Appendix
Aspirations and Victories of the Ancient Rishis
(A few selections from the Rig Veda)1
I
(The Rishi desires a state of spiritual wealth full of the divine working in which nothing shall fall away to the division and the crookedness. So, increasing by our works the divine Force in us daily, we shall attain to the Bliss and the Truth, the rapture of the Light and the rapture of the Force.)
1. These selections have been made from "The Secret of the Veda" by Sri Aurobindo.
Rig Veda V.20.1-4
II
(The Rishi celebrates the flame of the Will high-blazing in the dawn of knowledge as the King of Immortality, the giver to the soul of its spiritual riches and felicity and of a well-governed mastery of Nature. He is the bearer of our oblation, the illumined guide of our sacrifice to its divine and universal goal.)
Lord and his Spouse, set thy foot on the greatness of hostile powers.
Rig Veda V.28.1-6
III
Vanished the darkness, shaken in its foundation; Heaven shone out (rocata dyauh, implying the manifestation of the three luminous worlds of Swar, diyo rocanani); upward rose the light of the divine Dawn; the Sun entered the vast fields (of the Truth) beholding the straight things and the crooked in mortals. Thereafter indeed they awoke and saw utterly (by the sun's separation of the straight from the crooked, the truth from falsehood); then indeed they held in them the bliss that is enjoyed in heaven.
Rig Veda IV. 1.17
May he the knower discern perfectly the Knowledge and the Ignorance, the wide levels and the crooked that
shut in mortals; and, O God, for a bliss fruitful in offspring, lavish on us Diti and protect Aditi.
Rig Veda IV.2.11
Now as the seven seers of Dawn, the Mother, the supreme disposers (of the sacrifice), may we beget for ourselves the gods; may we become the Angirasas, sons of Heaven, breaking open the wealth-filled hill, shining in purity.
Rig Veda IV.2.15
We have done the work for thee, we have become perfect in Works, the wide-shining Dawns have, taken up their home in the Truth (or, have robed themselves with the Truth), in the fullness of Agni and his manifold delight, in the shining eye of the god in all his brightness.
Rig Veda IV.2.19