Chapter X The Three Modes of Nature                              TO TRANSCEND the natural action of the lower Prakriti is indispensable to the soul, if it is to be free in its self and free in its works. Harmonious subjection to this actual universal Nature, a condition of good and perfect work for the natural instruments, is not an ideal for the soul, which should rather be subject to God and his Shakti, but master of its own nature. As agent or as channel of the Supreme Will it must determine by its vision and sanction or refusal the use that shall be made of the storage of energy, the conditions of environment, the rhythm of combined movement which are

Chapter XIX The Planes of Our Existence IF THE Purusha in us has thus to become by union with its highest self, the Divine Purusha, the knower, lord, free enjoyer of its Prakriti, it cannot be done, evidently, by dwelling on the present plane of our being; for that is the material plane in which the reign of Prakriti is complete; there the divine Purusha is entirely hidden in the blinding surge of her activities, in the gross pomp of her workings, and the individual soul emerging from her involution of spirit in matter, subject in all its activities to its entangling in the material and vital instruments is unable to experience the divine freedom. What it

Chapter XXIII The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis KNOWLEDGE is the first principle of the Vijnana, but knowledge is not its only power. The Truth-consciousness, like every other plane, founds itself upon that particular principle which is naturally the key of all its motions; but it is not limited by it, it contains all the other powers of existence. Only the character and working of these other powers is modified and moulded into conformity with its own original and dominant law; intelligence, life, body, will, consciousness, bliss are all luminous, awake, instinct with divine knowledge. This is indeed the process of Purusha-Prakriti

A HYMN OF THE THOUGHT GODS Based on V.52-58 The shining host has arisen in my soul, the host of the Thought-gods and, they sing a hymn as they march upward, a hymn of the heart's illumination. March thou on, O my soul, impetuously to their violent and mighty music. For they are drunken with the joy of an inspiration that betrays not to falsehood, because the truth of eternal Nature is its guide. They are the comrades of a firm and blazing Light and in the force of the Light they work out their lofty aggressions; conquerors, violently they march on their path, self-protecting they guard of themselves the soul against falsehood; for they are many and

THE FOURTH HYMN TO AGNI THE DIVINE WILL, PRIEST, WARRIOR AND LEADER OF OUR JOURNEY [The Rishi hymns the Divine Force that knows all the successive births of the soul on its ascending planes of existence and as priest of his upward and onward-journeying sacrifice gives him the purity, the power, the knowledge, the increasing riches, the faculty of new formation and spiritual productiveness by which the mortal grows into immortality. It destroys the enemy, the assailants, the powers of evil, enriches the soul with all they try to withhold, gives the triple peace and the triple fulfilment of the mental, vital and physical being and, labouring in the lig

HYMN TO THE DAWN V. 79 [The Rishi prays for the full epiphany of the Dawn of the light of Truth in all its lavish splendour, with all the bountiful companies of its gods and seers, the shining herds of its thought, the rushing steeds of its force, the luminous impulsions with which it comes — companioned, as they are, by the burning rays of the Sun of gnosis. Let the Dawn arrive and the work will no longer be long and tardy.] 1. O Dawn, come with all thy splendours of heaven, awaken us today to the great felicity, even as once thou awakenedst us, — in the sonhood of the birth of knowledge, in the inspired hearing of the Truth.¹

CHAPTER XX The Hound of Heaven THERE yet remain two constant features of the Angirasa legend with regard to which we have to acquire a little farther light in order to master entirely this Vedic conception of the Truth and the discovery of the illuminations of the Dawn by the primeval Fathers; we have to fix the identity of Sarama and the exact function of the Panis, two problems of Vedic interpretation which are very closely related to each other. That Sarama is some power of the Light and probably of the Dawn is very clear; for once we know that the struggle between Indra and the original Aryan seers on the one hand and the sons of the Cave on the other

CHAPTER XIV The Cow and the Angirasa Legend WE MUST now pursue this image of the Cow which we are using as a key to the sense of the Veda, into the striking Vedic parable or legend of the Angirasa Rishis, on the whole the most important of all the Vedic myths. The Vedic hymns, whatever else they may be, are throughout an invocation to certain "Aryan" gods, friends and helpers of man, for ends which are held by the singers, — or seers, as they call themselves (kavi, ṛsi, vipra), — to be supremely desirable (vara, varā). These desirable ends, these boons of the gods are summed up in the words rayi, rādhas, which may mean physically wealth or pro

THE FOURTH HYMN TO MITRA-VARUNA V.65 THE LORDS OF THE JOURNEY [The Rishi invokes the two great increasers of the truth in our being to lead us in our journey to the plenitudes, to the vastness of our true existence which they conquer for us out of the narrow limits of our present ignorant and imperfect mentality.] He who has awakened to the knowledge, becomes perfect in will; let him speak for us among the gods: Varuna of the vision and Mitra take delight in his words. They are the Kings most glorious in light and most far in their hearing;¹ they are the masters of being in creature and creature

THE NINTH HYMN TO AGNI DIVINE WILL ASCENDENT FROM THE ANIMAL TO MENTALITY [The Rishi speaks of the birth of the divine Will by the working of the pure mental on the material consciousness, its involved action in man's ordinary state of mortal mind emotional, nervous, passionate marked by crooked activities and perishable enjoyments and its emergence on the third plane of our being where it is forged and sharpened into a clear and effective power for liberation and spiritual conquest. It knows all the births or planes of our existence and leads the sacrifice and its offerings by a successive and continuous progress to the divine goal and home.] Th