S1E1 The Ancient Vedic Matrix & the Sacrificial Context
In this episode, Matthew gives a historical timeline for the emergence of Vedas, defines the sacrificial triad that will become the throughline for future episodes in this series, and elucidates the nature of Vedic knowledge as being composed of rapture and truth. This foundational understanding of the central concerns of the Vedic world helps listeners understand modern yoga as an internalized and refined iteration of the Vedic sacrifice, still seeking knowledge and understanding of the existential problems inherent in human existence.
Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions below. Matt will be glad to answer you!
Edited Transcript
This discussion concerns some of the most ancient ideas from India that, right up until the present day, influence how we understand what yoga is, and how it is practiced. It's very important to know something of the origin and majesty of India’s ancient culture, which produced the sublime philosophy, art, music, etc., which has showered the world with wisdom and beauty, and fertilized the possibility of understanding and experiencing ourselves in profound ways.
We'll be beginning the discussion with the Vedas, specifically the Rig Veda. I think it's safe to say that for the majority of India, the Vedas are considered to be the orthodox source of knowledge and revelation. The Veda’s status as the fundamental revelation is emphasized by its method of transmission: it is said to be heard. The word in Sanskrit signifying this is Shruti. Most other texts are designated as Smriti, or those that are remembered, those that are in some sense, secondary to the initial revelation that established the philosophical and spiritual bedrock of the culture and land that is still called Bharat.
World Historical Context
Let’s look at rough dates for the composition of these texts, and put those in the broader context of world history in order to get a sense of how old they are, and also of what was going on in other places at the same time and immediately afterwards.
The world timeline places the Stone Age cultures as existing around 50,000 BCE. This period is dominated by tool making, but philosophy and art didn't figure prominently on the scene until around 8000 BCE, at which point we find the first rock art in Africa. Around 6500 BCE, agriculture began, and then around 3100 BCE, King Menes founded Memphis as the capital of Egypt. When we come to India, at about 3000 BCE pastoral nomadic societies emerge, and then around 2500, urban societies begin to spring up along the Indus river valley. Finally, between 1700 - 1500 BCE nomads in the Punjab are believed to have composed the Rig Veda, the first and most ancient of the Vedic corpus.
For a point of comparison, if the Vedas were composed between 1700 - 1500 BCE, Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, is thought to have been composed between 1450 and 1400 BCE. In 1240 Moses is said to have received the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai. Homer’s Iliad wasn’t written until 762 BCE. In China, somewhere between 479 and 551, Confucius is believed to have lived. In Greece, between 428 and 347 BCE Plato lived; and then finally, somewhere between 348 and 322, Aristotle lived.
Now if Aristotle is - loosely speaking - the founder of the Western mind, we can see that the Veda is well over 1000 years older than that. So we're dealing with some unbelievably ancient stuff here, and moreover, stuff that is very different from our modern mindset. Part of what we're trying to do in these initial podcasts is to help illuminate on the one hand how different we are from the Vedic culture, whose ideas and philosophies gave us yoga, but also at the same time - how similar we are: we're still looking for the same sort of answers; we're still suffering from the same sort of confusions.
Three Vedas
There are three primary Vedas. We can call them the big three: the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda and the Yajur Veda. How do they relate to one another? The Rig Veda is the fundamental material of the Vedic revelation: the Rig is what was seen by the seers, who are said to have then chanted it to us. They're called rishis, the ones who see. This initial revelation essentially dealt with questions like: how are we to live in this place? Who are the gods? How was the world made? What's my place here? What's our place here? How do we act, given these circumstances? These are big existential questions about where we belong, and what we're supposed to care about in human life.
The fundamental material in the Rig was used to create the other two Vedas, the Sama and the Yajur. Eventually the verses of the Rig were rearranged for chanting or singing, and this redaction then became the Sama Veda: Sama Veda means “knowledge of songs”. Some additional prose passages were added to comment on the fundamental revelation’s use in ritual, helping to clarify how the Rig Veda provides the material that defines the performance of ritual sacrifice. This expanded commentary eventually became the Yajur Veda: Yajur means “knowledge of sacrifice”. So if one were to summarize: the Rig Veda is the initial pot of gold - the initial revelation heard by the seers. It gets rearranged so that it can be sung, and then it gets elaborated on, so that the specifics of ritual sacrifice are defined and instantiated.
