Joe- I had a flash while driving the other day and I realized I may have missed the boat on the Fire/Light/Agni part. For me, Agni is a specific kind of fire - a transformational fire, and light is more of a "merging with the soul" or "becoming the soul" or "turning into God" thing. Of course, we already ARE the soul - doh! That's who we really are. But because of our deep identification and attachment to our perception of the physical, we forget that. Which brings us back to smarana - remembrance. We use Agni to clear out the "impurities - aka attachments, judgements, etc... in order to help us perceive ourselves as more than the physical. For me, "light" is an experience that we have, where we feel our Soul, our Self, our Source. We "see" light. In some religions, "seeing the light" is seeing "God," seeing more than you did before. Pranava is a different way of experiencing the same. In Sutras 1:28, Patanjali says that pranava is Ishwara - we can "hear" God, we "hear" pranava.
It's like the Divine has thrown us more than one bone. There are as many ways to understand and experience the Source as there are seekers. All paths lead to "God", the Source, the Divine, whatever the name. As Patanjali says in YS 1:39 after listing a smorgasboard of practices - pick one you like! Patanjali takes all limitation off of how we get to that place of becoming, experiencing, etc... God/Ishwara/Divinity.
That experience can be a) "hearing" pranava - the voice of God, b) "seeing" the Light - the light of God, c) smelling the essence of God (I forgot the word for this - "smell" the roses, d) "tasting" the amrit or e) Other.
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aums and agni
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