Whenever I share my view, whether in satsang or in writing, that like a bhakta, the Lord also longs for our fellowship, almost everyone, particularly those who strongly advocate the complete sovereignty of God, denies this. For them, God is completely independent and does not require anything from us, not even our fellowship. This doctrine is not limited to the Abrahamic faiths. In a few Hindu philosophical systems, such as Dvaita, this belief is also insisted upon.
My understanding of God is that in Her creation, She is completely independent. Of course, in Hindu philosophy, even God’s act of creation has several interpretations. But in Her relationship, She is dependent upon our response to Her initiative (see BT Song 926).
I am not a theologian and cannot prove this point from the correct interpretation of Scripture of any religion. However, in my bhakti to the Lord, when I write poems in the Viraha-bhakti genre, I freely use this concept of the Lord also waiting for His devotee to have fellowship, rather, a relationship with him or her. This is part of the bhakti tradition.
In this regard, I have a few questions for those who insist upon the Sovereignty of God. Even in creation, why did He have to create human beings? According to Hindu philosophy, at least in most schools, it is either an act of ‘divine play’ (Leela) or to provide an opportunity for souls to ‘work out their salvation’ through various births. There is also another view that the atman is eternal, neither created nor perishing. However, Mukti Veda does not uphold this view of souls. According to it, the soul was created once and destined to go to heaven or hell eternally. But according to my understanding of Muktiveda, if we are not created either for divine play or to give another chance to work out our own salvation, then what is the need for God to create us? Or should we say that even this one-time creation, destined for an eternal heaven or hell, is also a divine play? Or did He created us to have fellowship with us?
One view in Hinduism is that God created us because He did not want to remain ‘alone’ and seeking company.1 This cannot be true in Muktiveda as He is sovereign and does not require anything to remove His loneliness. Then what is the purpose of creating us? Though we need not agree with others, in my understanding, without knowing all about God, in Her relationship with a bhakta, the Lord is also equally longing to have our fellowship. Creation reveals His glory, but it cannot reveal His character. For that, He has to create something in His own image that could both reveal and experience His glory, and also have fellowship with Him knowing His nature.
To avoid going round and round on this topic, finally, I would like to quote what the Lord Himself says: “Behold, I stand at the door and ‘knock’. If you open the door, I will come in and have fellowship with you.”
Leaving all the context and theology aside, regarding Revelation, which is more an apocalyptic book, for me, first He comes and then knocks. If my understanding is correct, as this book is addressed to various mandalies and the followers of the Lord, this ‘coming’ and ‘knocking’ is not for all but for the believers. We seek God for our mukti, but once saved, now the Lord comes again and again in our life, ‘seeking’ and ‘knocking’ at our door, not only to give fellowship but also to have fellowship with us. Unless He knocks, we might not even know whether someone is at the door or not. But the most interesting part for me is that He never forces Himself to come inside; we have to invite Him. Here, an independent God who created me becomes vulnerable, standing outside for me to open the door and invite Him in. This interpretation may seem very childish, even to me, twisting the text and theology to fit my view. But with this childish nature, I approach God, trying to remain childlike in my relationship with Him.
However As Tom Wring points out, the one who knocks the door is the Master of the house and the one who has to open is his servant:
As Tom Wright correctly says, ‘The echoes of stories in the gospels suggest that the one knocking on the door is the master of the house, returning at an unexpected hour, while the one who should open the door is the servant who has stayed awake. It is, then, Jesus’ house in the first place; our job is simply to welcome him home.’ See BT Song 971 that I wrote about this.2
I would like to end this by quoting Rumi (see also BT Song 1552 that I wrote after reading the following Rumi’s song). I am not sure if this is relevant to this article, but becoming ‘one’, merging with each other, shows how God also remains ‘dependent’ though He is always ‘independent’. like the way he explains the word ‘BE’. To make it a meaningful word, both letters should mingle with each other. But when we pronounce the word as ‘be’, we can hear the sound of ‘B’, but to make it a word, we need both letters. Rumi, says that both the ‘subject’ and ‘object’ need to be tightly bound together. However, he didn’t specify which is the subject and which is the object. Unlike in Revelation, here it is the devotee who seeks fellowship, but God refuses to receive him as he comes with his separate identity as ‘me’. After wandering and being properly backed by separation, the devotee returns to merge his individual self with God. Whether God seeks us or we seek Him, unless we both merge with each other, there cannot be fellowship. Theology may not agree with this, but bhakti does. Then can I say He is an ‘in-dependent’ God?
6-6-2024
Gurukulam
Rumi
Two Friends
A certain person came to the Friend’s door
and knocked
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me.”
The Friend answered, “Go away. There’s no place
for raw meat at this table.”
The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up and down in front of the Friend’s house,
gently knocked.
“Who is it?”
“You.”
“Please come in my self,
there’s no place in this house for two.
The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through
the eye of the needle.
It’s a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,
not a big ego-beast with baggage.’
But how can a camel be thinned to a thread?
With the shears of practices, with doing things.— p. 87
Let’s return to the two friends whose thread
became single,
who spell with their two letters
The original word,
BE
B and E tighten around subjects and objects
that one knot may hold them. Two scissor blades
Make one cut.
And watch two men washing clothes.
One makes dry clothes wet. The other makes
wet clothes dry. They seem to be thwarting each other,
but their work is a perfect harmony.
Evey hold person seems to have a different doctrine
and practice, but there’s really only one work.3
See BT Song 927, 962. And also see: The Lord Alone Sings
Notes
1 If we raise the question as to how the finite rises from out of the bosom of the infinite, Samkara says that it is an incomprehensible mystery, maya. We know that there is the absolute reality, we know that there is the empirical world, we know that the empirical world rests on the Absolute, but the how of it is beyond our knowledge. The hypothesis of (p.49) creation is a weak one, and it assumes that God lived alone for some time and then suddenly it occurred to Him to have company, when He put forth the world….— The Hindu View of Life, Radhakrishnan, New Delhi, HarperCollins Publishers India, (1927), 1998, Fourth impression, pp.49-50
2 Tom Wright, Revelation for Everyone, New Delhi, ISPCK, 2015, Rev. 3.14-22.
3 Coleman Barks, The Essential RUMI, Introduction to the New Expanded Edition, New York, HarperCollins, 2004, p.88
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