The Royal Road to God
The many saints, seers, kings, and scholars who have enriched its culture and brought joy and peace to the lives of people have made this land holy. It is a source of inspiration to remember their teachings on days set apart for the purpose and to resolve to put them into practice.
Shankaracharya was one of the greatest of these saints. At a very young age, he mastered the scriptures, and composed elaborate commentaries on the Upanishads [treatise on the Vedas], the Brahma Sutra [holy scripture], and the Bhagavad Gita [song of God] that are the three basic treatises of sanathana dharma [the eternal path]. He journeyed by foot all over India, visited the famous shrines and holy places, and spent some years in the Himalayas, before his death at the age of 32. He revealed that the fundamental message of the seers and sages was advaita [non‑dualism]. The Vedic axioms, aham brahmasmi (I am the Absolute), tat twam asi [that thou art] etc. are expressions of truth which are validated by scripture, logic, and experience. The individual is the same as the universal. There are never two; all are One, the omnipresent cosmic consciousness, the formless, nameless impersonal attributeless Being.
Advaita did not encourage or inspire devotion to a personal God. There was no room for surrender to a master figure. But the masses, longing for the removal of an inner thirst had to be led, step-by-step, to this lofty goal of self-realization. Ramanuja [another great saint] interpreted the basic texts and discovered that man can realize God through worship, using the gift of nature as instrument. Using a coconut as an analogy, God is the kernel, the shell is man and the fibrous stuff is nature. They are intimately intertwined, as limbs in the body, parts with their own peculiar characteristics. Man, nature, and God are One without a second (advaita) in a special and unique sense. So, Ramanuja’s philosophy is named qualified non-dualism.
However, qualified advaita was an experience not easily accessible to ordinary men. Instead, they would put their faith in a compassionate all‑knowing, all-powerful God to whom they could pray and offer life and love. Madhwacharya [a south Indian saint] declared that man is totally distinct from God that man is neither God nor divine. Man’s highest destiny is to serve God, as Radha adored Krishna. Longing for the service, yearning to see and fill one’s eyes with the beauty and majesty of the Lord—that is the most potent sadhana [spiritual discipline]. The aspirant would much rather be an ant nibbling molecules of sugar than becoming a lump or a mountain range of sugar.
This process of devotion and dedication is the royal road, the smoothest path, to spiritual success. This day, the people of Kerala state, wherever they are, experience this holy process. Today is Onam and the Kerala region is refreshed by the monsoon; rains-forest, lowland, and coast are bright and burnished, the earth has a carpet of golden blossoms. The country is resplendent with an atmosphere of worship. A wonderful story explains this widely spread expectation, hope, and gratitude.
Hiranyakasipu [a king of the demons] is described in the puranas [ancient Indian texts] as a demonic ruler. He denied God and terrified his subjects. While he insisted that God is nowhere, his son Prahlada affirmed that God is everywhere. As a consequence, God was nowhere for the father, though He was everywhere for the son. Prahlada’s son was Virochana and the hero of the story of the Onam festival, is Virochana’s son. He name was Bali, Balichakravarthi (Bali, the emperor). Being the grandson of the devout Prahlada, Bali too was engaged in the glorification of God and in the material and spiritual uplift of his subjects. There was no trace of poverty or ill-health in his empire. Every home was lit with joy; every day was a festive occasion.
Why the Lord incarnated
He decided to celebrate an elaborate sacrifice called Vishwajit, which would propitiate the Gods so much that they would bless him to extend his beneficent rule over the entire world. The Lord utilized this opportunity to shower grace on him. He incarnated as Vamana [one of the incarnations of Vishnu] and proceeded to the sacrificial altar in the form of a mendicant student, just initiated into spiritual life. Bali was happy to welcome Him. When Vamana was asked what gift He would accept, He replied that He only needed the ground measured by three of His steps. Bali was surprised at this answer. For a short second, he doubted the intention and identity of the strange visitor. His preceptor Shukra, warned him not to agree. But Bali stood by his word. He permitted Vamana to measure three steps of ground for Himself.
