24 Sep 2018
Shri Ajay asked:- Phani told me that You have explained about the seven divine gates of God long back while sitting in the chair in the north side on the early morning of the festival day of Lord Vishnu. That was excellent. Please repeat the message given on that day by You regarding the seven gates since that message was not recorded.
Swami replied:- On that day, I was made to sit on the chair placed in the north side gate of the house and devotees prostrated to My feet with the faith that the North facing gates are opened on that pious day of Ekaadashii. Devotees worshipped Me with full faith and hence, God Datta revealed the real inner meaning of that traditional custom in the following way:- The seven gates indicate seven concepts through which the devotee has to pass on. The first three are related to Pravrutti controlled by Jaya and the other four are controlled by Vijaya, who are said to be the gate keepers. Jaya indicates success with normal efforts and Vijaya indicates success with more strenuous efforts. The first three gates related to Pravrutti are:-
i) Resistance to Kaama or illegal sex,
ii) Resistance to violence or Krodha and
iii) Resistance to greediness or Lobha.
These three are the main gates of hell as said in the Gita (Kaamah Krodhastathaa Lobhah). Here, you have to resist something, which is trying to enter your mind and there is nothing to be attained by special efforts. The other four gates are related to Nivrutti, which are to be attained through special efforts. Rejecting something requires normal effort only and attaining something, which is not possessed by you requires special effort. Jaya means normal success and Vijaya means special success since the prefix ‘Vi’ means something special. The four special gates through which one has to pass on to reach God are:-
i) Attaining spiritual knowledge (Jnaana)
ii) attaining devotion (Bhakti)
iii) attaining service to God (Karma) and
iv) attaining sacrifice (Tyaaga).
Service means sacrifice of work or Karma Samnyaasa and sacrifice means sacrifice of fruit of work.
Since the foremost three gates of Pravrutti are self-explanatory, I shall explain about the latter four gates of Nivrutti.
1) In the first gate, you have to attain the spiritual knowledge, which is about yourself, about the true path and about the goal or God. About yourself, you must realize that you are not the God and you are the true servant of God only forever. About God, you shall know that the unimaginable God or Parabrahman is charging the first energetic form created by Him to become God Datta or Father of heaven, who further charges certain selected energetic forms and human forms to become energetic incarnations and human incarnations respectively. The human incarnation is most relevant to the humanity. The path is to worship God as incarnation through true devotion or love. The main aspect of true love shall be worshipping the Lord without aspiring any fruit in return from Him. This aspect is very clearly seen while worshipping your issues and hence, love on issues alone is the true love. If you aspire practical fruits from God for your theoretical worship like singing prayers, reading books etc., such love is worst like the false love of a prostitute, who collects money from the visitors by showing theoretical love only through loving words and love songs. If practical worship (karma samnyaasa and karmaphala tyaaga) is done to get practical fruits from God, it is worse love (better than the above love) called as business devotion in which matter (items) is exchanged for matter (money). The best and true love exists only in the issue devotion in which both service and sacrifice are done without aspiration for any fruit in return. Even if the issues hate you, you will not fail in doing this practical devotion because your love to them is very very true. If you attain this true knowledge frankly without any hesitation and reservation, overcoming all your inconvenience, you have attained the true spiritual knowledge, which is the special victory in the first gate.
2) In the second gate, you have to attain this true theoretical devotion (love) to God. This means that you have to sing the prayers without aspiration for any fruit in return. Avoiding the prostitute devotion (aspiring practical fruits for theoretical love) is victory in this second gate.
3) In the third gate, you have to attain the interest in doing service to God without aspiring any fruit in return. Work is a form of energy and sacrifice of energy in the form of work or service is the background concept. This is called as karma samnyaasa. The word samnyaasa means sainthood. This is meant for the saints, who can do this sacrifice only since they beg society even for their food. This is like doing job without taking salary as we find in the case of some political leaders having some positions linked with salaries! But, these people earn a lot indirectly and hence, such free sacrifice of work is cheating the public only!
4) In this fourth ultimate gate you have to sacrifice your wealth earned by hard work to God without aspiring any fruit in return. The Veda said that sacrifice of wealth is the only path to attain God (Dhanena tyaagena ekena...). The Gita made this concept more serious by saying that sacrifice of wealth earned by hard work is the final and there is nothing further beyond this (Tyaagaat Shaantiranantaram). Here, the word Shaanti means full stop of the effort. The reason is the attachment to wealth earned by hard work is the highest. Sacrifice of highest bond is highest sacrifice. The householders are expected to do this along with sacrifice of work also. Work is energy and matter is condensed form of energy. Wealth is matter or condensed form of energy. Condensed form of energy is far far higher than pure energy or work. Based on this, the employee sacrificing energy or work in exchange with matter (salary) respects very much the employer. A person exchanging material item for material money with a shop keeper doesn’t respect him so much. If this highest form of sacrifice is done without aspiring any type of fruit in return, that is the end of the spiritual effort. God tested Saktuprastha in this sacrifice of material (food) only in a severe drought. The performer of the ritual (Yajna) doing both types of sacrifice alone gets the total fruit of that ritual (like going to heaven) and not the priests, who perform the ritual through theoretical worship.
All these three aspects (1. Sacrifice of work like bathing, dressing your children, 2. Sacrifice of wealth through will in the end and 3. Doing both these types of sacrifice without aspiring any fruit in return) are fully seen in the issue devotion only and there is no second example for this in this entire world. This means that any human being is having real love towards his/her issues only and there is no second thought about this. Keeping this issue devotion as the standard scale, one can estimate the truth of his own devotion to God in his own mind itself! In the theoretical prayers and devotional songs, we say that we keep God in the highest position of our love!! This means that we are doing double sin by telling lies everyday to God!!! This analysis applies to a very great lot of humanity leaving very few devotees as exceptional cases. Hence, the Gita says that only one in millions realizes the truth regarding God (Kashchit maam vetti tattvatah). That one person also attains God after millions of births by practically crossing these seven gates (Bahuunaam janmanaamante). Most of the people are standing before the first gate itself!
People want that God should be attained very easily by all the people! If you realize the value of God, such wish is impossible. If you ask that the Kohinoor diamond shall be available to every human being for purchase, how it looks? But, one need not be discouraged if he/she is in constant effort to cross these seven gates. An ordinary householder trapped in the net of worldly bonds also can reach God if constant effort is put like the Tortoise walking slowly reaching the goal. Even a saint may not reach the goal on withdrawing from the effort like a rabbit sleeping on the way with overconfidence. This concept is very very inconvenient to almost all the humanity to implement in practice. But, let the devotee accept this true spiritual knowledge at least theoretically so that an idea is fixed in the brain that continues with the soul in the form of convinced concept (sasmskaara) following the soul through several births so that in one fortunate birth the soul start effort and succeeds to implement it and reaches God. Whenever the climax of difficulty is expressed, it is a normal saying to say “is it as difficult as spiritual knowledge (Brahma Vidyaa)?” Here, this means that all the difficulty lies in the implementation of the concept and not in understanding the simple concept. Several people, unable to implement this most inconvenient concept, sidetrack the issue towards theoretical side and say that Brahma Vidyaa is very difficult to understand and hence, they are unable to implement the unknowable concept!
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