Posted on: 24 Jan 2007
Every one desires to have bliss. Bliss means very intense happiness, which exists continuously. Such bliss exists only with God. To get such bliss, you have to attain the state of God. But the main condition to attain the state of God is to not aspire for that state and hence to not aspire for bliss. One has to start in the spiritual path with this fundamental correction. But everyone starts with this fundamental mistake of aspiration for bliss. Some start to achieve the state of God with hidden a reference to this bliss. Anyway both are one and the same since bliss is possible only for the state of God. You have to get the clue from God alone to get such bliss. The clue means the special knowledge (Prajnanam). This clue is not like an industrial secret [trade secret], which can be obtained somehow, and then one can dispose of the clue-giver forever. Such disposal of the clue-giver cannot harm you in the case of the trade secret, because the application of the clue is not at the grace of clue-giver. But this clue is special because even the application of this clue is completely based on the grace of the clue-giver (God). You have to continuously remain in the divine service of God so that the application of the clue is continuously successful.
Therefore, the continuity of the application of this clue to get continuous bliss by maintaining yourself continuously in the state of God is purely based on the grace of God. The grace of God does not end with the handing over of the clue to you. The grace has to continue forever for its continuous successful application. If you were not aiming for this bliss from the beginning and since your aim is only to serve God continuously without aspiring for any fruit including bliss, the point of disposal of God after getting the clue does not arise at all in your case. If you were aiming for bliss at any time before getting the clue, the clue will not be given by God. Even if you happen to know this clue from some human preachers or from the divine knowledge directly, the clue will not work at all. Even after getting the clue from God, if your aim turns towards bliss, this clue shall not work from that moment. Even after the application of this clue and the subsequent attainment of bliss for some time, if your aim turns towards the bliss, the clue stops functioning from that time onwards.
I am clearly stressing on this point, which is very important, because the diversion towards bliss is inevitable to the human psychology at any time, which is the only possible poison. One should be aware of this point continuously. You have to enjoy the bliss in the state of God, which is granted to you by the grace of God, feeling that you are enjoying the bliss since that is the wish of God. By following His wish, God gets pleased. Only for such pleasure of God are you enjoying bliss and your aim is not the bliss at anytime. For any action (karma), for any sacrifice (tyaga) and for any enjoyment (bhoga) from your side, the basis should only be the wish and pleasure of God. Therefore, if your aim is always to give bliss to God and not to enjoy the bliss, God will just be a mirror reflection of your attitude. Then His aim will not be to enjoy bliss but to give you bliss and for the fulfillment of this wish of God, God will not mind transferring all your sins on to Him and getting you relieved from the punishments (if you are unable to enjoy your own punishments in the initial stage. In course of time you may become capable of enjoying the misery in the world and derive bliss from it).
Knowledge: Source of Bliss and Love
You must understand that bliss cannot be obtained through any other way like getting materialistic benefits etc. Bliss is inherent only of the state of God. But you can attain the state of God through the knowledge of the state of God and maintain it by the grace of God. Even Shankara did not forget the necessity of the grace of God to attain even the state of self where only peace is the result and not bliss (Ishwara anugrahaat…). Even for the continuity of peace by self-attainment, the grace of God is necessary. In that case, I need not tell you about the necessity of God’s grace to attain the continuity of bliss by attaining the state of God. In the first case of self-attainment, you may succeed to attain it for a moment by your self-effort, which is simply self-realization. But you will immediately fall from it, dragged by Maya so that you can be punished for the regular schedule of your sins. Moreover, in this path you are adding special endless sin to your list of sins by not accepting God other than your self. If you accept and worship God other than your self and proceed in this path of self-attainment, you will maintain the continuity of this state.
But once you have accepted God other than your self and worshipped Him, why should you crave only for peace? Will you pray to God just for preventing loss in your business? You will pray for profit and God will at least protect you from loss. Similarly, if you enter the service of the contemporary human incarnation with the aim of getting the bliss of God, you will at least attain peace, which may be a relative bliss with respect to misery. But if you enter the service of God without aspiration for peace or for bliss, you are sure to get bliss provided your state of selfless service is maintained. Therefore, never approach the Sadguru who is the human form of God for attaining continuous peace by self-realization. The human preachers can give you peace for a moment through self-realization. But the continuity of the peace is again dependent on the grace of God alone and not on the human preacher.
Since bliss is obtained only from divine knowledge given by God, you need not stress on the aspect of bliss separately from the knowledge. God is the possessor of divine knowledge and it naturally means that He is the possessor of bliss also because bliss is a consequence of His divine knowledge alone. Therefore, when you identify God through divine knowledge, it means you have identified the possessor of bliss also. You need not identify God separately through bliss. Some false human incarnations claim to be God by simply expressing bliss on their face. Without divine knowledge, such bliss is not true because when the clue is absent, how can the consequence be present? Of course, he may be a liberated soul enjoying the bliss by the grace of God and in such a case he has the clue also. You can get the clue from him but as you know, the grace of God is required for the success of the clue. The liberated soul will tell this fact also and will guide you to get the grace of God and not his grace. If the liberated soul acts as the human incarnation hiding God, he will loose the bliss immediately. A liberated soul will never do that because for meaningless fame of a Guru, he will not sacrifice such eternal bliss. But the false human incarnation, expressing false bliss, may trap you, by giving you the clue known from the divine knowledge. To eliminate such a false God, you have to observe his overall spiritual knowledge containing various other aspects with various angles and the special way of his presentation, to convince yourself. At this point, miracles cannot help you because even a demon can perform miracles.
Just like bliss, love need not be a separate sign for identifying God because the divine knowledge giving continuous bliss requires the grace of God, which is nothing but divine love. A false incarnation without divine knowledge, tries to impress you by expressing false love. True love is limited only to giving divine knowledge to you, which alone can give you eternal bliss. Therefore, love and bliss exist in the knowledge itself and there is no separate place for love and bliss apart from the knowledge. Human preachers who are false incarnations show love for you by helping you in getting some temporary worldly benefits, which do not give you real bliss. They only give some temporary, apparent and illusory happiness, which is just false bliss, and the help provided to you is just false love. True love is only giving you the true spiritual knowledge, which gives you real eternal bliss. Mere continuous happiness becomes misery. Happiness has its value only when it is temporary and is interrupted by misery. The continuous eating of sweets, continuous scenes of happiness in a movie, continuous winter etc., will bore you and finally become misery. The profit of even a little money gives happiness to a poor man but the profit of even a lot of money does not give happiness to a rich man. The happiness losses its significance in the absence of misery and continuous happiness itself finally gets converted into misery. Therefore, the continuity of happiness is impossible.
Bliss can be continuous because it is infinitely multiplied intensity of happiness and the very nature of bliss is continuity. Such bliss can come only from God and it can neither come from one’s soul nor from the world. The soul gives only temporary absence of both happiness and misery called as peace. The world gives both happiness and misery and none of these two is continuous. If you reach the state of God, which is called as “Saadharmya” in the Gita, then only can you derive the bliss from the world in which souls form only a part. Such a state can be obtained only from the true spiritual knowledge given by the Sadguru along with His grace.