DO I NEED GOD OR DOES GOD NEED ME?
Recently, I was asked a very pertinent question: Do you need God or does God need you?
Hearing that, my mind went into a kind of mental loop. And since then, it’s been a conundrum around which my mind has been wrapped. First of all, the concept of need… Sure, we all have needs. It is such an obvious assumption that all of us are permanently in some state of need! We need food, clothing, and a roof over our heads… that is the most basic beginning. That need is so basic that when Swami Vivekananda pleaded with Sri Ramakrishna to ask the Divine Mother to bring relief to his mother and siblings, who were suffering in abject poverty, and on his insistence that Sri Ramakrishna must do something, the latter relented and said, “Your family will never be short of basic food and clothing.”
NEEDS AND WANTS
Wonderful… so if the matter ended there, we would all be in this utopian blissful state, wouldn’t we? But it doesn’t end there, does it? How basic is basic? How simple is simple? There are millions in this world for whom one square meal is a luxury, whereas for many of us the vast variety of meals somehow falls short of needs! Not only do we need food, clothing and a roof over our heads, but we also need a car, a comfortable job, and a good salary so that we can ensure a comfortable lifestyle; we need to take our holidays, we need to travel, we need this and we need that, and we continue to need. Then, if, by some stroke of rare reasoning, we somehow register that we do not really need something, nothing stops us from wanting it! Therefore, this double-doored trap of need and want keeps us nicely encased. We are all caught in this cage. The need for education, the need for a decent job, the need for a comfortable home, the need for a decent transport…. At this level, it is the ongoing need or desire for material things and then beyond these material needs are the need for a family, siblings, children, friends, associates, and companions… this is totally endless! We create this huge network of needs and wants, like a covering around us, and finally, we need a break!
One pertinent question arises here. In this very exhaustive entire listing of needs, within this very fine and intricate covering, do we or did we register a need for God? I don’t recall that coming up!
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
But here is the secret… regardless of which network we construct or conjure up for ourselves, this ‘need’ for God somehow creeps in. I recall that in my very young days when one was so completely caught up with life and the multifarious activities, the existence of God had already been established. One did have this awareness that father would read the holy book, Guru Granth Sahib every morning and evening, and mother would read the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana. It was a daily ritual, and one took it as much for granted as one took everything else. Meanwhile, I was studying at a Roman Catholic school, therefore there was awareness of Jesus and Mother Mary. Along with that were the bedtime stories that we were told. All the bedtime stories were fascinating ones from Hindu mythology or our epics. So, one had heard of the antics of “butter-thief” baby Krishna, of his killing Kalia the snake and the bravery of Sri Rama in killing the rakshasas (demons), and so on. All this was part of the fun of life. And then there were the festivals; if we revelled in spreading colour on family and friends at Holi, we were familiar with the story of the wicked Holika trying to burn the young sage Prahlad in a fire. She was supposed to be invincible to fire, and Agni had given her the boon, but she got burnt alive while Prahlad came out unscathed. Why? Because he worshipped Lord Vishnu, and she was supporting the wicked father of Prahlad who claimed he was God! Why does Sri Ganesha have an elephant head? Why is there a rivalry between Kartika and Ganesha? Then there is the fight between the devas and the demons… how they catch hold of Vasuki the snake, Mandara the mountain, and churn the ocean to get hold of the container of the nectar of immortality… but before they can get to it, out comes this huge amount of poison, that is about to wipe them all out… until Lord Shiva swallows all the poison and ends up with a blue throat. All these stories were exciting and great fun. And they all talked of Gods, somewhere out there.
Beyond that, I am not aware of how seriously we took God. But we knew He or She existed. There was another level where we knew of the existence of God… I recall when heading out to one of my first important exams, I sneaked into that corner where the pictures of the Gods were kept, and where the holy books were kept, folded my hands and said, God please make sure the test paper is easy! In retrospect, I told myself, how silly was that? The test papers were set a month ago by the teachers, what was I expecting God to do about it today? Anyway, that was the extent of the existence of God… sitting somewhere and overseeing everything.
THE BOAT IN THE OCEAN
Let us now go into some imagery. Here is this large ocean of life and we are on this boat that we have structured and named after ourselves. This boat is laden with needs, wants, desires, relationships, emotions, likes, dislikes, and everything that we are caught up with, in this web of ‘me’ and ‘mine’. It is overloaded, but we keep on adding. And suddenly this tidal wave comes carrying with it everything we didn’t dream of ever happening to us: someone very beloved dies, another betrays us, we lose a job, we lose all our savings in the share market, a dreaded disease hits the body, and so on. And this list of what we don’t want or need is almost as long as our list of needs and wants! Blow after blow hits and we are paralysed into a state of shock, caught as we are in this fine mesh of our own making! How could this happen? And You, God, let this happen? At this point we seem to need God, perhaps just to ask, how did you let this happen? How could you let it happen… almost as if this rear-guard caretaker is supposed to be there, somewhere, keeping vigil over us, and therefore, is answerable.
