12 Aug 2014
Shri Durga Prasad asked “Enjoyment of misery is not possible for any human being without the grace of God. Atheists can never dream this since they cannot get the grace of God”.
Swami replied: Enjoyment of misery is possible to any human being including the atheist. The atheist is also one of the children of God. In fact, the father pays more attention to the wrong child and helps it also. Every human being, being the child of God is entitled to the grace of God just like every actor including the villain is entitled for the remuneration. Without the villain, where is the glory of the hero in the drama? Without atheist, the devotees have no significance. Without the night, the day and without summer the winter, are not significant at all. The Gita says that any human being has to put 4/5 parts of the effort and the God’s grace, 1/5 part is associated at the end to give the fruit to His child. The Gita did not mention here that atheists are an exception to this. The basic requirement to achieve the stage of enjoying the misery is detachment from the world. You enjoy all the scenes of the cinema since you are detached from all those scenes. You must make a beginning to achieve this detachment and continuously practice to attain this in spite of failures. Detachment is attained perfect and completely by continuous practice in course of time. This is told in the Gita that you can achieve the detachment of vibrating mind to the world and make it static by continuous practice of that very detachment from the world. The mind is vibrated due to attachment to several bonds and several issues in each bond. Once the mind is detached from the bonds and the various issues related to all these bonds, the vibrating nature of mind stops and the mind become still. Just like you enjoy the tragic scenes of cinema and sour dishes in the meals, you enjoy the misery also along with happiness. Continuous enjoyment of happiness also bores and results in misery. Thus, misery is inevitable and neither happiness nor misery is continuous. You enjoy the cinema and the meals continuously because you are detached from both.
An ignorant fellow also enjoys the happy scenes and weeps seeing the tragic scenes in cinema. Such a person attaches himself to the cinema. Similarly, a person attached to a particular dish enjoys it and rejects the dish, which is not liked by him. Such person is also attached to the meals. He does not like the taste of some vegetables and likes the taste of certain other vegetables. Unless you achieve the detachment from the world with the help of the spiritual knowledge that the world is unreal before the real God, you cannot achieve the detachment from the world. For that purpose, your constant association with the real God is essential. Your soul is also unreal before the real God since the soul is also a part of this unreal creation with respect to God. If you are associated with your soul, you cannot appreciate the relative unreal nature of the creation. The real creator is beyond this unreal creation and your reference should always be the real creator to realise the unreal nature of this creation. Hence, a devotee of God always succeeds in attaining the concept of unreal nature of the creation and a devotee of the soul can never achieve it. Unless you strongly realize the unreal nature of the cinema, you cannot be detached from it. An ignorant fellow laughs and weeps since he feels that the cinema is real with respect to himself or the soul. Such experience is true due to excessive ignorance since one should realize that the cinema is unreal with respect to the real self. But, the external world is real to the real self. If you say that the external world is unreal, the self is also unreal being a part of the world. Then also, the unreal world is always real to the unreal self. But, the world is unreal with respect to the real God and not with respect to the unreal self. Hence, the ordinary human being can never experience this world as unreal and therefore, can never enjoy equally the happiness and misery. Such enjoyment is possible only when happiness and misery are unreal. But both these are never unreal to the soul because they are part of the world.
When the world is felt unreal, then only happiness and misery can be felt unreal and can be equally enjoyed. Certainly, that is possible only to the real God before whom only the world is unreal. But, your constant association with such God through intensive devotion makes you become nearest to God (Saamipyam). In such state, the world becomes unreal to you also. It is almost identification of God with you. Narada says that God is identified with a human devotee also (Tanmayaahite) as in the case of human incarnation. Such nearness of God comes through devotion resulting in the fall of His grace on you. Thus, by constant practice and grace of God achieved through intensive devotion, a devotee can achieve such state of enjoying the misery. In the case of an atheist also, such practice can achieve almost the same result. The enjoyment of misery of a devotee never fails. But, the enjoyment of the misery of an atheist achieved by constant practice and unnoticed grace of God may fail sometimes indicating the necessity of recognising the existence of God and devotion to Him. This is an attempt of God to convert the atheist into theist so that his enjoyment of misery can become perfect and permanent. Thus, even in the absence of devotion to God, constant practice of the concept of detachment can give almost the final success (Abhyaasenatu kaunteya vairaagyenacha gruhyate - Gita). In the case of atheist, the detachment from the world is not achieved, which is based on the realization of the unreal nature of the world due to lack of association with God. Therefore, the detachment of the world is only by practice and not by realization. Therefore, the detachment of an atheist is not as strong as that of a devotee. All the result in the case of atheist is limited to the strength of the practice only. To that extent, the final result, which is enjoyment of misery, is granted by God due to His parental grace even in the absence of devotion. If this parental grace of God is absent, any extent of practice will not touch the fruit at all.
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