Destiny of Choice 002

Equality of Diverse Forms

G: I do not accept all that you say. But being spiritual-minded, I tend to believe in ‘Adhwaita’. You and the world are the same – the world, as you know it now exists only as long you ‘exist’. There is no sense, for e.g., in ‘planning’ for your near and dear’s lives after you exit! So much for life insurance!!

S: Most Indians are likely to be spiritual and, if they are analytically oriented, they are likely to be believers of ‘adhwaita’. However, it is the operation of the Stochastic Dynamic Destiny Principle that forces one to plan and take insurance, while forcing another not to exercise the choice to plan or take insurance.

G: It seems that you have moved in this direction of thought after years of worldly experience and your thoughts are still evolving: I wish that there was some way of skipping the learning curve and directly become a sanyaasi!!

S: You are right: earlier experiences must have caused me to think in a particular direction. I did not have any choice. And, I believe that for most of us there is no way of skipping the learning curve. Only a few may have been destined to become sanyaasi with out having to go through the experiential learning curve.

G: I also think that ‘realization’ cannot be through only reading or listening to discourses from tomes or religious texts. It can only be through experience – which is what life is.

S: I agree with you that ‘Realisation’ may not in most cases be possible without learning from experience. Maybe, reading, listening to discourses and participation in relevant discussions also helps progress towards realisation. However, I believe one can reach the state of realisation only if one is destined to realize.

G: It seems today, you have been mostly agreeing with me.

S: I have agreed with you only to the extent I am destined to do so.

G: Can I continue to ask assorted questions to find out your understanding on what others quote from Hindu scriptures?

S: Please do.

G: You agreed that desires motivate us into work or action. Then, what do you understand of the preaching that “ one should work without any attachment”? Unless one is attached, how would one work?

S: You are right. But the preaching is not a prescription for others to follow. To my mind, the preaching means that while one is in action, the action gets better done if the actor remains independent of, and not attached, to his action or the goal of the action or the uncertainty of the consequences of actions.

G: What is attachment?

S: Attachment is the absence of Independence. One may feel that his or her very existence and happiness dependent on the actions one is doing and desired outcome of those actions. He becomes tired with worries doing that action. That is normal. But the one who does not have this feeling may not act at all or may neglect in performing the actions. This is also normal.

G: But can there be persons who work without attachment?

S: Many persons work without attachment sometimes or other. Everyone cannot do this all the time. There are persons who concentrate on their actions and never worry about not being in action or being in action. They never worry about the result of action/ inaction while they are in action/ inaction. They live as if they are independent of their status of being in action (includes thinking as an action). It does not matter to them even if they are not busy in actions. Such people are truly independent. Such persons work without attachment. They are a rare tribe. They work like machines, say an automatic air-conditioner, when they are switched on mode and keep quite when in off mode. The hypothetical tree I talked about earlier works without any attachment.

G: Is it possible to develop such detachment in a human being?

S: Yes, if that is the destiny of a particular person. You preached certain good behavior to all people through religion. But very few people are able to follow and practice such advice. Even if you had given training to all people to steal, rob and kill others, only a few would be able to absorb or use that training.

G: If people are so different, how can you treat them equally?

S: You cannot treat them equally in your response behavior. You will not treat the thief who was trying to steal from your house in the same way as your friend. You cannot pay the same salary to your car driver and your aircraft pilot. But in your heart you know all these persons are manifestations of God and therefore they are nothing but you. This knowledge makes a difference.

G: What difference does this make?

S: You do not get upset that there are thieves or rogues in the society. You do not get angry with the thief or with the police for failing to prevent the thief from entering your locality at night. You catch the thief if you can with the help of your neighbors who rushed in when you raised the alarm. You defend yourself from his attack to hurt or kill you. You call the police to report the incident, handover the thief or its dead body if you killed him in self-defense. Yet, you are not angry with the thief. You see him as another manifestation of God.

G: How can you be not angry with someone who tried to hurt your interest? How can you think of your enemy as a manifestation of your God?

S: I am not suggesting that you do that. I also do not believe that people in general will do that. I am merely saying that there is no real cause of being angry with the thief or the enemy. You always knew that there are going to be thieves and enemies. Being in an angry state only hurts oneself rather than the enemy or the thief. I am merely saying that we cannot escape the Truth that the thief and the enemy and also you are the manifestation of the same God. When we accept this Truth, it makes a difference.

G: Only difference this will make is that the thieves and enemies will be further encouraged to hurt me more?

S: I am not sure that this will indeed be the case. A person, who maintained his family by robbing others on the roads through dense forests, suddenly went into meditation and later became a pious sage and wrote a classic Epic of the Hindus. He was as much a manifestation of God when he was a robber as when he transformed into a pious sage named Valmiki. The fact that I am not angry or that I admit the Truth about manifestation of God, cannot be a cause to encourage the thieves and enemies. Even if I pardon the thief, the police will not automatically let the thief go if it is once caught. The enemy will continue to be my enemy if he so wishes out of jealousy or a feeling that I have hurt his or society’s interest whether or not there is any real justification for his feeling against me.

G: Your God seems to be very unfair in suggesting that you forgive your enemy and the thief.