There is another important Veda called the Atharva Veda. Atharva means “knowledge of the fire priest”. This knowledge is concerned with worldly life. So, It deals with the practical things involved in living an average, everyday human life, and includes answers to questions like: “how do I take care of basic sickness?” “What about relations between people?” “What methods would I use to heal?” There are spells in the Atharva, and the use of charms, to address these problems, and there is also a fairly extensive herbal pharmacopoeia of healing remedies. Consequently, the Atharva Veda is important to the practice of Ayurveda, which references the Atharva as one of the main sources for its knowledge and methods. The word “Veda” is in Ayurveda, and that word means knowledge, and Ayur sort of means life, and so Ayurveda means “knowledge of life”.
Knowledge & Soma
Given that the word Veda means knowledge, we're going to try and drill down into that to get a sense of what the Vedic vision of the world really was like for these people, insofar as we can. Broadly speaking, then, what is Vedic knowledge? In order to answer this question, we have to talk about something called Soma, or the elixir of immortality. Now, one could make the bold statement that the central focus of the Vedas is Soma. Now, as bold a statement as that obviously is - there is truth behind it.
The soma is part of the Vedic sacrificial triad. Soma is a liquid. It is “pressed” from a particular plant, and this plant has not been identified with any certainty, although there have been many attempts to try and find it. Many have tried to associate it with the amanita muscaria mushroom, which induces visionary experiences when consumed. This visionary connection is important, because soma is a liquid that produces ecstatic states when drunk. Many translators refer to these states generally as Rapture.
Soma is also called the “vigor of the gods”. This means that the divine ones receive strength from this mysterious, liquid, elixir. Also, because humans need to make the sacrifice, they need Soma. Likewise, because the gods must also make sacrifices, they need the Soma. So everyone's eyes are focused on this particular object. Because sacrifice is the key to all things in the Vedic universe, all the action in the Veda can, in some way, be traced to the desire that both the gods and humans feel for Soma.
From this basic perusal, we see that soma engenders several important images: Ardor, rapture, vigor, rejuvenation - the sense of being really alive. But there's more: Soma not only induced a particular ecstatic kind of intoxication, it also encouraged truth. Here's a hymn from the Rig Veda that comments on this relation between soma and truth: “for the one who knows, this is easy to recognize; true and false words clash; of these two, the true, the just, is what Soma protects and he fights untruth.” (Rig 7.104) We're close now to having an initial insight about what Vedic knowledge most essentially is: it's this double gift - the one two punch of rapture, or ecstatic experience, and the true word. Roberto Calasso - a great translator - and one of the main scholars who figures heavily in our study, says that these two things, rapture and knowledge, distinguish Vedic knowledge from modern forms of knowledge. This further sheds light on the importance of the Vedic sacrifice: knowledge is ultimately revealed, via the divine, so we should remember that the divine will notice us if we offer it Rapture.
Now, because Soma is very complex - it's the vigor of the gods; it rejuvenates; it protects truth, and is therefore tied to the true word; and ultimately, because of its rapturous effects - it is extremely powerful. Approaching always involves as much awe and respect as we can muster. Without a proper approach, the fullness of Vedic knowledge will not manifest: in which case partial knowledge consisting of only one of these attributes - vigor, or rapture, or even truth - will emerge, and partial knowledge means the sacrifice may be performed incorrectly, and if this is the case, everything is at risk.
There’s a story that shows what it means to disrespect Soma, or to approach it without awe and respect. The first one to do this is Indra, one of the original gods, a very mischievous, very interesting, very important figure in the pantheon of gods that emerge in the initial revelation. Robert colosso recounts the myth of Indra abusing the soma:
Indra, eager, impatient, headstrong, he snatched the liquid from Tvastr and drank it without ritual, without mixing it, without filtering it. His body fell apart on all sides. The intoxicating liquid came out of every orifice. Then Indra vomited. He no longer knew what to do, so he turned to Prajapatti. Indra lay on the ground devastated. The gods gathered around him and said, in truth, he was the best of us. Evil has befallen Him. We must heal him.
In this beautiful image we see the devastating, fateful consequences for a God who, in haste, drank the soma “without ritual”. What does it mean to drink it without ritual? It means to drink it outside of the sacrificial context, and that in specific means to drink it without a certain gesture: outwardly without a certain posture, and inwardly, without a certain attitude, namely reverence. It also means to drink it without mixing it, or drinking it in its raw, unrefined state: the Soma needs to be worked on - prepared - in order for it to be fit for the sacrifice, and part of this means it cannot be drunk/offered without filtering it. All of this points to the fact that manifest reality needs to be filtered, or purified if any part of it is to be offered as a sacrifice.
