joy. He presides over the struggle of life to affirm itself. He pressures the continuing great evolution. The Maruts are powers of will, the powers of nervous or vital force that attains thought as light-force and the sounds and voice of self-expression. They are the impeller of all thought and speech. They maintain life powers that energize normal consciousness to expand itself, to grow itself into the 11

12 immortality of the truth and bliss of Supreme Consciousness. The Maruts maintain the powers of thought which by this strong and apparently (only) destructive movement, they break down the established and moribund and thus help make possible the creation and establishment of new formations. The Adityas are the Sons of the Infinite. They have a two-fold birth. Simultaneously, they are born above within divine truth as creators of worlds and guardians of divine law, and they are born in our known world and in sentient beings as cosmic and human powers of the Divine. In the visible world, the Adityas are male and female powers and energies. Aditi is the original pure consciousness of infinite existence and is selfluminous. Original, infinte, self-luminous consciousness contains internal recognition or primal self which to maintain its own creative power, splits while still interrelated to primal creation, itself which is Vishnu. Vishnu is the primal creation containing the stabilization of all creation. Here, now, we have the creation of primal male and female. Aditi is the progenetrix of cosmos and creation. She is The Vagina of the Universe or Cosmic Womb. She holds Agni, the God of Fire and Creator- God, within her womb like a normal mother. Aditi isthe mother goddess of the Vedic pantheon, She gave birth to most of the gods and goddesses. She is gentle and kind and and is often portrayed as the Sacred Unslayable Cosmic Cow. Aditi is the circulator of all life substance of all there is. Hymns to Aditi:: In the dawn, I call to the Divine Mother who is Infinite At noon and at sunrise. Rg Veda V.69.3 May we abide in the law of Thy workings And be blameless before the Infinite Mother. Rg Veda I

13 The Ashwins are the twin divine powers, whose function is to perfect the nervous or vital powers in sentient beings and in the sense of action and enjoyment born out of the ocean of being. They are the creators of healing and satisfaction. They pervade all worlds. They are lords or controllers of movement, journeys, and voyages. They are divine physicians. They give health, wholeness, and beauty to all bodies of sentient beings. They are the Lords of Bliss. With honey, You engladden all movements and their paths. O Aswins, honey-filled is the skin that You bear. Full of honey are the swans that bear You, You, who are golden-winged, waking with Dawn and who comes not to hurt, They rain forth all waters, They are full of rapture, And They touch that which holds the rapture. Rg Veda IV.45 Daksha is the discriminating and distributing thought of Divine Mind. Dakshina is the Goddess of Ultimate Discernment. Ila is the Goddess of the Strong Word of Truth-Consciousness who gives sentient beings their active vision. She is the spontaneous self-attainment of the Truth of Things-in-Action-and-Result-and Experience. Sarama is the Goddess of the Power of Truth that seeks and discovers and finds insight, hidden light, and immortalityy. Additionally, She is thegoddess of the Penetration of Intuition. Mahi (or Bharati) is the Goddess of the Vast Word that brings to us all things out of the Divine Source. She represents the largeness (brhat) of superconsciousness in us containing within itself the truth (rtam). 13

14 Saraswati is the Goddess of the River of Inspiration flowing out from Truth- Consciousness. She is the inspiration which creates wisdom and exists within wisdom. May purifying Saraswati, with all the plenitude of Her forms, By thought - rich in substance, Desire that we sacrifice our own ignorance. She, the impeller to Joyful Truth, The Great Awakener of Consciousness brings forth that great flood Of knowing within ourselves. Rg Veda I It can be observed that the Rishis presented their information in such a way that one can interpret the information singly as symbolic, metaphoric, actual, literal, or fundamentalist; or on a combination of these levels; changing the combinations, as the interior mental structure of the individual demands or personally needs. And it seems as though this metaphysical information is presented in a dissociated manner. It is possible that the Rishis understood what today we call dissociated mental states, and that they understood it better than we do today. It seems as though the Rishis believed and personally experienced, the human mind as ultimately being bipolar or binary. In other words, in its plus state or "primal" state, the human mind would resemble a boundaryless monomorphic structure, very unified, and expert at seeing the sameness of things, the translation of one thing into another, and so on. In this particular state, the human mind would be at least in a condition of base-level enlightenment, and could experience eternity within a split second, experience the livingness of all thought, and experience a high level and perhaps continuous pattern of high intuition or psychism. In its minus state or "vocational" state, the human mind would begin to dissociate within its "previous" monomorphic state, and enter a polymorphic state. Knowledge would no longer be directly experienced as an immense and complete structure. Instead, the human mind would 14

