28 May 2018
32) Value of God:-
Value of God is generally mentioned as the highest in our prayers, which is a lie in practical light. We have given entire wealth to our issues and not a single rupee for God’s work. The value of God is not even a trace of the value of our issues. But, we mention the value of God as infinite in our prayers (theoretical devotion). Are we not trying to fool the God through our prayers when we know very well that God is omniscient? We are attracted towards His omnipotence by which we like to solve our petty worldly problems. We are forgetting His omniscience and tell lies in our prayers. We shall be sincere before God while doing the prayers and express our true love to Him in proportion to our practical love only.
33) Detachment from World:-
Detachment from world shall result as a natural consequence of the attachment to God. There is no use to get detachment from world without attachment to God. When you have tasted divine nectar, coffee will be rejected by you spontaneously without any force. Such detachment from world is an indirect measure of your attachment to God. If you observe the scale-rod fixed in the river, the upper visible height is noted from which the lower immersed height or the depth of water is indirectly calculated. You must be sure that the scale is immersed in water and not in the sand! This means that you must be sure that the attachment of a person is to God and not to a prostitute! Even a person attached to a prostitute shows the same detachment from the world, which is shown by a devotee also attached to God! Detachment from world is not a pre-requisite for attachment to God since rejecting coffee doesn’t procure divine nectar. Such detachment is temporary only because mind can’t exist for a long time without attachment to anything. Hence, first, the attachment to God (Bhakti) must be achieved by all your efforts, which automatically brings the detachment from the world (Vairaagya) without any trace of effort.
34) Remembering God:-
Remembering God must be done with lot of interest and shall not be done without interest. Such interest on God comes when you hear the incidents took place involving the personality of God. This develops lot of interest or devotion towards the attracting personality of God. It is a matter of pity that some devotees go on repeating a single name of God thinking that they are strong devotees of God! For any matter, experience (anubhava) is said to be the ultimate authority. Tell Me really, by keeping your hand on your heart, are you not bored in repeating the same name? You can also understand the state of God hearing you continuously repeating His name from the experience of an incident in which your friend is constantly repeating your name in your ear! Instead, if your friend is praising your qualities with emotion mentioning the practical incidents, how much happy you are! The name projects certain quality and you may be attracted once to such quality. Can you be attracted by the same quality mentioned again and again continuously? At least, recitation of thousand names of God (Sahasranaama) is better since you are reminded of several qualities of God continuously. But, remembering the quality through a name is a strenuous effort. Instead, you can remember each quality expressed in an incident in detail and this attracts your mind without strain as said by Narada in the Bhakti Sutra as ‘Kathaashravana’. This type of attraction is called as penance. It is shown in cinemas that a devotee is repeating name of God continuously in penance and the pleased God appears to give a boon. Perhaps, God appeared because He was unable to bear the headache generated from continuous repetition of His single name and wants to get rid of the devotee immediately by giving the boon!
35) Break in the Devotion:-
Break in the devotion shall not discourage the devotee since such break is given by God only to the devotee. After a break, the devotion gets double speed and proceeds further. A culvert built in the path of the flow of water in a canal stops the flow of water and gives a break to the flow. The water after crossing the break, runs with increased speed in the canal. This illusion of creation, called as Maayaa, is the power of God, which creates breaks in the devotion not as an obstacle, but, as a promoter like the culvert. Narada, in his Bhakti Sutra mentions this as a part of definition of devotion (tadvismarane paramavyaakulataa).
36) Reading Novels and Seeing Cinemas:-
Reading novels and seeing cinemas is an attraction towards the world trying to divert you from God. Both these are heavenly dancers coming down to divert the penance of a sage. If you are unable to control this habit, which should be spontaneously controlled by the attraction to God and not to be controlled with force, you can divert the direction of this habit towards God. Generally, in novels and cinemas, heroes are projected with all good qualities and always are involved in protecting justice and in condemning injustice. All these qualities are the divine qualities of God in human form. You assume that the hero of such novel or cinema is an incarnation of God and proceed in the story with this new angle. In such case, reading such novel or seeing such cinema is equal to reading or seeing the divine epics like the Ramayana and the Mahaabharata. You need not change the material since you have to change your direction only. The lock is bonded if you turn the key in one direction and the same lock gets salvation if you turn the same key in the same lock in opposite direction. Even the bad qualities, which are out of your control, can be diverted to God, by which your enemy harming you becomes your friend helping you.
37) Divine Marriages:-
Divine marriages are performed between God and His life partner in Hindu temples, which are attended by several devotees with full devotion, but, without understanding the significance of such functions. The spiritual meaning is that God alone is the male husband and all the souls are His female wives as said in the Veda (striyah satiih...). Husband (Bhartaa-bibharti iti) means the maintainer and wife (Bhaaryaa-bhriyate iti) means the maintained. All the souls are maintained by God irrespective of gender. The soul attending the divine marriage is expected to know that it is always maintained by God and from that day onwards, that soul shall treat God as its husband or maintainer. The males must suppress their ego of gender recognizing their husband or God by placing themselves in the place of the bride. Ego obstructs tremendously the spiritual progress. The sages were made to be born as female Gopikas in order to suppress their ego of gender in practice. Shri Paramahamsa lived in Brundavanam for a long time in the dress of female Gopika! The soul having male body shall suppress its ego as male-maintainer of his wife since both the souls are maintained by the ultimate male-maintainer, the God. Two ladies are acting in the roles of Rama and Sita. The female actor acting as Rama in the role shall not forget that she is also a female actor! Another remarkable talent of the priest is to spend one hour in reading the names of the persons, who are patronizing the divine marriage and the list of various desires of those patrons to be fulfilled and after this, he performs the actual ritual of marriage in ten minutes!
