10 Jan 2019
Discourse Podcast
Shri Shashi Kopparthi asked: How to connect with and experience you Swami? In this age of Kali, choosing a guru is very difficult. As you said, many gurus like Satya Sai first did miracles to attract people and then imparted spiritual knowledge. I was looking for a living guru who can guide me. Can I get some miraculous experiences from a guru like you so that I can accept you as my guru? Shashi Kopparthi
Swami replied: I am just a human being like you without the slightest capability of doing any miracle. I happen to be the human being-component of the Human Incarnation of God Datta and that is only because He selected me for the purpose. His mission is the welfare of the world of devotees which is achieved by spreading true spiritual knowledge. The essential qualification to become the human being-component of the Human Incarnation is that one should never aspire for being selected by God for this purpose and attaining monism with God. This is the necessary qualification for the entry of God Datta into any human being. After becoming a Human Incarnation, a second qualification is necessary to maintain God within oneself throughout one’s lifetime. This second qualification is that one should never allow the ego to grow when one is praised by devotees around. If the human being-component becomes egotistic, God Datta will quit such a Human Incarnation and the human being-component will remain as a mere human being as in the case of Parashurama.
Externally, the human being-component in the Incarnation should not reject the praise of surrounding devotees. It should only reject the praise internally to save itself from the rise of the ego. The reason for not rejecting devotees’ praise externally is that it is necessary for the devotee of the Human Incarnation to have a monistic view of the Human Incarnation. The success of the devotee is in maintaining an unshakable faith that the Human Incarnation is identical with God. This is the true Advaita. If the devotee develops a dualistic view of the Incarnation, that is, he or she thinks that the Incarnation is different from God, the devotee is lost. Hence, in the interest of the spiritual welfare of the devotee, the Human Incarnation has to keep silent on hearing praise from the devotee. All that the Incarnation can do is to keep a smile on the face!
If the devotee adopts dualism towards the Incarnation, it is a terrible loss for the devotee. Similarly, if the human being-component of the Incarnation adopts monism towards itself, the human being-component faces a terrible loss since God quits it immediately. This is a very tricky and difficult situation of a reversible equilibrium between the human being-component in a Human Incarnation and its sincere devotee. It is due to this tricky situation, that Shri Paramahamsa said that He would prefer to be an ant and enjoy sugar rather than becoming the sugar and getting bitten by ants. God is like sugar and the devotees are like ants. So, He meant that He would prefer to be a devotee rather than a Human Incarnation of God.
The Life and Miracles of Swami
The owner of an institution selects a candidate for a job, who is already trained in the required work. If a trained candidate is not available, then alone does he think of selecting an untrained candidate and giving him the necessary training. When an experienced candidate is available, the owner does not waste time in giving training to the inexperienced candidate. Similarly, if a devotee suitable for a specific divine program is available, God selects that devotee to become a Human Incarnation for the purpose of that specific divine program. I had a lot of interest in spiritual knowledge since childhood, perhaps, due to some strong connection with spiritual knowledge from my previous births. I feel that God Datta selected me even when I was in the womb of my mother because later upon growing up, I had heard from my mother that while she was pregnant with me, she would regularly see temples, mosques, churches and Buddhistic shrines in her dreams. The dreams were an indication of my future divine program of Universal Spirituality. Another supporting miracle was that without studying Sanskrit from anybody, I became a deep scholar of Sanskrit scriptures and a poet in Sanskrit. I began composing verses in Sanskrit spontaneously. I wrote about a hundred books in Sanskrit on the correlation of the commentaries of the three divine preachers, Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva, by the age of sixteen years!
