Sapt rishi

Atri said: Our eyes, the eyes of the Saptarisis, which now flicker from the stars of the Great Bear, were ever wakeful over all that happens. That something merely happens in pointless. But that something happens and a watching eye gathers it into itself is everything Thus we came before the gods. Thus do we keep our watch after the gods. The gaze came before the scene. The world didn't exist then.But it didn't not exist either. It was the mind, if anybody knows what that might be. It was our mind. We seven, already old, yet unique and first among beings, watched over each other. We were eyes watching other eyes. There was nothing else to let itself be watched. And we knew: we haven't the strength, alone, we beings who are entirely mind, to bring into existence, to make existence exist, unless we compose something that goes beyond he who watches. It was time for the vision to split from the seer. We watched each other and said: 'This way we wil never exist. This is not existence. What's required is for someone to be composed of us'. Then, in silence, we began to burn. The mind concentrated on a fire- and we were the substance that fire consumed. That's why we were called rsis: because we consued ourselves:ris-. Whom did we want to compose? A person, the Person: Purusa. Who was he? An eagle with wings outspread. Two of us squeezed ourselves in aboce the navel, two below the navel, one was a wing, on the other wing, one the claws. All the flavour of life we had within us we brought together above, in the bird's head. That Person, the Progenitor, the Father, Prajapati, became this altar of fire, which we are bound at every moment to construct.

From Robert Calasso's Ka.