The cosmic gods — Surya

Last week I spoke on Agni, the Fire-God. Today I would like to speak on Surya. Surya is one of the Vedic Gods. Surya is the sun, the solar deity. At the same time, he is the god of illumination and liberation. Surya wears a golden robe and his chariot is drawn either by one steed or by seven mares.

Surya, the Sun-God, is extremely important and significant in our spiritual life, although there are very few hymns to him. Only ten hymns are offered to the Sun-God, in comparison to more than two hundred and fifty hymns offered to Indra.

The sun is far, very far from our planet, the earth. When we observe the sun from here, we see a tiny disc, but we know how vast it really is. Similarly, the inner sun, the sun that we have deep within us, is far, very far from us. But when we approach our inner sun we are illumined, we are transformed, and we enter into the effulgence of transcendental Light.

The physical sun, the sun that we actually see, is the eye of the Gods Agni, Varuna, and Mitra. I shall not speak today on Varuna and Mitra except to say that the physical sun, the great star whom we call the sun is the physical embodiment of the spiritual light of Agni and the two other cosmic gods. Surya is the eye of the gods.

Dawn is the harbinger of Surya, the Sun-God. In Sanskrit the dawn is called Usha or Ahana. Usha is the goddess of dawn. She invokes the presence of the Sun-God and when Surya appears, he seems to be following her. The Sun-God has boundless divine love for the Goddess Usha and he wants to offer all his inner divinity to her. She receives it joyfully from him.

The sun is the creator and from the sun our creation came into existence. Unlike the outer sun, the inner sun moves; that is why the inner light moves and illumines. Again, the inner sun can remain silent. When the inner sun is silent, we are also silent. That is why in the Isha Upanishad, one of the most famous Upanishads, we have a description of something that moves and at the same time moves not:

Tad ejati tan naijati…

That moves and that moves not. That is far and that is near. That is within and that is without.

Each of us, each human being, has an inner sun. The physical sun we observe every day, but the inner sun, the sun of divinity that we have inside us, unfortunately we do not see, in most cases, even once during our lifetime. Again, if I say that each individual is blessed with only one inner sun, then I am mistaken. The spiritual seekers who are advanced in the field of spirituality have more than one spiritual sun. And the spiritual Master, in his highest transcendental Consciousness, is the possessor of the entire universe. He possesses the outer sun and countless inner suns.

I assure you, if you are on the path to spirituality, you are bound to see your inner sun. Some of you have already had a glimpse of it. Some of you have seen it for a fleeting second, but have not been able to realise it as the inner sun. A day will dawn when you will see your inner sun face to face, and as you grow in the spiritual life you are bound to develop more than one inner sun. Every day you will see your inner sun fully in all its transcendental glory. You will be inundated with celestial Light.

The Sun-God also is the God of Flight and he performs his task like a beautiful bird. Time and space are covered by the wings of the Sun-God. In the Rig Veda there is a significant hymn which runs thus: “The stars are acting like thieves. When they see the sun, they act like thieves; they run away, for they are afraid of the infinite effulgence of the sun.” There is another hymn, the invitation of the evening. Evening invites the sun to set, saying, “Brother, you have worked very hard during the whole day. Now you take rest.” In that way night commences, when evening makes a fervent request to the Sun-God to take rest.

The sun is the creator who has created something without beginning or end. A great Master once said, “If the beginning comes from anything, then it cannot be a beginning. Beginning cannot come from anything.” It is true. But in the spiritual life we know two significant words: Purusha and Prakriti. Prakriti and Purusha are always birthless and endless. In the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna makes it very clear that Prakriti and Purusha are both without beginning. Purusha the transcendental Being, the primordial Being and Prakriti the absolute Energy, created both the eternal and the temporal.

In the Rig Veda we learn that existence came from nonexistence. Now what does nonexistence mean? If we think that non-existence means nothing then we are mistaken. Nonexistence is something which we cannot see with our naked eye, something which is beyond our earthly ken. Non-existence is something which is right now beyond the capacity of our earthly eye. It is not something that never existed. When our third eye is at our constant command, we will see the nonexistence as something which has not yet taken proper form and substance in the outer world. When it takes proper shape and form it becomes possible and practicable for us to see it and use it in our day-to-day life.

We all want to bathe in the sea of sunlight. The outer sunlight will give us purification; the inner sunlight will give us illumination. When we want to bathe in the sea or the river, we need soap, towel and so forth. But when we have a sun bath, we don’t need either soap or water or towel. And when we have an inner sun bath, we need only one thing. The only thing we need to satisfy all our inner needs is our soul’s tearful gratitude. When we offer our soul’s tearful gratitude to the Supreme, or when we enter into our soul’s tearful gratitude, we can in no time bathe in the sea of inner light.