Later, I became a Professor of Chemistry in a reputed engineering college in Vijayawada and worked for my livelihood while dedicating all my leisure time for God’s work. I propagated divine spiritual knowledge in the form of my books to Sanskrit scholars, who were extremely few in number. One day, I performed a special worship to Lord Shiva asking Him to give me poverty and all sorts of difficulties so that I could progress fast spiritually. I asked this in spite of my heavy worldly responsibilities of having a large family. The kindest Lord sanctioned my prayer immediately! Later on, God Datta appeared as Shri Satya Sai, another contemporary Human Incarnation of God and asked me to propagate divine spiritual knowledge full time. He promised me that He would take care of all my worldly problems. I left my job and entered this divine program full time. A little while later, God Datta appeared to me at the holy place called Shrishailam and merged in me. Just before merging into me, He conducted a severe test by asking me to jump from the top of the hill. He said this since I was singing a song composed by me, which says that I will even give up my life for Him if He asks for it. I jumped from the top of the hill at once, but He quickly caught hold of me.
I shared this brief background with you to reveal to you that I too am just a human being like you. Any human being has the chance of becoming a Human Incarnation if God selects him or her. Every person, including the human being-component of the Human Incarnation, is only an ordinary human being. Everyone has the chance of becoming a Human Incarnation and that chance is based purely on the will of the omniscient and omnipotent God alone. The Human Incarnation is not greater than the greatest devotee. In the Incarnation, God Datta and the selected devoted soul merge perfectly like gold mixing homogeneously with copper to form an alloy. Here the invisible God is like gold and the visible human being-component is like copper. It is the case of monism. In the case of the greatest devotee, the invisible God remains closely associated with the visible human devotee. It is like a golden rod welded with a copper rod, which is the case of dualism.
The excellent true spiritual knowledge radiated by the Human Incarnation comes only from the invisible God-component and not from the visible human being-component. Similarly, the miracles are also exhibited only by the invisible God-component and not by the visible human being-component at all. Your request for a miracle has been received by God Datta. If He feels that it will help you in your spiritual progress, I am confident that He will accept your request. I am just a postman between God Datta and you. If a miracle is not going to be useful in your case, He will not respond to your request. When I started the propagation of spiritual knowledge, several miracles were shown by God Datta through me for about two to three years in order to overcome the starting trouble in the divine program and for picking up initial momentum. But slowly, I found that the devotion of devotees shown towards me was only to exploit the divine miraculous powers for solving their worldly problems. This is not healthy for devotees. It increases their selfishness, which, in turn, opposes the divine grace from falling on them. So, I submitted a special prayer to God Datta to stop the miracles since the mission had already picked up some initial momentum by then. I prayed to Him to do miracles only in the case of real devotees to help their spiritual progress.
One day, Smt. K. Padmaram, a devotee from Ramachandrapuram, phoned me saying that I had not shown any miracle to her directly. I was in Vijayawada then. She requested me to show a miracle to somebody in Vijayawada at once and have that person call and reveal that divine experience to her. I scolded her over the phone for her foolish attraction to miracles and told her that even demons and devilish souls exhibit miracles after having attained miraculous powers from God through rigorous penance. I told her that the true spiritual knowledge alone is the identity mark of God since it is true knowledge alone that gives the right direction to the soul in both the worldly and the spiritual path. I did not know that God Datta had accepted her request. I came outside the house and was walking about in the front yard. Just then Smt. Rama, a neighbor who had arrived from Singapore and who did not know me at all, saw a radiant wheel rotating behind my head. She was terribly shocked. After some time, on my instruction, she phoned to my devotee and told her about her divine experience.
Surprisingly, at the same time, another devotee located in my native place, far away from Vijayawada, also saw this divine miracle. This lady-devotee was possessed by a deity called Shri Lakṣmi. The possessed lady called the daughter of my sister, Smt. Bhargavi, and told her that her uncle, which is I, had shown the divine radiant wheel called Vishnu Cakra behind my head in Vijayawada. My niece immediately called me asking why I had not shown any such miracle even to a close relative like her. I replied that even I could not see that wheel myself! Since the wheel was rotating behind my head whenever I turned my head around to see it, it would also turn along with my head to remain behind my head!
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