Thoughts on Dibya Darshan-III

A drunken person does not realise his precarious condition. He fumbles and falters. He staggers and stumbles. He lives in misery. Good sense does not occur to him. He behaves as if the extent of sufferings is not enough.

Similar is the position of the ignorant man. He remains away from knowledge that is required to get happiness. He is not aware of his power within. He tries to make his body clean but never tries to make the heart and mind clean. Hence God remains far away from Him. He, at times, mechanically performs some rituals by making some offerings to God and remains satisfied. He never evinces interest to know Him. Dibya Darshan preaches, "How shall you get something if you do not know it? What shall you ask for? Even if you happen to get, how shall you keep it? Bhasmasur had also been endowed with some boon. What was the result? He destroyed himself by that boon. You never asked for knowledge that is so essential to earn peace and happiness. Your conscience has been veiled as a result of which you are not in a position to discriminate between good and bad, right and wrong, permanent and transitory. Your indulgence in material objects cannot bring you liberation. You are mistaking your role as real and forgetting the Reality. You are engrossed in worldly life being oblivious of your creator. Your creator is only your liberator. Hence it is essential to know Him first. To know Him you must enquire who you are. In other words, you must acquire self-knowledge. If you forget God, you are bound to suffer. You are not inclined towards God because of your ignorance. You do not know His greatness. You only know that mundane matters will give you peace and happiness. Once you know how important God is, then only you will start contemplating on Him. You take interest in gold because you know that gold is valuable. Once you know that diamond is more valuable than gold, you start taking interest in diamond. Similarly when you come to know that God is most valuable, then only you will be attracted towards God. This is the way mind acts and reacts. But you are simply swayed away by your mind and senses who always keep you hypnotized."

It is the realised soul who can impart true knowledge to the aspirants and show the right path. He can only revive the power of discrimination in you. He can clear the cataract of ignorance in you. You can see things from proper perspectives. In other words, your angles of vision will change. You will be able to perceive the truth by acquiring higher knowledge. Thus you will one day know the Supreme Truth also. The Supreme Truth is Bliss-Absolute. The more you come to know Him, the more you will love Him and the more peace and bliss you will get.

He, who knows the mystery of Maya, will be able to get rid of Maya. He, who knows that he is ignorant, will try to get rid of ignorance. He, who knows what liberation is, will try to attain liberation. He, who does not have any inquisitiveness, is more or less like an animal.

As the level of knowledge changes, the standpoint also changes. As the standpoint changes the angle of vision also changes and thus man's perception towards everything also changes

He understands the futility of his earlier efforts. He resets his priorities and pursuits accordingly. He can well understand his lacunae and loopholes. He realises his inadequacies and sets his goal for completeness. The whole concept of life undergoes a sea change. So far, he has been mistaking something as life, which is, out of the blue, overpowered by death. Now he wants to live a life, which is free from death. Life must live and death must die. He ultimately realises that he is unborn and immortal. Divinity is his true self. If anything is to be craved for then it is only divinity, which is the true self. Any other pursuit retards or diverts the journey. A journey without a set goal is a wasteful fiasco.

Therefore, all actions relating to our survival, maintenance of our bodies, living in a society with happiness must be linked with that divine goal. In other words, delinked to this divine goal every action becomes meaningless. For attaining divinity an individual must, while living in a society, make his environment clean and trouble-free failing which his spiritual practice may get disturbed. Hence the need for inculcating divine qualities. A congenial and mutually supportive society contributes to the development of the individual towards his goal. Therefore the individual, society and God are the three phases of life. Once Godhood is attained, the totality is attained. To the realizer, the individual, society and all environments get transformed into one Reality which is the ultimate homogeneous essence encompassing everything. All becomings merge with the Being who is but the Indivisible Whole.

As discussed earlier, the low cannot scale the high. Mind cannot scale the intellect. Intellect cannot scale the conscience. Jiva cannot know the personal Godhead. The personal Godhead does not know the Brahman. This inertia of ignorance continues unless it is dispelled by the light of knowledge from the spiritual master. The thickest of darkness vanishes the moment a candle is enkindled. In other words, darkness is transformed into light. Light cannot find darkness. Light does not know darkness. Darkness is a derivative of light.