Of course, we remain oblivious to the fact that it is not only my boat, or your boat, or their boat… it is everyone’s boat that is rocked in exactly the same way. Why? Because it is in the nature of the ocean to throw up the tidal waves! It is the nature of the ocean to churn up storms and tsunamis! So, what happens, does the boat capsize and do we drown? Not at all… we cannot say that! Whenever we have looked around in desperation, we have managed to see this other boat, luminous, and beautiful, and guess what, the one that carries no baggage! Here is God, smiling, and reaching out… saying, “I have always been here, but you didn’t look!” At this moment, from the existence of God, outside, we become aware of the presence of God, right here, alongside us. God places this plank that links the two boats, and it is left up to us to cross over. What do we do? We step on the plank, and guess what? We keep looking back at that boat of ‘me’ and ‘mine’! The mind plays its old tricks… it is hard pressed in convincing us: ok so one person betrayed you, but others won’t; there are all your loved ones right there waiting to hold your hand; you can work and earn money again; you can still fulfil more of your dreams … you can keep dreaming, you can keep needing and wanting, and getting! Incredible isn’t it? So, we stand perched on this plank, actually trying to ride the tide with our feet spread on both boats! How crazy does that sound! But strange as it may sound… If we have that storehouse of the samskara, our tendencies, if the Grace of God is there, we do actually ride on this way for a while, dabbling with the world, but trying to hold on to the presence of God. We are in the world, with our boat in this ocean, but holding on to God as our infallible sail! If I may dare say so, we are doing that right here, right now.
THE WORLD, GOD, AND I
So what next? Are we supposed to keep on this absurd balancing act between the two boats? Isn’t it a little too convenient to want to have our cake and eat it too? We reassure ourselves, that She, our Divine Mother is there for us, and as a constant reassurance, we even say, Mother always takes Care! And here we are: We want to keep on creating our world of objectivity, and yet we want to call on God’s Grace and support, ad infinitum? Sure, we can continue this way; the boat will finally capsize, and we will resurface in this ocean of life, ready to build a new boat… because there really is nowhere else to go, and God will keep watching this crazy game of ours with patient amusement! But, as long as we own a boat, we perceive the world and God and ourselves as part of this whole combination, this show goes on. There are highs and lows, there is pain, there is suffering, and some joy, and if we want to stay on the seesaw, we can, swaying endlessly in this eternal cycle of births and deaths. One important thing that does emerge, however, with this seesaw of life, is the realization that everything is transitory; nothing can be permanent, and our expectations need to be tuned to this so that we can, at least, make a paradigm shift in our thinking. If we can ensure that awareness then we are, certainly on the move. If not, then stagnation and mental paralyses are inevitable.
GOD IS THE UNIVERSAL OCEAN AND STAGE
The question that arises is — Isn’t it time to stop and ask, “For how long must this show go on”? To find an answer to that question we have to stop in our tracks and very deliberately and seriously reflect. We just need to observe — all of us are playing the same game; it has been played over centuries and centuries; through the yugas; the stage is the same, the scenes are the same, the actors are also the same only the costumes, dialogues, and appearances seem different, and that also because everything is actually churning over and over in our make-belief that the playwright is different. Each one of us believes that our story is unique; that it is different from anyone else’s story! And here comes the final punch… If we are able to somehow reflect with some depth, we come face to face with a very startling discovery that our needs and wants, our highs and lows, our sorrows and joys, our lives entangled in this web of life, in this Ocean of Consciousness, and we entangled with each other… it is all a Play. And it is not our play, at all. God is the mastermind of this entire Game!
So here is the final imagery… there is this ultimate Cosmic Being (Purusha in Vedanta), omnipresent, omniscient, unchanging, and just the One. As long as it is just Purusha, there is no srishti (projection or manifestation). Therefore, there cannot be any question of stithi (preservation), or vinashanam (dissolution or destruction). There is only One. And then this Purusha stirs or looks… and we have the manifestation of Prakriti, the material cause of the universe, the Player, the Divine Mother, the Universal Energy. And thus, the Universe, and with it, all the pawns are the playground and here we are, the key links to Mother’s Play. She wants to Play! She sets us up, She lays down the rules, She creates this entire playground, the fascinating field of Maya, and lets us loose in it and we actually believe that we are the makers of our destiny and that the control is in our hands! Not at all! As long as we are these tiny microcosmic pawns on the chessboard… It is Mother’s Play, and so She needs us! Without us, there can be no play! Alternatively, if we can accept that we and the Mother are One, then we are as much the game changers as She is, and then we are as much the Ocean, as much the wave, and as much the boat. It is up to us, how we ride the waves or sail our boats and how we choose to live and move forward.
Swami Vivekananda says: “You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.” I have dared to tweak this a little, at least for my own understanding, I cannot believe in myself unless I believe in my Oneness with God because without that Oneness I am nothing!
