Surya And The Ascending Path Of The Spirit
Vedic Deities
Symbolically, the Veda is an expression of the ascending and descending path of the Spirit and its innumerable processes mapped and synthesised through Śruti*, and through Drishti and the descending Word enumerated of its recondite secrets in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of the stealers of the Truth, the haters of the divine Light, the hostile forces hellbent on preventing the Truth from establishing in the terrestrial. Of the many deities of the Vedic cycle, one of the most predominant and venerated among them all is Surya, the Sun-God as he commonly referred to, the many-eyed Godhead of the luminous heavens driving through the mid-heavens and lower planes on his seven-form horse-carriage of utter puissance, the Godhead of whom Agni is an intimate expression in the lower triple world. But the symbolism of the Veda is a recondite Truth hidden from the gaze of common herd and not a vague and pointless abstraction for the pleasure of intellectual puzzle, not a religious moonshine or a system of impractical beliefs, for behind its symbolism stands a living Truth and a vast Consciousness, an unbridled force of a spiritual Light, an utter godward State out of which comes the whole idea and creation of a numerous and countless existences and limitless universes, flowing out of an infinite measure of an-knowing Spirit, the divine Ishwara, who is also the Lord of the Vedic cycle. The ritualistic tradition is also a symbol, hiding beneath its apparent surface a spring of the Spirit and its ever-invigorating knowledge and wisdom, but it is nothing more than a folly of the Western Indologists, and no less than a crime, to see the high symbol of the Veda as a ritualistic barbarism of an unevolved race of men, trained only in the primitive acts of worship of amorphous Gods. We need not share in the mental ambivalence of the western intelligence which weighs the pros and cons of a large and profound civilisation such as ours from the viewpoint of its outward mind and its gross externalities and hammers out of scientific light an aberration of its insolvable confusion of limited or surface existence. The profound depths of the Vedic Light beckons only the natural believer in the spiritual Truth, not the wayward, intellectually well-dressed brute of the West.
The Vedic Surya is only a symbol of a still higher Godhead, a divine Persona of unfathomable existence, whose strength is measured in self-experience, if at all, by the infinite power of His endless creations and manifestations, the Divine Creatrix of which we are a pale reflection or a distant thunder, but the terrestrial bears the signature of His constant presence hidden in the waters of Life as a Lotus-bloom of the Spirit above all existence, but in the ascending heights of His all-exceeding self-effulgence, a certain determination of His infinite Persona becomes more of a synthetic self-experience forming the first impulse towards a world-transformation, the unquenchable need to transform the lower into the term and principle of the higher; and, in the Vedic ideal of the Truth and its symbol, the descent of the Surya with his many-rayed light into the lower triplicity of existence is one of the most well-documented, well-expounded idea in detail, though in a language indecipherable to the common multitude. The principle of transformation is of the Spirit, not of the mind or the senses, and mind, in its natural heights, is a wide beacon of a large light encompassing the multiple universes and permeating them with a cosmology of its own and by a system of its own gods, and each god by a system and cosmology of his own administers his own space and world in a higher and greater spiritual ecosystem, still of the cosmic Mind but overlaying very much into the first borders of the Overmind. But the question of ascension into higher spiritual domains must first form the basis of a meaningful and ever-lasting transformation of the lower, for without ascent of consciousness of the individual into the greater heights of the Spirit, the descent of the higher into the lower is impossible or even meaningless, and the Veda approaches the problem of ascent from a utilitarian viewpoint, from the premise of a practical synthesis to be effected in the stages of spiritual self-development of the individual, the divine Rishi of the Vedic tradition, who by the power of his aspiration and fidelity to a higher Ideal or Truth ascends into the greater planes of immortal existence and consolidates his spiritual knowledge by a secret symbol intelligible only to a similar experience or temperament. It is by Śruti he heard, and it is by Śruti others will hear of the Truth from the Truth.
Surya is a god of spiritual ascent of the soul of man, and to the Rishi, he is a path-cleaver, the divine godhead who transcends the lower mental existence, but, as mentioned, the Surya of the Vedic cycle is only a camouflage-deity of a greater Godhead, the great divine Gnosis of Sri Aurobindo, but in the Vedic parlance it is often referred to as Swar, which was yet to be attained by the Rishis, but the Vedic Swar is only an intermediate between the Supramental Light and the human consciousness; the Swar of Sri Aurobindo was glimpsed by them as if through a mystic ridge when the divine Sun, while crossing a path, cast a shadow-light on it for them to see, the swift miracle of a passing Light creating as many worlds of existence as through its rays, the indecipherable, illimitable and inexhaustible Truth-Consciousness, the divine Creatrix of the Infinite Mother. To cleave a path to it was the aim of the Rishis, a path of a slow, difficult and laborious ascent through the riddle and danger of a dark Inconscient. The ritualistic tradition extolling and enumerating the different aspects of Surya was only to clearly map out, as far as the efforts of the Rishis would go, a process and method of ascent into the nature of a higher consciousness and its ineffable dynamics of manifestation, a divine state of light free from the clutches of lower ignorance, and to bring down some of its magnificence into the nature and accord of external life besieged by pain and suffering, death and decay. A Swar of the Spirit in the manifest life of the earth was the true motive of a ritualistic tradition of the Veda, not a blind and illogical propitiation of stone and Nature-gods.
