The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

The Foundations of the Psychological Theory 45
of three cosmic divisions, Earth, the Antariksha or middle region
and Heaven (Dyaus); but there is also a greater Heaven
(Brihad Dyau) called also the Wide World, the Vast (Brihat),
and typified sometimes as the Great Water, Maho Arnas. This
“Brihat” is again described as “Ritam Brihat” or in a triple term
“Satyam Ritam Brihat”. And as the three worlds correspond
to the Vyahritis, so this fourth world of the Vastness and the
Truth seems to correspond to the fourth Vyahriti mentioned in
the Upanishads, Mahas. In the Puranic formula the four are
completed by three others, Jana, Tapas and Satya, the three
supreme worlds of the Hindu cosmology. In the Veda also we
have three supreme worlds whose names are not given. But
in the Vedantic and Puranic system the seven worlds correspond
to seven psychological principles or forms of existence,
Sat, Chit, Ananda, Vijnana, Manas, Prana and Anna. Now Vijnana,
the central principle, the principle of Mahas, the great
world, is the Truth of things, identical with the Vedic Ritam
which is the principle of Brihat, the Vast, and while in the
Puranic system Mahas is followed in the ascending order by
Jana, the world of Ananda, of the divine Bliss, in the Veda
also Ritam, the Truth, leads upward to Mayas, Bliss. We may,
therefore, be fairly sure that the two systems are identical and
that both depend on the same idea of seven principles of subjective
consciousness formulating themselves in seven objective
worlds. On this principle I was able to identify the Vedic
worlds with the corresponding psychological planes of consciousness
and the whole Vedic system became clear to my
mind.
With so much established the rest followed naturally and
inevitably. I had already seen that the central idea of the Vedic
Rishis was the transition of the human soul from a state of death
to a state of immortality by the exchange of the Falsehood for the
Truth, of divided and limited being for integrality and infinity.
Death is the mortal state of Matter with Mind and Life involved
in it; Immortality is a state of infinite being, consciousness and
bliss. Man rises beyond the two firmaments, Rodasi, Heaven
and Earth, mind and body, to the infinity of the Truth, Mahas,