28 Dec 2017
Shri Kishore Ram asked: During a long discussion with Shri Karthik and Shri Hrishikesh, we noticed the following point:-
1) In the control of doing sins, You have told that either fear for punishments (bhaya) or love to God (bhakti) must be there. In my practical experience, I find bhakti is more powerful in such control. In bhakti also, taking human incarnation as God is giving more effective result. Please elaborate on this practical aspect useful for the spiritual effort.
Swami replied: Selecting bhakti over bhaya itself indicates that the soul having such experience is really a blessed soul since such spiritual aspirant is in the rare Nivrutti line. This point itself proves that one in millions only belongs to this line in which sinful attitudes are controlled due to love to God. In this line, the devotee thinks “since God does not like sins, let me not do sins”. If you can collect such spiritual aspirants, the number of such devotees will be countable on fingers! Among such countable devotees, one only takes the human incarnation as God because ego and jealousy, which are inevitable in any human being, do not allow such faith in human incarnation. Hence, both these (control of sin by love to God and liking contemporary human incarnation) are extreme impossibilities. The Gita says that one in thousands travels in Nivrutti line (giving importance to devotion to God) and one in such rare devotees only knows the human incarnation (kaschit maam vetti…). Krishna says that one in thousands only tries to know about Krishna and one in such rare devotees only knows that Krishna, the human being, is God.
It is true that love is a better path than fear because in fear, tension is generated, which alone controls the sins. Tension is very inconvenient to the psychology of human beings. If this control of sins can be obtained by love to God, it is more pleasant path because in love, no tension appears. Moreover, the human psychology likes love. In this way, love is far better than fear. If the devotee has already developed much love to God, this path of bhakti is very much suitable in such case. But, such souls are very very rare. Most souls are habituated to do sins only due to terrible attraction towards the immediate fruits of sins. If you take the corruption, which is a very important sin in these days, its immediate fruit is earning more money with an illusion that money alone gives happiness. Money is essential for basic needs, but, excess of it is also essential for misery! The ultimate fruit of this sin is destruction of self and destruction of family members for whom such sinful money is earned. 99% of devotees are doing this sin even though they are devoted to God. But, the devotion to God is not so much developed so as to control this sin based on love to God. If you say that corruption shall not be done since God does not like it, how many devotees are controlled? They will do corruption and a little part of it will be given as bribe to God in the form of worships and divine services! Such concept of bribe is protected by the priests (that worship of God will destroy sins) because they get a part of bribe through such worships! The human nature dominates over the devotion in many cases of devotees and corruption is done by them. The false knowledge propagated by priests promotes such corruption without any fear. Hence, control of sin by fear is certainly a temporary measure only, but, it is immediately effective remedy. Realization of the sins through spiritual knowledge followed by repentance through devotion is not as effective as the concept of impression of inevitable punishment for the sin to be given by the unimaginable God in unimaginable ways even if the sinner escapes the law here. This path of fear gives immediate effect, but, is not permanent. The path of love to God does not give immediate effect, but, gives permanent result in long run. There are some medicines, which give immediate effect, but do not relieve you from the root disease. You have to repeatedly use such medicines whenever the disease attacks you. But, there are some medicines, which do not give immediate effect, but in long run removes the disease permanently. You have to prescribe the medicine based on the psychology of the patient. The best is to use both types of medicines. In the initial stages, devotion added by fear for the punishment is the best path. As devotion grows, the fear for punishment drops away since it becomes useless. In the climax of devotion as tested by God, this is proved. One day, Lord Krishna suffered with headache and Narada asked for the medicine of it. Krishna told that the feet-dust of a devotee can cure His headache. Even Rukmini and other wives refused to give the feet-dust fearing that such sin will lead to terrible hell. But, Gopikas gave feet-dust immediately telling that relief of Krishna is more important than going to hell! The effect of devotion is unimaginable, but, it takes lot of time. Pure gold (like the path of devotion) does not glitter much. Artificial rolled gold (like the path of fear) glitters much. Hence, the final advice is that both shall be used in the initial stage and in course of time, the path of the fear drops away by itself. In any case, you must start and continue with the path of devotion only.
