Divya Drishti - The Divine Vision

It was the evening of 27th Nov 2011, my sister's wedding day. After receiving my friends from the railway station and arranging for their accommodation, I had to go to the parlour to pick-up my sister who was dressed as the bride. When my sister came out, she looked so beautiful that a single drop of tear fell from my eyes. It was a festive mood in the family. The baraat was yet to begin and the general mood was of celebrations. Despite of this festive mood why this unceremonious single drop of tear ??? Her beauty reminded me that this is the beginning of the end. In a few hours from now, she would be married off and go away to a different family altogether. In short, I was feeling the pain of separation hidden deep behind her unparallelled beauty.

During my college days in Burla, I captured this beautiful sunset. Again, I felt the same emotional pain while witnessing this scenic sunset. The pain that a beautiful day in my life has come to an end; and with it, I am one day closer to the ultimate and inevitable oblivion - Death.

Recently, few months back, I had the chance to visit a resort as a part of my official team outing. There I captured this cute little kitten. It was mewing the entire winter evening. So my team mates offered it some food. Still then, it did not even care to sniff the food and continued to cry. Seeing this behaviour, I realized that this innocent kitten was missing its mother. This sorrowful feeling of a child getting separated from its mother touched me emotionally and it felt as if an arrow has pierced straight through my heart.

After much introspection, I realized that all the three events have one thing in common; that Pain & Beauty are two sides of the same coin. The ability to see one behind the other is the Divine Vision - Divya Drishti.

The beautiful and serene sunset in the picture is actually an exploding fireball millions of miles away. So explosive that everything within a thousand miles radius vaporizes. This fiery inferno description of the beautiful red sunset can send shivers through anyone's spine. The negative emotions like pain, fear and a sense of explosive violent atmosphere are always hidden behind the beauty of a serene sunset.

Similarly, the tears of separation flowing down the eyes of a bride during "Vidaai" add to her flawless beauty. But, the moment is an emotionally painful one and it becomes very difficult to remain dispassionate and witness the beauty associated with the pain.

In Mahabharat, only two persons had this Divya Drishti. One was Sanjay and the other was Arjuna.

To the normal human eye, the Kurukshetra War was the most bloodiest war. Millions of human beings literally slaughtered each other like animals. Human relations reached their nadir and four generations of the Kuru clan bayed for each others blood. The victor was not judged on the area captured, rather on the body count he piled up at the end of the day. Possessed with Divya Drishti, both Arjuna & Sanjay were witnessing something very different - The beauty of destructive creation. Everything was getting annihilated for the sake of a fresh start. But, there were certain conditions attached to this Divya Drishti. The moment one sees only one side of the coin, this divine ability is lost. Arjuna felt the pain of this blood-thirsty war when his only son Abhimanyu was brutally killed. Consequently, he lost the ability to see the beauty of destructive creation. Next day he walked into the battlefield with revenge in his mind, whose sole purpose was to destroy for the sake of destroying his enemies, and not to create a society for the good people. Sanjay also lost this divine vision when he started to feel the pain of Duryodhan dying in the battlefield. The beauty of dharma restored was no longer visible to Sanjay when he felt the pain of the bereaved blind king Dhritarashtra.

We tend believe that this divine vision is no longer present with ordinary mortals like us, and it is embedded forever, deep within the mythological texts like Mahabharat. But the strange fact is that anyone who can appreciate beauty has the inherent ability to feel the pain associated with it. The converse is also true i.e. anybody who is feeling some kind of emotional pain has the ability to enjoy the beauty of the moment. Then why don't we use our Divya Drishti and remain happy in moments of pain ??

The answer lies in the fact that, if we want to witness beauty in painful moments, then we must also be prepared to accept the pain hidden behind the beauty. The latter is easier said than done. Instead, we often choose to ignore the pain hidden behind the beauty rather than accepting it. As they say - "Sometimes knowledge becomes a poison and ignorance becomes bliss". Divya Drishti is all about digesting the poison (Vish) and become one with the almighty Shiv.