15 become very focussed, very specialized. Science would now be fundamentally different from Art. Religion would be fundamentally different from economics, and so on. Specialized skills would be created, specific knowledge would be created at the expense of overall knowledge, which, itself would become more and more generalized and less respected. Extreme dissociation would lead to either pathological states such as Multiple Personality Dysfunction and/or violent behaviour. But at the same time, extreme dissociation would create moments of astounding realization that there was a monomorphic, base-line enlightened state. Why? Because if the polymorphic state is pushed to its own limits, it will either subsisde entirely without recognition back into the monomorphic state, or it will have "useful" or "useless" flashes of insight into the monomorphic state, which is the only other "territory", existence, "space", mode, or ability within this closed, binary system of mind. Therefore, the human mind ebbs and flows from positive to negative, from monomorphic to polymorphic, from the "plus state" to the "negative state", and from continuous perception (on various levels) to dissociation (in varying degrees). The structure of the Vedas seems to strongly suggest all this, but it does so through the linguistic structures of a different culture and period in time approximately 3,500 years ago. If we accept these Vedic ideas as possible, and add to it the observation that human specialized knowledge (technology, art, science, medicine, etc) has developed at a ferocious pace from a period perhaps 1,000 years after the original completion of the 4 principal Vedas. And if we add yet another observation, that all technologically advanced cultures have become quite dissociated within their own societies, then we can speculate that the "vocational period" or dissociated period of the technologically advanced cultures is coming to an end with increasing rapidity. For those who fear an end to the power-primacy of their "minus" or dissociated state, this "coming to an end" is not seen as a very advanced form of the switching of modalities of perception, but, instead, it is seen as an end to civilization, or as a "negative" apocalypse, where those who are not loyal and defending of the dissociated state are sinners, evil, and will perish, and in so acting in this 15

16 manner, ultimately partially fulfill the function of what has been called the Antichrist (who, of course, poses as the "Good" of the world and draws support as such). At the same time, using cross-cultural reference, we could say that the knowledge of binary functioning as structure of the human mind is noted within the first few chapters of Genesis, that the recognition of the existence of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is in fact this recognition of dissociation. And further, that the expulsion of Adam (first man) and Eve (first fully-functioning woman), is a very good explanation of humanities "Fall" from the monomorphic state into the polymorphic state. Genesis notes Yahweh as saying that now both Adam and Eve will have to work by the sweat of their brow and will not experience the immediacy of immortality. State upon state is born, covering upon covering has become conscious and aware, in the lap of the mother, he sees. Rig Veda V.19.1 All the Gods/Goddesses with a single mind, a common intuition, move aright in their divergent paths towards the one will. Rig Veda VI.9.5 Here humans who hold within themselves the Thought, come to know, when they have uttered the mantras formed by the heart. Rg Veda VI samani va akutih samana hrdayani vah samana astu vo mano yatha vah susahasati United your resolve, united your hearts, may your spirits be at one, that you may long together dwell in unity and concord. 16

