Posted on: 26 Jun 2021
Note: This article is meant for intellectuals only
Shri Anil asked: Pādanamaskāraṃ Swāmi! In Your recent message You preached “The Veda says that God crosses boredom with the help of His self-ignorance (avidyā) and gains His original nature by realisation (vidyā), whenever necessary to perform a miracle (Avidyayā mṛtyuṃ tīrtvā, vidyayā'mṛtamaśnute…—Veda)”. In this context I would like to ask You; while Human incarnation of God preaches the divine knowledge, what will be His state: ‘avidyā’ or ‘vidyā? At Your Lotus Feet -anil
Swāmi replied: When a cat is sitting exactly in the middle of the joint wall existing between two houses, if you ask Me to conclude which side the cat is sitting, what should I tell? Sometimes, a person enters daydream while awaken and enjoys his imaginary world for sometime to get rid off his boredom. This is experienced by everybody, perhaps, including yourself. In such state, tell Me whether you are awaken or sleeping with ignorance? If you are awaken, you shall not get a dream because you are aware of this external world. If you are influenced by your ignorance fully and dreaming your imaginary world for time pass, is your dream full of ignorance as equal as the dream coming in the state of sleep? If it is sleep-dream you can’t be in awaken state. If you are in awaken state you shall not get the dream. It is a balanced reversible equilibrium between awaken state and sleep-dream state.
The rate of your forward transformation from awaken to sleep-dream state is exactly equal to your backward transformation from sleep-dream state to awaken state. This equilibrium state is experienced by all of us and we are petty human beings. God is omnipotent for whom nothing is impossible. For God both the awaken state and dream-sleep state exist side by side in full extent. We see the twilight in which both light and darkness co-exist in small quantities. This is our experience. But, omnipotent God will be experiencing such impossible twilight in which the light of mid summer day and the darkness of midnight in full absence of moon co-exist, which is totally impossible for us to experience. In the morning or evening slight light and slight darkness exist together. But, in the case of God intensive light and intensive darkness co-exist to form an unimaginable twilight.
The intensive light will not drive away the intensive darkness and the intensive darkness will not drive away the intensive light. Both co-exist together due to the unimaginable power (māyā) of God so that both the experiences of sleep-dream and full awaken states are equally experienced in the same time. By this, we have to say that God is in full ignorant sleep-dream state and also God is in full awaken state. Hence, we cannot explain the real state of God taking the worldly logic applicable to world and the ordinary souls living in the world. Unimaginable God can’t be compared with imaginable human beings. God Himself can be the best example for God. When we take the daydream (dreaming in awaken state) of a person, it will stand as available best example but not exactly equal example.