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The Guardians of the Light
SURYA,
LIGHT AND SEER
The Rig-veda rises out of the ancient Dawn a thousand-voiced
hymn lifted from the soul of man to an all-creative Truth and an all-illumining
Light. Truth and Light are synonymous or equivalent words in the thought of the Vedic seers even
as are their opposites. Darkness and Ignorance. The battle
of the Vedic Gods and Titans is a perpetual conflict between Day and Night for the possession of the triple world of heaven, mid-air and earth and for the liberation or bondage of
the mind, life and body of the human being, his mortality or
his immortality. It is waged by the Powers of a supreme Truth
and Lords of a supreme Light against other dark Powers who
struggle to maintain the foundation of this falsehood in which
we dwell and the iron walls of these hundred fortified cities of the
Ignorance.
This antinomy between the Light and the Darkness, the
Truth and the Falsehood has its roots in an original cosmic
antinomy between the illumined Infinite and the darkened finite
consciousness. Aditi the infinite, the undivided is the mother of
the Gods, Diti or Danu, the division, the separative consciousness the mother of the Titans; therefore the gods in man move
towards light, infinity and unity, the Titans dwell in their cave
of the darkness and issue from it only to break up, make discordant, wounded, limited his knowledge, will, strength, joy and
being. Aditi is originally the pure consciousness of infinite
existence one and self-luminous; she is the Light that is Mother
of all things. As the infinite she gives birth to Daksha, the discriminating and distributing Thought of the divine Mind, and is
herself born to Daksha as the cosmic infinite, the mystic Cow
whose udders feed all the worlds.
It is this divine daughter of Daksha who is the mother of
the gods. In the cosmos Aditi is the undivided infinite unity
of things, free from the duality, advaya, and has Diti the separative
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dualising consciousness for the obverse side of her cosmic
creation, — her sister and a rival wife in the later myth. Here in
the lower being where she is manifested as the earth-principle, her
husband is the lower or inauspicious Father who is slain by their
child Indra, the power of the divine Mind manifested in the
inferior creation. Indra, says the hymn, slays his father, dragging
him by the feet, and makes his mother a widow. In another image
forcible and expressive though repugnant to the decorousness
of our modern taste, Surya is said to be the lover of his sister
Dawn and the second husband of his mother Aditi, and by a variation of the same image Aditi is hymned as the wife of the all-
pervading Vishnu who is in the cosmic creation one of the sons
of Aditi and the younger brother of Indra. These images which
seem gross and confused when we lack the key to their mystic
significance, become clear enough the moment that is recovered.
Aditi is the infinite consciousness in the cosmos espoused and
held by the lower creative power which works through the
limited mind and body, but delivered from this subjection by the
force of the divine or illumined Mind born of her in the mentality
of man. It is this Indra who makes Surya the light of the Truth
rise in heaven and dispel the darknesses and falsehoods and
limited vision of the separative mentality. Vishnu is the vaster
all-pervading existence which then takes possession of our liberated and unified consciousness, but he is born in us only after
Indra has made his puissant and luminous appearance.
This Truth is the light, the body of Surya. It is described
as the True, the Right, the Vast; as the luminous supramental
heaven of Swar — "vast Swar, the great Truth" — concealed
beyond our heaven and our earth; and as Surya, the Sun, "that
Truth" which dwells lost in the darkness, withheld from us in
the secret cave of the subconscient. This hidden Truth is the
Vast because it dwells free and manifest only on the supramental
plane where existence, will, knowledge, joy move in a rapturous
and boundless infinity and are not limited and hedged as in this
many-walled existence of the mind, life and body which form the
lower being. That is the wideness of the higher being to which we have to ascend
breaking beyond the two enclosing firmaments of the mental and physical; it is described as a divine
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existence free and large in its unbounded range; it is a wideness
where there is no obstacle nor any siege of limitation; it is the
fear-free pasture of the luminous herds of the Sun; it is the seat
and house of the Truth, the own home of the Gods, the solar
world, the true light where there is no fear for the soul, no possibility of any wound to the large and equal bliss of its existence.
