The Vedic seers believed in a grand unity in the structure and functioning of the universe in adhiavika, adhyatmaka and adhibhautika spheres. They also discovered that the three fundamental entities in the Universe viz, manas (mind/consciousness), prana and vak (speech/matter), are responsible for every type of creation.
In the beginning, there was an indiscernible potential entity.
It gave rise to manas (mind) and in the manas, a desire to create arose and the creation commenced. The waters were the primordial fluid. They desired, “How shall we create”? They strained and warmed themselves up. In those agitated waters, the golden egg was formed.
The primordial waters represented Sneha (stickiness) principle and angiras which represented the tejas (fire) principle.
The combined presence of bhirgu and angiras in the primordial waters constitutes the Atharva principle. It is the bhirgu principle, that carries with it the soma concept, while the angiras principle is associated with agni.
In the celestial concept, the Sun and the stars requires some feeding in order to maintain their form and brightness. This food is essentially the food of agni (mahavrata or soma) which when consumed by the Sun becomes part and parcel of it. The Sun maintains its vak (matter) content and also contributed to its brightness by converting part of itself into agni.
Another important aspect of agni-soma interaction is that when soma in the form of food is offered to agni, it first becomes agni and rises up in flames. It ultimately loses itself in space, but in the process it becomes converted into soma finally and fills the space. If agni has the quality of spreading and losing itself, the other substance should oppose this spreading by feeding the agni and containing it.
The concept of soma is a very great achievement by the Vedic seers in their understanding of the creation process. SOMA has come into existence, because of the creation of the waters, when agni and soma unite, the condition that results is called satya.
Satya is of two types, brahmastya and devastya. Agni and soma are two important entities in the Universe which create and sustain this jagat. They enter into every object of creation, both gross and subtle and provide support to them.
Agni stops the contraction of soma at some stage and soma stops agni's expansion at some stage. That agni and soma partake in creation, in varying degrees and are responsible for the variety of creation in the Universe. When a star is in radiative equilibrium, there is a balance between the radiation pressure and the gravitational force and the size of the star is determined by the comparative strength of these two forces.
“O Soma, you have produced the herbs, the milk giving cows and the waters. You pervade the entire firmament and have dispelled the darkness with light”. All types of food or more precisely all types of enjoyables (bhogyavastu) come under the name soma and the enjoyer is of course agni., Garhapatyagni, antariksagni and dhisnyaagni.
Vaiśvānarāgni in the man is produced by the combination of divyāgni (agni of the heavens) and pārthivagni (agni of the earth) gets released of its earthly connection and becomes divyāgni. The finest essence of food that we take goes to make the manas. The food taken is used in three ways. The grossest part becomes waste (purisa) to be excreted. The medium part of it goes to build the flesh and the finest part goes to make the manas. When seers found that the Sun is constantly shining without any diminution in its brightness or change in its shape, they were led to the discovery of soma as the food, which kept Him immortal.
The seers had realized the importance of rainfall for all forms of life on Earth. They described this phenomenon in various ways and agni + soma description agni going up, and soma coming down was one of the ways used by them. The movement of water is uniform. It goes up and falls down. rain bearing clouds to feed the earth and agni moving up reanimates the heaven.
It should be noted that the rain contains soma. In other words, the only way by which soma reaches the earth is through rain. It is the heat of the earth that restores water to the clouds, which later comes down as rain. This is real constructive feeding of the earth and the life it supports.
Adhidaivika soma was responsible for the birth of the plants on the earth and also the birth of human beings. While angiras principle creates deva pranas and bhigru principle creates pitrapranas, atri principle creates bhutas (material bodies).