Because this process of preparation, which is synonymous with reverence and respect, did not happen, “Indra’s body fell apart on all sides”; the liquid leaked out; it began to run everywhere, and then he vomited. So the raw, unrefined truth of rapture is too powerful: it will tear us apart. It's not useful in our context, and we know this because, as the gods say: in truth, he was the best of us, but evil has befallen him, and now he needs to be healed.
In order to generate healing, the gods perform something called the sautramani rite, which heals Indra’s illness, and by extension his crime of irreverence. From this time onward, all who drank Soma feared its dangers, and there are specific prayers in the Rig Veda that demonstrate the level of awe and respect that we must demonstrate as we begin to approach the soma: “like the harness of a chariot, thus keep my limbs together”; and, “let these juices protect me from breaking a leg and preserve me from paralysis.” So we're hoping that when we receive rapture, our limbs will stay together, unlike Indra’s. We’re hoping to retain our integrity somehow. We are asking to be protected from the ill effects of a certain divine drunkenness: we might break a leg in the ceremony because of the power inherent in our state, because the rapture is so deep that we might become paralyzed.
So the correct way to approach the Soma begins with a desire for rapture and truth, and this desire is then tempered by the gesture of awe and respect. The sacrifice is a request that rapture come to us, but in a way that it can be applied with the precision of a surgeon: so that it reveals, rejuvenates, invigorates, and goes specifically to what is needed, illuminating what is most helpful, rather than blowing us apart causing paralysis.
Sacrificial Structure
As we've mentioned, the word Veda means knowledge. We now know that this knowledge is rapturous and truthful, and we know that it will be vivifying - life giving. All of this is entailed in knowledge of the sacrifice, or knowledge of how the cosmos works. Inside the sacrificial ritual there is a structure that's important to understand. What is the structure of the Vedic sacrifice?
Broadly speaking there are two primary parts: one is the higher and the other the lower. The higher is the macrocosm, or the realm of the Divine; the lower is the microcosm, or the realm of manifest reality, which includes the human realm. In the strict Vedic context, there's nothing that guarantees that these two realms will be connected in the proper way. Though they are mirrors of one another - very much like two mirrors facing one another - they need a mediating term to facilitate a coherent flow of information between them. In another way, in order for the human to receive information from the Divine, and in order for the human to respond - to send information or nourishment back to the divine - there needs to be a mediating term, and this is the function of the sacrifice. So in the end, the Vedic sacrificial structure is triadic: macrocosm, microcosm, and a sacrifice in between, which scholars like Mircea Eliade called the mesocosm, or the middle realm.
The scholar David Gordon White says this of the triadic sacrificial structure and its importance: “the Vedic triad of human, sacrifice, and divine has come to be applied to a myriad of domains across a wide array of religions, philosophies and scientific disciplines, including those of yoga and alchemy.” So it's very important to understand that this ternary structure is a dynamic entity that goes forward in history and becomes appropriated in different systems, such as the Upanishads, and later, the Bhagavad Gita, Hatha yoga, Tantra, alchemy, and Ayurveda to name a few. As the podcast unfolds, we'll need to keep in mind that this three part, ancient key to understanding the Vedic cosmos, goes forward in history into different contexts and is subtly transformed in its meaning and function, without ever losing its original essence.
What is this essence? David Gordon White says: “throughout the history of Indian thought, no set of concrete elements has been as pervasive as the sacrificial triad of fluid, fire, and air, or rasa, agni and vayu.” Fluid (rasa), fire (agni), and air (vayu) are then another way of seeing the mediated relation between the divine and the human. The fluid in this case would be the soma, the vivifying, intoxicating, truth protecting element; the fire, of course, is that which transforms; and the air is the fire’s breath. In another way: fluid is the microcosmic-human which feeds the fire from below; fire is the mediating/transformative principle; and air is the macrocosmic-divine which feeds the fire from above.
This is a simple yet provocative image, and it's important to understand because it is a specific example of the ancient law that the microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm. This means the triad is an image of the most essential components of our lives, and the right relation (yoga) they must embody in order for them to thrive according to divine law (dharma). For example, fire needs to eat. It can't just live on air; it needs food to cling to so the flames stay grounded. But fire also needs air: if you want to kill a fire, the fastest way to do it is to cut off its air supply, in which case it loses its motive force.