This supramental vastness is also the fundamental truth
of being, satyam, out of which its active truth wells out naturally
and without strife of effort into a perfect and faultless movement
because there is upon those heights no division, no gulf between
consciousness and force, no divorce of knowledge and will, no
disharmonising of our being and its action; everything there is
the "straight" and there is no least possibility of crookedness.
Therefore this supramental plane of vastness and true being is
also ṛtam, the true activity of things; it is a supreme truth of
movement, action, manifestation, an infallible truth of will and
heart and knowledge, a perfect truth of thought and word and
emotion; it is the spontaneous Right, the free Law, the original
divine order of things untouched by the falsehoods of the divided
and separative consciousness. It is the vast divine and self-luminous synthesis born of a fundamental unity, of which our petty
existence is only the poor, partial, broken and perverted cutting
up and analysis. Such was the Sun of the Vedic worship, the
paradise of light to which the Fathers aspired, the world, the body
of Surya, son of Aditi.
Aditi is the infinite Light of which the
divine world is a formation and the gods, children of the infinite Light, born of her
in the ṛtam, manifested in that active truth of her movement
guard it against Chaos and Ignorance. It is they who maintain
the invincible workings of the Truth in the universe, they who
build its worlds into an image of the Truth. They, bounteous
givers, loose out upon man its floods variously imaged by the
mystic poets as the sevenfold solar waters, the rain of heaven,
the streams of the Truth, the seven mighty Ones of heaven, the
waters that have knowledge, the floods that breaking through the
control of Vritra the Coverer ascend and overflow the mind.
They, seers and revealers, make the light of the Truth to arise on
the darkened sky of his mentality, fill with its luminous and
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honey-sweet satisfactions the atmosphere of his vital existence,
transform into its vastness and plenitude by the power of the
Sun the earth of his physical being, create everywhere the divine
Dawn.
Then are established in man the seasons of the Truth, the
divine workings, called sometimes the Aryan workings; the
law of the Truth seizes and guides his action, the word of the
Truth is heard in his thought. Then appear the straight undeviating paths of the Truth, the road and ford of Heaven, the way of
going of the gods and of the fathers; for by this path where no
violence is done to the divine workings, straight, thornless,
happy, easy to tread once our feet are set upon it and the manifested divinities are our guard, the luminous fathers ascended
by the power of the Word, by the power of the Wine, by the
power of the Sacrifice into the fearless light and stood upon the
wide and open levels of the supramental existence. So must man,
their posterity, exchange the crooked movements of the separative consciousness for the straight things of the Truth-conscious
mind.
For always the courses of the Sun, the gallopings of the
divine horse Dadhikravan, the movement of the chariot-wheels
of the gods travel on the straight path over wide and level ranges
where all is open and the vision is not confined; but the ways
of the lower being are crooked windings beset with pits and
stumbling-blocks and they crawl unvisited by the divine impulsion over a rugged and uneven ground which screens in from men
their goal, their road, their possible helpers, the dangers that
await them, their ambushed enemies. Travelling on the path of
the Truth with the straight and perfect leading of the gods the
limitations of mind and body are at length transcended; we take
possession of the three luminous worlds of the higher heaven,
enjoy the beatific immortality, grow into the epiphany of the gods
and build in our human existence the universal formations of the
higher or divine creation. Man then possesses both the divine
and the human birth; he is lord of the double movement, he
holds Aditi and Diti together, realises the universal in the individual, becomes the Infinite in the finite.
