Science, Culture and Integral Yoga :: Book of Fate: Below him burned the myriad suns

Narad has crossed the soul-space and is soon to enter the material scene. He sees below this soul-space burning the myriad suns. Narad has undertaken a long and difficult journey. It starts with the spiritual, he as the Man divine, finally assuming a human body upon earth. He prepares himself to take the physical form in which he shall enter the palace hall of Aswapati. He has crossed the soul-space, and from Mind moved into the gross world of things and objects, from causal-spiritual through the subtle into the dense physical. It is in such a body that he is going to walk into the palace hall. The myriad suns have their connection with this great transition, from the spiritual-subtle into the dense physical.

The myriad suns burning below him,—these are the suns which govern the process of the bright spiritual becoming the heavy dense material. Narad knows the alchemy and prepares himself to undergo the strenuous transmutation. He does it by the Prakriti’s Sankhya process of materialisation. The Mother says it is a complex process about which hardly anyone knows anything; it is a hard painful process also. Narad is prepared to accept the hardship and the complexity, is willing to undergo the whole sequence of becoming the gross. He has an attraction for the soul of the earth and he has a mission to carry out, and he is willing to pay the price required for that. He is a “slave of God” and so, it is his God’s work which he is going to do. He accepts the difficulty. He accepts the travail. So, with this rapid transition, Narad is here in the company of Aswapati and the Queen, here in Madra, on the ancient banks of the Alakananda, in the lower Himalayas. He is here just before the return of Savitri from the Shalwa forest. He has timed his visit well, very well indeed.

But what are these myriad suns? If the stars twinkle in the night, our sun blazes in the day! For the astronomer there is only one sun in the sky; the rest are stars, millions and millions of them, of all sizes and all luminosities, and varying life-spans, filling countless galaxies. Dante concluded his Comedy with the line

Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

(l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.)

In the second of the circles, Light of Light, in that circling, Dante dimly beheld the mystery of the Incarnation.

                            O eternal Light!

Sole in Thyself that dwell'st; and of Thyself

Sole understood, past, present, or to come…

But “the flight was not for his wings. Yet the wheel rolled onward, like wheel in even motion, by
the love impelled, love that moves the sun and the other stars.” But that was Dante’s upward 
flight, and he was puzzled by the mystery of the incarnation. In the case of Narad, however, 
there is no such mystery, even as he has the knowledge of all the three divisions of time; he has 
the unfailing trikāladŗşti. It is in that knowledge, and in the divine love, that he is coming. He is 
presently seeing

the myriad suns circling below him.

Narad’s journey begins early in the day, and he is attracted by the golden summer earth, and he sees the countless suns. But what are these suns? these myriad suns? In Savitri “suns” as plural appears 45 times (in the revised edition 46 times). There are “dazzling suns”, “magnificent suns”, “mystic suns”, “living suns”, cosmic suns”, “deathless suns”, “purple suns”, and so on, and so forth. There are also “unreal suns”, “misleading suns”, “material suns”. We have also a thousand suns of the Gita blazing in the sky: (XI:12)

divi sūryasahastrasya bhavédyugapadutthitā.

This was the verse quoted by Oppenheimer, the scientific leader of the Manhattan Weapons Project during the Second World War. He was witnessing the first-ever atomic explosion on 16 July 1945, at Alamogordo in New Mexico. With that success Oppenheimer became the American Prometheus. A great stride was taken by Man.

But let me get back to our theme and see in some quick manner the occurrence of “suns” in Savitri. This is interesting in many ways and possibly it can provide some clue about the myriad suns. The yogi-poet is using the plural “suns” very conscientiously, with all the occult-spiritual knowledge behind it. There is undoubtedly a purpose also in it. We have right in the beginning of Savitri the following passage: (p. 1)

As in a dark beginning of all things,

A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown

Repeating for ever the unconscious act,

Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,

Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force

Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns

And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.

Here is the creative slumber that kindles the suns, and not the stars, in the darkish material sky. But the most beautiful is perhaps the following: (p.314)

She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.

The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,

A power of silence in the depths of God;

She is the Force, the inevitable Word,

The magnet of our difficult ascent,

The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,

The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,

The joy that beckons from the impossible,

The Might of all that never yet came down.

“The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,” the Light from which all our lights come—how mystically luminous and powerful! And then, we have “vasts of vision and eternal suns.” (p. 659) It is interesting to note that we have “vasts of vision” and “unrealised Vasts”, “vasts” as plural. In Savitri this “vasts” appears 35 times. So does “infinities” 6 times, and “eternities” 9 times. We have 3 “calms”, such as (p. 346)

A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms

Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.

