The second coming (a parable)

The atmosphere was solemn but not heavy. There was a lightness and a Light that one always felt in the Master’s Presence. But the solemnness of the occasion was because of the Master’s ‘illness’. The Master had not been well for the last couple of weeks, and now he seemed to be withdrawing, suddenly, as a sun assumes the crimson golden hue of dawn just before setting in the western seas, the Master came back to his full outer awareness and smiled at the grave faces that had gathered around him in the dusk.

The Master broke the silence, or rather enriched it by his sweet and liquid voice that always seemed to come from some far-off world: ‘What makes your faces so grave?’ One among them answered with a rather low voice: ‘your illness Master and the fear we all share that you may leave us.’

There was a pause as if between the destruction and creation of worlds. The Master seemed to have lapsed again. But he came out of his trance soon enough. Slowly, he responded to the disciple’s anxiety:

‘But where am I leaving you? Do you think I am this body?’ The Master pinched his flesh at places while saying so, and continued: ‘None of us are mere physical bodies alone. Only you are not conscious of it whereas I am fully conscious of my deathless Self and the many births before. And the deathless Self is immortal. It does not die.’

The conversation had started. Another continued the thread: ‘you are God, aren’t you?’

The Master paused a while: ‘yes, but it is also true of all of you, only you do not know it.’

The disciple: ‘But you are God in a special sense, an avatar, the Supreme incarnated in a material body. You are not like us struggling from below upwards.’

The Master: ‘yes, but so were Krishna and Christ and Buddha avatar, conscious of their Godhead. Do you think an avatar is not subject to the laws of earth, when he takes up a human body.’

And the disciple: ‘we thought so, an avatar is free from the laws that govern us mortals.’

The Master said with a great force in his words: ‘None of us is a mortal. Bondage is an illusion, Death is an illusion. There is none bound, none dies. Have you forgotten the great injunction of Sri Krishna, “It is only forms that perish, the soul is immortal.” Did he not also say, “There was never a time when I or these kings were not there, nor when they will not”.’

The Master looked at them with a powerful gaze. Then as the glow softened, he continued: ‘Do you think that Sri Krishna, Christ, Buddha are dead and gone? Have I not told you my own encounters with them, especially with Sri Krishna, the eternal friend and lover of all mankind in whose arms of ecstasy I spent days and weeks. How could I if he were no more. In fact, an avatar never leaves the earth. He comes for the earth and stays here as a permanent part of the earth consciousness so that all who rightly strive may be helped by him and arrive.’

The disciples looked puzzled. Of course, they had read all this but somehow seemed to forget it. How foolish of them to believe that the Master could ever leave them. The Master as if read their thoughts: ‘How could I ever leave you. No, I will be present upon earth till the work for which I have come is done. Only you would not see me with your physical senses.’

‘That makes a great difference to us,’ one of them pleadingly complained.

But the Master reassured: ‘But my help will always be available just as ever those who have a subtle vision can even see me.’

‘But your physical presence….’

The Master revealed: ‘Do you think the Divine takes up a physical body only to guide a few handful of people who are near him? He can and does do that even without assuming a physical body. The experience of many devotees and saints testifies this.’

The disciple insisted ‘But still your physical presence makes a great difference.’

The Master looked at them with great compassion: ‘It does serve as a concrete example but one cannot profit by physical nearness alone. The Master is a doorway to help you discover the Divine Master within you. One too often forgets that simply because the Master is physically available and readily accessible. In fact, the help of the Master is not so much by the words he utters and the letters to which he replies for these can be readily misinterpreted. His real help reaches out as a silent but powerful influence to all who are receptive and open. And this help and influence is not dependent upon the physical Presence though men find it easier to open to someone who is concretely visible in flesh and blood. But that is man’s limitation, not the Master’s. He acts without hands and feet, speaks without the tongue and influences us even while he is bodiless. Indeed that is the Master’s mode of action even while he is in the body.’

A little puzzled the one with a logical reasoning asked: ‘Then why does God take up a body at all if He can guide men and the world without taking up a human body? And if He does, why does he seem to suffer and even fall ill and die like ordinary mortals?’

‘Oh that is another matter. It is not about Guidance but about doing something with physical matter or the earth substance. The Divine takes up a human body as a field of action directly upon Matter and the physical conditions of earth. Now also He acts but from behind, through many layers that clothe and conceal Him. Therefore the work upon earth seems so abominably slow, difficult, and painful. But by taking up a physical body, the Divine can bring the very physical substance and earth-nature directly in contact with the Divine Forces from another plane of a higher consciousness. That helps earth and embodied beings progress as a whole, collectively and not just few special chosen men. It makes the earth cover as if in one giant leap of a few decades or centuries what it would otherwise take millenniums to realise.’

