Man's Fate and God's Choice, Bhimeswara Challa [best free ereader .TXT] 📗

to say that age is an issue of mind over matter, and if you do not mind it does not matter; but it matters because in ageing, man loses both his identity and dignity, and some kind of pain — physical or mental — becomes a constant. Science is now focusing on this and is promising that it will soon drastically curtail the duration of, if not eliminate, old age by extending youth and warding off death. Even if science succeeds in that attempt, the body still remains vulnerable to physical destruction.

 

 

 

66 The Times of India, Hyderabad, India. 5 July 2008, p.14. To undergo the litmus test. Experience life after death. Soma Chakraverthy.

67 Nicholas Wade. Changing Regions of Genome Suggest Evolution is Still Occurring in Humans. 2006. The New York Times. Volume 126, Issue 9: Tuesday, 7 March 2006. Accessed at: http://tech.mit.edu/V126/N9/9long5.html

The rope and the snake

Whether it is the ravages of ageing or the dread of death, or even attachment to material things, they all come from our inability to sift and separate, distinguish and differentiate what Vedanta calls ‘real’ from the ‘unreal’, apparent from the actual. In most things we do, we just seem unable to see what needs to be seen, know what needs to be known or get things done in the right way at the right time. We cannot make up our minds, with all our powers of differentiation and discrimination, whether we are different or not different from the Ultimate Reality. Some say we are identical; some, that we are separate; and some others, that we are both identical and separate, different and non-different. If we are confused at such a fundamental level, then everything gets mixed up and life gets — or appears to get — drained of any meaning. That is why much of Vedanta grapples with this question. The doctrines of maya and avidya, for example, are meant to remove the cobwebs and mist that cloud our vision and comprehension. And despite all Vedantic explanation and illumination, man remains mired in his mind. Compounding the problem, we are also not clear where we are now poised in the grand scheme of Nature, on the canvas of the Cosmos. Many great thinkers have speculated that the human is not the last rung on the evolutionary ladder, not the ultimate product, and that it can — and should — evolve spiritually into a new species, a de facto divine life on earth, as different from man as man is from animal. For that, he must transcend the limitations of his body and mind, a body that is “more luminous and flexible and adaptable, entirely conscious and harmonious.”68 Sri Aurobindo called that life “supramental existence”. With the body and mind acting as impregnable barriers to all labor to touch his own soul, man has turned headlong into hedonist hubris and material prosperity. None of them are sought in their own right or for their own worth, but in comparison and competition to others. Our desires, even our devotion to God, are comparative, competitive

— and even confrontational. We want to please — or appease — God ‘more’ than others to obtain earthly advantage. The legendary Hebrew King Solomon, known for his enormous wealth, power, and wisdom, wondered, towards the end of his life, how we should spend our brief time on earth and, after having ruled out the paths of pleasure, knowledge, wealth, and power, he said “Be happy and do good as long as you live. Whatever you do, do it with all the might you have, you never know when life might end” and “God will bring every deed into judgment including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”69 More than 3,000 years since, and after the rise and fall of many empires and civilizations, that wisdom stands true. The bitter truth is that the world has never been short of wise men or words of wisdom, but it stands soaked from crust to core all through history with the toil and tears of the helpless and hopeless.

Human passions have always been stronger than the ability of human social personality to cope with them, and increasingly, they are in conflict with human priorities. Psychologists have long debated what constitutes ‘personality’ and why it differs so radically from individual to individual, even among siblings. Moreover, if we think we are stuck with our personalities, and there appears a possibility of changing them, the question remains: how and to what extent? The paradox is that while genetic inheritance of personality is an important factor, at least partially, some psychologists like Daniel Nettle (Personality: What

 

 

 

 

68 Sri Aurobindo. Philosophy and Spiritualism of Sri Aurobindo. Supramental Existence. Accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo

69 Jerry Boone. Graduating from Life. 2008. The Times of India, Hyderabad, India. 27 July 2008. p.17.

 

