One of the unique features of M philosophy is its unique conception of God as both the creator and destroyer.In other words while all Vaishnava Acharyas have conceived god as the all compasssionate and the creator , nobody has touched upon the destructive aspect of Vishnu , Vishnu who as Krishna declared himself to be the destroyer of all worlds.There in lies the reason for India's repeated defeats at the hands of its innumerable enemies.After Shankara's mayavada had plunged the land into rigorous ascetism and deprived it of all vitality and kshatriya glory , the vasihnava acharyas came to expound on devotion but yet failed to give the complete vision of God.Thus from ascetism to sentimental often mindless devotion was what Indians took to letting the enemies get the better of them. It was left to M therefore to give the complete vision of god , not only as Krishna as the lover , as Chaitanya most famously gave us all , Krishna as the little adorable baby as Vallabha taught us to see him , but also as Krishna , the great destroyer of the worlds , the one who instigates Arjuna to perform terrible deeds in the battle field and thereby encourage men to take to all works , sarvakarmani.
It was infact this complete vision of God , as both the creator and destroyer of the worlds that allowed the Vijayanagar Empire to come into existence.Thus while all Vaishnava Acharyas weakened India often times , Madhva strengthened India by giving us the complete vision of God.
In fact he even goes onto say that even carnal pleasure performed as an offering to God becomes purified and does not cause bondage.
Thus due to his conception of god which covers everything , he is called PurnaPrajna , or one who has complete knowledge.
In fact Madhva in his commentary on the Isha Upanishad mantra says that one must know god as both the creator and destroyer and knowing him only as the creator is sinful.Knowing god as the destroyer frees us from worldy miseries and knowing him as the creator gives us Moksha.
We find a similar ideas being expounded by A in his works.God as the destroyer figures prominently in his works and he vigorously emphasises on it.
"Hindus make a mistake in loving shiva but failing to adore Rudra"
"The sweet dance of Brindavana is incomplete without the death-dance of kurukshetra"
"Destruction is the first condition of progress inwardly; the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence"
The "Essays on the Gita" is a masterful work by Aurobindo in which he brings forth repeatedly this biune formation of Vishnu as the creator and destroyer.
"Indian spirituality knows that God is Love and Peace and calm Eternity, - the Gita which presents us with these terrible images, speaks of the Godhead who embodies himself in them as the lover and friend of all creatures. But there is too the sterner aspect of his divine government of the world which meets us from the beginning, the aspect of destruction, and to ignore it is to miss the full reality of the divine Love and Peace and Calm and Eternity and even to throw on it an aspect of partiality and illusion, because the comforting exclusive form in which it is put is not borne out by the nature of the world in which we live. This world of our battle and labour is a fierce dangerous destructive devouring world in which life exists precariously and the soul and body of man move among enormous perils, a world in which by every step forward, whether we will it or no, something is crushed and broken, in which every breath of life is a breath too of death. To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda. "(Essays on the Gita , second series , chapter X , the vision of the world-spirit,(1)Time the destoryer,(in 'Arya' May 1919)
He saw in Night the Eternal's shadowy veil,
Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,
In destruction felt creation's hasty pace
Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain
And hell as a short cut to heaven's gates. (Savitri)
A Fire that seemed the body of a god
Consumed the limiting figures of the past
And made large room for a new self to live. (Savitri)
This is the figure of the supreme and universal Being, the Ancient of Days who is for ever, sanatanam purusham puranam, this is he who for ever creates, for Brahma the Creator is one of the Godheads seen in his body, he who keeps the world always in existence, for he is the guardian of the eternal laws, but who is always too destroying in order that he may new-create, who is Time, who is Death, who is Rudra the Dancer of the calm and awful dance, who is Kali with her garland of skulls trampling naked in battle and flecked with the blood of the slaughtered Titans, who is the cyclone and the fire and the earthquake and pain and famine and revolution and ruin and the swallowing ocean. And it is this last aspect of him which he puts forward at the moment. It is an aspect from which the mind in men willingly turns away and ostrich-like hides its head so that perchance, not seeing, it may not be seen by the Terrible. The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables; it will not have the truth in its entirety because there there is much that is not clear and pleasant and comfortable, but hard to understand and harder to bear. The raw religionist, the superficial optimistic thinker, the sentimental idealist, the man at the mercy of his sensations and emotions agree in twisting away from the sterner conclusions, the harsher and fiercer aspects of universal existence. Indian religion has been ignorantly reproached for not sharing in this general game of hiding, because on the contrary it has built and placed before it the terrible as well as the sweet and beautiful symbols of the Godhead. But it is the depth and largeness of its long thought and spiritual experience that prevent it from feeling or from giving countenance to these feeble shrinkings.(Essays on the Gita , second series , chapter X , the vision of the world-spirit,(1)Time the destoryer,(in 'Arya' May 1919)
No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid.
It is possible to go ahead and give infinite examples , as Aurobindo repeatedly stresses the destructive aspect of the Eternal Being in all his works.But I believe the few above that I have given will suffice.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment