Aham Brahmasmi
Turning the pages of a
newspaper in the morning is no longer a cheering and inspiriting experience. Newspapers
no longer greet us with “Good Morning” but disturb us with a “Grim Day” to
follow. Every page has a couple of gruesome news about someone hacked to death,
another killed in an accident, a woman or a girl child raped, a senior citizen
bludgeoned in his bed, acid attack on women who had spurned male overtures,
besides stories of corruption, nepotism and criminality at high places that are
the least comforting to us in our daily quest and prayers for “achche din”. There
are just a few days (can be easily counted on our fingers) when one reads about
a sensational victory by our men in blue (that recur once in a blue moon) but
long before we could hold on to that solitary moment of joy, news about another
pathetic display in subsequent matches by our blue heroes(in cricket, Hockey,
Football, Tennis etc ) take the fizz out
of life. Waiting for the sound of the
newspaper at the doorstep, experiencing the
diurnal excitement of plonking oneself on the sofa and dexterously holding a
cup of tea on one hand and the half-folded newspaper on the other are now only
nostalgic memories as all the excitement of reading the morning paper has been
replaced by a weary monotony of looking at the grim headlines that speak of
macabre happenings all around us. The daily ritual tryst with the newspapers
gets over in less than five minutes and the only way to relieve oneself off
worrisome negativity is to get out and take a morning walk in the park when the
sun is still mild.
The smell of fresh air, scented with the fragrance of the flowers, in
particular jasmine, has a salutary effect on our frayed nerves as it quells the
morbidity and chillness arising out of of fear and rekindles the spirit of
life. (The scented air reminds me of how on some days we get perfumed
newspapers-because the newspaper barons know that the fresh crisp smell of the
morning papers no longer tickles our olfactory senses). The park that I walk
through has very tall trees and every time I see a plane on a slow descent
mode, I get the fright of my life seeing the wings of the plane almost grazing
the tree tops. The tallest tree in the world is Hyperion, measured at
115.61 m (379.3 ft) in US while in India this distinction goes to the
Great Banyan tree whose highest branch is 25m(82 feet). When I stand before the
tall trees in the park that are almost 12m(39 feet), often my eyes fail to locate
the top and reminds me of the Jack and
the Beanstalk story where the beanstalk is symbolic of a tree connecting Earth
to Heaven. Standing at 1.5m in front of
the tall trees that are10-12m tall, I realize human smallness vis-à-vis
Nature’s ampleness that contrasts with human arrogance and power to dominate
over gentle and generous Nature. The power that humans wield is ubiquitous as
it spares none in its attack. Man rages against man, against animals and birds,
against his personal and professional environment and above all, against Nature. The daily news
stories of Man’ violence is illustrative of his ravaging nature. Unlike God who
has the Power to create and the Power to destroy, Man seems intent on only exhibiting
his power to destroy. It will be not wrong to say whatever Man creates is
always to destroy anyone or anything inimical to his existence.
A lot of questions
arise when I see the majesty of nature that is at variance with the inhumanity
of Man. Two pertinent questions among them are where is God, the Creator, the
Preserver and the Destroyer and why has He endowed Man with greater power for
evil than for good. Even those who are atheists cannot ignore these two
questions. The first one is for them to assert that God is nowhere and thus
deny His existence and the second one to give Man the centrality of the world
he lives in and his choice to use or abuse his power. As for the believers who
never question established profundities, God is omnipotent and omniscient and
He will have his final judgment on Man’s (mis) deeds. There is never a doubt in their minds about
the end result for all evildoers.
In some way this line
of argument is distressing and skeptical given the enormity of violence all
around the world. Is God powerless to frighten Man into submission to His
warning about evil or is He merely a silent spectator of the ruthless power
unleashed by Man on all His creations and enjoy the fun of Man destroying
himself and his species? Why in the first instance has He given Man the power
to reason and discriminate and then withheld it by giving him the greater choice(
or a choiceless choice) to follow evil and suffer all the consequences thereof?
The Hindu believers in God cite the examples of Rama and Krishna who gave up
their heavenly status to descend as human beings to fight evil only after
allowing evil a long period of pomp and power to unleash great destruction all
around. For the Hindu believer, the present phase is a repeat of Ravan Raj that
will be decimated at the end amidst the triumphant chant of Victory to God:
Praritranaya Sadhunam Vinashaya Cha
Dushkritam
Dharamasansthapnaya Sambhavami
Yuge-Yuge.
( Whenever there is a fall in Dharma
and a rise in Adharma, I come, says Lord Krishna.)
The simple unquestioning
Hindu minds with their belief in the karma theory looks at rebirth as the final judgment to direct the good and
the evil doers to a life of happiness and misery respectively. But to the
skeptical minds like mine, the total blank-out of our past life in our new birth
negates the theory karma theory that pleasure and pain are directly related to
our past karma. The escalation of evil
today in different parts of the world- the
Boko Haram menace, terrorists gunning down innocents , ISIS brutish
attack on men, women and children who do
not accept their sovereignty, the
liberal use of firearms by ordinary people in pursuit of robbery,
revenge and criminal acts –( that appear as headlines in the newspapers) -makes one wonder whether karma
theory has any validity today. Even the children’s Fairy Tale about Jack and the
Beanstalk endorses Jack’s action of stealing the giant’s bag of gold coins, his
goose that lays the golden eggs and his harp that plays by itself- despite the
help rendered to him by the giants’ wife. When the giant chases him down the
Beanstalk, Jack axes it, making the giant fall to his death. This is vengeful
cruelty with a happy ending for Jack and his mother who live happily ever after
with the riches stolen from the giant. In short the moral of the story seems to
be “steal if you can and embrace evil as good.”
