-21_Rishi Dirghatama

Rishi Dirghatama

MANY of the Upanishadic rishis are familiar to you. Vedic rishis are perhaps not so.

Today I will speak of one of the Vedic rishis. Some names of great Vedic rishis must have reached your ears-Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa (I do not know if it is the same Kanwa of whom Kalidasa speaks in his Shakuntala), Madhuchchanda. All of them are seers of mantra, hearers of mantra, creators of mantra; all of them occupy a large place in the Veda. Each one of them has his speciality, each one delivers a mantra that is in its tone, temper and style his own although the subject matter, the substance, the fundamental realisation is everywhere the same. For example, Vashishtha is characterised by a happy clarity, Vishwamitra has force and energy, Kutsa is sweetness, Dirghatama is well known for his oblique utterances, his paradoxical apopthegms.¹

Today precisely it is of Dirghatama that we will speak. Dirghatama does not mean as the word would indicate to the layman, one who is very tall – śālaprāmśurmahābhujah in Kalidasa's phrase. Tama is not the superlative suffix (most), it is tamas, darkness. So, from the name itself one may naturally expect that the person was not of an ordinary category. Indeed the amount of stories and legends that have been woven around the name is fantastic-queer, odd, unbelievable, impossible in every way. I need not open that chapter.

I shall speak only of what seems to me probable and believable and likely and it must be this that he passed a long time

¹ Sri Aurobindo says: "In the deep and mystic style of the Dirghatamas Auchathya as in the melodious lucidity of Medhatithi Kanwa, in the puissant and energetic hymns of Vishwamitra as in Vashishtha's even harmonies we have the same firm foundation of knowledge and the same scrupulous adherence to the sacred conventions of the Initiates."

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in darkness, engulfed in obscurity. The legend says that he was in his mother's womb long past the due time and it seems it was of his own will. His mother's name was Mamata and his father was Uchathya. When he came out of the darkness and saw the light, it was a light strangely glimmering with all the vibrations of the long obscurity to which he had been accustomed. It was indeed the Light beyond the confines of all darkness, nescience, and yet carrying a mystic imprint of the mysteries of darkness. So he started his quest with this questioning:

I am an innocent babe, my ignorant mind knows nothing, who will tell me of the secret seats of the Godheads?¹

Indeed the darkness and the blindness seem to have been the Divine's grace upon him, for his eyes turned inward to other domains and saw strange truths and stranger facts. We remember in this connection another blind old poet who even though fallen on such evil days composed the world famous epic poem (I am referring obviously to Milton and his Paradise Lost). We remember also here the deaf incomparable master of music Beethoven. Many of the sayings of Dirghatama have become so current that they are now familiar even to the common man. They are mottoes and proverbs we all quote at all times. "Truth is one, the wise call it in different ways" – the mantra is from Dirghatama. "Heaven is my father, Earth my mother" – this is also from Dirghatama. The famous figure of two birds with beautiful wing5 dwelling on the same tree comes also from Dirghatama. There are a good many sayings of this kind that have become intimate companions to our lips of which the source we do not know. When we read the mantras of Dirghatama we are likely to exclaim even as the villager did when he first saw Hamlet played in London, "It is full of quotations."

You must have already noticed that the utterance of Dirghatama carries a peculiar turn, even perhaps a twist. In fact his mantras are an enigma, a riddle to which it is sometimes difficult to find the fitting key. For example when he says, "What is above is moving downward and what is down is

¹ Rig Veda, 1. 164.5.

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moving upward; yes, they who are below are indeed up above, and they who are up are here below," or again, "He who knows the father below by what is above, and he who knows the father who is above by what is below is called the poet (the seer creator)", we are, to say the least, not a little puzzled.

The old delightful rishi – to use the epithets he gives to his Agni – and blind into the bargain, continues, the substance and manner in the same way paradoxical and enigmatic, perhaps deliberately tantalising and confusing:

Those who are called feminine are masculine, yes, only they who have eyes can see, the blind do not know.

The son is the seer-poet, he knows and he alone knows these things who is the father of the father.¹

Then again look at this picture almost surrealistic in its boldness:

The cow gazing upward holds with her front legs the hind legs of her calf and the calf with its front legs holds the hind legs of its mother.²

Needless to say these are signs and symbols and figures of a language seeking to express truths and realities of an invisible world, spiritual and occult. We are reminded of the "twilight" language of the poet-saints (Siddhacharyas) of Bengal of much later days.

There is no end to the problems that face Dirghatama with his almost tormented mind. Listen once more to this riddle:

Even he who has created this does not know it.

