Man's Fate and God's Choice - Bhimeswara Challa (best e books to read .TXT) 📗

ever. We just cannot make up our minds and in the end, we have to go by our ‘gut feeling’ and bring it down to the basics. In the words of the theosophist Annie Besant, our goal ought to be to manifest “sympathy with all that feels, that swift response to every human need”563 to become ‘Masters of compassion’. She suggested a simple maxim: “nor let us forget that the person who happens to be with us at any given moment is the person given to us by the Master to serve at that moment.”564 That is a beautiful way of expressing divinity. To be able to serve not for the sake of the pleasure of serving but for the sake of serving, is the true test of spirituality. To attain that state, we must be able to not merely see God in every one, but also see everyone as God. For that, we need a brand new consciousness; and for that, we need divine grace. And for that, again, we need vairagya, non-attachment or renunciation of the fruits of one’s labor and abhyasa, spiritual discipline and practice. What the scriptures call Self-realization is transformation. The famous maxim of the Upanishads, Tatvamasi (Thou art that), is the ultimate transformation, the consciousness that you are nothing else and nothing but God. To become “the subtle essence in which all that exists has its self,” which the Chandogya Upanishad talks about, is the goal of spiritual transformation.

It is unlikely, as saints like Sri Aurobindo implied, that the sheer force of evolution, unless directed by God, could induce the movement of spirit into matter and raise humanity to a higher level, to a ‘consciousness of super-manhood’. In Sri Aurobindo’s soaring vision, the final ‘evolution’ is the divinization of matter itself, the ushering in of a completely new ‘divine’ way of existence on earth, what he called ‘life divine’, that will lead to greater unity, mutuality, and harmony within humanity. Transformation to this kind of ‘Gnostic’ being requires both psychic and spiritual transformation. Whether or not evolution is goal-oriented or simply an adaptation to a circumstance, and whether or not we are but a bunch of genes or memes fighting for living space, the fate of our species would depend on the creation of a context of life conducive to purposeful transformation. And we must change completely our perspective on the environment. We must recapture the spirit of religions like Hinduism where there is no such thing as the ‘environment’; it is simply divinity. We are far too dysfunctional, divided, and dissipated as a collective and coherent entity on earth to make the kind of mutations needed at the very core of our being. Mankind must find a way to increase, if only incrementally, the inflows of the ‘divine essence’ into daily life, and recapture both ‘the primal fear and pristine love of God’. Human evolution itself has demonstrated that the mind-dominated consciousness will not change solely through human effort, because we are

 

 

 

 

562 Wikipedia. Atheism. Accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

563 Annie Besant. The Doctrine of the Heart. 2003. The Theosophical Publishing House. Adyar, Chennai, India. p.v.

564 Annie Besant. The Doctrine of the Heart. 2003. The Theosophical Publishing House. Adyar, Chennai, India. p.x.

 

mental beings, and that true consciousness change entails loosening the grip of the mind, which our own mind will resist with all its available strength. The route to human transformation is consciousness change, and that is what God will induce if He wants to help us. If humankind ever becomes enabled to establish a kingdom of righteousness on earth, it would happen only through consciousness change. And for God to bestow His grace, we need to manifest devotion with compassion. Annie Besant said that “the word ‘devotion’ is the key to all true progress in the spiritual life.”565 Devotion is an intense attachment and love of anyone, but in spiritual life it relates to God. In true devotion, both towards another individual or to God, the ego evaporates and the boundary between the two blurs or disappears.

Devotion is the tissue that connects man with God. The lives of saints demonstrate the transformative power of devotion combined with cascading compassion for fellow creatures. Much of classical religious fervor is devotion so strong that the distinction between a devotee and the divine disappears. The foremost example in Hindu thought is the devotion-cum- absolute surrender of the Gopikas towards Lord Krishna, and the interplay between the two symbolized in what has come to be called the Raas Lila, the cosmic dance of love performed by Lord Krishna, a child all of seven years in the midst of His devotees. It symbolizes the interplay between the aspiring and the yearning human soul and the divine and transcendental love; it is about how the One relates to His many. Such is its sacredness and spiritual significance that in the Bhagavata Purana, it was affirmed that whoever hears or describes the Raas Lila attains Krishna`s pure loving devotion (Sudha bhakti). Ridiculously, it is sometimes portrayed — a projection of the limitations and frailties of our mind — as an erotic extravaganza. Swami Vivekananda said that it is the external expression of divine play that takes place in every human heart between the individual and the universal soul.

