Yoga in The Vedas by Jeanine Miller

Theosophy in Australia
YOGA IN
THE VEDAS
Jeanine Miller, France
What do we mean by yoga? Yoga in the West
has been thought of only in terms of physical
yoga: the exercises, the postures and so forth. But
the yoga that one discovers in the Vedas has
nothing to do with this. The word means union.
Union with what? Union with our Higher Self, our
inner God or Divinity. Union implies harmony.
The first step is thus harmonisation of ourselves
physical, emotional and mental for we are very
complex beings. All these aspects have to be
harmonised before anything can be done to
bring ourselves into union with the highest, for
the highest abides in perfect harmony. The
process of harmonising ourselves, leading to its
culmination - union - is yoga.
THEVEDAS
The higher aspect of yoga can be traced to the
Vedas. Most swamis place under the umbrella of
the word Vedas all the holy scriptures of India,
but from the orthodox point of view this is
incorrect. The Vedas, strictly speaking, are four
collections of hymns which were composed a
few thousand years ago by the great seers whom
we call the rishis at a time when man* communed
with nature far more closely than he does now, at
a time when man received visions, when man
could hear in his own heart the very pulse of the
universe, when he entered into complete
absorption with the devas. These four collections
of hymns are the Rig Veda - the Veda of the
Divine Sound or Word, the YajurVeda - the Veda
of the sacrificial formulas, the Sama Veda the
Veda of song, and finally the Atharva Veda.
Atharvan was a great rishi, and the Atharva Veda,
named after him, is the Veda of prayer or the Veda
* The word 'man' is used broadly to mean both
man and woman.
of the people.
These four are the basic Vedas. To them in
time were appended the Upanishads which are
esoteric treatises dealing with some of the
mysteries of the Universe and of ourselves, and
often explaining verses from the Rig Veda, the
oldest of the four Vedas.
The word Veda comes from the root vid which
means to know. A second meaning of the word is
to find. The fundamental meaning of Veda is the
real or Wisdom knowledge, the Greek gnosis.
YOGA
In yoga certain disciplines are outlined, such as
the restraints, abstention from wrongdoing, and
the observances, these being steps towards the
harmonisation of the human being. Abstention
from harming, from falsehood, from robbing and
so forth are the commandments. In relation to
the observances, Patanjali puts it succinctly thus:
Purity, contentment, self-discipline, self-study
and surrender to the Lord; such being the requirements asked of the ancient candidates for yoga.
But what of Westerners? In general we fall very far
short of these disciplines. Self-discipline and selfstudy mean facing ourselves, finding out about
ourselves, working upon ourselves, discovering
and surrendering to the Divine Will. All this implies
a tremendous inner search and is contained in
the one little word tapas, which will be mentioned
further on, that inner discipline whereby the
control of the little self, of the emotions and the
mind can be achieved. Afterwards come concentration, meditation and samadhi. How can we
translate samadhi? We have not had such a
concept in the West, but the Christian mystics
speak of ecstasy, so sometimes we translate
samadhi as such although samadhi is not always
Theosophv in Australia
ecstasy, but something quite different, a gathering together of all the energies of our being in
one-pointedness, piercing through to the very
core of being. These, then, are the key concepts
of yoga.
YOGA AND THE RIG VEDA
These key concepts can easily be compared
with what transpires in the Rig Veda, the oldest of
the Vedas, little known even to the Hindus
because of its outdated language. The language
of mythology and poetry is understood with great
difficulty. Mythology is the repository of man's
cosmic sentiency, man's communion with the
Cosmos. The soul projects upon the screen of the
Cosmos in a dramatic story its own striving, its
own struggling for the light and its own finding,
expressed as the conflict between darkness and
light, between the Self and the not-self, between
right and wrong, between the gods and the
demons.
We find in the Rig Veda the great battle of
Indra, representing mind against the forces of
inertia and chaos symbolised by the dragon whose
very name means obstruction. The key to many
of the myths is hidden in The Secret Doctrine and
in Jungian psychology - the psychology of the
Soul, not the psychology without the Soul which
is accepted in the universities. Since the second
world war scholars have begun looking into the
Rig Veda with greater psychological understanding. A basic knowledge of yoga philosophy has
also helped. We now have, therefore, a better
appreciation of this ageless collection of hymns
to the devas which, in spite of being only hymns
of praise to the gods, reveals a tremendous
civilisation.
I mentioned the observances. These are purity,
contentment, self-discipline, self-study, and
surrender to the Lord. How do these compare
with what we find in the Rig Veda? We must
consider these ideas in the context of Rigvedic
civilisation.
SACRIFICE
In such context we note that, to the Vedic
mind, purification and sacrifice were the two
wings on which man grows to Self Realisation, to
heaven, to the conquest of the self symbolised as
the sun. The Vedic ritual of the sacrifice was
performed every day and epitomised the action
of give and take. / give to the fire the best in me,
and the best in the poet very often was the hymn
by means of which he expressed his vision, his
aspiration, his yearning. As a result he received
further inspiration. So there is the ingoing and the
outgoing pulsation of life, the offering and the
receiving. In participation through the ritual which
was a reflection of the Cosmic Order, individuals
learned to integrate themselves in the vast Order

