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The Guardians of the Light
MITRA
If the purity, infinity, strong royalty of Varuna are the grand
framework and majestic substance of the divine being, Mitra is
its beauty and perfection. To be infinite, pure, a king over oneself
and a master-soul must be the nature of the divine man because
so he shares in the nature of God. But the Vedic ideal is not
satisfied simply with a large, unfulfilled plan of the divine image.
There must be noble and rich contents in this vast continent;
the many-roomed tenement of our being contained in Varuna has
to be ordered by Mitra in the right harmony of its utility and
its equipment.
For the godhead is a plenitude as well as an infinity; Varuna
is an ocean no less than an ethereal heaven. Pure and subtle
as the ether, his strong substance is yet no serene void or easy
vague of inactive peace, but rather we have seen in it a surging
march of thought and action; he has been described to us as a
nodus in which all wisdom is upgathered and a hill upon which
the original, unfallen workings of the gods are supported. King
Varuna is one who sleeps not, but is awake and mighty forever,
eternally an effective force and worker for the Truth and the Right. Still he
acts as the guardian of the Truth rather than constitutes it, or constitutes rather through the action of other god-
heads who avail themselves of his wideness and surging force. He keeps, drives even the shining herds, but does not assemble
them in the pastures, an upholder of our powers and remover
of obstacles and enemies much more than a builder of our parts.
Who then gathers knowledge into this nodus or links divine
action in this sustainer of works ? Mitra is the harmoniser, Mitra
the builder, Mitra the constituent Light, Mitra the god who
effects the right unity of which Varuna is the substance and the
infinitely self-enlarging periphery. These two Kings are complementary to each other in their nature and their divine works. In
them we find and by them we gain harmony in largeness: we see
in the Godhead and increase in ourselves purity without defect
basing love faultless in wisdom. Therefore these two are a great
duo of the self-fulfilling godhead and the Vedic word calls them
together to a vaster and vaster sacrifice to which they arrive as the
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inseparable builders of an increasing Truth. Madhuchchhandas
gives us the keynote of their united divinity. "Mitra I call, the
pure in judgment, and Varuna, devourer of the foe. By Truth,
Mitra and Varuna, Truth-increasers who get to the touch of
Truth, you attain to a vast working of the will. Seers, dwellers
in the wideness, born with many births they uphold the judgment at its works" (1.2.7-9).
The name Mitra comes from a root which meant originally
to contain with compression and so to embrace and has given us
the ordinary Sanskrit word for friend, mitra, as well as the archaic
Vedic word for bliss, mayas. Upon the current sense of the word
mitra, the Friend, the Vedic poets continually rely for their covert
key to the psychological function of this apparent sungod. When
the other deities and especially the brilliant Agni are spoken of
as helpful friends to the human sacrificer, they are said to be
Mitra, or to be like Mitra, or to become Mitra, — as we should now say, the
divine Will-force, or whatever other power and personality of the godhead, reveals itself eventually as the divine
Love. Therefore we must suppose that to these symbolists Mitra
was essentially the Lord of Love, a divine friend, a kindly helper
of men and immortals. The Veda speaks of him as the most
beloved of the gods.
The Vedic seers looked at Love from above, from its source
and root and saw it and received it in their humanity as an out-
flowing of the divine Delight. The Taittiriya Upanishad ex-
pounding this spiritual and cosmic bliss of the godhead, Vedantic
Ananda, Vedic Mayas, says of it, "Love is its head." But the
word it chooses for Love, priyam, means properly the delightful-
ness of the objects of the soul's inner pleasure and satisfaction.
The Vedic singers used the same psychology. They couple mayas
and prayas, — mayas, the principle of inner felicity independent
of all objects, prayas, its outflowing as the delight and pleasure
of the soul in objects and beings. The Vedic happiness is this
divine felicity which brings with it the boon of a pure possession
and sinless pleasure in all things founded upon the unfailing
touch of the Truth and Right in the freedom of a large universality.
Mitra is the most beloved of the gods because he brings
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within our reach this divine enjoyment and
leads us to this perfect happiness. Varuna makes directly for strength; we discover
a force and a will vast in purity; Aryaman the Aspirer is secured
in the amplitude of his might by Varuna's infinity; he does his
large works and effects his great movement by the power of
Varuna's universality. Mitra makes directly for bliss, — Bhaga
the Enjoyer is established in a blameless possession and divine
enjoyment by the all-reconciling harmony of Mitra, by his purifying light of right discernment, his firmly-basing law. There-
fore it is said of Mitra that all perfected souls adhere or are firmly
fixed "to the bliss of this Beloved in whom there is no hurt", for
in him there is no sin or wound or falling. All mortal delight has
its mortal danger; but the immortal light and law secures the soul
of man in a fearless joy. That mortal, says Vishwamitra (III.