It is true that the association with alive human incarnation gives the better impression and attraction than unimaginable God (who can’t be even imagined!), statues and photos of energetic incarnations and past human incarnations. Association with an alive item is always the climax point of impression and subsequent force of attraction. But, wherever the divine nectar (amrutam) lies, there, the horrible poison (halaahalam) is inevitable. The ego and jealousy are the two vices having power of climax. Even the sages could not get rid of these two cataracts! The Veda says that even angels dislike that, which is before eyes and like that, which is away from eyes (parokshapriyaa iva hi devaah pratyakshadvishah). If you want to swallow divine nectar, you have to tolerate this horrible poison initially. Both these vices should be controlled by you without expression like the poison kept in the throat of Lord Shiva without outward emission! The obstruction shall be removed by the grace of Lord Shiva and then only, you will get the divine fruit (amrutam) from the hands of Lord Vishnu. Both Shiva and Vishnu are one and the same God. If you try to get rid of ego and jealousy, God will help you. After that, you will be blessed by God in attaining the divine fruit after removing the obstruction. There will be terrible repulsion between common media and this should be overcome, after which, you can attain the wonderful fruit of recognition of contemporary human incarnation. The properties of the medium or human body like hunger, thirst, sleep, disease etc., remain as such misleading you to think the human incarnation as ordinary human being. The electrified wire also looks like non-electrified wire since the electricity is not expressed and since both wires have the same properties like colour of the metal, leanness of the wire etc., God can be only known by experience (anubhavaika vedyam Brahma) like the electric shock. A human being wearing insulating dress of ego and jealousy does not get the experience of unimaginable and invisible God present in the contemporary human incarnation.
There are three stages in any effort:
i) The initial stage before putting up the effort in which permanent defeat only exists. One should feel misery in this initial state and worry in this state is very useful, which kindles the aim to put up the effort. Jesus advised the people weeping for Him (while He was carrying on the cross), not to weep for Him, but to weep for themselves and for their children. The meaning of this advice is that those people are not putting up any effort in the spiritual path for which only they should weep or worry. The real worry comes only at the time of death, when all our valid worldly activities look like zeros and all the invalid spiritual activities look like numbers with numerical values! He was advising us about such time of death during His time of death, in which only we can find zeros and numbers separately in reality.
ii) Stage of effort contains both success and defeat in alternating manner. One should not feel discouraged by the defeat experienced in this stage of effort. In the stage of effort, every defeat is also an indirect stepping stone for success only.
iii) Stage of achieving goal in which success only exists permanently.
Therefore, one should be worried for the permanent defeat before putting up the effort. He should not be worried about the inevitable defeats appearing in the stage of effort or path being travelled. After starting the effort, one is destined to reach the goal on one or other day and hence, should not be worried if he is defeated after putting up the effort. In the spiritual path, God is very alert and active to extend His help to the soul provided it is travelling in the path by putting up the effort.
Shri Karthik asked:
2) In the case of divine work, should the soul keep himself/herself in the position of the doer or should the soul think that God is the doer? In the practical phase, the soul has to anyway posit himself/herself as the doer, because without this thought, action becomes impossible. Please explain.
Swami replied: When you are doing the service or sacrifice for the sake of God, you are spending your energy through sacrifice of work (karma samnyaasa) or the fruit of your work (karma phala tyaaga). When you are thinking that you have sacrificed your energy or fruit of your work, then only the action of sacrifice becomes possible or effective, in case, you are the doer of the sacrifice. Apart from this point, you will get real satisfaction of your love to God in case you think that you have sacrificed something belonging to you. From the view of these two points, doership and ownership are essential. In such angle, this type of maintaining doership for action and ownership for satisfaction of love, both these are good and God also likes these two aspects in you. The love to God in you arises only when you are thinking that you are doing the work for God spending your energy and when you are thinking that you are sacrificing something belonging to you to God. God wants the love towards Him to arise in your mind, which alone generates love towards you in His mind as proper reaction. This sort of exchange of love between God and devotee is the climax of His entertainment in this creation.
