by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 16
Jan. 2002

CHAPTER Seventeen- PRINCIPLES OF DIVINE MANAGEMENT - Part -1

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

Let us not see here an advocacy for meek submission. It is the understanding of the wise and recognising where, and in what, lies his benefit. It is not being foolish that we are talking about. It is a conscious intelligent decision.

So it is important that to remain in peace one must voluntarily submit to a superior, fully knowledgeable, totally capable and entirely and entirely benevolent entity and its principles.

You can do that - orient yourself to those principles- only when we understand these principles. The Svetasvatara Upanishad provides an exposure to these principles. That is our basis for this article.

PRINCIPLES OF DIVINE MANAGEMENT

Our Upanishads refer to The Lord as The Karta and Pravartaka of the entire universe. Karta means the Chief Executive and Pravartaka means the manager. Of course He is a Chief Executive and a Manager of a very special kind. Thus our seers of the ancient times did see in this entire scheme of things - in this gigantic enterprise called The universe, a scenario of management, a scenario of skillful execution based on certain universal principles, which they termed - sasvata niyama. An enterprise of such complex and immense magnitude can not thrive on chaos. It does not require much imagination to deduce that there is someone at the centre of things who manages it so efficiently and so well.

The objective of this article is to get an insight to the principles underlining this divine management and more importantly, whether such principles hold relevance in our vocational world, and in our personal lives. If these principles have held true from the beginning of time, then obviously proper understanding of them can only be for our greater good.

We shall proceed with this objective.

However, to be able to appreciate the concept of divine management, certain assumptions are necessary. "Assumption" perhaps, is a wrong word here because they are unquestionable truths in their own right. People who are reasonably well versed with the philosophy of sanatana dharma or eastern spiritualism will see this truth straight away. But there will be certainly few, who are yet to arrive at these conclusions in their own mind and further elucidation and contemplation in their case is necessary. That is an issue entirely separate. Yet I refer them to be assumptions simply to pre-empt any distracting debate on them at this stage, and divert us from our above objective in context of our topic.

There are five assumptions that need to be fixed in our minds. These are ::

1. God exists.
2. God is Omnipotent, having unlimited potential and power of accomplishment.
3. God is Omnipresent, present every where and overseeing all.
4. God is Omniscient the all knowing entity - and finally
5. God is benevolent and non-vindictive - Nothing ever is done by Him which is not for common good.

Conclusive debates can be held to establish the veracity of above statements but that is a separate issue. If for the time being we accept these assumptions it will facilitate our understanding.

Now let us go to explore how he manages his creation. To do this, two important issues have to be addressed such as "Characteristics of the creation" and "our role in this creation." After all, if we are going to discuss the management principles of the universe crated by the Lord, we must first picture the creation itself in our minds- its characteristics to be precise.

So what are the characteristics of this creation? Can this be translated or superimposed into our daily life?