Let us return to the
unsolved question about God, Good and Evil. Our epics have shown Ravan and
Duryodhana as representative of cruelty and inhumanity. In the Bible we have
the story of Adam and Eve, not acting in obedience to the commands of God, but coming
under the influence of Satan. In the Old Testament, we have the story of Job,
the pious and the righteous man, suddenly deprived of the grace of God and
subjected to disease, poverty and humiliation. He is not told that his
suffering is to test him and prove his loyalty and obedience to the Lord that
wassuspect in the eyes of Satan. When
Job seeks an answer to his question as to what his sin was to merit such a
punishment, the Lord refuses to tell him that He had a wager with Satan with
regard to Job’s piety and implicit faith in his dispensation. Instead he takes him through a virtual tour of
the lovely garden and asks Job who had created the sun the moon, the stars and
the sky, the ocean and the rivers, the flowers and the trees, the birds and the
animals for Man to enjoy. The story shows the Power of the Lord to create but
at the same time it reveals his Power to take away all that He has created at
any time he chooses to.
Looking at all the
stories, it is clear that there is a Power- God or Godot as Samuel Beckett
identifies the Absent Power or call it by any other name- that is principled on
co-existent contraries, of good and evil, of creation and destruction, of light
and darkness, of pain and pleasure, of tears and smiles, and last and yet the
most significant, namely of birth and death. The Power is invisible, inscrutable
and imperturbable, beyond human imagination. For reasons unknown, Man among all
the created species has been bestowed the power to reason and discriminate between
the contraries. Ironically this power to choose is not an unrestrained one for
many choose evil which seems more alluring and seductive than good. As our
mythologies have shown, our Hindu Gods will wait for full blown-up adharma
before stepping in to destroy it. By the time much evil would have pervaded the
world and in the Lord’s sweep that annihilates evil, a lot of good would also
be washed away. The great truth that good ultimately triumphs over evil allows
for free and uninhibited dance of the devil for a long time in the world. The
Mahabharata is a chilling story of the death of all but the five Pandavas
representing Dharma. In the Ramayana many sages are subjected to the demons’ unholy
acts before Rama could save them. Job in the Old Testament suffers immensely
before the Lord makes him acknowledge His power to offer and deny grace at His
will as His supreme prerogative. Adam and Eve are shown to fall unto the
temptation of Satan before which the Lord’s decree pales. No doubt, the ultimate
victory is that of the Lord who shows His benignity through his Power to
destroy. In this delayed entry of the Lord to set things right, Man’s choice of
evil to work out destruction seems true to the truism “Justice delayed is
justice denied”. The power given to Man to discriminate is a choiceless choice
as Man makes evil his preferred choice. When one sees Nature in her wholesome
glory and beauty, one recognizes the majesty and benignity of the Power that
has gifted it to us. Though the Power that has created should have the
responsibility to sustain it, it has ceded that responsibility to Man. And Man
has not lived up to the trust. He has failed to sustain his environment, but
worse is his insatiable greed that has made him worse than a rapist in denuding
Nature. He has made his choice clear- to destroy Nature to satisfy his wants. He destroys not only Nature but also the basic
human nature that has evolved over many millennia to live in harmony with his
surroundings.
Is the Lord waiting for
him to annihilate all that has been created before He comes and destroys the
predator who happens to be the best among his own creations? If He continues to
be an absent Lord, let us stop waiting for Him and use our own fair sense of
judgment to discriminate in favour of good. It sounds cynical to retort that
this is easily said than done. Having experimented with evil and the disaster
it has unleashed from time to time, why not experiment with good and see if the
tide of violence can be reversed. As
Nietzsche said the Will to truth is present in all human beings. In order to
discover the truth one must question all one has learned and observed. In Beyond
Good and Evil, he asks the modern generation(though he wrote towards the
end of the 19th C, it is more relevant for us today) to develop critical sense and not blindly
accept dogmatic premises on morality, God ,Evil and Good handed down to us
through many ages. His most pertinent
observation was to look at evil and good as different expressions of the basic
impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. He goes into the realm that is beyond good
and evil where one goes beyond mere assimilation of accepted dogmas and works
out a new dynamic approach towards affirmation of new values. Adapting
Nietzche’s exhortation to “Will to Power”, it is time for us in the 21st
century to “Will to Good” to counter the forces that “Will to Evil”, to harness
a new perspective for life, that would value Nature and her bounty, that would protect
the life-sustaining environment, and above all that would cultivate humanity
through love, peace, friendship and respect and appreciation for diverse people
of diverse origins and religions. There is no need to cry “O’ Lord , Where are
you?” and wait for Him to arrive to save us and the planet, but become the Lord
Himself absorbing both the power for good and evil and create new meanings and
values to sustain ourselves and the world around us. Isn’t this our scriptures
have endorsed? Aham Brahmasmi – I am
Brahman where the meaning is expanded to state "the
core of my being is the ultimate reality, the root and ground of the universe,
the source of all that exists.". These two words in Sanskrit explain the
unity between the macrocosm and the microcosm directing Man to understand the
power given to him, to improve his present state and guide his future both for
himself and the generations to follow.
