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Articles by H.H. Paramahamsa Swami Omkarananda Saraswatiji Maharaj
1. The Meaning of the Verses of the Shri Suktam in Rig-Veda 2. Adoration of the Form of the Divine – The Saint and the Sage 4. The Divine Fire – Worship of the Divinity Through Fire 5. The Pure Fire of the Vedic Sages - The Pure Leads to the Pure 6. The Divine Smile and the Devotees
The Meaning of the Verses of the Shri Suktam in Rig-Veda:
We are going to adore the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wonderful Divinity through the timeless and eternal hymn: Gaam ashvam and purushaan aham. So the verse says, 'Oh Lakshmi, give us cows and horses and men.' But you must understand, here the cow has a different meaning. Here the cow stands for wisdom, and here the horse stands for divine reason, a fast flying divine reason, sharp reason. Always the divine revelations have two meanings, two dimensions: one is the physical, the visible aspect, the other the invisible aspect. One is a plain meaning as it stands, and another a deeper meaning. So this hymn of the Veda needs the intelligence of a sage to be understood, otherwise he will go on thinking it to be what it appears to be when literally translated. Here, the horses mean divine reason, divine intuition. An intuition that flies ahead and sees the future, an intuition that penetrates into the heart of the divine Reality. Now, Shri Suktam asks the Divine, which is the supreme Fullness, to enrich us in every manner, to dispel from us, to remove poverty of every kind. Poverty of knowledge, of goodness, of peace, of happiness, every form of poverty is removed, and the whole being is flooded with light, with divine virtues, with the various powers of intelligence – an enlightened intelligence. With the various types and forms of illumination. Illumination is beauty, illumination is wealth, value, illumination is most desired, every kind of blessing is there in the illumination. We request the Divine, we pray to the Divine, we invoke the Divine to flood us with light, with wisdom, with divine reason, with divine beauty, divine joy, divine peace, divine blessedness.
A Prayer to the Divinity -
People pray in the churches, people pray in the temples, without begging the Divine to be present by them; they say words of which they are not sure if they reach the Divine. And where is the Divine? Nobody knows. It seems to be far away, perhaps above the clouds, perhaps below the earth, perhaps somewhere invisible. Such a presence is of no use, it must be here. —You can see that, you can feel it, you can touch it, you can admire it, you can have it, you can possess it, you can treasure it, you can use it. So, Shriyam Devim upahvaye. So much is in these small words: 'Come here, near. Be with me, be before my vision. Become the object of my adoration, dwell in my adoration and love. Love is the throne upon which I will make you sit. You are the life of life. Without you breath is not possible. Without you sight is not possible, nothing is visible, all is dark – though the sun is shining – the Truth is not seen. Without you all is dark. Come, abide by me. And if you abide by me, all is light, I see the Truth, I see the Eternal, I perceive the imperceptible – I see everything, when you are present with me. You are the light, the sight, the life, the treasure, the power, the grace, the perfection, the grandeur, the indescribable Beauty. You are everything. Come, stay by me, stand by me, let me adore you. You are supremely adorable. I am not asking you for the bread. If I have you, automatically bread will be brought by thousand princesses, a thousand princesses will be my servants. Come and stay with me. If you are by me everything comes, if you are not by me I have nothing. Even if I have anything it turns out to be ashes and a source of sorrow, the cause of all problems.’ So, the lover of the Divine invites the Divine, begs the Divine to be present: Shriyam Devim-upahvaye. Even the ‘Shriyam’ is not necessary, Devim upahvaye, that one word is sufficient: there is already Devi there, that Devi is Shriyam. What kind of Devi it is? Shriyam. It is Fullness of Wealth. The name of the Devi is Shriyam. It is the Fullness of Being. It is the Purnam adah. It is fullness of Joy, fullness of Life, fullness of Knowledge. That is the object of meditation. Of That the spiritual individual thinks. With That the spiritual individual is in meditation. Thousands of people ask on what to meditate, how to meditate, and thousands of people are taught to make the mind empty. The more they try to make the mind empty the more the problems arise, the more the dirty pictures come before the vision, all kinds of thoughts. So, millions of people deceive themselves in the name of meditation; they don't know what to meditate upon. Devim upahvaye – Divinity come near. You, come here. Taam upahvaye – You, be near. Divinity be near. Divinity come near. 'You are infinite Light, come near. You are present everywhere, but unless you are by me, before my vision, I can’t see you. I can’t appeal to someone whom I do not see. I cannot pray to someone whom I do not see. I cannot meditate on someone whom I cannot see, and whom I am not seeing. Therefore I would like to see you. I beg you, come near me. I try to make everything beautiful for you. Perhaps you don´t want to stand near me because I have not yet cleaned my teeth and washed my mouth, bad smell is emanating, oh, is that the reason why you don´t come to me? Well, next time when I come to meditation I will clean my teeth and wash my mouth. Or are my clothes smelling? I will put on fresh clothes. Perhaps the body is smelling, I wash it, I take a douche or bathe, I come fresh, and my presence will be welcome to you. Come stand before me, let me meditate upon You! You are wealth. You are eternity. If I think of you I have no death, I become immortal. If I am in your presence, and if you are in my presence, I am immortal, I have everything, I have boundless knowledge. If I have You, I have boundless power, boundless life, wisdom, understanding. Boundless joy, boundless peace, beauty, perfection, boundless blessedness.’ Devim upahvaye. Taam upahvaye. Taam ihopahvaye – You come here. Divinity be near. Come near!
