Posted on: 08 Nov 2020
[An online spiritual discussion in Telugu was conducted on October 18, 2020, in which several devotees participated. Some of the questions of devotees answered by Swāmi are given below.]
[Smt. Sudha Rani asked: God is awake all the time and is continuously aware (sarvakāla sarvāvasthalayandu). God never sleeps; only humans sleep. In that case, why do we perform suprabhāta sevā to God and wake Him up? As far as I know, this sevā is done only to a few Gods. Is this correct? If so, why?]
Swāmi replied: If you take God Kṛṣṇa, He is a homogeneous system consisting of four components that exist in a single phase, which is the human form. The components are: (a) the unimaginable God or Parabrahman, (b) the first Energetic Incarnation, called Datta, (c) the Energetic Incarnation, called Viṣṇu and (d) the human form of Vāsudeva, who is the son of Vasudeva. The unimaginable God merged with the first energetic form and became God Datta. This God Datta, is also known by other names such as Hiraṇyagarbha, Nārāyaṇa and Īśvara. He merges with another energetic form to become God Viṣṇu. This God Viṣṇu merged with the son of Vasudeva in the womb of Devakī and finally, God Kṛṣṇa was born. The first three components have no hunger, sleep etc. The last component, which is the human form, has hunger, sleep etc. On one side, God Kṛṣṇa sleeps, following the inherent characteristics of His human nature. But, on the other side, the other three components never sleep. All these four components are homogenously mixed and they have mixed properties. The major property is remaining aware without needing any sleep, whereas, the minor property is sleep. Hence, both angles are correct. But the view that God sleeps is relavent to the human devotees since sleep is part of their nature too. Thus, suprabhāta sevā, which is waking God up early in the morning, is meaningful from the angle of the human devotees. From the angle of highly realised devotees, such service is not necessary. But we have to ask such highly realised devotees also, whether they go to sleep or not! Since every human being invariably sleeps, we can give value to this service from the point of view of the whole of humanity.
In fact, this service should only be done to the contemporary Human Incarnation and not to images and and statues. But the majority of humanity, affected by ego and jealousy, does not identify the contemporary Human Incarnation. They are misled by the properties of the external human medium, which remain unaffected in spite of the presence of God within it. These properties of the human medium mask the presence of the internal God (Avajānanti mām…—Gītā). Only one blessed devotee conquers his ego and jealousy and identifies the contemporary Human Incarnation of God. In the view of this majority lot of devotees, the image or the statue itself is assumed to be the living contemporary Human Incarnation, while performing such services. This at least enables the development of theoretical devotion in the devotee. When such a devotee later conquers ego and jealousy and identifies the cotemporary Human Incarnation, the already-developed theoretical devotion can be expressed practically. The path has to be modified to accommodate all types of devotees. This leads to several variations in the path, each of which is suitable for a certain type of devotees. Defects are always inevitable in the beginning stage (Sarvārambhā hi doṣeṇa…—Gītā).