The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

282 Selected Hymns
cosmic Powers act and exist in the universe; man takes them
upon himself, makes an image of them in his own consciousness
and endows that image with the life and power that the
Supreme Being has breathed into His own divine forms and
world-energies. 4
It is when thus present and conscient in the mortal, like
a “house-lord”, 5 master in his mansion, that Agni appears in
the true nature of his divinity. When we are obscure and revolt
against the Truth and the Law, our progress seems to be a
stumbling from ignorance to ignorance and is full of pain and
disturbance. By constant submission to the Truth, surrenderings,
namobhih. , we create in ourselves that image of the divine Will
which is on the contrary full of peace, because it is assured of the
Truth and the Law. Equality of soul 6 created by the surrender to
the universal Wisdom gives us a supreme peace and calm. And
since that Wisdom guides all our steps in the straight paths of
the Truth we are carried by it beyond all stumblings (duritāni).
Moreover, with Agni conscious in our humanity, the creation
of the gods in us becomes a veritable manifestation and
no longer a veiled growth. The will within grows conscious of
the increasing godhead, awakens to the process, perceives the
lines of the growth. Human action intelligently directed and
devoted to the universal Powers, ceases to be a mechanical,
involuntary or imperfect offering; the thinking and observing
mind participates and becomes the instrument of the sacrificial
will.
Agni is the power of conscious Being, called by us will,
effective behind the workings of mind and body. Agni is the
strong God within (maryah. , the strong, the masculine) who puts
out his strength against all assailing powers, who forbids inertia,
who repels every failing of heart and of force, who spurns out all
lack of manhood. Agni actualises what might otherwise remain
as an ineffectual thought or aspiration. He is the doer of the
4
This is the true sense and theory of Hindu image-worship, which is thus a material
rendering of the great Vedic symbols.
5
Gr.hapati; alsovi´spati, lord or king in the creature.
6
Samatā of the Gita.