Adoration of the Form of the Divine – The Saint and the Sage No matter how divine his reason, how powerful his spiritual knowledge, when he approaches the Infinite, the Infinite by Its Grace sends him back to the adoration of the Divine in Form. So the seeker of the timeless, formless divine Truth is sent back to adoration of a Form of the Divine. It is by this adoration of any Form of the Divine that his relations with the Divine become completely established, unbreakable, personal, intimate. Such an experience is a real experience of the Divine. An abstract approach to the ultimate, nameless, formless Truth, no matter how powerful it apparently seems to be, is weak, and the success is little, if not also very much delayed. The success becomes easy, complete, powerful, the moment the devotee of the Infinite turns to the personality of the Divine. It’s exactly like the case with the child, you give a child no toy, and you ask the child to imagine the toy of its choice, and play with it. Imagine the difficulties of the child in this situation. No matter how powerful its imagination is, it does not satisfy. No matter how bad the toy be, how cheap, the toy pleases the child and fulfils something in her life. The moment it has the toy the child plays with it, talks with it, – and perhaps also plays the mother of the toy. Even as the mother is playing with her. It is this visible form that brings out the various capacities and senses of the soul of the child into operation. The relationship between the toy and the child becomes very personal, very living, and sometimes moving. The relation between the seeker of the Truth and the divine Personality is incomparably powerful. Here the toy of the divine Personality is something living, not something like the toy of the child. Even when the toy seems to speak to the child, it is the child itself speaking to itself. Whereas in the case of the devotee of the Divine, the divine Personality is all-responsive, all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-hearing, all-seeing, all-responding, all-satisfying, all-uplifting, transforming. It becomes more real than one’s own mother or father, and more intimate than them, and ultimately reveals itself to be the very heart and soul of our inner being. This way is the way of the divine experience, and it is by this way that thousands have attained the Divine. Sages are few, saints are many; and these sages have passed through the stage of being saints. That is the precondition. And those who attempt to go directly to the formless, nameless divine Reality – no matter how pure a life they live, how sharp their intelligence is, they face many difficulties, the Divine eludes their grasp, they are in the same position as a child which is given no toy but is asked to imagine the toy of its own choice and play with it. So devotion to the Divine Personality is indispensible for highest experience of the ultimate Truth. And devotion to the Divine Personality furthers spiritual development most rapidly.
Mantras are small prayers, and these prayers are timeless prayers. They are thousands of years old and they have been used with best results by thousands of saints and sages through the centuries. See these prayers, vedic prayers and so. You see, the Veda is a universal book. It has no ‘religion’ of its own. It is not a ‘religion’. It is a science of truth, and a technology of truth experience, the Veda. Ancient rishis they were always universal men, including, taking the whole humanity as their family.
