Question:
I was blessed to hear from you on Savitri, the Secret Knowledge
I truly believe that "Vasudev sarvam iti. He is the doer, and he is the deed. He is the actor, and he is the act. Srasta bhi wo hai, sristi bhi wo hi hai. Man is only an instrument of the divine Will. When man does everything as per the instructions of the divine, then why should he suffer? Where do the questions of bad karma, good karma, karma phala, and karmic debt come from? When one goes through a difficult time, then very often he is told "aap ko karma phala bhogtana padega". When I did nothing, then how am I supposed to suffer? Kindly enlighten.
Warm Regards,
A Sadhak of Savitri.
Reply:
“वासुदेवः सर्वम् इति" (श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता-०७/१९) - यह सकल जगत् ईश्वर ही है।
“Vasudev Sarvam Iti” means that the whole of this world is God, i.e., He is the Creator and the Creation; He is the Actor, and the act; He is the Dreamer and the dream; He is the Thinker and the thought. It is He alone who has become man. So, it is very natural to ask how a man is responsible for his acts when God is working through him, and what the justification for this law of Karma and Fate is.
It will be appropriate to recall the first verse of the Sri Aurobindo Upanishad, which says -
“ॐ एकमेव अदिवितीयम् ब्रह्म सदसद्रूपं सदसद्तीतं नान्यत् किन्च्चिदस्ति त्रिकालधृतं त्रिकालातीतं वा सर्वन्तु खलु ब्रह्मैकं यत किन्च्च ज्गत्यामणु वा महेद्वोदारं वानुदारं वा ब्रह्मैव तद् ब्रह्मैव जगदपि ब्रह्म सत्यं न मिथ्या।“ (श्रीअरविन्दोपनिषद्:, verse-1)
Which means: “Om. There is Brahman alone, the One without a second. Being and non-being are its forms and It is also beyond Being and Non-Being. There is nothing else except That. All that is contained in the three times and all that is beyond the three times is indeed that One Brahman alone. Whatever is in the universe, small or large, noble or mean, is Brahman alone, Brahman alone. The world is also Brahman. It is true, not false.”
In the Sri Aurobindo Upanishad, Sri Aurobindo says, “ॐ एकमेव अदिवितीयम् ब्रह्म and जगदपि ब्रह्म सत्यं न मिथ्या”, that is, all this is God, and there is nothing in this world which is other than God. This world is also God, and it is real.
To understand the above problem, let’s now go through three examples -
Example-1)
Consider the realities of the awakened and dream states.
Both the realities of the awakened world and
the dream world are true. However, when we are awake, the dream appears to us
false, and when we are in a dream, the awakened world appears to us untrue. However,
both are true in their own domains, but when we look at them from outside the
domain in which they exist, they appear false to us.
When we are in the real world, we forget the dream
world, and when we are in the dream world, we forget the real world, and therefore,
one of the two realities appears to us as false.
The real problem is not that one or both
observations are untrue, but that we are not able to rise to a world where both
worlds appear in their proper place and in harmony with each other, and
therefore, we are not able to see that both these observations are true.
Yet if we can take a higher position from
which we can see both, we will find that both are real.
Example-2)
Consider the realities of Earth and Heaven.
We
all have heard about the glory of heaven, and many a man has attempted to reach
heaven. Some of them, having reached heaven and being wonderstruck by its
glory, came down and professed the path to heaven which they found, declared that
the glory of heaven is not reachable on earth, and advocated leaving the earth
as it is and working to enjoy heaven.
The reality of the Earth is not false; we know
this, for we live here, while heaven is imaginary for us because we have no
access to it. But heaven is not false - the reality of heaven is true in heaven, and the reality
of earth is true on earth. So long as we are bound to earth, heaven appears
false to us. Perhaps, for those who live in heaven, earth is false. It is only
for those who can live both on earth and in heaven, transcend both earth and
heaven, and can harmonise between earth and heaven, that both earth and heaven are
true.
It is only when we can transcend earth and
heaven and establish harmony between the two that we can find that both are
real.
But why is
it so?
In the cosmic lila, things have been so
arranged that we get glimpses of the beauties of a higher world, but we can’t enjoy
them unless we change and transcend our present limits. If it were so that we
could enjoy heaven while living on earth, there would be no urgency to
change earth, and earth would have remained the same for eternity. It is an
evolutionary necessity, which entices us with glimpses of the glories of the
higher world but does not let us enjoy them unless we change ourselves and
become rightful claimants of those riches. This incompleteness and corresponding dissatisfaction force us to
participate in evolution.
Example-3)
Consider a room which is closed from the inside, and you are trapped in it. But it is only you who has, in a moment of unconsciousness, closed the room from inside and hid the key somewhere inside the room.
Now, if
you don’t know that you closed the room and also have the key to unlock it, you
feel trapped in it. But the moment you remember that you have the key, you
realise that you are in fact free. So, the feeling of freedom or imprisonment
depends only on your memory. (Once we realise who we are and are able to
recover our ‘smriti’ (स्मृति), we are no longer entrapped in the world or
the body.)
Freedom and imprisonment are both real. So long as we do not have the smriti (memory), who we are, we are under the subjection of Nature and feel imprisoned, and the moment we get our smriti (memory) back, we become free and the masters of Nature.
So,
freedom and imprisonment are both true, but what we experience depends on the
state of our consciousness.
Coming back to your question –
The
Law of Karma and Fate are true in the domain we live in, and the truth of “Vasudev Sarvam Iti” is true in a domain of perfect unity. Both seem contradictory, but
both are simultaneously true.
God, being Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Absolute,
can assume both states simultaneously. The Absolute, the Alone, and the
All-Powerful can become One as well as Many simultaneously. But man bound by
Reason thinks that the two are opposites and can’t exist together.
So
long as we live in human consciousness, we are governed by the Law of Karma and
Fate; it is only when we rise much above this divided world to a world in which
there is perfect unity and only One, that “Vasudev Sarvam Iti” is true.
Even if the fundamental truth is “Vasudev Sarvam Iti”, it is only the Law of Karma and Fate that are applicable to us. So long as man is bound to human ignorance, he can’t claim the privileges of the world of unity.
This is the cosmic lila; if it weren’t so, man would not feel himself entrapped and suffocated and never try to escape the human consciousness, and the whole plan of evolution would fail.
Not only that, a light, a beauty, a bliss from the highest region of creation enters our world and creates discontent among some. It is this discontentment which forces them to rise and find their truth. And the whole of humanity advances with them.
This is the hidden Divine Plan!
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