Advaita from scratch - Kanchi Mahaswamigal's Discourses - 13

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Kanchi Mahaswamigal's Discourses on Advaitam

 

KMDA – 13

 

Tamil original starts from http://www.kamakoti.org/tamil/part4kural306.htm

 

 

Note: In these discourses, `the Acharya' refers to Adi Shankaracharya. The

speaker is the Kanchi Mahaswamigal.

 

The world play and deluge

 

It is not ever possible for everyone to make an effort for Mokshha and succeed

in eradicating their worldly life. All the world is God's play; He creates

people with different multifarious tastes, they dance to His tune, run about

here and there, confront one another and all this constitutes His Cosmic Play.

Maybe this is what He likes to do and enjoy! If every one becomes either a jnAni

or a first class devotee, if every one has left it to His way and is always one

with Prema (Love) towards God or one with the Infinite Peace of the Almighty,

will God ever witness the panoramic variety unfolded by His drama?

 

At the same time His infinite compassion begins to play after having seen and

allowed all of humanity to dance according to their will and desire and He then

takes them back under the pretext of a deluge. They all merge in Him not by any

of their sAdhanA but by the Lord's Will.

 

That is the Grand Deluge (mahA-pralayam) at the end of which there is no more

world or universe. The puranas talk of several pralayas:

 

There is a daily Deluge (nitya-pralayam), namely the sleep in which every one is

merged (Sanskrit: `laya') in God.

 

[Note by VK: Though `merged in Him' is the familiar

English translation, I am going to use

`drawn into Him' in this context.

The reader will note the wisdom of this use as we go along]

 

Again after death, for some time they are drawn into Him before they go to

either svarga (heaven) or naraka (hell) or a punar-janma (worldly birth again).

There is another pralayam approximately after every period of seventy

chaturyugas (or mahAyugas) of four yugas each (this period is called a

manvantara), lasting for some time when they are drawn into Him. When fourteen

such manvantaras are over, Creator Brahma goes through a `night' of equal

duration (around one thousand chaturyugas) when there is no work of creation and

all JIvas are drawn into the Lord; this is called `naimittika-pralayam'. Creator

Brahma's one day (together with the night) is counted as 2000 chaturyugas. 360

such Brahma's days are counted as one Brahma's year and he lives for 100

`years'. At the end of that period another Brahma has to take over to start the

creation again. During this period of transition there is a pralaya called

`PrAkRtika-pralayam'. We may be `drawn' into Him so many times for so long.

Still none of this is the advaita union of one-ness with Him where we

consciously and permanently become one with Him. All those who have been drawn

into Him during the various pralayas have to be reborn when the pralaya is over.

In this `merging' or `being drawn into' there is no experience or cognition of

one-ness with Him.

 

The permanent release from transmigration is the aikyam or oneness by which we

become the Consciousness that is ultimate. Layam and aikyam are different. When

one object is drawn into another it does not mean they have become one. That is

why those who have been drawn into Him during the pralayas have the possibility

of being thrown again into samsAra. The standard example for this is the

nitya-pralaya through which every one of us go through daily.

 

The ShAstras speak only of the masses of people being drawn into Him purely by

His own Grace, without any effort or sAdhanA on their part and of their coming

out again to be born in another creation; they never speak of the entire world

of people getting enlightenment and the blissful Mokshha, never to return again.

 

In other words, the contention of the ShAstras seems to be: " Any world for the

matter of that will have several people who are not eligible for Mokshha; in

particular, the number of people without bhakti or jnAna will be numerous. When

the Lord thinks of giving even to such people some peace from the turmoil of

samsAra, He creates the situation of their being drawn into Him by destroying

the very world in which they live and drawing them all into Him for a time. He

does not create or allow a world to have all its people with only Bhakti and/or

JnAna .

 

For the true peaceful state of JnAna, it does not matter whether there is a

world or not. For the delightful flavour of Love (prema), there are the worlds

of Kailasa and Vaikunta, where the only objective is the ever-increasing rasa of

prema towards the Almighty. On the other hand in this world the Lord's play has

to be only a mixture of the nine rasas.

 

For the nobler benefits of worldly life.

 

The Lord's play ends only when He draws everything into Him during the

mahA-pralaya. Otherwise, the crores of people who are only puppets in this play

of the Lord, do not go into the path of Mokshha by their own sAdhanA. Maybe they

will go a little on the path of Bhakti. And those who go on the advaita path of

mukti will be even fewer.

 

However they have to be made to go on these paths at least to some extent. That

itself is a great consolation for the turmoil of the samsAra. This `some extent'

has to slowly increase and at least after several births it must become a full

involvement.

 

In order to make them go on the desired path, those who aspire for mukti, can

`utilise' their daily shAstraic obligations which have been prescribed for them

for their mental purification. Of course an actionless bhakti may not be

possible in the beginning; only that with action is feasible – we already saw

this. Thus, to gather people into a satsangh, collective worship in temples,

mass bhajans, exposition of religious-value-oriented material -- these are the

actions which can be done to lift the masses of people. But for such work we

need people who are at least one step higher on the spiritual ladder. The latter

set of people who involve themselves in karma for the sole purpose of achieving

a mental purification and thereby proceed towards a release from the samsAra

are certainly higher, spiritually, than the ones who observe a little bit of

bhakti for the purpose of improving their material welfare. Therefore the

better ones can perform the tasks outlined above for the purpose of involving

the others more and more in the bhakti path. It not only contributes to their

mental purification but also results in the service of spreading bhakti all

around.

 

( To be continued in KMDA – 14)

PraNAms to all advaitins.

PraNAms to Kanchi Mahaswamigal

profvk