CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HARMONY
The
way to eternity is much easier than the merchants of holiness will have us
believe. There are no dragons to be slain to achieve this goal nor are there any
rivers of fire to be crossed over for this purpose. These tales have been
invented by the gods and gurus to give themselves supernatural prestige for
forcing ordinary folks to cry and crawl before them for salvation.
Salvation does not mean securing a
palace in paradise which abounds in beautiful women and boys and thus resembles
the seraglios which were private brothels of the mundane rulers. Salvation means
becoming a part of Godhead which is the mode of existence based on bliss, immune
from fear of death and want of favour; it is the state of the glory of
individual souls which receive their divine immortality through mutual harmony
which is the virtue of being singular in diversity. In fact, this principle of
unity in multeity is the rule of existence at all stages: myriads of drops join
to create a pool, countless scintillas combine to make a flame and billions of
cells unite to bring about a human. Perfection of the aggregate, in each case,
depends upon the harmony of its constituents.
Though this harmony is the basis of
physical entity of every human, it does not exist between person and person as
is the case between atom and atom or cell and cell. This lack of harmony is
mainly attributable to the voracious attitudes of messengers and messiahs who
deprive ordinary man and woman from the dignity of participating in Godhead with
the sole purpose of establishing themselves as God through various ruses. They
attain this goal by dividing mankind in deadly sects who hate fellow-beings in
the guise of love and duty, and by destroying their power of understanding for
subjecting them to the kind of fundamentalism which forces its followers to live
at the level of animals through ignorance, bigotry and superstition. This
disunity based on mutual contempt is the exact antithesis of harmony, and the
major cause of human sorrows. Man is endowed with consciousness and thus
possesses the ability to live in harmony which is so essential for developing
his latent virtues to make him God-like even in this life.
Man's responsibility
Whereas other things are guided and
developed by the laws of nature, man is responsible for steering his own ship
because he is blessed not only with consciousness but also free will. Attaining
Godhead is the purpose of human life. If he deliberately opposes the purpose, he
is naturally leaping towards self-annihilation and not eternity. The person who
walks on his head instead of feet, must know the consequences.
Harmony is the motivating force of
the universe. It is the antithesis of inertia, inactivity and insensitivity
because it refers to the rhythm of active actions performed by countless parts
of the universe in unison: sound of marching soldiers or dancing of a bevy of
girls to the tune, are some examples of this fact. The continuous recurrence of
stresses emanates from the congruous spirit of individuals and not that of a
forcefully welded whole.
The marvels of the universe do not
necessarily give us a clear vision of its working; they usually make it more
mysterious and we tend to draw convenient onclusions from it.
Cosmic dance
Despite all this confusion, science
has unlocked many secrets of nature to make life lively, lovely and lucid. Take
a crystal, for instance. It is a solid of indefinitely extended framework of
atoms and ions which are arranged in rows, columns and planes to give them
regular geometric patterns. These solid pieces look stationary but in fact, they
are in a perpetual state of dancing: for forces between neighbouring atoms cause
them to vibrate in unison and as a result set up a series of waves which criss-cross
throughout the crystal. This harmonious vibration gives the universe the
appearance of a doll eternally enjoying the delight of an atomic or cosmic
dance. Man is a natural partner in the cosmic dance; unless he participates in
it with total volition, he cannot experience the divine ecstacy. And this
participation is not confined to one's fellow-beings; its boundaries extend to
include the natural environment; he must learn to appreciate the music of waves,
chirping birds and rustling winds, and also the sweet, serene majesty of hills,
forests and silvery streams.
This atomic or cosmic dance is
performed in association with a heavenly tune creating the cries-crossing waves.
Because of the perpetual motion, everything in the last analysis, is a wave.
Matter, the building material of the universe, has been referred to as
"frozen light" but because of its mysterious nature, light is
considered as both quanta (particles) and wave. Light, as wave consists of
transverse vibrations, very much like the vibrations of a violin string. An
electromagnetic wave is also a transverse wave like the sound wave which can be
set up by plucking a guitar string.
Like the plucking of a violin
string, everything sings as it vibrates; both a tinkling bell and a squeaking
door try to create music but what raises the rank of a noise to music is its
vibrational frequency. From the lips of a trumpet player to an organist, sun and
galaxy - everything is a musical instrument hilariously producing music. What a
physicist calls a sound wave is, in fact, a music wave especially when it
contains periodicity i.e. a regular pattern in the rise and fall of
oscillations. A sound wave is a mathematical entity because its audibility is
inversely proportional to the square of its distance.
A sound is likely to be a cacophany,
a grating noise, if it is without the virtue of harmony or periodicity. An
instrument ranks as a musical instrument only when it produces periodic
vibrations which are termed as tones. A tone is the Opposite of noise because
the former pleases but the latter displeases. Another peculiarity of tone is
that it contains features such as controlled pitch, loudness, timbre and
duration, which enable it to become autonomous.
Natural way of life
From the above narrative, it is
clear that everything as it moves, is engaged in a dance, and as it dances it
vibrates at a set frequency or periodicity, producing music.
Thus everything dances to its own
music which is the natural way of life. Therefore, the universe is not miscreant
and malevolent but merry and mirthful. It is marching towards its goal of
loftiness through harmony of singing and dancing. In fact, this cosmic dance is
the model for man to follow: man's survival lies in harmony, that is, complete
social accord. Unless a religion tolerates dissidence and promotes love of
mankind, it is the ambassador of discord, and has no place in the human society;
it is simply the work of the devil.
Universe produces harmony through
the force of natural law but man can't achieve this goal by laws alone because
he is endowed with free will which is a mechanism of free choice. His conduct,
therefore, must primarily be guided by his moral force. It does not mean that
man can be completely free from the jurisdiction of law. Yet free will is the
key to harmony.
What is free will? I shall
discuss this in the next chapter.
| 
Introduction
to Book IV
