The Twelfth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN OF MAN'S ASPIRATION TO THE TRUTH   [The Rishi invokes this flame of the Divine Force, this vast Lord of the superconscient Truth, this Truth-conscious One, to accept thought and word into himself, become truth-conscient in man and cleave out the many streams of the Truth. Not by mere force of effort nor under the law of the duality can the Truth be attained, but by the Truth itself. But there are not only powers of this Force that battle with the falsehood and guard and conquer, there are others also who have helped so far in the march, but who would keep to the foundation of the falsehood because they c

A Vedic Hymn to the Fire   A HYMN OF THE UNIVERSAL DIVINE FORCE AND WILL1     Other flames are only branches of thy stock, O Fire. All the immortals take in thee their rapturous joy. O universal Godhead, thou art the navel-knot of the earths and their inhabitants; all men born thou controllest and supportest like a pillar.     The Flame is the head of heaven and the navel of the earth and he is the power that moves at work in the two worlds. O Vaishwanara, the gods brought thee to birth a god to be a light to Aryan man.     As the firm rays

Part One The Secret of the Veda Chapter I   The Problem and Its Solution   IS THERE at all or is there still a secret of the Veda? According to current conceptions the heart of that ancient mystery has been plucked out and revealed to the gaze of all, or rather no real secret ever existed. The hymns of the Veda are the sacrificial compositions of a primitive and still barbarous race written around a system of ceremonial and propitiatory rite

' ' by Sri Aurobindo Page 1 of 50 Hymns to the Lords of Light     The Guardians of the Light   SURYA, LIGHT AND SEER   THE RIG VEDA rises out of the ancient Dawn with the sound of a thousand-voiced hymn lifted from the soul of man to an all-creative Truth and an all-illumining Light. Truth and Light are synonymous or equivalent words in the thought of the Vedic seers even as are their opposites, Darkness and Ignorance. The battle of the Vedic Gods and Titans is a perpetual conflict between Day and Night for the possession of the triple world of heaven, mid-air and earth and for the liberation or bondage of the mind, life

The Twenty-Fifth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN TO THE LORD OF LIGHT AND CREATOR OF GODHEAD   [The Rishi hymns Agni as the Seer-Will whose whole being is the light and the truth and the lavishing of the substance of divinity. He is the son born to the thought of the seers and he gives himself as the godhead born in man who is the son of our works opulent with the divine Truth and the divine Power and as the conquering steed of the journey and the battle. The whole movement of the Seer-Will is upward to the light and vastness of the superconscient; his voice is as if the thunder-chant of those heavens. He shall carry us by his perfect workin

XII   Vishnu, the All-Pervading Godhead   Rig Veda I.154     1. Of Vishnu now I declare the mighty works, who has measured out the earthly worlds and that higher seat of our self-accomplishing he supports, he the wide-moving, in the threefold steps of his universal movement.     2. That Vishnu affirms on high by his mightiness and he is like a terrible lion that ranges in the difficult places, yea, his lair is on the mountain-tops, he in whose three wide movements all the worlds find their dwelling-place.     3. Let our strength and our thought go forward t

The Third Hymn to Agni   THE DIVINE FORCE, CONQUEROR OF THE SUPREME GOOD   [The Divine Will-Force is that of which all the other godheads are forms and he manifests all these powers of supreme Truth as he grows in us. Thus the supreme state of conscious being is attained and by that our complex and manifold existence is maintained in the Light and the Joy. The Rishi prays that the evil may not be allowed to express itself again in him, that the secret soul in us who is the Father of things but in us appears as the child of our works and our evolution, may open itself to the vast Truth-consciousness. The Divine Flame will dest

The Tenth Hymn to Mitra-Varuna   AN INVOCATION TO THE SACRIFICE   [The Rishi invokes Mitra and Varuna to the Soma offering as destroyers of the enemy and greateners of our being and as helpers of our thoughts by their mastery and wisdom.]     1. O destroyers of the Enemy, come with your greatenings,1 O Varuna, O Mitra, to this our delightful sacrifice.     2. O Varuna, O Mitra, you govern every man and are the wise thinkers; you are the rulers, nourish our thoughts.     3. Come, O Varuna, O Mitra, to our Soma offering, to the sacrifice of the

VI   The Divine Dawn   Rig Veda III.61     1. Dawn, richly stored with substance, conscious cleave to the affirmation of him who expresses thee, O thou of the plenitudes. Goddess, ancient, yet ever young thou movest many-thoughted following the law of thy activities, O bearer of every boon.     2. Dawn divine, shine out immortal in thy car of happy light sending forth the pleasant voices of the Truth. May steeds well-guided bear thee here who are golden brilliant of hue and wide their might.     3. Dawn, confronting all the worlds thou standest high-uplifted and art th

Chapter XIX   The Victory of the Fathers   THE HYMNS addressed by the great Rishi Vamadeva to the divine Flame, to the Seer-Will, Agni are among the most mystic in expression in the Rig Veda and though quite plain in their sense if we hold firmly in our mind the system of significant figures employed by the Rishis, will otherwise seem only a brilliant haze of images baffling our comprehension. The reader has at every moment to apply that fixed notation which is the key to the sense of the hymns; otherwise he will be as much at a loss as a reader of metaphysics who has not mastered the sense of the philosophical terms that are being constantly used or, let us say, one who