and this could only be done through the inner
and outer purifying of the self and the coming
together in the sacrifice. We have lost the understanding of this concept of purification and
sacrifice. Sacrifice does mean fo make sacred. For
such a purpose purification is necessary. Here we
find the Rigvedic equivalent to the observances
of yoga. When it comes to surrender to the Lord
which implies devotion or bhakti, Western and
Indian scholars, influenced by the West, claim
that there cannot be any bhakti in the Rig Veda. I
claim, however, that the Rig Veda is full of hymns
which show bhakti. Here are some excerpts:
My songs-of-praise, high-aspiring, speed
forth as messengers to Indra....uttered by my
spirit to touch his heart. (Rgv X, 47.7)
May this song-of-praise be foremost in touching thy heart in blessedness. (Rgv I, 16.7)
One of the poets is in trouble, and has stopped
communing with his God, so he is asking:
What has become of our friendship of old
when we two kept unhindered company? O
Varuna, law-abiding, I went into thy mighty
mansion, thy thousand-gated home. (Rgv VII,
88.5)
With my own heart I commune with the question of how Varuna and I may be united. What
gift of mine will he accept unangered? When
may I calmly look and find him gracious?
(Rgv VII, 86.1)
We cannot but admit that this is complete
devotion.
TAPAS
One of the most important words which holds
the key to yoga is tapas. It comes from the root
tap which means fo burn. Tapas is that within us
which is burning us, inflaming us to realise our
inner fullness which is God. It means self discipline, self-oblivion, practising meditation and
contemplation. So tapas combines austerity,
purification, self-study, self-discipline and so on.
That the word is found in the Rig Veda again and
again proves that the practice of tapas and the
knowledge of its essential meaning goes back to
remote times. Indeed it was one of the secrets of
the rishis. It can be thought of as the flame
power of meditation. One of the Gods, Indra,
was declared to have conquered heaven through
his tapas. The fervour of his meditation was so
great that he was able to reach out even to the
supreme light. Indra represents the mind, and it
is so expressed in one of the Brahmanas. One
verse of the Rig Veda says that Re, the
meditating God, made heaven his special
conquest, and not only heaven but the nectar of
immortality which is hidden in the third heaven.
Herbert Whone writes:
When sound in the physical world is uttered,
there is interpenetration at all levels, causing
resonances to occur at the level of the body, at
the psychic level and at the deepest level of
creative intelligence - all within the framework
of ratio.... The ratio inherent in the sound man
finds himself able to utter is a reflection of the
ratio of the higher sound of cosmic intelligence.
Knowledge and use of this lesser ratio are for
man a gateway to his lost source.... (The Hidden
Face of Music)
Why in the heart? Because the heart means the

centre of the human being and contemplation in
the chakra of the heart awakens us to the understanding of the higher consciousness which, as
buddhi, radiates through the heart. The only way
we can understand this is by going into meditation, for nothing can explain it logically or rationally.
The Rig Veda itself tells us, for example, that
Varuna placed intelligence in the heart. Another
verse says:
This passage, unbeknown to its author, holds the

key to the understanding of the secret of Vedic
mantra, of light and sound being one, and of
their power of taking you right to the core of
yourself. Part of this secret is found in one
Sanskrit word (arc) which means both shining
and singing. So, one verse says:
Sing forth a hymn, lofty, profound, for divine
Varuna.
The light of consciousness has its root in the heart

