23 Aug 2009
[Ganesh Chaturthi] Ganapati means the Lord of a group of close devotees, who have reached the climax of devotion. The word Gana does not mean the entire group of normal souls. Gana means a group of souls, who have become very close to the Lord by their unimaginable devotion. The Lord is certainly the master of all the souls but, the Gana is specially attached group of souls. The king is attached to the people in his kingdom but, he is specially attached to his family members. There is difference in the intensity of the attachments. When the Lord incarnates on this earth in human form, these souls from the Gana also accompany the Lord. These liberated souls have no bondage of the cycle of deeds and their lives are totally planned by the Lord. For example, if you take the life of Jesus, His crucifixion was not due to His past deeds and it was purely based on the will of the Lord, who planned such incident in His life for the sake of upliftment of the society. Therefore, Jesus prayed “Let Thy will will be done”. Here, the crucifixion is according to the will of the Lord. The same statement cannot be uttered by an ordinary human being in such situation. The crucifixion of other two persons in the same time was based on their sins. Therefore, they cannot utter this statement because their lives were based on their deeds and not on the plan of God’s will. In the case of these two ordinary human beings, the proper statement should be “Let the Law take its own course”. Without this analysis, ordinary human beings also utter the former statement due to ignorance.
Generally, people pray God to remove their difficulties. They do not know that by doing so, God has to interfere in His own cycle of administration. By doing so, God has to insult the deity of justice and this deity was appointed by God Himself to run the administration without any partiality. Having ordered so, God Himself will not show partiality on anybody under any circumstances. God will not contradict His own policy. If any administrator in this world contradicts his own policy, he is certified as a mad fellow certainly. Of course, if a particular soul is in the climax of devotion to God, passing all the acid tests of Datta, God will over rule His own policy as in the case of Markandeya. In fact, God even killed the deity of justice (Yamadharma Raja) in such special case. Without analyzing its own status in the devotion, every soul prays God to violate the rule of justice and insult the deity of justice. Even though such insult is not mentioned directly in the prayer, the prayer means the same indirectly. Lord Krishna gave life to the dead son of Sandeepani and this was an extreme case since the dead body was also destroyed long back. Sandeepani was such a deserving person. Quoting this, Subhadra, the sister of Lord Krishna, prayed the Lord to give life to her dead son and the dead body was immediately available. Subhadra did not analyze the difference in the deservingness between her and Sandeepani. She thought that she deserves more than even Sandeepani, since she was the sister of Lord.
Some praise the Lord as the kindest, who protects even the sinners and thus, they say that Lord helps even the undeserving. If it is so, there is no place of punishment for the sins. If every sinner should be saved by the Lord, then the cycle of deeds becomes meaningless and invalid. Actually, this statement is made by deserving devotees, who project themselves as undeserving due to their submissive character and lack of ego. By this statement, one should not misunderstand that really God helps the undeserving due to His boundless compassion. His kindness is always seen in His constant efforts to preach all the souls to uplift them from doing sins and to make them deserving through high devotion. A teacher always helps every student to read and understand the knowledge, but he will not help any student in the examination by giving answers secretly. The kindness of the teacher is appreciated in his interest to teach every student but he is not appreciated in helping the students through unfair means.
Eligibility to Enter the Close Circle
The Lord behaves as a real father towards the souls of Gana because these souls have real devotion to the Lord as their real father. The other ordinary souls treat the Lord as adopted father. The adopted children love the father only for getting his property. Even if they serve him, the service is done with the ultimate aim of getting his property. The real children serve the father even though the father is poor without a single paisa. Their devotion is real. The ordinary souls love and serve the Lord only for getting some benefit from the Lord in return. Some like protection in this world by solving their problems here. Some others like to have protection after the death. All these are one and the same since they aspire for some fruit in return. Real love is always pure without aspiration for any fruit. The devotee serving the Lord practically by recognizing Him in human form here alone becomes the member of the Gana. Those souls worshipping Lord theoretically without practical sacrifice and service or those serving practically the idols and photos cannot enter Gana. The service rendered to idols is either received by themselves or the priests but not the Lord. Of course, the Lord is pleased if you can identify a real deserving devotee and serve him.
True knowledge is compared to fire (Jnaanaagnih… Gita) because no falsehood can survive in it without becoming ash. Certainly the true knowledge is harsh and looks like impossible to practice. The impossibility may be now but not in the future. The souls of Gana have practiced the true spiritual knowledge and hence, it is not impractical. The time taken to reach the stage of practice may be days or months or years or births. At least appreciate the truth, which is the first step in the practice. If you avoid the appreciation and criticize it so that you can escape its practice, you are gone forever.
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