05 Nov 2011
The Gita says that you should totally surrender to God (Tvameva Sharanam…). After your prayer and worship to God, you need not ask Him for anything even in the mind because He is omniscient. You are treating Him as an ordinary human being having limited knowledge. You should follow this principle even in the case of the human incarnation. The external human form misleads you to think that He is an ordinary human being. But, when you worship the photos and statues of energetic forms like Vishnu, etc., you should have the sense of omniscient God. The human form in the photo and statue may again mislead you. But, there are some devotees, who believe that God is formless and omnipresent. They do prayers sitting in open space. I expected them at least to have the sense of omniscient God. To My surprise, I find even them expressing their desires. This type of behavior proves that the God prayed by you is limited and not omniscient. Such God cannot be omnipotent also. In such case, how can such God respond to your prayers and answer through His omnipotent miraculous power? In your prayers, you praise the God as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. But, at the end of the prayer, your behavior contradicts all the above adjectives of God. Actually, you are a limited human being and do not know what is really good for you.
Most of the boons asked by you are only harmful to you. The omniscient God knows what is really good for you in the long run. With your limited knowledge, you do not know the multi-dimensional network of your past deeds. Such network is very complicated to understand as said in the Gita (Gahanaa Karmano Gatih…). The results of your past deeds come to you in a particular order that is convenient to you. The periods alter generally, which can be known from astrology (Jyotisha Shastra). A period may be bad for some horoscope, but, some sub-periods in that period are good, which serve as recreation intervals in a long bad period. Similarly, in a long good period, the sub-periods of bad planets also come to become intervals for change. The continuous good also bores like eating sweets continuously. This is the reason for the nine planets to rotate through their sub-periods in a long good or bad period. Therefore, God has arranged the incidents in your life in the best convenient manner for you. Hence, you must allow the incidents of your life to take place in their own natural way, which were set up by God. The fundamental role should not be forgotten, which is that, you must enjoy the good or bad results of your past deeds. Cancellation is impossible under any circumstances. Due to your insisting prayers and worship, God postpones the bad results. But, you have to enjoy them with compounded interest in the future. Don’t be clever to argue that God is not omnipotent if He cannot cancel a result. This process of inevitable enjoyment of the results of the deeds is established by God only. If He contradicts His own procedure, He becomes a bad administrator. God is always the best administrator. Your ignorance of this network and procedures of God makes you think that God cancelled your bad result in the case of its postponement.
Inconvenient Punishment Alone Transforms
Another way to help you due to your prayers and worship is to select the most convenient way of the punishment. Each sin has a list of alternative punishments. If you pull the chain in the train without reason, you should go to the jail for six months or pay thousand rupees as fine. For a rich business man, the convenient way is to pay the fine and not sitting in the jail for six months and losing all his business. Similarly, for a beggar, the convenient way is to sit in the jail getting free food since he cannot pay the heavy fine. If both worshipped God, the expected favour from God is to fine the businessman and to put the beggar in the prison. Otherwise, the real punishment will be to put the business man in the jail and to fine the beggar. The inconvenient punishment is only the real punishment because it only transforms the soul through suffering to some extent at least. Therefore, the sin does not end with the convenient punishments. The balance of the sin will give the inconvenient punishment in future with compound interest. If the business man is favoured with fine, he will repeat the sin again and again paying the fine again and again. Similarly, if the beggar is favoured with prison, he will repeat the sin again and again to continuously stay in the jail and get food throughout the life. Hence, the inconvenient punishment is necessary to transform the sin. If God feels that your transformation, which was delayed from a long time, is essential by that time, He may allow the inconvenient punishment in your case in spite of your prayers. The ignorance and illness should not be delayed for long since they become incurable after long time. In such case, you will misunderstand God for His silence to your prayers. It is like the decision on surgery of the doctor in spite of the protests from the patient. Therefore, do not ask God for anything and meddle with the best way of already set up system of deeds for you. God says that the devotee tries to interfere with the already set up cycle of deeds and he is a useless stupid (Evam Pravartitam Chakram – Gita).
Preach Knowledge Only After Getting Orders From God
There is only one way for the cancellation of all your bad results. Such way will be clear to you if you know the real aim of the punishment. The real aim of the punishment is only to permanently transform you. The permanent transformation comes only through the true knowledge. The truth in the knowledge has the power of transformation. If the knowledge of a preacher is unable to transform you, such knowledge is not true. If you are partially transformed, such knowledge is partially true. Sometimes the total transformation comes, but it stays for a temporary period only. In such case, the defect does not lie with the knowledge but with you only. The knowledge should be heard and discussed or debated continuously, by which the knowledge gets intensified and becomes fire to bring permanent transformation in you. Hence, the Gita speaks about the knowledge-fire (Jnanaagnih…). Therefore, you must take up the propagation of knowledge after hearing it, which involves continuous discussions and debates with others. Hence, the benefit of propagation is more for you than others. But, you should hear the right knowledge from right person. Otherwise, the wrong knowledge not only harms others but you also due to intensification through propagation. Hence, Shri Paramahamsa told that you should not become a preacher of spiritual knowledge unless you have command from God. Therefore, all your sins get smashed, if you are permanently transformed through knowledge. Hence, Shankara gave top most importance to knowledge. However, in the absence of knowledge, the punishment brings temporary transformation. Hence, something is better than nothing. The temporary transformation is thus possible in two ways.
The permanent transformation is possible by hearing the right knowledge and subsequent participation in its propagation since the right knowledge is the top most path. The main purpose of God coming in human form is only to preach this right knowledge (Satyam Jnaanam – Veda). The ignorant people preach wrong knowledge and scholars of the Scripture affected by misinterpretations, preach partially correct knowledge. In their case, the Scriptural knowledge is correct, but the misinterpreted knowledge from wrong commentaries is wrong. The scholars, learning the right knowledge from the Scripture with right interpretations from the human incarnation, can alone preach the right knowledge in the society.
Some people say that if the punishment given in the hell is in their memory, they will not repeat the sin. This is not correct because the thief punished in the police station becomes good for sometime, but, again steals due to the environment and circumstances. He remembers the punishment, but, still the circumstantial influence overcomes it. All the previous lives and the stay in the hell are forgotten by the soul due to the will of God only because God wants to give a fresh mind to the soul in the new life. The punishment in the hell has its temporary effect in the sub-conscious state due to which only, the children behave good and pure in their childhood. As they grow, they are influenced by the external environment and the internal hidden thoughts (Samskaras), which were temporarily suppressed by the punishments in the hell. With the strength of the environmental influence, these hidden ideas become strong and project, directing the actions of the soul in the new life.
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