Kartu Ajnaya prapyate phalam
Karma kim param karma thajjadam
Kartu - Supreme Spirit, God
Ajnaya - ordained
Prapyate - obtain, attain, achieve
Phalam - fruit, result
Karma - the law of karma, motive/effect, cause/effect
Kim - is it?
Param - supreme, greatest, most powerful
Karma - action , work
Thath - that, it
Jadam - lifeless, benumbed, ineffective
The Supreme Spirit or God has ordained that ( all action or work) will lead to results.
Then is the ( law of) Karma supreme ?
Work ( or action) is by itself inert.
(The results of actions flow from the will of God )
Bhagavan Sri Ramana anchors this treatise in the Divine Principle. He composed the thirty verses of Upadesa Saram in response to a request from his close devotee, the poet Muruganar, who had taken up the task of writing a poem of a hundred verses describing the experiences of a group of Rishis who had undertaken the performance of rituals in the Daruka forest and had thought that such rituals would help them acquire supernatural powers and ultimately lead to Liberation or Moksha.
To disabuse them from this obsession, the Lord Shiva appeared in the form of a Sadhu with Lord Vishnu as a maiden in his company. The Rishis were smitten with love for the maiden and thereby their equilibrium was disturbed and their powers curtailed. To make things worse, the wives of the Rishis fell in love with the Sadhu.
The legend describes the efforts of the Rishis to destroy the Sadhu, but to no avail. They then realized that the Sadhu was no ordinary person and bowed to him and sought instruction.
Muruganar
At this point, the poet Muruganar felt that Bhagavan, who he considered as the embodiment of the ultimate Truth, would be the best person to express that instruction of Lord Shiva. It was in response to this request that Bhagavan wrote the thirty verses of the Upadesa Saram in Tamil and later himself translated it into Sanskrit, Telugu and Malayalam.
The treatise takes the aspirant step by step through the processes of spiritual instruction culminating in the unique method of Direct Enquiry which ultimately gives the aspirant the experience of unity or Advaita.
THE WILL OF GOD IS SUPREME
Bhagavan initiates his instruction by establishing the primacy of the Divine Principle ( or God, Brahman, Parabrahman, Paramatma, Iswara, Allah etc as variously named in diverse scriptures and traditions). He affirms that the Divine Will is supreme and is the underlying core cause and basis for all manifestation and the consequent activity. The Divine Principle or the Self ( Atma) as Bhagavan liked to call It, is essentially stable, unchanging, permanent and everlasting. However, when It manifests as the universe, and all the components of the universe, the resultant manifest universe is full of dynamism, change, variation and activity. Thus, ‘action’ or karma is a characteristic feature of the manifest universe. This resultant activity is qualified ,modified and influenced by the innumerable and wide variety of combinations of varying degrees of the ‘Gunas’.
It is quite natural for anyone to think that the dynamic, vibrant, action-oriented manifest universe is the true reality. In his very first stanza of this treatise Bhagavan disabuses us of this illusion and categorically anchors the discussion in the Divine Principle and the Divine Will as the true motivating reality.
THE CONCEPT OF KARMA
The word ‘karma’ has two connotations in Sanskrit, that is, work ( or action) and the effects of work .
It is important to note that the results or fruits of work are themselves two fold. The first is the tangible result of the action in terms of physical or attitudinal outcomes. The second is the intangible formation of imprints in the form of impressions, memories and associated feelings. The law of ‘karma’ is primarily concerned with the second type. These are called ‘vasanas’ signifying latent fragrances of experiences or ‘samskaras’ meaning ‘equivalent to the actions’. They are also called ‘karmas’.
Why does Bhagavan commence his discourse by invoking the law of karma?
His statement is a categorical declaration that all that happens in the universe is through the will of God.
Significantly he uses the term ‘kartu’ to refer to God . The Latin ‘creare’ from which the English term ‘create’ is derived obviously has a deep connection to the Sanskrit ‘kartu’ or ‘kartru’. By using this appelation for God and not any of the other various connotations such as ‘Brahman’, ‘Iswara’ etc Bhagavan directs us to first cognize the process of manifestation of the universe.
‘Kartu’ is the cause or ‘Karana’. Creation or the manifest universe is the effect or ‘Karya’. Indian spiritual thought declares that this cause-effect relationship between God and the manifest universe is not a linear relationship. This means that the cause does not simply keep on producing the effect. The cause is not completely separate from the effect. The cause is inherent in the effect. Expressed in another way, the effect is a transformed cause and the cause is very much part of the effect.
This relationship between cause and effect is a more complex type of relationship than that between an action and the resultant physical result. When a stone is thrown at a glass window the pane is shattered. This is a single uni-directional relationship. The stone is separate from the glass. The whole glass is broken and the broken pieces bear no resemblance to the window. Similarly when a spoonful of curds is dropped into milk, then the milk uni-directionally transforms into curds. This unidirectional transformation like the shattered glass is irreversible.
