'Tat Twam Asi' Poem by Hindukush Ojha

Once upon a time,
When there was no science,
There was the utter need of mankind
To find a God to enshrine
Its heartfelt expressions of gratitude.
Being what he was - so imaginative,
Yet he could have known it
To be no imagination,
But an act of miracle
Being extricated from the clutches of death
Saved at a certain event
When death was imminent
And he got saved!

Or when a few thousand years later,
As it is now,
After the modern advancements
Of science and technology can explain
The perils of disease and death
And the way out of confusion.
Unlike the certainty
Of doom experienced by his forefathers
Who believed that a god had protected them
Which the modern man attributes to science.
Yet further, though he may have shifted,
Repudiated by science,
From the conceptualization of God
Yet the need to have answers beyond
The rational safety of intellectualization
Could not have been more so.

Thus, came Vedanta to fill the gap
And the God of Advaita,
Where 'Brahman Satyam
Jagat Mithya
Jeevo Brahmeva Naparaha''
Or
'Brahman is true, the world is false,
Jiva is none but this Brahman''.
The aphorism
Extinguishes the very firewall
That separates Man from his creator
And thus artificializes the need of Man
As being Superfluous
Who vividly colours all his deeds
That are the by-product of his modern life.
Which indeed might be true,
Yet it is this very fact,
That has helped Man establish
His philosophy in postmodern percepts
Based on the same philosophy of Advaita.
That took such a long while to
Come to fruition - to a realization
That it was Brahman itself yearning
To modernize - to experience the nuclear science of today
To bring to Man the astute intuitive understanding
That thou art.
Tat Twam Asi.

And Shankaracharya, once
Must have dreamt of this day.
The balancing act of surviving
Further exploration of science and space
Free from the danger of extermination
Of the human race shall not culminate
Therefore so soon.
For it is this Brahman - this God of Advaita
That shall engineer the Mankind's fate
For it to live long enough
To reach perhaps to
Wherever its mind should race.