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Chapter 10
CONTEMPLATION OF GOD’S MANIFESTATIONS
53. God In The Animals
23. A cuckoo is worthy of admiration; is a crow less so? I like it very much. Its voice may be shrill, still it has its own sweetness. How nice a crow looks when it arrives fluttering its wings! Little children are particularly attracted to it. A child does not like to take his food within the four walls of the house. You have to take him into the open yard and make him eat by turning his attention towards crows and sparrows. Is this attraction of a child for a crow a sign of craziness? No. Rather, it is a sign of wisdom. A child instantly identifies itself with the Lord manifested in the crow. A mother may otherwise try in many ways to persuade him to eat; the child remains stubborn. But he gets absorbed in observing the crow fluttering its wings, and eats unmindfully what the mother puts into his mouth. Aesop’s fables are based on the child’s curiosity about nature. Aesop saw the Lord everywhere. If I prepare a list of the books I like, Aesop’s Fables would be on the top of that list. Aesop’s world does not have human beings only; it also has foxes, dogs, hares, wolves, crows, tortoises etc. The whole creation speaks to Aesop. He has a divine vision. The Ramayana too is based on that vision. Tulsidas, while describing Rama’s childhood, has narrated a little incident. Rama, playing in the courtyard, tries to catch a crow nearby, but in vain. Then Rama hits upon an idea. He takes a piece of sweet in his hands and lures the crow. Tulsidas has written lines after lines describing such an ordinary incident. Why? Because the crow too is a form of the Lord. God that is in Rama is there in that crow too. The acquaintance between Rama and the crow is one between two manifestations of the Supreme Self. |
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