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yastastambha sahasrā vi jmo antānbŗhaspatistrişhadhastho raveņa.
tam pratnāsa ŗşhayo dīdhyānāĥ puro viprā dadhire mandrajihvam .
1. He who established in his might the extremities of the earth,
Brihaspati, in the triple world of our fulfilment, by his cry, on
him the pristine sages meditated and illumined, set him in their
front with his tongue of ecstasy.
dhunetayaĥ supraketam madanto bŗhaspate abhi ye nastatasre.
pŗşhantam sŗpramadabdhamūrva bŗhaspate rakşhatādasya yonim.
2. They, O Brihaspati, vibrating with the impulse of their
movement, rejoicing in perfected consciousness wove for us
abundant, rapid, invincible, wide the world from which this being
was born. That do thou protect, O Brihaspati.
bŗhaspate yā paramā parāvadata ā ta ŗtaspŗsho ni şheduĥ.
tubhyam khātā avatā adridugdhā madhvaĥ shchotantyabhito virapsham.
3. O Brihaspati, that which is the highest supreme of existence,
thither from this world they attain and take their seat who touch
the Truth. For thee are dug the wells of honey which drain this
hill and their sweetnesses stream out on every side and break into
overflowing.
bŗhaspatiĥ prathamajāyamāno maho jyotişhaĥ parame vyoman.
saptāsyastuvijāto raveņa vi saptarashmimaradhamattamāmsi .
4. Brihaspati first in his birth from the vast light, in the
highest heavenly space, with his seven fronts, with his seven
rays, with his many births, drives utterly away the darknesses
that encompass us with his cry.
sa suşhţubhāsa ŗkvatā gaņena valam ruroja phaligam raveņa.
bŗhaspatirusriyā havyasūdaĥ kanikradadvāvashatīrudājat .
5. He with his cohort of the rhythm that affirms, of the chant
that illumines, has broken Vala into pieces with his cry.
Brihaspati drives upward the Bright Ones who speed our offerings;
he shouts aloud as he leads them, lowing they reply.
evā pitre vishvadevāya vŗşhņe yajňairvidhema namasā havirbhiĥ.
bŗhaspate suprajā vīravanto vayam syāma patayo rayīņām.
6. Thus to the Father, the universal Godhead, the Bull of the
herds, may we dispose our sacrifices and submission and oblation;
O Brihaspati, full of energy and rich in offspring, may we become
masters of the felicities.
sa idrājā pratijanyāni vishvā shuşhmeņa tasthāvabhi vīryeņa.
bŗhaspatir yaĥ subhŗtam bibharti valgūyati vandate pūrvabhājam.
7. Verily is he King and conquers by his energy, by his heroic
force all that is in he worlds that confront him, who bears
Brihaspati in him well-contained and has the exultant dance and
adores and gives him the first fruits of his enjoyment.
sa itkşheti sudhita okasi sve tasmā iļā pinvate vishvadānīm.
tasmai vishaĥ svayamevā namante yasminbrahmā rājani pūrva eti.
8. Yea, he dwells firmly seated in his proper home and for him
Ila at all times grows in richness. tHo him all creatures of
themselves submit, the King, he in whom the Soul-Power goes in
front.
apratīto jayati sam dhanāni pratijanyānyuta yā sajanyā.
avasyave yo varivaĥ kŗşhņoti brahmaņe rājā tamavanti devāĥ.
9. None can assail him, he conquers utterly all the riches of the
worlds which confront him and the world in which he dwells; he who
for the Soul-Power that seeks its manifestation creates in himself
that highest good, is cherished by the gods.
indrashcha somam pibatam bŗhaspate asminyajňe mandasānā
vŗşhaņvasū.
ā vām vishantvindavaĥ svābhuvo asme rayim sarvavīram ni
yachchhatam .
10. Thou, O Brihaspati, and Indra, drink the Soma-wine rejoicing
in this sacrifice, lavishing substance. Let the powers of its
delight enter into you and take perfect form, control in us a
felicity full of every energy.
bŗhaspata indra vardhatam naĥ sachāsāvām sumatirbhūtvasme.
avişhţam dhiyo jigŗtam purandhīrjajastamaryo vanuşhāmarātīĥ .
11. O Brihaspati, O Indra, increase in us together and may that
your perfection of mind be created in us; foster the thoughts,
bring out the mind’s multiple powers; destroy all poverties that
they bring who seek to conquer the Aryan.
COMMENTARY
Brihaspati, Brahmanaspati, Brahma are the three names of the god
to whom the Rishi Vamadeva addresses this mystic hymn of praise.
