Of spiritual signature
| Date :26-Nov-2019 |
By Vijay Phanshikar
Jaise bimb tari basakechi yevhade/
(Just as tiny the Sun-disc may be)
Tari prakashasi trailokya thokade/
(Yet so small universe is to embrace the light)
Shabdachi vyapti tene pade/
(Such is the expanse of the word )
Anubhavavi//
(That one should sense)
- Dynaneshwari (Chapter IV)
How small the word often is! Just a few letters! Just a few sounds, nano and nuanced! Yet, so powerful is the expression in most cases! So meaningful, so masterful! In the seminal work Dnyaneshwari, Saint Dnyaneshwar often resorts to emoting about the power of words, the ability of the word to evolve newer meaning, newer dimension to human thought. But what a comparison has he drawn up -- between the ‘tiny’ disc of the Sun (whose expanding circles of light the whole universe appears small to accommodate) and word -- a word, the word! Since time immemorial, human species has evolved in an all-round, integrated manner, and the word played the most crucial role in that sublimating process. Each one of us has expressed every possible shade of thought and emotion -- happiness, sadness, sense of unity, deep anxiety, love, hatred, anger, calmness, distance, closeness -- so effectively in words. Our forefathers did it, and so would do those who would follow us deep into future. Countless languages grew on shoulders of human expression. Literature, too, grew in all languages to sublime heights -- prose, poetry, and all other forms.
There was not one subject for which the humans did and could not assign words. Saint Dnyaneshwar is all in awe of this process. So, in that ecstatic response to his fascination for word, he says that one should sense this power, this expanse, this penetrative ability of the word. Of course, in the original text in Marathi, he uses the word Anubhavavi referring to the expanse of a word’s power, likening it to the light from the small disc of the Sun engulfing the universe ...! The word Anubhavavi talks of ‘experiencing’ in a strict definition. But in Dnyaneshwari there often is an appeal to the process of sensing -- that is discerning with the help of senses, in a silent, wordless manner.
So, even as Saint Dnyaneshwar talks of word, he also resorts to expression such as Shabdevin samvadije -- communioning without actual, physical word. The word also has another parallel -- Akshar (which cannot be destroyed -- kshar means death, end, and Akshar means something that is beyond death, destruction). Here, too, is an analogy between ‘word’ and ‘light’. Light, too, is beyond destruction. That is why the light from a very, very distant celestial body deep into the galactic recesses of the universe (howsoever faint it may seem when it reaches us), does not ‘die’.
It travels for thousands of light-years and we are able to ‘see’ it. ‘Word’, too, has the similar capacity, potential -- deathless, as all the wise people believe. In the cosmic terms, ‘word’ also means the sound of Aum! -- the celestial hummmmm! Some ancient poets also tended to call this hum the ‘hymn’, that is the most pure expression. Modern science, too, agrees with this premise. But if this is one scientific reality, there is another dimension, too, to ‘word’ -- the spiritual signature of human evolution.