Daily Offerings from Alokda

The earth was overrun with floods and only a few had survived. King Manu had laboured hard to save as many as he could in the gigantic boat which rocked through the waters amidst unprecedented heavy rains. It was his duty to defend his subjects and he was doing it ably enough. A dream vision had forewarned him about the imminent catastrophe. He had seen in his dream a fish grow to a huge size carrying the boat tied to a projection above its nose. The fish had appeared in successive dreams and cautioned about the great floods during which his wisdom, grit and determination will all be tested to the utmost. His task was to rescue his people and the Vedas.

It took a week-long effort to build the boat. But who was to be picked up and who to be left behind, he wondered. As the king he was duty bound to treat all as equal and could not possibly be partial in his choices. The floods had not yet started but the boat was ready. Not knowing what to do next, he spread the word around about his dream. People had to come near the river shore and then they would be taken onboard the boat starting with women and children and boatmen and those well versed in the knowledge of the scriptures and the warriors followed by the rest, space permitting. He then offered everything to the great Lord and waited for the fated morn to arrive.

The daybreak arrived but there was nothing unusual. It seemed like any other day. Though the word had been spread only a few had come trusting the vision of the king. The rest simply laughed at him. Oh! how can one trust an inner revelation that no other person had? Some thought he has gone mad. Only a few gathered who knew that the king was not only pious but also a truthful man fully devoted to the great Lord. It was quite natural then that the great Lord would appear before him to help his subjects. So they came and waited.

As the day went down and most homes had turned off the lamps, clouds began to gather suddenly and unexpectedly. The winds moved at hurricane speed and thick drops of rain started pouring like javelins from the sky.

‘Let us not wait for the river to swell more. Let us set the sail.’ The king and his trusted men shouted. But their voices were lost in the speeding winds and the boat was beginning to rock. Quickly the few who had gathered, tied by their faith in the king and the great Lord, went up the boat and set the sails. The younger among them started rowing the boat that rocked like a fragile toy upon the mighty river swell. It was still the thick of night, an unending night as it would seem since the clouds covered the sun above while the water spread covering the earth below. All who had chosen to stay on fixed grounds were drowned.

Meanwhile the boat kept rocking as if it would sink any moment. But always a mysterious hand seemed to save it. Seven days and seven nights they steered driven by the power of faith.

At the end of the seven days, the select few chosen by fate found the sun slowly showing up from behind the clouds. The boat had also reached ashore a place largely covered with snow with some land and scant vegetation around. It looked bereft of life, animals or men. King Manu, who always led by example and from the front, got down to see if there is any possibility of settling down there. He had very thoughtfully brought in the boat some cattle and seeds and saplings of trees that could give fruits and grain. But first he had to ascertain if the terrain was hospitable.

He went very far from the shore and ship before his eyes met a hermit or a seer sitting quietly in an ingathered state. Seeing the king, the Rishi smiled and greeted him saying that he had been waiting for his arrival.

The king was surprised with joy to learn that a greater Plan was aiding him in his journey.

How could the Rishi know, he thought for a moment, but knew also that the rishis had access to knowledge through a different kind of senses and operations of the intuitive mind they had evolved through yoga. Was he also not shown by the great Lord the coming of the cataclysm? He who rescued his kind had already ensured that he would find their new home. Manu sought guidance and wisdom from the Rishi, sitting at his feet in a state of humility.

The Rishi started to reveal the secrets he was waiting to impart. “The earth had grown burdened,” he started. “The evil hidden in the underbelly of life had raised its head and was polluting the mind space with falsehood, doubt, fear and greed. The earth goddess needed to change her worn out garb exploited by human greed. The great flood that drowned the earth was a thorough cleansing and purification. Now that the bath is over, she is ready to wear a new gown again.”

When Rishi paused, Manu wondered what really is earth and why must she go through such gigantic destruction. He had heard of previous pralayas but never imagined that he will witness and, even
survive, one of them.