What are these calms? Possibly, there is the calm of knowledge, and there is the calm of joy, and the calm of beauty, love, passion, the calm of strength, wisdom, skill, perfection, harmony; there are the myriad calms. In the Future Poetry there are five Suns of Poetry,—the Sun of Truth, the Sun of Beauty, the Sun of Delight, the Sun of Life, and the Sun of the Spirit. There are also five Roses: Rose of Bliss, Rose of Light, Rose of Power, Rose of Life, and Rose of Love.* The ancient Vedic tradition speaks of twelve Adityas, twelve Suns; their names are: Dhata, Mitra, Aryama, Rudra, Varuna, Surya, Bhaga, Vivasvana, Pusha, Savita, Twashta, and Vishnu. In the Gita Sri Krishna says that among the Adityas he is Vishnu, ādityānāmaham vişnu. Each one of these Suns or Adityas represents a certain quality and cosmic function. Thus Love and Light are represented by the Sun as Mitra. In the form of Bhaga he is the Lord of Enjoyment, as the Increaser, he becomes Pushan. These suns are not metaphors, just descriptive; they are functional, they are powers, creative powers operating in the scheme of things.

The traditional Indian sun-worship in various forms, offered to the various suns in their respective aspects, is well known. Emperor Akbar got compiled a list of one thousand names of the sun for prayers four times in a day, morning, noon, evening, and midnight. There is also the complete yogic-physical exercise, Surya-Namaskar. A set of Surya-Namaskars has twelve names of the Sun whose powers are invoked while doing it; the set can be repeated a number of times depending upon one’s capacity.

Well, this all-pervasiveness of the sun is understandable. Even as we know, the whole commerce of earth is based on the sun. However, let us quickly see some of the spiritual aspects of the Sun. In the Isha Upanishad there is the invocation to the Sun for the revelatory knowledge by whose action we can arrive at the highest truth. Sri Aurobindo explains in the Secret of the Veda that the Sun, Surya, is the seer, the revealer. His Truth takes into its illumination all forms of things. But the significant description is about the eighth son of Aditi, Martanda. This Martanda should appeal to us more than the other sons. We are told that by seven Aditi moves to the gods, but the eighth son is Martanda, of the mortal creation; with the seven she moves to the gods, 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; he presides over mortal birth and death. Arisen, this sun mounts to the supramental Truth. This is the Vedic way of narrating the Savitri-story, the household story as we have in the Mahabharata. The story has a splendid charge, the full charge of the mortal world becoming divine. In it Satyavan is subject to death. In the Mother’s language, he is the divine Love who plunged into the depth of the Inconscience when the horror of separation from the supreme Source was perceived. Satyavan—he is the permanent Avatar, says she.

But what about the seven sons with whom Aditi moves to the supreme life? Are they not the seven Suns of the Supermind? In the Vedic experience Supermind as the creator in its manifold aspects in the unity of the Transcendent is what the Sun represents. These seven suns belong to that description. Sri Aurobindo lists them with further details about their actions in the yogic centres of the subtle body. Let me refer to the three revealing entries we have about these seven suns in Record of Yoga, written around December 1926. These are as follows: (pp. 1341-42)

· The Sun of Creative Origination (from the eternal vastnesses).

· The double Sun of Light and Power (concentrating the movements emanated from the infinite Wisdom-Will).

· The Sun of Word (organizing the creation).

· The Sun of Love, Bliss and Beauty (dynamising the descending harmonies).

· The Sun of Soul-Power (aspiring, receiving, grasping, assimilating the creation; divided here into the mind and psyche, there unified in Soul-Mind, Brahman).

· The Sun of Life (dynamically externalising the creation).

· The Sun of Everlasting Form (stabilisimg and containing the creation).

Here is the second entry:

· The Sun of Truth, originating the supramental creation.

· The double Sun of Supramental Light and Will, transmitting the Knowledge-Power that creates, founds and organises the supramental creation.

· The Sun of the Word, expressing and arranging the supramental creation

· The Sun of Love, Bliss and Beauty, vivifying and harmonising the supramental creation.

· The Sun of Supramental Force(Source of Life) dynamising the supramental creation.

· The Sun of Supramental Life-Radiances, (Power-Rays) canalising the dynamis and pouring it into forms.

