The Rishis

The rishis were spiritual giants who strode across the Indo-Gangetic plain long before the dawn of historic times. They were the sublime expressions of the perfect human being. They were the crown and cream of nature’s evolutionary cycle. Modern man has only recently begun to envisage the possibility that such specimens of humanity can exist. No one knows how old they were. They were truly ancient. Even though they lived thousands of years ago, the rishis had reached the pinnacle of human evolution. They can be described as perfect human beings. They co-existed in perfect attunement with the whole of nature. They were modest, humble, and never harmed anyone or anything.

These men were really supra-human, superior even to the gods. They were multi-sensory beings who had the gift of inner vision and were able to see past, present and future as one huge canvas unrolling before their inner vision. They could travel backwards and forwards in Time. They could describe events that took place in the realm of the gods and titans as well as events which were to take place in the unimaginable future.

They are the ones who gave us our heritage, our culture and our way of life. They are really spiritual scientists who discovered a colossal amount of knowledge about the cosmos and nature without the use of modern equipment. They are indeed the first scientists, physicists, botanists, physicians, surgeons, engineers, architects, sculptors, artists, preceptors and spiritual guides. They were great astronomers and astrologers. Their knowledge is not just theoretical but could be applied to every aspect of human life. The knowledge they accumulated came to be known as the spiritual science called The Sanatana Dharma. They ensured the constant renewal of Bharat’s spiritual tradition and culture by taking birth again and again in every age. They had command over the science of linguistics and gave us the sublime language known as Sanskrit.

The question is, “How did they manage to do this?” They were actually scientists of a very high order. Like all scientists, they wanted to find out about this world and the universe. The western scientists kept dissecting and examining the outside world in order to find out about nature. Before exploring the external world consisting of multifarious objects, the rishis asked themselves the question, “Who is the “I” who wants to know these things? If I don’t know myself, how will I ever be able to know the world outside?”

They realised that Nature itself was only a backdrop for the mind. Everything that happens, happens within the mind. However, they knew that everything, including this limited mind, had emerged from some super mind – the Supreme Consciousness. So, they set about to try and discover that Supreme Consciousness.

The method they used is known as tapasya or “intense austerity”. The word rishi implies a friction that unleashes heat. Tapas acts on the immobile mind and produces both light and heat. Shut up in the cages of their minds, the sages vibrated with the heat of tapasya. Everything in the external world can be made manifest through tapas. So, this was their main activity. When the mind concentrates intensely on a thing, a perfectly formed image will emerge. This is how they were able to discover so much about the external world.

Their knowledge of astronomy, cosmology, mathematics et cetera was phenomenal. They knew that the world was round and that it went round the sun. They knew everything about the planets and the earth, thousands of years before the western scientists. They did this without the use of any external instruments! How were they able to do this? They used the laboratory of their minds. They realised that the supreme consciousness that impregnated the cosmos was also inside themselves. So, by tapas and intense meditation, they could find out everything about the outside from the inside without moving from their huts and caves in the Himalayas where they lived! This knowledge of theirs is to be found in the Vedas which are a veritable storehouse of all wisdom.

 We consider the world to be solid and real but to the rishis, this was not so. The world's existence is sometimes manifest and sometimes submerged in pralaya or “dissolution”. It is ever being composed, decomposed and re-composed. The only reality that the world can claim to have, is some type of continuity in eternity. But the rishis were above this world play. They realised that the universe itself is only a derivative of the mind. That is why they called it maya. Maya can be called an art or an artefact or something that is an appearance and has been produced at some point in space and time. Maya is the display of forms. It can also be called an illusion, trick or jugglery.  It was only in the twentieth century that the Newtonian fiction of solid matter was blasted by the discoveries of quantum physics, “Matter is only energy in motion”!  The modern world is slowly coming to recognise this fact but this was already known to the rishis from pre-historic times.

Creation itself is only an idea or thought in the mind of the Creator. This being the case, creation is not a blind mechanical force as Darwin suggested and “survival of the fittest” is not the only factor that prompts evolution. He forgot that the continuity of life could be had only if the mother sustains the infant in its helpless state and this factor, which sustains the child, is "love". Had the value of cooperation and love not been expressed in life, there would have been no evolution and no life. So, contrary to Darwinian thought, there is a survival of the helpless aided by love, which is more basic than the survival of the fittest. The minds of the rishis were in dramatic opposition to the mechanistic Darwinian mind. They cultivated the sensitive parts of their brain so that they could penetrate the esoteric secrets of life. Unfortunately, there is an atrophy of these parts of the brain in the modern age, which is what is encouraging the young to senseless destruction and violence leading to chaos and perhaps total annihilation.

