We're authors of our own bewilderment

We're authors of our own bewilderment
6 Sep, 2007, 0510 hrs IST,Vithal C Nadkarni, ECONOMIC TIMES

Pope Benedict has described Mother Teresa’s decades-long crisis of faith as "the silence of God", a phenomenon the Pontiff says is "known to all believers".

Referring to the book of letters detailing the tormented state of Mother Teresa’s faith, the Pope says this isn’t unusual. All Catholics have to contend with the silence of God, which so sorely tested even the saintly Mother despite all her charity and force of faith, he has added.

By the Pope’s own admission, the cat is finally out of the bag: hereafter it would be extremely disingenuous to claim special access to the Big Boss who allegedly lives beyond the Pearly Gates.

Nor should you believe those who claim to have a hotline to heaven. This also rules out such prospects as barters with God, or bribing Him into benevolence with your little acts of piety. Does this sound pitiless? But that’s exactly how the universal cookie crumbles, even according to Bhagwad Gita.

That’s precisely the revolutionary message of the fourteenth verse from fifth chapter of the Lord’s Song: “Of course there is no God,” Krishna says to Arjuna, at least not in the sense that countless generations of priests and shamans have led you up to believe.

If at all there’s something, it’s what the Gita is willing to concede as “embodied consciousness”, which Swami Prabhupada, founder of the Hare Krishna movement, translates as “the master of the city of your body”. “He does not create activities, nor does he induce people to act. He also does not create the fruits of action,” the verse goes on to elaborate. All that pops out from the tendencies inherent in material nature.

The verse that follows makes even more revolutionary assertions: The Supreme Spirit lies indifferent beyond all epithets and categories; it does not care for your sinful activities nor is it pleased by your pious acts. “(Thus) the Lord neither hates nor likes anyone, though He may appear to,” says Swami Prabhupada. Our poor embodied souls often fail to get this message.

Enslaved by our own desire to escape from supreme consciousness, we become authors of our own bewilderment and grow forgetful of our own essential nature. This can only heighten the so-called darkness of the soul suffered by embodied beings, for ignorance has knowledge enthralled (ajnanavruttam jnanam tena mhuyanti jantavah) in its coils.

The way out of the impasse is through faith and enlightenment.