Salvation

[dattaswami]

Salvation

 

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 Gods 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.

 

 

 

www.universal-spirituality.org

Universal Spirituality for World Peace

[Luke_Wilbur]

 

selfless service through words, mind, intelligence and work and fruit of work

 

I would like to understand the concept of selfless fruit of work.

[dattaswami]

On 7/18/2013 at 10:01 PM, Luke_Wilbur said:

 

I would like to understand the concept of selfless fruit of work.

Selfless fruit of work means, donating hard earned money to God for His mission. God comes to this world in human form in every human generation known as Human incarnation of God (

www.universal-spirituality.org).

The Gita says that the sacrifice (donation to God) of the fruit of one’s work(money) is the final step of the spiritual path (karma phala tyāgaḥ, tyāgāt shāntiranantaram). The employee who sacrifices his energy (work) respects the employer who sacrifices his money (the fruit of work) to the employee in return. The employer does not respect the employee as much. A lot of energy, when condensed, becomes a small quantity of matter (E = mc²). Hence, the sacrifice of the fruit of work (money or matter) is greater than the sacrifice of work (energy). We also see in the world that the climax of real love exists only where there is practical sacrifice of the fruit of work. Actually, theoretical love is greater than practical sacrifice because theory is related to awareness and awareness is greater than inert practice. But the practice is the proof of the truth of the theory.

 

God is not in need of your practical sacrifice at all. He tests you for your ability to do practical sacrifice only to prove the reality of your theoretical love. Hence, you must also express theoretical love towards Him while doing practical sacrifice to Him. As told in the Veda, you must be attentive, respectful, full of faith, fearful and shy as you perform the sacrifice. You must always remember that He is not a beggar even though He might look like a beggar. He can take any form to test how real your theoretical devotion is based on your practical sacrifice. The fact is that He is the actual donor of even your energy (work) and the fruit of your work.

 

Swami Vivekananda wept seeing the terrible poverty of India in spite of its excellent spiritual knowledge and its excellent devotion to God. The reason for this situation is that practical devotion is weak in India. In the West, practical devotion is high and so, they are blessed with a lot of material development. The Veda says that God is just a reflection of the devotee (Rūpaṁ rūpaṁ pratirūpo babbūva). When both theory and practice are associated together, they form the complete real devotion. It is like scented gold. It does not matter who the devotee is and which form of God he or she chooses to worship. The relationship between these two is the devotion, which decides the value of the fruit. The initial stage of the relationship between God and the devotee is certainly based on business. But it should result in a real relationship in the course of time. Any initiative is always defective in the beginning, just as a freshly kindled fire gives off a lot of smoke. But after sometime, the smoke disappears and the fire burns brightly. Similarly, the devotee’s attraction to the fruit in a business-like manner is not wrong in the initial stage. It becomes wrong only when that initial stage continues forever.

 

Two partners in a partnership business became life-partners, in the course of time. In the initial stage, both were very careful in calculating their respective shares of the profit in the business. But later on, when they both became life-partners, there is no such calculation. Each of them feel that the total profit is his or her own. As per the need, one extends help to the other. Draupadi tore a piece of her sari and gave it to Krishna as a bandage when His finger was wounded. Krishna only needed that small piece of cloth at that time. When Draupadi was being unclothed in the royal court by the wicked Duśśāsana, Krishna rescued her by giving an infinite number of saris, which was her need. Such is the real bond between a devotee and God.