As has been said before, tapas was the method the rishis chose to activate this part of the brain. They focused the mind intently on an object or objective, disregarding physical comfort, heedless of hunger and thirst, sleep and rest. This can only be done if one has great humility and total surrender to a supreme force. Using this method, they found that Nature herself willingly revealed her secrets to them. Whatever they wanted to know was placed before the screen of their perfected and polished minds. From their explorations into the truth of the universe they realised that everything stemmed from one single truth – Supreme Consciousness. This was the thought that obsessed the minds of the sages – that they were “conscious” beings.

Consciousness precedes and pervades everything. Consciousness is that unique manifestation which needs nothing but itself. To become conscious of Consciousness is to become Brahman. The sages were the first to penetrate this Absolute Consciousness and to become "That". This truth they called the Brahman. It is formless, qualityless and beyond time and space. In order to make the mind have some idea of such a thing, they said that IT was sat-chit-ananda or “existence-consciousness-bliss”. The Brahman alone exists. In fact, IT is the only Reality since IT is the only thing which is imperishable, changeless, steadfast and eternal, beyond time, space and causality. Everything else is transitory, ephemeral and elusive and therefore “unreal”. By this classification, the world is unreal, since it is transitory. This is why they said the world is maya. Since the Brahman is all-pervasive, it is to be found in the human being also. In fact, they realised that this was the “I” that they had been searching for. This “I” was nothing but the Brahman and this “I” which we all possess; they called the atman. This atman is nothing but the Brahman! This alone remains when the body dies. It is immortal and eternal and beyond space and time. This is a truth which all human beings are capable of discovering for themselves.

The ego identifies with the impermanent body and wavering mind and insists that it is Supreme and is in control of everything. It is constantly on the see-saw of happiness and unhappiness since we live in a dualistic world. As long as this deception continues, the human being is a creature covered by ignorance.  When that identification ceases, the Self, which is eternal and immortal, shakes off its cloak of mortality and melts into the Truth of its immortality. The atman becomes the Brahman. This is the fourth great goal of the Sanatana Dharma and is known as moksha. This is the truth of the great Mahavakya of the Upanishad:  Aham Brahmasmi – “I am Brahman”.

This is the strange story of the Vedic rishis. No other civilization except perhaps the present one has reached such heights of knowledge but unlike this culture that craves only for more and more material wealth, they deemed all the knowledge of the external world to be secondary to the discovery of the true Self. All they needed was their little grass huts or ashrams situated in the middle of jungles, where wild animals roamed unafraid. Every day was a new day. They never stored or hoarded for the next day. Every day they made a fire into which they poured their oblations. They had a few cows that supplied the butter and ghee for their oblations and they cultivated the land only to the extent that they needed. Nothing engraved on stone and marble remains to tell the tale of their incredible lives.

Another strange fact about them was that they had no desires. They did not wish to conquer or control, they were content with whatever nature provided, and they did not yearn to possess more and more for the simple reason that they possessed the wish-fulfilling cow of plenty in their own minds which was capable of granting their every desire. Having found the secret of all existence, they continued to live only with the one desire, which was to serve the rest of creation. Loka- samgrahamevaapi – this was their creed - "For the good of the world!" They needed no commandments to keep them on the right path for they were the very embodiments of all commandments - of dharma - the cosmic order!

The rishis were superior to the gods. They existed before the gods. In fact, they were the ones who brought the gods into existence. They were the supreme creators!

The age of the Vedic rishis is amazing. They had so much mental power that they could materialise or create anything they wished. Yet we find that they did not bother to conquer countries, control others or make palaces and edifices that would last forever. They did not seek to carve in stone or wood or make effigies or temples or in any way try to immortalise themselves in this world even though they were perfectly competent to do so if they wished. They made themselves known exclusively through their words. They have left nothing else. They left no chronicle of their achievements, nor images that might have survived the course of time. They knew that this world was only as real as the morning mist and would melt with the rising of the sun. The sun of their consciousness was at its zenith and they did not desire the trifles of the world.

The only way to know something about their lives and ideas is by going into the Vedas themselves.

 Loka Samastath Sukhino Bhavantu