In Pursuit Of Happiness Part 6

 Continued From: http://thoughtsonsanathanadharma.blogspot.ca/2017/06/in-pursuit-of-happiness-part-5.html

The Chandogya Upanishad records the conversation between sage Udhalaka and his son Shwethaketu. The conversation takes place between the twenty four year old son and his father after Shwethaketu returns home from his gurukulam after completing his education. The son stands tall feeling proud that he is a learned man. Sage Udhalaka realizes that his son feels proud because he doesn’t have true knowledge called Brahma Vidhya. The sage then engages his son in conversation so that he can teach him Brahma Vidhya which is the true knowledge.

‘I see that you have returned home after completing your education. You are now a Somya, a person eligible to partake the Soma Juice offered in sacrifices but, do you know about the commander?’

Thus the father starts a conversation to teach his son about God and God realization. The summary of the conversation is as follows.

God is omnipresent as well as the Supreme Controller:

We say that God is Supreme because He is omnipresent but so is ether. Ether is present everywhere but omnipresence alone does not grant it supremacy. God is Supreme not just because He is omnipresent but because He is also the controller of everything. God wished for the cosmos to be created and from Him the entire cosmos was created. Thus everything we see is His body and thus everything is Him. A pot can be created from clay; hence, we can say that a pot is made of clay and thus is clay. We can use a pot to store water but we can’t use plain clay to store water. Clay can be used to store water only when it is fashioned into a pot by a potter using a kiln. The pot was clay before it was made. Similarly everything we see now was Sat. Sat is the Supreme Brahman. Sat has been transformed into this Universe. Sat is clay, the potter as well as the kiln.

Sat is the soul of every jeevatma. To explain this concept let us examine the following analogy. Let us say that we are travelling in a car. We are the passenger and there is a driver who drives the vehicle. In the journey of life, the car is our body, we are the passenger and the driver is Lord Krishna who is the Supreme Brahman. The car and the passenger depend on the driver to traverse the path; they cannot work without the driver. Similar to the car and passenger, our body as well as us depend on Lord Krishna as He is our soul and our driving force.

Eternal nature of jeevatma and prakruthi:

The jeevatmas are eternal. Our body is made up of prakruthi. Prakruthi is eternal. Hence, the jeevatmas and the building blocks of our bodies are both eternal. This is also supported by Science through the law of conservation of mass; matter can neither be created nor destroyed. At the time of creation, God changes matter from one form to another.

Creation and Apocalypse explained:

If we as well as the building blocks of our body as well as this Universe is eternal then what happens during a pralaya i.e. during apocalypse?

Before we can answer the above question, we need to understand why God undertakes creation in the first place. He is very compassionate by nature. Before creation we exist in an inactive form. He takes pity on us and in order to enable us to achieve eternal happiness, He creates. He gives us independence after creation and waits for those souls who seek Him and reach Him. He assigns bodies to the souls based on their past karmas. Some souls realize the reason behind creation and reach our Lord whereas most of the souls start to misuse their bodies. The souls gradually accumulate karmas which lead them further and further away from reaching the divine feet of our Lord. The Lord again takes pity on all the souls and causes pralaya to prevent us from sinking even lower. At the end of pralaya He decides to give us one more chance to see if we will reach Him and starts Creation again.

Lord gives rest to all souls during pralaya. We exist as one with our Lord. This condition of oneness during pralaya is known as Sat. Plurality was one in the beginning. Sat is unique. There is no second force on Sat to make it create. Creation transforms the inactive into active state. The cycle of creation and pralaya can be explained with the example of a self-blowing balloon. Let us imagine that there exists a balloon and it can inflate itself at its own will. Creation is equal to the inflated balloon and pralaya to the deflated balloon.

People often get confused and think that there existed nothing before creation. Something cannot be created from nothing as matter can neither be created nor destroyed. During pralaya we exist along with God at a micro level called sukshma roopa. After creation we exist as sthula roopa or in macro form. Thus creation is the process through which God transforms the micro into macro form and pralaya is the reverse of creation.

At the time of pralaya we are united with God and at the time of creation He becomes our souls. Thus we are never separated from God. We are always with Him and hence it can be said that we are Him.

