Can God be Seen?
Emperor Akbar once asked his
wise Minister Birbal, "Well, Birbal, you often repeat God is
everywhere." Birbal rejoined, "Yes, Badshah! God is everywhere. There
is absolutely no doubt in this." Akbar pulled the diamond ring off his finger
and asked Birbal, "Is your God in this ring, too?" Birbal replied,
"Yes, Badshah! He is certainly in the ring." "Then can you make
me see Him?" asked the Emperor. Birbal had no answer to this. He asked for
time; the Emperor allowed him six months in which to find an answer or to find
out a way to show Akbar God in the ring.
Birbal went home; he was
puzzled. He knew there was a solution to the problem; but he knew not that
solution. He dared not face the Emperor again without an answer to his
question. He grew pale and anxious.
Shortly after this encounter
with the Emperor, a little boy-mendicant came to Birbal's house for alms. He
asked Birbal, "What ails you, Sir? Why do you look so sordid and
miserable? You are a wise man, and wise men should have no reason for misery! Joy
and tranquillity are the marked characteristics of a wise man."
"True!" replied Birbal: "The heart is convinced, but the
intellect cannot frame words for it." Birbal then narrated all that
transpired between him and the Emperor.
"Is this what you are worrying
about?" exclaimed the boy in amazement. "I can give you the answer in
a moment; but will you allow me to talk to the Emperor personally?" Birbal
replied in affirmative and took the boy to the imperial court and addressed the
Emperor, "My Lord! Even this little boy can give you the answer to your
question."
Akbar inwardly appreciated the
pluck and boldness of the boy and was curious to hear him. He asked the boy,
"If God is all-pervading, son, can you show me your God in the ring?"
"O King!" replied the boy, "I can do so in a second; but I am
thirsty; I can answer the question after I have taken a glass of curd."
The Emperor at once had a glassful of curd given to him. The boy began to stir
the curd and said, "O Emperor, I am used to drinking good curd which has
butter in it. I do not like this stuff which your bearer has brought and which
does not yield butter at all."
"Certainly, this curd is
the best available," replied the Emperor. "Remember, little one, that
you are partaking of the product of the Emperor's personal diary." The boy
said, "Very well! If your Majesty is so sure that this cup of curd
contains butter in it, please show me the butter." The Emperor laughed
aloud and said, "I thought so! O ignorant child! You do not know that
butter can be got out of curd only after churning it; and yet you have the
audacity to come here and show me God!"
"I am not a fool, Badshah
Sahib," replied the boy quickly: "I only gave you the answer to your
own question!" The Emperor was puzzled. The boy said to him, "Your
Majesty! In exactly the same manner the Lord is residing within everything. He
is the indwelling Presence, the Self of all, the Light of all lights, the Power
that maintains the universe. Yet one cannot see Him with one's physical eyes. A
vision is only a projection of one's own mind, before the eye of the mind. One
can realise God intuitively and see Him with the eye of wisdom; but before that,
one has to churn the five sheaths, and the objects, and separate the butter,
the Reality, from the, curd, the names and forms."
The young boy had thus
answered Akbar's question and the Emperor was greatly impressed. He wanted to
know more and asked, "Child! Now tell me, what is your God doing all the
while?" The mendicant-boy replied: "Well, your Majesty, it is God who
lends power to our senses, perception to our mind, discernment to our
intellect, strength to our limbs; it is through His will that we live and die.
But, man vainly imagines that he is the actor and the enjoyer. Man is a mere
nothing before the Almighty governing Power that directs the movement in the
universe.
"It is in a twinkling of
an eye, when compared to the unimaginable age of the universe, that empires
rise and fall, dynasties rise and perish, the boundaries of the land and the
sea wax and wane, and we find a mountain range where there had been a sea and a
new sea where there had been a plateau. It is in a twinkling of an eye that we
find millionaires become paupers and paupers become millionaires, and a King
becomes a wandering exile by a tryst of destiny and a vagrant becomes a King. Many
planets are created, sustained and dissolved every moment in this vast
universe.
Who is behind this gigantic phenomena?
It is God and none but the one God, to realise whom one has to give up vanity,
the feeling of doership, arrogance and pride; to realise Him one has to
surrender oneself entirely to His will, which can be discerned through
cultivation of purity, emotional maturity and intellectual conviction; to
realise that God, one has to efface oneself in toto and feel that one is
a mere instrument of His will."
It was a new experience for
Emperor Akbar to hear the ancient wisdom from so young a mendicant. Akbar was
very liberal in his views, and this encounter with a Hindu child-monk was
perhaps in a way partly responsible for the Emperor to invite to his court many
Hindu scholars and holy men to participate in spiritual and academic
deliberations with Muslim divines and Maulavis.
Excerpts from:
Can God be Seen? - God Exists by Sri Swami Sivananda
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