4.Aghora - Beginning Stages - Agni

Aghora - Beginning Stages - Agni


Before proceeding into further levels of aghora itself, we should understand the relevance of two important elements from all sides of philosophy. Those two elements are agni and vayu. Let’s begin with the element Agni.

Agni
Irrespective of the school of thought which the aspiring spiritual disciples belong to, agni play a major role. What is the major superior quality of Agni which makes it much decorated in all scriptures? Among the five elements, only agni can purify anything without getting impure itself. Take the aspect of water for eg, when we clean with water; water gets impure within the process. So agni is supposed to be the only element to be used for purification in subtle levels.

According to vedic system, the agni is classified as laukikagni and yajnaagni. The agni; laukikagni is the fire we used for various household activities. This is also used in tantric fire worship of tantra shastra and also in which rig veda mantra samhita or atharvana veda samhita is used.

Now the yajnaagni is classified basically into smartha and sharutha agni's.

All rituals which are performed as recommended by grihya sutras use smarta agni. also smartha yagnas and samaskaras of daily nature (nitya karma) , for fulfilling desires(kamya karmas), incidental worships( naimittic karma) are also done with this agni. There are various names given for this agni as aupasana, griha etc etc. this is installed in the house during the marriage ceremony and is used for upasana. Everyone should keep this agni at least in the smallest form in house through out his life. Only a person who has smartha agni in his home can kindle shrauta agni or store shrauta agni in the house hold.

Now about shrautaagni – ritualistically this agni is used for conducting all yagnas as recommended by the shrutis (vedic corpus). This agni installation in the house is like the householder or the yajamana's desire to attain the dyu and swar lokas too. Hence it’s called expansive agni, or vaitharanikagni.

Shrauta agni again have been classified into 5 basically named as panchagnis. The panchagani's are garhapatya, dakshina, ahavaniya, sabhya and avasatya. Among these the first three form (tretagni) the primary ones and are extensively used for shrauta rituals.

The three forms of agni commonly used are

1) garhapatya - symbolizes the grihapathi or the householder and the oblations to this helps him to conquer expanded prithvi loka. Since earth is circular, the fire pit used for doing the offering is also circular.

2) dakshina - the oblations to this agni helps the householder to conquer dyu loka , the akasha . Hence it appears semicircular to view; the fire pit used for the rituals is semicircular in shape.

3) ahavaniya - the oblations to this agni helps to conquer the swar loka. Here this agni is used for invoking various devas. since the shape of the heaven is perceived as square (perfectly symmetrical) the square or rectangular fire pits are used for this rituals.

With this preliminary knowledge of the agni as per vedas, we should expand our familiarity towards the nature of yagnas too in the essential level. yagnas can be classified broadly into three

1) paroksha yagna - this is the yagna that happens in nature. The celestial interplay of complex nature.

2) antaryama yagna - this is the yagna which can be called internal sacrifice.

3) pratyaksha yagna - this is the yagna which is more commonly seen as this is the outward ritual representation. It in limited sense; model on the paroksha yagna.

With these concepts as the foundation, lets move towards the other disciplines of tantra and even the latter yogas mentioned in bhagavat gita and the relevance of agni and sacrificial representations there ....

dear all, with the generic explanation of agni in vedic aspect; being briefly mentioned in the previous post , lets focus on the internal agni. There are two types of internal fire. One is bhuta agni and another one is jataragni.

Before defining the two agni's lets understand the human body in the subtle level. The human body in the subtle level is divided basically into two levels. bhautika and daivika. The first three chakras: mooladhara (earth), swadishtana (water) and manipurka (fire) are the chakras which makes the ordinary human beings characteristics or in simple words the human beings themselves.

jataragni is responsible for the all the digestive , sexual and other instinctive fires of bhautika level of human body. The main purpose of this agni is to absorb the prana from food in the stula or physical level and is always being centered at the manipuraka chakra.

When the jataragni is strong it makes the bhuta agni dormant and will make the ego self identified with the body. Human beings acquire land, make houses, have kids, try to achieve worldly distinctions, differentiate among one self and also very materialistic when the jataragni is strong.

Tantra speaks extensively about the laukikagni (ritualistic fire used for external tantric rites) which is the jataragni in one form and hence never refrain or make people abstain from the world. This makes the strong emphasis on the concept of “brahman sat jagat sat ".

When we interpret it to Vedas, the yajnagni classification which is mentioned as the smarthagni; is the jataragni itself in the internal level. All the grihya rites are done externally with the smarthagni. So the internal agni creates the will and the external representation makes the necessary performance of manifested levels of existence; the definitive samaskaras.

We will continue with deeper concepts and also the explanation of the presence and relevance of agni in various yogic disciplines

dear all, now with the presence and relevance of agni being explained in the tantric and vedic levels and explaining its common existence in both realms , lets view on the various yogic disciplines.

All the yogic systems advocate on restraining of sense organs with yamas and niyamas. In this way , the fire created by the abstinence is the fire used for offerings. Based on the nature of the offerings this fire is again named suitably. A yogi at first control his senses , as senses are the receptors for the mind. since yogas are based on achieving the enlightenment either by controlling mind or the vital breath(prana), the fire created also is named appropriately. the yoga systems which emphasizes on the control of breath like pranayama systems symbolically works on the varied version of antaryaga.

But when the control is done by restricting and restraining the mind , the agni takes various names and forms. An adept starts his journey by offering his sense organs to this fire symbolically. Then he will kindle the agni for various other related activities of mind and perform the offerings. this also is called yoga yagna. for eg: if the offering to this agni is jnana or knowledge of spiritual mileage , its called jnana yagna. the devour for the new knowledge levels to offer to the subtle fire , janana agni is also created in return. similarly all yoga systems in Bhagavat Gita could be viewed.

Generally the most important aspect of agni is to amplify the effect and the quality of the offerings. hence it is used for subtle purification and also used for attaining purusharthas with external rituals.

With the brief explanation of agni and its associations with the various disciplines, lets move our focus on to the second element called vayu. dear all, the interesting fact is the literature available on agni and its multilevel existence which is broad , sometimes makes people really perceive every aspect of it as distinct and mutually non interchangeable.