After the heavy and philosophically intense previous episode, let me start this episode with a light and hilarious story.
Once someone asked Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Guru of Swami Vivekananda, the question “Is God Saakaara – with form, or is he Niraakaar – without form?”.
Ramakrishna had spent most of his life worshipping God in a feminine form of Goddess Kaali. Even during meditation, he could see none other than the figure of Kaali. How could he have answered this question, other than by saying “Of course God has a form!”.
But Ramakrishna was supposed to be a realized person. How did he actually answer this question?
And many modern Swamis like the one I was referring to in the previous episode, keep repeating this view. This in spite of the fact that many later Indian philosophers, who succeeded Sankara, strongly refuted this concept of mythya as put forth by Sankara. They did not agree that this world is an illusion.
When you interact with the world around you, have you ever noticed something? No matter what your eyes see, or ears hear, or tongue tastes, or nose smells or your hands touch, it is your mind that ultimately provides you the information. If you are asleep, or unconscious, no matter what your eyes see or ears hear, and so on, you will not be aware of anything! So, it is the mind that sees, or hears, touches, tastes, and smells.
That being the case, how do you know that what you see, or what you hear, or what you touch etc. actually exists out there?
On the other hand, many of us, either by training or by intuition believe that we are not just the body, but we also have a soul that gives us the subjective experiences.
Most of us never get this question. We always assume that the world is indeed what we perceive it as. That is our notion of reality.
Have you ever tried listening to some wonderful music recital on your mobile phone, sitting in a bustling market place? You know it is futile, unless you are wearing noise cancelling earplugs. The surrounding noise would totally submerge the music coming from your phone. Either you have to move to a quiet place or use an appropriate device.
Honestly, I don’t know what many of the modern Gurus mean when they say that they are ‘realized’.
Someone attains realization while sitting casually on a rock, another gets it when waiting for a train in a busy railway station, and so on!
I was a bit irritated by that question. I was a purist who believed that Yoga is beyond experiencing, beyond mystifying. It is a journey beyond the mind. Hankering for some experience was demeaning the potential of Yoga, that is what I thought.
In the previous episode, we discussed the Varna system that was prevalent in India. It is this Varna system that later gave rise to the often-criticized caste system.
I had an Indian friend who lived in US for a while. She was working in IT industry like most Indians who migrate to US. She told me an interesting incident.
Most westerners brush aside Hinduism as a polytheistic religion with idol worship at its core.
People of Abrahamic religions pride themselves as practitioners of monotheistic faith. That they feel, makes their faith superior to ‘the rest of the Pagan’ faith systems.
If you have followed my previous posts and or many of my earlier posts, you will agree that monotheism is not some prerogative of the Abrahamic religions.
Some of the thoughts expressed in these Upanishads are amazing, seen even from today’s point of view. My intention is not to say that whatever expressed in them is right. I just want to highlight how wrong we are when we try to assign a chronology to intellectual evolution.
Sometime last year, on August 18th 2022, to be precise, I started my new series of talks based on the ancient Indian scripture namely the Bhagavata. That day happened to be the birth day of Krishna who was the focus of my talks. That series went on for 33 weeks and finally concluded this year i.e. on March 30th 2023.
You remember the circumstances in which God agreed to appear on earth? We discussed that in the very beginning. It was to put an end to many tyrants who were wreaking havoc on earth and tormenting helpless people. With the killing of Kamsa, Chanura, Jarasandha, Duryodhana and so on, God’s purpose of coming to earth was successfully completed. Now it is time to lower the curtains and end this divine drama.
Having failed to convince Duryodhana about the futility of the war, Krishna set out on the next strategy namely Bheda or ‘divide and rule’. He wanted to weaken Duryodhana and force him to give up war.
We were discussing the plans of Krishna to go to Hastinapur as a peace maker. It was a strange situation. On one hand, Krishna very well knew how futile his attempts were. He also predicted the end game and assured Draupadi that war was going to happen and her revenge would be taken. On the other hand, Krishna wanted to play his role as a human being. He set off to Hastinapur as an envoy of Yudhishthira who wanted to avoid war at any cost. Yudhishthira was even prepared to give up his claim for the Kingdom.
