Live by the Fire!

In most ancient cultures, there is a tradition of fire.  The sun is the fire in the sky.  As sun’s rays fall on leaves and are absorbed by the Chlorophyll, the fire from the sun is captured and kept alive in the plant.  A piece of wood when thrown into a fire catches fire.  As the flames burn out, the wood becomes charcoal.  And this half burnt wood too can keep a fiery warmth going.  And even when plant material is buried under great depths for millennia, it gets converted into fossil fuel – ready as ever to show what it carries in its belly – fire!

No matter what the source, oil or a twig, a paper from a tree or a dry leaf, the fire is the same.  It changes colour with temperature or if chemicals are used, but always remains a carrier of light and heat, a carrier of vital energy.  Fire is the deepest hidden energy within every form released into its pristine self.  It is hidden inside the smallest of particles, smallest of matter.  An atom cannot be seen neither by the naked eye nor by a microscope and yet inside just one of these infinitesimal atoms is hidden a huge amount of energy, enough energy to wipe out everything within a few kilometres.  That is the magnitude of its potential.  It is incomparable to its mass and is proportional to the square of the speed of light.  Nothing can travel faster than light.  Compared to the speed of light we lead static lives.  And yet within every atom there lays a fire that is proportional to this speed times this speed!  It is unthinkable the amount of fire we carry within ourselves!

In Sanskrit the word for plant is shaakha which also means heat.  Plants carry heat.  Plants grow upward and this heat also grows upward within the plant.  And when we eat vegetarian, we carry this rising heat.  Within animal bodies the plant heat is converted into animal heat.  While plant heat rises naturally, animal heat has more intensity but lacks direction.  Left to itself, it flows downward.  Once the fire energy is processed by an animal body it is converted to life energy.  When an animal is killed, its rising fire leaves with its life.  A dead animal doesn’t catch fire – it rots.  A dry plant, a dry leaf catches fire unless dampened and buried.   A vegetable or a fruit or a seed from a plant still carries the fire.  But when we eat it, that fire is converted within us into life energy.  And when this life leaves us, we have very little fire left. 

Every consumptive process that a material goes through drains the fire from it.  That’s why natural foods ought to be preferred to processed foods.  When a seed or a vegetable is formed in a plant it has already gone through a process – but this is a process of fruition and not of consumption.  Fruition stores the fire while consumption drains the fire.  When an animal eats grains or leaves it gains life energy from it.  When this animal is consumed by another animal, it goes through a second process.  And when meat from such an animal is consumed, it is a third degree process and there is very little upward fire remaining.  An animal body must be burnt on a pyre of wood.  It doesn’t catch fire by itself – for there isn’t much left without its life. 

Life therefore is the fire inside a living being.  The human being carries this fire more than any other life form.  He is capable of feeling this fire and realising this fire.  Even as light has a dual nature, a particle nature and a wave nature, the human being has a material nature and a fire nature.  He has a material body and a subtle body of light.   And deep within these two bodies lies the essence of that body of light – a universal flame that is the center of the whole universe – manifest and unmanifest.  Ancient Indian Rshis as well as contemporary seers have seen this most sacred flame and sung its glory.  But the path to it is through the subtle body of a gentle fire, the body of light. 

This subtle body is the private property of every being and it is up to him whether to keep its rooms burning with light or switch off the lights and darken them.  As we make choices in life, we are choosing to keep the light going or choosing to switch some lights off.  If we do not realise, slowly all the rooms will become dark and a dark and false energy will start running our lives.  The more we choose light, the easier it becomes to travel the path of fire.  The more we choose darkness the easier it becomes to venture down the labyrinths into murky regions. 

In our daily life fire gives us intensity.  It also gives us passion.  Passion is a consumptive fire that branches out and leaves you exhausted.  Dispassionate intensity is a fire that concentrates and culminates in fruition and keeps you energised.  So when you choose a momentum in life make sure it is driven by the right kind of fire.   Develop intensity but rise above passion.  Develop integrity but rise above complexity.  Stoke and protect your fire of dispassionate intensity and put out the diluting fire of passion.