It is this conception that Surya embodies. He is the light
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of the Truth rising on the human consciousness in the wake of
the divine Dawn whom he pursues as a lover follows after his
beloved and he treads the paths she has traced for him. For Dawn
the daughter of Heaven, the face or power of Aditi, is the constant opening out of the divine light upon the human being; she
is the coming of the spiritual riches, a light, a power, a new birth,
the pouring out of the golden treasure of heaven into his earthly
existence. Surya means the illumined or the luminous, as also
the illumined thinker is called sun; but the root means, besides,
to create or, more literally, to loose, release, speed forth, — for
in the Indian idea creation is a loosing forth of what is held back,
a manifestation of what is hidden in the infinite Existence.
Luminous vision and luminous creation are the two functions of
Surya. He is Surya the creator and he is Surya the revealing
vision, the all-seer.
What does he create? First the worlds; for everything is
created out of the burning light and truth of the infinite Being,
loosed out of the body of Surya who is the light of His infinite
self-vision, formed by Agni, the seer-will, the omniscient creative
force and flaming omnipotence of that self-vision. Secondly,
into the night of man's darkened consciousness this Father of
things, this Seer of the truth manifests out of himself in place of
the inauspicious and inferior creation, which he then looses away
from us, the illimitable harmony of the divine worlds governed
by the self-conscious supramental Truth and the living law of the
manifested godhead. Still, the name Surya is seldom used when
there is question of this creation; it is reserved for his passive
aspects as the body of the infinite Light and the revelation. In
his active power he is addressed by other names; then he is
Savitri, from the same root as Surya, the Creator; or he is
Twashtri the Fashioner of things; or he is Pushan, the Increaser,
— appellations that are sometimes used as if identical with Surya, sometimes as
if expressing other forms and even other personalities of this universal godhead. Savitri, again, manifests himself,
especially in the formation of the Truth in man, through four
great and active deities Mitra, Varuna, Bhaga and Aryaman, the
Lords of pure Wideness, luminous Harmony, divine Enjoyment,
exalted Power.
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But if Surya is the creator, he who is, as the Veda says, the
self of all that moves and all that is stable, and if this Surya is
also the divine, "the wide-burning Truth that is lodged in the law
which upholds heaven", then all the worlds should manifest
that law of the Truth and all of them should be so many heavens.
Whence then comes this falsehood, sin, death, suffering of our
mortal existence? We are told that there are eight sons of the
cosmic Aditi who are born from her body; by seven she moves to
the gods, but the eighth son is Martanda, of the mortal creation,
whom she casts away from her; with the seven she moves to the
supreme life, the original age of the gods, but Martanda is
brought back out of the Inconscient into which he had been cast
to preside over mortal birth and death.
This Martanda or eighth Surya is the black or dark, the
lost, the hidden sun. The Titans have taken and concealed him
in their cavern of darkness and thence he must be released into
splendour and freedom by the gods and seers through the power
of the sacrifice. In less figurative language the mortal life is
governed by an oppressed, a hidden, a disguised Truth; just as
Agni the divine seer-will works at first upon earth concealed
or obscured by the smoke of human passion and self-will, so
Surya the divine Knowledge lies concealed and unattainable in
the night and darkness, is enveloped and contained in the ignorance and error of the ordinary human existence. The Seers
by the power of truth in their thoughts discover this Sun lying
in the darkness, they liberate this knowledge, this power of un-
divided and all-embracing vision, this eye of the gods concealed
in our subconscient being; they release his radiances, they create
the divine Dawn. Indra the divine Mind-power, Agni the Seer-Will, Brihaspati the Master of the inspired word, Soma the
immortal Delight born in man aid them to shatter the strong
places of the mountain, the artificial obstructions of the Titans
are broken and this Sun soars up radiant into our heavens.
Arisen he mounts to the supramental Truth. "He goes where
the gods have made a path for him cleaving like an eagle to his
goal;" he ascends with his seven shining horses to the utter
luminous ocean of the higher existence; he is led over it by the
seers in a ship. Surya, the Sun, is himself perhaps the golden ship
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in which Pushan the Increaser leads men beyond evil and darkness and sin to the Truth and the Immortality.
