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by
Sri Bimal Mohanty
VOL
No. 57 October . 2005
"SUSTAINING
GOD CONSCIOUSNESS."
"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"
We
have understood that developing a close relationship of oneness and inseparability
with everyone and everything around us is a practical way to capture the
feeling of God-consciousness. Every one has his origin in Brahman or God
and in some aspect or other represents Brahman. Thousands of
years back, the sanatan philosophy delivered this message to
the humanity :
Vasudeva sarvamiti- everything is Vasudeva, the Lord,
the Brahman. Recognise this truth and live by it. There is no
other alternative path to peace beyond this.
If I have to feel one with everyone and everything, and identify myself
with everyone, I can not harbour animosity with anyone. That would mean
animosity not only with the Lord but my own self as well. So the pre-requisite
for cultivating this oneness feeling is first to eschew any feeling of
animosity.
There is a beautiful line in Bhagavad Gita that is direct, practical and
sums up well the conceptual relationship between oneness of all created
beings and being God conscious. The Lord Krishna declares:
Nirvairah sarvabhutesu yah, sah mam eti PAndava.
He, who is without hatred or devoid of animosity towards all creatures,
comes to me O’ Pandava. To be with God, or to be ever conscious
of Him, the prerequisite as advised by the Lord himself is that ‘you
cannot have animosity towards anyone. You must banish this thought of
separateness, which is at the root of all differences. Slightest feeling
of enmity, takes you that much away from the Lord. All these talk of quarrel,
violence, war etc by which many people stand by and justify their actions,
have been declared ‘un-godly’ by the sanatan philosophy.
When everything is an integral part of the Lord, and has no separate existence,
then a negative attitude to any part tantamounts to a similar attitude
to the whole, – the Lord Himself.
There is some clarification required here as some advance a very understandable
argument that if enmity is un-divine and oneness is godly, how does one
justify the war between Kauravas and Pandavas and between
Rama and Ravana?
Two aspects in this context, go to clarify the real meaning and necessity
of introduction of these two epics into our philosophy.
The Sanatan philosophy does not permit any one to resort to violence
to settle personal scores. On the face of I, for the limited minds like
the ones you and me possess, the Mahabharat war certainly appears
as a conflict between Kauravas and Pandavas. But the
esoteric meaning points to a conflict between righteousness and evil.
(Dharma and Adharma). As our mind rises in knowledge,
we appreciate Mahabharat to be a clash between “ what should
get established” and “what should be removed for the good
of all”. The only objective is to let the right principles prevail.
Dharma sansthApana is the only objective.
The kurukshetra, the characters, the unfolding events are all
like the stage props that will finally assist the ultimate objective to
accomplished.
No body dies. No one ceases to exist. The Gita clearly proclaims:
Na tvevAham jAtu nAsam na tvam name janAdhipAh
Na caiva na bhavisyAmah sarve vayam atahparam.
None, you, me, or the kings ever ceased to exist in the past or shall
cease to exist in future. All the souls continue to exist with mere change
of states. Only the divine principles for the progressive movement of
the creation get re-established and the chaos removed from the cosmos.
If we fail to see beyond the armies and wars of Kauravas and
Pandavas, of Rama and Ravana, we miss out the
profound truth Mahbharata and Ramayana stand for.
The second aspect is no less significant. In these two wars, the justification
as we say, was to establish dharma.
Whose decision was that? Who decided that there is no other alternative
left, all other possibilities having been exhausted?
The interesting point here is that, in these two wars we find open participation
of the Divinity in the forms of Krishna and Rama. No such examples are
found anywhere else.
Does this have any special significance? Does this send out signals for
us to think about?
When a decision of such import is taken and has to be absolutely the right
one, the logic demands that the decision maker should be the one, who
possesses every bit of information- past, present and the future –
that have a bearing on the event. Any decision based on limited information
would usher disaster.
Who would be that omniscient one? Who is in possession of all contributing
information spanning all three dimensions of time? (the trikaladarshi)
and is the upholder (the vidhAtA) of the creation?
None other, except the Lord, The Brahman.
A decision of this nature, any justification of any violent conflict,
taken by mortal individuals can never be right. Because none is in possession
of all the factors, precipitating any violent happening. None can predict
the array of fall-outs that will be unleashed.
Any human decision to engage in conflicts to settle scores, can not be
justified as all the pros and cons can not ever be fathomed by the limited
human mind. No human can assume the role of the Divine.
So, any question of conflict between any elements in the creation is counter
productive to sadhana. Nirvairya bhava or absence of
conflict and practice of harmonious coexistence is coexistence with God.
People often ask, why! After so much of practice and sadhana,
one is still no near to God as one would like to be. We should rather
pause and ask: why on the face of so much similarity and interdependency
between all of us in the Lord’s creation, we still are unable to
sacrifice our individual self consciousness? There lies the crux of the
problem.
In this interdependent matrix, it is not difficult to imagine, how much
each of us need the rest around us for our existence, for our journey
towards fulfillment. A little contemplation will also reveal to our minds,
that whatever has made us what we are today, it is the contributions received
from million sources.
Be it our near or dear ones in the family, be it all others from the larger
society, the community or the world, be it humans, or animals or the plant
kingdom, even the neglected objects around or the great natural elements,
the far and distant stars and planets, all have and continue to play their
roles to make us what we are today.
Contrary to what many may think, any sadhana, any spiritual enlightenment
is impossible for any individual without the direct and indirect participation
of the entire creation that sustains us.
Only a grossly egoistic mind would fail to recognize these contributions.
What does that teach us?
The entire creation of the Lord is sustained by each and every one making
contributions for every other thing. Each one is playing a role in the
very existence and movement of the other.
The entire creation consisting of unaccountable celestial bodies of galaxies,
stars and planets, the many worlds of many universes – the anantakoti
brmhAnda- they all work to a single plan as a gigantic cosmic enterprise.
Each element contributing to the other’s creation, existence and
again transformation into something new and better, higher, more perfect.
We are taught this from our very childhood. The sun burns itself out,
sacrificing its own energy for the life sustenance of all life forms.
The winds blow distributing the life force for every one, cleans and purifies
the environment day in and day out. The water nurses all that are living
and making the new generation to come into life. The plant kingdom, the
trees and flowers give protective shade, fruits, fragrance and medicines
to cure diseases. The mother earth pours out food from her bosom to feed
all creatures. One life form sacrifices itself to provide food for another
life form. A father protects. A mother gives away parts of herself to
suckle the young.
Out of love and respect for the divine principle of things, this sacrifice
flows. Every one is sacrificing something or other all the time to uphold
a much larger concept. That larger cosmic concept invariably leads the
thinker to none other than the creator, the Lord or Brahma, making
him conscious of God.
When we speak of sacrifice, there is a divine universal law that seems
to be in force in this creation, and having its influence on each and
everything. The universe as a whole seems to be in the grip of a discipline
that unquestionably demands from everybody to be in a sacrificing mode.
Sri Aurobindo observes: ‘Indeed sacrifice is imposed and where need
be, compelled by the universal world force. It takes it even from those
who do not consciously recognize the law- inevitably because this is the
intrinsic nature of things.’
Sacrifice is the central reinforcement of spirituality, of God consciousness.
More about it we shall discuss next.
