I had been reading some articles on this philosophy for a while. I gave it a thought. And here are my interpretations and findings or a review rather of things that I have read and observed.
Word ‘adwaita’ can be defragmented into two parts. ‘a’ and ‘dwaita’. ‘a’ is not and ‘dwaita’ is two. So in simple words ‘adwaita’ is not two or not different or all is one.
So now what the theory says and how can it be applied in practice. Theory says everything in this universe is actually one soul. All is one. Like it’s said that our Vedas have neither beginning nor end. Vedas the almighty and the humans for that matter are actually just reflection of each other. Now the big question is “If all is one, then what’s the need of religious structure with temples and God where God is held to be almighty?”
This question bugged me again and again. I found satisfactory answers in Vivekananda’s philosophy. But before we go there, let’s take a look at evolution of man.
First, man was living in caves. Slowly he started to live in groups. One of the basic feelings of human being is ‘fear’. So during the course he must have feared something. May be wild animals or lightening or fire or heavy winds. A stage comes beyond which the thinking capacity of human stops. So when man came across this mental block, he perhaps came up with an idea of almighty. There must have been times or even today we face times when there is no logical explanation to offer. This vacuum was filled with concept of almighty or god. Over the years concept of god grew stronger, so basically man needed something where he can rely, based on which he could believe and this need basically gave birth to god.
During the early times the sages must have recognized this need. Now there job was basically to make this world a better place. They also needed some power or authority using which they could tame the evil powers in society. We know that not everyone in society is born genius and hence they need to be given a proper direction. Some times force is needed for proper establishment so all these must have given birth to the religious structure.
What basically sets the world in motion? It’s faith, it’s self confidence. God is a medium to get to a higher level of faith or self confidence. So in religious system the great sages used the god factor to good effect to infuse faith in individuals. They know that the common man feared god. So they termed ill doings as punishable by god in this life or next. So to sum up, religious system was basically built because not everyone has high level of self confidence. The Hindu religious system for that matter is really very scientific. The food items that are cooked on festivals are actually according to weather at that time. Or mantras chanted actually have definite phonetics which then activate different energy points in the body. However not every detail can be explained to common man so sages wrapped this all up with a coating of religion.
So all these developments basically gave rise to Dwaita philosophy. As god was held a supreme and hence slowly people started to forget the origin and the fact that the thing that they call ‘God’ actually resides within their own selves.
So Shankaracharya refreshed it all and he restated the fact that ‘All is one’. Now can this philosophy be implemented? I would like to give a simple example. “When a person is in a temple and some ill thought comes to his mind, what is his immediate reaction? – ‘Oh!, This is wrong I should get rid of this thought’. Now when is outside temple does he tend to apply same standard to his thoughts? ” Well he doesn’t. No one does for that matter.
And now why is this the case..? It’s mainly because we have good structure for basic education in this regard, but there are no advanced courses available..! one has to go deep in oneself and give it really good thought.
Without a doubt 'dwaita' philosophy is so very vital in the beginning or rather it's the only way forward. The question is, how early can we manage to proceed further than that.
The earlier we start, may be the farther we will manage to go. A world would be so beautiful place if everyone starts to realize this and hence eventually starts to treat everything around him as godly.
Still today, I find myself confused in these contradictory yet supplementary thoughts. But giving thought on this is at least a start I guess of this long self exploration…
To be continued.....
-Devendra Oak.
©Devendra Oak.
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