Fire lives within human ideals as well.  Courage, bravery, equanimity and nobility stoke the positive fire while jealousy, greed, lust and anger give rise to the destructive fire.   Be careful therefore when you choose to react or act.  Take a brave step.  Take a noble step.  Protect the dignity of the human existence through your actions.  Don’t ever hide like a coward.  Don’t succumb ever to the guiles of greed and anger, to the lures of lust and arrogance.  Shame and guilt are negative fires that erode your existence.  Human dignity, honour and self respect are positive fires that must be protected all the time.  And when you see this positive fire in others, you must respect it and regard it.  For if you disrespect or trample upon a positive fire in others, their fire will rage more brilliantly and yours will wilt. 

This is why ancient cultures adopted a fire ritual as an important part of their daily life and momentous events.  They solemnised everything by the fire.  They offered a token of everything they had to the fire before they partook of it.  Even now in India many householders still carry the ancient tradition of keeping a fire going all the time in their house.  The ancient Indians were always conscious of the importance of fire.  Everyone had to be made aware of it and it had to be protected.  Three times a day they would do a fire ritual with twigs.  They prayed to the sun every day at the junction of night and day and at noon.  The sun is the visible source of fire.  And the most benign form of this fire was at dawn and at dusk – when he sends out his benevolent rays before he appears or after he disappears on the horizon.  Just prior to sunrise, the daybreak is pleasant and floods us with light sans the heat.  This is symbolic of the light of knowledge.  And just after he sets, the crimson light fills us with a great energy that can last the night.   This is symbolic of the physical fire of life. 

We prayed to fire, to the Lord of Fire, and to that ancient and sacred source of the universe which also is a fire – a non-materialistic fire – a sacred and eternal flame.  When you have an ennobling thought, a thought that is sincere and is in the highest interests of all concerned, the life energy within you flows upward towards that eternal flame.  It draws energy from it and energises your body-mind field.  If life energy flows down alternately, then it takes away your energy and leaves you less energetic and fatigued.   

Even as we walk on this earth our walk and vision must be like a fire – beaming light and flaming upward.  The eyes are the symbol of fire within us.  Between the two physical eyes lies a third eye – the third eye of light and knowledge.  Our vision must be centred on this third eye and from that energy our physical eyes must shine bright with the fire of sincerity, knowledge, awareness and love.  Even our speech must be endowed with this fire of purity.  When we speak with conviction and knowledge, our voice comes from a deep-rooted source that gives it the quality of fire – a quality that purifies our own body-mind field as well as those that come within its reach. 

Every living being that is born on this earth must eventually be consumed by fire.  But he alone is wise who realises the importance of the fire within, protects it wherever he sees it, reveres its sacred source and lives by it.  He shuns everything that seeks to dampen this fire, this intensity.  Living a life of intensity and dispassion, we must stoke this eternal and faultless fire by the light of the day and by light of the moon.  Even as the day is lit outside by a bright sun, the fire of awareness must be kept alive and burning bright within ourselves, by means of work and offering – work that is beneficial to all, and offering of everything that we do to that most sacred and endless flame.  And may we learn to see life in the gentle light of this eternal internal fire.

Let every shred of ignorance be thrown into this fire and be burnt into ashes.  Let every piece of cowardice be sacrificed in this fire.  Let every diluting thought be purged by the flames of this sacred fire.  Let the thought of any endeavour that leaks our energies into varied and unproductive channels shrivel to dust in the heat of this fire.  Let every relationship be solemnised by this rising flame.  Let every thought of selfishness, greed, lust, anger and arrogance be burnt by the fire of truth and knowledge.  Life is light and fire.  Death is darkness.  Shy away from cowardice and darkness.  Lead a brave life of light – live by the fire!