Bhaarat : The Reality

 भारत समिधा सत्य अहिंसा एक असे असहाय

करी वदनी परिचय तव आता सत् शोधून तव काय

Context:

Somewhere in my early 20s when I was passing through some really difficult times I wrote a poem. The lines came out spontaneously and unknowingly at that moment when someone very dear and close to me criticized India. Essentially the criticism was how India will never improve, how western countries are “more civilized “, how life is more meaningful in these civilized societies  etc etc.

  Over the years  I have pondered over these lines again and again. There are some things that spring out of you that make you wonder how in the world did I put this in words? I didn’t have the qualifications to write this. Certainly not when I was barely 22.

These were the lines:

भारत समिधा सत्य अहिंसा एक असे असहाय

करी वदनी परिचय तव आता सत् शोधून तव काय

What do the words mean:

Bhaa-rat the Sanskrit name for India is a composite of two words. Bhaa (भा)means divine light. Rat( रत) means to revel in or delve into.

Samidha ( समिधा) are the offerings made to the holy fire during yadnyas and pujas. Basically they represent or symbolize sacrifice.

Satya(सत्य) or Sat( सत्) is Truth or Reality.

Ahimsa( अहिंसा) is non-violence.

Eka( एक) is ONE. Single entity.

Ase असे means is

Asahaay(असहाय) independent, without extraneous support !

Kari करी = do

Vadani वदनी through speech, by asking questions. With aid of words.

Parichay परिचय familiarize/ familiarity. Get to know. 

Tav (तव) you

Aataa( आता) = now

Shodhun ( शोधून) through search or investigation

Kaay(काय) = what 

One who Revels in the DIVINE LIGHT (Bharat/ India) will find upon investigation that Sacrifice,Truth and Non Violence are NOT SEPARATE from it. Not only is Divinity a single indivisible Reality, but Sacrifice,Truth and Non Violence, though they appear to be distinct entities on the surface, are all inseparable aspects of the SINGLE DIVINITY.

With deeper search( within your inner self )and with experience you will also realize that these principles STAND  STRONG  ALONE without needing anything to support them. 

For me this is what India had been then and has been forever. And you can probably see now how my journey was guided by its essence. Just like the tricolor is not India but an iconic representation of India , so is the saree. That is my identity in a multicolored global society.

This was what I wrote in 2021.

The meaning of the individual words remains unchanged. But the interpretation, which in turn is based on the extent of understanding, is subject to variation depending on the rung of the spiritual ladder one stands upon. 

As a 22 year old when the words sprung out of my head I was no better than a piece of wood to comprehend the meaning of the words. They just came out in a knee jerk manner in response to an unflattering comment about the country I loved.  A place I called motherland. The sentiment underlying the response was of hurt pride. The hurt was silent on the outside but inside it stirred something vigorously. I just wrote down what came to my mind in my own diary.

Over the years, the hurt subsided but the words never faded from my mind. I tried to understand the true import of the spontaneous words. More than anything else, the poem became an anthem that provided a direction for my life path. A blueprint that carved out an identity for me. The irony of my life initially nudged me and later began to intrigue me. A person who stood up to defend the greatness of India ended up leaving India and setting up home in the land where the person who had criticized India lived. It was a matter of destiny. But nevertheless steeped in irony. 

To have a better context for the words it may be pertinent to shed some light on the background of this friend because of whom the interaction happened. This was a good friend who was born and raised in India in a family closely tied to my family. From a very early age the person was convinced that a better life was possible in a western developed country, and certainly not in India. This was a good person who genuinely cared for me and wanted only the best for me but it is obvious that we differed in our outlooks considerably on some fundamental things. I only saw good in India and the other individual saw only all the wrong things about India. I had deep and firm belief in God and the other person fiercely challenged the presence of God. It was an odd combination of two individuals who had genuine trust and respect for each other despite their differences. We never got an opportunity to iron out the differences. Our paths just diverged abruptly and permanently one fine day. 

I was left to take a deeper look into my beliefs.

I dug into the meaning of the words I had unknowingly authored in a moment of rebuttal. 

Bhaa-rat भारत !

Ironically, I was married and out of India when I was figuring out the literal meaning of Bhaarat! 

One who revels in the divine light!

At that point in my life, I interpreted it as someone who is a believer. A follower of God. One who trusts in the teachings of God. 

Which surely I was. I was not well versed in the teachings of God at that age but I most certainly was a believer. No one could have convinced me that God does not exist. I may not have enough evidence to prove the existence of God or a solid argument in favor of my stand. Yet my belief was unshakable even at that age. 

What was the poem saying besides referring to Bhaarat?

करी वदनी परिचय तव आता सत् शोधून तव काय

It was making a suggestion. No compulsion. Just a polite suggestion to investigate the truth and get familiarized with the facts surrounding the divine light.

It had some specific qualifications mentioned . 

