This book, being a spiritual treatise, does not cover any of the caste system practised in this world. ‘Varnashrama’ was introduced based on the occupations and professions practised by men and women. Today we witness hundreds of castes, one claiming that it is superior to other castes. These were created and practised by those who had selfish motives.
God has designated only two types of his creations: Male and Female. Plant and animal kingdom have only two types: Male and Female.
A community consists of people doing different jobs. The names of different occupations were attributed to those people who were engaged in particular jobs. Later on, these job names have become caste titles. Among them can we grade a few groups as the highest or the lowest? All are necessary to form a community. All must live in harmony because everyone contributes to fulfil the needs of the society. All are equal. In order for the human race to live in prosperity happily, we must realize that we are children of God. One person does the farming another one sells goods yet another man washes clothes and irons them. Another one administers the country. Every man performs a particular type of duty. We need the help of all people and their services. We should never think of another person as inferior to us. There are differences only in the positions related to various jobs, and differences in the standard of living and even in the knowledge level. We can differentiate the people as the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the good and the wicked. This kind of differentiation leads us to two types – soul (Jeevatma) and God (Paramatma). The soul has no sex difference. However, man goes to lower level according to their segregating tendencies. Man has two sexes – male and female when he has human form. We need not think about them. We must aim at higher level.
When we understand the soul has no sex difference, we get the knowledge about the soul and this stage will lead us to godhead (divine nature). When we say that there is no sex difference among the souls, we must realize that there is no difference like caste or creed. We must not think of any caste system.
Then, is there not good and bad in thought, word and deed? Yes, there is. We must realize what is good and follow the path of righteousness in order to enjoy the divine grace. Complete knowledge is the state of wisdom. Such a wise person treats all human alike. He advises the ignorant people that path of universal love is the right route to attain godliness.He says: Namasivayam is the path of righteousness. The term “Namasivayam” can be interpreted as follows: Our body is made up of five elements – earth, air, water, fire and ether. We must exist and act within the scope of these five elements and go beyond with the aim of reaching the all-pervading, God. There are only two levels of human beings from the point of view of spiritualism — The wise and the unwise. When we think of higher level, all human beings fall under one of these categories.
There will be rarely a wise, saintly spiritual person in a population of one crore. All others fall under the other category. A saint is a self-realized person but the unwise grope in ignorance. The wise have conquered the death, but the other group is bound by fruits of action, and as a result, suffer and die.
So many people are trying to become the wise saints. But they need a suitable guide. If they get a qualified and wise person, they are fortunate. In addition, they must practise sincerely what is preached to them. Then only they will become the wise. Nobody can achieve success without unflinching determination. Those who aspire for sainthood must practise sincerely what is preached to them in order to reach the goal.
Everyone in this world is eligible to attempt sincerely and become enlightened through divine grace. The payment depends on the amount of work we put in. This is divine law. Good actions bear beneficial fruits and the bad ones lead to sinning. Nobody is exempt from this law. Our future birth is decided only by our actions in this life. These actions are the root cause (our previous actions) for all our sufferings and pleasures of life. All our pleasant and sorrowful experiences are results of our previous actions. It is ignorance to put the blame on others.
As a saint says, “the body is given to you as a result of your two types of action – good and bad ones”. We must realize that actions in the previous birth have led to the present birth. You must exhaust the fruits of action in order to attain the godhead.
Good and bad actions are classified under three types: prarabtham, agamyam and sanchitham. One who consults the universal accountant (Chitraguptan) and nullifies his account once for all becomes a wise person. This must be carried out before death knocks at your door.
You must have learnt the story of Markandeyan who surrendered to God, and escaped from the God of death.
You must catch God through unflinching faith in Him. When you think of only God who resides in you, by surrendering yourself to the will of God, then you can achieve the goal of catching and reaching God. Understand that God is trapped in this body and soul; he is in the form of mind, and knowledge. We must protect our body and clasp the soul; we must realize the God through disciplined mind.
Soon He will be under our control and we will become enlightened. This is the greatest achievement to be realized by man and nothing else.
Avvaiyar, the ancient saint, has divided people into two categories of caste. She does not talk about sexual difference. She says that those who perform charitable acts are superior human beings and those who refuse to do this are inferior persons. This is what moral code says.
Identifying a person with caste, is immoral act for a spiritualist. Casteism spoils man, intoxicates him towards hatred becomes a stupid person with brutal behaviour.
