06 Apr 2020
[Swami visited the house of Shri. K. Pavan Kumar and had the following spiritual discussion (satsaṅga). Kumari Sarada Snehitha asked the following question to Swami: “Swami, You said that Śaṅkara left His mother, Prahlāda left his father and Buddha left His kingdom, son and wife for the sake of God. But how is it justified to leave these legitimate worldly bonds?”]
Swami replied: We totally agree with your point, as far as pravṛtti or worldly life is concerned. All family bonds are legitimate worldly bonds that are within the boundaries of worldly life. This means that you should vote for these legitimate worldly bonds over illegitimate worldly bonds. You must give top priority to your mother, your father, your life-partner (wife or husband), your son, your daughter, your property etc. If you neglect your life-partner for the sake of an illegitimate bond with some other person, you have failed at pravṛtti. You are in the state of duśpravṛtti, which is the lowest level of injustice. Pravṛtti or the worldly life following justice, is the middle level. One must vote for pravṛtti over duśpravṛtti. But the highest level is nivṛtti, which is the spiritual path or the life of devotion to God. In nivṛtti, one must vote for God even over one’s legitimate worldly bonds. It means that one’s bond with God should be stronger than even one’s legitimate worldly bonds. This is exactly what is told by God in His final words, in the Gita. He says that the soul must sacrifice even the legitimate worldly bonds for the sake of God and that the soul does not incur any sin due to it (Sarva dharmān parityajya…—Gita).
The highest justice is to vote for God over both legitimate and illegitimate worldly bonds. God tests the devotee for his ability to vote for God over all legitimate and illegitimate bonds. This test is called Datta parīkṣā. The devotee who follows pravṛtti, has already rejected all illegitimate worldly bonds in favor of legitimate worldly bonds. In the final stage, God wants the devotee to even leave these legitimate worldly bonds and vote for Him alone. God has assured that leaving justice (pravṛtti) for the sake of God (nivṛtti) is not injustice. Leaving justice for the sake of illigetimate bonds alone is injustice and sin. For this test of God Datta, the soul must be a householder and not a saint (celibate). A saint is a person who has no family and has renounced all worldly bonds. He is like a student sitting outside the examination hall, refusing to enter into examination hall and write the test. Such a person cannot pass the test and cannot be awarded the subsequent degree. The sages passed through millions of births in the past, in which they were saints for several births. But finally, God conducted the final examination for the sages, in which they were given the birth of Gopikās, who were householders. You can declare that a person truly has a strong bond with God, if the person goes towards God, in spite of the person’s worldly bonds dragging him in the opposite direction. In the absence of all worldly bonds, if the person (saint) sticks to his bond with God, where is the test? You are already sitting apart from the fire and you say that you are not burnt. What is great in that? But if you sit in the fire and show that you are not burnt by the fire, then that is really great! Only then have you passed the test.
God’s test is always practical and not theoretical. He will not ask you to recite the 5th verse of 10th chapter in the Gita. He will not ask you to sing a specific song from the Sāma Veda to test the sweetness of your voice. The former is theoretical knowledge or jñāna yoga and the latter is theoretical devotion or bhakti yoga. His test is only in karma yoga, which is practical philosophy. This karma yoga consists of two parts. The first is karma saṃnyāsa which is serving the contemporary Human Incarnation of God. The second part is karma phala tyāga, which is sacrificing one’s hard-earned money to the contemporary Human Incarnation of God. The hard-earned money is the fruit of one’s hard work (karma phala). Saints, who have no money, cannot donate money to the Incarnation. They can only serve the Incarnation. A householder can do both. Since he earns money, he can sacrifice some money to the Incarnation and since he also has some spare time and energy, he can serve the Incarnation too.
Of course, all three steps of the spiritual path namely, knowledge (jñāna yoga), devotion (bhakti yoga) and practice (karma yoga) are equally important. But you must know that the mere jñāna yoga or mere bhakti yoga or even both of them together do not yield the fruit. Only karma yoga yields the fruit. Jñāna yoga is water and bhakti yoga is fertilizer. Karma yoga is the mango plant that alone bears the fruit. Without water, the plant dies and without fertilizer the plant cannot grow into a tree to bear fruit. Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva came in sequence and preached these three steps respectively. Their sequence shows that jñāna yoga generates bhakti yoga, which in turn leads to karma yoga, which ultimately, yields the fruit.
All of you (Shri Pavan’s family) are devotees of Shri Satya Sai Baba. Baba’s first attempt to preach to the public was during His early school days. He wrote a drama consisting of four scenes. The name of the play was ‘Do you practice what you say?’ (Ceppindi Cestāra). In the first scene, a preacher preaches to the public saying that one must help beggars. When the preacher returns to his home, a beggar comes to his door and the preacher’s son tries to give a handful of food grains to the beggar. The preacher stops his son from giving the grains. The son reminds his father that the father had himself preached some time ago that beggars should be helped. The father replied immediately “Does anybody practice what they preach?” The other three scenes run on the same theme. Baba projected the entire essence of His future divine program through this play. There are two parts to the title of the play. One part is ‘what is spoken’ and the other part is ‘what is practiced’. The first part is the theoretical part, including both jñāna yoga and bhakti yoga. The second part is the practical part which is karma yoga. Baba’s stress is on practice because karma yoga, which is like the mango tree, alone can yield the fruit and not mere jñāna yoga (water) or mere bhakti yoga (fertilizer) or even the two together.
One doubt might arise here. When the preacher himself does not practice what he preaches, why should we practice it? Suppose you are a smoker and the doctor gives you some medicines to control your smoking habit. You may say that since the doctor himself is a smoker, you need not use the medicines prescribed by him. This is the climax of your foolishness! If the doctor is a smoker, he will suffer for it. His lungs will get damaged. If you do not take the prescribed medicines, you will also suffer! Hence, you should not worry about the practice of the preacher. Sometimes, the preacher might even be an Incarnation of God like Shirdi Sai Baba, who used to smoke. His lungs will not be affected at all by His smoking. Incarnations show such negative qualities only to test the faith of conservatives in them. Hence, you should only bother about the preaching of the preacher and not the preacher’s practice. If you practice the correct preaching of the preacher, you will receive good results, irrespective of whether the preacher practices it himself or not.
People say that spiritual philosophy or spiritual knowledge, which is called Brahma Vidyā or Vedānta Śāstra, is the most difficult subject to understand. This is totally twisted falsehood. They claim that since spiritual knowledge is very difficult to understand, they were unable to practice it. It is nothing but a clever excuse to cover up their inability to practice. In fact, spiritual knowledge is conceptually the simplest to understand. The entire difficulty lies only in practicing what is easily understood. Swami Vivekananda once wept facing the sky asking why people in India are suffering from poverty even though excellent spiritual knowledge and marvelous devotion are found in India. The answer for that question is that even though Indians are the topmost preachers and the topmost singers who sing devotional songs, they are zero in practicing the spiritual knowledge. The knowledge and devotion of people in western countries are much lower than that of Indians. But their practice is wonderful. So, God practically gave them a lot of wealth in return. God has said in the Gita that He will approach you in the same way as you approach Him (Ye yathamāṃ…—Gita).
Keywords:
| Shri Datta Swami | Pravruti nivrutti dushpravrutti Sarva dharmaan parityajya cheppindi chestaara ye yathamaam
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