How can a selfish person pray to God?

[Ms. Thrylokya asked: Padanamaskāraṃ Swāmi! In one discourse, You defined yoga as equal enjoyment of both misery and happiness. You also said that if we could enjoy misery and happiness equally, there is no need of praying to or showing love towards God for removal of misery. Practically, I am not able to enjoy misery and want to escape from misery. You said that devotion should come out of the attraction towards God and we should not expect anything from God. But I am not in that state of selflessness as I have harboured some materialistic dreams since a long time. Although I have realized that those ambitions are futile, they are still able to tempt me towards the world and that is wasting my time.

After learning Your divine knowledge, I am not able to sit and read stotras before God because I know that my prayers are full of (selfish) aspirations to fulfill my desires. My devotion is not pure. How should a selfish person like me pray to God everyday?]

Swāmi replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! There are only one or two are selfless devotees among the millions of souls. Even out of these two rare devotees, only one reaches the climax of selfless devotion. Hence, selfless devotion is next to impossible. But the way to selfless devotion is always open and a few blessed devotees have travelled on this rare path. One among these very few devotees has also reached God, the goal. Hence, you must always be hopeful and continuously try to become such a rare devotee to enter the even rarer path to reach the rarest goal. It is next to impossible, but is not actually an impossibility.

There are two types of devotion: (1) The first is devotion without any aspiration. It is attained through yoga, which is the equal enjoyment of both happiness and misery. It is like enjoying both the scenes of comedy and tragedy in a movie or like enjoying both sweet and hot dishes in a meal. (2) The second type of devotion is devotion with aspiration. It is justified if the desire is only for one’s minimum needs and not for extra luxuries. In this second type of devotion, to get a proper response from God, you must express gratefulness to God, remembering all the favours already done by Him to you. The expression of desire for future needs must be preceded by the expression of gratitude for your past desires already fulfilled by God. If you lack this gratefulness for the past favours, it decreases the love of God towards you. You always stress on fulfilling future needs, totally forgetting the past favors already done by God to you.

The first favor done by God was giving you a human birth, setting aside your file of deeds. If your file is deeply studied by God, you will be born as a cat or a rat or an insect! This is the highest favor already done by God to you. The second favor is that you are born a female and not a male. A male is always infected with ego and that ego is very inconvenient in attaining salvation. Females lack ego and have the feeling of surrender to God. If the husband succeeds in the world, the reason for it is his worshipful wife in the house. Even the male sages had to take the final birth as the female Gopikās in order to get salvation. Apart from these two favors, God has given not only professional education to you, but also spiritual education through His human form, which is your contemporary Human Incarnation. You must always express gratefulness to God for these past favors and only then pray for your future needs. The strength of the aspiration for getting the fruit from God gets reduced by your sincere effort put in the practical work needed to achieve the future fruit. If you aspire for the fruit without making any effort, it shows that your aspiration for getting the fruit from God is at its climax. Hence, God Kṛṣṇa has advised the soul to concentrate on the work needed to achieve the fruit, without having an eye on the fruit. Having an eye on the fruit is nothing but the aspiration for getting the fruit from God (Karmaṇyevādhikāraste mā phaleṣu kadācana—Gītā).

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| Shri Datta Swami | How can a selfish person pray to God? | Karmanyevadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana Gita