Can a rich man be saved by God?

[Shri Anil asked: Pādanamaskāraṃ Swami! When the rich man approached Jesus for salvation, he could not sacrifice his wealth, as per the order of Jesus because he possessed a lot of wealth. Subsequently, Jesus said that “The truth is, it will be very hard for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom. Yes, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.” After hearing this statement, the followers asked, “Then who can be saved?” To this Jesus replied: “This is something that people cannot do. But God can do anything.” From Your knowledge, we know that God does not force anybody to follow His preaching. He only gives direction through knowledge. If that is the case, why did Jesus reply as above? Does it mean that in future births, the rich person was eventually going to be saved by God? Please grace us with Your reply. At Your Divine Feet –anil]

Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! The essence of all this is that the quality of sacrifice is extremely important for a soul to become God. One can become a Human Incarnation of God in the present life itself. The soul’s bond with God should be in the topmost position. It means that all other bonds should stand defeated before the soul’s bond with God. In a divine test conducted by God, the soul has to choose God over some worldly bonds. All the bonds of the soul other than the bond with God are worldly bonds because there are only two items—God and the world. The soul is also part of the world and is intertwined with the world from the beginning. The soul is like a wave in the ocean of water. It becomes extremely difficult for the soul to sacrifice its worldly bonds for the sake of God. Hence, the divine test is the most difficult one.

The difficulty of the test is always directly proportional to the value of the fruit. If one gets through the very difficult IAS examination, he becomes the District Collector. If one gets through the much simpler Group IV examination, he only becomes a low-level servant in the office. The sacrifice of one’s worldly bonds should be done due to one’s love for God. Merely sacrificing one’s worldly bonds without devotion to God is utter foolishness. Detachment from the world must take place due to the attachment to God. Thus, the divine test involves two sides—God and the world—competing with each other.

There are three very strong worldly bonds of a person and they are the bonds with one’s issues, with one’s wealth and with one’s life-partner. The fourth bond is the bond with one’s own life and it is the ultimate king of all worldly bonds. God competes with all these four bonds and success in all these four tests decides the ultimate divine fruit. This ultimate divine fruit can be of two types: (i) Forming a monistic bond with God by becoming a Human Incarnation and (ii) Forming a dualistic bond with God as His devotee, who becomes even the master of God. Such a devotee even controls God through his or her unimaginable dualistic love. One should not be fascinated by the idea of becoming God because God has tremendous responsibilities along with unimaginable powers. It is always better and wise to choose the second type of fruit in which you remain a devotee who has no responsibilities at all and the omnipotent God follows your wishes. Śrī Paramahaṃsa said that He prefers to be an ant enjoying the sugar instead of becoming the sugar and being bitten and enjoyed by ants.

What God wants us to understand is that no human being can succeed in these divine tests unless the soul has put in a lot of spiritual effort, which is extremely rare. The rich man is generally more attached to the world and it is only because of this reason that he became rich! Jesus’s statement saying, “God can do anything” means that He has all the unimaginable powers apart from the unimaginable responsibilities that accompany the powers. Even the rich man can get salvation, provided he is detached from the worldly bonds and is attached only to God. Everything depends on the spiritual efforts of the soul because whatever God does, He does without violating ethics and logic.

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