Introduction to The Vedas (10 July 2008) - Audio

I take it that all students in our country are interested to know what is India? What is it that makes India different from all other countries of the world? What is distinctive about India? What is the best way India can serve whole humanity in the best possible manner? And for that purpose one has to study Indian history. You take up any book on Indian history and you‘ll find the very first chapter will be related to what is called Vedic period. Now I know that all students read this word Vedic period. Some of you might have asked the question: What is Veda, why is the first period of Indian history is called Vedic period? You might have even been told that the earliest document that is available in regard to Indian culture is the Veda.

Now this word Veda is generally known even to the villagers in India and I am sure even the students of India are familiar with this word Veda. Unfortunately not many of you have asked the question: what is this word Veda? What does it mean? And what is this book called Veda? Normally this book Veda is hardly to be found in your surroundings and since it is very difficult to get access to that book in due course of time even the curiosity evaporates in regard to this book. But you know all knowledge becomes authentic when you see things in their concrete form. So I shall begin by showing you first of all this great book which is called Veda.

You know the word Veda comes from the Sanskrit root ‘vid’. I think all of you should know this word ‘vid’ and Veda. I will write for you, ‘vid’ is a word indicating a verb. You know grammar quite well, there are nouns, pronouns, there are verbs, there are adverbs, adjectives, prepositions and each one has a specific meaning. A verb is a word which indicates activity. Now the word ‘vid’ refers to the activity of knowing, ‘vid’ is to know. This is the word from where you know very well another word which is very familiar ‘vidya’. We have ‘vidyapeeth’, ‘vidhyalaya’ and the word ‘vidya’ is very, very well known in India, in almost all the languages of India. The original root is ‘vid’.

Now the very first book of India is known as Veda that is because this book it is said contains highest knowledge, not only knowledge but highest knowledge. When you grow up in due course of time, you will try to verify whether this claim is valid or not but in India it is largely believed by large number of people that Veda contains the highest knowledge. And that this knowledge was gained by some of the greatest human beings who walked on the earth. It may be surprise to many of us that there was a period of which this particular book called ‘Veda’ is a result, where some very great human beings meditated, underwent tremendous effort of what is called tapasya and they attained the highest knowledge. The result of this highest knowledge is now available to all of us.

Surprisingly when you read this great book Veda, you have some very astonishing things in it. But let me first of all show you the first book of the Veda, in fact there are four books of the Veda. The first book is called ‘Rig Veda Samitha’, Rig Veda and Samhita. In other words this book is called Samhita because Samhita means anthology, collection. Why it is called collection, I will come to it a little later. But Veda is a kind of a collection of a number of statements of knowledge. The word ‘rik’ actually means – hymn, hymn of praise, hymn of call, hymn which comes out of a human being in greatest ecstasy of wonder, sense of mystery, even victory. When somebody is very victorious then from his heart a song can emerge, or words of praise for all those who have helped in the victory, that song, those words of praise they emerge out of your consciousness. This is the briefest statement of this great book called the ‘Rig Veda Samitha’.

Now this book when you open, in fact not many people have seen this kind of any text, therefore it is very important that even after this class is over, each one of you should be able to hold this book in your hands and should be able to open the pages of this book and should try to see what this book contains, it’s a kind of a physical perception of this great book.

Why do I call it such a great book? There are three reasons why this book is a very great book. If there is in the world history, not only in the Indian history but in the world history, if you go backward, backward in time and try to see when human beings began to think for the first time. You must imagine that the first man may not have been able to think so well as you children, or young boys and girls of today can think so quickly because of the advancement of civilisation. But in the most primitive times people may not have been able to think so rapidly but a time came even then when human beings began to think deeply, greatly, vastly that happened also long, long, long ago. After that long, long period people began to articulate their thoughts, they began to develop a language and began to search for knowledge, they could store their knowledge, they could communicate articles of knowledge from each other and a time must have come when even the language became so developed as to assume the form of poetry. You know it is easy to write in prose but difficult to write in poetry.