That is not the case with the manifestation of the universe. God stirs the dark void of space and the universe is created. However this manifestation is followed by evolution. The manifest universe slowly evolves through various phases. Science today is carefully studying this process of evolution. But this process of evolution is not never ending. There is a limiting point when de-manifestation or involution will commence. This is called ‘laya’ or ‘pralaya’. And the magnificent universe collapses back to its primordial emptiness. The manifestation becomes ‘shunya’; however God remains.
This understanding of cyclic reversible creation describes God as both transcendent and immanent. The transcendent God becomes the manifest universe in which He is immanent, evolves , grows, matures, and then inexorably reverts back to His transcendent condition.
This transcendent-immanent-transcendent cycle of manifestation-evolution-demanifestation is the will of God, the law of nature. It is the fundamental basis of the law of karma.
The evolution of the universe takes place in a gradual manner through millions of years. The five primordial elements, the ‘panchamahabhutas’ namely, ‘akasha’, ‘vayu’, ‘agni’, ‘jala’ and ‘prithvi’ are initially formed. Non -living matter appears. Life forms appear and from amoeba they evolve through plants, fish, amphibians,birds and animals to the pinnacle of creation, the human being.
It is the human being alone who is equipped with the ability to de-manifest himself back to God. Non-living creation is inert, static and lifeless. It is the foundation for life but it does not live. All living creation is equipped with basic needs for survival called instincts. This instinctual programming of living beings is currently under scientific investigation as the field of genetics and the DNA.
Instinctual needs are the most basic such as sleep, hunger, thirst and so on. They simply ensure survival.
However, human manifestation is characterized by mind. That is why the human being is called ‘Manava’, the one equipped with mind. The English term ‘man’ is closely linked to ‘manava’ and ‘manas’.
Mind transcends instinct. While instinctual needs may be programmed in the body’s DNA, the mind is beyond body. Mind has the capacity to form habits and create habitual needs. Instinct creates thirst based on bodily needs. Habit creates a taste for beer or lemonade or whisky.
Mind also provides the power of intelligence or discrimination. It endows the human with the power of choice.
However, most humans become creatures of habit. The fulfilment of instinctual needs is pure and unsullied in itself. It is when habitual needs overlay instincts and cause preferences based on gratification of the senses that the problem arises. The fulfilment of instinctual needs does not create vasanas. That is why all living beings except humans are free of vasanas. Their evolution into higher and more developed forms is as a result of the law of nature and the will of God.
It is the human being alone who tends to stagnate life after life due to accretion of vasanas. Vasanas, like thoughts , have two components, content and feeling. The combination of content and feeling causes motives, preferences and attitudes.
The law of nature reflects the will of God. The law of karma reflects the mind of man.
In this opening verse of his discourse, Bhagavan distinguishes between the will of God which determines the process of manifestation , evolution and demanifestation, and the law of karma which determines the state of progress of evolution particularly in relation to humankind.
The human being depicts the fruition of the immanence of God in the universe and places in the hands of man the key to demanifestation. The human alone has the power either to prolong the evolutionary process or help in its successful completion.
By becoming a creature of habits, the human unwittingly aids the accretion of vasanas and the need for rebirth. Just like a car, by its very way of functioning, will slowly veer off the road if the driver takes his hands off the steering wheel, human beings can go on creating new vasanas which cause further rebirth. The law of karma is like the mechanism of a car.
The law of nature based on the will of God ordains that once a soul or ‘jiva’ has attained the status of a human being it has to revert to its pristine nature as God. However, the accretion of vasanas impedes this process and delays the progress to Godhood.
If all humanity keeps stagnating in its evolution the natural balance of the universe will be upset. Hence intervention by the God Principle Itself becomes necessary.
The natural cycle of evolution calls for a balance in the manifest universe. When that balance is upset, a correction becomes necessary.
The appearance of evolved souls such as Bhagavan is the intervention. His discourse is extremely important because it will aid countless human beings from upsetting the balance of nature.
It is in the nature of this evolutionary process in the universe for the Kali Yuga to be specially difficult. Over the 4, 320, 000 years of a Maha Yuga, the balance of nature becomes increasingly precarious towards the end period, the Kali Yuga. The Divine Principle manifests actively in various forms to correct the situation.
Bhagavan’s appearance in the last part of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century is an important correction.
This first sloka elucidates the raison d’etre for the discourse. At the beginning of the 20th century, as the clouds of World War I loom over Europe and considerable part of humankind is in chains, slavery and dereliction, with the impending destruction of World War II, the nuclear holocaust, the Cold War, and the emergence of such traits as greed, misappropriation , violence and the arbitrary neglect of the Divine Principle, Bhagavan commences his discourse by re-stating the great importance of Divinity, the creator of all manifestation and the need to accept Divinity as more permanent and stable than human life and its attractions.
Young Ramana Maharishi
REFERENCES:
http://bhagavan-ramana.org/muruganar.html
Upadesa Saram of Sri Ramana Maharishi - B V Narasimhaswami - 1970 - Sri Ramanasramam.
The Collected Works of Ramana Maharishi - Edited by Arthur Osborne - 1979 - Sri Ramanasramam.
Ramana’s Muruganar - Compiled and edited by A. R. Natarajan - 1991 - Ramana Maharishi Centre for Learning , Bangalore.
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