That eternal flux of Vast Intelligence which comes as a distributed radiance of light is indeed worthy of adoration

RGVEDA for the Layman

Translated with Commentary by Shyam Ghosh

A fresh translation of the RIG Veda was published in 2002. The translator sadly died in the year 2000 or I would have sent him my personal THANK YOU and touched his feet (a sweet Hindu custom of respect).

For years now, there has been only one translation of the Rig Veda available to most of us who do not read Sanskrit. Although I remain grateful for any translation, over the years as I came to understand more and more of the metaphysics of Hinduism, it occurred to me that perhaps the translator simply did not quite fully understand the subtle metaphysical depths of the text and that a great deal of the inner meaning must have been lost through a lack of spiritual knowledge.

For many years now most westerners have been completely bewildered by the Rig Veda - because most translations make the Rig Veda seem like a bunch of meaningless hymns propitiating deities.

I knew this could NOT be true.

For one thing, the Upanishads and the Puranic texts are all based on the Vedas (there are four Vedas). So the question remained how did such sublime enlightening metaphysical systems emerge of out of seemingly meaningless ritualistic hymns?

I decided on my own that the Vedas had to be some kind of encoded text that explained the nature of the universe, both visible and invisible. But I still had no evidence beyond my intuition. A recent book entitled, ‘Vedic Physics’ by Dr. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, shed some light on the inscrutable Vedas by posing analogies to the principles of quantum physics.

So --- you can imagine how excited and thrilled I am at holding this new translation, which offers a plethora of insight into the possible real meaning of the RIG Veda.

For example: the MARUTS are traditionally held to be immortal beings who ‘are a restless, warlike troupe of flashy young men…a society of war-minded men with esoteric practices and formula’ – they are the sons of Rudra and the friends of Indra – ‘riding on the whirl wind, they direct the storm and move with great noise, singing.’

[From 'The Gods of India' by Alain Danielou]

The Shayam Ghose translation of the RIG Veda defines the MARUTS as -

SILENT PARTICLES OF SOUND !!!

‘The…Rishi [Seer]…expounds the attributes of MARUT, the silent particle of sound. He traces the origin of Maruts to Rudra [the god who later became Shiva], the highly concentrate sound that first burst out of the primordial atom… the Rishi [Seer] affirms the existence of such electromagnetic sound particles in space. It is these particles [ether] which, when obstructed by material objects, rattle those and produce vibrations analogous to consciousness.’

Is this not an awesome insight? The Vedic texts have the power to unite human consciousness and modern science to their harmonius timeless traditional relationship with the Cosmos.

Here is another sublime example of a translation from Mr. Shyam Ghose of a very famous RIG Veda hymn, the Gayatri Mantra:

‘That eternal flux of Vast Intelligence, which comes as a distributed radiance of light, is indeed worthy of adoration.

May that ever impel our own thinking forward.’

2 related Sanskrit words from the GAYATRI mantra defined -

SAVITUH: The continuous flux of Intelligence, Time and Space

SAVITR: Visualized as the eternal expansion of Universal Intelligence in the dimensions of Space and Time

‘RGVEDA for the Layman’

Satasuktaparidarsanam

Translated with Commentary by Shyam Ghosh

Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.; 2002, New Delhi

This book is available from:

http://www.southasiabooks.com/