Now surprisingly you find that in the whole human history the first book, the first document that is available, there might have been many other documents, they have perished but if you want to find one text in which those human beings who thought deeply and greatly and vastly, if you want to know what were their thoughts, what were they thinking about? If you want an answer to this question, you will find that the earliest such document is this book ‘Rig Veda Samitha’, that is the first reason why every one of us should be acquainted with this one merely as a student of human history, not only of Indian history but as a student of human history.

Secondly this book is written in Sanskrit language. You will see that the whole book is in Sanskrit language, all over. That means that by the time that this book came to be written and I must say the word written is not appropriate because the writing came much later but by the time that this book came to be composed by that time Sanskrit language must have been sufficiently developed and it must have been so developed that some very great human beings were able to write this language in poetic form and that is what you should observe, that the entire book consists of poems.

The third thing that is very important to remember is that these poems are very well composed; these poems are not ordinary poems. Those who are capable of judging poetry they have concluded that this is exquisite poetry; it is the poetry of the highest beauty. You are aware that poems are normally written in metrical forms, you know there are metres. I do not know if you have studied any metre in any language but in Sanskrit itself there are many, many metres of Sanskrit poetry and many of these metres are now quite well known even in our regional languages, – in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, these metres are available.

What is a metre? A metre is the flow of poetic words in which there are measurements, in which you can measure and different metres refer to different number of words in a given line, or there should be as in English poetry – what is called stress. In English poetry most largely speaking there is no numerical number of words which are to be in a given metre. But as you will see that every word when you pronounce it has some kind of a stress, a hard stress, soft stress and on the basis of the stress you can determine what kind of poetic metre it has. In Sanskrit very largely it is dependent upon the number of words and also the stress, that is to say the stress which arises out of whether it is a short or long. Take for example the word ga and laa, ga is short pronunciation, laa is a longer pronunciation. So there is a combination of words in such a way that there should be a kind of a flow in which the short words and the longer words, they flow in a particular manner.

Now you will see that to write poetry itself is difficult but to write poetry in metrical form becomes very difficult and the great surprise is that all these poems are in various forms of metres not in one metre, several different metres. That means that when this knowledge was being composed, the Sanskrit language had become so much developed, so much articulated that its metrical form in varieties of its various forms that had developed and was made available. One of the most famous metres is called ‘Gayatri’. The word Gayatri you might have heard but word Gayatri is very important because that is also a kind of a metre; like Anushtup is another metre and there are many other metres, Mandakranta is another metre, Shikharni is another metre, there are many, many metres in Sanskrit language. The famous poem of Kalidasa – Meghadootam is written in Mandakranta. Mandakranta the word itself is very indicative of the meaning, that which rises – Kranta that which rises is manda, slowly, in which the whole flow of the poem flows slowly upwards. There is also a metre called Bhujangi, Bhujangi is a kind of a metre in which the flow of the words follows the movement of the waving of the hood of the serpent. It starts slowly and goes upwards and then again goes downwards, it’s a Bhujangi chanda. Metre is called chandas in Vedic language. So this is the third greatness of this particular poetry that we find here, this particular book consists of exquisite poetry, you might even say consummate art has been bestowed in the composition of these verses in this book.

Now having heard of this preliminary material about this Veda, you might like to ask as to what is written in it. I said that it contains highest knowledge, so one may like to ask, – give one example of what is that highest knowledge? Now if I really have to give you examples there are many, many of them but I don’t want to burden you so much. I’ll only give you one simple verse which is normally available quite easily in India, many of you must have heard about it, must have seen it, you must have recited it, so it is not very difficult. So I will give you an example immediately, it is called Gayatri Mantra, that is to say – a mantra is a verse, it is a composition of words and the sounds of words. Now these words which are composed in a particular metre which is Gayatri, tri means three and gaya means three melodies, there are three rhythms. So if somebody can recite to you Gayatri Mantra, you will find that there are three steps and three rhythms in it.