17 Rg Veda X The Beginning of Hindu Thought and the Vedas: Come now Indra, in Your rich lustres, These Soma-juices desire Thee. They are purified by the subtle desires and by an extension of body. Come now Indra, impelled by the mind, Driven forward by the illumined thinker, To my innermost and personal thoughts, I pour out my Soma-juice and seek full expression from speech itself. Come now Indra, use Your own forceful speed to reach my innermost personal thoughts. As Lord of the Bright Racing Horses, hold firm all delights gained within the Soma-juices. Rg Veda I In the Hindu religious world, the concept of Shiva and Shakti is ancient and Shiva and Shakti are mentioned in the hymns of the Rg Veda. The Vedic hymns display a mentality very concerned with subordination and helplessness and in an attempt to deal with these feelings, these Vedic hymns led people to propose and act upon a glorification of nature and the various physical subgroups (Sun, Moon, etc) and the various physical and mental elements that were directly experienced and/or consciously and immediately within human awareness. One is led to believe that one important factor (among many others now unknown) was the oral tradition of memory which preserved the experiences of earth changes, physical cataclysm, ice ages, and the mental anxiety of creating a culture with no previous standards upon which to relie. The people who first began writing down and preserving these ideas were the Rishis. The Rishis were those Aryan (Northern Hindu) people who felt that they were fully living their life and within their own intellect, mentality, 17

18 emotions, and spirituality, were experiencing the various forms of highest truth. They had transcended the basic limitations of day-to-day unenlightened behaviour. When they spoke or wrote, they acted with Sruti, which is a divine rhythm of the Universal Being, heard within the inner ear. It appears that their oral metaphysical tradition dates back at least as early as 4,200 BC. The existing forms of the Vedas have been dated through linguistic analysis to be from the period 1500 to 900 BC. Claims have been made that the Vedas date as early as 12,000 BC. The actual Vedic manuscripts date from the period 100BC. The word Veda is a derivitive of the word Vid meaning to know. The eartliest and most well known Veda is the Rg Veda. Rg means humans. It consists of 28 hymns, most of which are divided into 10 mandalas or "books", and each mandala is attached to the name of a specific rishi to whom the hymns were spiritually, mystically, or divinely revealed. It is important to realize that these ancient Aryans (Northern Hindus) while composing the Vedas believed it was imperative to include reference to the attitudes, abilities, and spiritual subtleties of painting, sculpture, music, and dance within their writing; and that all of these were seen as deeply and fundamentally embedded within human sexuality and the understanding of this process was necessary for the spiritual development of the everyday person. The Rishis held that their Vedic tribal group were Aryans, which meant that they (The tribal group) were/are that section of humanity which finds the sacred word of illumination and is increased within one's own personal existence by use of god and goddess forms, as well as respecting and even worshiping these forms. The Aryans wer/are involved in the great educational struggle of humanity to replace ordinary unilluminated thought with fully illuminated thought and perception, and, ultimately, to come into perceptual contact with one's own immortality which is beyond explanation. Veda has been and is considered a living system of knowledge approach and usage, that accepts limitations as an integral part of the ongoing process of renewel and movement towards immortality. Everything exists 18

19 as a duality of symbol and actuality. A core idea within the Vedas is that the human soul goes from a state of living death to a state of immortality by the individual's personal exchange of unknowing for knowing. The birth of man is a way for a human to become more awake to greater profoundities within life itself. At the moment of each internal birth, actual new worlds open to the human being and his/her actual field of vision and experience becomes greater. The sense of "home" begins to reveal vast implications and the human begins to sense that a greater and greater aspect/area of the universe is his/her actual home. Three other Vedas were appended to the Rg Veda. They are: The Sama Veda: A compilation of verses from the Rg Veda, rearranged for ritual purposes. Some of these rituals are still known, while others are lost. The Yazur Veda: A compilation of sacrificial formulae. The Arthaya Veda: A compilation of magical spells Within these Vedas, there is the perception of a force or a series of forces "behind", "above", and/or "beyond" all physical cause and result. Divine power was both loved and feared. This primal love-fear of Unknown Power or Powers has remained an intrinsic aspect of the human mentality. By studying the Vedas, we can relive the experience of this (one of many) primal moments in the development of the human race. This love-fear mentality can be very basic or "primitive" and it can be very elaborated, and finally, it can become subtle and transcendent as we approach the enlightened adulthood of the human race. So, at a very early period in human development, the human race became consciously aware of its own polarity-consciousness of love-fear, causeeffect, and matter-spirit. Awareness was seen as mind. The awareness of awareness was seen as spirit. These polar entities have not changed or disappeared since thet were first realized and exist in all cultures at all 19