Makes You the Way You Are, 2007), maintain that parenting cannot have any measurable impact on a child’s personality, and also that while our basic personalities do not change significantly after childhood, our behavior can. The question is, if genes cannot wholly account for the cluster of traits that add up to our personality, and if parenting is only a marginal input, then what ‘makes up man’ and the way an individual acts and reacts? The answer to that question takes us to theological theories like predetermination, fate, and karma. The goal of human life has been viewed scripturally as a process of personal development and liberation. At the same time, all religions emphasize that when it comes down to a choice between individual rights and even life and social good, one must choose according to the larger interest. Religions preach belief, virtuous conduct and piety, taqwa in Islam, as guiding principles, and together constitute a social ethical code of conduct. Man’s planetary responsibility as khalifah, a vice-regent, is another important aspect particularly in the present context. Despite all that, there has always been a clash between our personal priorities and the common good. Even spirituality, contrary to its premise, has been deemed as self-development divorced from social responsibility. Although long viewed as a bridge between different religions and between science and religion, spiritual quest has become an expression of existential restlessness, a desperate cry for help, an escape from all moral ambivalence. It is so identified with religion that many who practice the essence of spirituality loathe to be called ‘spiritual’. They do not see any need for any label; they are content to lead a life of service, simplicity, and compassion for the weak and vulnerable. But, for the so-called Generation X, like much else in modern life, spirituality too has become selective and another ‘virtual’, distinct from the real or actual. We choose what suits us and set aside what our senses do not like. There has always been a clash between what man can do and what he ought to do, and that gap has become wider than ever before. Our intellect, emotions, and feelings are increasingly at odds with the collective imperative. As a result, ‘we sail in fragile vessels across a raging sea of uncertainty’, terrified that the next tsunami might topple the ‘vessel’. Whether we are beguiled by maya or the mind, we live in a world vastly varied from the one we think we live in, or the world we ought to be living in. We are caught in the black hole between the real and the unreal, what we experience and what that is.

That brings up one of the most profound theological, metaphysical, and philosophic questions: what really is the character of human experience? Since time immemorial, the question that tormented the minds of spiritualists, scholars and philosophers was about the true nature of our existence, the reality of the things and the objects of the world that we so painfully experience. What is real and what is unreal, actual and virtual, and how does one differentiate? After a lot of introspection and striving, they came to a conclusion that what is real should be ‘permanent’, ‘eternal’ and ‘unchangeable’. Since everything in this world is changeable, transitory, and momentary, it cannot be ‘real’ in the true sense of the term. And if everything is unreal, can there be anything really ‘real’? Is it a matter of ‘knowing’ or ‘not knowing’ that is a question of the limits of human comprehension? Or is it far deeper, that there isn’t anything real in creation? A famous prayer, sometimes called the Abhyaaroha mantra, in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad begins with ‘Asato ma sad gamaya’, meaning ‘Lead Thou me, from the Unreal to the Real’. The problem is that we confuse the unreal with non-existence; the universe is not unreal, but our perception of it is; the illusion is real.

Vedanta says that all our miseries come from our mistaking the vain appearance for the real, which is Brahman or God. Many analogies are offered to make the distinction intelligible to a lay mind. One of the most famous is the often-quoted example in the Upanishads, that of the ‘rope and serpent’, or rajju - sarpa - bhranti as it is called in Sanskrit. This analogy is employed to explain the delusion of daily life. It roughly means that in dim light where things cannot be perceived clearly (agnana, avidya or maya) even a piece of rope (rajju) can be mistaken to be a snake (sarpa), and one can actually experience all the emotions (fear,

 

anxiety, etc.) associated with a snake. However, when bright light (gnana) is brought to bear, one will then see the rope clearly and all emotions associated with the non-existing snake will at once dissolve. The message is that the pangs of sorrow or the allure of happiness associated with worldly pleasures are because of our state of existential ignorance or the product of maya. But when one is exposed to knowledge of the real and the unreal, the samsarika delusions disappear and one will be able to perceive the real. The analogy assumes that the actuality is the rope and the illusion is the snake. But what if it is really a snake, which the world actually resembles, and the illusion the harmless rope? In one sense, it hardly matters; and in another it means everything. In his masterpiece Vivekachudamani, the great Adi Shankara says that one who is overpowered by ignorance mistakes a thing for what it is not; it is the absence of discrimination that causes one to mistake a snake for a rope, and great dangers overtake him when he seizes it through that wrong notion. Hence it is the mistaking of transitory things as real that constitutes bondage. Adi Shankara also says that only the man who discriminates between the real and the unreal, whose mind is turned away from the unreal, who possesses calmness and the allied virtues, and who is longing for liberation, is qualified to enquire after Brahman. Ramana Maharshi uses this allegory and says that the realization of the Self which is the substratum of human life will not be known unless the belief that the world is real is removed.

But the point is that, so long as we live in this world it is hard not to believe, even less to behave, that life is not real; it almost seems an insult to our intelligence. One would be tempted to say that if all that we experience in life — its triumphs and tragedies, ecstasy and suffering, highs and lows — are not real, then it does not really matter what is ‘real’.

Vedantists try to get over the apparent impasse and say that the unreal is not the world per se but that the way it appears to be to our senses is not real. Does it mean that the earth is not what it seems? That man is not what he pretends to be? That a tragedy is a triumph and vice versa? That pain is pleasure and