Fire. It burns everything, transforming it into flame. By consuming dead logs, it produces warmth and light. Thus I learn to absorb everything that life brings and turn it into the flame that enlightens my life. In that light, others can walk safely.

Lord Dattatreya

What If Fire Touched Someone With Love?

I was in sixth standard when I had a dream that has stayed with me all these years. In the dream I kept asking everyone, “What if fire touches someone with love?” No one had an answer. Even today I have no clear answer, but the question still burns at the edge of my curiosity. I remember learning in the same class about slash-and-burn cultivation, how fields are intentionally burned and then left untouched so the land can regenerate and return even more fertile than before. Fire, in that sense, touches the earth with love. It destroys only to renew. It clears what is exhausted so something richer can emerge. Our own challenges work the same way I believe, the heat of suffering often becomes the very force that makes us shine brighter. It is one of the most magical elements in creation. Without it there is no spark, no power, no movement. It takes courage to dream big, to take risks, to persevere through difficulty, and all of this happens because of our inner fire. It is the intensity that propels us through risk and challenge, that lights up neural pathways of purpose and endurance. Without it we lack motivation; with it we can burn through stagnation. But like any fire, if unchecked it can consume its own fuel in a way that harms rather than heals. The art of sadhana (practice), thus, is to stoke the inner fire without being consumed by it, to allow it to illuminate rather than burn down the house.

But the moment that inner fire goes out, what remains is just the mortal shell. When we give love, we speak of warmth. When we withhold it, we speak of coldness. These intuitive metaphors tell us that fire is not just heat, but the very condition of living and loving. On the Earth’s surface there are glaciers that feel unimaginably cold, yet as you dig deeper into the mantle and toward the core, heat increases, and the slow movement of these inner layers gives rise to the magnetic field that stabilises the planet’s rotation and protects life. The Sun itself is fire of such intensity that it is almost pure light. We are because it is. Without that solar fire, the entire solar system would collapse. If it became even slightly hotter or cooler, life and planetary orbits would disintegrate. Fire is creativity, continuity and cohesion in nature itself.

Fire (Agni) is called the mouth of the gods and is one of the most important deities of the Rigveda, with hundreds of hymns dedicated to him. Agni is the divine messenger who carries offerings from humans to gods, and who brings the gods into the sacrificial ritual. Many sacred births and transformations in myth occur through fire. Draupadi (and her brother) and others are born from yajña flames. Lord Rama and His brothers were born because of a pudding given by Agni as a result of a yajña. Rishis would perform Agni snāna, bath in fire as part of their austerities. Fire is at the heart of ritual because it stands for purification. When fire tests you, it removes whatever obstructs clarity and light. Even Sita Ma underwent Agni Parīkṣā in the Rāmāyaṇa to prove her chastity not just socially but symbolically, it becomes witness to truth. Even today, in common speech, we call life’s toughest ordeals “Agni Parīkṣā” precisely because the fiery intensity of challenge transforms but also burns away what is not authentic and reveals the truth, the Reality.

This is why Lord Natarāja, who stands atop the dwarf demon Apasmara representing ignorance, holds fire in one of his hands because fire consumes all that is non-subtle, unreal, heavy and resistant. For example, energetically, it (through activism oriented towards common good) burns the accumulated muck around our soul, societies, and religions – our ego, conditioning, repetitive emotional tendencies, ideological fixations, beliefs – leaving only the essence. Evidently, the heat transforms matter from one state to another, and dissolves solidity, hardness, and fixation so consciousness may expand. And when one reads Datta’s teaching on fire as a guru, the altruism of the lesson becomes clear. Fire burns for the sake of warmth and light for others. It transforms without expectation. It shows what a seeker must do – assimilate every experience, integrate it, embody it, and let that inner combustion turn into wisdom so others may find their way through its light. The real ritual is not what happens outside but what happens inside. Always.