· The Sun of Supramental Form-Energy holding and embodying the supramental life and stabilizing the creation.

And here is the last set:

· The Sun of Supramental Truth,—Knowledge-Power originating the supramental creation. Descent into the Sahasradala.

· The Sun of Supramental Light and Will-Power, transmitting the Knowledge-Power as dynamic vision and command to create, found and organise the supramental action. Descent into the Ajna Chakra, the centre between the eyes.

· The Sun of Supramental Word, embodying the Knowledge-Power, empowered to express and arrange the supramental creation. Descent into the Throat Centre.

· The Sun of Supramental Love, Beauty, and Bliss, releasing the Soul of the Knowledge-Power to vivify and harmonise the supramental creation. Descent into the Heart-Lotus.

· The Sun of Supramental Force dynamised as a power and source of life to support the supramental creation. Descent into the Navel Centre.

· The Sun of Life-Radiances (Power-Rays) distributing the dynamis and pouring it into concrete formations. Descent into the Penultimate Centre.

· The Sun of Supramental Substance-Energy and Form-Energy empowered to embody the supramental life and stabilise the creation. Descent into the Muladhara.

Could these be the suns seen by Narad while passing from Mind into material things? No, perhaps not these seven suns in their supreme celestial blaze of Truth, because his suns burned below the soul-space. The supramental Suns are the Transcendental Suns. They have not yet come down into the cosmic manifestation. Narad has crossed the soul-space and he sees below him circling these myriad suns. Possibly these myriad suns could be the secondary powers of the original seven supramental Suns, not they themselves directly burning here in the Sankhya world of material creation.

But before I go into the aspects of material creation by the Sankhya process, of Narad assuming a physical form of the kind we know, there has to be a connection with the life-force also entering into the dynamics. Thus, in addition to these successive gradations of the Truth-Suns, there have to be also gradations of Consciousness-Force, the gradations of Life. Sri Aurobindo describes the Seven Centres of the Life as follows: (p. 1343)

· The thousand-petalled Lotus—above the head with its base on the brain. Basis or support of Life-Mind for the Supramental; initiative centre of the illumined Mind.

· The centre between the brows in the middle of the forehead. Will, vision, inner mental formation, active and dynamic Mind.

· The centre in the throat. Speech, external mind, all external expression and formation.

· The heart-lotus. Externally, the emotional mind, the vital mental: in the inner heart the psychic centre.

· The navel centre. The larger vital proper; life-force centre.

· The centre intermediate between the navel and the Muladhara. The lower vital; it connects all the above centres with the physical.

· The last centre or Muladhara. Material support of the vital; initiation of the physical.

All below is the subconscient physical.

Pertaining to this Life-Force, let me quote one of my poems on this theme. It is entitled Seven Descents:

The Sun of supramental gold descends,

The high omnipotence of diamond daze!

The Lion of light with a million rays of truth,

The Bull of hero-strengths with armies of flame,

The White Horse with a moon-halo on his head,

The Eagle of ecstasy with far wafted wings,

The Stag of swift luminous omniscient beam,

The Star-Serpent of stark gigantic might,

The Bison with red horns of immortality’s Law;

The great august Paramount of seven dawns

Comes crashing the golden cosmos’s massive gates,

Sweeping in his royalty’s blaze the twilight of thought,

Thundering through the throat the impeccable voice,

Pouring in the heart the holocaust of love,

Pressing the fire-feet of the creative gleam,

Flooding with miracles the spines of little life,

Thrilling the vast Name in body’s night of trance;

The Self of Bliss bursts in seven epiphanies.

For the heavenly sage Narad to take a body in flesh and blood to enter the palace hall of Aswapati, these forceful centres must materialise in some way or the other, must become operational in the terrestrial context. That’s the alchemy to be carried out in a deep occult-spiritual manner. This can happen only under the auspices of the myriad suns that burn circling beneath the soul-space. Narad the heavenly sage is presently transiting from the spiritual into the deep material, the Man divine becoming Man human for the divine purpose. This transition is effected by the Sankhya process with the life-force giving it a vibrant breathing organic form, a luminous form. The description following the line

