Posted on: 25 Jun 2024
[Shri Ganesh V asked: Padanamaskaram Swamiji, In a recent discourse You have said that only God can enjoy both happiness and misery equally. A soul cannot enjoy both happiness and misery equally. But in another recent discourse You have said that a devotee of God will not get sad when one does not get the result he may desire for a work that he might have performed. He will think that he didn’t get the result because God has planned something better for him. I see a contradiction in these two points. How do I resolve this contradiction? At Your divine feet, Ganesh V]
Swami replied:- There is no contradiction at all between these two points. I don’t know how you find a contradiction. Please clarify about the contradiction clearly.
Point-1:- Since God is the absolute reality and the world is a relative reality for Him, God can enjoy both happiness and misery, just like a spectator seeing the cinema. The soul cannot enjoy like this because both the soul and the world are equally real since the soul is a part of the world. However, by the grace of the omnipotent God, a devotee can succeed since all impossibilities are possible to God. If the devotee is undeserving for Yoga (equal enjoyment of happiness and misery) or for any other requested fruit, God will not sanction the prayer because the undeserving fruit will damage the devotee.
Point-2:- The devotee shall not worry if God does not answer his/her prayer positively because God may give some better fruit in the future. Hence, the devotee shall not pray to God aspiring for any fruit in return for his/her prayer.
These two points are quite different having completely different contexts. They are not even connected anywhere. In such a case, how can there be a contradiction between two disconnected points? Unless you clarify the contradiction felt by you, I cannot answer. When I told about the granting of Yoga by the omnipotent God to a deserving devotee, the devotee prayed to God for getting Yoga. Therefore, this 1st point is not connected to the point-2 mentioned below.
If you assume that an undeserving devotee prayed to God to get success in Yoga, God did not give this fruit of Yoga since the devotee was undeserving. Here, your doubt is that how God can give a better result as per the 2nd point. The answer for this is that when a devotee is not deserving for a higher fruit and if God sanctions that higher fruit to the devotee, that damages the devotee, and such fruit is not a good fruit even though such fruit is a higher fruit. A lower fruit than such higher fruit will be a better fruit for the devotee since the lower fruit will give happiness to the devotee. Here, even the higher fruit that damages the devotee is not a good fruit whereas a lower fruit that helps the devotee becomes a better fruit. But, I remember very well that I did not mention the case of a devotee, who prayed to God to get success in Yoga. I only told that a deserving devotee can succeed in Yoga by the grace of the omnipotent God. Had you mentioned your assumption about an undeserving devotee, these two points would have been connected.
