Posted on: 19 Nov 2020
[An online spiritual discussion was conducted on October 31, 2020, in which several devotees participated. Some of the questions of devotees answered by Swāmi are given below.]
[Śrī Ganesh asked: Some people have a strong desire to earn a lot of money and become famous. Such people, if they are the devotees of the Human Incarnation of God, they might think, “Let me achieve my goal of earning a lot of money. Then, I will donate a part of it to my Sadguru as karma phala tyāga”. Is this the right way of doing karma phala tyāga? Here, the devotee is choosing to do worldly work in order to earn a lot of money rather than doing God’s work, which comes under karma saṃnyāsa.]
Swāmi replied: There are three stages of devotion. Let us call them the high, the higher and the highest stages. Let us consider the highest stage first. (a) The highest stage is earning money only for the sake of God’s work, foregoing self-enjoyment. While earning money in this manner, one should not commit sins. God is not in need of your money. In fact, whatever you possess now is also given by God alone. God asks you for your money, not for the sake of His need. He is asking you for your money, in order to test whether your bond with Him is greater than your bond with the money already possessed by you. God is not bothered about the magnitude of your donation to Him. He is only bothered about the percentage of the money donated to Him out of the total money possessed by you.
A beggar donated just one rupee to God when he had only one rupee with him. This is a 100% donation. A rich man having one crore donated one lakh rupees and his donation is only a 1% donation. The beggar is appreciated by God and not the rich man even though one lakh rupees is a much much larger amount than one rupee! (b) The middle stage, which we have called the higher stage is earning money for the sake of God as well as for the sake of one’s own enjoyment. (c) The lowest stage, which we have called the high stage is to earn money for oneself and for one’s own family alone and not for God. As long as you do not commit any injustice, even this stage is also not sinful because God is not begging for your money. You are donating to God because of your own love for God and for your own pleasure alone.
This aspect of the sacrifice of service and the fruit of work is a very delicate and critical point, which must be understood in the right sense. It is very well established that true love requires practical proof. Mere theoretical love is not sufficient to prove that it is true love. Apart from the necessity of the practical aspect of love, which is the sacrifice of the work and the fruit of work, the non-aspiration for any fruit in return is also essential. It proves that the practical love is real, leaving no doubt, at any time.
Developing such true love for God is not impossible since it is even found in worldly life, in the case of our children. This is the reason why God is known as Datta, which means an adopted son and not an adopting Father. If God is our adopted son (Datta), we have to show issue-devotion towards Him. Issue-devotion is the aspiration-free real love that we show towards our children. It means that we should practically serve Him and sacrifice the fruit of our work (wealth) to Him, without aspiring for anything in return. If we were to treat God as our adopting father instead, the above concept would be reversed! We would be expecting Him to sacrifice for us, without aspiring for anything in return from us!
The testing of the devotee for his or her ability to perform the practical sacrifice of the fruit of work is done by God only in the climax stage. Such a test should not be misunderstood to be the need of God. Neither is it the exploitation of the devotee by God. Kṛṣṇa forcibly searched Sudāmā, asking him what practical gift Sudāmā had got for Him. Sudāmā was in a worse condition than a beggar. Kṛṣṇa’s insistence on receiving the practical gift from Sudāmā was a test of the true love of Sudāmā. Kṛṣṇa had absolutely no need of eating that handful of flattened rice that Sudāmā had brought along as a gift for Him. Śaṅkara, who could produce a rain of golden fruits, went to the house of a poor lady, begging for food. He did not need any food from her. He only wanted to test her ability to do practical charity, even in her condition of terrible poverty. Hence, one should never even dream that God is trying to exploit the devotee or that God is in any sort of need.