59.2), who learns by Mitra's law, the law of this Son of Infinity,
is possessed of prayas, the soul's satisfaction in its objects; such
a soul cannot be slain, nor overcome, nor can any evil take
possession of it from near or from afar. For Mitra fashions in
gods and men impulsions whose action spontaneously fulfils
all the soul's seekings.
That happy freedom of all-possession comes to us out of this
godhead's universality and his reconciling luminous embrace of
things: Mitra's is the principle of harmony by which the manifold workings of the Truth agree together in a perfectly wedded
union. The root of the name means both to embrace and to contain and hold and, again, to build or form in the sense of linking
together the parts or materials of a whole. Adorable Mitra is
born in us as a blissful ordainer of things and a king full of
might. Mitra holds up heaven and earth and looks sleeplessly
upon the worlds and the peoples, and his vigilant and perfect
ordinances create in us a happy rightness of mind and feeling,
—sumati, a state of grace, we might almost say, —which becomes for us an unhurt abiding-place. "Free from all undelightfulness,"
says the Vedic verse, "rejoicing with rapture in the goddess of the Word, bowing the knee in the wideness of earth, may
we attain to our abiding-place in the law of working of Mitra,
son of Infinity, and dwell in his grace" (III.59.3). It is when
Agni becomes Mitra, when the divine Will realises the divine
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Love that, in the Vedic image, the Lord and his Spouse agree
in their mansion.
The well-accorded happiness of the Truth is Mitra's law
of working; for it is upon Truth and divine Knowledge that
this harmony and perfect temperament are founded; they are
formed, secured and guarded by the Maya of Mitra and Varuna.
That well-known word comes from the same root as Mitra.
Maya is the comprehending, measuring, forming Knowledge
which whether divine or undivine, secure in the undivided being of
Aditi or labouring in the divided being of Diti, builds up the whole
scene, environment, confines and defines the whole condition,
law and working of our existence. Maya is the active, originative,
determinative view which creates for each being according to
his own consciousness his own world. But Mitra is a Lord of
the Light, a Son of Infinity and a Guardian of the Truth and his
Maya part of an infinite, supreme and faultless creative wisdom.
He builds, he joins together in an illuminated harmony all the
numerous planes, all the successive steps, all the graded seats of
our being. Whatsoever Aryaman aspires to on his path, has to
be effected by the 'holdings' or laws of Mitra or by his foundations, statuses, placings, mitrasya dharmabhiḥ, mitrasya
dhāmabhiḥ. For dharma, the law is that which holds things together
and to which we hold; dhāma, the status is the placing of the law
in a founded harmony which creates for us our plane of living
and the character of our consciousness, action and thought.
Mitra, like the other sons of Aditi, is a
master of Knowledge. He possesses a light which is full of a varied inspiration,
or, to keep closer to the Vedic term, a richly diversified hearing
of the knowledge. In the wideness of existence which he enjoys
in common with Varuna, he acquires possession of heaven by the greatness of the
being of the Truth and enlarges his conquering mastery over the earth by these inspirations or hearings
of its Knowledge. All the five Aryan peoples labour therefore
and travel for this bright and beautiful Mitra who comes into
them with his luminous force and bears in his wideness all the
Gods. He is the great and blissful one who sets and leads
creatures born into the world upon their path. The distinction is
drawn in one verse that Varuna is the masterful traveller to the
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soul's supreme seat, Mitra makes men advance in that march.
"Even now," says the Rishi, "may I attain the movement to the
goal and journey on Mitra's path."
Since Mitra cannot fulfil his harmony except in the wideness
and purity of Varuna, he is constantly invoked in company with
that great godhead. Theirs are the supreme statuses or planes
of the soul; it is the bliss of Mitra and Varuna that has to in-
crease in us. By their law that vast plane of our consciousness
shines out upon us and heaven and earth are the two paths of
their journey. For Aditi of the Truth, their mother, has borne
them omniscient and great for almightiness; and it is luminous
Aditi, the undivided being, whom they, wakeful from day to day,
cleave to, she who holds for us our habitations in that world of
light and they attain to its luminous forcefulness. They are the
two Sons perfect in their birth from of old who support the law
of our action; children are they of a vast luminous power, off-
spring of the divine discerning thought and perfect in will.