There are many Gayatri Mantras in the Veda not one, but the one which has become very famous is the one which is the one I will write for you, and I would like you all to copy out in your own book because it is the one simple one known to everybody in this country and very largely recited by so many people in our country and when you come to know the meaning of it, you will still feel it to be a treasure.

I don’t know if you can read it but I shall repeat. As you can see I have begun with the word which is not difficult for any Indian to understand, it’s called Aum. What is this word Aum, I will discuss with you at some length later on, it is one of the most important words in the Veda. Then you find three other words Bhur, Bhuvah, Swah. If you read together it is Bhur, Bhuvah Swah, now what does it mean?

You must remember that there is a view that Veda has no meaning, they are only words put together in some kind of form. I should like to tell you to throw away this view; every word of the Veda is meaningful. It has a meaning and when anybody speaks of the Vedic mantra, you should always try to understand what it means. These three words are extremely important words in the entire Vedic literature. These three words indicate a short formula of three great things they have discovered, the Vedic Rishis discovered and whenever you recite this mantra there is a kind of a system in India to recall this great discovery made by Vedic Rishis of these three great things. They discovered that this physical world that we see is not the only thing that exists in the world. This physical world is a very vast world. You must have seen now many films which give you the origin of universe and wonderful pictures of the vastness of the universe. You have seen how from the beginning which is all dark into darkness as it were, something happened, explosion took place and this vast universe began to develop, very rapidly. And when you hear the word galaxy that itself is a tremendous thing and ordinarily you can’t imagine what a galaxy is like, where millions of stars are clustered in one galaxy and then when you are told that there are millions of galaxies, our imagination bursts out; and yet we are obliged to imagine it because this whole vast world, the physical world that we see itself is such a huge thing.

All that is physical that physical that discovery they discovered this vastness of universe from the way in which the Vedic Rishis wrote and what they wrote, it can be seen that these Rishis had visualised the vastness of the universe and therefore when they described the whole universe they used the word Brihad – Brihad means vast. All that physically visible universe is contained, is indicated by the word Bhur.

Then they discovered that there is an invisible world behind this world, behind this vast universe there is even a vaster universe. Now what does it contain? What is its stuff? What is its substance? What is its nature? The knowledge regarding it is also given in the Veda and that is called Bhuvah,– it is also known as antariksha. Something that is more than physical, more subtle and more than this we shall come to it later on when you try to understand the great discoveries made by Vedic Rishis and because of these discoveries what they wrote is called Veda, it’s called a book of knowledge. So you must know what was the content of this knowledge, it was knowledge concerning the vastness of the universe, physical universe and a more invisible universe which they called intermediate universe. And then they called another Swah. Swah is even higher, it has also substance but of a different kind of substance, it has also different kind of nature. So that Swah is once again a very vast world, even vaster than then the Bhuvah.

Actually speaking these Vedic Rishis had seen even more and even vaster universes they had discovered which are not often repeated, so I am not writing them just now. I shall later come to those words and write down for you, still some higher and higher worlds – Maha, Janaha, Tapah, Satyam. These are other worlds therefore they spoke of Saptaloka, there are seven worlds. What is the nature of these seven worlds, all this is described in this great book?