and the heart is the gateway to the soul. From the
soul comes the light, through the heart, which
lightens our mind. Again and again the poet refers
to Agni as seated in a secret place, as bringing to
birth within the heart a thought as light. Again
thought, thinking, becomes light. This light which
is Agni enlightens our darkness, enlightens our
mind. Thought moving from the heart, fashioned
in praise, goes to Indra, the Lord.
My ears, my eyes speed after this light lodged

here within my heart. (Rgv VI, 9.6)
You can translate it as sing forth or shine forth. To

shine forth a hymn may sound poetic, but can the
logical mind fathom the meaning of this simple
phrase? Such simple but striking phrases abound
in the Vedas. They give pause for thought, for
deepening our approach towards the mysteries
of the psyche.
KNOWING THE DIVINE WITHIN

That there were stages for reaching out to the
light within is indicated by a few hints. For
example:
In the fourth degree of prayer the sage found
the sun till then immersed in gloom. (Rgv V,
40.6)
The mantra is not fashioned intellectually. It

emerges, is aroused, from the depths of the heart.
The following verse tells us:
Men find Agni (the fire, the flame, the
creative flame) hidden in the cave, when they
have sung their mantra which is fashioned in
their heart. (Rgv, 67.2)
St. Theresa also enumerates and explains the

degrees of prayer. These degrees, therefore, all
build up, leading to a supreme illumination or
epiphany when the rishi was visited by a divinity. In
the above verse the sun is the point of illumination. Two further instances could be cited:
Notice hidden in the cave. This archetypal

expression is found throughout the ages, in all the
traditions but especially in the Upanishads as
well as the Christian scriptures. Jesus was born in
the stable of the human body, in the cave of the
human heart. In the darkness of the cave, in the
womb of the mother, grows that seed which will
become divine, which, when born, becomes a
human being or a soul-infused person. In the
cave of the heart also wells forth that sound which
rings true, which is the very essence and epitome
of our inner being, which, as the mantra, can take
us back into our innermost centre. This is the
esoteric meaning of rig veda, the science of the
word or sound.
The lordly herdsman of the whole universe,

the enlightened one, has entered into me, the
simple.... (Rgv, 164.21)
/ have known this mighty celestial man,
refulgent as the sun beyond the darkness.
Only by knowing him does one overcome
death. No other way is there to go. (Yajur
Veda, 31.18)
Only by knowing the divine within us can we
overcome death! Obviously the death of the
physical body does not matter any more when
you have contacted the God within, the Divine
spark; in Christian terminology, the Christ within.
Thus:
Desireless, wise, immortal, self-existent,
contented with the essence, lacking nothing
is He. One fears not death who has known
him, the atman, serene, ageless, ever
youthful. (Atharv, X, 8.44)
THE HEART
So now we turn to the last of the great
expressions of yoga mentioned in the Vedas, and
that is: the heart. Patanjali says:
Awareness of the nature of consciousness is
gained by contemplation in the heart. (Yoga
Sutras III, 35)
The ultimate goal in yoga is union with the
10
Transcendent which is the Immanent; hence the
conquest of separation, of death. This some of
the rishis achieved. The above quotations are
among the most beautiful and revealing of the
world's religious traditions. The Vedic sages
looked upon the loftier light beyond the darkness and thus transformed, realised that from the
furthest star right to our innermost heart, burns
the same dynamic spark, the fire of creation and
regeneration, the spirit that makes everything
one, everything new. He who is in the fire and He
who is in the heart, and He who is yonder in the
sun, He is One, says the Maitri Upanishad. Then it
is that the sages realised that Deity is that whose
shadow is death, whose shadow is immortality.

(RgvX, 121.2)
This is indeed the flight from the alone to the
Alone.
REFERENCES:
Miller, J., The Vedas, Rider & Co., London,
1974.
Vedas, various editions.
Whone, Herbert, The Hidden Face of Music,
Gollancz, London, 1974.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, various editions.

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Theosophy in Australia

learned to integrate themselves in the vast Order

Why in the heart? Because the heart means the

This passage, unbeknown to its author, holds the

The light of consciousness has its root in the heart

My ears, my eyes speed after this light lodged

You can translate it as sing forth or shine forth. To

KNOWING THE DIVINE WITHIN

The mantra is not fashioned intellectually. It

St. Theresa also enumerates and explains the

Notice hidden in the cave. This archetypal

The lordly herdsman of the whole universe,

The ultimate goal in yoga is union with the

shadow is death, whose shadow is immortality.

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