Below him circling burned the myriad suns

pertains to this transition. Narad is about to enter into the etheric sea and just there burn these myriad suns. They appear to govern the transition from the spiritual into the material. This is a difficult process, as I mentioned a little while ago; it is a painful process also, the spiritual becoming the material carrying in it the life-force. In fact, at the moment, there is no mechanism for the supramental Suns to enter directly into the earthly physical. There is no mechanism by which the Superman divine can become Man human on earth. It looks paradoxical that the spiritual can become the physical, but not the supramental. One day it will happen; but it will not, it cannot happen at the present juncture. The material Nature is not yet ready for that to happen; there is no supramental Sankhya available at this stage for that to happen. Manomaya Purusha is not ready to receive or give rise to Vijnanamaya Purusha. The Rishi’s cry is for the supramental Sun to bring to us the great Light, to bring in that strength the vast mass of bliss, its vasts; he prays, vision upon vision of the beatitude to break upon us. But it cannot take itself a physical form. That was the work the Mother was busy with after the descent and manifestation of the supramental Light and Force in the earth’s subtle-physical in February 1956.

Presently, however, let us get back to the Sankhya by which Narad appears in the palace hall of Aswapati.

*For the Rose of God reference may be made to

http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2007/6/20/3035478.html

and the related link.

Keywords: SriAurobindo, Spirituality, Spirit, SavitriClasses, Poetry, Ashram

Posted to:

Main Page

.. RY Deshpande, Ph.D.

INTEGRAL YOGA

SRI AUROBINDO

.. 'Savitri'

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

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Re: Book of Fate: [Which Vedic verse did Oppenheimer actually quote at Trinity?]

by ronjon on Wed 10 Oct 2007 11:54 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

There's apparently some controversy over what Oppenheimer actually said when the first atomic bomb exploded at the Trinity test. According to Wikipedia:

Oppenheimer later recalled that while witnessing the explosion he thought of a verse from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita:
“ If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one... ”

[Ed. - I think this is the translation of the "divi sūryasahastrasya bhavédyugapadutthitā" phrase that RY quotes above - ronjon]

Years later he would explain that another verse had also entered his head at that time:

It is the famous verse, which begins as "Kalo Asmi" and was quoted by Oppenheimer after the successful detonation of the first nuclear weapon. He unfortunately mistranslated it as "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds". The correct meaning of the Sanskrit words is "Now I am Time (not death), the destroyer of all."

“ We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that one way or another.'[1] ”

According to his brother [Frank], at the time Oppenheimer simply exclaimed, "It worked." News of the successful test was rushed to President Harry S. Truman, who authorized the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Oppenheimer later became an important figure in the debates on the repercussions of this act.

^ He spoke this quote on an NBC television documentary broadcast in 1965;
see Hijiya (2000), 123, fn 1. The clip is available online: J. Robert Oppenheimer on the Trinity test (1965).

Can you help us understand the correct translations of these phrases RY?

Thanks,

~ ronjon

Re: Re: Quote at Trinity

by RY Deshpande on Thu 11 Oct 2007 07:57 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Thanks Ronjon, for drawing attention to the ‘Trinity’ aspect of the Wartime Atomic Weapons Project. And your query. I quote here first extensively from The Essays on the Gita (pp. 379-80) regarding what we have in the eleventh chapter of the Gita which is subtitled as Vishwarupa Darshan, the Vision of the Universal Form.

The reporter of the Mahabharata War, Sanjaya, describes to the blind king Dhritarashtra the form of the Godhead Arjuna saw on the battlefield. It is as follows:

The supreme Form… made visible… is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere and in whom are all the wonders of existence, who multiplies unendingly all the many marvellous revelations of his being, a world-wide Divinity seeing with innumerable eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons, glorious with divine ornaments of beauty, robed in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands of divine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes. Such is the light of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods. Arjuna sees him, God magnificent and beautiful and terrible, the Lord of souls who has manifested in the glory and greatness of his spirit this wild and monstrous and orderly and wonderful and sweet and terrible world, and overcome with marvel and joy and fear he bows down and adores with words of awe and with clasped hands the tremendous vision.

Seeing that tremendous vision, Arjuna cries:

I see all the gods in thy body, O God, and different companies of beings, Brahma the creating lord seated in the Lotus, and the Rishis and the race of the divine Serpents. I see numberless arms and bellies and eyes and faces, I see thy infinite forms on every side, but I see not thy end nor thy middle nor thy beginning, O Lord of the universe, O Form universal. I see thee crowned and with thy mace and thy discus, hard to discern because thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasurable. Thou art the supreme Immutable whom we have to know, thou art the high foundation and abode of the universe, thou art the imperishable guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul of existence.

