Posted on: 04 Feb 2005
Every spiritual aspirant aims at his own bliss (Atmaananda). Salvation means the liberation from all the worries and misery. Sayujyam or Kaivalyam means reaching God to attain bliss because God is the Infinite Ocean of bliss. If this is the aim of spirituality, how is it different from materialism? In materialism, everybody wants to be free from worries and misery and wants to attain permanent happiness, which is called bliss. Therefore, in that case, there is no difference between a materialistic aspirant and a spiritual aspirant. The only difference between these two aspirants is that the materialistic aspirant uses worldly items as instruments to attain the goal and the spiritual aspirant uses God as an instrument to attain the same goal. Remember that enjoying bliss is enjoying the fruit you have earned. If you enjoy the bliss in this world, nothing remains for the upper world. In the upper world you cannot do any new effort (Karma) and earn more bliss because it is only the world of enjoyment (Bhoga Loka) and not a world effort (Karma Loka). Therefore, you must think of reducing your desire to enjoy the bliss-fruit obtained from God. Even if you store a part of the fruit for the upper world you have to come back to this earth again to do more spiritual effort. It has a lot of risk because when you return back to earth, we don’t know the atmosphere in which you will be placed and so you cannot be sure that you will be able to take this spiritual effort.
Then what is to be done? Go on doing the spiritual effort without aspiring for the bliss-fruit. Surrender the fruit to the Lord and have no aspiration for the fruit. Enter into the service of Lord as His beloved servant. As His servant you must aspire only for the bliss of God and not your own bliss. This means that you should do that service to the Lord which pleases Him. The bliss or pleasure of the Lord alone should be your goal. If Lord is pleased, you are pleased. In the service even if you undergo loss and get troubles and misery, it should be a pleasure for you because the service is finally going to please the Lord. This is the highest path in which your bliss-fruit is infinitely multiplied and is beyond any account.
When the finger of Lord Krishna was cut, Draupadi tore her sari and bandaged the finger. It was a very costly sari and she was sitting in the sacrifice of Rajasuya. If her sari is torn during the ceremoney, she would lose all her wealth. She knews it and the Pandavas lost the kingdom after the sacrifice. She was prepared for all this because her goal was only to please the Lord. When she applied the piece of cloth as a bandage, she never aspired for the bliss-fruit in return for that service. Therefore, that piece of her sari was infinitely multiplied into several saris and was given to her by the Lord at a proper time. Similarly, when you sacrifice the bliss-fruit to the Lord, it will be infinitely multiplied and He will give it to you whenever the right occasion comes according to His discrimination. In this stage the Lord is pleased to see you enjoying bliss and therefore, you must enjoy the bliss because that pleases the Lord.
Shankara prayed to the Lord saying “Namokshasya akaanksha”, which means that He had not even a trace of desire for salvation or bliss. He wandered all over India, debated with several scholars and took lot of strain to serve the Lord. He was killed by black magic in the end as a result of His efforts to preach God’s word. He did it in the service of the Lord because He felt that if the Lord is pleased by this service, then that must be His pleasure too. He even accepted His death with pleasure in the service of the Lord. Even Jesus accepted His death by crucifixion in the service of the Lord, while doing the propagation of Divine Knowledge. He even felt death as bliss because it pleased the Lord. Hanuman took a lot of pains to participate in the war and at one point, the arrows of Meghanada horribly wounded him. He took that also as bliss because that pleased the Lord. Radha wept throughout her life when she left Lord Krishna and that was her bliss. Arjuna killed Bhishma by shooting arrows on every inch of the body of Bhishma. Do you know how much he wept in doing so? Arjuna lost his father in the childhood itself and his grandfather, Bhishma, nourished him like his father. The love of Bhishma for Arjuna was the highest among all the grandsons. Arjuna felt the extreme pain in killing Bhishma as bliss because that was the wish of the Lord and it pleased the Lord. Therefore, sacrifice to the Lord is highest path and aspiring for your own bliss and using God as an instrument for it is not spirituality at all. If you aspire for your own bliss, you are only in the materialistic path under the mask of spirituality.
In all the above examples the service was done only to God in the human form. Shankara propagated the knowledge on the order of His Sadguru Govinda Bhagavatpada who was in human form. Jesus spread the knowledge based on the instruction of His baptising preacher. Radha and Arjuna served Lord Krishna. Hanuman served Lord Rama. The service is meaningful when the Lord is received through the human body, which is the best object in this creation. You can find the pleasure on the face of the Lord for the service you have rendered. Therefore, sacrifice in service and the selection of the human incarnation, which is the best medium [in which God appears], is the result of true divine knowledge.
In all these examples you can find the knowledge with analysis and logic. The Veda says that God lies in the heart by the name ‘Prajna’ who will give bliss to you as the salary for your job. That is a lower state because the bliss belongs to the heart, which is the lower level of your mind (Manomaya Kosa). But in the brain [intellect] (Vijnanamaya Kosa) the Lord dwells by the name Ishwara, who gives the divine knowledge. The Gita starts with Jnana Yoga stating that you should depend on the divine knowledge before you start the spiritual effort. In the entire Gita, sacrifice and service to the Lord is explained, which is the proven love. Therefore, the knowledge of Shri Datta Swamiji is blissful knowledge but the word bliss refers to the bliss of the Lord and not to the bliss of the devotee.
This knowledge is a scheme in which your bliss-fruit is infinitely multiplied and will be rendered to you whenever the Lord feels it is the right occasion. The blissful knowledge given by other preachers, gives you bliss here itself, and that will be finished by your enjoyment here and will lead you to a risk. When you identify the human incarnation, you get love and bliss from His divine knowledge. When the identification is over you should leave the aspiration for bliss and enter the service of the Lord, which is the path of thorns that leads to permanent heaven. The bliss you receive from the human incarnation at the time of identification is just a temporary experience and you should not aspire for that forever. The service of other preachers will give you bliss immediately as long as you are alive or at the maximum in the upper world also. But it is a path of roses leading to hell, which is this earth to which you have to return again and fall in the horrible cycle [of endless births and deaths, which are full of suffering].