Now you must know at the very outset that in our modern world there is view, which is a very powerful view, which says that what exists can be seen only in form of matter, therefore there is a view that only matter exists. In terms of these people what exists is only Bhur, they might say there is nothing Bhuvah, nothing like Swah, nothing like Maha, nothing like Janah, these are all imagination, fictions. As students you must be seekers. If there are great human beings who have spoken of other worlds, invisible worlds, supraphysical worlds, the worlds which can’t be seen by your ears and eyes and by perceptions of senses; you should not conclude that these Rishis were only speaking of fictions. You must examine yourself; this is what science teaches us. Science tells you that you should not take anything for granted. If somebody says I have seen UFO, you know there are today many stories of UFO, (unidentified flying objects). Some people say they are fictions, some say they have seen physically. As a scientist you can’t say yes or no, you should accept only when you verify yourself. If Vedic Rishis have said there are worlds other than the physical worlds, you have surely not seen those worlds. You have not seen Bhuvah, you have not seen Swah, so you can’t say immediately, ‘yes’ what Rishis have said is right, nor can you say what they say is wrong. Without your own knowledge if you say they are right or wrong it is unscientific. The attitude which we must develop is that anybody says something that he has seen, he has experienced something, you should not immediately throw it out, saying it must be imagination that is unscientific. You should be ready to examine and test it and Vedic Rishis tell you they are aware of this fact. They know the moment they speak of Bhuva, Swah, Maha, people will say we do not know, we cannot believe in it, therefore they have given the methods by which you can be trained to see them. You know just as there are many, many distant stars which you can’t see with your naked eyes but they exist, even if you can’t see. And many of these stars which are distant you can see through telescope but even to see through telescope you need to be trained. It’s not as if you just go to telescope and you can immediately begin to see, it requires training.

Now according to Vedic Rishis there are methods by which capacities can be developed and you can experience, you can travel into these worlds of Bhuva, Swah, Maha and so on. Now when this kind of claim is made our responsibility becomes even greater. As scientists we must ask ourselves: what are these methods by which you can develop our experiences? Now that knowledge of development of you means of experiences that knowledge is also given in the Veda that is the greatness of this book. It not only speaks of these different worlds, it also tells us how we develop our capacities by which we can see them, we can experience, we can travel in them. We shall see later on when we have time and if you have curiosity, we shall develop this subject vastly but for the moment you can only say that in India there is a tradition that when you recite this particular mantra, you should recall the great discoveries made by Vedic Rishis of these three great worlds, not all the seven worlds but at least these three great worlds – Bhur, Bhuvah, Swah, – the physical world, the intermediate world and a still higher world; it’s not the highest world, remember, it is a higher world the highest is Satyam but that we shall see later on but at least these three worlds are described in every recitation of Gayatri Mantra – Om Bhur, Bhuvah, Swah.

Now begins this Gayatri Mantra. Now let us see as I told you always ask the question what does it mean? So let me first of all read out to you every word and give you the meaning and perhaps you will yourself be able to give the meaning by putting these words together. Tat means That; Savitur means of Savitri, Savitri means the sun in Sanskrit language, that is one of the words used to describe the sun. Whenever the Vedic Rishis wanted to describe the sun there were so many words. As you know in Sanskrit there is profusion of words, for the same object there are hundreds of words, like lotus for example. I don’t know how many words do you know to indicate the word lotus in Sanskrit, even in your own language, you ask yourself how many words there are to indicate one object called lotus. There are so many words, at least hundred words there are in Sanskrit language to indicate the word lotus. Similarly to indicate the word surya, the sun the word Savitri also is used. So Savitur means – of the sun.  Vareñyam, Vareñyam means the most blessed, the choicest, most beautiful. You know in Sanskrit language the word Vara is very important. Vara is that which is liked, cherished, relished, that which is chosen, that which is considered to be boon, even for boon – mujhe vardan doo. So the word Vara is a boon, give me the boon. So great gift, the cherished gift is called Vara, Vareñyam the most blessed, the choicest, the best. Bhargo is a light, lustre; Devasya  – of God; Dhīmahi means we are meditating; Dhiyo, Dhiyo is Dhiyah, Dhiyah is intellect that’s why we have in Hindi bhudhiman. The word Dhi is used because of bhudhiman, dhi; Yo means which; Nah – ours; Prachodayāt – may be driven, may be guided, may be directed. So I have told you the meaning of every word here and now you can put these words together in a very systematic manner and I’ll tell you rapidly, then you can see again how I have collected all these words.

We are meditating on the most blessed lustre and light of that God who is known as the sun, so that our intellect may be directed by that one. So let me see once again. We are meditating upon the most blessed lustre of that light, of that God, who is known as sun, so that our intellect may be directed by it. Now you will be able to place all these words together and make the whole sense complete. It simply says we are meditating. In other words the Vedic Rishis had made a great discovery of what is called the process of meditation.

