Yagyas – Awakening Impulses of Creative Intelligence

Yagyas – Awakening Impulses of Creative Intelligence

[00:45] Sanskrit – The Unambiguous Language

Jai Guru Deva. Thank you for listening to the Vedic Worldview, my podcast. I am Thom Knoles.

Let’s spend a few minutes looking at a word which has two different spellings and I’ve come down on the side of one spelling, Y-A-G-Y-A, yagya, yagya.

And sometimes you may see it, in case it’s confusing to you, it means the same thing, it might be spelled Y-A-J-Ñ-Y-A, yajñya, and the Ñ would have a tilde over it. I find that use of Roman characters, you know, Roman characters are, for those of you who don’t know, are the letters, the calligraphy, the letters that we use, in common English writing and in a large number of languages around the world, most of them European or offshoots of European, use Roman characters.

These are the characters that were created by the Romans for the spelling of Latin, but we continue to use them today, though Latin no longer is extant as a conversational language. So we use Roman characters, of which there are 26, to try to spell Sanskrit words, for which there are more than 50 calligraphy characters.

In Sanskrit, there’s never any question about how something is pronounced if you look at the calligraphy. Using Roman characters, especially the vowel sounds, there can be any number of ways of pronouncing a vowel sound.

And there are a lot of different ways of pronouncing consonants too. You look at the word receive and it has a C in the middle of it. It’s pronounced no differently to an S. But you look at the word cat, and the same C now sounds like a K. And for people who are first learning English, this kind of thing is very, very confusing. You look at the word tongue, t-o-n-g-u-e, and then you look at the word argue, a-r-g-u-e, and it’s not arg, and it’s not tungu, it’s tongue, and argue.

So you see English, it somewhat gives itself obstacles, because of its limited number of characters in the alphabet. So we have to figure out ways of getting Sanskrit words, squash them into Roman characters and spell them and I’m going to come down on the spelling of, what seems to me the most logical spelling, Y-A-G-Y-A, yagya.

[03:41] Awakening the Impulses of Creative Intelligence

So what is it, Thom? Yagya? Yagya is a way of awakening in our consciousness some fundamental elements or impulses of creative intelligence and giving them a very specific, if you like a gardening approach or gardening analogy, giving them some water.

If you go out into your veggie garden and you have a certain amount of water in your watering can, and out there in the field you’ve got some strawberries and you’ve got some lettuces and you’ve got some root vegetables and you’ve got some whatever else is growing up there, but you only have five minutes and you’ve only got a certain can of water.

Then you may need to choose which of those things in the garden you water, and by watering their roots, they’ll grow into maturity and yield something for you. In a yagya, we take a particular intention, so we have an intention, we know what it is we would like to experience, to a pundit.

Pandit may be spelled either P-A-N-D-I-T or P-U-N-D-I-T. I rather prefer the P-U-N-D-I-T spelling. Although there’s no official spelling of it, just as there’s no official spelling of yagya. Yagya and pundit.

A pundit is someone who has the capacity to make the sounds, under particular circumstances, make the sounds by voice, to voice the sounds. that are expressive of different impulses of creative intelligence embedded in the consciousness field. To bring into being very specific personified elements of creative intelligence to cause a favorable outcome in terms of having an intention served.

[05:59] Name and Form are Infinitely Correlated Indeed

You, the one who is the commissioner, the one who commissions, so you’re the commissioner of the yagya, have another role. You have to be para, P-A-R-A.

Para means the Knower who sits quietly in the Unified Field of consciousness, para means transcendental, sits in the Unified Field of consciousness and witnesses the sequential elaboration of sounds coming out of the mouth of the pundit.

Those sounds being Sanskritic sounds which enliven and awaken certain combinations of impulses of creative intelligence to bring about the intention of the commissioner, you, the Knower, the performer and the Knower.

The Knower is the one who is witnessing the yagya and the one who is doing the work, the pundit is the one who’s supposed to create the sounds with great accuracy. Vedic sounds are sounds which are voiced, that have to be voiced with perfection of accuracy because Nama rupa sahitam bhavati eva.

