07 Jan 2012
[Shri Anil asked, “Several people are asking how a person can enjoy physical pain?” This question is with reference to Shri Swami’s New Year Message given on January 1, 2012.]
There are several illustrations to prove that the physical pain can be also enjoyed. In boxing, when the opponent embraces you strongly, you feel unhappy because such a situation leads to your defeat. But, when you are embraced by a beautiful girl, you feel more happiness and the degree of your happiness is proportional to the strength of the embracement! Therefore, the physical pain in one situation is unhappiness, whereas the same physical pain in another situation leads to happiness. Even when you eat the hot dish, your tongue burns due to the vigor of chillies and your eyes shower the tears. All these symptoms are the indication of unhappiness only. But, still you enjoy the happiness in eating the hot dish. Therefore, you cannot link the enjoyment with mere external material. Ofcourse, the external material gives rise to the feeling and the feeling may be pleasant or unpleasant depending on one factor, which is that whether the external material is interacted continuously or not. If you interact with any item or situation of the creation continuously, you become unhappy. Even the embracement of the beautiful girl becomes unpleasant, if such embracement continues without gap. If you are exposed to the heat for a long time, you feel happiness in cold as in the case of an Indian. If you are exposed to cold for a long time, you feel happiness in the warmness and heat as in the case of a foreigner. Hence, the process of enjoyment depends on the alternating interaction with the external items or situations in this world. Hence, any continuous interaction with the same item or situation gives unhappiness, whereas the change in the interaction gives happiness.
God is the Father of the souls and hence, arranges the life cycles of the souls with alternating pleasant and unpleasant scenes. Even though you have done sins continuously for some long span of time and good deeds continuously in another long span of time, God does not arrange the life cycles with the continuous misery and continuous happiness proportionally in corresponding long spans of time. God neglects this continuous span of time and arranges the life cycle in such a way, so that every life cycle is fixed with alternating fruits of sins and good deeds. The re-arrangement of the good and bad fruits in alternating fashion by drawing good and bad fruits from both these span is done by God, who is omnipotent. You may expect God to cancel all the sins due to His omnipotent nature. If it is done like that, you will not enjoy since continuity of anything leads to misery. Hence, even in such case, misery is inevitable. Therefore, if you do not pray God for removing the miseries, God has already arranged the life cycles in best way to give you continuous enjoyment. You are praying God to remove the difficulties, which are the fruits of your bad deeds. The law of justice does not accept the cancellation of the fruit of any deed. Hence, due to your prayers, the difficulties are postponed to latter births by God along with compounded interest. You also pray God to give continuous happiness. For this, God draws the good fruits from the future births with reduced interest to the present life cycle. Due to such continuous enjoyment of good fruits, you are again bored with misery. Hence, you are totally foolish in disturbing the already designed life cycles of God. As a result of this foolishness, your future births will be full of continuous miseries. The continuity of the misery gives you unhappiness just like the continuity of happiness. Therefore, pray to God being always attracted by your love to His divine personality and not for disturbing the already best designed life cycles by God due to His paternal affection. Therefore, you will be continuously happy by enjoying the alternating pleasant and unpleasant scenes of life and by not asking anything from God.
Method of Eradication of Ego and Jealousy
Shri Anil: How to help the foolish people, who are caught in such continuous troubles in their life from birth to death?
Shri: Swami: If such people happen to do some good deeds, the good fruits of such good actions will be immediately introduced to give a break in the continuous suffering. God is always positive and tries to help His children even if there is a trace of possibility. But, remember one thing that God will not do anything by your simple continuous praise in prayers. Unless some good deed exists, His hands are tightened. When Draupadi cried praying Lord Krishna for help, the Lord immediately verified her account book to see whether there was any credit of her good deed. The Lord found such credit, which was infinitely multiplied by Him into infinite number of saris. The infinite multiplication can be done by God provided there is some basic credit from your side. Hence, you should always believe in practical philosophy than continuous begging and weeping before God through prayers. The practical philosophy can be according to your level and you need not worry about its magnitude since God can multiply it to the required extent. But, the extent of practical philosophy should not be below your capability imagining that God will multiply to any extent. The realization of all these concepts is called as jnana yoga or knowledge. The praise of God through prayers without any aspiration in return is called as bhakti yoga or devotion. The implementation of the practical sacrifice is called as karma yoga or action, which alone is the fundamental basis for God to bless you.
In any case, the practical sacrifice should be without any aspiration in return. Draupadi sacrificed a piece of her valuable sari to bind the wound of the finger of the Lord without any aspiration in return. Even when she cried for help, she never thought about it since she did it without any expectation in return. Practical service to the society without the name of God gives you temporary heaven. The same service in the name of God brings the grace of God so that when you are ripened, God comes down in the human form to receive your service directly. If you servE the humanity in the name of God, you will render the service to God in human form even if you don’t recognize Him. Serving the humanity removes the inherent repulsion to a co-human being due to ego and jealousy. Service to all the living beings is the basis since it is the starting stepping stone by which the service to inert statues and photos is stopped. Such service to inert objects is waste since the service is not received by the receiver. However, even such service is inevitable in the case of beginners, who are unable to eradicate their ego and jealousy towards living beings and especially to the human form of life.
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