भारत समिधा सत्य अहिंसा एक असे असहाय 

Bhaarat + Samidhaa + Satya + Ahimsa = Single reality 

This reality had one other characteristic. It could stand alone without additional support. Asahaay. Not to be interpreted as helpless. 

Divine light, that commonly is referred to as God, one can understand it needs no other support. It is the support of all creation. It illuminates all the sources of light in the universe.

One can also perhaps understand the concept of this entity being the ultimate Truth. The deduction of truth has been eloquently demonstrated by souls much more qualified than I can ever claim to be. For anyone who is interested to learn, I would suggest to study Anubhavamrit( also known as Amritanubhav) the original treatise on the nature of Atma( soul) by the 13th century poet Saint Dnyaaneshwar.

One can also perhaps agree with the fact that truth needs no alibi. It can defend itself.

But how do samidhaa and ahimsa tie into this entity?

It is only in the ascent from the unreal to the real, from the darkness to light are these concepts understood better.

At the ordinary level of awareness everyone is identified with themselves as a human being with form, a physical body with arms, legs, trunk, head, sensory organs like eyes and ears, the ability to taste and touch, ability to talk and move, to understand spoken and written language, to think, infer, learn, make decisions.

One such unit is one person and that person is distinct from another person. 

At higher level of awareness, the sentient part of the individual is the eternal divine part and the physical form and all ideas accumulated within its thinking mind are subject to change and destruction. This destructible part is superimposed on the changeless reality. The eternal part is synonymous with divine light and it is the part that is aware. It facilitates observing the superimposed components as separate from itself. In other words, what was believed to be inseparable unit, at higher levels becomes evident as two separable entities, one that can observe is the Self, one that can only be observed is the non-self. 

At one more higher level the realization occurs that the stage where there are objects to be observed and for the act of observation to occur, an entity termed observer becomes essential , this stage is no different from the stage in which dreams occur. Just like you only become aware of the dreaming state when it comes to an end, i.e when you wake up from the dreaming state, similarly the unreality of the ordinary waking state becomes evident when you rise above that state. That higher state of awareness has been described in the spiritual literature as Turiya or super consciousness. This is not a myth. It can be experienced. 

In Turiya, one conclusively realizes that the entire world of objects and multiplicity is a dream, an illusion that collapses upon rising to a higher level of consciousness. It becomes a relative reality, not the ultimate reality. The ultimate reality confers a sense of reality to the world of multiplicity. This world of objects cannot exist without the support of the higher reality. In other words it is not asahaay or stand-alone. Only the ultimate reality is asahaay or stand-alone. 

A person who has awakened from the state of multiplicity to the state of Turiya acquires an entirely unique perspective of the state of multiplicity. He now knows that there are not multiple entities at all even though they appear to be real at a glance. For him there is only one entity. Any appearance of an observer and observed is conclusively an illusion for him. 

Therefore from that highest state of awareness he has nothing left to hold on to as a possession. Every possession is “sacrificed” in the fire of awareness. It becomes a samidhaa! A symbolic object of sacrifice. His old self as a separate human being, along with his personal beliefs, desires and aspirations all become samidhaa. He rises above those identities and concepts. And thereby that samidhaa, the sacrificed identity has no more needs. It becomes part of the divine light. And stand-alone like the divine light. 

Now let’s look at the concept of ahimsa. Ahimsa is non-violence. One who has decisively known that there is no one in reality besides a single entity, who it is redundant to even refer to as I or self, who can such person try to harm? If he knows that reality is singular and eternal, and anything that is potentially destructible cannot be real, is violence even possible from his perspective? 

When you contemplate on these matters, what you are essentially doing is exploring the validity in the declaration, or getting familiarized with the reality in the claim that 

भारत समिधा सत्य अहिंसा एक असे असहाय ! 

That the person who gets immersed in divine light is synonymous with the highest sacrifice, synonymous with the ultimate truth and the perfect symbol of nonviolence. He represents a single, indivisible entity that needs no secondary support for its existence. 

He is just one manifestation of the unmanifest support of the universe. Everything else you see is a manifestation of the same unmanifest reality that supports the universe. 

It is a mind boggling concept to understand for any uninitiated mind. The uninitiated mind has to do the hard work of scrubbing the impurities off itself to let the divine light shine from within. Not many are inclined to do this hard work.

As for the story of the ordinary woman in me, what she muttered in defense of her motherland proved to be a guiding voice that showed her the entire universe much greater than just her motherland. Bhaarat is a bigger concept than a mere name for her motherland. Bhaarat is a birthright of anything that exists in the visible universe, irrespective of its size, shape, color, species, gender, location, age, and other characteristics. It can be reclaimed by anyone who believes in it. There could be a lot of minds who may not believe in it. But truth is that those minds are borrowing energy from it. It is not borrowing energy from anything. It is asahaay. It is unbothered by belief or non belief.  

It simply is. 

Those who find it, become one with it.

Those who don’t find it or know it, even they are it. Just because a lamp is unaware that the light is emanating from it does not make it something else. It still remains a lamp, the source of the light.