As long as the above merit continues, feeling of doership and ownership are not at all bad and in fact are the best since they are useful for the equilibrium of love between God and devotee. But, there are certain wrong sides of this concept. As I told, any best is always associated with the worst. The wrong side of this wonderful concept is generation of ego due to doership and ownership. In such work and sacrifice done for God, the doership may give rise ego in your mind. The ownership also may raise ego and may make you feel as donor and neglect the receiver as a cheap entity. When King Bali was warned that the beggar came is God, Bali told that he feels proud to become donor to God! God suppressed him down, which means only that his ego was suppressed. The exchange of boons with such sacrifice of work and fruit of work may also develop business line with God, which is also against the best spiritual path in which sacrifice of work and fruit of work are done without aspiration for any fruit in return. To get rid of all these defects coming from doership and ownership, you have to remove the curtain of your ignorance behind the doership and ownership. The energy used by you in the work for God is given by God only. The fruit of work sacrificed for God is also given by Him only. This is the truth behind the curtain. If this curtain is removed, you will find the truth and the ego will immediately evaporate. But, you shall not remove this curtain always because without the concepts of doership and ownership, work and satisfaction of love are impossible respectively. For anything created by God, both sides of coin exist. The good side is the intention of God. The bad side is due to the inherent attitude of the soul. Therefore, you can keep on the curtain for the sake of good side and whenever the bad side appears, you can remove the curtain so that good can be protected and maintained by removing the bad, whenever it appears. This talent of using the concepts in the required occasions is called as yoga by the Gita (yogah karmasu kaushalam). The meaning of this verse is that yoga means the talent present in doing the actions.
3) With reference to God, when the world is taken as unreal, free will makes no sense. However, when the world is taken as relatively real and God is recognized as the absolute reality, then free will exists for the soul. This is what I have understood based on one of Your recent answers. Is my understanding correct?
Swami Replied: The world is unreal in the absolute plane to the unimaginable God only. This point applies only to the view of the unimaginable God and not to the view of the imaginable soul, which is a part of the imaginable world. Everybody misunderstands Shankara, who told that the world is unreal. But, nobody is careful to recognize the view of the spectator in which only the world is unreal. The world is unreal for God only because God is the absolute reality (Paramaartha Sat) or the Creator. The soul is mentioned in the category of creation (prakruti) under the name ‘Paraa prakruti’ as per the Gita. Hence, soul is a part of unreal creation (relativity or vyavahaara sat). For the unreal soul, the unreal rest part of creation can’t be unreal!
When Buddhists sent an elephant towards Shankara, He ran away seeing it. Buddhists asked Him “Why are You running away from the unreal elephant?” Shankara replied “You have misunderstood Me. I never told that elephant, which is a part of the world, is unreal. I told only that the entire world is unreal. My running away is also unreal being a part of this unreal world, which is composed of items of matter and energy along with actions (which are forms of energy) and these component items (matter and energy including actions and awareness since actions and awareness are forms of energy) are unreal components of the unreal world. Running away is an action and hence, is the unreal component of the unreal world.”