Sri Aurobindo paraphrases Arjuna’s further description of the greatness of this vision, of the terrific image of the Destroyer, as follows:

This Immeasurable without end or middle or beginning is he in whom all things begin and exist and end. This Godhead who embraces the worlds with his numberless arms and destroys with his million hands, whose eyes are suns and moons, has a face of blazing fire and is ever burning up the whole universe with the flame of his energy. The form of him is fierce and marvellous and alone it fills all the regions and occupies the whole space between earth and heaven. The companies of the gods enter it, afraid, adoring; the Rishis and the Siddhas crying “May there be peace and weal” praise it with many praises; the eyes of Gods and Titans and Giants are fixed on it in amazement. It has enormous burning eyes; it has mouths that gape to devour, terrible with many tusks of destruction; it has faces like the fires of Death and Time. The kings and the captains and the heroes on both sides of the world-battle are hastening into its tusked and terrible jaws and some are seen with crushed and bleeding heads caught between its teeth of power; the nations are rushing to destruction with helpless speed into its mouths of flame like many rivers hurrying in their course towards the ocean or like moths that cast themselves on a kindled fire. With those burning mouths the Form of Dread is licking all the regions around; the whole world is full of his burning energies and baked in the fierceness of his lustres.

The world and its nations are shaken and, in anguish with the terror of destruction, Arjuna shares in the trouble and panic around him; troubled and in pain is the soul within him and he finds no peace or gladness. He cries to the dreadful Godhead:

Declare to me who thou art that wearest this form of fierceness. Salutation to thee, O thou great Godhead, turn thy heart to grace. I would know who thou art who wast from the beginning, for I know not the will of thy workings.

It is in response to this utterance of Arjuna, Sri Krishna asserts on the gory battlefield who presently he is, asserts he as the Time-Spirit in his terrible form ready to destroy the world:

kālosmi lokakşayatkŗtpravŗddho lokānsamāhrtumiha pravŗttah

I am the Time-Spirit, destroyer of the world, arisen huge-statured for the destruction of the nations.

“I am the Time-Spirit, kāla asmi”, poised for “the destruction of the worlds, lokakşayatkŗta” —this is what we have in the Gita-text. In Sanskrit kāla has the sense of Time as well Death; conventionally kāla is taken as Death when we say kāla has come. Therefore there is a justification for Oppenheimer equating it with Death, as you quote the Trinity reference.

Here are the relevant dictionary meanings of kāla: Time (in general); the Supreme Spirit regarded as the destroyer of the Universe, being a personification of the destructive principle; Yama, the God of death; Death, time of death. The feminine Kali has an obvious connection with this sense also. Sri Aurobindo’s description as the Time-Spirit is the most apt; but this should be distinguished from the German Zeitgeist.

But I am not sure if this—the destructive—could have been the sense of Oppenheimer’s utterance immediately after witnessing the splendiferous Alamogordo or his ‘Trinity’ test. His awe of the explosion, and the poetic quality of his utterance combined with the coinage of the ‘Trinity’ after John Donne, can best be described as the thousand suns (sahastra sūrya) ablaze in the sky (divi)—divi sūryasahastrasya bhavédyugapadutthitā. This terrifying Death-concept might have come afterwards, in the wake of the weapon’s power that became dreadful and deathful, in the wake of some of the strong opinions of this use as destructive weapon. Brighter than a thousand suns is a direct and understandable reaction seeing the dazzle and the glory that spread in the morning sky of that era-ushering event.

There is a chapter in my unpublished book Big Science and India dealing with the Manhattan Wartime Project. Maybe, I will post it one of these days. This will have some relevance, I suppose, to what we are talking about.

RYD

Re: Book of Fate: Below him burned the myriad suns

by Angelo on Tue 16 Oct 2007 02:10 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

The line, 'Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns' was mentioned in the above post. I am wondering if Mr. Deshpande would comment on the significance of this line as well, as he seems to be saying that we are not to understand them as the normal 'stars' of the cosmos, but something else. Any light that could be shed would be appreciated. Thanks.

