28. Agni

Agni is one of our cosmic gods. According to Hindu mythology, he is second only to Indra. Agni means fire. This refers to the aspiring flame that rises from our inmost being; again, Agni refers to the Fire-God himself. We are all aspirants. We are all seekers after the infinite Truth. It is we who have to embody Agni, the flame of aspiration, in the inmost recesses of our hearts.

The Vedic sages, who said they had seen Agni, saw a particular form of Agni according to their own spiritual growth. The rishis or seers saw many forms of the gods according to their own individual realisation. For example, when someone invoked the power aspect of Agni, then in the vital world he saw Agni with his tongue out and his hair a mass of flame. Another aspirant, invoking the benevolent aspect of the god would meet Agni as a benign, glowing deity, full of luminous, compassionate power. A third aspirant, after committing some serious moral blunder in the physical plane and thinking the god would be angry with him, would meet Agni’s destructive and angry form.

But the real Agni, the cosmic god in his highest consciousness and in his nitya rupa, his eternal form, will appear in front of a seeker in normal human form with two arms, two legs and so on. He looks very tall and very beautiful.

At the age of nineteen I first saw Agni during my highest state of meditation. Long before that, at the age of thirteen, I knew about my own realisation from past lives. But one day at the age of nineteen, while I was meditating very deeply, Agni Devata, the highest god, came and stood in front of me. I was deeply moved to see him thus, for the first time.

At the present time, of course, I don’t have to meditate deeply to be blessed by Agni. Now I am blessed by the Supreme. At any moment, I can approach the Supreme and I can also have a free access to all the cosmic gods and goddesses. They have the same free access to me.

At that time, Agni came and stood in front of me and he said to me in English, not in Bengali. Agni said to me, “Aspiration is realisation and realisation is aspiration.” This was the message he gave me. Then he asked me if I understood him. My immediate answer was, “Yes, I have understood you.” Then he said, “Then tell me what it means.” I replied, “Human aspiration embodies realisation. Realisation is something we discover; we do not invent it. So inside aspiration, realisation is there. When our aspiration is complete, we see that there realisation looms large. Realisation is not something totally different from aspiration. It is inside the abode of our aspiration. Again, it is realisation that tells us that we have to eternally aspire to reach the ever-transcending Beyond.”