Why this depression? [ A question put to me by several devotees]

[dattaswami]

Why this depression? [ A question put to me by several devotees]

 

Let Me answer your question straight with a simple example

You have caught a hot iron rod with your hand and you are weeping

You are asking Me to remove the heat from the rod and give you happiness

For this you are constantly praying the Lord to use His special power.

I have to laugh at this situation because the easiest solution is to remove

Your hand from the rod to be happy, which you are not doing at all

You cannot get rid of your attachment to the rod, but you pray the Lord

To cool the rod using His Maya, is this prayer justified in any way?

Why don’t you get detached from your family bonds and be happy?

The hand with which you have caught your family members is your mind

You detach your mind from the bonds of your family members

And be peaceful always and there is no need of praying the Lord for this

When the solution is in your hand why do you ask the Lord for it?

When the solution is out of your hands there may be justice in asking the Lord

 

In the first stage you detach your mind from them and be worry less

In course of time when your detachment by mind becomes complete

You will spontaneously leave your duties also and attain bliss

The detachment from the family comes by your attachment with the Lord

As the bond with the Lord becomes more and more strong, your family bonds

Become weaker and weaker and finally all the bonds disappear

In this state you are left over only with the bond with the Lord

This state is called “Eka Bhakthih” in Gita or the single pointed devotion

Devotion means love and this is related to the plane of mind

As the faculty of intelligence becomes more and more sharp

By the knowledge preached by the Lord, the devotion to Lord

Becomes more and more strong, thus knowledge is acting as

Both fertilizer as well as pesticide on both the sides simultaneously

It acts as a fertilizer for the bond with the Lord, which is like a plant

The plant grows slowly and becomes a huge tree by this fertilizer

The family bonds are like the insects that attack this devotion plant

For those insects this divine knowledge acts as a pesticide also

The knowledge is also the generating factor like the water for the seed

Only by the knowledge of the Lord, the devotion is generated

Devotion is the love or attraction towards the Lord to attain Him

It ends in agony or Vedana as told by Ramanuja, thus knowledge is

The generating factor, the fertilizer and the pesticide simultaneously

When Rukmini heard all the details of Lord Krishna from sage Narada

She developed intensive attraction for the Lord and that is devotion

Sankara emphasized on the knowledge and Ramanuja on devotion

 

Knowledge is the generator of devotion and devotion is the cause

For the achievement of the Lord, by the devotion of Rukmini only

The Lord came and married her, thus devotion ends in the achievement of the Lord

Gita says the same “Bhaktya tvananyaya”, now when the devotion is full

The family bonds are completely broken; Rukmini did not care for her

Brother and parents and even the tradition, therefore, as the devotion grows

The family bonds are cut simultaneously, without the attachment to Lord

The detachment from family is impossible because only after tasting

The divine nectar, one can leave all the worldly drinks spontaneously

Attachment of one thing should lead to the detachment of other thing

Simple detachment from the family without the attachment to the Lord

Becomes impossible, even if achieved does not stand permanently

Without tasting the divine nectar, if you leave the worldly drinks

It is meaningless and one day or other you will run to the worldly drinks

Finally, the real devotion is proved only by the selfless service

Rukmini served the Lord after attaining Him, she constantly pressed

His divine feet and her aim was not to become the queen of Dwaraka

Madhva shows this service as the real proof of the true love

 

In the beginning you should try for the detachment from the family

By withdrawing your attraction or mind slowly from these worldly bonds

This can be achieved once you start binding yourself with the Lord

The attachment to the Lord is directly proportional to the detachment

From the worldly bonds, but don’t think that you have been detached fully

The full detachment by mind from the worldly bonds can be tested by you

As the mind gets detached, the concentration in the duties is diluted

Don’t fear that this may spoil your duties. No! Never! Be sure!

Because your detachment from the duty is due to your attachment to the Lord

The Lord will take care of your duties, in fact that is far below to His level

 

 

His servants like Hanuman will take care of the success in your duties

If your duty is diluted due to your laziness or diversion to some other

Worldly affair, then your duty will be definitely spoiled, but if you become

His devotee, will the Lord keep silent if your duties are failing?

