Judith M. Tyberg (Jyotipriya)

Ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti

(one) (Truth) (wise) (variously) (speak)

Truth is one: the Wise speak of it in many ways.

Sri Aurobindo's Interpretation of the Vedas

Sri Aurobindo, the greatest 'scholar-mystic' of recent years, in a series of articles called "The Secret of the Veda", "Hymns of the Atris" and "Hymns to the Mystic Fire" has revealed in a cogent manner that the Vedas are the ancient psychological and spiritual wisdom of India expressed in a symbolic language which took the visible phenomena of nature, the sun, sky, wind, rain, lightning, dawn, etc., so familiar to every man and employed them for Gods and their activities because these were more revelatory of great truths, more luminous and enduring in their connotation than abstract words.

Hence the Vedas are shown to have a double meaning presented in a system of parallelisms of internal and external deities. But Sri Aurobindo declares that the Veda was primarily a record of spiritual enlightenment. It is secret words for awakened and purified souls. The extraordinary incoherence so puzzling to most translators following Sayana's exoteric interpretation disappears when this inner interpretation is adopted. A thread of sense exists through the Vedas when this inner meaning is followed, thus showing that the Vedas were primarily meant for the illumined down the ages and that its external meaning which was the secondary meaning was for the worship of the populace. Thus he has justified and substantiated the widely accepted tradition in India that the Vedas are the supreme fount of divine knowledge.

The intricate Vedic ritual is shown to be representative of both the outer and inner sacrifice, the outer ritual and mantra bringing about the benefits in the here and the hereafter, and the inner sacrifice and prayers the spiritual ascension, the complete transmutation of the whole being for a Divine Life on Earth. It teaches that the greater surrender gives the greater right. Coomaraswamy in his essay "Atmayajna" (Self-Sacrifice, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol.6, February, 1942), also declares that: "Just as Christianity turns upon and in its rites repeats and commemorates a Sacrifice, so the liturgical texts of the Rigveda cannot be considered apart from the rites to which they apply, and so are these rites themselves a mimesis of what was done by the First Sacrificers who found in the Sacrifice their Way from privation, to plenty, darkness to light, and death to immortality." The Upanishads, the essence of Veda, refer to this higher sacrifice as the true Wisdom.

Before the time of Sayana, the Vedic Commentator, whose ritualistic and naturalistic interpretation of the Vedas which has been so widely accepted in the West as well as by Indians trained in Western scholarship, there was prevalent in India among all schools of traditional commentators such as Yaska, Skandasvami, Durga, Udagitha, Venkata Madhava, Ananda Tirtha, Madhva, etc., the knowledge of a triple meaning to be found in the Riks: the Adhibhautika or external worship and ritualistic sense, the Adhidaivika, the cosmogonical, giving the knowledge of the Gods, and the Adhyatmika or spiritual, yielding the knowledge of the Self, of man's inner life in its journey from the mortal to the immortal. Yaska in his Nirukta, I, 4, 6, referring to these three interpretations says: "The Yajnic or sacrificial is the flower and the daivic or that pertaining to the Gods is the fruit or the daivic is the flower and the adhyatmic or that pertaining to the supreme self is the fruit".

These other two senses spoken of gradually became obscure and after Upanishad times it seemed that the Vedas were for the priests and the Vedanta or Upanishads, which were a more direct expression of spiritual truth, were for the sages.

But the tradition of Vedic revelation has continued in India. Radhakrishnan says in his Hindu View of Life, p.17, "The Vedas register the intuitions of the perfected souls. They are not so much dogmatic dicta as transcripts from life. They record the spiritual experiences of souls strongly endowed with sense of reality. They are held to be authoritative on the ground that they express the experiences of the experts in the field of religion. If the utterances of the Vedas were uninformed by spiritual insight, they would have no claim to our belief. The truths revealed in the Vedas are capable of being re-experienced in compliance with ascertained conditions."

And Yaska clearly mentions that the true sense of the Veda cannot be perceived by the ordinary mind, but can be recovered directly by meditation and tapasya (Nirukta, II, II; XIII,13). We find similar passages in the Rig-Veda (Rig-Veda V, 81,I) and Shaunaka's Brihad Devata (VIII, 129; VIII; 130-137).

