The prayer of everyone who believes in the law of karma: “God save me from doing any evil!” And if this becomes the prayer of every man and woman in India, this ancient, unhappy land will become new and India will shine, once again, in the splendour of the new morning sun.
I do an evil deed in the dark of the night, I say to myself: “No one saw it: I shall get away with it!” The law of karma tells me: it is true, no one saw it. But the seed has entered the field of my life. The field of my life has registered it. And one day or the other — today, tomorrow or in the distant future — out of the seed will grow a tree whose fruit will have to be eaten by me! Therefore, beware! Take care! Live and move and do your daily work in the ever-living presence of God!
This was the teaching that was given to every student in ancient India. There is an oft-repeated story of a guru and two disciples who came to him seeking admission to the ashrama. The guru gives them a coconut each and instructs them to break the coconut where no one may see them, and return with the broken pieces. One of the students enters a dark and solitary cave and, finding no one watching, breaks the coconut and within no time, returns to the ashram. The second disciple returns only after sunset and that, too, with the coconut intact. His friend says to him: “Why did you not accompany me? There were so many caves. I entered one of them. You could have entered another and broken the coconut. Nobody would have seen you.” At this, the other friend replies: “I entered cave after cave, but wherever I went, just as I was about to break the coconut, I found that He was watching me. God was watching me! There was not a nook or a corner where God was not!”
How many of us live in this consciousness? This is an ancient interpretation of an ancient, eternal law. But how many live up to it?
If only we lived in the thought that God is watching us, exploitation, social injustice and maladministration would be completely eradicated from the country.
Dada J P Vaswani is a humanitarian, philosopher, educator, acclaimed writer, powerful orator, messiah of ahimsa, and non-sectarian spiritual leader