You must have heard this word meditation very often but what exactly is this meditation is not sufficiently clear to most of us. In the Veda there is a big science of this process of meditation, it’s also a knowledge given in the Veda. The Vedic Rishis found out that our intellect has one very great power. Our intellect is capable of developing thoughts. This is not a very difficult thing to discover. All of us have intellects and all of us have experience of thinking. We are all aware of what ideas are. You may not be able to define what is an idea, if I ask you the question suddenly but that doesn’t matter. All of us understand what is the process of thinking but we don’t know the power of thinking, that thinking has many kinds of powers and that these powers can be developed at higher and higher levels, just as sound has number of pitches, low pitch and high pitch and higher pitch and highest pitch and you must have seen that when voice is articulated in different pitches it has different powers. In a crowd for example anybody who shouts loudest can be heard because it’s a great power. Even in a song for example when some good singer sings at a very high pitch you will see the magical effect of that high pitch. You have seen Lata Mankeshkar for example at what high pitch she can take her voice and then you can see the magical effect of that high pitch. Every pitch has an effect, even slow pitch also has an effect, high pitch has an effect. Even silence also has an effect where there is no pitch at all, complete silence even that has an effect. A very good speaker, a very good singer knows how to use silence also in speech or in singing. It has its right effect if suddenly there is a song going on and suddenly there is a drop in the sound, it has a magical effect and then again the sound begins this kind of combination of pitches has a great effect.

Now similarly in the process of thinking, you have low pitch, high pitch, higher pitch, highest pitch and also experience of silence. And every pitch of thinking has its own effect, which many of us will have never tried actually. You must have seen for example when while watching a film there are many kinds of dialogues and some very long dialogues have a tremendous effect. If somebody can speak for ten minutes at a stretch with a certain modulation of his speech, a long process of thinking, all compressed into ten minutes time and see the effect of it on your brain, make an experiment. Listen to dialogues, short dialogue, murmur of a dialogue, a kind of a dialogue which is very whispering dialogue, a dialogue which is very forceful. You must have seen some dialogues in which you are presented with a legal case in a courtroom and you can see how the lawyers argue the cases and there are dialogues of arguments and they have different effects according to the pitches of your thought, at what level the thought goes. You must have seen that every thought has an image, you analyse your thoughts, behind every thought you will find an image. And the moment you hear a word the image crosses your mind. If you are a very good thinker, you will see if you just find some time when you watch somebody speaking and as the words go on flowing from the speaker, you will watch how many images are formed in your mind and these images create in your consciousness a complete picture of what is being conveyed. You must have seen some people speak at length and make no effect on you, some people speak a few words and make a great effect on you, some people make very big speeches and also make very big effects, why? Because the images which are produced by your thought movements by expressions of thought, pictures, ideas become clearer it is like seeing hundreds of photographs in one sight, as it were and see the effect that hundred photographs can make on you. The image is reinforced once again, another photograph and again the image is reiterated, reemphasised. In this manner you will find that various images which are produced when a thought is expressed your understanding is affected.

Now meditation is nothing but a process of repeating certain ideas in a slow motion, in a regulated motion, in a steady motion with complete concentration so that ideas which are not relevant to that idea are not allowed to cross and this is the most important part of meditation. You take a line of thought and you allow only the thoughts which are relevant only to that line of thought, don’t allow other lines of thought to cross and then see how this thought flows like a river steadily, quietly with great attention towards its goal and when this is done, you will find that every meditation discovers its target, it’s a very important point. Every meditation has a target. It is like a bullet which is released from the gun and if your power is very great, you can see the speed by which the bullet runs and reaches exactly the bull’s eye – the target.

