Posted on: 23 Oct 2018
Shri P. V. N. M. Sharma asked Shri Swami the following question: “You have mentioned in one of the Bhakti Ganga-songs that the saint Datta came to the abode of Goddess Lakshmi, begging the food. As per tradition, it is expected that a renounced-saint would beg for food since saints are not supposed to cook their own food. But afterwards in the same song, You also mention that the saint Datta met with His wife as a house-holder. Both these contradict each other. How can Lord Datta be a renounced-saint as well as a house-holder?”
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! God and the soul are totally different because God is omnipotent whereas the soul has a very negligible potency. Hence, no soul should imitate God. God plays with the three fundamental qualities namely sattva, rajas and tamas. The same three qualities play with the soul. The qualities are balls for the play of God. Souls are balls for the play of these qualities. As per tradition, a person passes through the four stages of life namely, being a bachelor-student, a married house-holder, a person who has retired into the forest and finally a renounced-saint. These four stages in a person’s life are called as Aashramas. When sages asked God Datta about His Aashrama, God replied that He is above all these four states. It is possible for God to play with fire without getting burnt. For an ordinary soul playing with fire, it will certainly result in body-burns. Ordinary souls should not imitate God; they should keep away from the fire.
Sage Vashishtha’s preaching to Rama is recorded in his book called as the Yoga Vashishtha. At the beginning itself, he preaches that an ordinary soul should not imitate God and should stay away from worldly bonds as far as possible. God alone has the capacity to be totally detached from the worldly fascinations, even when immersed in worldly bonds. He can remain like a lotus in a lake, which is not wetted by water. Hence, a soul should follow the four stages; trying at least for gradual detachment from worldly bonds as age ripens. It is important to try to achieve detachment from the earliest stage of a bachelor-student so that it might be achieved at least by the time the devotee becomes a saint in his old age.
But such detachment from worldly bonds should come only due to the attachment to God. The former is useless without the latter. Attachment to God comes by knowing spiritual knowledge completely. Spiritual knowledge leads to devotion to God. The devotion causes one to get involved in the work of God, which is propagating His spiritual knowledge. Since the spiritual knowledge will generate devotion and devotion will generate the involvement in God’s work, there is no need of preaching about devotion and the involvement in God’s work separately. Therefore, Shankara stressed only on knowledge. The service of God, which is propagating His divine knowledge, is mainly advantageous to the soul who is propagating the knowledge. It is that soul, who gets transformed by repeated propagation to others. Hence, the propagation of spiritual knowledge means becoming a saint gradually. Even after becoming a saint, he or she should continue the work of propagation in order to maintain the attained stage. The main duty of a saint is only the propagation of spiritual knowledge in the world. It is important for the maintenance of the spiritual knowledge of oneself and also for the simultaneous progress of souls in the world.
A saint should not be judged by the external saffron cloth. Neither should you think that a person is a saint just because he or she left the home and family. Many people leave the home and family with force, without being perfectly attached to God through the propagation work. A person merely wearing the saffron cloth and leaving the home is not a saint. Even a house-holder without the saffron cloth, but who is doing the work of propagation is a perfect devotee, trying gradually to become a perfect saint like Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva and others.