Continued On:

In Pursuit Of Happiness Part 5

 Continued From: http://thoughtsonsanathanadharma.blogspot.ca/2017/05/in-pursuit-of-happiness-part-4.html

We can only know Him with the help of the Vedas. The Vedas have been accepted as true by many intelligent sages like Sage Vasishta, Veda Vyasa, Parasara, Valmiki and many great philosophers like Sri Sankaracharyar, Sri Ramanjacharyar and Sri Madhvacharyar. We are in no way more intelligent than any of the above people and nor do we have the proper training to discover God on our own. We accept many scientific theories without any question. For instance, we accept Bohr’s atomic model without question. How do we know that it is the most accurate model of an atom? Have each and every one of us seen an electron in orbit? We accept the model because it has been accepted by other scientists. We know that we don’t have the training/intelligence to discover the atomic model on our own. Similarly, we have to accept the Vedic teachings about God because it has been accepted by the many sages and philosophers. The Vedic teachings are millions of years old and are not created by any individual person. The Vedic hymns were heard by the ancient sages and hence the names came to be called as “Shruthi” in Sanskrit meaning, those that were heard.

Now that we have accepted the existence of God, why are we created? Who is responsible for our fate? What is the purpose to be achieved by us in life?

We know that we don’t take birth just because our parents desired to have children as there are many childless couples in this world who wish to have children. There are also many couples who do not want children but are blessed with children. Hence, our birth is not because of our parents’ wish to have a child but, because the Lord caused us to take birth and assigned our parents to us. We are created as a sport by the Lord. The act of creation, destruction and preservation is but a game to Him!

If He wants to play, why should He use us as a toy? Think of the number of natural calamities like tsunamis and earthquakes which cause sufferings. Think of the day to day sufferings faced by a physically handicapped person, people struggling to get a meal and people trying to endure the aches and pain caused by diseases. These are also the result of His creation and how could He make us suffer just so that He can play His game? It is because of the above sufferings that most people believe that God is non-existent.

The Vedas state that He is always happy. Thus, even when we suffer, He is happy. Doesn’t this make Him cruel?

There are two types of happiness.  We are happy when we are satisfied. The second kind of happiness is when we laugh mockingly at someone. The Lord experiences both these types of happiness. When we follow His rules and strive to reach Him He is happy because He is satisfied with us. When we go against Him and harm other people, He is happy because He makes fun of us because like an elephant throwing sand on its head after a bath, we work foolishly to harm ourselves. For example, there was a servant who worked for a landlord. The servant was foolish but wished to obtain a raise. His friend advised him to approach his master when the master was in a good mood. One day the master asked the servant to purchase some oil. In those days people had to take a container with them and fill it with oil at the store as oil didn’t come prepackaged in bottles and cans. The master saw the servant leave with a sack.

‘Where are you off to with the sack?’ asked the master.

‘to get oil,’ replied the servant.

The master started to laugh loudly mocking the servant’s foolishness. Whoever heard of filling a sack with oil! The servant thought that the master was happy and approached the master that instance for a raise. We can all imagine what happened next! Like the master laughing at the servant, the Lord laughs at us when we keep getting stuck in this material existence called the ocean of samsara.

God is not cruel because He doesn’t give us a random body and a random life. We are assigned a body, a family, an occupation, wealth, health etc. according to our past karmas.  If He assigned our subsequent births at random then He will be at fault.  He will then have the fault of troubling us and He will be cruel because we suffer. As He doesn’t assign our subsequent births at random, He is not cruel. We get rewarded for our good deeds and are punished for the bad deeds. When we suffer, the sins earned by us are spent thus reducing the amount of sins in our karmic account. Every time we are happy, the merits accumulated in our karmic account are spent. The sins and merits do not cancel each other; they have to be spent separately in order to bring the karmic account to zero.

Even in a common game like cricket there are rules to be followed. A batsman is rewarded six runs or four runs for hitting boundaries and is called out if the ball is caught by a fielder. Why do we need rules in a game? Why can’t the batsman be allowed to play even after he had been called out? Why should each team play with 11 members in their team? If a worldly game like cricket should have rules including reward and penalty why shouldn’t the Lord’s game of creation have the same?

Continued On:http://thoughtsonsanathanadharma.blogspot.ca/2017/06/in-pursuit-of-happiness-part-6.html