The Light of the Fire Within*
* ( Final Paper submitted to Professor Premji in Introduction to Indian Philosophical Literature)
In the name of the Creator, the Sustainer, the
Destroyer of the worlds, the One who has Many names, by whose grace alone is
the path of liberation known, the veiled beauty whose light illuminates the heavens,
the earth and the self deep within us.
***
You,
O Agni (Fire), are Indra, the bull (strongest) of all that exist; you are
wide-striding Visnu, worthy of reverence; you, O Lord of the Holy Word (Brahmanaspati), are the chief priest who
finds riches (for the sacrifice); you, O distributer, are associated with
munificence.[1]
Thus goes one of the
many hymns in the Rig Veda dedicated to fire. The Rig Veda is perhaps the
oldest[2]
amongst all the continuously transmitted scriptures that continue to be relied
upon by human beings in the twenty-first century. One of the most central
images in the Rig Veda is that of fire (variously call agni and sometimes jyotish).[3] In
the age of microwave ovens and electric grills, it requires some imagination to
understand why fire once occupied such a central place in human thought about
god, cosmos and the self.[4] Yet,
fire is a rich scriptural imagine, well worth pondering.
To some extent, the
celebration of fire by the ancients can be accounted for by its great utility.
Whenever they first discovered fire (or it was revealed to them), our ancestors
must have been experienced as a source of major transformations in their lives.
But we know that the significance of fire among the ancient Indians went well beyond
the utilitarian since sacrifices were offered to it and through it. Fire was
more than a mundane object; it was the sacred symbol par excellence.
One could even say it
was the vedic answer to one of the most perennial problems in human thought. The
problem that many human beings have confronted, across the sea of time, is that
earthly life sometimes feels unbearably meaningless. At such moments, the
ephemeral and bounded world we reside in, begins to feels hopelessly
insufficient. We feel an inner longing for an unbounded and immortal existence.
That yearning finds fulfillment only in the unbounded heavens which, on account
of our situation, we stare into all the time. In such situations, it is only natural
to try and restore meaning in life by connecting the earthly with the heavenly,
the finite with the infinte.[5] But we all know that the gulf between the
heavens the earth is staggeringly vast. How is it ever to be bridged?
This is where the
ritual fire of the Vedas came in handy for ancient Indians. It enabled in the
vedic context a connection between the earthly to the heavenly. Olivelle notes:
The
central feature of vedic sacrifices, from the simplest to the most complex, is
the ritual fire. All offerings are made in the fire, and it is believed that as
the fire consumes the offerings, the gods themselves partake of it. The
Sanskrit term agni is, at one and the
same time, the ritual fire and the fire god…[6]
The ritual fire in the
Vedas could “sublimate” the things of this world and takes them higher, all the
way up to the heavens. It served a significant metaphysical function. Keeping
the fire going, became, therefore, was a rather serious business. The emergence
of priests who were more than anything else, keepers of the sacred fire was, at
least in part, a response to his tedious exigency. The hierarchically ordered
and extremely stable society that emerged around priests and the vedic ritual they
administered was meant, amongst other things, to best enable the priests to keep
the ritual fire going.
***
Somewhere down the journey,
however, these priestly worshipers of fire stumbled upon an insight that would forever
transform their worldview radically. in the toil of keeping alight the five
sacred fires, these post-vedic thinker came to recognize that they had ignored
a fire perhaps more worthy of being tended to. The Katha Upanishad recalls:
A person the size of
the thumb
resides within the body
(atman);
The Lord of what was
and what will be –
from him he does not
hide himself…
The person the size of
a thumb
is like a fire free of smoke[7]
The Upanishadic thinkers
discovered a source of light and warmth, the fire of the soul, the atman, that far exceeded any ritual fire
their ancestors had know. It turned out that the immortal fire everybody had
been looking for out there was
actually to be found in them. The Kath Upanishad recalls this turn inwards
with poetic beauty[8]:
The Self-existent One
pierced the apertures outward,
therefore, one looks
out, and not into oneself.
A certain wise man in
search of immortality,
turned
his sight inwards and saw it within his
self.[9]
After that seminal undated
moment in history of Brahmanical thought, philosophical speculations came to focus
on this mysterious fire within us, its nature, its light and its growth. If
fire was the unrivalled preoccupation of the vedic thinker, the post-vedic
thinkers preoccupation came to be with atman
– along with brahman.
****
“Yajnavalkya, what is
the source of light for a person here?”
