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of the Upanishads that remain yet unintelligible or ill-understood as well as much of the origin of the Puranas. It is also easier to explain and justify rationally the whole ancient tradition of India and to affirm that the Vedanta, Puranas, Tantra, the philosophical schools and. the great Indian religions do go back in their source to the Vedic origins, and we can now confidently claim that the so-called incoherencies of the Vedic texts exists in appearance only because the real thread of the sense is to be found in an inner meaning, and that the hymns appear in the light of the real thread as organic wholes and expressions, which are just and precise.
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The contents of the Vedas may rightly be seen, not as speculations of intellectual thought, but as discoveries made by certain faculties, the operations of which can, it is claimed, perceive truths and realities directly, intimately and by identity. There are explicit references in the Veda to these faculties, which are given symbolic names, the meanings of which are no more difficult to determine. If we study the hymns addressed to Bharati or Mahati, to Ila, Saraswati, Sarma and Daksha, we can see1, that Bharati or Mahati is the faculty that. perceives luminous vastness, that Ila is the faculty of revelation, Saraswati is the faculty of inspiration, Sarmii is the faculty of intuition and Daksha is faculty of discrimination. They are, we might say, to use the expression of the Upanishads, the inner faculties that are the source of our outer faculties, the inner eye of the outer eye, the inner ear of the outer ear, chakshushah chakshuh, shrotrasya shrotram, manso manah, vācho vācham, prāṇasya prāṇah. And if we study the Vedic texts more closely, we shall find in them the secrets of the processes of the Vedic Yoga by means of which these faculties can be brought out of their latency, cultivated and perfected. And if we inquire as to what were the contents of the knowledge gained through the exercise of these faculties, we shall discern in the texts of the Veda, not indeed a systematic body of philosophy, but which can still be described as a doctrine of the mystics, a doctrine, the terms of which are complete, the structure of which is supple, and the thought of which is practical and experimental, vibrating with sure experience. 1. Vide in particular, Rigveda 1.13.19, 10.110, 1.8.8, 5.4.4, 1.3, 5.45, 1.104.5, 3.31.6, 4.16.8, 1.72, 1.62.
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