SORROWS OF GOD

JATINDRA MOHAN GANGULI

He woke.

In the dark void around nothing existed.

His awakening consciousness spread and from it emerged light which shot through space. Continuing to spread it diversified and condensed into minute particles which gravitated, aggregated, rotated and reacted, and stars, moons and planets were formed. He was interested and went on making and creating more and more and newer and newer things and objects.

Into some of these He infused life and consciousness, and these moved and crawled and walked and functioned subject to the laws which He made for them. More and more complex beings He created without halting to judge how they would behave. As a new creature was made and it came before Him. He gave it a set of laws for its conduct and behaviour which it followed faithfully in its existence. To the little ant, as it appeared, He gave a set of rules and laws to follow and obey in life, and it went away to do and live accordingly. To each creature, small or big, the mosquito, the spider, the snake, the fish, the cat, the dog, the tiger, the elephant and others, and to the various birds, as each was created and appeared before Him, He similarly gave suitable rules and laws to follow, and each went away to obey them and live accordingly during its existence.

With rising enthusiasm He continued to create more and more sophisticated creatures even though He had difficulty in managing some of them. But by altering and readjusting the process and mechanism of their manufacture He was able to establish control over them and make them obey His laws.

Then the two-legged man came and stood before Him. As He had framed and given laws to follow in life to other creatures, so He gave to man also. But to His surprise He saw that man did not mean to abide by them. He explained that the laws were for his good, for his happiness and well-being, but he looked careless and indifferent. He repeated His advice and instructions but man did not heed, and turned to go.

God held His hand and stopped further creation to attend to the problem of man, but man had gone beyond His control. What had gone wrong in the complex human machine made up of many parts and pieces, circuits and inter-linked gadgets, due to which man behaved like that, He wondered. He checked and rechecked and altered some circuits and took out some parts, but to no effect. Then He called those men who had been created and who were at large in order to dismantle them, but the, disregarded His call and went their way. What worried Him was to find that, though He had kept the procreating power of all creatures under restrictive rules which regulated their generation, He had omitted to keep check on the procreating power of man. If the other creatures did not mind the laws which God made for them, they were to go out of existence because their procreating power was controlled by Him. But not so with man who was conscious of his unrestricted self-creating power. And therefore he ignored His command.

God watched amazed and alarmed. Man started creating man recklessly and haphazardly, unlike the man God had meant to create. As a result man remained not of one specie like other creatures, in spite of having some resemblance in physical shape and form. Fantastic human products came in increasing number and they were so varied in behaviour and conduct that there was no peace, no harmony in their home or outside and no understanding, no adjustment in their activities and inter-relationship.

They burst out of their environment, disturbing peace and order, breaking nature’s laws and upsetting God’s plan and purpose. They felled trees, plucked flowers, killed other creatures, cut the surface of the earth, obstructed and deflected the course of streams terraced the sides of hills and drove tunnels through mountains. Glittering gold and diamond buried deep in the earth for protection from sun and rain they dug out and spoiled by the touch of their greedy hands and the focus of their lustful eyes.

There was confusion and devastation all around. The earth quaked, the sea waved, air blasts blew, birds shrieked and flew, animals howled and ran, fishes dived deep in water, to escape from man. Man and man also fought and killed and ran from one another. Man was on rampage. Nature, stripped of its beauty, charm, glory and shy sweetness by the crude hands of man, was in tears which fell from the clouds.

There was pain, distress, suffering, agony all around as man multiplied and spread. He disobeyed his Creator, disregarded His wishes and followed not His laws and injunctions. He flouted His authority to establish his own. The many things and creatures which God had created were put in disorder and disarray and these looked up to Him for help and protection. Man oppressed by man also looked up to Him, called, prayed and rang bells to call His attention. But God was helpless. He watched and regretted having made a Frankenstein who advanced to molest Him too. Man disfigured His image and gave it many odd shapes and fantastic forms. He sometimes fixed Him on a cross and sometimes cut Him to small size to put Him inside a four-walled temple. He symbolised Him whimsically and his vanity made him elevate his own smallness to greatness by describing God as one like himself having similar body, mind, feelings and sentiments.

God was disgusted at such caricature of Him by man who put on show strange and funny models of Him cut out of stone and told fantastic and ridiculous tales and stories about Him as if he knew all about Him since he was born. God was bewildered; He was annoyed. But He was helpless. Man was beyond His control.

