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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.
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.
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.
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 realisations 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 lndra. 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 fulfillment, 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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