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na nūnamasti no kastadveda yadadbhutam
anyasya chittamabhi sanchareņyamutādhītam vi nashyati
INDRA
1. It is not now, nor is It tomorrow; who knoweth that which is
Supreme and Wonderful? It has motion and action in the
consciousness of another, but when It is approached by the
thought, It vanishes.
kim na indra jighāmsasi bhrātaro marutastava
tebhiĥ kalpasva sādhuyā mā naĥ samaraņe vadhiĥ
AGASTYA
2. Why dost thou seek to smite us, O Indra? The Maruts are thy
brothers. By them accomplish perfection; slay us not in our
struggle.
kim no bhrātaragastya sakhā sannati manyase
vidmā hi te yathā mano asmabhyaminna ditsasi
aram kŗņvantu verdi samagnimindhatām puraĥ
tatrāmŗtasya chetanam yajňam te tanavāvahi
INDRA
3. Why, O my brother Agastya, art thou my friend, yet settest
thy thought beyond me? For well do I know how to us thou willest
not to give thy mind.
4. Let them make ready the altar, let them set Agni in blaze in
front. It is there, the awakening of the consciousness to
Immortality. Let us two extend for thee thy effective sacrifice.
tvamīshişhe vasupate vasūnām tvam mitrāņām mitrapate dheşhţhaĥ
indra tvam marudbhiĥ sam vadasvādha prāshāna ŗtuthā havīşhi.
AGASTYA
5. O Lord of substance over all substances of
being, thou art the master in force! O Lord of Love over the
powers of love, thou art the strongest to hold in status! Do thou,
O lndra, agree with the Maruts, then enjoy the offerings in the
ordered method of the Truth.
COMMENTARY
The governing idea of the hymn belongs to a stage of spiritual
progress when the human soul wishes by the sheer force of Thought
to hasten forward beyond in order to reach prematurely the source
of all things without full development of the being in all its
progressive stages of conscious activity. The effort is opposed by
the gods who preside over the universe of man and of the world and
a violent struggle takes place in the human consciousness between
the individual soul in its egoistic eagerness and the universal
Powers which seek to fulfil the divine purpose of the Cosmos.
The seer Agastya at such a moment confronts in his inner
experience Indra, Lord of Swar, the realm of pure intelligence,
through which the ascending soul passes into the divine Truth.
Indra speaks first of that unknowable Source of things
towards which Agastya is too impatiently striving. That is not to
be found in Time. It does not exist in the actualities of the
present, nor in the eventualities of the future. It neither is now
nor becomes hereafter. Its being is beyond Space and Time and
therefore in itself cannot be known by that which is in Space and
Time. It manifests itself by its forms and activities in the
consciousness of that which is not Itself and through those
activities it is meant that It should be realised. But if one
tries to approach it and study it in Itself, It disappears from
the thought that would seize It and is as if It were not.
Agastya still does not understand why he is so violently opposed
in a pursuit which is the eventual aim of all being and which all
his thoughts and feelings demand. The Maruts are the powers of
thought which by the strong and apparently destructive motion of
their progress break down that which is established and help to
the attainment of new formations. Indra, the Power of pure
Intelligence, is their brother, kin to them in his nature although
elder in being. He should by their means effect the perfection
towards which Agastya is striving and not turn enemy nor slay his
friend in this terrible struggle towards the goal.
Indra replies that Agastya is his friend and brother, -- brother
in the soul as children of one Supreme Being, friends as comrades
in a common effort and one in the divine love that unites God and
man, - and by this friendship and alliance has attained to the
present stage in his progressive perfection; but now he treats
Indra as an inferior Power and wishes to go beyond without
fulfilling himself in the domain of the God. He seeks to divert
his increased thought-powers towards his own object instead of
delivering them up to the universal Intelligence so that it may
enrich its realizations in humanity through Agastya and lead him
forward by the way of the Truth. Let the egoistic endeavour cease,
the great sacrifice be resumed, the flame of the divine Force,
Agni, be kindled in front as head of the sacrifice and leader of
the march. Indra and Agastya together, the universal Power and the
human soul, will extend in harmony the effective inner action on
the plane of the pure Intelligence so that it may enrich itself
there and attain beyond. For it is precisely by the progressive
surrender of the lower being to the divine activities that the
limited and egoistic consciousness of the mortal awakens to the
infinite and immortal state which is its goal.
Agastya accepts the will of the God and submits. He agrees
to perceive and fulfill the Supreme in the activities of Indra.
From his own realm Indra is supreme lord over the substances of
being as manifested through the triple world of mind, life and
body and has therefore power to dispose of its formations towards
the fulfilment, in the movement of Nature, of the divine Truth
that expresses itself in the universe, - supreme lord over love
and delight manifested in the same triple world and has therefore
power to fix those formations harmoniously in the status of
Nature. Agastya gives up all that is realised in him into the
hands of Indra, as offerings of the sacrifice, to be held by him
in the fixed parts of Agastya's consciousness and directed in the
motional towards fresh formations. Indra is once more to enter
into friendly parley with the upward aspiring powers of Agastya's
being and to establish agreement between the seer's thoughts and
the illumination that comes to us through the pure Intelligence.
That power will then enjoy in Agastya the offerings of the
sacrifice according to the right order of things as formulated and
governed by the Truth which is beyond.
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