In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad teaching of the Panchagni Vidyā, the knowledge of the five fires, fire is the symbol and meditation object for the cosmic process of manifestation and dissolution. Here the universe itself is described as a sequence of five symbolic fires through which being arises and returns – from celestial realms to rain, to earth, to human, and finally to generative union. These are not literal bonfires but stages of cosmic sacrifice and interconnection, showing how all existence is woven together through sacrifice and transformation. In the same Upanishad, there is a story of Upakosala, a sincere student who tended the three sacred fires (Gṛhapatya, Anvāhārya, and Ahavānya) under his guru Satyakāma Jābāla for twelve years. He served with devotion, yet when his teacher let other disciples go home, he was not permitted to leave. Upakosala was anguished and refused food, confessing that his heart was restless and full of desires that pulled him in many directions. Recognising his genuine spiritual longing, the sacred fires themselves “took pity on him” and began to teach him directly.  

From the fires came voices revealing that “This life is Brahman; the sky is Brahman; bliss is Brahman. Know Brahman.” Upakosala replied that he understood life as Brahman but did not yet understand how the sky or bliss could be the same. The voices explained that the “sky” meant the lotus of the heart where Brahman dwells and that “bliss” meant the bliss of Brahman. Then the fires taught him that earth, food, fire, and the sun, everything he worshipped, are forms of Brahman. The presence in the sun, the moon, the stars, water, lightning, and all directions is the same one Reality.  

This is a teaching about how sacred objects and the elements of ritual, especially fire, are not separate from the ultimate Reality. They are not external tools alone but gateways to realisation when one meditates on them as forms of Brahman. The Upanishad assures that one who realises this truth through meditation on the fires is freed from bondage, transcends sinful action, and attains the “world of fire”, a symbolic way of speaking about liberation and a luminous, unbounded life. His descendants flourish spiritually and materially, grounded in this recognition, supported in both this world and beyond by the truth he embodies. 

This story exemplifies how fire in the sacred sense is not only a ritual flame but an inner witness of transformation and a mirror of the Self. It shows that meditation on fire, on its forms, origins, and inner presence, is a path to dissolving illusion and recognising the one reality that pervades all existence. The Upanishads also teach Prāṇagnihotra, the fire of life in breath and body itself, where each inhale and exhale is a sacrificial offering, reminding us that the universal soul (Brahman) resides within every living being. Our breath sustains fire within us even as it sustains life itself.

On another note, when the outer flame dances, the inner flame of tapas (discipline) and brahmavidyā (knowledge of the Absolute) is what stabilises the mystic in her path. Tapas literally means heat, effort, burning away of dross, a disciplined life sustained by inner fire which is not just impulsive passion as one would believe while pondering on human desires including sexual desires, but clarity of purpose, steady attention, resilience to discomfort, and courage to face the unknown. It is the fire that gives you the discipline to sit in meditation, to breathe in discomfort, to witness ego and fear without collapsing into them whilst letting them burn away with each breath.

This is why after the heaviest emotional and existential tests in life, many seekers experience a breakthrough, a kind of sakṣātkāra, direct perception of reality, because the heat of struggle dissolves protective illusions. But this is never easy, because heat reveals what has been buried. In Buddhism, this transformative fire appears in the wrathful compassion of the Tārās and fierce deities, love that is too pure to tolerate delusion. The Fire Sermon of the Buddha also speaks of the senses and mind burning with craving, aversion, and ignorance. Liberation begins when we stop feeding these flames. The Buddha says the world burns not because the world is flawed, but because we keep throwing fuel into the fire, our thoughts, our reactions, our grasping. So, when self-awareness arises, we stop feeding the saṃsāric fire. When we refuse to add more fuel, no more compulsive reactions, no more egoic assertions, no more unconscious desires, the fire fades away. I wrote a song and published it on my channel here.

Thus, fire in our psyche is the longing for the divine, the drive for truth, the courage to sit with discomfort/pain until it turns into clarity and the warmth of love that allows the Self to shine through. If fire touches someone with love, perhaps, just perhaps, what it means is that when the heat of intention meets the clarity of devotion as we discussed in Uttarachatakashtakam, the human being begins to transcend fear, attachment, and fragmentation, aligning instead with the unknown, unnamable Self, the Brahman. In that space, fire is a mirror, showing us both our vulnerabilities and our ever shining, indestructible core – Shakti, the cosmic fire itself.

Love,

Priyanka

Note: This essay is part of “The Twenty-Four Mirrors”, a contemplative series on the Gurus of Lord Dattātreya. All Rights Reserved.

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