This is the first aspect of Surya that he is the supreme Light
of the truth attained by the human being after his liberation from
the Ignorance. "Beholding a higher Light beyond this darkness
we have followed it and reached the highest Light of all, Surya
divine in the divine Being" (1.50.10). This is the Vedic way of
putting the idea which we find more openly expressed in the
Upanishads, the fairest form of Surya in which man sees every-
where the one Purusha with the liberated vision "He am I".
The higher light of Surya is that by which vision rises on our
darkness and moves towards the superconscient, the highest
that other greater Truth-vision which, having attained, moves
in the farthest supreme world of the Infinite.¹
This brilliant Surya is made by the godward will of man;
he is perfectly fashioned by the doers of divine works. For this
light is the vision of the highest to which man arrives by the
Yajna or Yoga of his being, by its union through a long labour
of self-uplifting and self-giving to the powers of the concealed
Truth. "O Sun, thou all-seeing Intelligence," cries the Rishi,
"may we, living creatures, behold thee bringing to us the great
Light, blazing out on us for vision upon vision of the beatitude,
ascending to the bliss in the vast mass of thy strength above!"
(X.37.8) The Life-powers in us, the purifying storm-gods who
battle for the knowledge, they who are created by the divine
Mind Indra and taught by Varuna who is the divine Purity and
Wideness, are to attain to their enjoyment by the light of this
Surya.
The light of Surya is the form, the body of that divine
vision. He is described as the pure and visioned force of the
Truth which shines out in his rising like the gold of Heaven. He
is the great godhead who is the vision of Mitra and Varuna;
he is the large and invincible eye of that Wideness and that Harmony; the eye of Mitra and Varuna is the great ocean of vision
of Surya. His is that large truth-vision which makes us give to
its possessors the name of seer. Himself the "wide-seeing",
"the Sun, the Seer who knows the triple knowledge of these gods
¹Rv. X.37.
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and their more eternal births", he sees all that is in the gods and
all that is in men; "beholding the straight things and the crooked
in mortals he looks down upon their movements". It is by this
eye of light that Indra, who has made him arise in heaven for far
vision, distinguishes the Aryan powers from the Dasyu, separating the children of light from the children of darkness so that he
may destroy these but raise those to their perfection.
But seerhood brings with it not only the far vision but the
far hearing. As the eyes of the sage are opened to the light,
so is his ear unsealed to receive the vibrations of the Infinite;
from all the regions of the Truth there comes thrilling into him
its Word which becomes the form of his thoughts. It is when
"the thought rises from the seat of the Truth" that Surya by his
rays releases into the wideness the mystic Cow of Light. Surya
himself is not only "the son of Heaven who is the far-seeing eye
of knowledge born of the gods" (X.37.1), but he is the speaker
also of the supreme word and the impeller of the illumined and
illuminating thought. "The truth that thou rising free from sin, O Sun, speakest today to Mitra and Varuna, that may we speak
and abide in the Godhead dear to thee, O Aditi, and thee, O
Aryaman" (VII.60.1). And in the Gayatri, the chosen formula
of the ancient Vedic religion, the supreme light of the godhead
Surya Savitri is invoked as the object of our desire, the deity who
shall give his luminous impulsion to all our thoughts.
Surya Savitri, the Creator; for the seer and the creator meet
again in this apotheosis of the divine vision in man. The victory
of that vision, the arising of this Light to "its own home of the
Truth", the outflooding of this great ocean of vision of Surya
which is the eye of the infinite Wideness and the infinite Harmony, is in fact nothing else than the second or divine creation.
For then Surya in us beholds with a comprehensive vision all
the worlds, all the births as herds of the divine Light, bodies
of the infinite Aditi; and this new-seeing of all things, this
new-moulding of thought, act, feeling, will, consciousness in the
terms of the Truth, the Bliss, the Right, the Infinity is a new creation. It is the coming into us of "that greater existence which is
beyond on the other side of this smaller and which, even if it be
also a dream of the Infinite, puts away from it the falsehood."
