We have seen or heard of situations where people with vested interests do not like others to get educated, either due to selfishness, or due to jealousy or to maintain their hegemony. In certain feudal pockets of India a few decades ago, the village chiefs did not allow the villagers to have modern education as it would encourage them not to work in their fields or do domestic service.

An interesting discussion on similar lines is seen in the BrihadAranyaka Upanishad (mantra 1-4-10) where the Upanishad makes some harsh remarks on the ritualist perpetually seeking favours from the gods. These remarks come in the context of discussion on how the knower of Brahman ‘becomes’ Brahman. The Upanishad states that in the case of a seeker who attains the sarvAtma bhAva i.e. ability to see Brahman everywhere, not even the gods can obstruct him from becoming Brahman. It implies that under some other circumstances the gods can really obstruct the seeker, and that is how the discussion starts.

Let us see as to what are these circumstances.

There is a statement in the Veda (TaittirIya Samhita) which says: jAyamAnO vai brAhmaNO tribhih rnavAn jAyatE, which means that every person is born indebted in three ways, and that his indebtedness is to the sages, the gods, and the forefathers. He is indebted to the sages who have given him his culture and the way to redeem from the debt is to follow and preserve that culture. Gods fulfill our wishes and indebtedness to them has to be redeemed by performance of yagnas, the mutually preserving activities as the Gita says. The indebtedness to forefathers is to be redeemed by preserving the family line by having children. The cultural, spiritual and familial indebtednesses bind a human being in various karmas/actions.

It follows that humans should continue to propitiate the gods through yagnas.

The gods, in Vedic context are intermediary beings between humans and the Supreme Being. They also have likes and dislikes (rAga,dvEsha), and, like humans, aspire for realization of Brahman. They are only a step above the humans in virtues and powers. There is interdependence between the gods and humans, the yagnas performed by humans sustain gods and the gods give prosperity to humans (Gita 3-11).

A realized person i.e. jnani is neither bound by karmas, nor bound to perform them; he is free from any such obligation. He goes out of the karma cycle. As he is not bound to do the rituals like yagna, the gods feel that their vassal is slipping away from their flock and so have a vested interest to keep him in the flock.

A doubt arises: if the gods are so mischievous, they can even be harassing us in a routine way by not giving or delaying results when we perform a good deed or perform a yagna. In such a case it would be unwise to do any worship.

It is not so. Karma phalam or fruit of one’s action is as certain as Newton’s first law, it can’t be changed even by the gods. In fact the followers of MimAmsa school (called karma mimAmsakas) believe in a strict determinism in which a specific karma gives a specific result. There is no freedom to gods to meddle with this. They can give fruits, no doubt, but strictly according to karma.

The main question emerges: is bramavidya an action/karma? It is a self-enquiry leading to self-realization. It is not an action like yagna. In yagna there is a giver-taker relationship or a vassal-master relationship. It is ‘I’ worshipping ‘you’. There is a dwaita bhAva i.e. feeling of duality or bhEda bhAva i.e. feeling of separateness in the whole process, but not so in case of self-enquiry. The scripture says that self-enquiry is only getting rid of ajnAna or ignorance, and not achieving something which is not already there. There can be a time gap between an action/ritual and the result, but in the case of self-enquiry liberation is simultaneous with removal of ignorance. So when it is clear that self-enquiry is not karma, how can the gods obstruct?

Besides, gods themselves are aspirants for brahmavidya. They can obstruct when the humans are aspiring for tangible results like prosperity, success and so on. All actions in the realm of duality/dwaita bhAva can be obstructed but not self-enquiry where the duality disappears and the seeker becomes Brahman.

Realization stops all future actions that are in the plane of duality. Even if a person performs an action, it is karmAbhAsa or mere appearance as karma. It may look like karma from the point of view of others, but the doer himself does not have the ‘I’ feeling or doer-feeling (kartRitvabhAva). He may be doing some activities because of the continuing result of a karma which has started giving result, and it cannot be stopped just as an arrow already shot from the bow cannot be stopped (an example given in the texts).

The ‘I’ feeling in any action is the cause of duality. When this feeling disappears due to self-realization, there is no worshipper-worshipped or vassal-master relationship. In fact the realized person does not see god as other than himself.

For those who can’t do this, the Upanishad has some harsh words:  yO anyAM dEvatAMupAstE anyOsAvanyOhamasmIti,na sa vEda, yathA pasurEvam hi dEvanAm. It means that like a farm animal labors for the master, so does the person serve the gods, because he sees duality, i.e. worships god as other than himself, in a servant-master mode. He will be perpetually indebted.

If we reason like this, people in society would stop going to temples or churches falsely assuming that they are in the process of realization or that they are already realized souls. There is a danger to social order. Devotion is a disciplining force in society contributing to social harmony and hence Shankara does not want to discount this. Hence, slightly going beyond the text he suggests that humans, however, have to worship gods and seek their help in attaining liberation. It is like a servant obediently serving a master while also praying for his release from bondage. The gods, in turn, see as to who are the selfish slaves and who are the seekers and release those who serve well with selfless devotion and love.

