By Prof Surendra Bhatnagar

“What way, we are better than bacteria ?
What way, we are higher than a ficus tree?
What way, humanity transcends divinity?
Why was man, the last act of creation?
Why man alone is put to judgment of law?”
–Find answers here to these Whys

My son is a microbiologist and my daughter-in-law is a molecular biologist. So bacteria, particularly archea have been my fascination. They fascinate me since like the god, they are immortal, like ecstatic of old, free from sex. Archea can eat iron and can make pulp of wood. O God! It can live in the valleys of volcanoes and bear the weight of oceans.

Beauty fascinates man. The world’s largest industry is of cosmetics. Fashion is another great draw. But beauty fades with age for men and women alike. Butterflies don’t need make up. Their colourful feathers don’t fade with age.

Butterflies change their body – changing the shape, dress and colour with the change of time. When feeding, as caterpillars they wear a dress matching with the colour of their surroundings. They keep themselves unnoticed, hiding through camouflage. Adult butterflies evolve wings to reach to their mates. They dress, mostly with brilliant colours and feed on poisonous plants. Their bodies bear offensive smell to keep distance from the prey.

Like traditional Brahmins, the butterflies keep themselves untouched while feeding. Safety means more food, which means more energy. They suck in the ambrosia before their nuptial flights. For sex they wear a different nuptial dress and mate high in the sky. While man lives closed doors, they live in gardens; while living in the company of flowers they have no aspiration for the Garden of Eden. Following the natural law, the animals are not subject to the judgment of any court of heaven or earth.

Man doesn’t match with animals, in body-strength, long-life and beauty. To animals everything is natural; to man it is acquired, adopted or mimicked. Mannerism (cat walk, Gaja-gamini), masks, and even popular titles and family names have their origin, nay roots in the animal world.

So, why the creation wheel, adaptive and non-adaptive, did not stop with animals? Why did it wait for the emergence of man?
Why all this evolution? What for man?

Animals have evolved every art and every strategy to attract their female counterparts. Animals are good followers of rules; they don’t, probably, can’t make or break the rules. Yet, evolution hasn’t bestowed them with power to think, a power that separates man from animals. Thinking is a mind game. Without thinking one can’t make a choice of alternatives. Thinking empowers man to deny and defy and make a judicious selection of the appropriate strategy.

It is man alone, whom the God has made in His own image and likeness, has power to think, and to make or break the Law. He can’t instantly accept or reject any proposition without thinking. A thinking man is a new species of animals which topped the creation. After creating man, God stopped the creation process and gave man the key for the future creation. Ever since, the job of the God is only to see that man behaves. He didn’t make man permanent. But has given him sufficient time to discuss, accept or reject and act out of his free-will. This freewill is freedom – the first step towards spiritual liberation.

While animals and even gods are not given the power to defy and deny, the man has the power to modify. Because, on the sixth day of creation, God created a thinking brain.

Mind with Thinking Power

Five million years ago, on God’s sixth day, man was created and God perfected creation.

‘And God made all life and living creatures after their (natural) kind. The man he created after his own likeness and image and gave him the dominion over the whole earth’, says the Bible.

On the seventh day, God ended his work and rested. The resting state of God in India is Vishnu. Therefore the sixth day is the day of man’s being. He also gifted man the intelligence to read his writings properly and brain enough to analyze and discriminate. ‘He gave every beast of the earth, every fowl of the air and everything that creepeth wherein there is life and every green herb for food’.

But it does not mean that man may eat all things, including poisonous plants and animals without discrimination.

Holy Quran is more specific about eatables. But the point is ‘proper judgment (selection)’ is necessary. The brain gives the man the faculty to discriminate also. Beyond the human intelligence, God made nothing. Henceforth, man matters in all the affairs of earth. And mind is the last measure of the judgment. No more future evolution now. If anything has to happen it will happen in the gray-sphere of brain.

Human brain has a limit, not the human mind.. The later makes one restless in the search of real freedom. The real freedom is in the silence of mind. Reason makes one restless. The real freedom is freedom from associations.

Meher Baba, who has described the entire spiritual journey in minute details, describes the creation as a mind game. He puts liberation as the state of consciousness. Liberation is when the mind finally stops. Or in a manner of speaking, when bird stops chirping (to nationalise a popular expression in Mulkraj Anand’s The Seven Little- Known Birds Of The Inner Eye, 1978).

When the mind stops working, it is endless rest; it is endless peace. The theory of bio-feedback machines does not apply to the state of meditation, in which state, brain emits beta, theta, as well delta waves. This indicates that one is deeply relaxed as in sleep and at the same time fully awake also, writes Dr. B.K. Upadhyaya in his book ‘Mind management’ (2010).

In the state of deep sleep, the mind enters the field of deep darkness and we are relaxed and don’t fear; then why should we not be happy when we get awakened, while still getting full sleep – the state described for Vishnu in puranas?