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

philosophy, the human body is composed of seven basic sheaths: matter, life, mind, super mind or gnosis, bliss, becoming, and being. Human evolution, it is said, has passed through the first four sheaths, constituting what the human today ‘is’. To make further progress through the last three sheaths — bliss, becoming, and being (Sat, Chit, and Ananda) — the human needs the grace of the divine force. This is because these sheaths lie beyond the realm of the physical world and are in the spiritual world. The tenth avatar will help mankind cross the last three layers of consciousness and merge with the divine. It means that God will induce consciousness- change as a prelude to final transformation. Without that even God cannot change us or save us.

 

‘Critical mass’ and the ‘hundredth monkey’

God may love us a little more than other creatures — so we would like to flatter ourselves — but by our malevolent conduct and by our stubborn refusal to mend our ways, we must be leaving Him with little choice but to wring His hands in despair. God is kind, compassionate, and merciful, but also just, which means that He has no favorites and holds all His creation equally accountable for its choices and actions. And He too has, like all of us, his own swadharma; his righteous duty and obligation that is cosmic, overarching, and the one that sustains the universe or ‘multiverse’ as some cosmologists like to call it (to signify that there are millions, if not billions of worlds). His swadharma, in so far as earth is concerned, is to restore the moral order on earth, with or without man. Let us not forget that, even on earth, we are simply the ‘human portion’ of His being, not the entirety of His manifestation.

Somehow our ‘intelligence’ has never been able to grasp this primal truth and to come to terms with it. The root cause of man’s narcissistic and nihilistic bent of mind is the way he thinks and looks at himself, at the universe, and at God. Every man thinks he is at once the epicenter of the universe as well as a victim of circumstance, of fate, or of an ‘unfair’ God. The perception of ‘being a victim’ leads to indifference and intolerance and to violence, which then becomes a statement, a protest, a way to redeem one’s self-esteem and to feel ‘good’ about oneself. Increasingly, in a ruthlessly competitive world, in the minds of the weak and vulnerable, and the marginalized, violence is the weapon of choice, the only way they feel their voice will be heard. The only alternatives to them appear to be surrender or suicide. Since even the oppressor feels he is a victim, violence then becomes the preferred means to ‘settle scores’ not only with the ‘oppressor’ but with the world. Thus violence breeds violence, and soon it becomes the behavioral norm, for settling disputes of every hue and character. Although violence is more extreme and endemic now, it has been integral to human nature and history. Indeed it is inseperable from or indistinguishable from everything we call human. Prehistory was so violent that some anthropologists estimate that almost 40 percent of deaths were due to fighting. Since power comes with the possession of weapons, the race is for more and more destructive weapons than what the potential adversary has or is likely to have. The only way to get out of this syndrome is to attain a different content of consciousness. It may be a higher consciousness, or a prehistoric one or a ‘bicameral’ one.

What really matters is that humans need a consciousness change to advance any further or at least not to stumble over the brink. Vaclav Havel, the playwright, said that without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness nothing will change for the better and the impending catastrophe will be unavoidable. This very imperative was reflected in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be

 

transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).573 ‘Renewing of your mind’ is nothing but consciousness change. The principal thrust of the Bhagavad Gita is consciousness change. The tenet to treat pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow on the same footing and to do all work without attachment to its rewards or returns is tantamount to consciousness change. It is only through consciousness change that spiritual transformation becomes possible. It is only through consciousness change that the hold of the ‘empirical ego’ is destroyed and the suffocating sense of separateness disappears.

While such is the drift of the scriptures, the direction of scientific effort should be to ‘fix’ the brain circuits, to transform self-centeredness into altruism, animosity into compassion, indifference into benevolence, and hatred into love. We can never say ‘never’ with science, but to think that by manipulating or boosting the brain we can master the mind, much less the consciousness, seems a huge stretch of credulity. Brain surgery can hardly be a substitute for spiritual transformation. At this moment in man’s tenure on earth, we must, with all the wisdom we are capable of mustering, face up to one fact. Maybe it was possible in the distant past, but it does seem highly improbable that with our present-day body and mind-consciousness we can incrementally ease into a spiritual something, capable of expressing and experiencing higher life. We must become innovative enough to destroy everything man has come to stand for, without destroying what man is meant to be. In the end, it is God’s choice, and the dynamics of divine intervention in human affairs can hardly be comprehended by us with the present consciousness.