This should sound familiar, especially because fire’s transformative action can easily be described as eating and breathing. This makes the human being look quite a bit like the sacrificial fire: humans must maintain homeostasis, so we carry a fire, and therefore a hunger that has to be satisfied as long as we're alive. As carriers of this fire, we are always already a part of the sacrificial reality that is revered in the Vedas. Because we have to eat, we require something like Soma; but also like a regular fire, we have to breathe: if our air supply is cut off life is over very quickly. Now we see that the essence of the Vedic sacrificial dynamic is also the essence of what it means to be human, and that our very existence is a partaking in the sacrificial reality.
So this triad of fluid, fire, and wind has taken on many forms, depending on its field of application. Let me briefly mention what some of these other forms are to generate a sense of the work the images have performed throughout the millennia : moon, sun, and wind. The moon is the correlate of Soma; the Sun is the correlate of the fire; and the wind is the correlate of the air. In the context of Tantra and alchemy, there are two triads that are really important: one is that of semen (reproductive tissue), blood, and breath. In this case, the reproductive tissue is a homolog of soma, the blood of fire, and breath is the homolog of wind. In Hindu alchemy we find the triad of mercury, sulfur, and air, and those basically retain the same values. And finally, in Ayurveda, we see the doshic triad of kapha (earth and water), pitta (fire and water), and vata (air and ether). All of this must be kept in mind as we move forward, because we're going to continue to see these elements again and again.
How does it work?
How exactly does the sacrifice work? To answer we have to look at the relationship between the elements of another important triad: individual, invisible, and visible. The invisible is analogous to the divine realm; the visible is analogous to the human realm; and, the sacrifice again mediates between the two as the individual. So in this sacred hierarchy, the invisible governs the visible.This means the visible emerges from/is created by the invisible. In turn, the visible provides nourishment for the invisible. This is another way of saying that the visible is absorbed into the invisible. This means that all action, all thought, all gesture, has the potential to feed the divine realm and facilitate absorption - through the human - back into that higher level.
However, it's crucial to understand that all these things - action, feeling, thought, spoken word - can only be successfully reabsorbed into the divine if the individual offers them in the sacrificial context. David Gordon white gives us an image to help us understand: “a pot broken in this world, that is in the sacrificial context, becomes a whole pot in the world of the gods.” So if broken in the sacrificial context, the pot will be reconstituted in the divine realm: it will be born again at a higher level. This is what the Vedic people were hoping for when they engaged in the sacrifices. They were taking positive action on their own behalf, hoping that they could accrue a store of good karma so that their birth would be better in the next life. Importantly, the individual is the mediating element through which food, action, feeling, thought, and spoken word are transformed and absorbed into the invisible realm, finally nourishing the gods.
So things that dissolve in this mundane reality are reabsorbed and reconstituted - ie born again - at a higher level, if that dissolution takes place in the sacrificial context. If not: all action, all gesture, all thought, all spoken words have no ultimate meaning. This is actually a fairly weighty proposition. I remember the first time I read that those humans who do not partake in the sacrifice do not actually exist: they're not real. They're not what they're supposed to be, because everything they do is outside of this knowledge that the sacrifice facilitates: they do not act, eat, feel, think and speak according to the divine law (dharma), so they do not actually exist.
This is a devastating vision of the consequences of ignorance, and it generates a tremendous feeling of weight and responsibility to know that I can be reconstituted; I can take positive action on my own behalf, but it's going to have to be in a very specific scenario, a very careful, surgically precise, scenario composed of the humble, respectful desire for rapture and truth.
When we can, we like to finish with a story, and in this case we have a story about the seriousness of the sacrificial context and the transformative power of the knowledge that it brings. This is a very interesting story about a young boy who has to learn a very difficult lesson. It's the story of Brgu, who is the son of Varuna, one of the supreme gods:
Consumed by the arrogance of knowledge, the young son of the supreme god Varuna, was sent off by his father into the world to see what knowledge alone could not reveal, to find out how the world itself is made. Without this, all knowledge is pointless. In the east, Brgu came across men who were slaughtering other men. Brgu asked, “why?”; they answered: because these men did the same to us in the other world. He saw the same strange scene in the South. In the West, there were men eating other men and sitting about calmly. In the North as well, amid piercing cries, there were men eating other men. When he returned to his father, Brgu was speechless. He was wide eyed. Varuna looked at him with satisfaction, thinking: “he has seen”. The moment had come to explain what his son had seen. He said, the men in the east are trees. Those in the south are flocks of animals. Those in the West are wild plants. Last those in the north who cried out while they ate other men were the waters.