In the later Puranic theogonies Brihaspaii and Brahma have long
become separate deities. Brahma is the Creator, one of the Three
who form the great Puranic Trinity; Brihaspati is a figure of no
great importance, spiritual teacher of the gods and incidentally
guardian of the planet Jupiter; Brahmanaspati, the middle term
which once linked the two, has disappeared. To restore the
physiognomy of the Vedic deity we have to reunite what has been
disjoined and correct the values of the two separated terms in the
light of the original Vedic conceptions.
Brahman in the Veda signifies ordinarily the
Vedic Word or Mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression
of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being.
It is a voice of the rhythm which has created the worlds and
creates perpetually. All world is expression or manifestation,
creation by the Word. Conscious Being luminously manifesting its
contents in itself, of itself, atman, is the
super-conscient; holding its contents obscurely in itself it is
the subconscient. The higher, the self-luminous descends into the
obscure, into the night, into darkness concealed in darkness,
tamah tamasa gulham, where all is hidden in formless being
owing to fragmentation of consciousness, tucchyenabhvapihitam.
It arises again out of the Night by the Word to reconstitute in
the conscient its vast unity, tan mahinajayataikam. This
vast Being, this all-containing and all-formulating consciousness
is Brahman. It is the Soul that emerges out of the subconscient in
Man and rises towards the superconscient. And the word of creative
Power welling upward out of the soul is also brahman.
The Divine, the Deva, manifests itself as conscious Power
of the soul, creates the worlds by the Word out of the waters of
the subconscient, apraketam salilam sarvam, - the
inconscient ocean that was this all, as it is plainly termed in
the great Hymn of Creation (10. 129). This power of the Deva is
Brahma, the stress in the name falling more upon the conscious
soul-power than upon the Word which expresses it. The
manifestation of the different world-planes in the conscient human
being culminates in the manifestation of the superconscient, the
Truth and the Bliss, and this is the office of the supreme Word or
Veda. Of this supreme Word Brihaspati is the master, the stress in
this name failing upon the potency of the Word rather than upon
the thought of the general soul-power which is behind it.
Brihaspati gives the Word of knowledge, the rhythm of expression
of the superconscient, to the gods and especially to Indra, the
lord of Mind, when they work in man as "Aryan" powers for the
great consummation. It is easy to see how these conceptions came
to be specialised in the broader, but less subtle and profound
Puranic symbolism into Brahma, the Creator, and Brihaspati, the
teacher of the gods. In the name, Brahmanaspati, the two varying
stresses are unified and equalised. It is the link-name between
the general and the special aspects of the same deity.
Brihaspati is he who has established firmly the limits and
definitions of the Earth, that is to say of the material
consciousness. The existence out of which all formations are made
is an obscure, fluid and indeterminate movement, - salilam,
Water. The first necessity is to create a sufficiently stable
formation out of this flux and running so as to form a basis for
the life of the conscient. This Brihaspati does in the formation
of the physical consciousness and its world, sahasa, by
force, by a sort of mighty constraint upon the resistance of the
subconscient. This great creation he effects by establishing the
triple principle of mind, life and body, always present together
and involved in each other or evolved out of each other in the
world of the cosmic labour and fulfillment. The three together
form the triple seat of Agni and there he works out the gradual
work of accomplishment or perfection which is the object of the
sacrifice. Brihaspati forms by sound, by his cry, ravena,
for the Word is the cry of the soul as it awakens to ever-new
perceptions and formations. "He who established firmly by force
the ends of the earth, Brihaspati in the triple seat of the
fulfilment, by his cry."
On him, it is said, the ancient or pristine Rishis
meditated; meditating, they became illumined in mind; illumined,
they set him in front as the god of the ecstatic tongue,
mandra-jihvam, the tongue that takes joy of the intoxicating
wine of Soma, mada, madhu, of that which is the wave of
sweetness, madhuman urmih (IX. II 0. II), hidden in the
conscient existence and out of it progressively delivered. But of
whom is there question? The seven divine Rishis, rsayo divyah,
who fulfilling consciousness in each of its seven principles and
harmonising them together superintend the evolution of the world,
or the human fathers, pitaro manusyah, who first discovered
the higher knowledge and formulated for man the infinity of the
Truth-Consciousness? Either may be intended, but the reference
seems to be rather to the conquest of the Truth by the human
fathers, the Ancients. The word didhyanah in the Veda means
both shining, becoming luminous, and thinking, meditating, fixing
in the thought. It is constantly being used with the peculiar
Vedic figure of a double or complex sense. In the first sense it
must be connected with viprah, and the suggestion is that
the Rishis became more and more luminous in thought by the
triumphant force of Brihaspati until they grew into Illuminates,
viprah. In the second it is connected with dadhire
and suggests. that the Rishis, meditating on the intuitions that
rise up from the soul with the cry of Brihaspati in the sacred and
enlightening Word, holding them firmly in the thought, became
illuminated in mind, open to the full inflow of the
superconscient. They were thus able to bring into the front of the
conscious being that activity of the soul-thoughts which works
usually in the background, veiled, and to make it the leading
activity of their nature. As a result Brihaspati in them became
able to taste for them the bliss of existence, the wine of
Immortality, the supreme Ananda. The formation of the definite
physical consciousness is the first step, this awakening to the
Ananda by the bringing. forward in mind of the intuitive soul as
the leader of our conscious activities is the consummation or, at
least, the condition of the consummation.
