Tuesday 20 January 2015

Realize One in many

|| योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् ||
Mananeeya Eknathji is bringing out the difference  between Western thinking and Indian. Darwin's theory of evolution doesn't give full explanation of the story of creation. But or sages like Patanjali gives us total cause and effect relationship and explain it. Here quoting famous utterance of Swamiji, Eknathji explains the ideas of evolution and unfoldment. He says:
Darwin propounded the theory of evolution, according to which this world has evolved by certain stages. In Indian philosophy, there is no evolution but unfoldment. The world is being unfolded, gradually leading it to perfection. There is progressive striving towards perfection. The potential "becoming" is leading towards "Being". The superman has to be transformed into a divine person and for that we are unfolding ourselves. These two ideas of evolution and unfoldment are diametrically opposite. Swami Vivekananda therefore declared in a forceful manner, "Each soul is potentially Divine. The goal of life is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do it by work or worship, philosophy or psychic control, by one or more or all of them and be free." Think over it again and again—digest it inwardly. It is the most important statement and every word of it is used advisedly. Either out of ignorance or hesitation or disregard, one may avoid to bestow thought on it and act accordingly; but ultimately one has to come to it. There is no other way out. This is the quintessence of Indian philosophy in a nutshell.

Further the Oneness of life is also to be understood and how the whole creation is but manifestation of that One Divinity in various forms. It all appears different but the core is one. With a very practical example of the three seas in Kanyakumari, Eknathji explains :
When some V.I.Ps come, I have to accompany them to the Rock Memorial. And after having observed all the things they sometimes remark, "How fine it is! We find three oceans coming together and we also see the different colours of three oceans, the Arabian sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal." I do appreciate their remark. I wonder whether there are really three oceans. The ocean is one only. It is for our convenience that we have named them differently and the colour of all of them is the same. The water of the ocean has one colour only. But due to the depth or shallowness of the waters or due to the reflection of the sky we speak of their having different colours. So also, all forms of life are one. One can just name them differently to distinguish one from the other. We name also abstract things. We call Gunas by different names, but there is no watertight comparmentation as such. Every Guna has the mixture of two other Gunas also but to show the predominance of one particular quality, we name it by that quality. By which attribute can we label Swami Vivekananda? Was he a Jnanayogi or Karmayogi or Bhaktiyogi or Rajayogi? As a matter of fact, no yoga is complete without the presence of other yogas. It is by the comparative preponderance of the one over the rest of them, that entitles it to be named by that yoga. God is one but we have so many deities and so many stotras on each one of them. This is not multiplicity, but it is unity in diversity.

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