If we closely see, this is one passage where the text is strongly commenting on a karmaTha i.e. one who has karma-fixation. Can a ritual for ritual’s sake or for selfish desires liberate a person? This is the question. Logically speaking, one who seeks boons is a debtor, and hence the Upanishad says: avidyAvAn hi rNi, i.e. an ignorant person is an indebted person.

Narada-bhakti-sutras echo the same idea while defining bhakti/devotion. Narada says: sA twasmin paramaprEmarUpA,(sutra-2) which means that the true form of worship is supreme love. Gods also love those who do not seek boons.

Examine this with commonsense psychology. Is it the gods who are obstructing the seeker or is it his own desires, greed and ambition? The answer is clear. Shankara’s commentary gives a good psychological account of the seeker who is vacillating between desires and the struggle to get rid of them. The Upanishad uses a no nonsense language. A person who sees the achievables as other than himself desires them. One who has sarvAtma bhAva, the ability to see Brahman in all things, has nothing to aspire. One who sees diversity seeks things, one who sees unity (one Brahman) is already complete.

Satyam or Truth, as we know, is one of the attributes of the Supreme. In Vedic Sanskrit there are two equivalents for the English word ‘truth’. They are: satyam and rtam. The expressions in the upanishadic invocation rtam vadishyami, satyam vadishyami meaning ‘I will tell truth’, I will tell truth’ are quite well known. There is a slight difference between the two words rtam and satyam.

Shankara’s commentary on the two words shows that while satyam is an eternally valid statement uncontradicted or uncontradictable in past, present and future, rtam is a truth of lesser order or degree. It is something which is deduced in a particular context in the light of a scriptural injunction. In a way, it is a contextual truth or what is right under the circumstances (not expedient). Like in the story of the sage who was giving shelter to a fleeing victim who was being chased by a robber. On the robber’s query as to whether the fleeing person was hiding in his ashram, the sage seems to have replied: the eyes which see cannot tell and the tongue which tells cannot see. Of course, in those dharmic days the robber did not further interrogate the sage nor search his house but went away. Here what the sage was telling was rtam i.e. what was right in that situation as per dharma. So the word rtam seems to be closer to the English word ‘right’.

What Rupert Murdoch was doing was to somehow know and tell truth like the upanishadic student who said ‘I will tell truth’, but something went wrong.

What was his intention in finding truth and what sort of truth was he trying to find out? Well, he has been accused of prying into the private lives of people and blackmail and consequently aggrandize himself and build up an economic empire with, of course, a lot of clout. The mens rea, or the intention as they call it in law is important here. He was interested in knowing the salacious or sleazy details of celebrities, which would in no way ennoble the sensibilities of the readers, but on the other hand, would debase the sensibilities of the society. That was why there was so much of righteous anger. The British Police which was considered as the role model for police all over the world, had also to suffer a humbling moment.

The next question is familiar: who is the conscience keeper in the society?

 When Joseph Addison started his paper ‘The Spectator’, it was a turning point in modern history, as it provided a witness and a critic of all the wrongs in the society. Human society always requires such a mechanism for its own self-criticism and reconstruction. The ancient Indian model was that of rshis, or sages who had the freedom to admonish kings when things went wrong and they were above any persecution by the kings. History is replete with many examples to illustrate this. When kings changed or when kingdoms were invaded these sages were untouched. The sages in turn kept up high standard of virtuousness and were the moral mentors of the society. These were the intellectual minority in Toynbee’s words who guided the majority in association with the kings. The sages represented the saatvic temperament and the kings represented the rajas temperament. Shankara, in his commentary on the Gita (4-1) in fact concludes: brahma-kshatre paripalite jagat paripalayitum alam i.e. the whole world could be protected if the integrity of the two agencies_ the intelligentsia and the ruler_ were protected. (That is why the Gita was taught to a warrior and not to a retired person finding it difficult to attain detachment). References to these two agencies are quite frequent in the vedic literature.

Poets in some societies were charged with the responsibility of keeping a watch on the rulers and had the freedom to comment on them. The Indian society also gave such role to poets. But this is not as effective as the institution of sages or religious leaders.

The judiciary is only reactive, not proactive. The judges can adjudicate an issue only when it comes on to the bench. They can only interpret the law made by the law maker, who is the politician. All the experiments like the ‘creative interpretation of law’ etc. have their limitations.

The field is now left to the civil society and the media, (which is in fact, a part of the civil society) to correct the society. They are the custodians and commentators on public morality and political integrity. The civil society,however, is finding it difficult to find unanimity on any issue, because the intellectuals are aligned to one ideology or other, and it is difficult to have a non-aligned intellectual.

The old adage –‘tell truth, tell the pleasant truth, do not tell the unpleasant truth’ (satyam bruyat priyam bruyat, na bruyat satyam apriyam) is for someone who wants to play safe. There is another prescription for those who are expected to be the watch dogs of society-‘tell truth, even unpleasant, when you have to correct a wrong in someone whom you love’.

It is highly doubtful whether Rupert Murdoch’s revelations fell into the above categories. It was degradation from the times of ‘The Spectator’ of Addison. If we are permitted to call ‘The Spectator’ as the witness consciousness, we may have to use the epithet ‘prying consciousness’ in case of Mr.Murdoch.