POEMS AND POETS
26. The World Is A Rotten Place
What do we make of this world?
It depends upon how we ie our minds are made up! If we follow organised religion, we will go by what they teach: the world is the work of God, and we only have to do as they say God has ordained. If we follow science we will say that there was a Big Bang and the world appeared , and everything happened by chance.There are any number of positions in between. The fun is, none of them can give any proof!
There are a special class of people, known as Sages. They have experienced the Truth of the world first hand. They come from all countries, all traditions. They say we cannot know this world objectively.We know it only through our senses, as interpreted by our mind, depending on our level or state of consciousness. The mind and senses can mislead us, as when we see a mirage, or mistake a rope for a snake in dim light. The question about the truth or nature of the world can be solved by each one of us only when we experience the truth by ourselves. This is done by refining our consciousness. The Sages do not offer elaborate theories, do not run organizations. How can we believe them? By their life .Walk the path and 'know' the truth. They say:
Drishtim Jnanamayim kritva,
Paschyet Brhmamayam jagat!
If you look with the sight of Wisdom ( pure consciousness), the world will be perceived as the form of the Infinite!
More or less the same words were said by Blake:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, men would behold everything as it is- Infinite"
(Quoted in Stephen Larsen: The Mythic Imagination, p.107)
The problem in the present day has been compounded by almost anyone writing on religious/spiritual subjects. And we now have access to anything anyone says, anywhere in the world. We get confused.
But through all this confusion, one fact stands out: This Universe is an Organism- that is, it is Alive! It is Intelligence, not just intelligent.That means,it must have a meaning and purpose. We cannot fathom it, yet. The more Science explores, the more it is confronted by its limitations. No branch of Science has a last word on anything,as yet! All it does is to manipulate certain intermediate processes for some immediate ends, the long term consequences of which no one knows.
In the meantime, social scientists are dissatisfied with both our natural and social conditions. They attempt to reform things, institutions. But neither pure science, not the social sciences do offer any guidance to people about the conduct of their lives. This is still done by traditional religions. Those who do not follow organised religions, but are nevertheless convinced that the world is not merely mechanical, that there is something here we do not quite know, follow their own eclectic path, calling themselves 'spiritual but not religious'. Their number is growing.
Some of the great poets do not subscribe to organised theology of any school, but they do believe in the Bible and give their views accordingly. Donne, Blake, Pope, Browning , Tennyson belong to this group. The greatest of them is Milton. The following words of Browning may be taken as typical:
"Life is a probation and the earth no goal
But starting point of man."
From: The Ring and the Book,X 1436
This provides a basis for piloting our life here. If we believe the world is the final goal, then death becomes the end; the imperfections of the world strike us- we are struck with the world. But if we believe the world is not the final goal, then we have to make use of the world, such as it is, to seek our true goal. Saiva Siddhanta says that God has created Tanu,Karana, Bhuvana, Bhogam, to enable man to realise God. These are the instruments. As modern saint-scholar-poet Muruganar put it-
Donda nirdondamavai tonre vuyirtokaitam
Banda Muktikkaap padaitton taal potri!
Praise to the holy feet of Him
who since the beginning of time has created
the pairs of opposites and their absence
for the bondage and liberation
of the mass of living beings!
( From: Ramanapuranam,lines189-190.
Translation by Robert Butler, T.V.Venkatasubramanian and David Godman)
The same Cape of Storms became the Cape of Good Hope! The difference was in the man, not the Cape!
But this involves a deep question: Why should God create both? This is at the very heart of Christianity and the Old Testament story of Genesis, which Milton attempted to tackle in the Paradise Lost.
JOHN MILTON: Paradise Lost
One hesitates to take the name of Milton! He is so great! May be ranked after Shakespeare, but Shakespeare looks easy and approachable, but Milton is formidable. Milton's grand style,wrote Arthur Quiller Couch; but his theme also is grand- grandest in the entire range of Western Literature: the story of Genesis, no less! This is the grandest epic in the English language.
Now you may ask me: Genesis is the Biblical account of the story of Creation. What has a Hindu got to do with it?
While I do not believe that it is the story of the origin of mankind, I concede it could be the story of a tribe of Jews! This is how it is taken by many authorities, including Spinoza. Every tribe in the world has got its own genesis story! Secondly, the fall of man has a deeper-symbolic-meaning for me, than a mere fall from heaven. It is a fall from our original consciousness of Unity! It is our forgetfulness of our divine nature! It is the Ignorance, for which Jnana is the cure! It is this memory which Arjuna recovers when he says " smritir labda"! The idea strikes me, may be not the form it got in the Bible!
Milton began with the avowed aim:
"I may assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men."
He chose to relate the story-
"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe
With loss of Eden..."
The subject is the most serious on earth-death and woe in the world, caused by man's own disobedience.
But we face three crucial issues from the beginning:
This provides a basis for piloting our life here. If we believe the world is the final goal, then death becomes the end; the imperfections of the world strike us- we are struck with the world. But if we believe the world is not the final goal, then we have to make use of the world, such as it is, to seek our true goal. Saiva Siddhanta says that God has created Tanu,Karana, Bhuvana, Bhogam, to enable man to realise God. These are the instruments. As modern saint-scholar-poet Muruganar put it-
Donda nirdondamavai tonre vuyirtokaitam
Banda Muktikkaap padaitton taal potri!