38) Miracles:-
Miracles stand as the practical proof for the concept that the unimaginable God is proved to exist through unimaginable events, called as miracles. Of course, magic exists, which looks like a miracle and a careful analysis reveals whether it is magic or a genuine miracle. A scientist does the analysis with open mind to find out whether it is a miracle or magic. But, an atheist, with rigid mind, proceeds with the analysis to prove everything as magic only and to establish the absence of any genuine miracle. All scientists are not atheists and all atheists are not scientists. In any book of science, you don’t have a chapter under the head line ‘rejection of unimaginable God and miracles’. This shows that science noted the existence of genuine miracles due to their open mind, but, keeps silent on that topic since unimaginable item has no imaginable explanation. If you see the atheism, its books contain only one topic as mentioned above! Even science believes only in the authority of perception and hence, in these days of developed science, genuine miracles are prominent. An atheist shows the magic by generating ash from hand, which is hidden between the fingers and says that based on this, every generation of ash is such magic only. How can he explain the creation of ash in continuous streams from a vacant pot and the creation of scented nectar from the photos of God in the houses of devotees even in the absence of the performer of the miracle? Some jealous devotees are satisfied by mocking Shri Satya Sai Baba that the items existing somewhere are secretly transferred to the hands of Baba! Agreeing to their criticism, can they explain the transfer of items from a shop to the hand? A scientist said that the article created by Baba can be explained by science. He says that since matter is condensed energy, a part of cosmic energy is condensed in to materialized article maintaining the law of conservation of matter and energy and hence, an equivalent amount of matter somewhere will be converted in to energy. All this is ok, but, using all this theory, can this scientist generate an article in similar way? Not only the appearance of matter, but also the spontaneous workmanship to prepare that article from a lump of mass generated by condensation of energy has to be explained! Dr. S. Bhagavantam, a famous scientist also thought like this whenever Baba created articles. One day he went to Baba along with his friends for the first time. Baba created a photo showing Himself along with those scientists as they stand with Him! Baba gave that photo to the scientist asking him “Is your doubt cleared?”
Miracles are meant for atheists only. The theist has already believed in the existence of God and does not need any proof for the existence of God. But, the theist is also terribly interested in the miracles to use these to get solutions for his worldly problems, which are the punishments of his sins only. Miracles postpone punishments with increased interest to be received in the future!
39) Temples:-
Temples in ancient days used to exist in peaceful places like hills, forests etc., so that devotees could worship God with peaceful mind and used to meet saints there for getting spiritual knowledge. In those days, worships were without aspiration for any fruit in return from God. Today, the temples are terribly crowded with people running for getting their desires fulfilled from God! The peace disappeared and atmosphere is polluted with bad odoured desires. For spiritual progress, both crowd and loneliness are not suitable as both extreme ends. An atmosphere with few devotees is congenial for spiritual progress as the middle path. Such atmosphere existed in temples in the ancient days and hence, God existed in temples. Today, crowds exist and the atmosphere is commercialised and in such places, even a saint can’t live and not to speak of the ultimate God. Today, God lives in worship-room existing in your house with few people only and your house is the best place to worship God.
40) Systematic Analysis:-
Systematic analysis always shows what is truth and what is false and this is an important pre-requisite for learning the spiritual knowledge as per Shankara (Sadasat viveka). In this impartial analysis, sentiment has no place at all. You can’t give any weight to the long time in which a tradition stood. When the analysis is done without any prejudice and bias, truth and falsehood are separately seen and the falsehood runs away as soon as truth shines. The falsehood can’t claim its long standing in the name of tradition as its legal strength of the right of position before the truth that appeared in a moment! Shankara says that the darkness may be dwelling in a closed house for 100 years, but, it will run away as soon as the radiation of Sun enters the house through the opened doors! We shall not be biased completely to one side since all old is not gold and all the latest is not the best. You have to select the truth and reject falsehood whether it is old or latest (puraanamityeva...). It is said that a fool drinks salt water from a well saying that it was dug by his father (taatasya kupoyamiti...). Even the scripture (Shruti and Smruti) can’t be the authority since we are not sure of insertions and deletions done in the scripture in the past. Even the experience can’t be accepted without analysis since a person with defective eyes experiences two moons in the sky and such experience can’t be the authority without analysis since analysis proves that his eyes are defective. Among all the four authorities (Shruti or the primary scripture, Smruti or the secondary scripture, Yukti or the analysis and Anubhava or experience), the analysis stands as the ultimate.
(To be continued...)
★ ★ ★ ★ ★