20 times. We have learned special ways to emphasize aspects of these polarities. For instance, by emphasizing spirit, we can create ways of training or yoking (sanskrit: yoga) ourselves into some form of personal transcendence in which we are not at the effect of these polarities, but are using them as tools for our personal and cultural development. By doing this, we begin to understand the idea of holiness or nearness-to-a Supreme-Power. Within holiness love becomes heartfelt compassion, fear becomes the understanding of the relativity of power, cause becomes hierarchical cause and primal cause, cause-effect becomes one - karma, and the elaboration of time itself and movement existing within time, and matter becomes the play of spirit and spirit becomes, ultimately an expansion into the Infinite. These aspects of the human consciousness cannot be changed, merely modified or elaborated. Within the Vedic practices, there were certain clearly stated or clearly implied concepts. Will is an aspect of knowledge taking the form of force. Aryaman is the light energy of Divine Consciousness working as force. Divine Consciousness is the force of continual-self enlargement and a continuous self-transcendence. Aspiration is the enlargement and expansion of the sentient beings' Being - the increase of force, truth, joy, and light - all of which become interdependent working powers, increasing in abilities until they enlarge and stimulate ever-opening worlds of its own being - ultimately endless. The Day is the same as Extra-Consciousness. The Night is the same as Intra- Consciousness. All truth for humanity exists somewhere within one or both of these two primary aspects of one full rotation of the planet Earth. Chandras is rhythm. Later this concept was expanded and made more detailed by the Kashmir Shivites as their concept of Spanda (which is dealt with in the chapter on Vedic Revival). Ultimately, Chandras (while, at the same time,remaining in its primal form) becomes Devatati or the selfextension of what we might call the Godhead, and this equals Parama Paravat - the supreme of the superconsciousness -and Paramam Vyoma - the supreme ether, the infinity of being at superconsciousness. 20

21 All the created forms in the universe, have their own intimate basis in the infinite, which is always above mind, life, and matter, and are reconstructed or misconstructed from the infinitesmal. All created forms come from the void, moving through various forms which are less and less insubstantial - and at some variable point this process, itself is reversed. This is known as the Gradation of Worlds. Here, we understand all creation to be a formation or formations of Chandras or Spanda. Every external system of worlds in each of its planes, must be in material correspondence with some power or rising degree of consciousness of which it is an objective symbol and therefor, contains a relational internal order of objects, forces, consciousness, and a large number of finite possibilities, including the possibilities of chang, both sudden and gradual, as well as parallel and contradictory possibilities. All forms, ultimately, come from a realm of complete Beatitude, and, periodically, all forms return to the realm of complete Beatitude within which they temporarily disappear, before this process recycles again, much in the same way that they ocean tides advance and receed. Within the Gradation of Worlds are 3 generalized subsets Sat-Chit-Ananda: A triple divine world consisting of Energy (Sat), Wisdom (Chit), and Bliss (Ananda). Superconsciousness: The Highest Vastness. The Ultimate Truth. The Realm of Linkages. The Triple Manifested World: 1.) Pure Mind - Heaven. 2.) Life-Force - Antarisha (the mid-world between Heaven and Earth) 3.) Matter - Earth. In Vedic thought, all forms and aspects of being are flowing in and out of continual synthesis; either with full consciousness (very rare) or with some aspect of limited consciousness ( very common). Brahman is the source and object of the most profound aspects of soundbecome-word. Sound-become-word is the expression of the human intuition arising out of pure being. It is the voice of the primal rhythm of 21