Similarly, every process of meditation has a bull’s eye, a certain object. You know even in your classroom you find how you understand a thing when you are attentive and how you don’t understand when you are not attentive. Why because when you are attentive your thought movement moves slowly, steadily, regularly, without any disturbance from any other side and it really grasps what is being said, the target. What the teacher wants to communicate to you is really grasped, that is your target, you understand.

This is a great discovery that concentration is the key to knowledge. If you want to understand anything, if you want to grasp anything, if you want to possess the object of your knowledge, concentrate on it. Concentrated process of thought is what is called meditation, Dhimahi. So when this mantra says: we are meditating; it means that there is here a process of steady, concentrated, attentive process of a thought which goes straight on the object. Now what is the object? This mantra says what is the object? The object is bharga vareniyam, this is the object. The object is expressed in three words – tat, vareniyam, bhargaha. We are meditating on Tat, on that, on that light, on that lustre, on that lustre which is vareniyam, which is the highest, most blessed. We are meditating on a target, on an object which is the highest lustre, that highest most blessed lustre of what – Savituh devasya, of that God, devasya of that God, who is known as Savitri, of the sun. We are meditating on that most blessed light of the God that we know as sun.

Now if you know the meaning and then you recite, you will also try to do the same meditation yourself. It’s not only recitation which is important, once you recite then you be quiet and you also learn how to meditate. You try to see that on your screen of thought there is only one important word lying – vareniyam, bhargaha tat, all the time. Tat vareniyam, bhargaha all the time let this be on your screen, let this word go on repeating, we are meditating on that most blessed light, lustre. Then in the second phase of our meditation, let meditation be longer and you say: Let us meditate on that most blessed lustre of God which is known as sun.

Now the moment you hear the word sun, surely in your mind there will be image of the sun and that is very helpful. Why because the moment you think of sun, you will have three ideas arising in your mind. One is that there is all light. You must have seen that light is a most precious gift that one can have in the world. If you look at the whole universe and you ask how much is the light in this whole universe then you will discover that the larger portion of the world is dark. We don’t normally think of it because our sunlight is most of the time in our waking life, we see light everywhere. So we are so familiar with the light that we don’t think the great importance of light. To be familiar is to remain very often in a state of ignorance, to break the familiarity and to see the strangeness of that which is familiar, the newness of that which is familiar gives you an opening into the doors of knowledge. So if you can really see how much is the darkness in the world and then to find that Oh! There is one sun before us which is absolutely light, and light and light, there is no darkness. To think of an object which is entirely luminous, to think of it, imagine, normally we don’t think of it at all, it’s such a dear friend of ours. Whenever you are in your waking life, you open your eyes; you can see sun anywhere, so we don’t give lot of importance to it. But imagine that there is available to our consciousness, experience an object which is entirely luminous. You don’t have to put any kind of torch to see that sun, it is self-luminous, not only luminous but self-luminous. This self-luminosity is itself a great thing to understand.

Secondly you will find that in the sun there are thousands of rays, it’s also very interesting. Sun is one but its capable of thousands of rays, it’s a mystery, how one object can throw thousands of rays. Thirdly you find that all these rays are united in that one object. Of course here the sun’s rays are all scattered all over here but if you go straight into the origin, you find all of them united. Now this image of the sun is very important. The Vedic Rishis discovered that we are all basically living in darkness. We are all ignorant but we can rise into knowledge and this knowledge, when you reach the top of the knowledge, it will be similar to the sunlight, it will be luminous, everything becomes clear there is no obscurity in it and in that knowledge you will see multiplicity, you will see all as it were and you will see them all united. And the Vedic Rishis gave a criterion – when can you say that you have known?

There are many people in the world who claim I have knowledge, I know, I know, I know; this is the usual refrain that you find from all over the world among many people. The Vedic Rishis told you, you should go to that individual, who says that his knowledge is the knowledge which is comparable to the light of the sun. If you really want to be guided, if you really want that there is no mistake then Vedic Rishis have given you this idea that there is a light, the most blessed light which is similar to the light of the sun.

