Posted on: 17 May 2023
[Ms. Thrylokya asked: People say that when Karma (action) is over, spiritual things like getting Sadguru, salvation, etc. will happen. To end the karma, we have to stay in the worldly life and do our worldly duties. What is the meaning of this?]
Swami replied: Strictly speaking, there is no meaning and coherence in these statements. What is the meaning of “when karma is over”? Any human being is constantly involved in karma as per the Gita (Kāryate hyavaśo jantuḥ…). The Gita says that even the life journey cannot proceed without karma or action (Śarīra yātrāpi ca…). When this is the reality, do you think that there is any sense in what is said by people? Sometimes, people speak some statements without any sense so that others will not understand those sentences, but, they think that there is some special deep meaning, which is only known to those people speaking such statements. Then, those people get some respect from the audience. Perhaps, these people mean that when sins are exhausted, such fortunate things happen. But, strictly speaking both merit and sin are actions or karma and hence, the above meaning cannot be deduced by analysis. Even then sins are endless (Nāvirato duścaritāt… Veda) because some type of subtle sin is always associated with the actions related to the world as we see the case of ordinary human beings. Hence, it is foolish to think that good spiritual things happen without our sincere effort. Such people waiting for the good spiritual things to happen without effort are the people, who postpone spiritual things since they are not prepared for spiritual life and are always immersed in worldly life. One should not listen the words of such escapists and waste the short human life in worldly affairs only and finally meet the unpredictable death. The present human life is said to be final human life by several religions. Even Hinduism says that the human life is very very rare, which also means almost the same as told by other religions (Nara janma durlabhamidam… Shankara). The future lives of such optimistic people will be definitely the births of birds and animals only, which are confined to worldly life only.
In fact, such spiritual fortunes come due to meritorious deeds and a meritorious deed (Punya Karma) is also action or karma. Then, how would the deed or karma oppose the spiritual fortune? Hence, such statements of ignorant people posing as scholars of spiritual knowledge shine only before a more ignorant audience.