They are the guardians of Truth, possessed of its law in the supreme ether. Swar is their golden home and birth-place.
Mitra and Varuna have an unwounded vision and are
better knowers of the Path than our sight; for in the Knowledge
they are seers of Swar. They take by the passion of their discerning thought the concealing falsehood away from the Truth to
which the path has to lead. They proclaim the vast Truth of
which they are possessed. It is because they possess it and with it
the perfection of the will which is its effect, that they are seated
in us for empire and uphold our action as the masters of might. By Truth they come to the Truth, nourishing in their lordship
of things our thoughts, and in their purified judgment they open
the eye of consciousness to all wisdom by the perception in men.
Thus all-seeing and all-knowing they by the law, by the Maya
of the mighty Lord, guard our actions, even as they govern the
whole world in the power of the Truth. That Maya is established
in the heavens, it ranges there as a Sun of light; it is their rich
and wonderful weapon. They are far-hearers, masters of true
being, true themselves and increasers of truth in each human creature. They nourish the shining herds and loose forth the abundance of heaven; they make heaven to rain down by the Maya
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of the Mighty Lord. And that celestial rain is the wealth of the
spiritual felicity which the seers desire; it is the immortality.¹
ARYAMAN
Aryaman, third of the four great solar godheads, is the least
prominent of them all in the invocations of the seers. No separate hymn is addressed to him and, if his name occurs not un-
frequently, it is in scattered verses; there is no strong body of
Riks from which we can construct firmly our idea of his functions
or recompose his physiognomy. Most often he is simply invoked
by his bare name along with Mitra and Varuna or in the larger
group of the sons of Aditi, almost always in adjunction to other
kindred deities. Still there are half a dozen or more half-Riks
from which his one chief and characteristic action emerges
accompanied by the usual epithets of the Lords of the Truth,
epithets expressive of Knowledge, Joy, Infinity and Power.
In the later tradition the name of Aryaman is placed at the
head of the Fathers to whom as their appropriate offering is
given the symbolic food, the piṇḍa of the Puranic funeral and
memorial rites. In the Puranic traditions the Fathers are of two
classes, divine and human, the latter being the ancestors, the
Manes. But it is in connection with the Fathers as the souls who
have attained to heaven, to immortality that we must think of
Aryaman. Krishna in the Gita, enumerating the chief powers
or manifestations of the eternal Godhead in things and beings,
speaks of himself as Ushanas among the seers, Bhrigu among
the Rishis, Vyasa among the sages, Vishnu among the children
of Aditi, Aryaman among the Fathers. Now in the Veda the
Fathers are the ancient illumined ones who discovered the Know- ledge, created
and followed the Path, reached the Truth, conquered Immortality; and in the few Riks in which Aryaman's
separate personality emerges, it is as the God of the Path that he
is hymned.
His name Aryaman, kin etymologically to the words arya,
ārya, ari, by which are distinguished the men or peoples who
¹Vṛṣṭim vām
rādho amṛtatvam
īmahe (V.63.2).
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follow the Vedic culture and the Gods who assist them in their
battles and their aspirations, is similarly indicative. The Aryan
is the traveller on the Path, the aspirant to immortality by divine
sacrifice, one of the shining children of Light, a worshipper of
the Masters of the Truth, a fighter in the battle against the
powers of darkness who obstruct the human journey. Aryaman
is the godhead in whose divine power this Aryahood is rooted;
he is this Force of sacrifice, aspiration, battle, journey towards
perfection and light and celestial bliss by which the path is
created, travelled, pursued beyond all resistance and obscuration
to its luminous and happy goal.
In consequence, the action of Aryaman takes up the attributes of Mitra and Varuna as leaders of the Path. This Force
fulfils the happy impulsions of that Light and Harmony and the
movement of infinite knowledge and power of that pure Vast-
ness. Like Mitra and Varuna he makes men travel on the path;
he is full of the perfect happiness of Mitra; he is complete in the
will and the works of sacrifice; he and Varuna distinguish the
path for mortals. He is like Varuna a godhead manifold in his
births; like him he oppresses the wrath of the hurter of men. It
is by the great path of Aryaman that we shall cross beyond the
souls of a false or evil thought who obstruct our path. Aditi,
mother of the Kings, and Aryaman carry us by paths of a happy
travelling beyond all inimical powers. The man who seeks the
straightness of Mitra's and Varuna's workings and by the force
of the word and the affirmation embraces their law with all his
being, is guarded in his progress by Aryaman.