It is mentioned in the beginning of this chapter that there is a caste and it does not refer to the caste system prevalent in the society. A person with divine knowledge never thinks about different castes but treats all people equally. There is a saying “An ascetic considers even the king as an ordinary person” Of course, the king is an ordinary person like others in the eyes of a monk.
Only rulers of the countries go to ascetics to make obeisance to them. The saints and monks never go to rulers for any favour, nor do they surrender to them. These saints are devotees of God, who pray and do service to God and humanity. Therefore, they do not care about worldly things.
The great poet Bharathiar proclaims in his Viduthalai Kummi, his folk song on women’s liberation: “Let us create a caste of divinity”. He advises women to depend on God to get over the ocean of birth and deaths. Bharathiar called those aspiring women as of “Divine caste”. After witnessing all atrocities in the world, he proclaimed that there was no caste and was terribly upset by the wicked practices of caste among humans.
Tamil word, saadhi, as a verbal form, means “achieve your goal”. It means that you must take steps to reach the highest level by deeply realizing the nature of God. It also means “you must achieve your aim in life”. You can do it”. The greatest achievement in life is realizing God. Of course, God will bless you. Avvaiyar refers to this state that we can achieve it through charity and austerity. This is the state of wisdom we rarely find. One who leads such austere life will realize the deathlessness state of life.
When you admit the children in the school the first question the school authorities ask is “your caste”. What a shame! Rulers of the country encourage the caste system through privileges offered to different categories of caste. As a result, nobody wants to be in the ‘high caste’. Many people claim that they belong to ‘low caste’ and demand more benefits from the government. It is a pathetic paradox that one who blames other high caste people for putting him in low caste category, claims many privileges and rights from the government stating that he belongs to a low caste.
Here let us use the wise words of Jesus Christ – “Oh father! They do not know what they are doing; forgive them for their sins”.
Being the children of God, we are the highest form of living beings. We, the humans, are microcosm of the huge macrocosm of the divinity (paramatma). If we realize this basic truth, there is no question of belonging to high or low caste for any human being.
All saints have uniformly said that we all belong to the same category of human beings, and the same race of mankind. Consider this line of thought.
All problems arise because of foolish human beings. A disciple of Jesus became a traitor because of his greed for thirty silver coins. His unworthy desire resulted in sad ending. Socrates, a Greek philosopher, was poisoned to death because government of his time was so foolish that the rulers did not understand the greatness of Socrates.
We read about similar incidents frequently. What have we learnt from them? We applaud the remarkable achievements of people and stop there. We read about them, but never think about the ideas given in the books and try to implement them in our lives.
A person has the sixth sense only when he thinks and understands the highest idea in life. When I published my book, “Kanmani Maalai” (A Precious Garland of Pupil in the Eye or, A Precious Garland of Divine Vision ) every reader praised that the style was simple with fluency and ease. It terribly pained me because they did not understand the motive behind the writing. The purpose of writing the book was to make the readers realize the secret of wisdom to be achieved in everyone’s life.
Not even one-fourth of the readers have understood the spirit of the book. Many readers followed various other spiritual teachers and argued from their own point of view went away dissatisfied. I always say that all spiritual teachers try to guide us in the right path of wisdom. I often quote their teachings and acknowledge their stand point too.
A spiritual teacher never aspired for fame and popularity. The aim in their preaching was to share their spiritual experience with other people and guide them to reach the same state of spiritual level and experience the blissful state of divinity. They never ask us to worship them. They called themselves as a devotee of God and hide their true nature of divinity. Their aim was to make people wise and be better human beings. They never attempted to blow their own trumpets.
Let me summarize my objectives. All must understand what I have realized and achieve their goals by realizing the secrets of spiritualism.
Fair mindedness (Needhi), code of conduct (Neri), and perfect propriety (Ozhukkam) are the corner-stones leading to the building called spiritual experience. With these virtuous qualities one must be led to practise universal love. This is the crown of one’s achievements. One who tries to find an answer to “Who am I?”, will realize that a soul (Jeevatma) is a minute particle in the vast universal space, God (Paramaatma).
One who feels the presence of God everywhere will start feeling pity for all living beings. Even the crops suffering without water in the field will arouse pity in him. Such a human being is filled with pity and sympathy for others, practising universal love (Jeevakaarunyam). He realizes that all pervading God is present in each soul. Such a wise person experiences the supreme bliss and thus conquers death.
Don’t fight for upholding the caste system and die miserably. Let us aim at the purified nature of soul and practise universal love to become a part of God.
Human race is only one and the God also is only one. Thiruvalluvar says: those who practise universal love without harming any living organism are austerely virtuous persons.