The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

The Guardians of the Light 509
many-roomed tenement of our being contained in Varuna has
to be ordered by Mitra in the right harmony of its utility and its
equipment.
For the godhead is a plenitude as well as an infinity; Varuna
is an ocean no less than an ethereal heaven. Pure and subtle as
the ether, his strong substance is yet no serene void or easy vague
of inactive peace, but rather we have seen in it a surging march
of thought and action; he has been described to us as a nodus in
which all wisdom is upgathered and a hill upon which the original,
unfallen workings of the gods are supported. King Varuna
is one who sleeps not, but is awake and mighty forever, eternally
an effective force and worker for the Truth and the Right. Still
he acts as the guardian of the Truth rather than constitutes it,
or constitutes rather through the action of other godheads who
avail themselves of his wideness and surging force. He keeps,
drives even the shining herds, but does not assemble them in the
pastures, an upholder of our powers and remover of obstacles
and enemies much more than a builder of our parts.
Who then gathers knowledge into this nodus or links divine
action in this sustainer of works? Mitra is the harmoniser, Mitra
the builder, Mitra the constituent Light, Mitra the god who
effects the right unity of which Varuna is the substance and the
infinitely self-enlarging periphery. These two Kings are complementary
to each other in their nature and their divine works.
In them we find and by them we gain harmony in largeness:
we see in the Godhead and increase in ourselves purity without
defect basing love faultless in wisdom. Therefore these two are
a great duo of the self-fulfilling godhead and the Vedic word
calls them together to a vaster and vaster sacrifice to which
they arrive as the inseparable builders of an increasing Truth.
Madhuchchhandas gives us the keynote of their united divinity.
“Mitra I call, the pure in judgment, and Varuna, devourer of
the foe. By Truth, Mitra and Varuna, Truth-increasers who get
to the touch of Truth, you attain to a vast working of the will.
Seers, dwellers in the wideness, born with many births, they
uphold the judgment at its works.”
The name Mitra comes from a root which meant originally