The Drop & The Ocean
In one of his longer poems, Tennyson describes prayer as a moment when “the man in God and the God in man” meet. He must have dimly seen what Baba puts so clearly and compassionately, “You have not heard me fully when I say I am God; for I also insist that you, too, are God.”
To understand the real import of this statement is perhaps one of the most urgent needs today. What Tennyson means in his compact phrase is also very simple, but profoundly meaningful. His statement presupposes two things: there is humanity in God and there is divinity in man. We can understand and appreciate the notion of divinity in man. But when it is asserted that there is humanity in God, we do not feel so comfortable.
But the statement only means that God has profound concern for man. He worries for the well-being of him as no one else does, even as man himself does not. He delights when man cultivates and expresses true love, deep virtue, and sincere detachment. God’s grace, love, indulgence, and joy are showered upon mankind whenever one treads the path to Him. The fully conscious Divine answers the not-yet blossomed, unconscious divine. It is the call of the part for the whole, the Holy. It is the answer of the whole, the Holy, for the yearning of the part. It is the hunger of the drop for the ocean, the urge of the ocean to replenish itself. It is the particular finding its fulfillment in the Universal, and the Universal finding its fulfillment in fulfilling the particular.
When we come to the statement of Bhagavan Baba, we have to grasp it at a slightly higher level of significance. It speaks of the keen desire of the Universal to help the particular to identify itself with the Universal. This little game of Brindavan, the game of the many and the One, has been going on through the ages. But the curious fact is that the ocean has more of the agony of separation than the drop. The depth of compassion in the divine for man is deeper than the yearning in man for the Divine. So, Bhagavan adds, “You, too, are God.”
If you have heard Bhagavan speak with a deeply pathetic and simple smile on His quivering lips, “So many people come to me every year, but I don’t find a single devotee among them,” and if you have a pair of sensitive eyes in your heart (not head!), you can certainly sense the agony of God.
The whole has come in the garb of the part in order to draw the part to itself. But the part blinds its eyes and dodges. “Come, Bindus [drops]!” calls the ocean. But the Bindus would rather stay away, evaporate, and be lost. That is the tragedy of man, who is unaware of the loss, the impact of which is writ large in the face of bliss.
~Prof. B. B. Misra
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, January 1977
