 |
EDITORIAL Sitaramdas Omkarnath in Abhay Vani (Fear Not) says, “Do not suppose this is possible and that impossible for me. I can bind an elephant with a lotus-thread and drown a mountain in a drop of water. No one has power to determine the course of My actions. Leave alone your solicitude for family, have no thought of wealth, health or unpaid debt; I have made provisions for all your needs and liabilities. I am yours. Oh, call—call me. All your worries shall pass. Fear not. Fear not. Fear not.”
These are words of blazing assurance and succour. But there is something deep in this. In this passage the Lord has driven home three fundamental truths about the nature of Grace and His workings. First, He says, Do not suppose this is possible and that impossible for me. Why does He say this? Perhaps, he is quite aware of our natural tendency to judge everything. Perhaps, he knows we are dogged by reasoning and we try to see everything with our limited, so-called ‘practical’ vision. We want to see the infinite with our glasses tainted with finiteness. The realm of possibility and impossibility lies within the limits of reason. The divine drama however is happening at a level higher than possibilities. For Him, nothing is impossible. And it is in this ‘impossibility’ that we can have succour when all things possible have let us down. Lord is saying: I can bind an elephant with a lotus-thread and drown a mountain in a drop of water. These words are not meant to play up or dramatize what He can do; they simply illustrate the law of transcendence which is common to His workings. They point at the higher reality where what we think is possible and impossible is irrelevant or illusory.
We are always trying to see and understand Grace in our day-to-day life, always trying to bind the working of Grace to the same worldly plane on which we exist, but Grace is a transcendent principle. Consider, for instance another famous assurance. Mookam Karoti Vaachaalam Pangoom Langhayate Girim, Yat-Kripaa Tamaham Vande Param-Aananda Madhavam (I Remember with devotion the Divine Grace of Krishna who can make the dumb speak with eloquence and the lame cross high mountains,
I remember and extol that Grace which flows from the Supreme Bliss manifestation of Madhava). Once again, there is no intention to dramatize or play up. Lord’s transcendence is being extolled. He can make a village bumpkin turn into a brilliant scholar like Kalidas. By his Grace, Valmiki can reincarnate in a worldly, pleasure-seeking Brahmin living in a small village East of Allahabad and blossom into Tulasidas. By His Grace, a Shankara can turn a gooseberry in the charitable hands of a destitute woman into a rain of kanak (gold). We are surely not confronting limitations when we talk of Grace.
Do not suppose this is possible and that impossible for me. This is the warning for the very beginning. As soon as we think of God and the way He might work for us, we are letting our immature and inchoate belief in the usual workings of nature cloud our vision. We are infected with the concept of possibility. But God’s workings are impossibly possible. That is why He is telling us not to suppose. If we suppose, we are limiting our expectation as well as His dispensation.
When it comes to God’s or Guru’s Grace, the impossibility can happen at two levels, the ordinary and the extraordinary. When we are stubbornly attached to seeing life play out in a particular manner, anything other than the expected is impossible. So, we think such and such thing is impossible in a given circumstance. Come Grace, it happens. Impossible happens!
Then there’s the totally miraculous way that the Lord adopts. Something we cannot conceive to be possible, happens. That’s impossible again!
Our expectations of what, who, when, where, how, why—are all the things that create a sense of possibility and impossibility for us. We don’t realize these things don’t hold for the divine. Our suppositions begin with our notion of what, who, when, where, how, why. Lord is telling us not to suppose. He is telling us not to think what will happen, who will make it happen, when it will happen, where it will happen, how it will happen and why it will happen. Any of these can be altered by the law of transcendence.
Shaivic scriptures speak of five Shaktis of God: Srishthi (creation), Sthithi (preservation), Samhara (destruction), Tirobhava (concealing grace) and Anugraha (revealing grace). What Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath is talking here is the play of last two aspects. Tirobhava and Anugraha— the concealing and revealing Grace. Guhanath Swami speaks of this in the following words. “Anugraha and Tirobhava are powers of God in the domain of Arul. Arul is Grace and can be defined as any happening by God's design in our life that has to do with our spiritual evolution or the fulfillment of our prayer requests by Him. An answered prayer is God’s Grace. Protection from calamity or suffering is God’s Grace. Spiritual revelations or knowledge is also God’s Grace.”
Tirobhava or concealing Grace raises a barrier between the spiritual and the material. But there’s God’s kindness in this obscuring too. He does not want us to know more than what we are ready for. When the covering is removed, full grace shines forth as Anugraha. To begin with, the aspirant seeks things from Him with conditionality; then there are fewer conditions imposed on God about His dispensations and finally none.
While Tirobhava is God’s power to limit, Anugraha is power of God’s power of limitlessness. We often hear the saints speak of Aseem Kripa. It is clearly limitless. As the curtain is lifted from our lower life that’s untouched by the divinity in us and around us, the kiss of infinity is experienced by us. Then we start not to suppose.
The next thing He says is No one has power to determine the course of My actions. God’s ways are inscrutable. It’s futile to assess or probe these. If we indulge in juvenile research of the Ultimate, we are bound to draw wrong conclusions. It’s best we purse our lips. We don’t know. Nobody knows. Only God knows! That’s the way it is. But we need not lose cheer. He will let us know what we need to know through His revealing Grace- Anugraha. Until then, we have to bow in silence.
The third and the last thing He says in the passage quoted is I am yours. Oh, call—call me. Calling is necessary. When we pray, when we worship, when we serve, when we meditate, that is precisely what is being done….calling Him! It is easy to call one who is ours. He says I am yours. God is ours, so calling him is easy and natural.
Let’s repeat the heart-warming, fear-dispelling, soul-stirring words of Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath again:
Do not suppose this is possible and that impossible for me. I can bind an elephant with a lotus-thread and drown a mountain in a drop of water. No one has power to determine the course of my actions. Leave alone your solicitude for family, have no thought of wealth, health or unpaid debt; I have made provisions for all your needs and liabilities. I am yours. Oh, call—call me. All your worries shall pass. Fear not. Fear not. Fear not.”
Raj Supe (Kinkar Vishwashreyananda)
The Editor
|
|
Home
Home
Previous Article