But the Rik most distinctive of the function of Aryaman is
that which describes him as "Aryaman of the unbroken path, of
the many chariots, who dwells as the sevenfold offerer of sacrifice in births of diverse forms" (X.64.5). He is the deity of the
human journey who carries it forward in its irresistible progress
which the attacks of the enemy cannot overcome or successfully
interrupt so long as this divine Force is our leader. The journey
is effected through a manifold movement of our evolution, the
many chariots of Aryaman. It is the journey of the human
sacrifice which has a sevenfold energy of its action because there
is a sevenfold principle in our being which has to be fulfilled in
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its integral perfection; Aryaman is the master of the sacrificial
action who offers this sevenfold working to the godheads of the
Divine Birth. Aryaman within us develops our various forms of
birth in the ascending planes of our existence by which the
Fathers climbed, travellers on his path, and by which it must be the aspiration
of the Aryan soul to climb to the highest summit of Immortality.
Thus Aryaman sums up in himself the whole aspiration
and movement of man in a continual self-enlargement and self- transcendence to
his divine perfection. By his continuous movement on the unbroken path Mitra and Varuna and the sons of
Aditi fulfil themselves in the human birth.
BHAGA
The goal of the path is the divine beatitude, the illimitable joy
of the Truth, of the infinity of our being. Bhaga is the godhead who brings this
joy and supreme felicity into the human consciousness; he is the divine enjoyer in man. All being has this
divine enjoyment of existence for its aim and end, whether it
seeks for it with knowledge or with ignorance, with the divine
strength or the weakness of our yet undeveloped powers. "On
Bhaga the strong calls for his increasing, on Bhaga he who has
not the strength; then he moves towards the Delight" (VII.
38.6). "Let us call in the Dawn on Bhaga strong and victorious,
the son of Aditi who is the wide-upholder, on whom the afflicted
and the fighter and the king meditate and they say to the Enjoyer, 'Give us the
enjoyment' " (VII.41.2). "Let it be the divine Enjoyer who possesses the enjoyment and by him let us be its
possessors; to thee every man calls, O Bhaga; do thou become, O Enjoyer, the leader of our journey" (VII.41.5). An increasing
and victorious felicity of the soul rejoicing in the growth of its
divine possessions which gives us strength to journey on and over-
come till we reach the goal of our perfection in an infinite beatitude, this is the sign of the birth of Bhaga in man and this his
divine function.
All enjoyment comes indeed from Bhaga Savitri, the mortal
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as well as the divine; "creating a wide and vast force he brings
forth for men their mortal enjoyment". But the Vedic ideal is
the inclusion of all life and all joy, divine and human, the wideness
and plenty of earth and the vastness and abundance of heaven,
the treasures of the mental, vital, physical existence uplifted, purified, perfected in the form of the infinite and divine Truth. It is
this all-including felicity which is the gift of Bhaga. The Enjoyer
is to be called on by men because he has many riches and ordains
perfectly all delights, — the thrice - seven delights upheld by him
in the being of his mother Aditi. It is by creating in us "the wide
and vast force", it is when the Divine as Bhaga, Pushan, Aditi,
the infinite, the undivided puts on the radiances of the infinite
consciousness like a robe and distributes without division all
desirable boons that divine felicity comes to us in its fullness.
Then he gives to the human being full enjoyment of that greatest
delight. Therefore Vasishtha cries to him (VII.41.3), "O Bhaga,
our leader, Bhaga who hast the wealth of the Truth, giving unto
us, raise up and increase, O Bhaga, this thought in us," — the
Truth-thought by which the felicity is attained.
Bhaga is Savitri the Creator, he who brings forth from the
unmanifest Divine the truth of a divine universe, dispelling from
us the evil dream of this lower consciousness in which we falter
amidst a confused tangle of truth and falsehood, strength and
weakness, joy and suffering. An infinite being delivered out of
imprisoning limits, an infinite knowledge and strength receiving
in thought and working out in will a divine Truth, an infinite
beatitude possessing and enjoying all without division, fault or
sin, this is the creation of Bhaga Savitri, this that greatest Delight.
"This creation of the divine Creator goddess Aditi speaketh forth
to us, this the all-kings Varuna and Mitra and Aryaman with one
mind and heart." The four Kings find themselves fulfilled with
their infinite Mother by the delightful perfection in man of Bhaga
the Enjoyer, the youngest and greatest of them all. Thus is the
divine creation of the fourfold Savitri founded on Varuna, combined and guided by Mitra, achieved by Aryaman, enjoyed in
Bhaga: Aditi the infinite Mother realises herself in the human
being by the birth and works of her glorious children.
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