22 being, where Conscious Being luminously manifests its contents within itself, and ultimately, is the expression of Atman. Atman is Ultimate Source. Atman is ultimate source. Brahamanaspati is the creator of the Primal Word - OM or AUM which gives birth to all words. The primal word brings into consciousness, light and visibility, and speed. Brihaspati is the master of the creative word which manifests seven different, interrelated rays which illuminate the self-expressed thought, Itself. Prajapati is The divine Hermaphrodite, and Lord of the instinct for procreation. Hymn to Agni: The great fire at the beginning of dawn has sprung to the above. It issues forth from darkness and has come with radiance. Agni, the bright-bodied, at its birth, fills all our dwellings with shining light. O Agni, when you are born, You art the embryo of heaven and earth. You are beautiful, carried within the plants, Varied, of infancy, Thou disperses the glooms in night, You roar loudly from all maternal sources. May He, quickly at manifestation is vastness and wisdom, Pervading all, defend me (his 3rd manifestation). When worshippers use their mouth to ask for His own water, Animated by one purpose, These worshippers praise Him in this world. Rg Veda X

23 Agni is the most important and universal of the Vedic gods. He is the fire, the heat which prepares, perfects, asimilates, and forms. He is the heat of life and creates the sap, the fluids, the semen, the essence of all substantial being and the essence of their delight. He is will contained within prana (life-energy). Agni is the will of the nervous system, purifying it by action. He leads all thinking to effective power. Agni leads all active energies into a condition of pure light. Agni exists within the Truth, Infinity, and Ultimate Intelligence which contain the container where knowledge and force are unified, where will is in harmony with all things, and therefore is a perfect regualtor of divine action. Agni, always, is represented as being in the double aspect of force and light. Agni gives to: Indra - pure and deified mentality. Vayu - pure and divine vital joy and action. The Four Great Vasus - greatnesses, enjoyments, nicetities, and strengths of perfected being: Varuna Mitra Bhaga Aryaman Ashwins - The youth of soul with raptures and swiftnesses. Daksha - actualities of truth and correctness. Saraswati- actualities of truth and correctness Ila- actualities of truth and correctness Sarama- actualities of truth and correctness Mahi- actualities of truth and correctness Rudras: the play of the physical, vital, mental, and ideational 23

24 activities Maruts - the play of the physical, vital, mental, and ideational Activities Adityas - the play of the physical, vital, mental, and ideational activities Indra is the God -Ruler of Being. he is the power of pure existence selfmanifested as Divine Mind. Indra rains down the life-giving and heavenly waters, recovers the lost or hidden illumination and raises the SUn-of-Truth high into the heaven of our own mentality. Indra is the master of Swar, the supreme heaven above heaven, the world of divine light. Swarajya is the perfect environment reachable by sentient beings through our ascensions beyond our mortal mentality to the luminous truth of our being and its supernatural infinities. Vayu is the God-Master of Life, source of dynamic breath energy called prana, which is a major contributing factor to the system of aggregate nervous activities which support the mental energies governed by Indra. Here we see some similarity to the Hebrew ruach (meaning breath) and a smattering of entimological relationship between the Sanskrit Vayu and the Hebrew YHVH. Varuna is the First Great Vasu and is the etherial, oceanic, the God-Infinite Ruler of Wide Knowledge, manifestation of active omniscience and omnipotence. Varuna is the organizational principle of all world and social systems and their areas, geometries, and images. Relational to Sat. The power of Surya of the vast, clear, wide, purity. Mitra is the Second Great Vasu and is the all-embracing harmony of the truth, and the God-Lord of Love who maintains all harmonies. He is the principle of harmony by which the many workings of truth agree into one perfected and unified whole. Mitra is the force which embraces, contains, 24