Nama, meaning the name or the word given to a particular desired form or phenomenon. Nama rupa. Rupa means form. Nama rupa sahitam bhavati eva. Infinitely correlated they are, indeed. Name and form are infinitely correlated.

[07:50] Serving the Intention of the Knower

From that deep, inner, quiet consciousness state where you are witnessing a sequential elaboration of sounds, if the sounds are made with accuracy, then the intention of the Knower is served by that sequential elaboration of sounds, that specific sequence. The way of pronouncing it, the voicing of it, the Sanskrit has to be done very accurately.

Otherwise you end up very accurately bringing into manifestation something that you don’t want. And why would you do that? Well, you wouldn’t. A slight variation of sound will bring into manifestation, something completely different.

Let me give you an example.

One of the elements of the subtle human physiology is a thing known as a chakra. Chakra. C-H-A-K-R-A. Chakra. Chakra means a circle. And there is a variety of chakras, energy centers, arrayed from the tailbone along the spine vertically up to the top of the head, six or seven of them, depending on which of the last two you count. And these chakras have to be enlivened and awakened and purified in order for “energy” to flow in an upward fashion to activate and fully awaken the mind and the brain. Chakras.

However, regularly I hear people use the word chakra as if it’s pronounced with an S-H. Shakra. Shakra. “Oh, Thom, I want to awaken my shakras. My shakras are in need of some juju. Can you please help me with my shakras?”

Shakra, in Sanskrit, would mean, forgive the graphic nature of this, semen that has no live sperms in it. Shukra is lively semen that is filled with those wee beasties, and shakra is impotent semen.

So when someone says to me, “I want to enliven my shakra,”to me it has a completely different meaning.

Chakra is spelled with a CH for a reason. Chakra. Chakra. So, yagya, yagya,yag-ya, yagya, yagya.

[10:38] Stirring the Depths of Consciousness

In yagya, the pundit knows how properly to voice and pronounce, with exquisite accuracy, the sounds that are needed to awaken in the consciousness field, all of those impulses of creative intelligence that will come into being and will interact materially and structurally to bring about the desired intention of the commissioner, you, the Knower.

And the thing that makes it work Is you being established in Being as an innocent witness of the yagya, an innocent witness of it. You bring para to it. You awaken the fundamental underlying Unified Field on which the waves play. The pundit stirs the waters, as it were, and makes the waves, but you create the depth, with your consciousness.

If you have oceanic depth and you stir, you get big waves. If you have a little shallow muddy puddle of consciousness and you make waves in that with a pundit, then you have splishy splashy muddy thin puddle water. But if you have an ocean and you do the same amount of stirring, you end up with large undulating powerful waves.

So, we need to have para and we need to have pundit. You are the para, and the pundit is the stirrer.

[12:27] Agni – The Sound Nature Makes When Intending Fire

Now, the pundit will also use other elements, besides merely voice, to accentuate the pronunciation and sequential elaboration of the sounds, notably agni. Agni, A-G-N-I, is the sound that Nature makes when intending fire.

You notice how I put that? The sound that Nature makes when intending fire. I could have just said, “Agni means fire.” It means the consciousness engendered by the phenomenology of fire. I could have just used the word means, but means is a reference to symbolic language.

Mesa means table in Spanish. Table means the same object in English. Neither the word table nor the word mesa has in it the sound characteristics which, if experienced at the quietest level of consciousness, will cause a table to come into the awareness of the listener. You won’t get a table by vibrating the sound mesa and you won’t get a table by vibrating the sound table if you are in your least-excited state.

Sanskrit is an onomatopoeic language and it will cause three dimensional manifestation in the awareness of the Knower. When the Sanskrit properly is intoned, with perfection, while you are in the least-excited state, what comes into being in your consciousness is the form, Nama rupa sahitam bhavati eva. Name and form are infinitely correlated indeed, if the conditions are right.

