Saraswati is the Word and the Word is the way of the gods” – Sama Veda
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God – John 1:1
What is Word that Matthew, John and Sama Veda are talking about, and what’s the meaning of “Word” anyway? If we can get to the origin of the “Word“, something should happen, right?
That is the premise; stories we recited last week ask us to get to the source of Words/Thoughts; to the initial seed-thought that generated the Word, the source, that primal vibration… In yogic thought, mind (manas) and speech (vac) are intertwined. Mind provides the information bits, hence masculine, and speech is the fully manifested effect, hence feminine. More on this later.
Okay, in a broader sense, where are thoughts coming from, and where were they before they occurred to us? That’s at the core of the practice of meditation. Keeping looking for that source…
Here are the two stories we read last Sunday. Both are from the book by Robert Calasso’s Ka: The stories of Mind and Gods of India –
Svargaloka (Heaven/Bright world)
On the seventh day of the moonlit fortnight of the March (Vasanta rutu) they met together where the Saraswati silts up in desert sands. They are setting off to celebrate rite that was also a journey from which one might not (want to) return. They headed east, against the flow of Saraswati, because “the sky is against the flow.” And the place they hope to reach was none other than the “Svargaloka” or the bright-world, the sky that once the gods had conquered. The light of that world opened out in a place called Plaksa Prasravana, from where the Saraswati came down to earth after her celestial journey, spreading out in ponds and meanders. Before setting off, they consecrated themselves to Vac, to the Word, because, Sarasvati is the Word and the Word is the way of the gods.
Traveling towards the source of the river, they would be traveling toward the source of the Word, whence it vibrates. “They go even to Plaksa Prasravana; Plaksa Prasravana is the furthest border of the Word; at the furthest boarder of the Word, there is Svargaloka. (at this edge, there are no Words, because there are no thoughts that generate words!)
They said to themselves: “The Word, Vac, is the only way to reach the Svargaloka. Vac is Saraswati, this running river that silts up here, in our world, and loses itself. Setting out from this point, from the sands of our world, we must follow the river upstream. It is a long, hard undertaking, that goes against the way of things, which know only how to go down. The Word, and these waters, are the one help we have. We shall follow the Word, so as to be able to leave it behind. A mere span to the north of Plaksa Prasravana, the Word is no more. Only something that shines. There are the seven rishis (sapta rishis) – the center of the world. And where these salts are, that is the heart of the earth. And what is black in the moon, that is the heart of the sky. He who thus knows the two centers and the two hearts of the sky and the earth departs not unwilling from this world (iccha-mrtyu or death on-permission).
How did they go upstream?
The gṛhapati, the first among the celebrants and leader of the expedition, took a cart chock and hurled it as far as he could. As he hurled it, he yelled, and the others yelled with him. They yelled and beat the ground, because “yell and blows” are show of strength” – and strength was something they needed. A heard of cows came after them, patient and silent. There might be ten, there might be a hundred (Cow, as in go, in vedic literature has several meanings, and one of the meanings is conscious thought). Where the chock fell, they kindled the fire called garhapatya. Then thirty-six paces to the east they prepared the fire ahavaniya. Thus for forty-eight days they walked along the banks of the Saraswati, sacrificing according to the phases of the moon, tossing the chock toward the east and stopping where it fell, yelling… (That was their life… meditate the way to heaven! The duration of this meditation is – 48 days!).
Similar description in Satapata Brahmana (12.2.3.12) of Yajurveda:
Such, indeed, are the wilds and ravines of sacrifice, and they (take) hundreds upon hundreds of days’ carriage-drives;
and if any venture into them without knowledge, then hunger or thirst, evil-doers and fiends harass them, even as fiends would harass foolish men wandering in a wild forest;
but if those who know this do so (who understands what’s said in the brahmana verses before this), they pass from one duty to another, as from one stream into another, and from one safe place to another, and obtain well-being, the world of heaven.
Mind
The mind was confined in a compound, like the Cows, like the Dawns (Ushas). Whatever happened inside a fence, inside the walls of a palace, inside a cave sealed by a great stone. Outside foamed the immense ocean of the world, barely audible beyond a thick wall of rock. Inside, in the compound, was another liquid, a “pond,” which, however small, was nevertheless equivalent to the ocean without. The ocean was outside the mountain, called Vala, but inside the mountain too. By splitting the rock, Indra allowed inside ocean, “the ocean of the heart:, (hrdya samudra), to communicate with the outside ocean, the palpable ocean of the world. It was a moment that opened up a new way of knowing. For the rsis it was knowledge itself, the only knowledge they wished to cultivate. Not the mind shut away in its airy cage, reconstructing a conventional image that corresponded point by point to the vast cage of the cosmos. But quite the contrary: the water of the mind flowing into those of the world and the waters of the world flowing into those of the mind to the point where they become indistinguishable one from the other.
Calasso’s commentary
The ultimate difference between the knowledge passed by the rsis and every other knowledge consists in this: for the rishis and all their descendants, knowledge begins when the Cows flee from the compound, when the Dawns awake, when the Waters flow through the cleft in the rock, when the doors of the mind are thrown open it becomes impossible to say which waters are flowing in and which flowing out, what is substance and what is substance of the mind. And everybody else? They live in ignorance of the compound, the rock, the Cows, the Dawns, the Waters. It’s hardly surprising if misunderstandings abound.