The result is the formation of the
Truth-Consciousness in man. The ancient Rishis attained to the
most rapid vibration of the movement; the most full and swift
streaming of the flux of consciousness which constitutes our
active existence, no longer obscure as in the subconscient, but
full of the joy of perfected consciousness, - not apraketam
like the Ocean described in the Hymn of Creation, but
supraketam. Thus they are described, dhunetayah supraketam
madantah. With this attainment of the full rapidity of the
activities of consciousness unified with its full light and bliss
in the human mentality they have woven for the race by the web of
these rapid, luminous and joyous perceptions the
Truth-Consciousness, rtam brhat, which is the womb or
birth-place of this conscient being. For it is out of the
superconscient that existence descends into the subconscient and
carries with it that which emerges here as the individual human
being, the conscious soul. The nature of this Truth-Consciousness
is in itself this that it is abundant in its outflowings,
prsantam, or, it may be, many-coloured in the variety of its
harmonised qualities; it is rapid in its motion, srpram; by
that luminous rapidity it triumphs over all that seeks to quell or
break it, it is adabdham; above all it is wide, vast,
infinite, urvam. In all these respects it is the opposite
of the first limited movement which emerges out of the
subconscient; for that is stinted and grey, slow and hampered,
easily overcome and broken by the opposition of hostile powers,
scanty and bounded in its scope. But this Truth-Consciousness
manifested in man is capable of being again veiled from him by the
insurgence of the powers that deny, the Vritras, Vala. The Rishi
therefore prays to Brihaspati to guard it against that obscuration
by the fullness of his soul-force.
The Truth-Consciousness is the foundation of the superconscient, the nature of which is the Bliss. It is the
supreme of the supraconscient, parama paravat, from which
the being has descended, the parama parardha of the
Upanishads, the existence of Sachchidananda. It is to that highest
existence that those arise out of this physical consciousness,
atah, who like the ancient Rishis enter into contact with the
Truth-Consciousness. They make it their seat and home, ksaya,
okas. For in the hill of the physical being there are dug for
the soul those abounding wells of sweetness which draw out of its
hard rigidity the concealed Ananda; at the touch of the Truth the
rivers of honey, the quick pourings of the wine of Immortality
trickle and stream and break out into a flood of abundance over
the whole extent of the human consciousness.
Thus Brihaspati, becoming manifest first of the gods out
of the vastness of that Light of Truth-Consciousness, in that
highest heavenly space of the supreme superconscient, maho
jyotisah parame vyoman, presents himself in the full sevenfold
aspect of our conscious being, multiply born in all the forms of
the interplay of its seven principles ranging from the material to
the purest spiritual, luminous with their sevenfold ray which
lights all our surfaces and all our profundities, and with his
triumphant cry dispels and scatters all powers of the Night, all
encroachments of the Inconscient, all possible darknesses.
It is by the powers of the Word, by the rhythmic army of
the soul-forces that Brihaspati brings all into expression and
dispelling all the darknesses that encompass us makes an end of
the Night. These are the "Brahma"s of the Veda, charged with the
word, the brahman, the mantra; it is they in the
sacrifice who raise heavenward the divine Rik, the Stubh or Stoma.
Rk, connected with the Word arka which means light
or illumination, is the Word considered as a power of realization
in the illuminating consciousness; stubh is the Word
considered as a power which affirms and confirms in the settled
rhythm of things. That which has to be expressed is realized in
consciousness, affirmed, finally confirmed by the power of the
Word. The "Brahma"s or Brahmana forces are the priests of the
Word, the creators by the divine rhythm. It is by their cry that
Brihaspati breaks Vala into fragments.
