The drama of life: Life is like the projections of a cinema camera onto the cinema screen. The play of light, colour and flicker causes images to be portrayed onto the screen. There is no basis for the images, except for these elements coming together. Take away the screen and the projection is washed out into nothingness. Thus is the drama of life – the screen is the basis on which life takes place with all its interplay of emotions, living and dying. Take away the screen and nothing computes. God is like the screen on which everything else interplays, where everything is interwoven to make some sense. God is what life is projected on, the basis of life itself.
( I ) The Cosmic Drama
But because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear. - Alan Watts
We moderns are too smart to be taken in by the concept of The Leela, where the Lord, in a spirit of joy (Ananda), creates the universe for his enjoyment and in which we are but puppets shunted around by the whims of the master string puller, the Cosmic Puppeteer.
It is hard to believe that we are just imaginations of a supreme being; of someone outside of ourselves who dreamt us up and is now controlling us – just as a video gamer can create an avatar and take part in an online game, interacting with several others in a similar situation.
It is hard to accept that we are someone’s or something’s figment of imagination; that what we se as a solid reality is nothing but a perception of the mind; a veiling of ‘that/tat’ to give rise to multifarious projections of reality.
No, we are too smart for believing anything like that. Why? Because we have been hammered with alternative beliefs – beliefs that actually work within this ‘real’ life, which can be proved again and again.
When science and logic tells us that we are beings of reason, a ‘super’ animal quite capable of looking after ourselves without a problem, and we have proven it by achieving such dramatic adventures as landing on the moon, probing Mars and plumbing the depths of our oceans, we see no reason to believe in a God who does not redress wrongs, allows suffering to carry on, and brings about death and destruction on both the innocent and wicked. This logical mind tells us that a God - should He/She/It exist - is unfair, an oxymoron (in some case a moron), and a projection or a mental aberration that is used by megalomaniacs to control people through awe and fear.
In our ‘logical/reasoning’ minds, God should not compute. Our minds work on seeing and experiencing, and what can be observed can believed in. Then, what is beyond the senses and beyond the comprehension of the mind, is beyond our knowledge and thus, beyond what we have to believe.
But the majority of the population of Earth just refuse to give up on the concept of a supernatural power that determines the cause and flow of our lives. While die-hard atheist (not all scientists are included here) would want us to believe that this a brainwashing of some kind, these ‘brain-washed people continue merrily with their lives, adoring a god of their choice to which they pay homage with the expectation for it to look after them in times of need and woe.
And they die proclaiming the existence of God (and with fingers crossed) hoping to be heading to a better place. They skilfully use logic and reasoning in all aspects of their lives but will not use it for their belief system, their belief in God.
And they have a good reason for it. Logic and reason appear to fail miserably in the ‘understanding’ of God, in fact, call it the paradox of God.
But that in itself is part the Leela. For one cannot comprehend things beyond its conditioned life. How can a plant understand the concept of travelling for pleasure, and while an animal can feel a whole gamut of emotions, the finer understandings with which we humans carry out our daily lives is beyond the ken of animals.
“Also the difference of condition in the world of beings is an obstacle to comprehension. For example: this mineral belongs to the mineral kingdom; however far it may rise, it can never comprehend the power of growth. The plants, the trees, whatever progress they may make, cannot conceive of the power of sight or the powers of the other senses; and the animal cannot imagine the condition of man, that is to say, his spiritual powers.” - Baha’i Faith
Humans are conditioned beings, even from before being born (keeping in mind the karmic burden we bring into each life of ours). From birth we are conditioned into certain behavioural patterns in addition to the karmic burden - from our parents and relatives, from our teachers and from all people we interact with. This forms our gunas, or attributes, our characteristics.
Such a well-conditioned mind is incapable of seeing beyond this conditioning, and thus it is religion (well, most of them, anyway) that sets out to recondition man in the image of God. That is what is meant by seeking Samadhi/seeking God, either through devotion, inquiry or doing good works.
According to monism, there is only One and no other. Everything in the universe is the One emanating into many; when the One chooses to become the many so to experience the many – at the same time, in real time. This is the leela.
When God, the One without attributes, the Nirakaar, the Absolute, chooses to start this leela, He (I use this as a convenient pronoun for God is without attributes) has to become the material cause of the world that he brings forth.
God has to surround itself, envelop itself with the ‘material’ of this universe (or universes). The material is the dream stuff of His dream, His leela. The natives of Australia are spot on in their interpretation of Creation as Dreamtime. They believe that every person essentially exists eternally in the Dreaming.
Hindu philosophy goes further by saying that only He exists and everything is a figment of His imagination. That the personality we display as individuals is the merriment (ananda) of God’s mind taking shape in multitudes of egos, engaging itself in multifarious activities, seeking every possible kind of outcomes for each and every kind of interaction and engagement life can have, and does have.
