Posted on: 05 Apr 2020
[A devotee asked: Guruji, You are giving the highest knowledge. Jai Guru Datta! Is karma behind corona virus? Why is it spreading to all countries? In the Mahabharata, the karma was borne by the people who supported both the parties which were at war with each other. Now, why is the world bearing the karma, when people are far away from each other and have no relationships with each other? Please Lord Datta (Datta Swami), I beg You to protect world from the corona virus!]
Swami replied: Were there no deaths before this corona virus epidemic? If we eliminate this corona virus, will all deaths stop? Is it not a meaningless question? When the time of death comes, there are one crore (10 million) ways of implementing death to a soul. This does not mean that you should not take all the necessary scientific precautions to prevent yourself from catching the infection. You must always concentrate on your effort in any issue. We do not have such a high level of devotion that we will be protected by God, irrespective of our practical effort. There are hardly one or two devotees, who can be protected from death by God. Even in those rare cases, the devotees are not willing to escape death. It is God who interferes and protects them from death because there is still some remaining divine work that they are supposed to complete in the world.
Our level of devotion is low and hence, we are not able to have 100% faith in God. So, we should act only as per the extent of our faith. In other words, we should take all the necessary precautions. Even if God appears before us and promises to protect us, right after He disappears, we will begin to doubt whether what we saw was real or an illusion. Hence, God also preaches to us only as per our level of devotion. In the Gita, God said that we have to put in effort to the extent of 80% and depend on God only for 20% (Daivaṃ caivātra pañcamaṃ…—Gita). Does it mean that God is expressing His inability to grant you 100% protection? No, not at all! God has the ability to protect you 100%, even without any practical effort from your side, such as the scientific precautions to prevent infection. But your nature is such that it cannot reach that level of faith. You can, at the maximum, reach 20% faith. Hence, God only preaches what we can follow. There is no point in preaching to us, something that exceeds our level of faith and devotion since it is beyond our capacity to follow it. Several people have phoned and asked Me this same question. I posed the same three questions to them as I have posed to you at the beginning of this message. In addition, I told everybody that they should recite the following prayer:
Dattātreya bhavāneva, bhavāneva gatirmama.
(O Lord Dattātreya! Only You, only You are My path.)
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| Shri Datta Swami | Daivam chaivaatra panchamam