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