Only a mathematician could possibly appreciate the awe-inspiring ratio of possibilities these multitude of forms, each one of the trillions of forms itself faced with multitude of possibilities, and each of those possibilities having at least two choices in itself.
That is why one of Vishnu’s name attribute is Amitesh – he who permeates the universe as its material cause.
( II ) The Naatak – the drama we are involved in
The knowledge of the dreaming, the existence of God was placed into the minds of man. Ever wondered why man is the only ‘animal’ capable of seeking satisfaction outside of itself, in abstract reasons and understandings like peace, justice, love and kindness? Why we are ‘set above’ animals, not in our superiority in subjugating them, but in our understanding of seeking a purpose in life.
So, if everything is just a dream, an illusion, why does everything feel so real? Religions have their own interpretations of why this ephemeral world, ranging from the archaic where a god chooses to create the heavens, planets (Earth) seas, mountains, animals, other worlds and mankind in a number of days to the Vedantic postulation of Maya enveloping God so as to delude us from its reality.
Any number of reasons are given as why we live in this illusion, ranging from the falling from grace with God (the original sin) to the effects of karma to the vibrations of the anu (the atom)
Quantum physics states that everything in the most minute level is actually pure energy that is conscious, intelligent and living.
All things exist as energy from the lowest rate of vibration, the densest physical condensate of matter all the way to the highest rate of vibration in the universe, The Source, God. The Entire Universe is a Single Super Spectrum of Universal Energy.
The play of this energy is interpreted by our sense and the brain into a semblance of the reality, a very holographic interpretation that feel so real.
“Know that there are two kinds of knowledge: the knowledge of the essence of a thing, and the knowledge of its qualities. The essence of a thing is known through its qualities, otherwise it is unknown and hidden.” – Baha’i faith
Psychology also comes in to help us understand this better – the mind is a most powerful instrument. It is quite capable of building a world for itself, both in the dream state as well as in the waking stage. Only in the waking stage, such world-building activities are called neuroses, and are very likely to help you end up in a mental institute. Nevertheless, the capability of spawning a reality is inherent in each and everyone of us, and we do it on a very regular basis when we start day-dreaming.
Science tells us that subatomic particles are simply energy packets. You are a cluster of energy, so is everything else. A cluster of energy is always in motion, moving and changing to form new configuration at every moment. The table that is in your dining room is not as solid as it appears to be. On a highly magnified level, you would realize that it is in constant flux, “losing” and “gaining” billions of energy packets, but intelligently maintaining the overall “look” of a table There is a consciousness that keeps the energy in that particular form for our perception (or is that something we do).
What ‘helps’ us in stopping us from building our own individual realities is the collective consciousness we share. God, after all, is One, thus only one consciousness pervades the universe/s.
It is this universal consciousness – the Chith – that is responsible for holding the overall form of the universe/s, the planets, stars and other cosmic bodies, the forms of life and materials within each cosmic body, and the form of cells or the energy packets we have isolated in our verification of the ‘truth’.
And we are part of this conscious - sharing its forms, observing them through whatever little our senses are able to gather as information which is then analysed by our brains and offered to us as objects that we can understand.
Scientist says that all the electrons and subatomic particles of an atom are held together in their precise position and orbit by an invisible force, by which without it, everything would fall apart and reality as we know it, would cease to exist in an instant.
( III ) The Nautanki – the delusion of life through Attachment and Maya
He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.
[God’s Labour: Sri Aurobindo]
Now the part where we, as personalised egos, take over is the nautanki of the universe/s. This is where we ‘clash’ as individuals, seeking out our satisfaction/place in the world by means of skills, cunningness or aggressiveness.
It is ongoing, this staged play in the great drama of life – birth, living, death, getting, forgetting, remembering, memorising. We are born, we are conditioned towards certain goals, we try to achieve them, we are either thwarted, or are successful and then we die. In dying we leave behind either weeping friends and relatives, or legacies or a sigh of relief from others.
We pin traditions to what we do and call it culture. We pin habits to our lives and call it character. We try to do good, we try to get away with it, constantly pushing the envelop – both physical and mental. We set up systems, we rage against other systems. We build our civilisations, we destroy others. We say we are lords of some domains and wage wars to protect, or we see other domains and lust after them.
We raise children so that we can leave behind something of ourselves when we are gone. We mould children in our images, using them to fulfil our unfulfilled dreams. We marry; for convenience, for lust, for love, to show off. We step out to do something extraordinary, no matter how trivial, or in bad taste it is. For we are built to do something, not just vegetate in our lives.
We are social animals, we are individuals with unalienable rights, we are pockets of similar-thinking people, or we are groups - a nation, a political boundary, a religion, a creed, or common cause.
Our minds are the formalised aspects of the Great Thought that is God.
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