What exactly had Brgu seen? The world is made up of two brothers, Agni and Soma, brought up as two asuras, or demons in Vrta’s belly; they abandoned him to follow the call of another brother Indra, and to pass over to the side of the devas, or the divine ones. Agni became the devourer and soma the food. Down here, there is nothing else than devourer and devoured.
The Vedic imaginary really comes alive here. The most basic insight is that all action, and therefore all existence, proceeds from the event of eating, or the interaction between angina and soma. This interaction is the fundamental act of consuming something, making it disappear, integrating it somehow at a higher level, and being invigorated as a result. All the things in this world are traced to this fundamental fact, which itself is a form of violence. This is a strong statement: to clarify, to exist means engaging in a certain form of violence, if indeed one wants to continue - if life wants to continue. There's no way out, because if you don't want to continue - if you don’t want to participate in the sacrifice - then you yourself will be erased, and that's also an act of violence. Sacrifice is thus needed as a fundamental principle in order to make sense of everything. It is knowledge of how the world is made.
It's interesting that the Brgu initially sees the beings residing in all the directions as people like him: they're called “men”. But then, after he has seen and becomes wide eyed, or awakened, his father explains the reality of where he lives, and a paradox is instantiated: on one hand, the beings in the directions become distinguished from him in their form: they show as trees, waters, plants etc. Yet on the other hand, they remain forever like him as they, too, are abound by the sacrificial law of violent, ritual consumption: everything is eating everything else; everything is disappearing and being reconstituted at a higher level; the visible is being absorbed into the invisible.
All of this is ultimately reduced to two enduring images: Agni and soma, or fire and food. They are brothers because each is an inherent and necessary part of sacrificial life - nothing exists or continues without them. This then is the essence of the knowledge that the Vedas reveal: because there's a fire, it's going to have to be fed. So we must express the gesture of awe and respect, and engage in the Ardor of sacrificial existence, for which the preferred food is that which produces truth and ecstasy.
Summary
We positioned the Veda historically between 1700 - 1500 BCE. We focused a little bit on the Rig Veda, and noted that it is the original material of the revelation, out of which the other two Vedas are fashioned: the Rig is rearranged, and some things are added to it, and that forms the Yajur and Sama Vedas, with the Atharva Veda eventually emerging later, which concerns practical everyday living and healing.
Soma is the centerpiece of the sacrificial ritual, and the macro - micro cosmic relationship is mediated by sacrifice. Soma is necessary for the sacrifice. You also must have fire, and the fire has to breathe. If things are offered in the sacrificial context, with a certain inner and outer gesture, their dissolution here in the lower world is reintegrated in the upper world. But if things are offered outside of the sacred context, if they're not offered, if they just happen in a sense, then those things dissolved here go the way of entropy - to borrow a modern metaphor. That means they just come apart, and they stay apart, and become dispersed evenly throughout all of space and time, somewhat like Indra’s limbs. But if offered in the sacrificial context they remain constituted as the individual thing they are, but now at a higher level.
We saw that all existence follows from eating, and that nourishment is a form of violence in which everyone takes part, simply because they exist.
All of this is important for understanding modern yoga, and I'm going to say just a few things about that without going too deeply, so that you come to all of the podcasts to hear the details. Modern Yoga is itself an iteration of the Vedic sacrifice. For instance, it is seeking the kind of knowledge that the Vedic people were seeking in its engagement with ideas like Samadhi, or absorption - something similar to the rapture and ecstasy produced when the Soma is imbibed in the sacrificial context. Samadhi, and hence modern yoga, is also inherently tied to ideas like satya (truth) clarity and discrimination (viveka), and prajna (truth bearing insight). So we can say that modern yoga is an evolved form of this Vedic sacrifice, one that has been internalized and refined, but one that is still oriented by rapture and truth. In some sense, it's also a ritual of tending fire, which we now call tapas. We still have to feed that fire, and now we feed it our own ignorance. We feed it what the yoga sutra calls klesha, or our afflictions. This process is most essentially guided by pranayama, so the breath is still the thing that makes the fire alive, allowing it to continue to eat, grow, and perform its transformative work. Keep listening and these connections will become clearer.
God bless all of you.