The Divine Fire – Worship of the Divinity Through Fire Consciousness is Power. It is energy of energy, it is the subtlest energy. All energy is fire, is force. Just take a small example: You give to any person, say to Mrs. H., a serious question, and demand an immediate answer. What does she do? She closes her eyes at once, and concentrates her whole attention on the problem, and tries to find out the solution. Touch her forehead, specially the place between her eyebrows, you will find it is very warm. What’s the reason? Every exercise of thought generates fire. Meditation, when it is deep and profound – right type of meditation – generates tremendous fire. After a few hours of meditation the man would like to eat three times, four times, tremendous heat has been generated in the body. But the sages who meditate do not eat much, they have other resources. Well, much of the dross of the body is burnt out. So, meditation which is deep thought generates tremendous fire in the body. Every exercise of thought, every type of energisation of consciousness, generates fire. Fire is of many forms, – visible form, invisible form. The fire generated by intensive thought is not visible, but you can feel it, the forehead of the person is very warm, the face becomes bright. Who gave the brightness to the face? Fire. Fire is the basis of all brightness. The significant Sanskrit word is Tejas. Effulgence. An effulgent face. The eyes are luminous. From where does this luminosity emerge? From fire. Fire is the basis of that luminosity. The luminosity can come from purity. Purity is fire. Gold is the most pure metal in the world, it has been subjected to fire, and purified. That is why in the Shri Suktam you find 'Hiranya-varnaam... suvarna-rajata-srajaam...' – the Divine Lakshmi is of the golden colour, and is putting on a garland of gold and silver. Suvarna-rajata-srajam... This is symbolic. Lakshmi is an embodiment of absolute purity, Her form is golden, She is the fire of creative consciousness, She is the fire of gold – unlimited wealth, eternal wealth, everlasting wealth. Her purity is fire. Her nature is of the form of fire, carries the characteristics of fire – brilliance. She is the centre of infinite Consciousness. She is the energizing Power of infinite Consciousness. The countless universes emerge from the energization of Consciousness in Her. The Divine creates the universes by the Agni of Consciousness, through tapas, through meditation. Austerity is an exercise in fire, it generates fire. Even the food that is digested in your stomach is the result of the action of fire on the food in the stomach. The juices, the gastric fire is an embodiment of the divine fire. Without that, food cannot be digested, life cannot be sustained. Fire is everywhere immanent: fire in the life, fire in the digestive system, fire in the brain, fire in the soul. The luminosity of the soul is a manifestation of the Fire of the Consciousness. Light and Fire are one and the same. Lakshmi, Agni, all these are one and the same. Ultimately, every one of these Divinities can be reduced to the Fire of infinite Consciousness, the Dynamism of the Infinite, of the Absolute, of the eternal Truth. Truth is not merely static, it is also dynamic. Truth in dynamism generates fire.
The Pure Fire of the Vedic Sages – The Pure Leads to the Pure The purest thing in the whole world is God Himself, the Fire of Infinite Consciousness. The Truth is the purest thing one can think of. God is the purest of the purest. And what is the way to experience God? The Bible says, purity of heart: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see the Divine.’ A pure heart is full of fire, fire of devotion, fire of transformed energies. Hate has been transformed into uncompromising universal and divine Love. You need fire not only to transform grain into food that you can eat, and also in order to digest the food that you eat by the digestive fire – but even for converting the lower nature into higher nature in yourself you need fire, for transforming lower impulses into higher impulses. For converting hate into love you need fire. To burn up the limitations of human life, again you need fire: the fire of meditation, the fire of purity, the fire of divine knowlede, the fire of devotion and divine love. All these types of fire you need. Not only that, you need another type of fire: directly to contact the Divine. Only purity can reach that which is supremely pure, the Divine. What is the purest thing in the material universe? Fire. Anything impure, put it in the fire, at once it becomes purified. Fire is the greatest purifying force, not water. Fire is the greatest purifyng force, and as such it is closest to the nature of God. If you want an agent who is very pure and therefore can reach God who is the purity of purity, you have to approach fire, you must beg fire. Fire alone can reach God. A pure thing reaches the pure thing. If you send an impure thing it gets burnt halfway, no use. So, the Vedic sages – who are not Hindus but devotees of the Truth and experimenters in Truth – have discovered, in consequence of their intuitive consciousness, their transformed natures, their divine character, their revealing intelligence, the fact that Agni alone can carry our prayer to the Divine as nothing else would.
But fire is not a material thing as the physical fire is, it has a dimension – even the physical fire – a divine dimension, which is related to the supreme Reality. There is a principle of Fire, universal and timeless principle of Fire. When the world is destroyed, when the universes disappear, this timeless Fire does not disappear, it is everywhere as it has always been. And if new worlds have to be created, the Divine uses this Fire to create new worlds. It is timeless. And it has a personality – it has knowledge, it has consciousness, it is a person – experience shows, intuition shows. And this timeless principle of Fire can assume a form, in executing its divine purposes. It is full of Consciousness, it is itself Consciousness. It is all-knowing, it is all-seeing, it is the witness of all that is going on in the universe. What you did this morning, all that you thought, all that you felt, is witnessed by this principle of Fire.