No one grudges what man has achieved; the problem is with what man has become. Man may pretend to be the master of the universe but hardly has any mastery over his own life, and that will not change. But we must do our bit. We must find a way to tap not only the dormant or unused areas of the mind but also the latent and the for-long-discarded part of consciousness — heart intelligence and energy. The heart has been described as the interface of body, mind, and spirit, and it can take us on the most important journey: that of self- discovery. From there to knowledge of God, which the scriptures say is the true purpose of human life, is only a step away. The Indian mystic and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “The mind moves from the known to the known, and it cannot reach out into the unknown.”574 The real answers to real questions like who, what, and why we are, and what becomes of us after death, are in the realm of the spirit, not of matter, they are in the realm of the heart, not of the mind. To ensure that man lives in harmony and amity with other men and with Nature, we need a completely new perception of reality and of our relationship with the universe and God. That ’relationship’ has been the focus of the scriptures, and has been the subject of intense study, conjecture, and speculation. It is pretty straightforward in the scriptures: God is the origin, the creator, the sustainer; indeed God and His creation are one. Human birth entitles and empowers a soul to find a way to God.

In our obsession with ‘knowing’ God, we forget that despite his stupendous accomplishments, man has serious sense limitations. Many other species have sharper and more evolved capacities — they can hear and see better, move quicker and live longer. Just as that does not make them better beings, so is it with man. Man knows, through scientific experimentation, of the existence of much more than the eye can see, of much more than the hand can touch, and of much more than the ear can hear. We must go beyond the sensory

 

 

 

573 The Bible. New International Version. Bible Gateway. Accessed at: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2012:2

574 Jiddu Krishnamurti. Commentaries on Living. Accessed at: http://www.jiddukrishnamurti.org/thought.htm

 

power to spiritual power. Ken Wilber says, “It is often said that in today’s modern and postmodern world, the forces of darkness are upon us. But I think not; in the Dark and the Deep there are truths that can always heal. It is not the forces of darkness but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound. It is an exuberant and fearless shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us as savior.”575 It is that ‘fearless shallowness’ that we must fear, that ‘exuberant’ complacency.

There are some analysts who see differently. They are more optimistic and see shadowy signs of human renaissance, feel the birth pangs of a more humane human. Much of the ‘feel good’ about the future stems from technology. But there are also others who see signs of more fundamental and deeper reasons not to despair. They feel deep within their own hearts a shift towards the intuitive heart and as a result, they feel that humankind’s ability to move beyond limitations and experience fulfillment has exponentially grown. Many people are trying to change their priorities and values. The increasing interest in spirituality and religious practices of all kinds, albeit sporadic and sparse, illustrates that people are looking for something more than a life of unrelenting avarice and blinding ambition. They are searching, going within themselves, for meaning and purpose in their lives. So many are people’s wants and such is the sense of desperation that even for purely material things, like a job or a loan or a visa, or to destroy a rival or someone they envy, many are turning to ‘spiritual service providers’ who promise to service everything except the soul. Spirituality is the fashion of the day and salvation is now big business. We need to change the balance of forces that control consciousness, which means that the grip of the mind should be loosened.

P.D. Ouspensky said, “We must start with the idea that without efforts evolution is impossible; without help, it is also impossible. After this we must understand that in the way of development, man must become a different being, and we must learn and understand in what sense and in which direction man must become a different being; that is, what a different being means.”576 For Ouspensky, evolution into a different being does not happen en masse for humanity; it is selective, since everyone does not want it strongly enough and long enough. To become a new being, man must acquire new faculties that he does not possess, but also those that he does not have but thinks he has, what Ouspesnsky calls the ‘missing link’.

Man’s fate might well rest on his ability to control what Jalal ad-Din Rumi characterized as the “duck of gluttony, the cock of concupiscence, the peacock of ambition and ostentation and the crow of bad desires.”577 And on our ability to turn our gaze and senses inwards to see that the wish-fulfilling philosopher’s stone is inside us. The Upanishads emphasize, as the Indian philosopher R.D. Ranade put it, the need for a dual process of ‘introversion’ and ‘catharsis’. Sri Sai Baba said, “Our senses have been created by God with a tendency to move outward, and so, man always looks outside himself and not inside.”578

 

 

 

 

575 Ken Wilber. The Pocket Ken Wilber. 2008. Shambhala Publications. Massachusetts, USA. p.125.

576 P.D. Ouspensky. The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution. 1974. Vintage Books. A division of Random House. New York, USA. pp.8.

577 Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi. Masnawi. PoemHunter.com. Accessed at: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/masnawi/

578 Shri Sai Satcharitra. Chapters