Angelo

Re: Re: Book of Fate: Below him burned the myriad suns

by RY Deshpande on Wed 17 Oct 2007 04:33 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Dear Angelo

Your question about the line “Whose creative slumber kindles the suns” in the following passage on p, 1 of Savitri

As in a dark beginning of all things,
A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown
Repeating for ever the unconscious act,
Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,
Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force
Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns
And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.

is of course connected with the dark beginnings of things. The Symbol Dawn opens with it, the commencement of this creation. We have in it a cluster of phrases describing in various ways what actually happened at that sombre moment: “tenebrous womb”, “dark beginning of all things”, “unconscious act”, “unseeing will”, “cosmic drowse”, ignorant Force”, “somnambulist whirl”, “shadow spinning in the soulless Void”, and so on. This is the “last Nothingness” from which has to come the intended manifestation. But this “Nothingness” is different from the “first Nothingness”, the Non-Manifest, Avyakta, the unexpressed Absolute. The “last Nothingness”, the Unmanifest, is kind of negative Absolute, and has in it present the inconscient Self and the blind somnambulist Force, Achetana Purusha and the Andhah Prakriti. So, whatever has to happen will happen by the workings of this unseeing Prakriti, Nature, and it happens or will happen only because there is present behind it the supporting inconscient Will of the inconscient Being or Purusha. This pair we meet also in the passage pertaining to Narad’s arrival on earth (p. 415)

He passed from Mind into material things
Amid the inventions of the inconscient Self
And the workings of a blind somnambulist Force.

Therefore it is this “ignorant” or the “blind somnambulist Force”, who is going to kindle the suns in her creative slumber. Note that the action is the action of kindling, kindling of the suns who are in their dark states, the unexpressed potentials, potentials which can flame up, blaze. The same sense is present in the other passage I have quoted as another example of the “suns” as plural in Savitri: (p. 314)

She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,
A power of silence in the depths of God;
She is the Force, the inevitable Word,
The magnet of our difficult ascent,
The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,
The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,
The joy that beckons from the impossible,
The Might of all that never yet came down.

“The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,”—again the suns are there but they have to be kindled. But what is meant by “kindling”? The stars in scientific astronomy are kindled by the force of gravity, the ubiquitous force that cannot be dissolved, eliminated, gravitational collapse leading to rise in temperature to a point when the thermonuclear fusion can set in, gravity acting as a matchstick or the lighter. But then they will have the sense of the stars and not of the suns.

In the language of the mystics, the Suns or the Vedic Adityas represent certain qualities and cosmic functions, certain powers, personalities, living godheads active in their roles. I have briefly indicated these in the article. Thus Love and Light are represented by the Sun as Mitra. In the form of Bhaga he is the Lord of Enjoyment, as the Increaser, he becomes Pushan. These Suns are not mere metaphors, just descriptive; they are functional, they are powers, creative powers operating in the scheme of things. The suns are possibly, as I said, the sun of knowledge, the sun of joy, the sun of beauty, of love, passion, strength, wisdom, skill, perfection, harmony; there are the myriad suns. There are five Suns of Poetry,—the Sun of Truth, the Sun of Beauty, the Sun of Delight, the Sun of Life, and the Sun of the Spirit. But let us not take them in their abstract sense, even as they are powers and personalities. I am avoiding describing them as deities, which they are, but not in the religious sense just to be worshipped; their aspects have to be imbibed. Sun as the creator brings out one or the other faculty and it is that which is being done, somnambulistically, by the ignorant Force. They are present there, dormantly, and she is the one in her long travail kindling them slowly. So shall they become manifest in their authentic blaze and glory, a long process for which she works tirelessly, works through the sempiternal ages.

I don’t know if this answers your question, but perhaps that is one way of looking at things. Thanks for your interest in the subject and the keenness with which you are following it.

RYD

Re: Re: Re: Book of Fate: Below him burned the myriad suns

by Angelo on Wed 17 Oct 2007 10:21 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Thank you for your answer. I believe I have understood.

Angelo

Re: Re: Re: Re: Hymn to Felicity

by RY Deshpande on Fri 19 Oct 2007 04:32 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Let me give one example of the plural “suns” from Savitri. It occurs in Book Ten Canto Three (pp. 630-31) when Savitri is giving a lesson to Yama the God of Death in the Delight of Existence, how in it and because of it the whole creation is moving. Hers is a Hymn to Felicity, Ananda Sukta, and it asserts that it is from Ananda that we have come, including Death, it is in Ananda we live, and it is towards Ananda we move. There is joy everywhere, even when it wallows with the reptile and the worm, it lifts its head, an equal of the stars:

It shares the fairies’ dance, dines with the gnome:
It basks in the light and heat of many suns,
The sun of Beauty and the sun of Power
Flatter and foster it with golden beams;
It grows towards the Titan and the God.

The Sun of Beauty and the Sun of Power are mentioned contextually and the other unmentioned suns will blaze in this creation as it shall advance in the Delight of Existence.

RYD

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