POET. FIRAQ AND NATURE OF SELF (ATMAN)

                                     

FIRAQ  AND NATURE OF SELF (ATMAN) 

"Kah diya tune jo masoom tau masoom hain hum,

Kah diya tune gunehgaar , gunehgaar hain hum" ...( Firaq Gorakhpuri)

(If you pronounce  ‘You  are the Unstained’, then unstained I stand;  

If you declare ‘you are the Transgressor’, then transgressor I become.)

Read through the Upanishads , Firaq’s couplet moves beyond the lover’s lament and turns into a doctrine of the Self (Atman). The ‘you’ addressed here is no longer the earthly beloved. It is the Absolute, whose Will (Saṅkalpa)utters the world into being, projecting the paired opposites of Virtue (Puṇya)and Sin (Paapa) upon the formless (Brahman).

What the poet discovers is that innocence and guilt are only limiting adjuncts ( Upaadhis ) or masks draped over the Self (Atman), which by nature is Without-Qualities (Nirguṇa) and Immutable (Nirvikaara). No label can cling to it. This is why the Bṛhadaraṇyaka Upanishad repeats "not this, not this" ("neti, neti"): every designation falls away, leaving only the witness.

The beloved’s speech, then, acts as the Power of Illusion (Maaya-shakti). It spins out 'Name and Form ' ( Naamroopa ) , the world of moral binaries, while the substratum stays true to the great Upanishadic axiom: "One only, without a second" ("Ekam eva advityam").

So the verse is not a confession of dependence. It is the Individual-Soul (Jiva) awakening to "That Thou Art" ("Tat tvam asi"). Whatever thou namest me, that I am ; because in truth, there is no ‘I’ distinct from 'Thy' Word.

(Avtar Mota)

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