11 Dec 2010
[Evening Message] The stealing of butter by Lord Krishna as a boy is enjoyed by the devotees as the mischief of the Lord (Prabhu leela). By this, the Lord is treated as an ordinary ignorant boy and the mischief is reduced to the activity of ignorance of the childhood. God is never ignorant and the childhood is related to the body or medium in which the Lord is hidden. An ordinary soul in such a medium can be ignorant but not the omniscient God. God cannot be affected by the properties of medium. Therefore, there should be an excellent meaning and it should be a wonderful message for the spiritual aspirants. Externally, it looks like a mischief of an ignorant boy, but internally, it has the whole essence of the Holy Scripture the Veda, which says that the sacrifice of wealth alone leads to God.
Devotees, who are matured in both these angles, are very very rare.
You may be well versed in the first angle, but you will fail in the second angle. The sages in the forest were in the climax of the first angle. [Example:] Sharabhanga, a sage, sacrificed his life for the sake of God, but could not recognize Rama as the human incarnation of God. Instead of sacrificing his body in the fire altar, he should have sacrificed his life in participating the war between Rama and Ravana.
Similarly, people recognize the human form of God, but are unable to sacrifice anything for the sake of God. [Example:] Dhrutarashtra recognized Krishna as God, but could not donate even five villages begged by the Lord for the sake of Pandavas. The failure in the second angle is mainly due to repulsion with the common co-human form. The ego and jealousy are the two layers that cover the two eyes of any devotee in recognizing the co-human form of the Lord. Unless you reach the climax of both these angles, you cannot succeed in your spiritual field (nivrutti).
When God comes in the human form, that itself starts illusions in your mind. You will mistake the Lord as an ordinary co-human being since you are affected by the common properties of the external human medium. The birth, growth, illness, thirst, hunger, other qualities like worldly desires and final death confuse you in recognizing the Lord. You must separate the inner permanent soul from the external human body since all the above mentioned properties do not touch the soul. Therefore, the Lord started the Gita with such separation in the second chapter, which is the beginning of the Gita. If you are able to separate the soul and body, you will easily separate the supersoul or God from the body in the human incarnation. At the same time, you should separate the soul and God also so that you will not mistake the soul existing in every human body as God.
In the human incarnation of God, three items exist viz.,
In every human being, the human body and soul exist without God. The distinction between these three items is very important in the beginning (Yasmat ksharamatitoham… Gita). These three items exist in the human incarnation as per the Veda also (Dvaasuparnaa…). Since God is unimaginable, the human incarnation also appears like a human being, having the visible human body and the invisible but imaginable soul. The Gita says that the soul is invisible but imaginable to analytical knowledge (Pashyanti jnana chakshushah…). The Veda also says that the soul is imaginable to the sharp analytical intelligence (Drushyatetvagrayaa…). Since God is not touched by even the sharpest analysis, nobody can recognize God in the human incarnation through direct proof. You can infer the existence of God through your experience of the wonderful true spiritual knowledge emitted by the human incarnation (Satyam jnanam.., Prajnanam... Veda). Here also, you have inferred only the existence of unimaginable God and you have not experienced any inherent characteristic of God. Therefore, God remains always unimaginable as said by the Gita (Mamtuvedana…). Apart from this normal confusion created by the human medium including both body and soul, God creates extra confusion by e.g. stealing butter [1]etc., so that even if you cross the first level of confusion, you will be certainly trapped by the second level of confusion (Mamamaya duratyayaa… Gita).
Failure In One or Both Angles
You might have reached the climax of the first angle. In such case, you sacrifice your wealth to temples but not to the human incarnation, which will be properly utilized by Him. The wealth sacrificed by you to the temples is not properly utilized by the people of management of the temple. They distribute the food among all the devotees, who visit the temple. Such sacrifice is totally a waste. You must differentiate the poor devotees and help them by such donated wealth. You can help even an atheist, who is a poor person. If the atheist becomes free of the worries of poverty, he will have peaceful mind to think about God and in course of time, he may become a great devotee of God. You are helping him by providing a chance to become the devotee of God. Therefore, the management of temple should spend the donated wealth to help poor people and not to help rich devotees, who are not in need. The service is being done to all the devotees irrespective of their need. This lack of discrimination is the greatest sin in view of God. Therefore, the donor himself should do such service by spending sometime in such important effort. This will be far better than the blind donation to some agency, which itself is blind. You must help poor people irrespective of their devotion because even an atheist has chance to become a devotee after becoming peaceful in mind.
The people, who are not matured in either of these two angles, neither like the sacrifice nor like the recognition of human incarnation. They become very intelligent and like to have the fruit of sacrifice of both the angles through their clever interpretation. They treat the statue or photo as God. They sacrifice the food to God represented by photo or statue and eat it. They claim to achieve the fruit of the devotee sacrificing the food to the human incarnation. Statues and photos are the results of the clever interpretations of such selfish people only. If such angle is not present in the mind, the offer of food to the statues and photos is not at all wrong because such sacrifice develops at least the theoretical devotion in the beginners. Theory is the mother of practice. Without theory, there is no birth of practice. But, the theory without practice is a waste in the long run and does not yield even a trace of the fruit at anytime. The knowledge and devotion are the two parts of the theory. You may have lot of information about Delhi and its path and you many have a lot of inspiration also to go to Delhi. Both these are knowledge and devotion respectively. Without putting even a little effort like going to the railway station to purchase the ticket, there is no use of the knowledge and the devotion. Theory is very important because it is the generator of the practice. But, practice is equally important since there will be no generation of even a trace of fruit without practice. Therefore, the theory involving jnana yoga (knowledge) and bhakti yoga (devotion) along with karma yoga (practice) are equally needed for achieving the grace of God.
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