The Human Body (September 1976)

According to the Indian conception, there are five   elements of   the   human   body.    They   are  (earth),   (water),  (luster), (air) and (vacuum).   When the human body is cast away by a person, it is said that   he has become one with the aforesaid five elements.

Our theory in the Puranas  says, there are as many as 84 Jakhs yonies (i.e., species).   They are all graded.    After every birth, a living being does some good   deeds and some bad deeds.  He reaps the benefit of those deeds while getting the next birth.  Good deeds acquire for him a superior species while bad deeds lower his species.   Thus after going through all   these eightyfour lakhs yonie-, the soul is born in the human body.

Darvin's theory of evolution says that at the beginning, there were living beings only in the water. Later on some beings evolved, who were staying partially in water and partially on land.  This evolution continued and a living being was evolved, who stayed entirely on land.  The process of evolution continued through ages and ultimately the man was born.

In this   connection   it   may  be stated that the   theory of incarnations of the God, as depicted in our  Puranas, needs to be examined in this context.  The first incarnation of God Vishnu was fish.  A fish is a living being who stays all the time in water and can never remain alive out of it.  The second incarnation was a tortoise.   This living being stays partially in water and partially on land.  The third incarnation was a pig. which stays entirely on land, and uses water only for drink-incarnation is that of  half   man and half animal.

Then we come to the Waman incarnation, This was no doubt a full man; but he was not a completely grown up normal man.  He appears to be a pigml. The incarnations after Waman are those of complete man. From the series of the above 'avatars', we see a strange similarity between their sequence and the sequence of the species as stated by Darvin.  The persons composing the Puranas were perhaps aware of the theory of evolution, they only did not put it up as a theory but they conveyed it through a religious phenomenon of incarnations of God.

Leaving aside the theory of the birth of the human being, we see that the main difference between the other beings and man is his power of speech and his power to think.  Because of his intelligence and his power of thinking, he has been able to win a victory over so many other animals, though physically they have been much more powerful than him.  This craze for power later on did not halt at only subjugating other animals.  The more intelligent people thought of making other human beings their slaves.  Of course, they also revolted after some years of slavery, and became independent.

Thought and intelligence show the bright side of the human body; but the human body is a storage of mucus, urine and excreta, which we are throwing out of our body, through various organs. Some saints have therefore warned the human beings that they should not have too much attachment to their body, because it is nothing else but a store of all dirty things.  They have said that the body of a lady, which outwardly appears to be attra­ctive, is nothing else but a store of dirty things and have warned the ordinary people against indulging too much in the sex matters and thus wasting their life by going away from the devotion to God.

Against this censure of the human body, some also explained the advantages of the human body, that because of the intelligence and the power of thinking, human beings have many advantages.  The other living organisms, for example, cannot think about the origin, growth and develop­ment of this universe.  They cannot also think about the greatness of God, who has been universally accepted as a creator of this universe.  We human beings can only think about God and have devotion to Him.  In the following shloka the human being has been advised to make the best use of the body, which he has been lucky enough to get.  The Shloka reads as follows :-

The meaning of the above shloka is, "Oh human being, you have purchased this human body, in the form of a boat, at a very great cost of merit.    So you try to cross the vast sea of sorrows before this boat disintegrates".  Here the human body is compared with a boat.  Of course, for  purchasing any small or big thing, you have to pay some price.   The human body being a very sophisticated organism, having complex functions, its cost must be very high.  The poet, who appears to be grooved in our Puranic philosophy, has been naturally thinking in terms of  the 84 lakhs of yonies and has therefore said that acquiring the human body is the highest   achievement of this world, and that you had to pay a very high price, in terms of merit, in order to achieve the human body.  When you  pay a high price for   anything, it is quite natural that you would expect a good return out of the boat and says that you should try your best to cross the sea of sorrows through this boat, so long as it does not capsize.   The breaking   or disintegrating of the boat means the death as far as the human body is concerned.   In the  conception of the 84 lakhs yonies, this idea is a basic one that if the   human being makes the best use of his life, if he   performs penance, if he spends his life in thinking about God and concentrating on Him, is redeemed and is freed from the cycle of birth is called as Moksha and it is supposed to be the highest aim of human life.  Some saints have therefore talked in terms of the above shloka and said that the human body may be full of mucus and other dirty things, but it is only in this form of the living being that we get a chance to worship God, to under­stand Him and to be one with Him (i.e., achieve Moksha).  Hence we must thank God for having given us the human body and repay His obligations by concentrating on Him.

We, the ordinary people, do not understand the real purpose of the human body and think that it has   been given to us only for enjoying the comforts and   pleasures of  this world.  Though most of the saints have been careless about the comforts of their body, they have not advised us to leave the worldly life altogether and go to the forest.   Shri Sai Baba, the   great saint of Shirdi, also did not advise people to leave the pleasures of the worldly life.  He on the other hand wanted people to live a life of ease and comfort, which would be free from difficulties.  One thing was however noteworthy about Him.  He did   not love His body-as we do.  We are trying to have the best food, we are trying to have the softest bed to sleep we are trying to have the richest clothes to wear; but if we look at the life of Shri Sai Baba, we find that He was never after any of the aforesaid things.  Like so many other saints, we do not find that   love for one's own body in Shri Sai Baba, which we   see in the minds of all ordinary humam beings.  We all Sai devotees have therefore to remember the purpose of God in giving us this human body and   hence to renounce our extra attachment for our body.    We have to follow Shri Sai Baba in making the best use of this body for concentra­ting on God and making use thereof for giving comforts to others; with a view to obtaining liberation of the soul or the Moksha.