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To prepare that new birth and new creation for man by
his illumination and upward voyaging is the function of Surya,
the divine Light and Seer.
THE
DIVINE DAWN
As the Sun is image and godhead of the golden Light of the
divine Truth, so Dawn is image and godhead of the opening
out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human
ignorance. Dawn daughter of Heaven and Night her sister are
obverse and reverse sides of the same eternal Infinite. Utter
Night out of which the worlds arise is the symbol of the Inconscient. That is the inconscient Ocean, that the darkness concealed
within darkness out of which the One is born by the greatness
of His energy. But in the world of our darkened mortal view of
things there reigns the lesser Night of the Ignorance which envelops heaven and earth and the mid-region, our mental and physical consciousness and our vital being. It is here that Dawn the
daughter of Heaven rises with the radiances of her Truth, with
the bliss of her boons; putting off the darkness like a black
woven robe, as a young maiden garbed in light, this bride of the
luminous Lord of beatitude unveils the splendours of her bosom,
reveals her shining limbs and makes the Sun ascend upon the
upclimbing tier of the worlds.
This night of our darkness is not entirely unillumined. If
there be nothing else, if all is deep gloom, yet the divine flame of
the seer-will Agni burns through the dense murk giving light to
him who sits afar in its shadow; though not yet kindled, as it
shall be at dawn, on a sacrificial altar, yet even so it fulfils
on our earth as the lowest and greatest of the gods the will and
works of the hidden Light in spite of all this enveloping smoke
of passion and desire. And the stars shine out and the moon
comes at night making manifest the invincible workings of the
infinite King. Moreover, always Night holds hidden in her
bosom her luminous sister; this life of our ignorance taught by
the gods in their veiled human working prepares the birth of the
divine Dawn so that, sped forth, she may manifest the supreme
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creation of the luminous Creator. For the divine Dawn is the
force or face of Aditi; she is the mother of the gods; she gives
them birth into our humanity in their true forms no longer com-
pressed into our littleness and veiled to our vision.
But this great work is to be done according to the ordered
gradations of the Truth, in its fixed seasons, by the twelve months
of the sacrifice, by the divine years of Surya Savitri. Therefore
there is a constant rhythm and alternation of night and dawn,
illuminations of the Light and periods of exile from it, openings
' up of our darkness and its settling upon us once more, till the
celestial Birth is accomplished and again till it is fulfilled in its
greatness, knowledge, love and power. These later nights are
other than those utter darknesses which are dreaded as the
occasion of the enemy, the haunt of the demons of division who
devour; these are rather the pleasant nights, the divine and
blessed ones who equally labour for our growth. Night and Dawn are then of
different forms but one mind and suckle alternately the same luminous Child. Then the revealing lustres of
the brighter goddess are known in the pleasant nights even
through the movements of the darkness. Therefore Kutsa hymns
the two sisters, "Immortal, with a common lover, agreeing, they
move over heaven and earth forming the hue of the Light;
common is the path of the sisters, infinite; and they range it, the
one and the other, taught by the gods; common they, though
different their forms" (1.113.2,3). For one is the bright Mother
of the herds, the other the dark Cow, the black Infinite, who can
yet be made to yield us the shining milk of heaven.
Thus the Dawns come with a constant
alternation, thrice ten—the mystic number of our mentality—making the month,
till some day there shall break out upon us the wondrous experience of our
forefathers in a long bygone age of humanity when the dawns succeeded each other
without the intervention of any night, when they came to the Sun as to a lover
and circled round him, not returning again and again in his front as a precursor
of his periodical visitations. That shall be when the supramental consciousness
shines out fulfilled in the mentality and we shall possess the year-long day
enjoyed by the gods on the summit of the eternal mountain. Then shall be the dawning of the
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"best" or highest, most glorious Dawn, when "driving away the
Enemy, guardian of the Truth, born in the Truth, full of the bliss,
uttering the highest truths, fulfilled in all boons she brings the
birth and manifestation of the godheads" (1.113.12). Meanwhile
each dawn comes as the first of a long succession that shall follow
and pursues the path and goal of those that have already gone
forward; each in her coming impels the life upwards and
awakens in us "some one who was dead" (1.113.8). "Mother
of the gods, force of the Infinite, the vast vision that awakes
from the sacrifice she creates expression for the thought of the
soul" and gives us the universal birth in all that is born (I.I 13.19).