Other Notes
Opening the mouth of the cave is a famous hymn from Rig Veda (3.31); some key verses and yogic interpretation are summarized below. One of the key points here regarding the cave and the rock at the mouth of the mountain is that they correspond to the internal world and the ego. The cave is the internal world, and the outside of that mountain is the external world (Not Mine of that I-triangle). The stone that closes the mouth of the mountain is the frontal-I, which is equated to the demon Vala, which has also a meaning of enclosure, net. Indra is the one who breaks that stone to open the mouth of the mountain here. Infants apparently can not differentiate the internal world from the external world, as in they can’t tell something (or imagery) is internal mind-created or actually in the external world as cognized by the senses. And by about 10 years old, all kids develop the ability separate those two worlds. Yogis quest is to be able to gain control of that process, and stay in that open mode for most of the time. That altruistic open mind we feel after a yoga/meditation session is not accidental. That indeed is a true feeling we have been seeking since we lost it in childhood; and don’t we all love that feeling?
What does it mean for Meditation?
For beginners, meditations can be long. As we spend time in meditative states, they lead into the ardor/cathexis stage, where the universe starts revealing itself in evermore detail. See the details of Rig Veda 3.31 below; Angiras rishis meditate on cows or knowledge ray-beams, for months!
Thoughts
What is a thought/Word?
Yogis theorized that thought is a result of the Self/I duality. Duality requires maintenance of boundaries between two polarities – for example, Yes/No, hot/not hot, do/don’t, right/wrong, etc. Take a simple example of “Sky is blue”. You need to maintain a boundary between Sky is blue and Sky is not blue, so that you can choose. Maintaining a boundary requires energy, and therefore it’s logical that thinking takes mental energy.
How a thought forms?
The reflection of “I” in “Self” generates thoughts (from the two-birds story). How the reflection is colored makes all the difference. Depending upon how the sensory information interacts with “I”, we can have a total of 81 types of responses. We will talk more about that in detail later, but thought itself is a result of I/self duality. When those two merge, i.e., when “I” merges with “self”, there can be no reflections, hence thoughts! Then we get to realize the higher knowledge.
Why meditation and thought control?
What did yogis see in Meditation? Why did they need it? How did they stumble upon it? What made them think that closing eyes and sitting under a tree can be useful? Very intriguing… They saw ardor (tapas) as the ideal method to answer any knotted question. They saw meditation as a way to go beyond what meets the eye, to get a look behind the curtain… What they came up with is pretty astonishing… Chakras and endocrine control, mind-body-breath axis, Universal Person, we can go on… This list is a lot longer with stuff that we crave all the time. We will come back to this while discussing the modern science perspective.
Rig Veda – Mandala 3, Hymn 31
(Dēvata: Indra)
3.31.4. “The victorious (Maruts) associated (with Indra when contending with Vṛtra) perceived a great light issuing from the darkness. The dawns recognizing him (as the sun) arose, and Indra was the sole sovereign of the rays (of light).”
3.31.5. “The seven intelligent ages (the aṅgirasas) having ascertained that (the cows) were concealed in the strong (cavern), propitiated (Indra) by mental devotion; they recovered them all by the path of sacrifice; for Indra, knowing (their pious acts), and offering them homage, entered (the cave).”
3.31.6. “When Saramā discovered the broken (entrance) of the mountain, then Indra made great and ample (provision) for her young, as previously (promised); then the sure-footed (animal), forest recognizing their lowing, proceeded, and came to the presence of the imperishable kine.”
3.31.7. “The most sage (Indra), desirous of the friendship of the (aṅgirasas), went to the cave, and the mountain yielded its contents to the valiant (deity), aided by the youthful Maruts, equally wishing (to conciliate the sages); the destroyer (of the asuras) recovered (the cattle), and immediately aṅgirasas became his worshipper.”
3.31.8. “May he who is the type of all that is excellent the anticipator (of his foes), he who knows all that is born, who destroys Śuṣṇa, the far-seeing, the restorer of cattle may he, a friend coming from heaven, honouring us as his friends, be free from all reproach.”
3.31.9. “The aṅgirasas, with minds intent on their cattle, (sat down to worship Indra) with hymns, following the road to immortality; great was their person verance by which they sought for months to accomplish (their ends).”
3.31.10. “Contemplating their own (cattle) giving milk to their former progeny (the aṅgirasas) were delighted; their shouts spread through heaven and earth; they replaced the recovered kine in their plural ces, and stationed guards over the cows.”
3.31.11. “Indra, the slayer of Vṛtra, let loose the milch kine, assisted by the Maruts, born for his aid, and entitled to praises and oblations, and the excellent (cows) contributing abundantly to sacred offerings, and yielding the butter of libation, milked for him sweet (sacrificial) food.”
Notes
- The words such as Cow (go), Horse (aswa), Dawn (ushas) etc. don’t mean what comes to our mind immediately. The meanings are context-dependent. Go (cow) and Aswa (horse) refer to conscious thoughts and instincts, and Dawn (sunrise) refers the illumination of the “self”. Now the story of the mind makes a little more sense, right? Rishis, while expressing what they “saw” in their deep meditations, used Sanskrit, in which nouns are apparently constructed from word-roots that are action-based. Without going into details, the name for what we call sun, for example, depends upon the specific action of sun we are referring to – Savitri, Surya, Arka, etc., are all names for sun.
- Agni – Agni or the element fire is considered as that transformational agent in our bodies. For example, the agni in our belly converts food to energy. In the mind story, this perspective is useful to bear in mind…
- Directions: South is right or down, North is left or up, East is to the front, and West is to back of the subtle body.
- From Taittariya Upanishad – Anandavalli
He who knows the bliss of Brahman, (आनन्दं ब्रह्मणो विद्वान् )
whence (all) words recede, (यतो वाचो निवर्तन्ते )
as well as mind, without reaching, (अप्राप्य मनसा सह )
he is not afraid of anyone whatsoever. (न बिभेति कुतश्चनेति)
Yogic Thought 
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