Act of
God
Sri Krishna says, “All living beings will go back to the Unmanifest
nature at the end of a Kalpa, and at
the beginning of the Kalpa, I create
them once more. Thus subjugating the nature I create and recreate. All beings
are thus helpless victims of the nature.”
The threefold natures of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas or qualities of tranquility,
passion and ignorance, have already been discussed. These natures decide the
personality and actions of all living beings. Every living being undergoes
alternate cycles of creation and destruction or birth and death till they break
away from the cycle of rebirth. At the end of a Kalpa or thousand Yugas, everything is involved in the
unmanifest, from where they evolve again at the beginning of a new
Kalpa, to reap the fruits of their actions. The actions are decided by
their nature. Thus every being is as if a helpless victim in the hand of the
nature. The Lord as the master of the nature uses her to procreate. All other
beings are followers of their nature and hence the divine mother Prakrti. It is as if they are helplessly
subservient to the nature, both internal and external, as they are subjected to
the cycles of birth, old age, disease, death.
It is the nature which is supposed to
contain the mysterious power called Maya that binds with the veil of
ignorance. Only the Supreme Being is beyond Maya. To tear the veil, one needs the
weapon of Supreme Knowledge or a glimpse of the Truth. Ignorance will not go
unless one is able to transcend the threefold nature and the
world.
But creation and destruction are actions. If the Lord acts, isn’t
He also subject to the laws of action or Karma?
Sri Krishna
answers this, “Even though I, perform these work (of creation, preservation and
destruction), these works do not bind Me, for I am not attached to them. I am
indifferent to the consequences of My actions.”
This is a very strange knowledge and the Lord here becomes
the message of Gita personified. So
far we have heard from Him about the principle of action – as sacrifice of
selfish desires, and non attachment to the fruits. He proclaims here, as He
does in the third and fourth Chapters that He performs all actions with complete
detachment. In the fifth Chapter He also provides a differentiation between
action and inaction. As Supreme Being, all actions originate from Him. However
He can remain unattached to the actions because He does not need any fruit. Seen
in another way, He or the Supreme Being, the Brahman, is passive, inert. He is
present everywhere and everything is He, but He is not into anything because of
this passiveness, inertness, that is why He is indifferent. It is the manifested
power or Shakti which is involved in
the tasks of creation, preservation and destruction However these two states,
inertness and active state, are as different from each other as the ocean and
its waves, as the fire and its burning power, as the light and its brightness,
i.e., there is no difference, only two states of perception. We can perceive
fire by its heat, as long as we do not feel the heat or do not see the bright
light of the flame we cannot realize that the fire is burning, even though there
is a fire. So also as long as we do not see any manifestation of the power of
God or Shakti, we do not realize the
existence of the Supreme Being. Such manifestations therefore come down from
time to time and are called incarnations or avatars. These beings primarily come
down (from a lofty plane of consciousness to an ordinary plane) through
compassion for the world and to dispel the ignorance of the masses, to help them
get a glimpse of the Truth and thus free themselves from the bondage. In another
version, they come to the rescue of their devotees, for the restoration of
virtue and truthfulness, to check the decadence and degradation in human
civilization in terms of arrogance, pride, lust and greed. However since these
incarnations or unique manifestations work without any selfish motives or
desires, purely out of compassion, they are not subjected to the ordinary laws
of Karma that are binding.
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