“The sun, Your Majesty, is his source of light,” he replied. “It is
by the light of the sun that a person sits down, goes about, does his work, and
returns.”
“Quite right,
Yajnavalkya. But when the sun has set, Yajnavalkya, what then is the source of
light for a person here?”
“The moon is then his source of light. It is by the light of the
moon …”
“But when both the sun
and the moon have set…?”
“The fire is then his source of light….”
“But when … the fire
has died out…?”
“The voice then is his source of light. It by the light of the voice
that a person sits down, goes about, does his work, and returns…”
“But when… the voice is
stilled..?”
“The self(atman) is then
his source of light. It is by the light of the self that a person sits down,
goes about, does his work, and returns.”
“Which self is that?”
“It is … the inner
light within the heart.”[10]
It is hard to miss the
drama and the excitement latent in this upanishadic dialogue. Here we are being
told, in the context of a society of fire-worshipping priests, that when the
fire is gone, the heavens do not fall into darkness and dismay because there still
remains an inner light to guide, a light that shines within the heart of every
human beings, a light that requires the mediation of no priests. The
implication is clear: the ritual fire and the hierarchical society built around
it is not indispensable.
Of course, the
discovery of the atman did not erase
all doubts. Everybody and anybody could and feel and see agni and jyotish. But
what of this atman that the
Upanishadic thinker harp on and on about?
The materialist skeptics of the age asked as do we today: If there is a
fire within us, a light, a source of radiance that is so very important, why
can’t we see it, touch it, feel it? The Book of Liberation in the Mahabharata
responds by pointing out that if the self is above the senses in the scheme of
things, then it is only reasonable to expect that the senses would not be able
to grasp it; instead, they would would be grasped by it:
[T]he
five forms of consciousness function within the body. But the self, the single
source of consciousness, is beyond them….”[11]
The different sense faculties such as hearing cannot perceive their own essence
by themselves. But the soul is all-knowing and all-seeing; because it is
all-knowing, it perceives the sense faculties.[12]
This passage in the
Mahabharata goes to highlight the limits of sense-perception.:
Just
as a person would not be able to see smoke or a flame in a log simply by picking up an axe, so people do not see what is
beyond the body by cutting open its stomach, hands and feet…”[13] Although
men have never perceived the northern slopes
of the Himalayas or the dark side of the moon,
it does not mean that they do not exist. In the same way, although the subtle,
individual self that abides within living beings – the essence of which is
consciousness – has never been perceived by the eyes, this does not mean that
it does not exist.[14]
This
passage takes care of the case against the
existence of atman which rests on the
claim that seeing alone is believing. The log already has the fire in it, but
we can’t see the fire until it comes out. The hills and the moon have sides
which we cannot see even though we accept their existence. So the human has an atman which we cannot see; our inability
to see it is no proof of its non-existance.
The
Upanishads go further and also build a positive case for the existence of atman, eliciting an oft-ignored fact from
our daily lives. Much like the early vedic ritualists, many of us today scarcely
ever pause to think about the sleep state in which we spend close to a third of
our lives on earth. Often in our sleep, we dream. How do we dream? Is it not
amazing that when our faculties of sight and sound and smell and touch and taste
are all suspended, we are still able to see, hear, smell, touch and taste a
whole new world? The dream as metaphor – as in “follow your dreams” –
is a commonplace but the dream as reality,
the strange and often pleasing experience we have in our sleep, is given short
shrift. Dreams point out to each and everyone of us the possibility of other
dimensions of existence, beyond the reach of our senses. It is precisely when
we tune out our senses that world of dreams appears before us.
The
Upanishads point out that any objective and comprehensive theory of human
cognition much account for the totality of our experience, which includes
waking and sleeping. It must tell us if the world of dreams is less real than
the waking world? Which light is it that illuminates the land of our dreams?
These are questions are as relevant for the moderns as they were for the
ancients.
The
Upanishads affirm the reality of both the sleeping person and the waking person
by positing the presence of an atman something
which witnesses both states.[15]
This
is how [a man] dreams. He takes material from the entire world and, taking them
apart on his own and then on his own putting back together, he dreams with his own radiance, with his own
light. In that place this person becomes his own light.[16]
The Upanishadic argument
is simple and quite convincing: we know we have an inner light, our own
radiance, the atman because if we
didn’t wouldn’t be able to see the world of dreams.
Thus far we have
presented the arguments for the existence of atman. Exactly what is this atman? To some extent, beyond its
existence, little than can be known about this ultimate mystery of human
existance.