Clearly, neither is that ideal within the reach of most men, nor will such harmony be able to manifest in the minds of modern men, the ‘pure love’ of God — “love that is stain- less, motionless, and that one feels only for the sake of love” that Sri Ramakrishna said was beyond even dharma and adharma.566 And also, neither will we ever have “the comfort of certainty about the ways of God”,567 nor will we ever know what His plans are for our future. All the knowledge we have assiduously accumulated is of no avail; in fact, it is this mind- centered knowledge that is the burden breaking our back. It is the human capacity to acquire, access, assess, and use knowledge far beyond the needs of simple survival that has allowed humanity to prevail and eventually to dominate; but it is, in Einstein’s words, slowly strangulating the ‘holy curiosity’ of spiritual inquiry. ‘Knowledge’ figures prominently in the scriptures. Knowledge, in Christianity, is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; and in Islam, Prophet Muhammad declared himself to be the ‘city of knowledge’. In Hinduism, it is divided into two kinds, paroksha-jnana (indirect knowledge) and aparoksha-jnana (direct knowledge). What we commonly call knowledge is really raw data; knowledge is what you imbibe; data is what is accessible; wisdom is the use of knowledge for the good of the world. It is being claimed that, “all of the information which all of mankind has ever recorded in books can be carried around in a pamphlet in your hand…”568 Information, it has been said,

 

 

 

565 Annie Besant. The Doctrine of the Heart. 2003. The Theosophical Publishing House. Adyar, Chennai, India. p.xii.

566 Swami Nikhilananda. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. 1996. Sri Ramakrishna Math. Chennai, India. p.635.

567 Mark Tully. Unfashionable Virtue of Heartfelt Humility. The Times of India. Hyderabad, India. 11 July 2007. p.12.

568 William A. Goddard III, et al. (eds.). Handbook of Nanoscience, Engineering, and Technology. 2003. CRC Press. Florida, USA. p.I-3.

 

no longer has the proverbial nexus with power because technology makes it accessible to everyone. It is more important to connect, judge, and choose. And unused and unusable information, like cholesterol, clogs the arteries of advancement. We have to unlearn what we have learned so far. The scriptures and saints have consistently told us that the ultimate end and aim of life is the union with God. As Tagore said, “This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.”569 There are some who say that in endowing us what we have, God gave up part of his own power and therefore we are doubly accountable to God: for our own actions and as His proxy.

Rabbi Norman Lamm (Faith and Doubt, 1971) wrote: “The drama of human existence is predicated upon the divine grant of Freedom to Man. But such Freedom for Man implies that God has willingly surrendered part of his control; that he has paradoxically, willed that things may go against his Will.”570 The question that crosses the doubting mind is: will God regret his ‘giving up’ and deem us betrayers of His trust? If, as the Quran says, ‘there is always a third person listening when two people whisper’, and if God is closer to you than your nose, God then knows our every fleeting thought, every word spoken, and every act done or not done. If we are ‘naked’ and cannot hide anything before God, what are we supposed to do to save ourselves? We cannot hide and we will not change. A fair way to proceed is to put ourselves in God’s shoes and imagine what we would do to Him if he behaves the way we do. Any human jury would pronounce that He has betrayed our trust and mandate, and would probably put Him away for good. Although we may be wary of phrasing the issue in this way, what man is really trying to do by becoming immortal and by freeing himself from the consequences of his actions, is to make God passé, or redundant, or at least bring Him into disrepute. Alexander Pope wrote, “Tis this, Though Man’s a fool, yet God is wise.”571 But can that save man? For, as philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, “Man is capable of nothing; it is God who gives everything, who gives man faith.”572 God is merciful, but He is also just, and being just means being fair, fair to all His creations. Will Nature, which is but a practical extension of God, continue to be indulgent? If we are rational beings, as we claim to be, we should know the answer is ‘not likely’. If human consciousness stays static and the mind rules the roost, our relationship with God, with Nature and with our own inner selves cannot change in any sweeping way, and we need to do a lot more while God needs to do nothing. He will simply relapse into His ‘yoganidra’, His cosmic sleep, and Man will have to do all that needs to be done to ease the earth of the human burden. With the mind and weapons he has, that will not be an uphill task. Already, we see the tell-tale signs. In the Hindu doctrine of avatars (incarnations), God descends to earth to eradicate evil and restore righteousness from time to time. But it has also another import. Truly, God did not have to become human to do what he wanted to do; it was to show that man can become God. It was predicted, as mentioned earlier, that the last avatar would be Kalki, at the end of this Yuga, to re-establish righteousness on earth. Significantly, it was said that the minds of men who live

 

 

 

569 Rabindranath Tagore. Sadhana: the Realisation of Life. Soul Consciousness. 1916. Internet Sacred Text Archive. Accessed at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/tagore/sadh/sadh04.htm

570 Cited in: Woolf Abrahams. Reflecting on Judaism. Petitional Prayer, Determination & Freewill; Are They Compatible? Accessed at: http://www.reflectingonjudaism.com/?q=Petitional_Prayer

571 Alexander Pope. The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Volume 1. Full Books. Accessed at: http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Poetical-Works-Of-Alexander-Pope-Vol4.html

572 Parrinder Geoffrey. A Dictionary of Religious and Spiritual Quotations. 1989. Simon and Schuster. USA. p.140.

 

at the end of the Kali Age shall be reawakened, and shall be, in the words of the Hindu scripture Vishnu Purana, ‘as pellucid as crystal’. According to Vedic