As Vritra is the enemy, the Dasyu, who holds back the flow
of the sevenfold waters of conscient existence, - Vritra, the
personification of the Inconscient, so Vala is the enemy, the
Dasyu, who holds back in his hole, his cave, bilam, guha,
the herds of the Light; he is the personification of the
subconscient. Vala is not himself dark or inconscient, but a cause
of darkness.
Rather his substance is of the light, valasya gomatah,
valasya govapusah, but he holds the light in himself and
denies its conscious manifestation. He has to be broken into
fragments in order that the hidden lustres may be liberated. Their
escape is expressed by the emergence of the Bright Ones, the herds
of the Dawn, from the cavern below in the physical hill and their
driving upward by Brihaspati to the heights of our being whither
with them and by them we climb. He calls to them with the voice of
the superconscient knowledge; they follow him with the response of
the conscious intuition. They give in their course the impulsion
to the activities which form the material of the sacrifice and
constitute the offerings given to the gods and these also are
carried upward till they reach the same divine goal.
This self-expressive Soul, Brihaspati, is the Purusha, the
Father of all things; it is the universal Divinity; it is the Bull
of the herds, the Master and fertilizer of all these luminous
energies evolved or involved, active in the day or obscurely
working in the night of things, which constitute the becoming or
world- existence, bhuvanam. To the Purusha under the name
of Brihaspati the Rishi would have us dispose in the order of a
sacrifice all the materials of our being by sacrificial action in
which they are given up to the All-Soul as acceptable ablations
offered with adoration and surrender. By the sacrifice we shall
become through the grace of this godhead full of heroic energy for
the battle of life, rich in the offspring of the soul, masters of
the felicities which are attained by divine enlightenment and
right action.
For the soul's energy and overcoming force are perfected
in the human being who bears in himself and is able to bear firmly
this conscious Soul-Power brought forward as the leading agency in
the nature, who arrives by it at a rapid and joyous movement of
the inner activities as did the pristine sages, compasses that
harmonious bound and gallop of the steed of Life within and adores
always this godhead giving it the first fruits of results and
enjoyments. By that energy he throws himself upon and masters all
that comes to him in the births, the worlds, the planes of
consciousness that open upon his perception in the progress of the
being. He becomes the king, the samrat, ruler of his world-
environment.
For
such a soul attains to a firmly settled existence in its own
proper home, the Truth-Consciousness, the infinite totality, and
for it at all times Ila, the highest Word, premier energy of the
Truth-Consciousness, she who is the direct revealing vision in
knowledge and becomes in that knowledge the spontaneous self-
attainment of the Truth of things in action, result and
experience, - Ila grows perpetually in body and richness. To him
all creatures of themselves incline, they submit to the Truth in
him because it is one with the Truth in themselves. For the
conscious Soul-Power that is the universal creator and realiser,
leads in all his activities. It gives him the guidance of the
Truth in his relations with all creatures and therefore he acts
upon them with an entire and spontaneous mastery. This is the
ideal state of man that the soul-force should lead him,
Brihaspati, Brahma, the spiritual light and counsellor, and he
realising himself as Indra, the royal divinity of action, should
govern himself and all his environment in the right of their
common Truth, brahma rajani purva eti.
For this Brahma, this
creative Soul seeks to manifest and increase himself in the
royalty of the human nature and he who attains to that royalty of
light and power and creates in himself for Brahma that highest
human good, finds himself always cherished, fostered, increased by
all the divine cosmic powers who work for the supreme
consummation. He wins all those possessions of the soul which are
necessary for the royalty of the spirit, those that belong to his
own plane of consciousness, and those that present themselves to
him from other planes of consciousness. Nothing can assail or
affect his triumphant progress.
Indra and Brihaspati are thus the two divine powers
whose fullness in us and conscious possession of the Truth are the
conditions of our perfection. Vamadeva calls on them to drink in
this great sacrifice the wine of immortal Ananda, rejoicing in the
intoxication of its ecstasies, pouring out abundantly the
substance and riches of the spirit. Those outpourings of the
superconscient beatitude must enter into the soul-force and there
take being perfectly. Thus a felicity will be formed, a governed
harmony, replete with all the energies and, capacities of the
perfected nature which is master of itself and its world.
So
let Brihaspati and Indra increase in us and that state of right
mentality which together they build will be manifested; for that
is the final condition. Let them foster the growing thoughts and
bring into expression those energies of the mental being which by
an enriched and multiple thought become capable of the
illumination and rapidity of the Truth-Consciousness. The powers
that attack the Aryan fighter, would create in him poverties of
mind and poverties of the emotive nature, all infelicities.
Soul-force and mental-force increasing together, destroy all such
poverty and insufficiency. Together they bring man to his crowning
and his perfect kinghood.
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