WRITTEN by London Swaminathan 

 

Date: 16 April 2018

 

Time uploaded in London –  15-51 (British Summer Time)

 

Post No. 4921

 

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GAYATRI Mantra/hymn is the most powerful mantra in the Rig Veda and it is found in other Vedas as well. It is a great wonder that mantra which reverberated on the banks of River Sarasvati and later Sindhu (Indus) and Ganges is still chanted by millions in India. While Brahmins only were chanting in those days and in recent years, great saints like Chinmayananda and Sathya Sai baba made it popular among other communities as well.

 

The meaning of the Mantra is

Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine vivifying Sun (light) and May He enlighten us.

There are lot of Mantras/hymns on Ushas (the dawn):

Immortal Ushas, please by praise

What mortal may enjoy they days!

Who, mighty one, can reach thy place!

Rig Veda 1-30-20

 

The parallelism of thought is very remarkable, between the general Vedic concept of Ushas with the lines of blind poet Milton.

 

Compare the following lines on Ushas (Dawn)

 

English poet, though blind, sings about light in the following lines:

 

“Hail, holy light, offspring of Heaven first born,

Or of the eternal, co-eternal beam

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,

And never but unapproached light

Dwelt from eternity, dwell thou in me,

Bright effluence of bright essence increate

Or hear’st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,

Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun

Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice

Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep

Won from the void and formless infinite.

Paradise Lost, Book 3

 

The Rig Veda says

Fair as a bride embellished by her mother thou showest forth thy form that all may see it

Blessed art thou, O dawn. Shine yet more widely. No other Dawns have reached what thou attainest.

 

Rich in cattle, horses, and all goodly treasurers, in constant operation with the sunbeams,

 

The Dawns depart and come again assuming their wonted forms that promise happy fortune.

Obedient to the reins of Law Eternal give us each thought that more and more shall bless us.

Sine thou on us today, Dawn, swift to listen. With us be riches and with chiefs who worship.

RV 1-123

 

Upanishads say,

To the illumined soul the Self is all. For Him, who sees everywhere oneness, how can there be delusion or grief?

–Isha Upanishad 7

The whole world is illumined by His ilight.

–Sveteshvatara Upanishad 6-14

 

Milton also said God is Light (see above)

 

–Subham–