S: My God suggests all types of actions: getting angry and not getting angry or accepting the Truth about manifestation of God or not accepting that. I will be doing as per one of the opposite or alternative suggestions. Which one I actually do is the one I am destined to do. I have no real choice as the thief and the enemy.

G: You always end up using your Destiny Principle to justify what you say. But most people in the World will not accept your Destiny Principle. Even the few who might accept your Principle, will not accept that individuals have absolutely no choice.

S: I agree. What you are saying about the rejection of and reservations about the Destiny Principle is also consistent with that Principle. If all human beings were to accept the Destiny Principle and believe in it, God’s manifestation in human form will at least temporarily end.

G: Better we move over to some other questions about cultivating this thought about everything being manifestation of the same. Why is it that we find impossible to accept this so-called Truth you are talking about? We are unable to consider a thief as a manifestation of God.

S: Because as per the destiny principle, human beings have adopted the practice of giving identification on the basis of differences in forms and relating behavior with forms. Consider a situation that all human beings look exactly alike and wear identical dresses. . Ignore sex differences for the present. However, different humans have different kind of emotions, capabilities and preferences. So differently persons will behave differently. Some may have a tendency to steal while others may not. It would be impossible then to relate the behavior of one human being with his form. You would not know who was the thief and whose house raided. You cannot even enforce relationships between two different human beings. Because all look so identical, you cannot make out who did what to whom. Getting robbed becomes a risk similar to getting into a road accident or getting hit by hurricanes in a hurricane-prone area. You then do not identify the act of stealing with a particular identified person. You accept the incidence of theft in your house as a natural calamity or accident due to human error. No one will have difficulty in accepting others as manifestations of God.

G: But this hypothetical situation of all looking identical is not true of the World. Very few human beings are identical in form.

S: I also happen to know what the real world is. But, for a while consider hypothetical situations for analytical purposes. Let us consider another hypothetical situation where humans have different forms but all behave similarly because they have identical emotions, capabilities and preferences. Let us assume all try to steal from others. Then, the society accepts stealing as normal behavior. No one will have objection to accepting others as manifestation of God.

G: The problem arises because different persons not only look different but also behave differently in the real World.

S: You are right. That is the source of the problem. Now let us make you as the God to design a system, by which you impart the stealing tendency among some of the people, say, one-sixth of the population, so that you have a real World, rather than hypothetical worlds. You are a great mind and also fair. So you decide to throw a dice before each child is conceived as your manifestation and decide that whenever six comes up, the child will be imparted with stealing tendency. Now, the probability of each child born with stealing tendency is same (one-sixth). It is you as God designed this system to manifest yourself to make a real world. So, we cannot say that the thief is not a manifestation of God. The thief is the same as other manifestations of God. It is only the throws of dice that caused the differences in behavior among human beings. There was nothing intrinsically bad or evil with the human who turns out to a thief. Why then should others not accept the thieves as manifestation of God if they knew that it is only throws of dice that made the behavior difference and helped create the real world?

G: I agree if what you say about what God throwing dice is true, logically it would be necessary to accept thieves as manifestations of God in the same way as others are. But how can a throw of dice explain so many types of differences among human beings? We just do not have only six categories of human being.

S: You are right. There are numerous types of attributes among human beings. There are numerous types of tendencies, preferences and capabilities. Also, the strength of attributes also varies from very weak to very strong. If God has to be fair then He must resort to a large series of throw of dice for child being conceived to cover so many attributes with varying strengths. Maybe, He must drawing cards from a pack of 52 cards a number of times for each child conceived Maybe He has to play games of Carom or Ludo and relate each coin cleared into the holes to each attribute to be imparted. Will He have all this time?

G: But how do we know what game of fair chances does God play to impart different behavior, emotions, capabilities and preferences to different persons?

S: God need play these Games at all. Only the process in which children are conceived, born, brought up, grow, age and die, can these probabilities be assigned. The process itself becomes a stochastic process. Once the probabilities are automatically and randomly generated, God does not have to play any game of chances like throwing dice again and again. Human beings are only a small part of the Universe. There are other living beings, the physical materials, the energy flows, the vast space separated by billion light years, the numerous terrestrial bodies and cosmological forces and matters, the billions of Stars and black holes. The destiny process covers the emergence, continuation, transformation and disappearance of each such entity. You can recall that I referred to Stochastic Dynamic Destiny Process or Principle.

S: Yes, I do. If the material used to create, sustain and destroy any form or formless entity is drawn from something already in existence and the probabilities of the emergence, transformation and disappearance of all entities are the result of an unbiased, fair, stochastic process, each form can be regarded as the manifestation of God. We can easily appreciate the unity among diverse forms. Everything is God.

S: Yes, each entity goes through a process not under its control. Whatever it does and meets/ transact/ interact with is nothing but a part of that process. So every entity is essentially the same.

G: It is difficult to practice this in life.

S: Certainly, it is so. And, this is so because the destiny process itself is so designed. Human beings are but a small fraction of the Universe. The destiny principle covers the entire Universe including the destiny principle itself. Even if every one wishes to practice the thought that everything is nothing but the manifestation of the same God or Destiny Principle, the probability of everyone’s wish becoming true at the same time is so very negligible that we can say that this will never happen.