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yA devI sarva sarvabhUteSu tuSTirUpeNa saMsthitA
namastassai namastassai namastassai
namo namaH
Again and again, I bow to the deity who resides
in all beings as contentment.
Eternal Law is first and foremost a statement of faith. Even after asserting existence
of something called Eternal Law, it is not really easy to say what it is. It is a law that creates and upholds the universe
we live in - universe that I modeled here as a coin. And a peculiar coin it is. Unlike ordinary coins, we can rarely see it
fully. Most of us live and die on one face of the coin (the physical plane) without even becoming aware that there is more
to this coin. A few who begin to look beneath the surface usually don't dig in far enough and thus still see only a bit more
than the "surface only" dwellers of the universe. As the universe is hard to see in its entirety, so is the Eternal Law hard
to fathom in its entirety. Much like the universe it upholds, this law also has three facets. It manifests in three different
forms. Indeed this three-fold manifestation of the Eternal Law is what gives rise to three views of the world we saw earlier.
When
the Eternal Law manifests itself in its primal form, it finds expression as sat-chit-Ananda or as being, consciousness and joy. This is the essential plane of the universe,
the source of space and time.
When Eternal Law manifests as natural laws of the physical universe it gives rise to
the material plane or the physical world we live in. These are the laws which scientists like
to study. Examples of this manifestation are the laws of gravity, laws of motion, laws of thermodynamics and so on. These
laws maintain order in the material plane. These laws correlate events occurring in the material plane. They tell us how causes
produce effects and how actions lead to consequences. The most fundamental laws of the physical universe are all axioms - axioms
which are necessarily contained in the grandest axiom of all - the Eternal Law.
The above two manifestations of the Eternal Law are linked by the way Eternal Law manifests
between the essential and material planes described above. This link is the law of karma. It operates in the field that spans
the two planes. This is dharma kshetra, the field governed by dharma
or Law. It consists of the (world of) hiraNyagarbha, or the subtle body of the universe, and AkAsha or the causal body of the universe. This law maintains order in the world
of hiraNygarbha and AkAsha. It correlates all that happens in the world of hiraNyagarbha and AkAsha.
Since most of our total personality resides in the world of hiraNyagarbha and AkAsha, the law of karma applies
to all that pertains to our subtle and causal bodies. Indirectly, it influences all that happens in the material plane also
as we will see in saMsAra.
In "Three Views of the World" I said, "In the long run,
when the whole story is written, the consequences of our actions are ours to bear and ours alone to bear." This follows directly
form the law of karma. Law of karma is thus an ultimate statement of personal responsibility.
dharma kSetre kuru kSetre samavetA yuyutsavaH
Bhagavad Gita sets the stage with these words. Troops have assembled for a battle,
it tells us. They have assembled on two fields. One field is located in the physical plane; it is Kuru-Kshetra,
which is located near modern New Delhi. But each soldier is also going to wage his battle on another field - the field of
Law or dharma kSetra. We all are constantly engaged in the enterprise of life in the same
two fields, the physical plane and the dharma
kSetra, which is what makes the message of Gita pertinent to all of us all the time. It is unfortunate, that most
who are engaged in wars today are unaware that, unbeknownst to them, they are also fighting their battle in dharma
kSetra, where their performance really counts and will decide their future.
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