Discoveries of The Vedic Rishis - Discoveries of The Vedic Rishis 304

If you read the whole book The Secret of the Veda, you will find that Sri Aurobindo has given the key to many of the gods. For instance, there is a word, Brihaspati. Sri Aurobindo has said, Brishapati, means power of the soul, the soul-power. So wherever the word Brihaspati comes, it is power of the soul. Soma is a word. Very often you find in the Veda, Indra drinks Soma. So you might find, many people think: barbarians, Indra must be a drunkard. He must be drinking Soma. Sri Aurobindo says, Soma is the lord of Delight. It is not wine; it is the Lord of delight. And then the whole ninth chapter of the Rig Veda, is devoted to the secret of the Soma. What is this soma? And the Veda says that unless and until you have mastered your senses, you will not have an access, even a slight access to Soma. You can't enter in the Ministry of Soma unless you have mastered your senses. There is a very beautiful analogy given: if you want a vessel, how do you make a vessel of clay? You heat up, you bake the jar. Now if you have baked the jar, and made a vessel out of it, then you pour into it whatever you want to pour, then if what is poured is ordinary water, it will be retained. But if it is a very powerful kind of a drink put into it, it will break if it is not fully baked. It depends upon the baking, how much baking you have done. So it is said in the ninth chapter that our whole human body is like a jar. Now this jar can contain, can receive all delight, it is capable of receiving delight on the condition that the body is fully baked. If you don't bake the body, then when the delight will come, the body will break down. You will not be able to sustain that delight at all. So Indra is able to drink the soma: it means that Indra is so powerful, he is a master of all the senses... In fact all the senses are nothing but manifestations of Indra. That is why in Sanskrit we have got the word for senses: indriya. The word indriya comes from Indra. All the senses are nothing but manifestations of Indra. Wherever there are senses, it is the abode of Indra. But this Indra is only in the ordinary form. As you rise higher and higher, Indra becomes greater and greater, until you find the most baked Indra, as it were, fully powerful. And he is so powerful that the highest delight can be drunk by him, can be absorbed. He can be the vessel. And if you yourself invite Indra in your body — that is a secret, how you can invite Indra in your body that can be done, by a tapasya, by a kind of movement of austerity. And the minimum is: control of senses. If you can't control your senses, then forget about Indra. Indra is not available to you. His Ministry is closed for you. You have got to control your senses. You should have a lot of tapasya in which all the desires of senses — senses are like horses, you know, they want to run in a wild manner, senses want to satisfy themselves. If you want Indra however to sit in your indriyas, in your senses, then you have to exercise a lot of control. Therefore Veda gives you means also how to control your senses. What are the means by which you can control your senses? What is the kind of life you need to lead to control your senses? So if you want to fight with Vritra, don't think that it is a very easy thing to fight. That is why most of the people are obstructed and they remain there. They don't know how to make any effort at all. If you want to fight against Vritra, the first condition, minimum condition is: control of your senses. Then after the senses are controlled, develop your buddhi. After development of buddhi (this means intellect, power of discrimination), then you go into higher experiences, expand your powers of the mind to a very high degree: manur bhava, become pure human mental being. When you reach that point, go beyond it. Illumined intelligence that is not mental intelligence. Veda had found out that there is an intelligence higher than the mental intelligence that is Indra's intelligence, illumined intelligence. What is the difference between human intelligence and illumined intelligence? There is a beautiful analogy which is given: when you see a thing with one eye, how do you see it? When you see it with two eyes, how do you see it? This is our normal experience. We can either be blind, or you can see with one eye, or we can see with two eyes, that is our highest capacity. But if you have Indra invited in you, then Indra is supposed to be sahasraksha, he has thousand eyes, this is the image. So what is the difference between seeing with two eyes, and seeing things with one thousand eyes? That is illumined intelligence. So if you transcend your human intelligence, then you will begin to see with many, many more eyes, until you get thousand eyes. I told you yesterday that the present crisis of mankind is that we have reached the maximum of mental intelligence. All that we can do with the mind we have done. And yet problems remain. How shall we solve these problems? The answer is that you have to go beyond mind. Beyond mental intelligence, you have to cross the threshold of two eyes. You have to enter into the field of thousand eyes, illumined intelligence. But even this is not the highest. Illumined intelligence is not the highest.

Above illumined intelligence, above Indra, there is Vishnu. That is another algebraic term, -- Vishnu. What is Vishnu? And the image that is given about Vishnu is: he is like one single eye covering the whole sky, -- One single eye covering the whole sky. It is not thousand eyes. Eyes are sockets, small sockets. But Vishnu's eye is so vast, it covers the whole sky. Imagine the whole sky having one eye, how much it can cover, how comprehensive. Illumined intelligence will give you knowledge, but still multiplicity will be there, lot of multiplicity. But when you come to Vishnu, you have one comprehensive knowledge, united knowledge, unity. So whenever the Veda speaks of Vishnu, Veda speaks of an intelligence which is unifying. One unified vision of everything. All things comprehended.