Seven Rays - in Hindu Scripture

In Hindu Scripture

Agni is a Hindu and Vedic deity depicted in three forms: fire, lightning and the sun. In Hindu art, Agni is depicted with two or seven hands, two heads, and three legs. In each head, he has seven fiery tongues with which he licks sacrificial butter. He rides a ram or a chariot harnessed by fiery horses. His attributes are an axe, a torch, prayer beads and a flaming spear. Agni is represented as red and two-faced, suggesting both his destructive and his beneficent qualities, and with black eyes and hair. Seven rays of light emanate from his body.

In the Gayatri prayer from the Vedas, the seven rays are described as the emanations of the Sun, identified with the creator of life, "Because the being who shines with seven rays, assuming the forms of time and illumines all... naturally shines with seven rays is called light or the effulgent power; the light of the Generator or Sun - the light is the sun, the sun is the light, they are identical."

The Vishnu Purana, a post-vedic scripture, describes how Vishnu "enters into the seven solar rays which dilate into seven suns." These are the "seven principal solar rays," the source of heat even to the planet Jupiter, and the "seven suns into which the seven solar rays dilate at the consummation of all things..."

20th century Hindu scholar, poet and mystic, Sri Aurobindo, described the Vedic seven rays of knowledge, or Agni, as "the seven forms of the Thought-principle" and wrote that "the seven brilliant horses of the sun and their full union constitutes the seven-headed Thought of Ayasya by which the lost sun of Truth is recovered. That thought is again established in the seven rivers, the seven principles of being divine and human, the totality of which founds the perfect spiritual existence."