The word sun is used as in poems like a symbol, actually speaking when the Vedic Rishis say we are meditating upon the light, the cherished light of that sun, the word sun actually stands for not this sun that you physically see, they have seen, they have experienced in the highest realm, we spoke of Bhur Bhuva Swah at the beginning, there is a physical world, a higher world and a still higher world and still higher world and still higher world and the highest knowledge which they gained is symbolised by them by the word Savitur. So this mantra simply says: we are meditating upon the light, the most cherished light, upon that cherished light of the sun which is God. Then, why do we see that light, what do we meditate on that light? So that Diyah, so that Nah – our light, small light of intellect, which is a small little thing. So our intellect may get directed Prochodayat, may be directed by that light.

Now you will see that in this mantra there is a packed knowledge. It tells you that it is possible for we who are ignorant, we have an instrument in our being, in our body, life and mind something is given. One instrument is capable of meditation, that instrument is our intellect – dhimahi, dhi is the intellectual. So we have in us a capacity called intellect and that capacity can be utilised by concentration and it can go to the target which is supreme light, it can do so, this is the claim of the Vedic Rishis. It doesn’t say you should believe it, take it for granted, – no, not all. Vedic Rishis were great scientists and they tell you, you try to meditate, we have given the method. Meditate by your intellect and think of these words, of the Vareniyam Bharga these are indications, try to imagine, make a picture in your mind of the most blessed lustre, make an image of it in your mind, think of the sun. It’s a kind of help given to us, think of the sun and think of it all the time with a concentration, five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes.

If you can meditate, it’s a difficult thing therefore don’t think that within five minutes you will get the end. Just as sun is very far from us and if you throw an arrow from here, how long will it take for the arrow to reach the sun, the target, hardly at all; it may not reach at all. For any shooting done from the earth for it to reach the sun may take a very, very long period. Similarly if you think here and put your intellect and straighten it, even if you put a huge telescope and try to see through the biggest telescope, if your thought has to reach it, it will take lot of time. But try it, like a scientist, you should be like a scientist, who when he is told that this can be seen, can be done, can be achieved. I don’t know if you have read the lives of many, many scientists they take the whole life time to achieve one article of knowledge.

In recent times for example there has been analysis of chromosomes. I don’t know if you have heard the word chromosomes? You have heard the word DNA for example. To find out the compositions of the cells of the human body and there are so many constituents of it, they have taken years and years and years to determine the composition of these chromosomes that requires patience of a scientist. Similarly, you become a scientist that is the advice of the Rishis; do not believe because we are telling you. Rishis are very, very clear – do not believe because we are telling you, we are only telling you so that you may be put on the quest, make your own quest, we are giving you all the indications how you can find out. We are not keeping that secret to ourselves, we are telling you what are the means, if you have got intellect even to discover, it is not by stretching your arm that you will get sunlight that is very clear, it is not by walking hundred miles that you’ll get sunlight; there is in you a power called intellectual power that intellectual power if you train it towards the sunlight and make the image of sun as your help, as an aid and if you do repeatedly, concentratedly, Dhimahi, you must concentrate, meditate then you will find that ultimately your intellect is driven by that light.  Make an experiment and see for yourself.

Now you will see that I began by telling you what is Veda. I showed you the book, this Rig Veda Samhita. I told you there are many, many verses here, in fact if you count there are more than ten thousand verses in this book. Many of you may be budding poets and you must have seen even to write two lines of poem, how long does it take and how much effort you have to make. Even big poets, great poets for them to write long, long things is a difficult task. These are ten thousand verses; you can imagine the magnitude of it. And then I told you only one mantra out of these, I have given you only one example and I have shown you what is the method by which you should try to understand every mantra. Every mantra is meaningful and every mantra tells you the object of knowledge, the method of knowledge and the result of that knowledge. Such is this great book and whether one likes it or not, it happens to be your first book in your history. You must feel proud that our first book starts with so much of knowledge given in a huge book of ten thousand verses. I think we stop here today because this is already a long one but if you feel happy, we shall continue next time. Thank you.