Should devotees ask God or does He provide without asking?

[Smt. Priyanka asked: Padanamaskaram Swami! There is a saying in Telugu, “Adigite gaani amma annam pettadu”, which means, “Until you ask, your mother will not give you food”. I fail to understand this concept. I feel a mother will always ask her children, if they are hungry and offer food at correct times of the day.

Taking this concept, does this apply to the relationship between a devotee and God as well? Should devotees ask for certain things from God? Does God wait till that person approaches Him to ask what the devotee is seeking for? God knows everything about every person, including their wishes and desires since He is omnipotent and omnipresent and resides in the heart of His true devotees. Can you please explain when it becomes important or necessary to ask God anything? Or does God Himself give the devotees what they need or want, when it is the right time? At Your feet, Priyanka.]

Swami replied: The mother takes care of her children in childhood. But when the children grow into adults, she neglects this point, especially on some occasions. Suppose a grown up son or daughter comes home in the evening. The mother assumes that her child must have already had lunch. So, the mother does not ask her child, whether he or she has had lunch, unless the child specifically discloses that he or she has not had lunch. The mother is also a human being and does not know everything like the omniscient God. One should not ask God for anything, even in the mind. If you ask, it will be delayed. If you do not ask, it will be given immediately, provided it is beneficial to the devotee.

When you ask God to fulfill some desire, God is not only the father and mother, but also the judge, who has already given the judgment for your deeds. He acts as the judge as well as the father by balancing the given judgement with His paternal love for souls. When you pray to God to cancel the punishment of your sin, it is impossible because God, being the author of the divine constitution, will never do such a thing since He is a good administrator. Divine sages are constantly watching Him, without even blinking their eyelids. So, if God were to do whatever you desire, it would disturb the impression the sages have about God. At the maximum, God can postpone the punishment to the future with accumulated interest. We foolishly think that God has cancelled our punishment once and for all! Therefore, not responding to our prayer is also God’s love for us. Otherwise, we will suffer greatly in the future as we will have to suffer a greater punishment due to the postponement and God does not want this. This is the reason why God keeps silent for most of our prayers, in which we ask for some benefits. When we have not done a good deed, how can a benefit be given to us? God has already arranged our life cycles with good and bad fruits alternately, so that we will neither have continuous unhappiness nor will we get bored with continuous happiness. If we insist much, God will withdraw some good fruit from one of our future life cycles and give it to us in the present. But in this preponement of the benefit, there is a loss, which is like a penalty (reduced interest) for the premature withdrawal of a fixed deposit in a bank. Again, we think foolishly that we have succeeded in soaping up God by our prayers and emotional songs sung for God. We think we have brainwashed God in the most talented way and tricked Him into giving us some benefit for the good deeds that we have never done!

The punishments for sins serve to bring temporary reformation in the soul, if the soul is unable to transform itself into a reformed soul through spiritual knowledge. As per the general human psychology, souls will not get reformed by the mere theory of spiritual knowledge. They get reformed, even if only temporarily, through punishments, which are practical. From this point of view also, God is very eager to, at least temporarily, control souls through the punishment of their sin. The soul is fond of postponing the punishment, so that it can get some temporary relief. God is fond of implementing the punishment, if spiritual knowledge fails, so that the soul can be controlled from committing more sins, at least for a temporary period. This temporary control can also be made continuous through such frequent punishments. When we pray to God, all these parameters are simultaneously considered by Him before deciding. The matter is not as simple as people think that when we pray to God, He just cancels the punishments and gives us benefits that we have not earned by doing good deeds. Even if we have done some good deeds, their fruits are already scheduled to be enjoyed by us in our future life cycles. Prematurely withdrawing them at present will lead to a loss in the value of the benefit (in the form of reduced interest). God also thinks about this loss that we will have to bear.

When we are faced with a problem and if we are real devotees having true love for God, without the aspiration for any fruit in return from Him, He suffers on our behalf. He, as the mediated God or the Human Incarnation of God, takes the punishment of our sin onto Him and suffers for our sake. Such a response from God is the true love of God towards His real devotee, who loves God both theoretically and practically, without aspiring for any fruit in return from Him. The true love of the devotee for God and the true love of God for the devotee are like a reversible equilibrium. When such a reversible equilibrium of true love exists between God and devotee, that bond of devotion is really the blessed one!

You may think that even the above blessed bond of pure love between God and devotee is based on business. You think that it is only because the devotee served God practically, that God blessed the devotee practically in return. So, it finally appears to be a practical transaction, which is only business. This is not correct because there was no such intention of business, either in the mind of God or in the mind of the devotee. Moreover, business is based on the equivalence of items exchanged, whereas, in this bond of true devotion, there is no equivalence. For example, Draupadi gave a tiny piece of cloth torn from her saree to bandage the cut finger of Krishna. But Krishna gave her thousands of sarees in the court to protect her from being insulted. If you balance the values of the two items exchanged, there is no comparison at all. Even if one goes to a doctor, the payment made by the patient for getting the wound bandaged will not be equal to the total value of thousands of sarees! Here, the practical transaction took place based on the requirement of the situation. The wounded Krishna required only a piece of cloth for the bandage. The Draupadi who was being undressed by the Kauravas in the court, required an infinite number of sarees to cover her and protect her dignity. Here, there is no balance sheet or tallying the credit and debit transactions in the account. Hence, the above bond of pure love between God and devotee cannot be treated as business devotion.

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| Shri Datta Swami | Should devotees ask God or does He provide without asking?

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