This answer given by Shankara can be further explained. The unreal relative world is unreal for the absolute God, but is real for the unreal relative soul (being the part of the world). Shankara is human incarnation of God. There are two components in Him:- 1) Unimaginable God and 2) Imaginable medium or human being-component.
i) If He replies in view of His unimaginable God-component, He could have done the unimaginable miracle by standing against the elephant and the elephant could have passed through Him without hurting Him in any way. In this option, the elephant (along with the rest world) is unreal before Him (unimaginable God). The unreal human body of Him shall be damaged since for the unreal human body, the unreal elephant is real. But, such damage can’t be done to His human body since the unimaginable God pervaded and merged not only with His soul but also with His body (antar bahishcha - Veda). In the case of Krishna also, same thing happened and hence, His tender body (in fact, finger) could lift the hill. As per the required context, either soul or body or both can be merged with God. Same Krishna wanted to test Draupadi by causing a cut to the finger. While eating a sugarcane, His finger was cut, by seeing which Draupadi ran to Him and tore her valuable sari to use for bandage. On this occasion, the unimaginable God withdrew from the body and remained in the soul only. If the unimaginable God withdraws from soul also and remains as the basis for the soul along with body, in such case, Krishna will be an ordinary human being having unimaginable God as just a basis only as in the case of the entire world including all souls, which is based on God.
ii) In spite of the possibility for the above option, He opted for the second option only by behaving like an ordinary human being having unimaginable God as just a basis (common to the entire world) because His behaviour must be an example for the other ordinary human beings. If Shankara behaved like God-component, the other human beings also will follow it and will be damaged by the elephant. Shri Paramahamsa told “A preacher told that the whole world is God. The disciple after hearing this did not move away on seeing the elephant since he felt that it is God. The elephant threw him away with the tusk. Then he came to the preacher and told about it. The preacher told ‘You heard me and treated elephant as God. Why did you not hear the controller-God sitting on the elephant-God, warning you to move away?’.” Hence, Shankara behaved like an ordinary human being and explained such behaviour also through His concept. In the case of the above incident, in which elephant is treated as God also, the correct interpretation was not understood. The Veda says that the entire world is God (sarvam khalvidam Brahma). The misinterpretation of this is that world is God and hence, everything in the world is God. The correct interpretation is that the world is under the control of God and the controlled property can be mentioned as representing its owner as found in the documents of property. This interpretation is possible as per the grammar (tadadhina prathamaa) as given by Ramanuja.
Hence, detailed analysis must be done in the case of every concept before you decide the final interpretation of it. If you take the concept in hasty manner, only misinterpretation results.
4) “The deed has no address in the soul if it is done without the quality and this point is well explained in the Gita (kurvannapi na lipyate). The results of the deeds will not touch such a divine soul” - By definition, deeds are generated because of desire, which is again based on the qualities of a soul. How can any soul perform a deed without an associated quality?
Swami Replied: It is impossible to do a deed without aim or desire, which is a quality (the desire must belong to one of the three qualities: good sattvam and bad rajas and tamas or to a mixture of these three qualities). If anybody does a deed without aim or desire, such person will be treated as mentally retarded. Only mad people do some actions without any intention. The intention is given the main importance in the deed than the doership even in law. The person having intention and doing planning for a murder is the higher criminal than a rented person doing the murder. Taking this as the basic concept, the crime and its punishment are decided. However, in this concept, a very careful analysis is needed before arriving at the conclusion. The person, who does a murder without any intention just for money only, can’t be declared as sinless because doing any sin for money itself is a sin. Moreover, killing a person is the highest sin since non-violence is said to be the highest justice (Ahimsaa paramo dharmah). The doership in this sin gains gravity even though the doer is having no intention of crime. If there are two cases, the extent of sin depends on the type of the case. i) A person is rented to kill somebody. In this case, the rented doer has more gravity of sin even though he has no intention for the crime. ii) A person is rented to beat somebody and not to kill. In this case, the rented doer, not having the intention to beat, will have sin with lesser gravity.
The intention for doing a deed must be carefully analyzed in all angles before deciding that the intention is absent in any quantity and in any angle. Then only, such deed done without any trace of intention in any angle will not have the fruit to be attached to the soul. This is a very critical aspect and one should not apply to every deed done by him by proving it (through powerful logic) as a deed done without intention to escape its fruit (especially this is done when the deed is a sin). One should not imitate the divine personalities like Krishna, Shankara, etc., in this line for the sake of undue advantage.
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