‘Oh yes, we can see that; how your coming revolutionized the entire face of the earth. The very atmosphere has changed,’ a disciple observed, but then added, as if with a tinge of doubt: ‘That is why all the more we cannot understand your illness. We have seen and experienced your powerful Presence and its Influence several times ourselves and in the world. To say the least, we have seen you cure such intractable illnesses in others. So why or how could you not cure yourself!’

The Master spoke as if enigmatically: ‘May be I could cure myself but would not. May be I wish to experience all that human beings experience including illness and death so that I can change their law. How could I do it unless I experience it? How can how ca I change the law unless I fully know it? It is easy to pass beyond the law and remain above it, it is also easy enough to superimpose the law of one plane upon another, but it is extremely difficult to change the law of one plane into another.’

The disciples looked quizzically at each other: ‘What does that mean, we do not quite grasp that.’

The Master: ‘It is easy, for example for a yogi to keep his body alive and healthy for a long period by superimposing upon it the vital force, or else, to simply rise above his illness and be free within of all reactions. That is how miracles ordinarily work. But when you want to change the material laws, then it is another thing altogether. In the previous two, you rise above them or else momentarily suspend or hold them in abeyance for whatever period you wish to with a constant superior control. It is like policing. The presence of the police controls the thief so long as they are vigilant but it does not change a thief or criminal. For that you have to enter into the criminal’s mind and consciousness and know it by a kind of identification, of course without losing your own identity. It is a deliberate process. You do this not out of any weakness but out of strength, to understand how they think and operate, what is their origin due to. And all this so as to change them. That is transforming the law.’

‘But won’t that upset the balance,’ one reflectively demurred.

‘It would do so only if the law were such at the origin and fixed for all times. But that is not the case. Earth and physical life has become what it is not because it is radically and incurably false in its origin. Quite the contrary. Its origin, as indeed the origin of all things is Truth and Consciousness and Bliss. But, in the course of time it has become almost its opposite.’ The Master paused, reflectively, as if the whole course of earth’s history stood before him in one panoramic flash.

‘But why did this fall from Glory come out,’ someone steeped in tradition asked seizing upon the pause.

The Master once again turned towards them: ‘Oh! haven’t you read, I have written all that in great detail elsewhere.’ Some of them could notice the touch of gentle irony in the Master’s words, haven’t you read, as if observing human complacency. For these were his way, gentle and subtle yet unfailing in pointing us the road of Light.

He continued: ‘Nevertheless, the fact that everything has issued forth from the Divine and contains His Presence within it, therefore everything is not only potentially Divine but also destined to become more and more so through an evolutionary process. Matter too, despite all its inertness and unconsciousness is divine in its origin and in human beings it has already reached a point wherein it can be divinised. The Divine descends upon earth and takes a physical body to redeem matter and liberate the godhead concealed in it.’

With a flash of intuition one observed: ‘Oh! like that story of Ahalya who becomes stone due to a curse and then turns into a goddess by the grace of Lord Rama’s touch.’

But another ventured to ask: ‘Is that the reason why Divine comes again and again upon earth and takes up a physical body? Is this the second coming spoken of in the great traditions of Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism?’

The Master answered: ‘The second coming is not a religious event. It is not the resurrection of a certain creed or Church or a theology nor is it to save a particular religious group. The second coming is precisely this, — this complete victory of the Divine upon earth, this reign of Truth and Light in this world, the Divine advent in all His Glory and not as He is presently concealed in the thick cloak of a human body. The second coming is about the coming of the Divine in a divinised body, a body befitting the Mighty Presence.’

The disciples were awestruck. How much vast was the Master’s vision and how small and narrow our ignorant beliefs. After a long silence one asked, ‘So you will come again.’

The Master nodded in ascent, and added: ‘Yes in a divinised body. For only such a body can truly fuse and express all the diverse aspects of the One Divine who comes as Krishna, Christ, Buddha and the rest.’

One pleaded: ‘How will we recognise you?’

And the Master said: ‘That is one reason why I must depart. So that you open your inner eyes and find me there. For they who have this inner vision will always find me for they know me as the Supreme Godhead who has assumed this form. For them the form is the door to the worlds of Light and Truth. But those who see the form alone and know Me only by my external personality will try to make a cult and a religion or an intellectual creed and dogma and philosophy out of it. That is what man has always done so far with the Divine. But with the second coming all this will cease, for the Divine will no more be hidden by the form nor will He need the imperfect figures of idea and philosophy or religion to express Himself in this world. The second coming is the great return, the return of the Divine as the revealed and not a concealed sovereign and king upon earth. That will also be the establishment of the Divine Kingdom here, the dream of all religions and the hope of mankind.’

The Master’s words fell silent in the fast gathering night. But a hope stole in the heart of earth and the Light of a New Dawn waited in the Eastern sky for the appropriate hour.

Alok Pandey