25 and holds. Mitra is primordial linkage. Relational to Chit. The power of Surya of the luminousity of love, comprehension, and harmony. Bhaga is the Third Great Vasu and is the Godhead Who Brings Joy, the allemcompassing actual form of Ananda (=Ultimate Bliss). From Unmaifested Divinity, Bhaga brings forth the truth of a divine universe now manifested in physical actuality and delivers infinite being from imprisoning limits and creates form for pure infinite knowledge to relate consciously to form and manifest into will. At the same time, Bhaga works through the will to divine beatitude. Bhaga possesses all of this without division, sense of fault, or devolving structures of being which can be called sin. Literally, Bhaga means Vagina. In a greater sense, it is the primordial force of the vagina. The power of Surya is happy spontaneity and enjoyment. Aryaman is the Fourth Great Vasu and is the aspirational power of the truth and the light of divine consciousness working as force. Aryaman is continual self-enlargement and self-transcendence. Aryaman's foundation is the movement and all discernning force of Tapas, the meaning of which is Transcendental Heat. Here is the power of Surya of clear discernment, aspiration, and endeavor. Surya is the Godhead of Supreme Truth and Supreme Knowledge of this Truth and from all aspects of Surya's being this is emanated by means of light-rays. Surya is God-Master of the Truth of Being, Truth of Knowledge, Truth of Process, Truth of Movement, Truth of Act, and Truth of Function. Surya the Sun is the illuminator of all other gods and goddesses. In His active power, he is addressed as Savitri (from the same Sanskrit root as Surya) The Creator or as Twashtri, the Fashioner of Things, or Pushan, the Increaser. The name Surya is used for His passive aspects as the Body of Infinite Light and the Body of All Revaltion. The Rudras are the violent ones who lead the upward evolution of the conscious being. The Rudras force battles against evil - the hostile powers who try top break up the unity and completeness of our being. The violent 25

26 and mighty Rudra breaks down all defective formations and groupings of outward or inward life. He is the supreme healer. Opposed, he destroys. Called upon for aid and propitiated, he heals all wounds and all evil and all sufferings. The force that battles is his gift, but also, it is the final peace and joy. He presides over the struggle of life to affirm itself. He pressures the continuing great evolution. The Maruts are powers of will, the powers of nervous or vital force that attains thought as light-force and the sounds and voice of self-expression. They are the impeller of all thought and speech. They maintain life powers that energize normal consciousness to expand itself, to grow itself into the immortality of the truth and bliss of Supreme Consciousness. The Maruts maintain the powers of thought which by this strong and apparently (only) destructive movement, they break down the established and moribund and thus help make possible the creation and establishment of new formations. The Adityas are the Sons of the Infinite. They have a two-fold birth. Simultaneously, they are born above within divine truth as creators of worlds and guardians of divine law, and they are born in our known world and in sentient beings as cosmic and human powers of the Divine. In the visible world, the Adityas are male and female powers and energies. Aditi is the original pure consciousness of infinite existence and is selfluminous. Original, infinte, self-luminous consciousness contains internal recognition or primal self which to maintain its own creative power, splits while still interrelated to primal creation, itself which is Vishnu. Vishnu is the primal creation containing the stabilization of all creation. Here, now, we have the creation of primal male and female. Aditi is the progenetrix of cosmos and creation. She is The Vagina of the Universe or Cosmic Womb. She holds Agni, the God of Fire and Creator- God, within her womb like a normal mother. Aditi isthe mother goddess of the Vedic pantheon, She gave birth to most of the gods and goddesses. She is gentle and kind and and is often portrayed as the Sacred Unslayable Cosmic Cow. Aditi is the circulator of all life substance of all there is. 26