The sun always signs. When we turn our back towards the sun then only we see shadow. If we keep our doors and windows closed we feel the absence of light. We experience darkness. In other words, when the path of light is obstructed, darkness appears. In fact, darkness is created by light. Darkness owes its origin to light. Darkness again is relative. Although ultra-violet and infra-red rays are present in the so called darkness, we humans are unable to see things because of our limited vision whereas some other creatures are able to see properly. That means darkness is a state of light. They are not opposite to each other. They only differ in degree and not in kind. The light of the eye determines whether there is light or darkness. Still higher than the light of the eye is the light of knowledge or consciousness .We are unable to see that light which enables us to see. We are unable to see that conscious energy which keeps us conscious and which provides us all energies that we possess. Because of the rays of the Sun, we are able to see both the Sun and the Earth. But we have never seen the rays. We only see some brightened objects on which rays fall.

Just as darkness is a state of not seeing, similarly ignorance is a state of not knowing. It is knowledge that signs out everywhere and always. In fact, we are the products of that knowledge power. When we are not one with knowledge, ignorance casts its spell. Our inborn varieties such as body, senses, mind and intellect obstruct the path of knowledge. Separatist walls are raised. Knowledge path gets cut-off. The light of the Self appears diffused because of the lenses we wear. Differentiation and variation are created. A single object or subject is perceived from various angles. Effects become many and varied due to different perceptions. Different coverings work as different lenses as a result one is viewed as many. We are ourselves compositions of multiplicity. The undivided knowledge appears divided, circumscribed and fragmented. Ignorance starts its reign. Ignorance is natural or logical phenomenon that cannot be explained. Ignorance is as old as knowledge. Ignorance is as beginningless as knowledge. But ignorance has end just as darkness has end. Knowledge does not know of any ignorance. Ignorance is a potency of knowledge. It is a state of knowledge conditioned by self-generated imagination or apparent fragmentation.

To transcend ignorance one has to be one with the undivided pure knowledge, i.e. the self that is pure consciousness. Any departure from this highest state shall create the shadow of ignorance and therefore generate multiplicity. The self-sun is the light that always signs. For the knower of the self, there is no ignorance. For the ignorant, there is ignorance. Ignorance is the perceiver and the same ignorance is the object of perception. In a higher sense, knowledge is the perceiver and the same knowledge is the object of perception. The jiva (ignorant) experiences the jagat. The realiser experiences the self within and without. In other words, it is knowledge that appears as ignorance and it is also ignorance that appears as knowledge for the ignorant.

Energy is invisible and indescribable. Energy manifests as matter. Matter is a form of energy. Here the energy is my body and all its constituents. There the energy takes the forms of mountains, oceans and different objects of the phenomenal world. The invisible energy becomes the matter after several stages of modifications. Matters are also transformed into energy. Thus matter and energy are one and the same. In other words, there is a unity or homogeneity in heterogeneity. There is nothing other than energy. Total energy is constant, neither increasing nor decreasing. Changes like deaths and births are merely intermediary phases. Through changes only, new products are created and the creation wears new look every day with new colours and new glamours.

Dibya Darshan explains this by its Theory of Change according to which there exists an unchangeable conscious entity that governs all changes. It is not the matter, which has got the power to transform itself into invisible and indescribable energy. It is not the energy that has got any power to transform itself into meaningful and significant world of matters. A conscious force is definitely at the background of everything i.e. creation, operation and destruction. A systematic law is undoubtedly at work to maintain the consistency, regularity and universality.

Man is himself a product of this grand cyclic process of change. Changes do occur within and without every moment everywhere. The objects change. The subjects change. Therefore, the mutual relationships also undergo changes calling for adjustment or resetting always. Changes are multidimensional. Changes take place in the gross as well as in the subtle worlds simultaneously resulting in equations getting changed and so also the application of formulae. We, who are composed of varieties and variables, live in a world of varieties and variables, interact with them to create momentary equilibrium until a state of permanent equilibrium is reached which is a perfect state of bliss or the heavenly abode.

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