Slokam 5

No one could imagine what transpired to cause the calamity and disaster.  Everyone was looking at the Paramathma and asking in amazement as to how such a large cart could be shattered to pieces without any cause?

Our intellect looks for causes behind observed phenomena. We are puzzled when we cannot discern the reason behind a particular event.  The most common question of despair that we all ask in our lives is – “why did this unfortunate event have to happen to me”? “why did I contract this illness or disease”? We want to know what is it that we did to attract the evil forces? We want to know the cause, so that we do not repeat it. 

The cause of an illness is often genetic or environmental.  So from a physical aspect,  science seeks to set right the environment or develop a medical remedy for each disease, so that it will not re-occur.  The physical distress always manifests in one form or another,  and the forms themselves change over time.  A virus mutates, so the vaccine has to be modified year after year, to fight the new strains that develop. 

As science finds a solution for one physical problem,  a new problem appears.  Many diseases have been seemingly eradicated. But in the process of eradication,  we use pesticides, weedicides and other medication, that damage the environment and cause diseases that have innumerable side effects.  There is seemingly no escape from the consequences of physical remedies.

Worldly remedies have the common feature of providing temporary relief by converting the primary problem into symptoms. The problem never goes away.  It returns in many many forms, ways mean, that cannot even be perceived by us, till we feel the impact.

The residents of Gokula only see the shattered cart.  They cannot know what transpired to cause the physical destruction. Was it another physical phenomena such as an object falling on the cart? They could not see anything?  Did some miscreants destroy it?  There were none to be seen. In life we perceive only a tiny fraction of what goes on behind the scenes, to make this life manifest. The vast majority of the action happens behind the scenes, unknown and unseen by anyone other than the supreme.  Yet we assume our “intellect” (aka Ego), is the primary enactor of the manifestation and we go about taking ownership of everything that we perceive,  with our Rajasic Guna.

Why are we not shown the hand that moves everything? The answer is that the very purpose of this life is for us to find the hand of the Paramathma.  That hand is hidden, not by remaining out of sight or beyond our senses.  The supreme hand is in plain sight,  yet we blindfold and handicap ourselves with the Ahankara, which separates us from the universe that sustains us.

May we ever be aware that behind our every breath, our every move, is the hand of the Paramathma.