Sun is a little child of Fire. No sun is conceivable without Fire. The sun is not only this physical sun of our universe but there are subtler suns. There are countless suns in the universe. Every star is a sun. So when the Hindu worships the sun it is not the Hindu who is childish or stupid but it is the professor who is studying him that is stupid and foolish, for the professor thinks, “Ah, this Hindu is looking at the sun and adoring the sun. As soon as the sun rose – look here my photograph, there I have photographed the Hindu folding his hands to the rising sun”. And he will give commentaries on this, “The Hindus the sun-worshippers. What fools are the Hindus, the sun is a boiling ball of fire, what stupidity to adore such a sun”. But what this professor does not know is that there is far more wisdom in that Hindu than all the books of philosophy can reveal. The Hindu is conscious that he is not adoring this sun, for suns like this are countless in the universe; this physical sun is not going to help. Even though without this physical sun life on earth will be extinct – a fact which must compel any sensible man to bend his knee in reverence for such an object which is sustaining our life. But it is not this sun that he is adoring – who is in this fire? What is the origin of this fire, the ultimate origin? What is sustaining this fire, and into which fire will this fire of the sun be dissolved? So he asks and he discovers the supreme Fire-Principle. That is the witness of all the universes, that is in your consciousness. That Sun is already seated in your heart. Without Him you cannot digest the food, without Him your eyes cannot see, your brain cannot think. Without that life is impossible. It is the Life of life, Soul of soul.
This marvellous Fire which is purity itself, has been made the instrument by the great sages of conveying our prayers to the supreme Reality. So, if you have a prayer and if you are not sure that it will reach the Divine, you please give it to the messenger Fire, and beg him to take it and give it to the Divine. At once he takes it and gives it to the Divine. There is a method and there is a process, by which we can invoke fire, that timeless universal Personality of Fire, which has knowledge, consciousness, sees everything, knows everything, blesses everyone. This Personality is invoked, and one begs this Personality to carry one’s heartfelt prayer to the Supreme Reality. This is a great science. We can call it a mystic science, for much of it is invisible to us. It needs a sharp intelligence, in a pure nature, to grasp these subtleties. It needs a greater spirituality, greater sharpness of intelligence which by its very greatness has to be called the expression of the Grace of God; which by its very greatness can be called a revealing intelligence, or illuminated mind, – and an enlightening mind, a perceiving mind, a mind that perceives the hidden realities in the universe. Such a mind, which is unfortunately beyond the reach of the professor, and the scientist and the scholar – that is the instrument by which one perceives these highest realities. So it is a great science, known to few. The Divine Smile and the Devotee What does a young mother do when her only child returns from the school? The very first sight of the child makes the mother smile at the child. The child is the object of love for the mother. And so the first thing she does when the child returns from the school after such a long time, she smiles at the child. It is an object of love that she is smiling at. The very sight of the child makes her smile, a smile caused by love. How much more is the heart of the devotee smiling at the sight of the Divine. Since the heart of the devotee is perceiving the Divine all the time, it is all the time smiling. It is a perpetual smile. The life of the devotee is a festival of smiles – endless festival of smiles. The Divine is all-loveable, the Divine evokes infinite love, for the Divine is indescribable joy, beauty, wealth, perfection. Can such a heart ever know sorrow? Can such a heart of such a devotee ever know death? Or bad news, or unhappiness, or any suffering? All these things are abolished from the life of the devotee. Can it know any fear, anxiety, worry? All these are completely abolished from the life of the devotee. It is a perpetual smile in which it dwells. It is face to face with the infinite, imperishable Divinity. The Divine is Joy Itself, the essence of Joy. The essence of absolute Joy, absolute Light. Where there is absolute Joy and Light how can there be any disease or death or sorrow or suffering, or unhappiness or misfortune? Even if the body is by some chance assailed by any disease, the smiling heart of the devotee is unaffected. It is perpetually face to face with the essence of absolute joy and light. Who would not envy such a heart? What a great blessing is such a heart to the whole universe.
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