(This article was first published in the June 2016 issue of 'The Call Beyond', monthly magazine of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, New Delhi.)
Saraswati is among the
few Vedic deities who are well-known even today. She is revered today as the
goddess of knowledge, art, and creativity. However, she symbolized something
more specific and profound in the Vedas. Sri Aurobindo reveals the original
meaning of Saraswati in his work The Secret of the Veda.
In the Vedas, many symbols were taken from the physical world to represent specific aspects of our mind and mental activities. Saraswati, which was also the name a river in the Vedic times, symbolized Inspiration. The word ‘saraswati’ means, “she of the stream, the flowing movement”[1] and is therefore a suitable name both for a river and for the inflow of inspiration. Let us understand her full significance.
In the Vedas, many symbols were taken from the physical world to represent specific aspects of our mind and mental activities. Saraswati, which was also the name a river in the Vedic times, symbolized Inspiration. The word ‘saraswati’ means, “she of the stream, the flowing movement”[1] and is therefore a suitable name both for a river and for the inflow of inspiration. Let us understand her full significance.
The Vedas were composed
when the Rishis received “an eternal truth and an impersonal knowledge...
that came vibrating out of the Infinite to the inner audience of the man who
had previously made himself fit for (it).”[2]
The Vedas are therefore called śruti, the heard. The words that the mind
of the Rishis heard, their speech merely repeated. Saraswati represents this
inflow from the plane of Truth-consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo explains, “She
(Saraswati) is the current which comes from the Truth-principle, from the Ritam
or Mahas and we actually find this principle spoken of in the Veda,—as the
Great Water, maho arṇas,—an expression which gives us at once the origin of the
later term, Mahas.”[3]
Maho arṇaḥ sarasvatī, pra cetayati
ketunā:
dhiyo viśvā vi rājati – R.V. I.3.12
“Saraswati by the perception awakens
in consciousness the great flood (the vast movement of the Ritam) and illumines
entirely all the thoughts.”
Ignorance is removed and
all thoughts are illumined, i.e. directed by Truth, by the inflow of
Inspiration, the gushing luminous stream descending from the
Truth-consciousness. Saraswati is therefore referred to in the Veda as the
secret self of Indra – the symbol for the Illumined Mind.
“Truth comes to us as
a light, a voice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a new discernment of
ourselves and all around us. Truth of thought creates truth of vision and truth
of vision forms in us truth of being, and out of truth of being (satyam) flows
naturally truth of emotion, will and action. This is indeed the central notion
of the Veda.”[4]
The Vedas describe this
phenomenon as the great flood which inundates the entire mental being with
luminous streams of thoughts and opens the passage to Bliss, Ananda or Mayas.
“It is by the dawning of
the true or infinite consciousness in man that he arrives out of this evil
dream of pain and suffering, this divided creation into the Bliss… For the
Vedic Rishi Truth is the passage and the antechamber, the Bliss of the divine
existence is the goal, or else Truth is the foundation, Bliss the supreme
result.”[5]
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