You can become God only if you yourself strongly believe that you are God.....

"Hey son of Vasudeva! I am aware about all your deeds and who you are. You are on a mission. To resurrect Dharma. Never forget that! Not the Dharma, which runs away from life. But the Dharma that reinforces life with correctness and converts man to God. Your people say that you are God. They are right. Your are God. But, you need to trust yourself. Krishna, You can become God only if you yourself strongly believe that you are God. ......... "

- Translated to English from Chapter 14, Guests of Bhargavaraman, Madhurapuri 

(Madhurapuri is Malayalam translation by Shatrughnan of the Original work by K.M. Munshi's second volume about Krishnavataram)

Though there has been many inspiring and thought provoking statements in this marvelous work by Kulapathi I felt this one stands out among many others. 

According to Advaita, there is nothing but the Supreme Lord in the Universe. All that we see as Real is not the Real. We feel it as Real because of our ignorance. For example, what a goldsmith sees as only gold, we see it as bangles, necklaces, chains, rings, anklets etc. The truth is that they are nothing but gold. Similarly all the names and forms we see in the Universe is, in its absoluteness, nothing but the Supreme Lord or Consciousness. Keeping this principle in mind, there is no God distinct from me as I, myself , am God. It is my ignorance that veils me from the knowledge of my absolute being.

Now reading what Bhargavaraman (or Sage Parasuram as more popularly known) says to Krishna, who himself is being worshiped world wide as God, Krishna would be God only if he strongly believes that he is God and that would mean he acts as if he is God. This would, in turn, mean that he acts as per Dharma - Dharma, of being in thick of action but still upholding what is correct; Dharma, of not running away from ones duties and trying to attain the Divine who sits somewhere in a distant world judging the actions of the men. If so done by each man, he becomes God. 

So who is Krishna that we worship - he is a man like anyone of us but someone who has broken that veil of ignorance, someone who has realized that he is not different from the Universe or any of the material being or thing that we see around. Krishna is of no single religion, he is beyond religion, caste and creed. He epitomizes the realized man, the uncommon but common man who knows what the Absolute Truth of Oneness is


What does this mean to me the common man? If I am GOD then why worship? Worshipping God should not be to get you a job, should not be to get you your girlfriend, it should be ideally a meditation where in you meditate upon this fact that you are one with the World and you are one with God.  

Take a step backup and start strongly believing that I am God. Then I am absolved of all my anxiety, my grief, my happiness and I start enjoying the Absolute Peace. It does not absolve me from my duty to perform my actions but it absolves me of the anxiety I would have about the fruits of my action. Since I am one with the World, I have no enemies, I have no competition. All I need to do is travel with the wave of time, performing duties that I am to perform bounded by space and time. As a son, brother, husband, father, employee etc etc and then very soon I fully realize my truth, the Absolute Truth that I am God !! 

Aham Brahma Asmi !!!

PS: This dialogue between Sage Parasuram and Krishna is not from Original Mahabharatha or Bhagavatham but an adaptation of the same. But I believe it upholds the essence of the two majors works mentioned above and hence my interpretation of the same

PK - Why blame a movie ?

There has been such hue and cry over PK, the movie. 

While the makers of the movie claim that PK refers to the state of being drunk (पीके - as in Hindi) detractors claim it refers to Pakistan. Few say just like .in refers to Indian websites .pk refers to Pakistani websites.  Also, the international short code for Pakistan is PK.  So what is the issue? Issue comes from the fact that the movie shows polytheism and "GodMen" in bad light and now when the movie name has indication towards an Islamic Nation and the lead actor himself is a Muslim; this definitely raised eyebrows of so called custodians of Hinduism.

Intolerance and ignorance is the key problem here. 

Hindus claim that their religion unlike others' is not "founded" by some one - a sage or a  prophet or a messenger. It is a form of life. Ideally it should be called "Sanatana Dharma" - Dharma that exists always. If this be the case why should follower of Sanatana Dharma be worried about few people trying to spoil its image? If one believes and lives as per Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism as it is widely called, he knows that there is only One All Pervading Supreme Power; now it would apply whatever religious practice one wants to follow - he should not see a difference between a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian for that matter. He also should understand and realize that difference of opinion existed even within Hinduism. Let us forget the innumerable castes but just see the fact that even in Vedic Philosophy we see different schools of thought viz. Advaita, Dwaitha, Vishishta Advaita so on and so forth.  

So you do not know your own roots but blow trumpet about you being a great Hindu and raise voice against a movie which just takes a look at the current situation from its perspective.  

One movie may decide to highlight flaws in Hinduism may be another one picks Islam or Christianity. I recollect the hue and cry when Vishwaroopam was released. Atleast in case of Vishwaroopam the maker and the lead actor was a proclaimed atheist but here almost all of the crew except the lead actor follow Hinduism as a religion. 

Is not the religion defamed by fake Babas and Gurus - who claim to have direct link to God and are they not fooling the followers. If not all, do we have atleast few? Forget few do we even have one? Then I think the movie is not wrong. To satisfy followers of all religions, all movies need not highlight what is going wrong in each one of them.

Ignorance has led to intolerance. One is not not able to tolerate the teachings of another religion. Why so?  Accept it if you so will, else reject it. In a very positive debate, argue on that and see if you can drive the point. But don't try to suppress it; as the more you suppress, the more it would bounce back. 

Another story floating in the social media is that the protagonist of the movie says that instead of wasting 20 rupees in doing milk abhisheka of Siva Linga that goes down the drain, why not donate it to poor. The funny part is that people are asking instead of spending 200 rupees to buy this movie's ticket, why not donate it to 10 poor people? BTW, who forced them to watch this movie? Now that they spent the money and got this notion that money spent on movie ticket can be used for charity, it should be a lesson learnt from this movie. Let them not watch any more movies and give away that money for charity. Why to blame this movie for making them spend 200 rupees; instead it has saved them from wasting few more hundreds in future.

Rather than seeing a movie as just a story being told may be with some message, making it a point of national debate has only helped those who worked behind the movie as the movie is set to become all time highest grosser at the BO.  

As I write this blog, I know that I am also taking sides but I strongly believe that we have far more serious and important things to debate on, to reach consensus on and move on with developmental and welfare activities than fight in the name of religion, conversion, ghar wapsi and so on.

PS: I have not seen the movie so far and do not think will see it before it hits the small screen or DVD release