About
this self (atman), one can only say “not ____, not ____”. He is ungraspable,
for he cannot be grasped…[17]
While its ultimate
nature is profoundly unknowable, in passages quoted above, we have noted some
metaphorical descriptions. The atman has
been likened to an inner light[18] and
to a smokeless fire.[19] The
Bhagavad Geeta describes the well-developed atman
as a lamp. In the Sixth Teaching which pays the greatest attention to the
self, Sri Krishna likens the man who has mastered his self to a lamp:
“He does not
waver, like a lamp sheltered
from the wind”
is the simile recalled
for a man of
discipline, restrained in thought
and practicing
self-discipline.[20]
***
We have mentioned
earlier that the discovery of fire in the earliest days of vedic world was a
major event that created practical problems that were solved by a social
structure. The discovery of the atman, the
fire within, was no less significant for post-vedic thought and society. It
gave rise to a whole new set of practical problems. How does one tend to the
inner fire? How does one get one’s atman shine
forth? This very practical query gave rise not only to yogic world-renunciation
practices and Samkhya philosophy but also endowed earlier vedic practices with
a new meaning.
Put simply the atman is tended to, by yoga and japa.
On yoga as a practical way for tending to the atman, we find the sage
Yajnavalkya telling his wife Maitreyi,:
You
see, Maitreyi, it is one’s self (atman)
which one should see and hear, and on which one should reflect and concentrate.
For when one has seen and heard one’s self, when one has reflected and
concentrated on one’s self, one knows this whole world.[21]
In Patanjali’s Yoga
Sutra, we are told that the object of yoga practice is to get rid of the cover
that often keeps out the light of the soul from shining forth.
Thence,
the covering of the [inner] light disappears.[22]
Japa,
it
may be recalled is the practice of reciting/chanting/intoning an portion from
the Vedas (as small as the one word OM). The vedic verses, it may be recalled,
began their career as accompaniments to the fire rituals. But in the later
period, they become, as though, fuel for the fire of the self, aids in
meditation.
In Mahabarata’s Book of
Liberation, we find descriptions of yoga and
japa which the blend the two:
Sitting
on a heap of kusha grass, with kusha grass in his hands and topknot,
surrounded by kusha grass and with kusha grass around his loins, he ought
to pay homage to his sense faculties, but should not cherish them. Bringing
about a state of equanimity, he should hold the mind within itself. In his
thought he should meditate on the brahman
by quietly reciting the Vedas, which are suitable for this purpose… By
resorting to the power of the Vedas, he brings about a state of meditation….
One he ha[s] accomplished his practice through self-understanding, so becoming
peaceful and free from disease, he attains the self, which is immortal,
spotless and pure.[23]
***
The epic journey of the
Indian tradition from agni to atman is not without parallels. In a
paper on agni I can hardly keep myself from mentioning the most famous
Biblical/Quranic theophany. In his first direct encounter of the Prophet Moses
with God. God appears to him, interestingly, in the form of a fire. Moses is
drawn to it at first by the promise of warmth, protection and guidance – all in
a very physical. But when he draws closer to the fire, he finds he is up for
something much bigger:
Has
the story of Moses reached thee? Behold, he saw a fire: So he said to his
family, "Tarry ye; I perceive a fire; perhaps I can bring you some burning
brand therefrom, or find some guidance at the fire." But when he came to
the fire, a voice was heard: O Moses! "Verily I am thy Lord! therefore (in
My presence) put off thy shoes: thou art in the sacred valley Tuwa. I have
chosen thee: listen, then, to the inspiration (sent to thee).” (TaHa: 9 – 12)
Theophanies are
comparative rare in the Abrahamic scriptural tradition and become progressively
rare; this fire-theophany is perhaps the only one that finds explicit mention
in the Quran. This obviously makes one wonder about the significance of the
fire metaphor. Moses never saw God – as a fire or anything else – ever again.
But the voice that he had heard as he stood by the fire never departed. It
became the guiding light within him.
***
The Indo-Persian poetic
tradition is as littered by the image of the candle and the moth, as the vedic
tradition is by the image of the ritual fire and the priest tending ot. The
poets extols the moth who is drawn to the light of the candle, how it flies
round and round it until, in a moment of ultimate self-sacrifice it hurls
itself into the fire. It is cremated and at the same time liberated. The
metaphor of the moth and the candle was well suited to the bhakti tradition – and was avidly used by the poets of that
tradition. The devotee seeks the divine with the devotion of the moth
circumambulating the candle and fines union with the beloved only after
sacrificing the self. The metaphor of the candle and the moth also fit well
with the most ancient of all Arab religious rituals – the pilgrims’
circumambulation of the House of God in the Valley of Mecca.
