Swami, Would You Kindly Accept Our Invitation to Attend the Function of Repeatedly Reciting the Name of God Datta (Naama Saptaaham)?

O Learned and Devoted Servants of God,

[Several devotees from various places, ranging from illiterate to highly qualified, came to Swami, seeking the clarification of their doubts in spiritual knowledge. Some of the prominent questions, along with the clarifications given by Swami, are given here.]

Q. Swami! We are inviting You for a function called ‘Naama Saptaaham’ on God Datta. Will it be possible for You to come?

Swami replied:- I will run to attend any function on God and not to speak of the function on God Datta. But, I am sorry to say that I will not be able to attend this specific function. The reason is that in this specific function, you will be repeatedly saying the name of God Datta for seven days continuously. If I call your name in your ear continuously for seven minutes, will you be able to tolerate the headache generated from such repetition of your name? Not only you, but also, I, the speaker of such repetition, will get terrible headache. Therefore, not only you, but also, the people in surrounding houses will get terrible headache. You will fear to agree this fact because you fear that by agreeing so, God will be displeased and will not give you, your desired worldly boons for which only you are doing this function bearing all the strain. Somebody advised you that your worldly desires will be granted by God if you do such function. Therefore, the attraction for your worldly desires is only forcing you to worship God in this way! Your continuous patience is only due to your attraction to your worldly desires and is not due to your attraction to God. Hanuman was always remembering the name of Rama and Radha was always remembering the name of Krishna because they developed the climax of attraction towards Rama and Krishna respectively and they didn’t have any worldly desires. In your case, such attraction to God is not already developed so that you can claim that you are repeating the name of God due to already developed climax-attraction to God. There was no trace of attraction to God in you and where is the place for climax-attraction? You are only imitating Hanuman and Radha externally. There is lot of difference between you and both those climax devotees internally. You have climax-attraction towards worldly bonds whereas they have climax-attraction towards God. Hence, you are repeating the name of God due to your attraction to worldly desires to be fulfilled by God and due to your faith that such worship will please God to grant you, your desired worldly boons. God is omniscient and knows whether you are worshipping God by this way due to your real climax-attraction to God or not. You can’t fool the omniscient God by this type of artificial worship. You think that God will misunderstand your worship as if it is done to Him due to your climax-attraction towards Him and get pleased to grant your worldly boons. Such a possibility can exist if God is also a human being with limited external knowledge so that He is unable to understand your internal motive of the worship. But, He is omniscient and knows whatever is present in your mind and hence, will not be fooled by you like an ordinary human being. He knows very well that your tedious worship is only based on your attraction to worldly desires and is not based on the climax-attraction to Him, which is without aspiration for any other worldly fruit. In such case, will your worship develop happiness or hatred in the mind of God?

Hence, for doing such continuous worship, there shall be pre-existence of already developed climax-attraction to God in your mind so that you are taking His name continuously due to your unlimited love and attraction towards Him only. How to achieve such climax-attraction to God? The way for this is to know more and more details about the divine personality of God, which is called beginning stage of Jnaana Yoga. This can be attained by you by reading the life histories of various incarnations of God Datta. You make this function, first, as the function in which His life histories like Guru Charitram, Satcharitram etc., are continuously read. While reading so, you develop lot of interest towards God Datta and such interest itself is the attraction to God. Various incidents in their lives and the corresponding ways of response of God in such incidents will develop immense attraction to God Datta in your mind, which is the climax love to God. When you hear the background of the behaviour of God Datta from a Sadguru, your climax-devotion gets confirmed due to clarification of all your doubts regarding the personality of God in depth. This completes Jnaana Yoga, which generates intensively theoretical devotion in you and this is called Bhakti Yoga. With the help of Jnaana yoga, you can recognize the contemporary incarnation of God Datta because God comes as human incarnation in every generation to avoid partiality to a specific generation only. You will find the same spiritual knowledge in the contemporary human incarnation of God Datta also and you shall catch Him and surrender to Him with full service and sacrifice and this is called Karma Yoga. Service and sacrifice to statues and photos of God certainly helps the development of your theoretical devotion, but, such Karma Yoga is done only to the representative models of God, which is not received and enjoyed by God directly. These three Yogas are fully established in this order of sequence only by the three divine spiritual preachers, called Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva. Karma Yoga consisting of service (Karmasamnyaasa) and sacrifice (Karmaphala tyaaga) stands as the proof of your real theoretical devotion to God, which is actually not at all needed by God.

Therefore, convert such Naamasaptaaha functions to Paaraayana Saptaaha functions by reading the life histories of the incarnations of God continuously so that people in the neighbouring houses, your co-devotees participating in the function and finally yourself will not get any headache in the place of which you will get more and more interest to God. After becoming the climax-devotee of God, you will utter the name of God repeatedly in spontaneous and natural way, due to love to God and not due to any force based on worldly desires. We have an impression that devotees performed penance by repeating the name of God continuously and that God appeared before them to grant any boon desired by the devotee. Do you know that God appeared before them not due to His love on the devotee, but appeared before the devotee because God was unable to bear the headache created by the devotee through such repetition of His name continuously! Such boons given by God destroyed the devotees in course of time. Real penance is the real interest or love or devotion to God based on the climax-attraction towards His divine personality without aspiration for any fruit other than His happiness. People say that Japam means repetition of His name continuously and this is totally wrong interpretation. Shankara gave the correct interpretation by saying that Japam means remembering His divine personality by repeatedly speaking (or reading) His stories (Avishraantam patyurgunaganakathaamredanajapaa— Soundarya Laharii). Sage Narada also mentioned this as the initial stage of devotion in his book, called the Bhakti Sutram (Tat kathaa shravanaadishu...).

★ ★ ★ ★ ★