Thoughts on Dibya Darshan-II

To recapitulate, a spiritual mendicant has to cultivate the divine virtues such as renunciation, restraint, spiritual efforts, service, truth, love and forgiveness. Unless one is ready to renounce, one cannot practise self-restraint. By practising self-restraint one musters up power in him. An unrestrained person is generally weak and incapable of achieving anything substantial. A restrained person, on the other hand, is a strong person. Only a restrained person can fix his mind on God. His mind becomes powerful, when it is fixed on the omnipotent existence. With skilful action and determination to attain the goal, he can move ahead braving all odds. Only a strong person can serve others. He wins the goodwill and blessings from others. In the process of service, he gains knowledge as he comes across more and more truths. Consequently, he comes to possess the quality of love. Where love rules, forgiveness comes spontaneously. He loves all just as his own self. Everything becomes his self.

The seven divine virtues form the underlying basis of this creation which is unfolded layer after layer from the causal to the subtle and from the subtle to the gross by the Law of Eternity, which is none other than the Sanatan Dharma. This Law of Eternity emanating from the causal state manifests itself as the seven divine qualities in the subtle creation and there- after in the gross creation of names and forms. The Law of Eternity manifests itself as the various lower truths in the physical world cognizance of which comes under the ambit of physical science or scientific truths. Whether it is the Law of gravitation or properties of space, air, fire, water and minerals or the systemic patterns of the living beings in whom the digestive system, respiratory system, blood circulation system etc are operative, all are pre-existing. That means, those are not man-made. Man must try to comprehend that behind the lower truths operative in the physical planes, there are also higher truths, which govern the lower truths. Those higher truths are the prerogatives of the Almighty. In other words, those are God's will or the manifestation of His Absolute Consciousness. The Absolute Truth manifests as the relativities in the subtle and gross creation, He being the only Reality.

The seven divine qualities are very much present in all the creatures whether they know them or not. Man being the most developed creature is endowed with a higher mind or intellect as a result of which he is in a position to cognize the under-lying essence of everything although he is also steeped in ignorance. He has therefore to acquire the light of knowledge as a result of which the darkness of ignorance can be dispelled. He has to necessarily nurture the seven divine virtues in him, which will help him evolve higher and higher i.e. to his goal. The goal is to return to where he had begun from. He is in the process of an unknown journey. He is way-laid. The lighthouse of knowledge can show him the right direction to reach his heavenly abode where eternal peace and bliss reign. Any deviation has to cause restlessness arising from out of disequilibrium. Hence Dibya Darshan at the cost of repetition says, " To know the Law of Eternity is knowledge and to observe the same is Dharma."

When we see or perceive something, be it water or ice, we recognize it because of its form as well as its quality. That means some truths are ingrained in it basing on which we identify certain things, be it movable or immovable, and be it living or nonliving. These ingrained truths are nothing but expressions of certain pre-existing principles or Laws involved, generally called properties. After cognizing the truths latent, we describe the same in our own language. That means, knowledge is involved in everything. In other words, it is knowledge, which manifests as an object. Knowledge is required to cognize, identify understand and also to explain things. Dibya Darshan says," Knowing the truth is knowledge." Likewise, not knowing the truth is ignorance. He, who does not know the truth, gets deluded. Due to his lesser understanding, he mistakes one for the other or super-imposes something on another. With lesser knowledge, he more often than not, gets a distorted understanding of things and therefore he suffers.

The creation is a manifestation of truths. The creation is a manifestation of the Law of Eternity. The creation is a manifestation of knowledge. The creation is a manifestation of consciousness just as matter is a transformed state of energy. Consciousness and knowledge are one and the same although their usages differ. This indicates that the truth is related with Law of Eternity. The operative Law or truth when cognized and understood is termed as knowledge. The basis of everything is of course consciousness which plays the dual or multiple roles of the maker and the made, the truth and the perceiver, the governor and the governed, the knower of objects and the objects of knowledge and so on. The Almighty, who is said to be the Pure Consciousness, is therefore called Omnipotent, Omni-scient and Omni-present. His creation with all its happenings is therefore not an accidental outcome but a conscious, perfectly regulated and perfectly integrated design encompassing the past, present and future. The same Pure Consciousness is present in every one as the self. Hence knowing the self is the ultimate goal of every one.