Even to him who has seen it, it remains veiled. One who is shrouded in his mother's womb with his many progenies has entered into untruth.³

Here are some more of his aspirations, the questions that trouble him, the riddles whose solution he needs most. He calls upon the world and asks:

¹ Rig Veda, 1. 164.16.

² Ibid., I. 164.17.

³ Ibid., 1. 164.32.

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Tell me where is the end of this earth? Tell me where is the nodus of this universe? Tell me what is the meaning of the energy-flow from the energetic steed?

Tell me again what is the word that is in the highest spaces?¹

To these abstruse questions he himself gives, I am afraid, abstruse answers:

This sacrificial altar is the extreme end of the earth, this sacrifice is the nodus of the universe, and this nectar of immortality (Soma) is the energy-flow of the steed and this Brahman is the Word in the supreme heaven.²

As are the questions so are the answers, equally enigmatic and obscure.

About the Word, the mystery which Dirghatama unveils is an extraordinary revelation – so curious, so illuminating. In later times many lines of spiritual discipline have adopted his scheme and spread it far and wide. Dirghatama himself was an uncommon wizard of words. The truths he saw and clothed in mantras have attained, as I have already said, general celebrity. He says: "The Word is of four categories. It has four stations or levels or gradations." The Rishi continues: "Three of them are unmanifested, unbodied; only the fourth one is manifest and bodied, on the tongue of man." This terminology embodying a fundamental principle has had many commentaries and explanations. Of these the most well-known is that given by the Tantras. They have named the fourfold words as (1) parā, supreme; (2) paśyantī, the seeing one; (3) madhyamā, the middle one or the one within and (4) vaikharī, the articulate word. In modern language we may say that the first one is the self-vibration of the Supreme Being or Consciousness; the second is the vibration of the higher-mind or the pure intelligence; the third is the vibration of the inner heart; and the fourth the vibration of physical sound, of voice. In philosophical terms of current English we may name these as (1) revelatory, (2) intuitive, (3) inspirational and (4) vocal.

Now in conclusion I will just speak of the fundamental

¹ Rig Veda, 1. 164.34.

² Ibid., 1. 164.35.

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vision of the rishi. His entire realisation, the whole Veda of his life, he has, it appears, pressed into one single rk. We have heard it said that the entire range of all scriptures is epitomised in the Gita and the Gita' itself is epitomised in one sloka – sarvadharmān parityajya ... Even so we may say that Rishi Dirghatama has summarised his experience, at least the fundamental basic one, and put it into a sulfa. It is the famous rk with which he opens his long hymn to Surya:

Lo, this delightful ancient Priest and Summoner; he has a second brother who is the devourer. There is a third brother with a dazzling luminous facet – there I saw the Master of the worlds along with his seven sons.¹

This is again a sphinx puzzle indeed. But what is the meaning? The universe, the creation has its fundamental truth in a Trinity: Agni (the Fire-god) upon earth, Vayu (the Wind-god) in the middle regions and in heaven the Sun. In other words, breaking up the symbolism we may say that the creation is a triple reality, three principles constitute its nature. Matter, Life and Consciousness or status, motion and Light. This triplicity however does not exhaust the whole of the mystery. For the ultimate mystery is imbedded within the heart of the third brother, for our rishis saw there the Universal Divine Being and his seven sons. In our familiar language we may say it is the Supreme Being, God himself (Purushottama) and his seven lines of self-manifestation. We have often heard of the seven worlds or levels of being and consciousness, the seven chords of the Divine Music. In more familiar terms we say that body and life and mind form the lower half of the cosmic reality and its upper half consists of Sat-Chit-Ananda (or Satya- Tap as-Jana). And the link, the nodus that joins the two spheres is the fourth principle (Turya), the Supermind, Vijnana. Such is the vision of Rishi Dirghatama, its fundamental truth in a nutshell. To know this mystery is the whole knowledge and knowing this, one need know nothing else.

A word is perhaps necessary to complete the sense of the commentary. Agni has been called old and ancient (Palita), but why? Agni is the first among the gods. He has come down

¹ Rig Veda, I. 164.1.

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upon earth, entered into matter with the very creation of the material existence. He is the secret energy hidden in the atom which is attracting, invoking all the other gods to manifest themselves. It is he who drives the material consciousness in its evolutionary re-course upward towards the radiant fullness in the solar Supra-Consciousness at the summit. He is however not only energy, he is also delight (vāma). For he is the Soma, the nectarous flow, occult in the Earth's body. For Earth is the storehouse of the sap of Life, the source of the delightful growths of Life here below.

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