Prior to the advent of man God was free and familiar with His creatures, with the birds, animals and all the rest. He used to appear before them, play with them, share their joys, feelings and emotions and join in their work and activities. He was not mysterious but familiar to them. They knew Him as one of them. But when man came and misrepresented Him and gave a false and strange picture of Him and made Him look small, odd and fantastic, He felt ashamed to show His face and appear before them. He hid Himself and became mysterious. The birds looked for Him at dawn and called Him to join in their song as before; the animals came out in the open to play with Him; flowers blossomed and spread their fragrance to welcome Him; but poor God had no face to show them. It was hideously coloured and disfigured by man. He hid behind the clouds, sad and dejected.

But man made His stay there also intolerable. In his little meaningless languages man composed hymns and prayers, which contained no sense, to humour His and these he recited again and again and louder and louder till God’s ears could stand no longer. Disowning and disobeying Him in all respects and in all things of life man’s prayers and solicitations added insult to the injury inflicted by him on God.

After the creation of man God had in His mind the creation of higher and higher beings, but He realized after His experience with man that if He created more sophisticated and higher beings than man they would defy Him more. So He stopped further creation and in regret, sorrow and disgust, higher and higher above the clouds He withdrew to be out of the reach of man’s vision, man’s calls, shouts and prayers. And more and more He mystified Himself and dived into the dark space.

“Why did my beloved man turn like this? Why did he go astray? Why did he forsake all that I had given him–good sense, clear vision, good sentiments, good understanding, the power to judge and discriminate, which would have brought him all the joys, all the bliss, all the happiness that life and the world could give? Why did he go off the good, smooth path on which I had placed him? Why did he not look and listen to me? Why did he disregard and disobey the good laws I had made for his safety and security, for his well-being and happiness? O why did my beloved man leave all that to go the wrong way which led him into trouble, worry, misery and sorrow?”

So God wondered, lamented and reflected. Man was in sorrow, in distress and suffering and sank more and more in them as he left the lead of God who spoke and warned from within his heart till he threw Him out. Man’s sorrows made Him sorrowful, but man made His stay with him impossible. He not only disobeyed and flouted Him, but his false description of Him and his insincere worship and prayer which allowed Him no peace, no rest, made His presence in the world miserable. His relation with His creatures also became embarrassing because of man’s hideous misrepresentation of Him before them. Yet as He departed from this world He thought not so much of the faults of man as of his sorrows and sufferings. But He was helpless to help man who cared not for Him and who never wanted to understand His true Self and to know what message He had for him.

Man was still His most beloved creature. He loved him still and loved him all the more for his sorrows which made His own sorrows deeper and more agonising. And He regretted all the more His helplessness to help man. Unable to bear the sight of his sorrows as He moved away from the good earth and its creatures He saw the earth crumbling under the hand of man.

Away He moved faster and faster with the receding galaxies into the hollow of space to create another earth but an earth having all other things as in this except man.

But there was one man who truly loved Him, who trusted Him, who had abiding faith in His taking care of him and doing what was the best for him. And so he had no fear, no worry, no discontent, no agitation in mind. He had accepted and followed the rules and laws of nature which he understood God had made for his welfare and happiness. He walked erect, looked forward with confidence and whatever came and whatever happened he found in them the loving hand of God working for his good. In his trustful dependence on Him he had wished for nothing, because he believed that what he would wish and desire might not be for his good but what He would give would be. So he never prayed, never sang hymns to praise, flatter and please Him. When others shouted and prayed he entreated them not to trouble and disturb Him. “Can’t you trust Him to do the best for you?”–but none listened. He didn’t read the holy books in which he was distressed to find untrue statements and raise descriptions of Him. He turned away from where greedy, lustful people sat in worship and made offerings to God in the hope of pleasing Him to grant them their wishes. He was pained to see that these people gave Him no rest, no peace and kept shouting and praying “Give me this, give me that, give me more and more.”

He withdrew from there and looked up to the sky where he saw God moving away from the earth. He called “Come back my Beloved, do not leave me.”

God looked back at him and said, “I can be here no longer; man has made my stay intolerable. But to you, my Beloved, I shall ever give vision whenever you will remember me and will look up to the starry sky.”

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