But man is deluded by ignorance. He thinks that he knows everything or he has got sufficient knowledge required for his living. He is not conscious of the fact that he has to learn a lot of things more and what he knows is insignificant only. He develops self-complacency. Whatever he knows, he mistakes it to be final and becomes very rigid with his level of knowledge. He is unaware that he has forgotten his true self. He does not know who really he is. He identifies himself with some names, positions and qualifications, which he has acquired afterwards. He forgets that he is living only by knowledge and further knowledge is so essential for him. When the scope for entertainment or sensual enjoyment comes, he becomes ultra-active whereas when the question of learning some higher knowledge comes, he resists and ridicules. Because of his low level of knowledge, his power of understanding is also low. He cannot grasp the knowledge of higher levels. The low cannot scale the high. The short cannot measure the long. A student belonging to a lower class cannot understand and appreciate the syllabi of degree level or university level. He remains indifferent so far as knowledge is concerned. He seeks happiness but gets sufferings. It is because, he does not know how to get happiness. He shuns the knowledge that is required to earn happiness. Hence suffering is the logical conclusion. He does not have a set goal. He wanders aimlessly indulging himself in various pursuits without any accomplishment worth the name. At times, he lays unduly more importance and does a lot of things for earning some money whereas for acquiring knowledge he pays little heed. He is rather addicted to ignorance. He never bothers to know the reasons of his sufferings. As a result of this, he cannot take any remedial steps. He is unaware that ignorance is a malady he suffers from and the only panacea is knowledge. He does not know what nectar is and what poison is. He behaves as if he is destined to suffer although he himself is Knowledge Absolute or Bliss Absolute. Due to excess indulgence in gross matters he remains away from subtle things and is therefore taken possession of by materialism. Consciousness thus gets eclipsed. It is knowledge only that provides insight into subtler things.

These are symptoms of ignorance. An ignorant man has to suffer. Dibya Darshan reiterates, "Ignorance is the cause of sufferings." Presence of sufferings indicates presence of ignorance. No one welcomes sufferings. It is natural offshoot of ignorance. Ignorance causes doubts and confusion. An ignorant man becomes narrow and egocentric. Due to ignorance he commits sins. Sins beget sufferings. Thus he is caught in a vicious circle. When in misfortunes, he worships many personal godheads and goes on begging. Possessing demoniac or devilish qualities, he makes various offerings to God to tide over his sufferings. God approves and accepts only divine qualities and not the devilish designs. The offerings made by such persons are not of any avail. God rather punishes the demons as they belong to conflicting categories.

Religious institutions are growing. Many temples, mosques and churches are being constructed. But there is no end to human miseries. Rather the same is on an increase. There are inter- religious and intra-religious discords and wranglings. This indicates that spirituality is not properly understood. There remain deficiencies and defects in our mechanical ways of worshipping. Superstitions still rule the roost. The results are just opposite. There is an imperative need to rationalize and reason out some of the prevailing religious practices by imparting true spiritual knowledge.

Due to ignorance, religion is also misunderstood and misinterpreted. Through out his life the ignorant man goes on begging before God. Several births he has taken and all along he has been asking for something or other. He has never been satisfied. He is ever in want. Whatever he had got then is useless now. He wants newer and updated things with a hope that he would get permanent happiness from out of that. But still he remains unsatisfied and lives in misery. He continues to crave for more and more. The fact that knowledge is the only source of happiness is still unknown to many. A child does not understand himself. He does not understand the world around him. The child immediately jumps for a chocolate and rejects a ten-rupee note. Similar is the situation with the ignorant person.

We are not conscious of the fact that everything belongs to God. Out of grace, he has provided us with various objects of enjoyment. We must not claim ownership over all those. God is the only owner. He can anytime denude us of all our belongings. Nothing is ours. We can hold nothing permanently. We enjoy the space, air, fire, water and earth. But we are not the owners of the same. If he deprives us of all these, we cannot exist even. Our physical bodies are made of the five gross elements named above. These gross elements do not belong to us. Similarly even the senses, organs of action, mind and intellect are graciously given to us for our use. They must be properly and carefully used. Misuse may lead to dispossession. Therefore we should not boast of anything. Without His grace we are nowhere. We must not forget to express our gratitude to Him.

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