27 Hymns to Aditi:: In the dawn, I call to the Divine Mother who is Infinite At noon and at sunrise. Rg Veda V.69.3 May we abide in the law of Thy workings And be blameless before the Infinite Mother. Rg Veda I The Ashwins are the twin divine powers, whose function is to perfect the nervous or vital powers in sentient beings and in the sense of action and enjoyment born out of the ocean of being. They are the creators of healing and satisfaction. They pervade all worlds. They are lords or controllers of movement, journeys, and voyages. They are divine physicians. They give health, wholeness, and beauty to all bodies of sentient beings. They are the Lords of Bliss. With honey, You engladden all movements and their paths. O Aswins, honey-filled is the skin that You bear. Full of honey are the swans that bear You, You, who are golden-winged, waking with Dawn and who comes not to hurt, They rain forth all waters, They are full of rapture, And They touch that which holds the rapture. Rg Veda IV.45 Daksha is the discriminating and distributing thought of Divine Mind. Dakshina is the Goddess of Ultimate Discernment. 27

28 Ila is the Goddess of the Strong Word of Truth-Consciousness who gives sentient beings their active vision. She is the spontaneous self-attainment of the Truth of Things-in-Action-and-Result-and Experience. Sarama is the Goddess of the Power of Truth that seeks and discovers and finds insight, hidden light, and immortalityy. Additionally, She is thegoddess of the Penetration of Intuition. Mahi (or Bharati) is the Goddess of the Vast Word that brings to us all things out of the Divine Source. She represents the largeness (brhat) of superconsciousness in us containing within itself the truth (rtam). Saraswati is the Goddess of the River of Inspiration flowing out from Truth- Consciousness. She is the inspiration which creates wisdom and exists within wisdom. May purifying Saraswati, with all the plenitude of Her forms, By thought - rich in substance, Desire that we sacrifice our own ignorance. She, the impeller to Joyful Truth, The Great Awakener of Consciousness brings forth that great flood Of knowing within ourselves. Rg Veda I It can be observed that the Rishis presented their information in such a way that one can interpret the information singly as symbolic, metaphoric, actual, literal, or fundamentalist; or on a combination of these levels; changing the combinations, as the interior mental structure of the individual demands or personally needs. And it seems as though this metaphysical information is presented in a dissociated manner. It is possible that the Rishis understood what today we call dissociated mental states, and that they understood it better than we do today. It seems as though the Rishis believed and personally experienced, the human mind as ultimately being bipolar or binary. 28

29 In other words, in its plus state or "primal" state, the human mind would resemble a boundaryless monomorphic structure, very unified, and expert at seeing the sameness of things, the translation of one thing into another, and so on. In this particular state, the human mind would be at least in a condition of base-level enlightenment, and could experience eternity within a split second, experience the livingness of all thought, and experience a high level and perhaps continuous pattern of high intuition or psychism. In its minus state or "vocational" state, the human mind would begin to dissociate within its "previous" monomorphic state, and enter a polymorphic state. Knowledge would no longer be directly experienced as an immense and complete structure. Instead, the human mind would become very focussed, very specialized. Science would now be fundamentally different from Art. Religion would be fundamentally different from economics, and so on. Specialized skills would be created, specific knowledge would be created at the expense of overall knowledge, which, itself would become more and more generalized and less respected. Extreme dissociation would lead to either pathological states such as Multiple Personality Dysfunction and/or violent behaviour. But at the same time, extreme dissociation would create moments of astounding realization that there was a monomorphic, base-line enlightened state. Why? Because if the polymorphic state is pushed to its own limits, it will either subsisde entirely without recognition back into the monomorphic state, or it will have "useful" or "useless" flashes of insight into the monomorphic state, which is the only other "territory", existence, "space", mode, or ability within this closed, binary system of mind. Therefore, the human mind ebbs and flows from positive to negative, from monomorphic to polymorphic, from the "plus state" to the "negative state", and from continuous perception (on various levels) to dissociation (in varying degrees). The structure of the Vedas seems to strongly suggest all this, but it does so through the linguistic structures of a different culture and period in time approximately 3,500 years ago. 29