The Vedic Rishis, inspired poets penetrated with the beauty
and glory of physical Nature, could not fail to make the most of
the figures given to them by this splendid and attractive symbol
of the earthly dawning, so that if we read carelessly or with too
much attachment to the poetical figure we may miss or repel their
deeper meaning. But in no hymn to their beautiful goddess do
they forget to give us shining hints, illuminating epithets, profound mystical phrases which shall recall us to the divine sense
of the symbol. Especially do they use that figure of the rays that
are herds of shining cows around which they have woven the
mystic parable of the Angirasa Rishis. Dawn is invoked to shine
out on us as when she shone upon the seven-mouthed Angirasa,
on the unity of the nine-rayed and the ten-rayed seers who by
the utter thought of the soul, by the word that illumines broke
open the fortified pens, "pens of the darkness" in which the
Panis, misers and traffickers of the Night, had shut up the Sun's
radiant herds. Her rays are as loosings forth of these shining ones;
the Dawns themselves are as if the released upward movements
of those herded illuminations. Pure and purifying, they break
open the doors of the pen. Dawn is the Truth-possessing mother
of the herds; she is herself the shining Cow and her milk is the
divine yield of heaven, the luminous milk which is mixed with
the wine of the gods.
This Dawn illumines not only our earth but all the worlds.
She brings out into expression the successive planes of our existence so that we may look upon all "the diverse lives" of which
we are capable. She reveals them by the eye of the Sun and fronting
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"the worlds of the becoming she stands aloft over them all
as the vision of immortality" (III.61.3). She is herself that which
shines out widely as the Eye, and like her lover the Sun she gives
not only the vision, but also the word; "she finds speech for every
thinker", she creates expression for the thought in the soul. To
those who saw only a little she gives wide vision and brings out
into expression for them all the worlds. For she is a godhead of
thought, the "young and ancient goddess of many thoughts who
moves according to the divine law" (III.61.1). She is the goddess
of the perceptive knowledge who has the perfect truth; she is the
supreme light of all lights and is born as a varied and all-embracing conscient vision. She is the light full of knowledge which
rises up out of the darkness. "We have crossed through to the
other shore of this darkness," cries the Rishi, "Dawn is breaking
forth and she creates and forms the births of knowledge" (1.92.6).
Constantly the idea of the Truth is associated with this
luminous goddess Usha. She awakens full of the Truth by the
illuminations of heaven; she comes uttering words of truth; her
dawns are luminous in their entering in because they are true as
being born from the Truth; it is from the seat of the Truth that
the dawns awake. She is the shining leader of perfect truths who
awakens in perception to things of. varied light and opens all
doors. Agni, the mighty one, enters into a great wideness of our
heaven and earth receiving his impulsion in the foundation of the
Truth which is the foundation of the Dawns; for the outshining
of this Dawn is "the vast knowledge of Mitra and Varuna and
like a thing of delight it orders the light everywhere in many
forms" (III.61.7).
Moreover she gives the riches we seek and leads man on the
divine path. She is the queen of all boons and the wealth she
gives, expressed in the mystic symbols of the Cow and the Horse,
is the bright abundance of the higher planes; Agni begs from her
and attains in her luminous coming their delightful substance;
she gives to the mortal inspired knowledge and plenitude and
impelling force and vast energy. It is she who creates the Path
for mortals by her light; she makes for them the good paths that
are happy and easy of going. She moves man to his journey;
"Thou," says the Rishi, "art there for strength and knowledge
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and great impulsion, thou art our movement to the goal, thou
makest us set forth on the journey." Her path is a path of light and she moves
on it with horses yoked by the Truth, herself possessed of the Truth and vast by its power. She follows effectively
the path of the Truth and as one that knows she destroys not its
directions. "Therefore," runs the chant, "O Dawn divine, shine
out on us immortal, in thy chariot of bliss, uttering the words of
Truth; let horses bring thee that are well-governed, golden of
hue, wide in their strength" (III. 61.2).