The Rishi knew before the king could speak and continued. “Though there are countless planetary systems and countless gods and goddesses who govern the cosmos as cosmic managers, yet earth is a very special formation,” he said. “It is here that the great drama of evolution is unfolding through which consciousness climbs creating new forms for the habitation of the great Lord until this creation becomes one with the Creator.”

“Who then is the Creator? Is He Brahma, the bearer of the Word, or Vishnu, the powerful and Wise? Or Shiva, the mighty or the bewitching Krishna?” the king asked.

The Rishi replied, “O king, Brahma and Vishnu, Shiva and Krishna are but four aspects of the One Great Lord. They represent the Great Lord’s aspects of Existence, Consciousness, Force and Delight. That is why the wise call Him as Sachchidanand. Call Him by any Name and He responds since He dwells in every creature and responds to the truth in their hearts.”

The king was silent for a while contemplating on the great mysterious One, whom the wise call by many names each representing one quality or the other of His Infinity.

Then breaking the silence with a thought from afar he asked, “Here upon earth we see that everything is in pairs. So I carried pairs of animals and my fellow humans. But does the One has not His companion? How does He create?”

The Rishi explained, “Though One and Nameless, the One becomes two for the purposes of creation. They are the two principles of creation that we find everywhere, masculine and feminine, purusha and prakriti, Brahman and Maya, Ishwara and Ishwari, the Lord as the stable basis of all creation and His Shakti, the Knowledge and Power, the Conscious Force that builds, governs, penetrates, moves all creation in many worlds.”

“Many worlds?” the king pondered and reflected loud.

“Yes, O king, limited by our vision we believe the material world to be the only one. But there are countless worlds built of a different substance, worlds of the immortal Gods that are full of splendour and light, and in their contrast and opposites, worlds of the Titans, dark and dangerous.”

“But why did the gracious Lord built the dark and dangerous worlds?” the king asked as the image of a terrible shadow was recalled by him during the great voyage. It was as if a gigantic shadowy being was constantly rising from the sea to drown their boat. But the great Lord rescued it safely through the stormy turbulent waters.

“Out of love He creates,” the Rishi continued, “Out of love He throws challenges as the Night across the path of the immortal Soul so that it may grow wiser and strong even as the Lord.”

The king contemplated and saw how every difficulty had only helped him grow stronger so that he could steer his people through this tremendous crisis. But this was only the beginning of a long new journey, he thought and the Rishi again responded to the unspoken word held back in the king’s mind.

“O king indeed all destruction is the prelude to a new and higher creation. Therefore, you must rebuild a new world here and then spread out everywhere so that mankind does not make the same mistake again and bring their civilization once again to the brink of destruction.” The Rishi paused and the king anxious to know asked, “But I have little resources left. How then shall we build?”

“The outer resources are but means, O king!” the Rishi spoke, “Discover the power, the infinite Shakti, the Divine Mother and build with Her Wisdom and Power, the same Power that has built this rainbow-hued creation.”

“But where shall I find Her? By what means shall I seek Her?” asked the king.

“Find Her in your heart, O king, where She resides permanently. Find Her through love, it is through love that She has woven the stars as necklace around the Unseen Lord.”

The Rishi closed his eyes and a Voice filled the king’s heart with hope and joy and his soul heard in the deep quietude of the snow.

We are but sparks of that most perfect fire,
Waves of that sea:
From Him we come, to Him we go, desire
Eternally,
And so long as He wills, our separate birth
Is and shall be.
Shrink not from life, O Aryan, but with mirth
And joy receive
His good and evil, sin and virtue, till
He bids thee leave.
But while thou livest, perfectly fulfil
Thy part, conceive
Earth as thy stage, thyself the actor strong,
The drama His.
Work, but the fruits to God alone belong,
Who only is.
Work, love and know, — so shall thy spirit win
Immortal bliss.
Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
Fear not to enjoy;
For Death’s a passage, grief a fancied thing
Fools to annoy.
From self escape and find in love alone
A higher joy.
Seek Him upon the earth. For thee He set
In the huge press
Of many worlds to build a mighty state
For man s success,
Who seeks his goal. Perfect thy human might,
Perfect the race.
For thou art He, O King. Only the night
Is on thy soul
By thy own will. Remove it and recover
The serene whole
Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover
To God the goal.
[Sri Aurobindo: The Rishi]