This is the real point of the faith on the Lord, practical field is real

Devotees say that they have full faith in the Lord, but they fail in practice

Their faith is only theoretical, when practical comes they slip tremendously

Some people say that their mind is fully dedicated to the Lord and

Just they are doing the duties externally, this is a complete hypocrisy

Because the duty is always proportional to the attachment of the mind

By the will of the mind only you can do anything, if the mind is not willing

You can do nothing, therefore your action is a mirror of your mind

When you are doing the worldly actions or duties, your mind is certainly

Absorbed and concentrated on the worldly affairs only, don’t fool the Lord

Can the omniscient Lord be fooled by your hypocrisy? Then whom you are fooling?

 

 

Are you fooling the public? What is the use of it? Finally it means that

You are fooling yourself, therefore be sincere and truthful in the spiritual path

When your mind is fully absorbed in the Lord then your duties fully disappear

That shows your full faith in the Lord and so your duties are done the best

By the servants of the Lord and this stage is the final ripened stage

Sankara left His duty of serving the old mother and went for the mission

The mother of Sankara was permanently granted the divine abode of the Lord

May be, she might have faced some temporary inconvenience in her last life

But that is nothing compared to the divine fruit she got from the Lord

See the faith of Sankara on the Lord who left His old mother and He was only

One son to her, she was not helped by anybody since she was abandoned

By her relatives and lives outside the village in a small hut.

You cannot expect that final state to day itself, i.e., the final goal

You must try to reach that goal everyday and try in every minute

Slowly one day or other by the grace of the Lord you will surely reach the goal.

 

 

 

At the Lotus Feet of His Holiness Sri Dattaswami

 

Anil Antony

 

www.universal-spirituality.org

Universal Spirituality for World Peace

antonyanil@universal-spirituality.org

[Soldier of God]

To put it simply most people lack discipline.

[dattaswami]

To put it simply most people lack discipline.

The liberated soul, who came down in a role to this earth along with the Lord to enjoy this world-drama by direct participation invites both happiness and misery simultaneously like sweet and hot dishes in the meals. Anything bores if it is continuous. Entertainment does not bore even if it is continuous. But entertainment through continuous happiness or continuous misery bores. A picture either with continuous scenes of happiness or with continuous scenes of misery bores and the entertainment also bores. Entertainment should be same as a product but the sources of entertainment should change. You cannot entertain yourself with continuous sweet dishes or continuous hot dishes. Such continuous entertainment is called Bliss or Ananda. The word Ananda means continuous happiness (Aa samantat Nandayati Iti). If the happiness is a product, it is continuous. If it is the source it is discontinuous. Therefore, you can be continuously happy, if your happiness is the product of alternating misery and happiness. You are happy, when you get happiness. But you should be happy when you get the misery also. You must enjoy both sweet and hot. You must be happy to praise and abuse, profit and loss, life and death, sincerity and cheating etc. This world is already arranged with these alternating sweet and hot items. If you can enjoy both, you are always happy during your life and after death. This is the state of God and is also the state of a liberated soul, who accompanies the Lord to this world. The king visited the cinema along with his family. All the family members including the king enjoy both the happy scenes and tragic scenes. This is equality of the liberated soul with the God in the cinema hall. When the cinema is over, king is king and servant is servant.

 

The spiritual journey is to transform yourself from ignorant soul to realized soul and finally to become the liberated soul which is called as the complete salvation. You have to be dear and near to God to become a liberated soul. This transformation is possible by His grace only. His grace comes only when you are in true path. You can go in the true path if you get the true knowledge from Him only. This is the divine cycle. The true path is selfless service through words, mind, intelligence and work and fruit of work. Such five-fold service is rendered by you to your body and your family members. An ignorant soul is controlled by ignorance, which is real. A realized soul has neither ignorance nor the grace of God. This middle stage comes because, in this stage, the soul serves the Lord through words, mind and intelligence but not through work and fruit of work. The service is theoretical but not practical. In this stage, the coverage of ignorance (Avaranam) is removed but the practical effect (Vikshepa) is not removed. He realizes the Truth but is unable to practice it. In the final stage God’s grace dawns on him and the ignorance is removed theoretically and practically. The ignorance may exist in this stage also as a helper for the full entertainment. Such ignorance may appear real from the view of liberated soul also, but it will be removed by God whenever the scheduled duration ends. Such real ignorance is imposed by God also on Himself, which goes after the fixed schedule ends.