The Divinity, Immanent and Transcendent

In the womb moves the lord of life. Ever unborn, He is born in many forms. In Him alone reside all existing things. I know the drawn-out thread in which all these creatures are strung. I know the thread's thread. I know the great Brahman.

The Supreme Being has innumerable heads, eyes and feet. He pervades the earth on all sides ad fills the ten directions. This Purusha is all that has been and that is to be. Lord of Immortality, He grows by mortal food. Such is His greatness, yet greater than this is Purusha. All creatures make the fourth of Him, the three-fourths make the immortality in heaven. I have known this great Being, effulgent like the sun beyond darkness. By knowing Him alone one transcends death. There is no other way to go.

Divinity in Man

Devas, we have surely established our brotherhood with harmony in the mother's womb. Listen, all you sons of immortality, you who inherit the celestial regions.

When the Devas fused the mortal man complete, They all entered into him. Therefore one who knows man regards him as Brahman's Self.

Jivatman and Paramatman

The Indwelling Spirit: Jivatman and Paramatman

Two beautiful-winged birds, knit together by love, friends, have found their abode in the same tree. One of them eats the sweet pippala fruit; the other, that does not eat, looks on. 

There is the lotus that is  nine-petalled body of man, enclosed within triple bands, in which dwells the Spirit with the Atman. Knowers of the Veda know that.

The Atman is desireless, firm, immortal, self-existent, contented with the essence, lacking nothing. One does not fear death who has known Him, the Atman, serene, ageless, youthful.

May all my limbs remain unimpaired and my soul unconquered.

There is the Light of Lights which is my inner being. The peerless spirit within living beings - the immortal light.

The ears open to hear, my eyes open to see. The Light that is hidden within my spirit shines beyond it. My mind roams with its thoughts in the distance. What shall I speak and what really shall I think?

Aspects of the Divine

The One Unmanifested, Attributeless One

There was neither existence nor non-existence then, neither air nor sky which is beyond it... There was neither death nor immortality, nor any sign of night or day. There breathed the One airless, by self-impulse. Apart from That was nothing whatsoever. 

Darkness was concealed in darkness there, and all this was indiscriminate chaos. Then the ONE which was covered by the void was manifested through the light of Tapas. 

The One is Lord all that moves and that is fixed, of what walks, what flies - the multiform creation. 

The loving sage beholds That Reality which lies hidden in mystery, where the universe finds one single home. In That all this unites, from That all this emerges. The all-pervading One is warp and woof in created things.

The ONE manifests as personal Deities

They speak of Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni. The One Reality the sages call by many names as Agni, Yama, Matarisva. Agni, verily, is That, Aditya is That, Vayu is That, Chandrama is That. The Light is That, Brahma is That, Apah are That, Prajapati is That.

Tell me of the Support of the Universe: who is that One Being... on whom Agni, Chandrama, Surya and Vata rest? In His body existed the thirty three devas by dividing themselves into its limbs. Those alone who knew Brahman knew the three and thirty devas.

The Sages

From 'Thus Spake The Vedas'

1. Sages unfold the divine secret.

O Lord of sacred knowledge! When the sages uttered the first and foremost speech, giving a name to the nameless, it was their best and purest, and revealed with love the Divine Secret that lay hidden in their hearts. The Deity makes the sacred text. With prayer we approach Him who finds the way for us. He reveals the hymn in the heart. Like rain from the cloud, this noble song of praise has been produced from my soul. It is not by our human nature that we know of Him.

2. Truthful spirit of the Sages

These sages, endowed with insight, move one, while their truthful spirit shines brightly. United in their praised-song and chants and in their lustre divinely elected and God-like, the seven sages, with their deep insight, took up the reins like one seated on a chariot. Sublime are the rishis. Our homage to them, to their eyes and the truth of their spirit. The rishis, the world builders, chanted their sacred words and the seven sages prayed in session with ritual and austerity.

3. How the Sages spread the sacred words?

Of you whose help comes quickly, I ask for the wealth of spirit through which we may spread forth amidst men like light. Lord of light! fill me with the sweetness of honey so that I may speak the glorious words to the masses of the people. The Lord of the Seven Communities and of the Eighth which comprises all mankind make the pathways pleasant for me, and may have a companion with whom there will be full concord, so that I may speak these blissful words to the masses of people - to the man of knowledge, the ruler, the laborer and the trader, to my own people and to the foreigner.

4. Books of Knowledge

From the universal sacrifice (at creation) were born all the Vedas. The Vedas are omniform (dealing in all aspects of life and reality). The knower of Vedas (who carries on the oral tradition) is the highest heaven in which the revealed words of the Vedas abide. Endow me with the lustre that is in the truth of the Vedas,