In the Vedic characterisation of the universe we have an eloquent cosmogonic hymn describing the Horse Sacrifice, the ancient Ashwamedha. In it this entire creation is treated as the Primordial Horse born of the Upper Waters. Indeed, this Horse is a wonderful gift of Death himself. "You are Death, you are the Sun," apotheosises the Rishi. [1] In the movement of this Horse are present all the movements of this world and therefore are contained in Death all the metres or chhandas, the universal rhythms of the dynamic Truth. The physical body belongs to him and he was actually the first to find us the way. But he finds the way for those who deserve it to be found. The individual's tapasya is equally necessary for that to happen. While it is given, it has to be won also, a great occult process.
In recognition of the works of Yama, the Ordainer of the World of Mortality, in bestowing immortality to the followers of the benedictive path, the Angirasa Rishis, the first sacrificers in the knowledge of the Truth, raise a joyous chant of inspired and heroic praise to him. [2]
Honour the King with thine oblations, Yama, Vivasvan's Son, who gathers men together; Who travelled to the lofty heights above us, who searches out and shows the path to many.
Yama first found us a place to dwell in: this pasture can never be taken from us; Men born on earth tread their own paths that lead them whither our ancient Fathers have departed.
To Yama pour the Soma, bring to Yama consecrated gifts; to Yama sacrifice prepared and heralded by Agni goes.
Offer to Yama holy gifts enriched with butter, and draw near; So may he grant that we may live long days of life among the Gods.
Death is there right in the middle of life, Death is a constituent of life. Within Death there is immortality, antarām mŗtyor amŗtam; also on Death is founded immortality, mŗtyava amŗtam ahitam. Such is the glory of Death which should be the cause of all our jubilation. We are fulfilled by Death, the Ordainer of the mortal world. He is the one who makes us small, alpa, that smallness becoming smaller and smaller by the reverse process, as if growing into a Godly greatness in its vanishing cipher-hood.
That is why the Vedic funeral hymn also proves to be the hymn of benediction. But it is a hymn for the meritorious souls, for tapasvins who have observed severe and difficult austerities during the earthly sojourn. Therefore it also becomes a part of a dedicated life in the pursuit of heavenly immortality. The Rishi speaks of the body of Agni as made of gold, hiraņya tanu, and by performing sacrifices he too possesses it in its shining strength and beauty:
Free from evil is thy body; it is like pure clarified butter, it is pure gold; that in thee is golden in its shining, for such is thy self-law. [3]
Not only do the Gods have the privilege of such an immortality; it is also a privilege that can be won by us by performing Yajna, by carrying out the Sacrifice in the full dedication of life to the Truth, by living in the dynamism of active Reality. That indeed is the way by which death and life together bear the sacrificer; he after having discarded the body reaches the happy heavens of plenitude.
But when the Gods performed sacrifices and became immortal they also told Death that no one will become immortal with the body. Thus was the body apportioned to Death. Therefore the evilless and golden body of Agni, hiraņya tanu, has yet to appear in the mortal world, in this mŗtyuloka. But Agni, himself being the Lord of Substance and one who creates forms in his splendour, is ever at work for it. After all immortality has to be immortality in the physical; it has to be physical immortality, the caseless task of bringing out the golden body. That is why he is here, here on earth, known as the immortal in the mortal, the Eternal’s bit, amśa sanātanah. Immortality in heaven is a kind of static immortality which can become dynamic and progressive only in the terrestrial scheme.
It is said that Rishi Vamadeva lived for a hundred years in the spiritualised body and then had sixteen years of divine life. In the wake of Vamadeva’s intense Tapas Paritapa, or Illness, had approached him at the age of eighty; but the Rishi spoke to the spirit behind the infliction, telling him that it was not yet time for him to depart; he informed it of his decision, of living, for one hundred and sixteen years. Then Paritapa left the Rishi untouched. After completing his sixteen years of divine life, Vamadeva dropped his physical body and attained immortality in heaven. He acquired a shining body or divya tanu in the causal world. Earthly Yajna gave him a high celestial gain.
That such a possibility, of a golden body, was present in the Vedas is quite evident from the fact that the Rishis had discovered the foundational creative Reality present everywhere; they had the experience of it, and they were even familiar with its Truth-dynamism. They termed it mahas, the junction point of Earth and Heaven, dyāvā-pŗthvī. The Rishis characterised it as ŗta-cita, Truth-Consciousness having the properties of satyam, ŗtam, bŗhat, the Truth, the Right, the Vast. Not only that; they even spoke of sūrya-tvak, meaning the divinised or sun-brilliant skin. Time was not yet ripe for that to happen in this world.
Although the Vedic Rishis did envisage the divinised skin, they conceived it possible only down to the subtle physical, and not below, the gross. Rishi Agastya found that the gross material body is afflicted by the triple poison and finally gave up the attempt of transforming it. It is in the context of this difficulty that we see the uniqueness and greatness of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga. According to him the Supramental Being is necessarily the next rung in the evolutionary scale. Even the gross physical matter, which the Rishis called jada, will eventually be transformed into supramental stuff. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo's yog-tapasya was directed towards this. Not only that, that it was directed towards this; the result of his difficult yoga-tapasya was, the very cells of his body awoke to their divine reality.
In the Vedic language, it is only by knowing Him that one transcends death: tam eva viditvati mŗtyum eti. Our soul may know him, our spirit may know him and transcend the transience of this existence. But that will not be sufficient, leaving the rest of the creation dark and ignorant and subject to Death. In that eventuality one would wonder whether the physical body had been made with any purpose at all, except that of housing the soul and the spirit to discard it and get into the elsewhere of transcendence of which there was really no need for them? Will the body know him? Only when it shall, there will be the great success and the great triumph, mahad yaśah, the glory of immortality in the physical. Death in one form is the promoter of that intention in the creation, in another the antagonist, the denier, the stubborn and uncompromising obstacle standing across the path of the divine Event.
References
[1] Rig Veda, I.163.2-3
[2] Rig Veda, X.14. (
[3] Hymns to the Mystic Fire, SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 190