Posted on: 20 Apr 2024
[Ms. Thrylokya asked:- Paadanamaskaaram, Swami. On hearing the Advaita philosophy, one gets a lot of encouragement and excitation with full energy because one feels that he is God. Swami, don’t You think that this is a good attraction and encouragement of the soul to take interest in spiritual line and to get some detachment from this worldly materialism?]
Swami replied:- In order to attract a devotee to the temple, as a sort of encouragement, will you offer a bottle of wine to the devotee? The wine also gives a lot of attraction and encouragement with excitation. You have to think about the negative effects of drinking wine. Similarly, you have to think about the negative effects on the soul on receiving the Advaita philosophy. Some alcohol is necessary for the health of the body and such required alcohol is supplied to the body from the food items involving fermentation. The alcohol supplied by you from the bottle is extra quantity that gives bad effects to the health. Similarly, the Advaita philosophy will do good for the souls having a good mind (sattva guna). In good people, this philosophy will be useful to cross depressions and get sufficient confidence that is required in doing good activities inlife. But, for a bad person (rajas and tamas gunas), this philosophy acts like extra wine generating negative effects. For example, in the case of a demon, who is an embodiment of rajas and tamas, such philosophy develops bad effects by which the demon shouts that he alone is God. We see this in the case of demons like Ravana, Hiranyakashipu, etc.
A good person will say that every soul is God as told by Shankara (Jīvo Brahmaiva nā'paraḥ…). This is the reason why Shankara stressed on the purity of mind before introducing the Advaita philosophy. Purity of mind means that the mind shall have very predominant sattvam quality filtering out rajas and tamas. A demon says that he alone is God and a human incarnation like Krishna also said that He alone is God. What is the difference between the demon and God Krishna since both say that only one soul becomes God. The difference is that the demon due to rajas and tamas says that he alone is God, which is based on his ego and jealousy towards other souls. Krishna told the same thing based on the reality of the spiritual concept and not based on ego and jealousy towards other souls. Krishna is a soul filled with 99% sattvam whereas the demon is filled with 99% rajas and tamas. Hence, Krishna is the incarnation of God whereas the demon is the worst soul to be punished by God. If the Advaita philosophy helps the devotee to properly use it for required occasions in life (like depression and under-confidence), it is good like the required alcohol for the body attained from food items. The same philosophy in the case of a demon generates bad effects like the extra alcohol taken through bottles. The aim of Shankara is only to help humanity in the spiritual path using Advaita philosophy whenever there is its requirement. But, in most of human beings, the Advaita philosophy generated bad effects due to the lack of mental purity (citta shuddhi).
Hence, while attracting devotees through the Advaita philosophy as initial kick, the preacher must be very careful in revealing the total picture through which the later on bad effects are also understood by the receivers of spiritual knowledge. Even though Shankara is the founder of the Advaita philosophy, in order to avoid these bad effects, He practically demonstrated that He alone was God and not every soul (by drinking molten lead). A devotee shall use the Advaita philosophy-sword with careful practice learnt from the Sadguru. Otherwise, the devotee will cut his own hand by careless handling of the sword. Shri Satya Sai Baba always spoke about Advaita philosophy to attract every human being and this is the reason for His tremendous popularity in public. But, in one speech, He said that based on this Advaita philosophy, one shall not do mad activities, which means that in real sense, the soul is not God!
As I told several times, Shankara created this philosophy to turn atheists into theists. When this country was fully filled with atheists (Puurvamimaamsakas and Buddhists), God incarnated as Shankara. There was no other way than to say that every atheistic soul is God because the atheist is so egoistic that he will not accept anything as God other than himself (his own soul). Then, He told that the soul is God, the soul exists and hence, God exists. This path was the only alternative for Shankara. The soul is a part of this creation only and neither the creator nor part of the creator. If soul is God, soul must be unique and eternal. In such a case, when Prajaapati stole some souls (cowherds and cows) from Brundaavanam, how did God Krishna create the same souls? Since God Krishna Himself is God, He created the souls once again because soul is a part of creation only. This creation is created by God for His own entertainment. Therefore, the soul being a part of the creation is also an item of entertainment created by Him. In an entertaining drama, there will be inert items (Aparaa Prakruti) as the settings of scenes and the awareness-items as actors (Paraa Prakruti) are also required for completely enjoying the drama. The Gita says that the soul is the best part of Prakruti or creation (Paraa Prakruti). Whenever God wants to incarnate on the earth in human form for the sake of some welfare activity, God merges with a selected soul to become the human incarnation of God, which is the ultimate God Himself. Every soul is not God and at the same time, you cannot say that no soul is God. Both flood and drought shall be avoided. Even if we forget the absolute truth (that God is the creator and soul is a created item) conveniently for the sake of requirement of an occasion, we shall not maintain permanent ignorance of the absolute truth.