The charming flute-player had bewitched the whole village. Men and women of all ages flocked around him as his lips blew through the bamboo reed. As his gentle fingers ran over the holes wild animals became docile and flowers danced with joy under his magic spell. Even the sun and rain seemed to obey the rhythm of his music. Some enjoyed the sheer magic of his flute and cared not to analyse. Others tried to understand its method and process. The scientifically minded even tried to gather all the associated things as evidence linking them to his flute-playing capacity. They studied the quality of bamboo and the size of the flute with the spacing of holes and the force of his breath moving through it. The simple, religious minded observed his lifestyle, his eating habits, his sleep and his routine. Thereby they could emulate some of these to stimulate in themselves the capacity to play flute.

Then the flute player disappeared one day. To where none could say. But he had left behind his flute. The village after waking up to the sudden loss was divided into different systems and philosophy each claiming its right over the flute-player’s fortune. Creeds sprang up, each claiming sole authority over the flute-player. Cults and rituals began in his name, where every adherent was expected to religiously follow the lifestyle of the great master. The flute was wrapped in silk and gold for the eyes of the faithful to worship. Few privileged ones (privileged in the eyes of the caretakers) got the rare opportunity to touch the flute with their fingers. In time the legacy turned into a flute religion. Each faithful member was expected to keep a flute in a worship room, wrapped in fine silk. The poor could do it in glazed cotton though. The flute was taken out of the silk cover annually in a mass festival called the bamboo-festival. The traditional ones worshipped flutes of different sizes made of bamboo alone. The modernists changed with times and flutes of fibre glass, metal and plastics with machine-art adorned their houses. The philosophers mocked the ritualists. They saw in the flute a symbol of great cosmic rhythm. They discovered and wrote books on the great seven cosmic rhythms and principles that governed life everywhere. Out of these seven rhythms sprang up the seven great laws. The hard core practicalists converted these laws into fixed and inflexible rules that all must follow. Anyone trying for any variation in the rhythm was regarded as a deviant member to be socially shunned or punished. The scientists laughed at both—the ritualists as well as the philosophers. They saw in the flute-player’s magic nothing but a clever play of harmonics. They classified these harmonics into precise mathematical formulas. They calculated the rare statistical probability of the events linked to the magic of his flute. They hypothesized how the sound of the flute drove the wind in a certain way that changed the pattern of the weather and, thereby, favourably affected the crops.

Days went by and centuries and generations. The flute-player’s magic turned into a hard religion, his free force into a system of philosophy, his creative art into a precise technique. Even worse, the rarity of the event turned many believers turn sceptics and, in collusion with the scientifically minds, they declared it all a myth and a legend believed by petrified minds.

The flute-player’s soul watched all this with great pain. For all of them had caught only an outermost fringe of his clothing. And what they all missed was his delight that he longed to share with all and the source inspiration that he wished to awaken in others so that the magic could dwell in every heart. And so, he decided to come back again. But this time he was born in another land and wore another dress. He spoke another language and had a different lifestyle. Times had changed but these things had little significance for the flute-player since he could draw the same force of inspiration and breath the same delight in every age. But people failed to recognize him. The religionists banned his entry into their citadels declaring him an infidel, a breaker of sacred traditions. The philosophers failed to understand the new music he brought to life in his creative freedom and declared him a heretic and a revolutionary. The scientists once again started analysing with their lens and their calculators. But the children followed him, entranced by his magic and the flower once again danced with joy and the wind felt thrilled and the sun once again kissed the earth and greeted it with the freshness of a new dawn.

Alok Pandey

The Ramayana is an evolutionary parable that moves at several levels. At the very outset, it is very clearly a story of the conflict between the forces of Darkness and Light, with the eventual victory of Light over Darkness, Truth over Falsehood, Good over Evil. That is how the memory of the great epic stirs in the minds of the Indian people. But the story is not as simple as that.

