Undoubtedly, in the beginning man worshipped the Powers of the physical world, the Sun and the Moon, Wind, Rain and Storm, the Sacred Rivers, the Deities who presided over the workings of Nature. In Greece, Rome, India, and among other ancient peoples this worship is generally seen to have existed. These gods in course of time assumed a higher, a psychological function. This was accomplished by the ancient mystics, men of self-know-ledge and a deeper knowledge of things; in Greece there were the Orphic and Eleusinian mystics, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their occult lore, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis. They were men of a great spiritual and occult knowledge who discovered secrets of the worlds behind the physical world and saw a Truth, a Reality behind the apparent universe and aspired to realise this Truth.
Thus we notice that Pallas Athene who may have been originally a Dawn-Goddess assumed in classical Greece a higher function, and for the Romans she became Minerva, the goddess of learning and wisdom; Apollo, the Sun-God, became the god of prophecy and poetry; Hephaestus the Fire-God became a divine smith; in India the river-goddess Saraswati became the goddess of muse and learning.
Fire is one of the well-known five elements of the physical world, the other four being earth, water, air and ether or space; in the enumeration of all the five, fire comes in the middle. The ancient mystics took each of these to represent some other world, constituting the fundamental character of a particular plane of existence.
In the Upanishadic symbolism earth represents the material world, Matter, the first or the lowest range of creation and that which supports the other worlds. The Sanskrit words dhara and dharitri bring out the sense of earth being the basis, the upholder. Water comes next; it is the Life-world, prana. As the principle of life-force its characteristics are movement and continuity.
Then fire. It represents the Heart, that which seated within inspires and drives the movements of life. For fire the Sanskrit word is Agni. The root Ag means power, light, burning; it also means to lead, to direct. Physically the principle of the sun, heat and light, psychically fire would be the principle of the heat of consciousness, the ardour of the central being, tapas, tejas, also the Will-Force and the illumined Will. Thus, according to the context one could translate Agni as Flame, Power, Strength, Will, Divine Will, besides the general term Fire. The other Sanskrit word pavaka means that which purifies.
Air is the thought-world; it represents Mind. The Maruts, the Vedic wind-gods are thought-gods with Indra as their king. The thought-world has its own expressions and forms and shapes. Finally, ether or Space. It is the principle of Infinity, the infinity of the Spirit, the limitlessness of the immanent and transcendent Presence.
In the ancient religion of Zoroaster we find invocations to the higher and inner Fire:
unto Thine INNER FLAME I pay My homage, and to Thine ETERNAL LAW...!
Again,
Whom shalt Thou send, O Mazda, to protect Us all, when Untruth threatens us with hate, Other than Thine own Fire and Thy Love?2
Another mystic says,
He who is near Me is near the fire.3
However, in the Vedas we come across rippling streams of Fire-hymns. There we enjoy a multiaspected vision of Fire couched in "seer-wisdoms, seer-words". In fact the Rig-Veda opens with a hymn addressed to Fire itself:
agnimile purohitam yajnasya devamṛtivijam hotaram ratnadhatamam.
I adore the Flame, the vicar, the divine Ritwik of the Sacrifice, the summoner who founds the ecstasy.4
The sacrifice, an essential Vedic concept, invariably demands the presence of the deity Fire, irrespective of the sense, ritualistic or esoteric, in which the word is accepted. In its spiritual sense,
Our sacrifice is a journey, a pilgrimage and a battle, a travel towards the Gods and we also make that journey with Agni, the inner Flame, as our path-finder and leader. Our human things are raised up by the mystic Fire into the immortal being, into the Great Heaven, and the things divine come down into us.
It is a double process, the ascent of the lower into the higher by self-offering and, in response, the descent of the higher into the lower; thus there is an integration of the lower with the higher.
With the knowledge of the psychological significances of the Vedic words, even proper nouns have an inner sense, one starts unveiling the deeper reality of what is said. For instance, the colloquy of Agni and the Gods related in the Rig-Veda, Mandala X. 51, becomes a parable of Agni (the divine spark flickering in man) gone into hiding in the nether regions of inconscience when every-thing is laid for the Yajna, the sacrifice, the cosmic labour of the universe towards the Light out of Darkness. The gods who go in search of Agni are Varuna (god of the Vast Consciousness), Mitra (god of the harmony of Infinity) and Yama (god of the Under-world). Agni first refuses to join them; he is afraid of the enormous task, even his elders have failed before. But the gods insist and Agni comes out; the soul, the divine spark in man, accepts the mission of the manifestation of divinity on the earth, even though the attempts of its predecessors, the deities of the physical, vital and mental consciousness, one may say, did not succeed.
Similarly, the story of the Kathopanishad grows in meaning when we know that the boy Nachiketas (naciketas, one without consciousness or knowledge) is the young aspirant still in the Ignorance. His father Vajashravas may be a significant name representing one famed for material plenty or one open to an abundance of inspired hearing.
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