The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Soma, Lord of Delight and Immortality 355
The hymn begins with an imagery which closely follows the
physical facts of the purifying of the wine and its pouring into the
jar. The strainer or purifying instrument spread out in the seat of
Heaven seems to be the mind enlightened by knowledge (cetas);
the human system is the jar. Pavitra ˙mtevitata˙mbrahman. aspate,
the strainer is spread wide for thee, O Master of the soul; prabhur
gātrān. i paryes.ivi´svatah. , becoming manifest thou pervadest
or goest about the limbs everywhere. Soma is addressed here as
Brahmanaspati, a word sometimes applied to other gods, but
usually reserved for Brihaspati, Master of the creative Word.
Brahman in the Veda is the soul or soul-consciousness emerging
from the secret heart of things, but more often the thought,
inspired, creative, full of the secret truth, which emerges from
that consciousness and becomes thought of the mind, manma.
Here, however, it seems to mean the soul itself. Soma, Lord
of the Ananda, is the true creator who possesses the soul and
brings out of it a divine creation. For him the mind and heart,
enlightened, have been formed into a purifying instrument; freed
from all narrowness and duality the consciousness in it has been
extended widely to receive the full flow of the sense-life and
mind-life and turn it into pure delight of the true existence, the
divine, the immortal Ananda.
So received, sifted, strained, the Soma-wine of life turned
into Ananda comes pouring into all the members of the human
system as into a wine-jar and flows through all of them completely
in their every part. As the body of a man becomes full
of the touch and exultation of strong wine, so all the physical
system becomes full of the touch and exultation of this divine
Ananda. The words prabhu and vibhu in the Veda are used not in
the later sense, “lord”, but in a fixed psychological significance
like pracetas and vicetas or like prajñāna and vijñāna in the later
language. “Vibhu” means becoming, or coming into existence
pervasively, “prabhu” becoming, coming into existence in front
of the consciousness, at a particular point as a particular object
or experience. Soma comes out like the wine dropping from
the strainer and then pervading the jar; it emerges into the consciousness
concentrated at some particular point, prabhu, oras