Ravana, the protagonist of Darkness is not all Evil. There are traits in him that are the marks of goodness. He looks after his subjects well and has ensured for them a happy and prosperous kingdom. He also engages in religious activities and can be very generous if he is pleased. He also follows some strict rules of conduct, even if they are few and personal to him and follows them religiously. Besides, he is a talented musician and an intellectual giant who is well versed in the scriptures. But herein lies the beauty of the epic. All these human achievements, remarkable though they may look, do not make him a godly being. Rather, he continues to bear upon him the stamp of the Asura, the fallen angel who has deviated from the path of Light. For, as the story goes, Ravana was once an angel, a watch-guard to the doors of the great Lord Vishnu, the preserver aspect of God. But he suffers a fall, a fall from grace that comes about through a curse of a sage when Ravana questions his credentials and obstructs his way to the Lord with arrogance and haughtiness that is unbecoming of God’s servants. And that brings the fall, that is the stamp that Ravana carries through three lives till he is redeemed by the Grace of his Master, Lord Vishnu. 

The hallmark of Ravana through all that he does is wanton arrogance and vanity that is reflected even in his seeming virtuosity. It is he who is the saviour, the protector, the winner of battles, the devotee of Shiva. He can, or so he thinks, even outdo his Lord by his strength and force till Shiva humbles him as he tries to carry the destroyer of evil along with his consort and his abode to his kingdom on his bare hands. He is a worshipper of Force and Strength and knows no other Godhead. Therefore, he distorts the great Vedic mantra Sohamasmi, That is me, to mean that the ego is That since the only self he knows is the self of the ego. It is this gigantic ego that is the mark of a Titan and not his lineage or capacities or intellectual powers or even religiosity. Of course, his intellectual capacity saves him to an extent from being an inferior form of titan, the Rakshasa, who is an image of a devouring being of some vital world, who is thoughtless and crude in his ways. Ravana, though not outright crude, is full of deceit and cunning and cannot tolerate any affront to his ego. He refuses to hear any other voice except the voice of his ego.

Since he refuses to surrender his ego, his redemption can therefore come only through a breaking of the thick shield in which his soul is trapped. His soul still longs to be God’s menial and knowing the troubled and restless nature that houses it, the soul of Ravana chooses to hurl itself against God in a wrestle since this alone, it feels, can hasten the advent of its Lord and be released from this evil bondage to an accursed and fallen life of being the Adversary in God’s world.

He too, therefore, serves a purpose in God’s mysterious scheme of things. By his triumphant egoism, by his force threatening to destroy the sages, the gods, the guardians and keepers of the laws, Ravana hastens the advent of God into this world. By this advent, not only he but the entire clan of Asuras and Rakshasas is redeemed. Thus, evil too hastens in its own way the advent of God. And what really is evil but a deviation of the energies given to us, from their true purpose, that of serving the Lord in all humility and surrender. This is the truth of Ravana’s life: A life centred around the ego is a dark and fallen life even if it is full of outer triumph and successes, even if we hide in the garb of high intellectuality and a show of religiosity, even if the person concerned is full of talent and capacities. He is still an inferior type and his soul feels stifled, entrapped and longs to be God’s servant once again. For, in the last analysis it is better to be God’s slave than be a boastful and egoistic king of the three worlds, it is better to seek His service than nurture the ambition of ruling men.

When such a nature reaches its extreme it becomes the conscious harbinger of evil. Once this happens then there are only two possibilities left for it. Either to surrender to God and be converted into Light by His touch of Grace, the longer and more arduous but more fulfilling path. Or, and that is what Ravana chooses, be dissolved by the Light by hurling itself against it, a shorter but inferior path since it brings back the soul denuded and unfulfilled.

Ravana was given the choice till the last moment, even his brothers were given this choice. But it is only Vibhisana who chooses the path of surrender while the rest simply chose to dissolve back into the Light leaving the soul’s mission upon earth unfulfilled, its work half-done. 

Alok Pandey