The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

196 The Secret of the Veda
these conclusions we have not to wrest the sense of words, to
interpret the same fixed term by different renderings according
to our convenience of the moment or to render differently the
same phrase or line in different hymns, or to make incoherence a
standard of right interpretation; on the contrary, the greater the
fidelity to word and form of the Riks, the more conspicuously the
general and the detailed sense of the Veda emerge in a constant
clearness and fullness.
We have therefore acquired the right to apply the sense
we have discovered to other passages such as the hymn of
Vasishtha which I shall next examine, VII.76, although to a
superficial glance it would seem to be only an ecstatic picture of
the physical Dawn. This first impression, however, disappears
when we examine it; we see that there is a constant suggestion
of a profounder meaning and, the moment we apply the key we
have found, the harmony of the real sense appears. The hymn
commences with a description of that rising of the Sun into the
light of the supreme Dawn which is brought about by the gods
and the Angirases. “Savitri, the god, the universal Male, has
ascended into the Light that is immortal and of all the births,
jyotir amr.ta ˙m vi´svajanyam; by the work (of sacrifice) the eye of
the gods has been born (or, by the will-power of the gods vision
has been born); Dawn has manifested the whole world (or, all
that comes into being, all existences, vi´sva ˙m bhuvanam).” This
immortal light into which the sun rises is elsewhere called the
true light, r.ta ˙m jyotih. , Truth and immortality being constantly
associated in the Veda. It is the light of the knowledge given by
the seven-headed thought which Ayasya discovered when he became
vi´svajanya, universal in his being; therefore this light too is
called vi´svajanya, for it belongs to the fourth plane, the turīya ˙m
svid of Ayasya, from which all the rest are born and by whose
truth all the rest are manifested in their large universality and
no longer in the limited terms of the falsehood and crookedness.
Therefore it is called also the eye of the gods and the divine
dawn that makes manifest the whole of existence.
The result of this birth of divine vision is that man’s path
manifests itself to him and those journeyings of the gods or to