It may be argued, as part of a wider analysis and accrued knowledge, that the polytheistic tradition of the Veda in general and a separate process and method of propitiation accorded to each and every god in particular is nothing more than a conflict of different perceptions in disarray with each other, each insisting a method of its own, each its own synthesis, but the idea of polytheism itself is based on an irreconcilable state of mutually conflicting differences converging on a point of a certain feeble oneness in purpose and aim, in which each aspect accords a certain recognition to the other as long as it retains its dominant position and self-serving narrative. Veda is not monotheistic either, for its sense and narrative, its light and knowledge come from a perception of oneness as the basis of its ritualistic tradition, in which a many-sided approach to a supreme Reality is not only admitted but also highly encouraged and deeply adhered to. Veda transcends these human notions by leaping straight into an ineffable harmony of all contraries from which flows a many-sided approach to the process and method of the ritualistic tradition of the Vedic cycle. The Vedic Gods are an expression of a higher divine Gnosis, and Surya, Agni and Indra are one of a few of the important deities. If we divorce ritualism from the Vedic tradition under the pretext that it is barbaric and meaningless, we may have to do away with the Vedic tradition entirely and head towards the cross of West’s intellectual redemption! If ritualism were a mere outward symbol of a collective race wallowing in its primitive or simian urges, not knowing reality from fantasy, then it is only wise not to follow the aberrations of our spiritual forefathers and their idiosyncrasies, less their unintelligible Riks**. Vedic ritualism hides behind its vast structure occult processes of the Spirit ascending towards a plenary Reality, and each Rik is a celebration of the ascending process of the Spirit, captured in detail, documented but hidden in esoteric language and symbol and expressed through a particular ritual or set of rituals intelligible only to the initiated and the earnest seeker of Yoga. It is out of this wider seeking and higher understanding of the Vedic ritualism that we have to seek the mysteries of the spiritual ascent of the Spirit.
Surya felicitates in the mind of the seeker a sense of spiritual self-seeking after a greater Consciousness and Light, a creation of an acutely sensitive perception to the touches of the higher Light and Knowledge, to the sense of a rush and downpour of a higher Gnosis into the lower mental, to an immaterial sense of unfathomable Delight in the lower crevices. Spiritual illumination, not liberation was their object, although liberation from pain and suffering, from the urges and impulsions of the body were the natural results of their progression into the ascending line, but one of the shortfalls of their approach to the method of ascent was a conspicuous absence of minuter details; the process of spiritual ascent was captured in the essential detail and description of the ascending planes of consciousness, but not in the perfection of its various hidden processes which, even to the highly developed supra-intelligence of the Rishis, were hidden or revealed, though only barely, in a fleeting moment of conscious self-identification with the Supramental Gnosis; it was more of a vision of the Truth-Consciousness in the illumined mind, a distant luminosity captured in the vast memory of the Rishi and heard of its divine dicta through the manifest Śruti in his mind, and even in the lower planes ascending towards the higher ones the processes were captured only in their essentiality and purpose; it was not so much a weakness of their temperament or lack of their adventurous spirit as it was more of a divine Indeterminate of Consciousness hiding in plain sight in all the planes of consciousness, and would reveal itself later only to the chosen Avatar of God and to the Supreme Mother.
An ascension of consciousness, in the process and method of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, is a process and method of capturing through the manifest power of the Supramental Surya the process and method of the divine Indeterminate present in the lower as well as higher states of consciousness, and this Indeterminate is an absolute power of the Divine Gnosis and is a determinant of form and substance of the planes of consciousness, their indisputable Truth and dynamics of manifestation, the ऋतम् (Ritam) which sustains the divine multiplex of a conscious self-manifestation of the gnostic Spirit as the Lord of all creation. To be self-conscious of our own ascent, to be self-aware of the secret Divine present in the ascending triangle of consciousness, to seek out of Him the revelation of the ultimate truth of each and every successive plane and formulate a practical, synthetic knowledge of the workings of the ascending strata is the desired outcome of a higher Yogic sadhana, and without this formulation of knowledge, self-ascension would be incomplete and half-conscious, a subtle amputation of the higher knowledge not noticed at all by the self-ascending spirit of man, for he is more likely to mistake the bright orb of the divine Sun for the Sun itself and proceed formulating upon his half-illumined understanding a lessor synthesis of the Divine Gnosis only to be defeated by the formidable resistance of the Inconscience in the terrestrial. Surya has the inherent knowledge both of the divine ascent and of its complexities and helps the aspirant ascend into the heights of the Spirit by illuminating his mind and intelligence towards discovering a set of innate methods to divest truth from half-truth and darkness, and these are methods of the Spirit heard and synthesised by the great Vedic Rishis, and each Rik is a method of knowledge to be self-discovered first and then practised through a ritualistic symbolism until each it is perfected in the consciousness by the practitioner of Yoga. The principle of self-ascension is an occult science not knowable or understandable to common intelligence or to the verve of the intellectual seeker steeped in the methods of external science, which has hardly penetrated even the rough surfaces of supraphysical existence. A self-ascent so founded on the inherent knowledge and protection of the gnostic Godhead is bound to lead the aspirant to a higher, all-embracing Consciousness and Truth and to a higher sense of a greater Light and Knowledge indicative of a downward march and descent of a higher divine Gnosis into the lower.
*That which is heard of the Truth by the faculty of the Truth.
**According to Mahesh CR, The Vedic Rik is a Pāda, a couplet, a single cell of a larger edifice.
Mahasaraswati and The Sense and History of the Vedic Symbol
