Lexicon of Rig Veda

Lexicon

of Rig Veda

Three concepts and three their images are closely related: Waters – Rivers – Oceans. Waters is an impersonal figure for Nature, Prakriti, objectifying double principle of Existence-Consciousness (sat-cit), therefore Waters contain in themselves all knowledge and force of Consciousness deathless infinite Existence and, life-giving, give this existence and consciousness to all that is from highest Sachchidananda to material universe.

Figure of the Rivers symbolizes movement, flowing, mode of action of consciousness-existence according to vrata-s, Laws, of all seven worlds: to physical world, to vital world, to mental, overmental, supramental, ananda and sat-cit-tapas. All seven Rivers flow through every region of existence (and we have 7x3 = 21 rivers) and inflow into the Ocean of this region, in lowest, in middle and in upper. The figure of the Ocean symbolizes not movement or mode of action of Consciousness-Being, but its endlessness, when its shores are only above and below on the borders between regions of existence. The word ap has two meanings, “water” and “work”, so Vedic waters are the active ones, sleepless constantly moving, 1.24.6, that flows by law of their nature, 1.33.11. The great Stream of mothers-waters, 1.158.5, begins its involutionary movement downwards “from their common nest”, begetting all words and maintaining their existence: for ever the rivers from one abode, not dried up, deathless keep laws of workings by forces. Many thousand mothers-sisters like wives serve to the non-timid, 1.62.10. Seven rivers-sisters carry seven combinations of principles of existence and of their qualities for every of seven worlds. Flowing through regions of three steps of Vishnu, the rivers like the worlds, also are gradated into “trice seven currents”, 10.75.1. In the worlds of the Heaven, of the third step of Vishnu, worlds of deathless eternal existence, the Waters carry immortality and curing, 1.23.19, 1.23.20. In Svar they carry supramental Knowledge: in these divine Waters our cows (supramental perceptions) drink, 1.23.18; the Waters that give hearing of the Truth, 3.1.11. But in the lowest step of Vishnu, in the worlds of Earth, four upper rivers of the honey Ocean, 1.62.6, are locked within the rock and must be released by supramental power of God.