Praise to the holy feet of Him
who since the beginning of time has created
the pairs of opposites and their absence
for the bondage and liberation
of the mass of living beings!
( From: Ramanapuranam,lines189-190.
Translation by Robert Butler, T.V.Venkatasubramanian and David Godman)
The same Cape of Storms became the Cape of Good Hope! The difference was in the man, not the Cape!
But this involves a deep question: Why should God create both? This is at the very heart of Christianity and the Old Testament story of Genesis, which Milton attempted to tackle in the Paradise Lost.
JOHN MILTON: Paradise Lost
One hesitates to take the name of Milton! He is so great! May be ranked after Shakespeare, but Shakespeare looks easy and approachable, but Milton is formidable. Milton's grand style,wrote Arthur Quiller Couch; but his theme also is grand- grandest in the entire range of Western Literature: the story of Genesis, no less! This is the grandest epic in the English language.
Now you may ask me: Genesis is the Biblical account of the story of Creation. What has a Hindu got to do with it?
While I do not believe that it is the story of the origin of mankind, I concede it could be the story of a tribe of Jews! This is how it is taken by many authorities, including Spinoza. Every tribe in the world has got its own genesis story! Secondly, the fall of man has a deeper-symbolic-meaning for me, than a mere fall from heaven. It is a fall from our original consciousness of Unity! It is our forgetfulness of our divine nature! It is the Ignorance, for which Jnana is the cure! It is this memory which Arjuna recovers when he says " smritir labda"! The idea strikes me, may be not the form it got in the Bible!
Milton began with the avowed aim:
"I may assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men."
He chose to relate the story-
"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe
With loss of Eden..."
The subject is the most serious on earth-death and woe in the world, caused by man's own disobedience.
But we face three crucial issues from the beginning:
- choice and freewill
- relationship between man and woman
- good and evil
The poem does not answer any of these decisively, but that whatever is, is how God intended! This is rather disconcerting.
The poem opens with Satan and his band finding themselves in hell, having already fallen. Does it mean that hell was already there to receive them, even before the fall? Does it mean the fall was fore-ordained? Hell was:
"Such place Eternal Justice HAD prepared
for those rebellious" (1.70-71)
Does it mean that God created the world with rebellion in mind? Was the world built for rebellion?
Then again, God finds that Satan is on his way to tempt man and says:
" ...................And shall pervert,
For Man will hearken to his glozing lies
And easily transgress the sole command
Sole pledge of his obedience.So WILL fall
He and his faithless progeny . Whose fault?
Whose but his own? Ingrate! He had of Me
All he could have. I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood though free to fall."
(3.92-99)
If these are the words of God, they make disturbing reading.
God made man free to fall! Man will allow himself to be perverted by Satan and "will fall". So, man's free will in the end really means the freedom to fall! Will even a human parent allow his children to run and fall into a pit, saying they are 'free'? So, what kind of parent is God? Does this not suggest a sadistic streak in the merciful God?
For me, there is an even more disturbing question. This is man, God's fresh creation. How could he even get the idea of disobedience and transgression so soon, while he is still in God's pristine condition?
The relationship between Eve and Adam too creates problems from the first. Eve says she just ran away from Adam on first seeing him, because:
" ................methought less fair,
Less winning soft,less amiably mild
Than that smooth wat'ry image: back I turned."
(4.478- 480)
So, Eve finds Adam not so agreeable, after all! She runs away, Adam pursues and seizes her by the hand, and she yields! After debating whether they should work together, Eve goes off to work alone, is tempted by the serpent, eats the apple, gives it to Adam, making him her partner in the venture and together they go to Eden.
We thus see that from the beginning, the story creates more problems that our theology and philosophy have been able to solve all these centuries. It gives enough valid grounds for our psychologists and feminists to argue on many vital issues. So, how does Milton hope to justify the ways of God?
In fact some have even suggested that Milton might be admiring Satan, the rebel, for he was himself one! And it is strange to think that Eve could think she had freedom only when she disobeyed God! Does it mean women could not achieve liberation, except with disobedience?
The only happy outcome of this epic is that in the end Adam and Eve decide to live together! What a conclusion from Milton who advocated divorce for women, before it was made law! Whether the poem succeeds in justifying God's ways, it at least conveys that man has to reconcile to them!
Whatever the philosophical import, Paradise Lost is a grand poem, a mighty epic conceived and executed in grand manner. It abounds in passages of superlative beauty. It is simply overwhelming. English language might or might not have remained unadorned and plain without it, but we can never call ourselves literate until we can read it!
Life is a greater mystery than all our philosophies can tackle!
No epic can divine its origins. Let us simply bow! Here is a nice lesson from Arthur Osborne:
Arthur Osborne: The Wind
I am a pipe the wind blows through,
Be still, it is the wind that sings.
The course of my life and the things that I do
And the seeming false and the seeming true
Are the tune of the wind that neither knows
Good and ill,nor joys and woes.
But the ultimate awe is deeper yet
Than song or pipe or storm;
For pipe and tune are the formless wind
That seemed for a while to take form.
And words are good to escape from words
And strife to escape from strife,
But silence drinks in all the waves
Of song and death and life.
From: Be Still,It Is The Wind That Sings.
Ramanasramam Publication, 2000.
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