Dakshinamurthy Stotram - Post 15

Let us take up the last 2 lines of the 2nd stotram today

(Just as a juggler unrolls his magic, even so the “Great Yogi” (Brahman) manifests this universe by His own free will

To that “Great Yogi”, who is the form of the Guru, do I offer my salutations.)

Sri Dakshinamurti in this verse is referred to as the one who causes the expansion of this entire universe. How? Through his maya.

Here maya has yet another meaning. In common parlance, maya here means magic. Mayavi means magician. 

The ‘Juggler’ simile removes the defect of destruction of the Creator in the above simile. We now have a Creator who creates as a juggler creates his magic performance. 

Does this improve on the previous example? Yes, the juggler is not destroyed when the magic-show takes place. 

Brahman is the only reality

Even so, Brahman is not destroyed when creation takes place. Everything else is the same as before. 

Just like the magician, Eswara expands the universe. This is the metaphor used to impart the profound Vedanta. It does not mean Eswara is magician. 

Whatever magician creates is not as real as the magician. The magician is more real than his or her creation.

The magician may create a living creature, a real world of beings etc. at the stage.

When Sri Rama fought Ravana, Ravana used to manifest himself with same 10 heads as several Ravanas.

However, the real Ravana always knew that only he is real and all other Ravanas created with his maya shakti  are all unreal .

Similarly, Eswara is compared here to a magician where, Only He/Brahman exists. For us human beings, creation may be there, but Brahman has no association with the creation though Shruthis declare that He created this universe.  

Creation is unreal

In addition, we have the added benefit of demonstrating that Creation is something unreal; it’s just a piece of ‘magic’. 

Brahman is the efficient cause for creation

There is a further advantage to this simile. The juggler expresses His own free will (Swecchayaa). That is very accurate for the Creation process, where Brahman is the Nimitta Karana or efficient cause of Creation. Nimitta means “that which stands far apart from the effect and produces it.” 

Brahman is the efficient cause, providing the “blue-print” of creation, like an architect is the efficient cause for a building being built. The architect has to “live” in a building before it is built! It is the same with Brahman and His creation.

The Blue print referred here is the outline of the drawings we learnt in Panchadasi session.

Creation is an illusion

The Mayavi’s creation is purely an illusion. The objects he creates cannot be touched. No transaction can take place with them. This is also agreeable to the seeker. It helps him to understand the illusoriness of the world even better and thus, he develops dispassion towards such an illusory creation.

Creation for a videhamukhta - is it there?

We often read in various verses in vedanta treatise that a sage sees SELF in all or all as SELF.

Even as Sai devotees, we go about saying that we must see God in all.

For a sadhaka or a devotee, this deliberate efforts to see Swami in all is acceptable.

However, a videhamukhta (who has no duties left to perform in this creation) does not even perceive creation as He is liberated without his body.

He does not see human beings as human beings, this macrocosm world as world, nature as nature, any Deity as God.

He just exists as Brahman; that is all. 

Till the time he lives, his breathing is on, He exists (as Brahman/SELF) and only He exists. 

If anyone, out of their stupidity or ignorance, tries to relate such a sage with this creation, they can at best get only one answer

"He exists and only He/THAT exists. Therefore, whatever you call as creation, as human beings etc, must all be contained in His/THAT existence. In this context only, you may say, all creation is SELF, even this is a very limited intellectual understanding of His state"

Let us look at how we human beings create the world for us as magicians ourselves.

Janaka roars in Ashtavakra Gita,

(O marvelous! I am pure consciousness. The world is like a magic show. Hence, how, and where, can there be any notion of rejection or acceptance in me)

What a magic show is for a magician

A magician creates an environment and performs magic which are unbelievable and fascinating.

However, the magician is never carried away by the magic that is shown / that appears at the end, as he knows the tricks behind the magic and he also known that it is illusory, what appears to be real and fascinating, is not real.

Magician knows that the magic is illusion, and he never gets fascinated by the magic, though he created that with his mind and intellect

How Jiva looks at the creation he has created for himself as a magician

But a human being, filled with avidya and then, Raga, dvesha etc., gets carried away by the fascinations that he with his mind created and starts believing them to be true and starts living in that illusory fascinations…..

How a Jivanmukhta sees the world as a magic show

I am pure consciousness, says a realized Seer.

The magician’s mind that can create all fascinations as explained above, has merged in me the pure consciousness and is not separate from me the self anymore.

So, when I look at human beings caught in their own created illusory fascinating unreal world, I laugh like a child, I am amused. I don’t reject, I just laugh.

What is there for me in this whole scenario, in such a world, with illusory appearances, to either accept or reject?

Not only that. In my own life, depending upon my dharma, I also must do / undertake something with my mind, which, though not an illusion for me, I don’t get caught with my mind’s created action or event or whatever, still, I know, whatever done by mind at worldly level is all illusion as the world itself is an illusion.

So, not only that I laugh at the world (world’s minds causing illusory fascinating experiences) but I also laugh at myself, when I also have to take up something with my mind, though inwardly knowing all of that to be unreal and illusory.

I don’t have to make special efforts like one has to make for watching a magic show, standing in queue, getting ticket, pay for ticket, enter, sit, wait for a long time for the magic show to commence etc.

Wherever I am, I can see through the world of fascinating illusions and wherever I am, I can just laugh at the same and get back to my samadhi effortlessly!

Coming back to the stotram, the last line of each stotram is the same and once it has been explained in the 1st verse itself.

To that “Great Yogi” Dakshinamurthy, who is the form of the Guru, do I offer my salutations.

Love.