SWAMI DAYANANDA SARASWATI : (Interview with non duality magazine) -10.

Question from audience: If you see the whole creation is mithya [relatively real] – it has no substance – its substance is only in your self – and that you lend the substance to the creation – and it resolves into mithya – why do you need Isvara [the Lord]? Why is there a necessity to have Isvara?            

            Swamiji: Mithya is Isvara [total universal Law and Order]. Mithya consists of all-knowledge, you know. This body is mithya. It’s nothing but knowledge. This whole body is a complex creation, so there is so much knowledge. There is nothing but knowledge here. And every cell is knowledge, every platelet is knowledge, and every organ is knowledge, every function is knowledge. It’s all knowledge. And so once knowledge is the thing, then mithya is only in terms of reality, and that reality is all-knowledge. And so this whole jagat is knowledge. There is nothing more than knowledge, word and meaning.

Word and meaning is knowledge. If you say, ‘chair,’ there is no chair. This is all cloth and then there is something inside, so none of them is chair. All the constituents of this chair are not chair. So if you remove them all, there is no chair. And each one has got a word and meaning. And so, each word if you look into it, there again it becomes many words. So every word has got many words. And any one word again you take among the many words, and then again you have many words.

            So you go like this. That’s how science is never ending. And they go on branching off into small lanes and by lanes. So all-knowledge means – where is this all-knowledge? Same vastu [same reality], is all-knowledge. Then I can understand all-knowledge from the standpoint of the small knowledge I have, because I have buddhi [intellect]. That’s why we call it Hiranyagharbha, all-knowledge, Isvara.

Individual/total, then that’s the difference. That makes all the difference. And the total is never away from the individual. Therefore the absence of alienation from the total, from all that is here, is security and safety for me. So that’s where the sanity lives. That’s where the sanity, well-being and wellness of the person abide.            

            The absence of alienation from the whole is where the sanity is and wellness is. They say, “I am the self.” I go one more step: “I am the whole.” (Laughs)            

            So either way you require Isvara, because you live your life only in Isvara’s domain. If ‘God’ makes the pursuit religious, let it be religious. We are afraid of religion because of religious teachers, (laughter), not because of God. The religious teachers have presented God as a punishing God.
           
God the Father makes an offer that I cannot refuse, “Either you come to me or go to Hell!” (Laughter)            

            If a godfather makes an offer, I can get him before he gets me, because he is locally available. But this God sitting in Heaven and makes an offer that I cannot refuse, I can’t even get him. (Laughs)

Swami Dayananda Saraswati      

To be continued  ...