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

The Sixth Hymn to Mitra-Varuna   THE TWIN UPHOLDERS AND PROTECTORS   [Mitra and Varuna perfect the vastness of the superconscient being which is the object of sacrifice; they possess the full abundance of its force. When they reach that luminous origin and home, they give men, labourers in the sacrificial work, its peace and bliss; on the way to it they protect the mortal from his spiritual enemies who would stand in the way of his immortality; for they keep firm to their higher workings and to the seats of the higher consciousness to which those workings belong and to which man rises in his ascent; universal and all-knowing they de

The First Hymn to the Dawn   [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 o

The Tenth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN OF THE SPLENDID SOULS WHO ATTAIN   [The Rishi prays to the divine Flame to work in him by the triple force of Power, Knowledge and Delight. He speaks of the splendid souls of knowledge in our humanity who attain to the Truth and Vastness; they are the burning and overpowering flame-rays of this transcendent Conscious-Force of the Divine that is at work in us to climb to divine mastery. Some have become such souls, others are still hampered but growing. He desires the increasing affirmation of Agni so that all may advance to a rich and all-comprehending universality.]     1. O Flame,

The Doctrine of the Mystics   THE VEDA possesses the high spiritual substance of the Upanishads, but lacks their phraseology; it is an inspired knowledge as yet insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical terms. We find a language of poets and illuminates to whom all experience is real, vivid, sensible, even concrete, not yet of thinkers and systematisers to whom the realities of the mind and soul have become abstractions. Yet a system, a doctrine there is; but its structure is supple, its terms are concrete, the cast of its thought is practical and experimental, but in the accomplished type of an old and sure experience, not o

  Section Four THE FOUNDATION OF SADHANA THE FOUNDATION OF SADHANA I It is not possible to make a foundation in yoga if the mind is restless. The first thing needed is quiet in the mind. Also to merge the personal consciousness is not the first aim of the yoga: the first aim is to open it to a higher spiritual consciousness and for this also a quiet mind is the first need. *  *  *  The first thing to do in the sadhana is to get a settled peace and silence in the mind. Otherwise you may have experiences, but nothing will be permanent. It is in the silent mind that the true consciousness can be built.     A quiet mind does not m

Section Two INTEGRAL YOGA AND OTHER PATHS INTEGRAL YOGA AND OTHER PATHS I I do not agree with the view that the world is an illusion, mithya. The Brahman is here as well as in the supracosmic Absolute. The thing to be overcome is the Ignorance which makes us blind and prevents us from realising Brahman in the world as well as beyond it and the true nature of existence. *  *  * The Shankara knowledge is, as your Guru pointed out, only one side of the Truth; it is the knowledge of the Supreme as realised by the spiritual Mind through the static silence of the pure Existence. It was because he went by this side only that Shankara was una

Section Five SADHANATHROUGH WORK SADHANA THROUGH WORK I The ordinary life consists in work for personal aim and satisfaction of desire under some mental or moral control, touched sometimes by a mental ideal. The Gita's yoga consists in the offering of one's work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature. Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ord