Like all the leaders of the Path, she is a destroyer of enemies.
While the Aryan wakes in the dawn, the Panis, misers of Life and
Light, sleep unawakening in the heart of the darkness where there
are not her varied rays of knowledge. Like an armed hero she
drives away our enemies and dispels the darkness like a charging
war-horse. The daughter of heaven comes with the light driving
away the enemy and all darknesses. And this Light is the light
of the world of Swar, the luminous world that Surya Savitri
shall create for us. For because she is divine Dawn of the
luminous paths, vast with the Truth and bringing to us its bright
world, therefore the illumined adore her with their thoughts.
Removing, as it were, a woven robe the bride of the Lord of
beatitude by her perfect works and her perfect enjoyment creates
Swar and spreads wide in her glory from the ends of heaven over
all the earth; she attains to a high-uplifted strength in heaven
establishing the honey of the sweetness and the three luminous
regions of that world are made to shine out by the delightful
vision of this great Dawn.
Therefore cries the Rishi, "Arise, life and force have come to
us, the darkness has departed, the Light arrives; she has made
empty the path for the journey of the Sun; thither let us go where
the gods shall carry forward our being beyond these limits"
(L113.16).
PUSHAN
THE INCREASER
Since the divine work in us cannot be suddenly accomplished,
the godhead cannot be created all at once, but only by a luminous
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development and constant nurture through the succession
of the dawns, through the periodic revisitings of the illumining
Sun, Surya the Sun-Power manifests himself in another form as
Pushan, the Increaser. The root of this name means to increase,
foster, nourish. The spiritual wealth coveted by the Rishis is one
that thus increases "day by day", that is, in each return of this
fostering Sun; increase or growth (puṣṭi) is a frequent object of
their prayers. Pushan represents this aspect of the Surya-power.
He is the "lord and master of plenitudes, lord of our growings,
our comrade". Pushan is the enricher of our sacrifice. Vast
Pushan shall advance our chariot by his energy; he shall become
for the increase of our plenitudes. Pushan is described as himself
a stream of the divine riches and a lavish heap of its substance.
He is lord of the vast treasure of its joy and companion of our
felicity.
The return of the night of ignorance which intervenes
between the successive dawns is imaged as the loss of the radiant
herds of the Sun frequently stolen from the seer by the Panis and
sometimes as the loss of the Sun itself hidden by them again in
their tenebrous cavern of the subconscient. The increase which
Pushan gives depends on the recovery of these disappearing illuminations of the Truth. Therefore this god is associated with
Indra the Power of divine Mind, his brother, friend, ally in battle,
in their forceful recovery. He perfects and accomplishes our host
that seeks for the herds so that they conquer and possess. "Let
Pushan pursue after our luminous herds, let Pushan guard our
war-horses, let Pushan conquer for us the plenitude. O Pushan,
go after our cows.... Let Pushan hold his right hand over us in
front; let him drive back to us that which we have lost" (VI.
54.5,6,10). So also he brings back the lost Surya. "O shining
Pushan, bring to us, as if our lost herd, the God of the varied
fullness of flame who upholds our heavens. Pushan finds the
shining King who was hidden from us and concealed in the cave"
(1.23.13,14). And we are told of the luminous goad which this
resplendent deity bears, the goad that urges the thoughts of the
soul and is the means of accomplishment of the herd of the radiant illuminations. What he gives to us is secure; for because
he has the knowledge, he loses not the herd and is the guardian
Page – 434
Contd....
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