 So Sri Aurobindo, the great Seer and Yogin of India, after undergoing his spiritual discipline and attaining divine realization writes in his Vedic commentaries, "The Secret of theVeda":

All this Vedic imagery is easy to understand when once we have the key, but it must not be taken for mere imagery. The Gods are not simple personifications of abstract ideasor of psychological and physical functions of Nature. To the Vedic seers they are living realities; the vicissitudes of the human soul represent a cosmic struggle not merely of principles and tendencies but of the cosmic Powers which support and embody them. These are the Gods and the Demons. On the world-stage and in the individual soul the same real drama with the same personages is enacted.

The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection and that perfection must be attained on all our levels- in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to up-bear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind through our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being.

In India this higher meaning of the Vedic ritual and worship will aid the country both religiously and economically. Instead of the clarified butter and various food being thrown into the outer Fire, the inner sacrifice or the holy action of feeding or quickening the Divine Immortal spark in man, Agni, the Fire God, will be acted out by kindling the divine fire with the purified and clarified mind, symbolized by the ghi and the physical or outer manifestation of the divine in life, symbolized by food or annam. Agni, thus invoked, calls and invites other Gods to share in the fruits of the sacrifice and in turn each brings blessing, or interpreted, means that once the God in man is awakened, it reveals its powers and aspects as the flame of his presence is sustained in life.

Then Indra, God of the Firmament, the Illumined mentally, appears and is represented as constantly struggling and battling with Vritra, the Serpent Adversary who covers with his darkness all divine activity and who hides the cows, the rays of truth-light in the caves of the Pan is or the sense-life. Indra is often aided in his fight by Rudra and his hosts of Maruts, the great Destroyer and the storm gods, symbolical of the Breaker of old molds and the powers of will and nervous or vital Force. The Ribhus, the Seasons, who accompany them are symbolical of the artisans of the Gods who help one repeat man's divine achievements.

Gradually Ushas, the Dawn of higher truth, comes escorted by the Ashvins, the Horsemen of the Sun, representing the swiftness and effectiveness of action in the great journey to Truth and illumination, the Sun.

With the glorious Sun of Truth come his goddesses or aspects: Savitri, Divine Grace which manifests the immortal in the mortal; Mitra, the Friend of the Gods, the luminous power of love leading to harmony in thought, impulse and action; Varuna, the Vast Expanse, the oceanic wideness and unity of infinite Truth; Aryaman, the Chief of the Milky Way, the immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration leading beyond.

Then follows Rita and Ritachit, Truth in action and Truth-Consciousness with their goddesses or powers: Mahi or Bharati, the Vast Word or greatness of Wisdom that brings us all things out of the Divine source; I!a, Goddess of Truth vision or revelation; Saraswati, Goddess of streaming inspiration; Sarama, the hound of heaven, intuition; and Dakshina, Goddess of divine discernment.

Soma, the God of immortal nectar is the consummation of beatitude, the wine of immortality and divine ecstasy.

Thus in the Vedas is portrayed richly the psychological science of the transformation of the human into the Divine, the mental into the Supramental, the falsehood into the Truth, darkness into Light, mortality into Immortality.

A specialized study, following along the lines of any one of these keys given would enrich the science of higher psychology. Excluding a few Christian mystics, Western Science is a babe in respect to the supernormal psychology so minutely and beautifully presented in the Vedic shastras. Sri Aurobindo shows that Ritachit or Truth-Consciousness of the Vedas, is a promise to those who make the inner Yajna or sacrifice. The how of this sacrifice is fully unfolded by the unveiling of the symbol-language of Veda. Thus Sri Aurobindo, the fine flower of the Renaissance of the Sanatana Dharma or Perennial Truth, has shown that the poetic hymns of the Rishis of old India were both intuitive of, and a psychological and spiritual guide to a Divine Life on Earth.

But the Veda warns: "To enter into the very heart of the mystic doctrine, we must ourselves have trod the ancient paths and renewed the lost discipline, the forgotten experience. Who will have the strength to recover the light of the Forefathers or soar above the two enclosing firmaments of mind and body into their luminous empyrean of the infinite Truth?

"Who will free the radiant herds of the Sun, imprisoned in the darkling cave of the Lords of the sense-life? When will the Maruts again drive abroad and when the Hound of Heaven once again speed down to us from beyond the rivers of Paradise and break the seals of the heavenly wwater and the caverns be rent and the immortalizing wine be pressed out in the body of man by the electric thunder-stones?

"Till this happens the secret of the Veda, even when it has been unveiled, remains a secret." (Sri Aurobindo, Secret of the Veda).

Please send your comments to:
ewcc@earthlink.net

Themes Editorials Events People News Projects
Circulations Studies Creative Reviews Articles HOME