The Lord had incarnated to bless Bali, not to destroy him. So, when He had measured the earth with one stride and the earth with the second, He placed his foot on Bali’s head and accepted the Emperor as the third foot of ground. That foot released Bali from the recurrent cycle of birth and death. But Bali made one last wish, which the Lord agreed to fulfill. He prayed, “Allow me to come to the Kerala I ruled over, one day in the year, so that I can see the people I love and the land I cherish in my heart.” Onam is that day.
A day of rejoicing
The people of Kerala celebrate the arrival of Bali with great rejoicing. It is a holy day, when they prepare delicious sweets and offer them to the Lord. Everyone wears new clothes, and every home is decorated with festoons, garlands, and floral designs. The atmosphere is fragrant with incense from every domestic shrine. Villagers spend the day together in dance and song. Lamps are lit in front of each home; they are placed on doorsills, and held before temples by rows of children. The lighted lamp symbolizes the individual (jiva) whose self is but a tiny flicker of the cosmic light. Old and young, rich and poor, are all equally immersed on Onam day in grateful adoration of the Lord and of Bali who earned the grace of the Lord by sacrificing his ego.
The lesson that Onam imparts is this: A lifetime spent without devotion to the almighty Lord is a pitiful waste. Ridding oneself of identification with the body and its adjuncts, one must involve oneself with the spirit. This alone can reveal one’s reality—the atma [one’s real self]. Once the atmic core of oneself is contacted, it needs only one step more to discover that all else have the same atma as their reality. Thus, man becomes aware of the unity that is the truth that is God.
Man is now suffering from a totally topsy-turvy view of things. He believes that man is real, nature is real and that God is a figment of the imagination. But God is the seed that has expressed itself as nature, of which the human body is a part. Just as in every fruit that the tree yields, the primal seed is evident, the cosmic consciousness (Paramatma) is the core of every being too.
The lower self or ego acts like a fog to hide this truth, which when known can make man free. The ego is the unseen cause for the ups and downs which one struggles with all his life. To remove the fog, to cleanse the mind of desire and distress, man has to engage himself in positive activity. Man is prompted towards activity by the better nature rooted in him. But, out of sheer perversity, he pursues ruinous activities that pollute his thoughts, words, and deeds.
The ear ought to be eager to listen to the glory of God. The tongue ought to love the taste only of His story. Every action must be worthy enough to be an offering to Him. I have told you often, “See good, hear good, speak good, do good, and be good. This is the way to God.” I often add, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, do no evil, and be not evil. This is the way to God.”
Experience of God
There are people today who affirm that there is no God. But Hiranyakasipu who belonged to this category was confronted by his own son, who asserted even as a child, that God exists and can be experienced. Those who deny God cannot prove that He does not exist, except by their limited reason and logic. The experience of God earned by sages in all ages and all lands cannot be argued away with the help of reason, which can be affected by prejudice, pride, and even ill‑health. There are many truths that are too stable to be dismissed.
The magnet attracts iron, three plus three add up to six, a green betel leaf with white lime on it when chewed with a brown nut stains the saliva red, a sapling hung with the roots above nevertheless grows upwards as is its wont—these facts cannot be negated at all. The awareness of God, which is the very purpose of human existence, has to happen—however long it takes, however difficult the process. When the heart is purified and the consciousness is illumined, the task is easy.
God is minuter than the minutest. When you are unable to see the air that you know is all around you, how can you see God who is so minute? God is vaster than the vastest. When you are unable to picture the cosmos which astronomy has not succeeded in unraveling, how can you see or imagine the vaster than the vastest?
Emperor Bali, who is welcomed into the hearts and homes by the people of Kerala on Onamday, had unwavering faith in God. He served his subjects, as if God Himself commissioned him. He most gladly offered all that he earned, all that he was, to God. He overcame the clouds of ignorance and rose to the heights of supreme wisdom. His self expanded so much that it merged in divine consciousness. Purity leads to unity and unity leads to merger with divinity. This is the message that the festival and the story of Bali convey to mankind.
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, Sept. 1985
