In the previous episode, we had witnessed how life in this world is a cycle, and there is never a start or an end point to it. We can understand from yesterday’s important discussion that there is nothing called “ultimate” destruction in this world. It is just that, the world passes through various stages of existence and whatever we see today, might “change” into a different form tomorrow. Thus, Bhagawan’s major role to play here is that, as He creates the world, everything assumes a physical form of existence, and as Bhagawan “destroys” the entire thing, all of it merges into Bhagawan’s divine form once again, only to be recreated in a different form again! We’ve witnessed a few examples to illustrate and highlight this point as well.
In all of these, we might wonder where are we in this mammoth exercise of Bhagawan? How do we take an account of ourselves in this world? Do we, as human beings, undergo the same cycle? If so, how does Bhagawan keep accounts of millions and millions of living beings living in this world, including human beings?
To answer these questions one by one – Do we human beings undergo this same cycle? Yes, we do! But how does Bhagwan keep accounts of all living beings together? This is where our “Karma” theory comes into play. Bhagawan has created a beautiful ploy here – We are born in this world on account of our previous “Karma” – Both good and bad. Depending upon the intensity of our good / bad “Karma”, we get a birth accordingly for approximately 80 – 90 years. Bhagawan has an accurate, yet complicated methodology to maintain all our “statistics” and “arithmetics” intact, as to who commits what kind of “Karma” in this world. We might not realize that, but as we said earlier, Bhagwan is beyond our intellectual reach. According to that, once this birth gets over after 80-90 years, we get the subsequent birth and once again the same cycle continues. Thus, here we might see two important things – One is that our physical body changes its state once it dies off, It is burnt to ashes and becomes merged with the soil of the earth’s surface. Secondly, our Atman changes from one physical body to another, after the lifetime of this physical body is over. In fact, we’ve to redefine the “Atman” and “Physical body” here. Of course, we’ve witnessed many times that the “Atman” is non-destroyable in nature, but what about our physical body? We say that it is destroyable, but strictly speaking, our physical body changes from one state to the other. Our Atman takes different births according to the Karma that this living being is accumulating.
However, if one thinks that he / she has had enough of this birth / death cycle and creation / destruction cycle, he / she can exhibit “Bhakti” towards Bhagawan and with His grace, can get out of this cycle, as a special case. However, just because this individual has gone out of this cycle, it doesn’t mean that the world would cease to exist. The creation / destruction and birth / death cycle would continue taking place in the world endlessly. We might ask a question here – If everybody in this world starts thinking that they should get relieved from these cycles of birth and death and creation and destruction, and if everybody exhibits Bhakti and alleviates themselves, what would happen to this world? Who would be there in this world henceforth? This is a good question to ask, but we should understand one important aspect here. First of all, how many people would be there in this world at any given time? Around 800 million? Or even more, isn’t it? I’m not talking about just one country. I’m talking about the entire world put together, with all the seven continents. So, even if these 800 million people try for liberation from this world at the same time, and even if Bhagawan grants “Moksha” to all of them, we would still have other living beings isn’t it? We would have plants, trees, animals, insects, etc. who would still be living in this world and passing through each and every phase of these cycles.
Thus, this is not going to be an overnight process that the entire lot of creatures in this world is going to get liberated at a stretch! This cycle is thus going to be endless and the world is still going to keep existing with all its beauty and living beings in it. Thus, it is only upto us to exhibit ardent Bhakti or devotion towards Bhagawan to liberate ourselves from here, so as to reach Vaikunta. So for today, let us realize this important fact of this world and let us wait till the next episode to witness the continuation of this discussion with many more intriguing questions and answers! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 