--- In [email protected], "llundrub" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So I know yagyas are the way of heyam dukam anagatam etc, but what are the > mechanics exactly? I mean, do the devas just dig it so much that we do > ceremonies that they shower blessings? So they are not altruistic? They will > only help those who sacrifice? What are the mechanics? Are they moral? If > you only sacrificed exactly so much do you only get exactly so much back? Or > is the quality of the priest important? If you have a huge and expensive > yagya with a shitty pundit is it not as good as a poor yagya with a great > pundit? And so on... Is it not only karma really? The amount of energy put > into the aspect of creation through ritual?
FWIW-- Here's the first part of the "Richo Akshare" verse of the Rig Veda (MMY-approved translation): The verses of the Ved exist in the collapse of fullness, in the transcendental field, in which reside all the devatas, the impulses of creative intelligence, the laws of nature responsible for the whole manifest universe. Following is a portion of the commentary on this verse from "The ILA MA Handbook: A Celebration of Vedic Knowledge," edited by Anjali Mahaldar, in the section explaining yagyas (Mahaldar was president of ILA MA, the International Ladies Association of Maharishi Ayur-Veda, which was in existence for a few years in the late '80s): "What this means is that the verses of the Veda reverberate in pure consciousness as potential, but as yet unmanifest, values of rishi, devata, and chhandas. It is this eternal vibration of nature, in effect humming to itself in infinite frequencies, that generates all the possibilities in the material world. On this level of pure consciousness there is no time, space, or manifest creation--just the idea of them. It is this idea which ultimately expresses itself in different combinations of rishi, devata, and chhandas to generate what we experience as objective, material reality. "The verses of the Vedas, then, are the primordial sounds in which nature itself communicates [to itself]. They organize the whole field of activity because they correspond in vibration to the infinite frequencies that generate all of creation. "Properly reciting the verses of the Vedas influences the devata value of life. The devata value of consciousness is the intermediary between the knower (rishi) and the known (chhandas). Each primordial sound creates its own devata--its own impulse of creative intelligence. Put together in specific ways, these impulses become enlivened within the transcendent to fulfill the yagya's objective. The dynamics of how one devata emerges from another, and how they interact, engineers the whole field of activity."