The sun that we see in the sky is always beautiful. The day dawns; we see beauty all around. We look at the sun and we get inspiration. God the Beauty, the Sun-God, comes to us in the form of inspiration. The poet is inspired to write soulful poems, the musician is inspired to compose most beautiful pieces. The men going to work in their different walks of life are getting abundant inspiration to fulfil their daily duties from the sun. Here the Sun-God comes to us as inspiration. We have to perform the tasks of the day. We have to fulfil our outer demands as well as our inner demands. The inner Sun comes to us with his fiery flames, giving us powerful, soulful, dynamic inner will which will hasten our inner evolution and outer manifestation.

The Sun-God comes to us as realisation in the evening. Evening comes, the sun sets, purity reigns supreme all around. Nature is strengthening, mother earth aspiring, all peace and love within and without. When realisation dawns, the roles of inspiration and aspiration end. With evening comes realisation, as the Sun-God offers us the consummation of his wealth.

In the Vedas there are thousands of mantras. Mantra means incantation. It is a Sanskrit word. A mantra can be a syllable, a word, a name or a sentence or two, and when we utter it soulfully we are transported into the seventh heaven of celestial delight. There are thousands of mantras, but there is one mantra that is known as the mother of all mantras and that mantra is the Gayatri mantra. This mantra we find in the three Vedas; the Rig Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda. Also this mantra is in one of our ragas — a most sublime raga called Gayatri. I am offering you this particular mantra right now. Why? There is a special reason. First I would like to chant it, then I will tell you its significance.

Aum bhur bhuvah svah
tat savitur varenyam
bhargo devasya dhimahi
dhiyo yo nah prachodayat

This is the Gayatri mantra. Many composers have set tune to it. Its meaning is: “We contemplate on the most brilliant light of the Creator-Deity, the Sun-God, for inner understanding, to illumine our intelligence, to stimulate our understanding, to transform our earthbound consciousness into the boundless light of the inner Sun, the Sun-God."

In India, in the small hours of the morning, the Brahmins and the seekers of the highest Truth, with folded hands, look up into the sky as the sun comes up over the horizon and offer this prayer to the Sun-God. They chant it most soulfully. They repeat this mantra hundreds of times for inner illumination. You can imagine how it looks when you walk along the Ganges and see the Indian Brahmins who are conversant with the Vedic lore and the seekers of the Infinite with folded hands, praying to the sun for inner illumination. By repeating this mantra, hundreds and hundreds of seekers have attained to spiritual perfection. This mantra is the mother of all mantras. If you can repeat it soulfully thousands of times at a stretch, you are bound to get at least an iota of inner illumination. But it has to be done most soulfully and not like a child learning something by rote.

The sun is the soul of the universe. The soul has neither birth nor death. This is what we know of the soul.

Na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin…

"The soul is never born and it never dies. It has no beginning, it has no end, no past, no present, no future."

This is the soul. Again, you know that I very often sing here:

Vāsāṁsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya…

"Fire cannot burn it, water cannot drench it, wind cannot dry it, weapons cannot cleave it…"

This is the soul.

The Sun-God gives us knowledge, wisdom. The Sun-God frees us from ignorance, teeming ignorance, impenetrable darkness. Therefore we have to invoke the Sun-God. Avidya means ignorance. Vidya means knowledge. Vidya and avidya go together.

What is ignorance? Let us take ignorance as a thorn. One thorn has entered into our foot. Now let us take another thorn, Knowledge, to remove the previous thorn. Once we have taken out the thorn, when both thorns are out, we do not need the thorn that has entered into our foot and we do not need the thorn that helped us to remove it. When we took out the first thorn with the help of the second thorn we can say that we entered into the realm of death and conquered it. We go beyond both Knowledge and ignorance and enter into the domain of wisdom’s ecstasy.

There are two types of knowledge; outer knowledge and inner knowledge. Outer knowledge can tell us about spiritual life, inner life. But this outer knowledge is not the same as inner knowledge. Outer knowledge tells us that there is God, that if we follow the spiritual life we will realise God and that if we meditate on God we will have peace, bliss, power, delight and so forth. This is outer knowledge. It cannot go further. But from the information that we have gathered together as outer knowledge, if we try to go deep within, when we enter into the inmost recesses of our heart, the inner knowledge dawns. When inner knowledge dawns, automatically, spontaneously we taste the divine nectar, Amrita and this divine nectar is immortality.

The sunlight and the Sun-God cannot be separated. As God the Creator and God the Creation cannot be separated, so the Sun-God and the sunlight cannot be separated. Thus in The Vedas it is said:

Surya jyotir jyotir surya…

"The Sun-God is light, light is the Sun-God…"

Surya here is not the Vedic God Surya; here Surya means the Supreme God. So the Sun-God and sunlight can never be separated. Similarly, our aspiration and our realisation cannot be separated. Today we are aspiring, tomorrow we shall be realised. When we are all realised we shall see that our aspiration and our realisation are absolutely inseparable.