CAN GOD BE SEEN ?

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

CAN GOD BE SEEN ?
Emperor Akbar once asked his wise Minister Birbal, “Well, Birbal, you often repeat God is
everywhere.” Birbal rejoined, “Yes, Badshah! God is everywhere. There is absolutely no doubt in
this.” Akbar pulled the diamond ring off his finger and asked Birbal, “Is your God in this ring, too?”
Birbal replied, “Yes, Badshah! He is certainly in the ring.” “Then can you make me see Him?”
asked the Emperor. Birbal had no answer to this. He asked for time; the Emperor allowed him six
months in which to find an answer or to find out a way to show Akbar God in the ring.
Birbal went home; he was puzzled. He knew there was a solution to the problem; but he
knew not that solution. He dared not face the Emperor again without an answer to his question. He
grew pale and anxious.
Shortly after this encounter with the Emperor, a little boy-mendicant came to Birbal’s house
for alms. He asked Birbal, “What ails you, Sir? Why do you look so sordid and miserable? You are a
wise man, and wise men should have no reason for misery! Joy and tranquillity are the marked
characteristics of a wise man.” “True!” replied Birbal: “The heart is convinced, but the intellect
cannot frame words for it.” Birbal then narrated all that transpired between him and the Emperor.
“Is this what you are worrying about?” exclaimed the boy in amazement. “I can give you the
answer in a moment; but will you allow me to talk to the Emperor personally?” Birbal replied in
affirmative and took the boy to the imperial court and addressed the Emperor, “My Lord! Even this
little boy can give you the answer to your question.”

Akbar inwardly appreciated the pluck and boldness of the boy and was curious to hear him.
He asked the boy, “If God is all-pervading, son, can you show me your God in the ring?” “O King!”
replied the boy, “I can do so in a second; but I amthirsty; I can answer the question after I have taken
a glass of curd.” The Emperor at once had a glassful of curd given to him. The boy began to stir the
curd and said, “O Emperor, I am used to drinking good curd which has butter in it. I do not like this
stuff which your bearer has brought and which does not yield butter at all.”
“Certainly, this curd is the best available,” replied the Emperor. “Remember, little one, that
you are partaking of the product of the Emperor’s personal diary.” The boy said, “Very well! If your
Majesty is so sure that this cup of curd contains butter in it, please show me the butter.” The
Emperor laughed aloud and said, “I thought so! O ignorant child! You do not know that butter can
be got out of curd only after churning it; and yet you have the audacity to come here and show me
God!”
“I am not a fool, Badshah Sahib,” replied the boy quickly: “I only gave you the answer to
your own question!” The Emperor was puzzled. The boy said to him, “Your Majesty! In exactly the
same manner the Lord is residing within everything. He is the indwelling Presence, the Self of all,
the Light of all lights, the Power that maintains the universe. Yet one cannot see Him with one’s
physical eyes. A vision is only a projection of one’s own mind before the eye of the mind. One can
realise God intuitively and see Him with the eye of wisdom; but before that one has to churn the five
sheaths, and the objects, and separate the butter, the Reality, from the, curd, the names and forms.”
The young boy had thus answered Akbar’s question and the Emperor was greatly
impressed. He wanted to know more and asked, “Child! Now tell me, what is your God doing all the
while?” The mendicant-boy replied: “Well, your Majesty, it is God who lends power to our senses,
perception to our mind, discernment to our intellect, strength to our limbs; it is through His will that
we live and die. But man vainly imagines that he is the actor and the enjoyer. Man is a mere nothing
before the Almighty governing Power that directs the movement in the universe.
“It is in a twinkling of an eye, when compared to the unimaginable age of the universe, that
empires rise and fall, dynasties rise and perish, the boundaries of the land and the sea wax and wane,
and we find a mountain range where there had been a sea and a new sea where there had been a
plateau. It is in a twinkling of an eye that we find millionaires become paupers and paupers become
millionaires, and a King becomes a wandering exile by a tryst of destiny and a vagrant becomes a
King. So many planets are created, sustained and dissolved every moment in this vast universe.
Who is behind this gigantic phenomena? It is God and none but the one God, to realise whom one
has to give up vanity, the feeling of doership, arrogance and pride; to realise Him one has to
surrender oneself entirely to His will, which can be discerned through cultivation of purity,
emotional maturity and intellectual conviction; to realise that God one has to efface oneself in toto
and feel that one is a mere instrument of His will.”
It was a new experience for Emperor Akbar to hear the ancient wisdom from so young a
mendicant. Akbar was very liberal in his views, and this encounter with a Hindu child-monk was
perhaps in a way partly responsible for the Emperor to invite to his court many Hindu scholars and
holy men to participate in spiritual and academic deliberations with Muslim divines and Maulavis.