But the Vedic discovery
of the fire within has been no less influential. Again and again, people have
stumbled upon the insight that what they were looking for out there is actually in
them. Let me conclude with a few lines from one of a poem that served as the
ultimate inspiration for this paper.
Shama kay dil key thandak ban ja
Noor-e –did-e-parvana ban ja
Seekh Zaheen kay dil say jalna
Kahay ko har shamma peh jalna
Apni Aag main khud jal jayay
Tu aisa parvana
ban ja.[24]
The relatively unknown
poet Zaheen begins evoking a long list of mystically charge and rich images. He
goes from less image like the wine and the bottle of wine, progress in each
line of the stanza. Ultimately, he invites the devotee to become the “coolness
of the candle’s core” or even “the light of the moth’s heart.” But when reaches
the peak, in the last couplet, the poem completely inverts the older
conceptions of the candle-and-moth metaphor. He shifts the focus completely
from the fire out there (the candle)to
the fire within. The moth is set free, even from the candle. He say:
Be the moth that is burnt to ashes
By a fire of his own, the fire within.
This then is the
seminal twist of the post-vedic tradition on vedic ritual – to tend to the fire
of the light within with the same devotion as the Brahmans once tended to the
ritual fires of the vedic world.
[1] Edgerton, Rig Veda, p. 52
[2] The use of the term “scripture”
for the Vedic corpus is not without its problems. The prototypical “scripture”
is the New Testament which was transmitted primarily in the written form. On
the other hand, the vedas were, and still remain texts whose primary mode of
transmission is oral. They are committed to memory and passed from generation
to generation like that. In that sense much like the Old Testament and the
Quran, which are also primarily orally transmitted. For more on the essential
orality/aurality of “scriptures”, see William A. Graham Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of
Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
[3] The Rig Veda is by no means
alone in its invocation of the fire god. The Isa Upanishad, considered a much later work by scholars, concludes
with the following prayer:
O Fire, you know all coverings;
O god, lead us to riches,
along an easy path.
[4] It helps, though, to ponder over
a twenty-first century analogues of fire: hydro-carbons and nuclear fuels.
These forms of fires remain central to life as we live it today, and play a
crucial role is in modern political, economic and ecological thought. The fear
of a disruption in the hydrocarbon supply chain animates us, no less than it
animated ancient fire-worshippers.
[5] For a remarkable exposition of
the existential need to bridge the heaven/earth gulf in modern time, see
Tolstoy, A Confession, tr. Patterson (1985), p.60: “What meaning is there which
is not destroyed by death? Union with the infinite God, heaven… provides us
with the possibility of living… it alone provides humanity with an answer to
the question of life, thus making it possible to live..”
[6] Olivelle, Upanishads,
Introduction, p. xlii
[7] Olivelle, Katha Upanishad 4.1,
p. 242
[8] The Upanishadic turn in Indian
philosophy has been likened to the Socratic turn in Greek philosophy. For more,
see …….
[9] Olivelle, Katha Upanishad
4.12-13, p. 240
[10] Olivelle, Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.3.2-7, p. 58-59
[11] MB 202.10-15, p. 261
[12] MB 203.5, p. 267
[13] MB 202.10-15, p. 261
[14] MB 203.5, p. 267
[15] Olivelle, Katha Upanishad 4.4,
p. p. 241
[16] Ibid, BHU 4.3.9, p. 59
[17] BHU, 4.4.22, p. 68; This
affirmation of the ultimate unknowability of atman is reminiscent of the Quranic refrain about the spirit: “And they inquire of you [O Mohammad] about
the Spirit? Tell them that the Spirit is amongst those matters ordained by my
Lord [of which] not much has been disclosed to men. (17:85) (I am using my own interpretive
translation because I did not find the prominent English translations of this
verse satisfactory.)
[18] Olivelle, Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.3.2-7, p. 58-5
[19] Olivelle, Katha Upanishad 4.1,
p. 242
[20] Miller, Bhagavad Gita, 6.19, p.
67
[21] BHU, 4.5.6, p. 70
[22] Feuerstein, Patanjali,
Yoga-Sutra, II. 52
[24] Abida Parveen’s beautiful
recitation of this poem can be found in her album Raqs-e-Bismil, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTvAS6oKo1U
