10 Jun 2021
[Swāmi, You said that God is pleased more if we serve His devotees. But You also said that Sadguru (human incarnation of God) is the first deserving person to receive service from a soul. Please correlate these sentences. -At Your Divine Lotus Feet, Laxmi Thrylokya]
Swāmi Replied:- God aspires your service to test the truth of your divine love or devotion. God is really not in need of your service or sacrifice. In the case of devotee, there is need. God begs you for food to test you whether you can sacrifice food practically to Him or not. The devotee begs you for food because he is hungry. One more speciality with God is that He begs for your food, which you are going to eat with tremendous hunger. Saktuprastha and his family were hungry from several days in the time of a severe drought. One day, he could get very little quantity of rice on begging, he brought it to home, got it cooked and he along with his family was just going to eat it after dividing it. God came as hungry guest and was begging for food continuously so that all the family members donated their entire food in sequence one after the other. When Sudāmā, fasting along with family from several days, came with a gift of flattened rice brought on loan, Kṛṣṇa took the gift by force and ate it completely. When Sudāmā was going back to his home, Kṛṣṇa did not give him even 1 rupee! The devotee can easily find out the test of God from the abnormal and severe nature of the test. It is an indication given by God to His devotee. Hence, God does not come at all in the list of receivers. In the list of receivers, the topmost member is a real poor fellow in severe need of food, cloth, medicine and shelter. You shall not apply the analysis to discriminate deserving from undeserving receiver in this case. Next comes a poor devotee. God can’t fit in the list of receivers because except God, all the souls are receivers from the only donor-God!
Salvation (Mokṣa) is liberation of soul from the fascination to the worldly bonds. Close union (Sāyujya) is the tremendous attraction to God. First Mokṣa or Sāyujya?, is the question. Both are not mutually interdependent. Sāyujya is the main and sole aim of all the Spiritual effort. First is Sāyujya and Sāyujya is the entire goal. Once Sāyujya comes, Mokṣa is a spontaneous by-product. Mind can be attached to one God or multiple world only. Mind can’t attach itself to both because the true attraction or real love or pure devotion can exist either with God or world. Of course, in the path of Spiritual effort, both the bonds co-exist. As the devotee is progressing in the Spiritual path, the bond with God is strengthened more and more and the bond with world is proportionally weakened more and more. If you compare the starting and the ending points of Spiritual journey, in the starting point, the bond exists with the world only and in the ending point, the bond exists with God only. In between these two points, both bonds exist simultaneously with varying strengths during the journey.
In the initial state of Spiritual journey, an effort is to be put up to leave the worldly bonds and to attach to the bond with God. In this initial state, one has to try for Mokṣa from worldly bonds and Sāyujya with the bond of God. In this state, Jesus told that one shall hate the worldly bonds, which indicates the effort of the devotee to hate the worldly bonds. Here, the word “hate” indicates only a temporary detachment from the worldly bonds. Jesus fixed the highest goal in this effort so that at least people will be successful in detaching from the worldly bonds temporarily. If the temporary detachment itself is suggested as the goal, the devotee will not be able to succeed even to get a trace of detachment. Such detachment from the worldly bonds is very essential in order to find time to attach with God through Spiritual meetings etc. There must be some effort to attain Sāyujya with God and to do this effort, some detachment from the worldly bonds is essential to find time to devote oneself to God.
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