So, agni. Agni gives us the word in English, ignite. It came through Greek via Alexander, who went over to India and got a Sanskrit teacher, and igneous became the Greek word for fire. Then it got into Latin, the great imitators—the Romans, who were the great imitators of the Greeks. Excuse me Romans, but you were—who turned it into ignis and then it got into ignition of your car.

Ignis, ignition, agni, agni, Sanskrit for fire. As I’m fond of saying, English is largely Sanskrit spoken with a terrible accent. And so, my ignition is my agnition, agni.

[15:29] Bring Forth All the Gifts

And agni is there in a yagya. There’s usually a fire that is brought into being, not using matches or lighters, using friction and using mantras. Agnimile purohitam yagyasya devam rtvijam hotaram ratnadhatamam.

Agnimile, I adore you Agni, agnimile. Purohitam, I am the purohita, I am the one performing the yagya. Yagyasya devam rtvijam hotaram, I am now bringing into being through this yagya, all of those impulses of creative intelligence to serve the life supporting intentions that are awakened here.

Bring forth, please, all gifts. Ratnadhatamam. Bring forth all gifts.

Agnimile purohitam yagyasya devam rtvijam hotaram ratnadhatamam is repeated while making friction, causing a piece of wood to begin smoking and then to ignite. Ig-nite. Agni. And then fire comes into being and into the fire are placed all kinds of precious herbs.

Please forgive me Americans, I think the word is properly pronounced herbs, as, considered by about a billion people who are Commonwealth English speakers. For those of you who are desperately American, it is herbs [erbs]. All right, we’ll go with that for the moment.

Herbs [erbs] or herbs, for those of you who have a more eloquent ear, are those precious plants and plant substances, which when placed into agni create a delightful off-gassing of incense and fumes, all of which are very, very beneficial to the atmosphere and the breather of that. Purificatory and awakening and enlivening of the finest qualities in the human physiology.

And, during the ceremony of the careful sequential elaboration, enunciation of the Sanskritic sounds that embody the intention of the commissioner, you, the Knower,there’s also the use of ghee. Ghee is G-H-E-E. You can buy it at your local supermarket. Clarified butter. Clarified butter is used as the carrier of the herbs and herbal products that are incinerated in the agni during the expression of these sounds.

[18:22] Favorable Conditions in the Consciousness of the Knower

The idea of yagya is to help to create the favorable conditions in the consciousness of the Knower to be able to see and reach out to and make use of that that issues forth from the consciousness field as a result of the yagya.

You know, when you go to university or even high school, and you enter the art room, and, you know, you may sit down at the desk and say, “Well, I’m here, let’s make art.” And the art teacher is going to say, “Well, over there we have pots of paint, over there we have modeling clay, over there we have some soapstone, easy to sculpt. Over there we have some chisels. Here we have some paintbrushes, here we have some crayons, here we have a variety of media on which you can express yourself.”

But if you are so sleepy, you entered the art class after having not slept for five days, you might be sitting in your desk with your head down on the desk. Well, all the elements for creating the art have just been described to you and they’re all right there. How awake are you?

If you are awake then a starting point for the art is to get the tools for making the art into your hands and then you can start the process of doing your research, your experimentation, to see what it is that wants to come out of you.

[20:06] Increasing Capability

A yagya is very much like that. It doesn’t cause a thing to occur, it makes you capable of reaching out and taking into hand the laws of Nature that are provided by the yagya that will then allow you to sally forth into the world with greater interactive success, interacting with the demands of the world in a way that will bring you the greatest expressions of joy and happiness.

So you commission the yagya and we have access to one of the families of India who happened to be the chief masters of the process of yagya. And all one has to do if you wish to commission a yagya is to be in contact with my team and they can help you be in contact with a pundit in India who is a yagya performer and who can help you make the art that will come from you entering the art class, the Vedic art class, the yagya class, and give you access to all the tools of the laws of Nature that can help you change the circumstances that you would like to change to become the master of your environment.

Jai Guru Deva.