09 Sep 2024
[09-01-2003] Some people think that sādhanā is simply chanting mantras, some people think that it is mere meditation and some people think it is just worship. This is how different people think in different ways about sādhanā. By practicing any of these, God is attained, but the attained God is not maintained for long. Any of the above practices are like calling Swami into our house. Swami is coming as soon as He is called. But when He comes inside our house, there is a bad smell of selfishness. We are habituated to it. We cannot live without it. A mud pond is a lake of scent for a pig, but can a human being enter that mud pond? Here, house means it is our body. Datta enters into our bodies whenever we call Him. For this, there is no need to chant His name several times. Calling Him once by name is enough. There is no need for sacrifice, i.e., penance for many years to call Him.
Remembering Him once is enough and Datta will enter you. But the entered God is not able to stay in you. The reason is the bad smell in you. That bad smell is coming from the three mud ponds in you. Those three ponds are ‘jealousy,’ ‘ego’ and ‘selfishness.’ All these three should be wiped out without even a single atom of them remaining. When jealousy disappears, he or she becomes Anasūyā. That means, any individual soul can become Anasūyā. There is no difference between man and woman here. All the individual souls are women and are the form of Prakriti. Another name for jealousy is Asūyā. When jealousy is gone, the soul becomes Anasūyā and Datta enters such a soul. This is the inner meaning of Datta being born from Anasūyā's womb. These three qualities, ego, jealousy and selfishness, are Rajas, Tamas and Sattva qualities respectively. Jealousy is Tamas.
When jealousy is gone, Lord Shiva, the Lord of Tamas, will enter you as a husband. Ego is Rajas. When the ego is gone, Brahmā, the Lord of Rajas, will enter you. Selfishness is Sattva. There are both good and bad parts in it. The bad part is to think that the items and the people of the world are yours. They are bad because these items and relationships are unreal. When this life ends, this individual soul enters into the relationships of different individual souls with a new body. It is like an actor moving from one film shooting relationship to another film shooting relationship. But the relationship with the owner of all the film shootings, i.e., the film producer, is eternal. Similarly, an individual soul will have an eternal bond with the Creator of this creation in all its births. Therefore, giving up temporary worldly bonds and thinking that Swami is mine is a good part of selfishness that came from Sattva.
But again, this good part becomes the bad part when you think that Swami is mine ‘only.’ Satyabhāmā sacrificed all her gold to attain Krishna but the reason for her defeat was that she thought Swami belonged to her alone. So, renouncing all worldly bonds and thinking that "Swami is mine" is good only. But it is wrong to think that Swami must be belong to me only and no one else. Rukmini thought that Swami not only belongs to her but belongs to all eight wives equally. That is why, Satyabhāmā lost and Rukmini won in the test. But such Rukmini was also defeated by Radha. Rukmini thought that Swami should be attained only by His eight wives. But Radha thought that all 16,000 Gopikas should also attain Him. However, Mīrā is even better than Radha. Do you know why? She thought that Swami should be attained by all ‘souls’ and so she propagated about Swami to all souls. Therefore, Swami physically united Mīrā in Him in the Puri Jagannath temple. Such Kaivalya, along with the body, was not given to Rukmini, Satyabhāmā and Radha.
Similarly, Shankaracharya traveled all over the country to propagate the divine knowledge so that all souls would be uplifted. So, Lord Datta gave the same Kaivalya along with the body to Shankara in the Dattatreya cave in the Himalayas. Therefore, there is no Datta without sacrifice. Datta does not come near without destroying selfishness. Jealousy does not go if ego is not destroyed. Ego does not go if jealousy is not destroyed. There is not even an atom of jealousy in Mīrā and Shankara. Think how far are you when compared with them.
When the neighbour asks if the power is cut in your house, you immediately ask your neighbour if the power is cut in their house too. You get joy when power is gone in their house. If the power goes out in your house and exists in the neighbouring house, your face will burn with jealousy. To get rid of your jealousy, Swami will come as a human incarnation each time, will select some souls and will start purifying them. You do not recognize His efforts for your welfare. You blame Him for finding fault with whatever you say. You criticize Him by saying, “Even if I utter Shri Rama, it is becoming a bad word.” But you do not recognize His intention to purify you perfectly and enter into you. The reason for objecting like this is your ego alone. Selfishness is even more difficult to overcome.
Once, Lord Hanuman was fanning Shri Rama with a hand fan. A monkey sitting there thought like this: ‘Can I not do this small service?’ Lord Rama immediately stopped Hanuman, called that monkey and asked it to fan Him with that hand fan. By Shri Rama's will, the wind slowed down and began to feel sultry. The hand fan in the monkey's hand rose a little. In other words, he is fanning so that both Swami and himself will get the breeze. By Shri Rama's will, the wind level further slowed down. Sultry further increased. Then the monkey started fanning himself! Then Swami looked at him and smiled. The same test was put to Hanuman in Kishkindha Cave. Hanuman's whole body is dripping with sweat, but Hanuman was fanning only Swami. What does this mean?
Therefore, when jealousy, ego and attachments due to selfishness are gone from you, only then will the three forms of Datta enter you. But if you want Datta, who is the root of the Trinity, to enter you, you have to start donating. That is, you should give the knowledge that you have received from Swami to all the souls and while they are enjoying it, you should also enjoy it equally. It is through such sacrifice or donation that Datta enters and stays firm. It was because of your lack of faith that He could not transform you completely when Swami came in the form of human incarnation. After attaining the faith that Swami is the Lord, you doubt again that whether He is the Lord or not. This reduces attention and develops negligence. Again later, you doubt that He might be the Lord. Because of this wavering of faith, you have not been able to fully receive yoga from the King of Yogis (Yogirāja). Know that faith is the foundation of yoga.
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