Posted on: 07 Feb 2005
I advised homogeneity before the Lord in the spiritual effort. I never told you to be homogeneous in this world. Lord Krishna told Dharma Raja to tell a lie in order to kill Dronacharya. Lord Krishna says in that context, that one should cheat the cheaters in the world. Lord Krishna says “If you go into the world of Maya without Maya, you will be killed as a soldier who goes to the war without armour on the body”. When you are associating with Maya for the sake of the world for a long time, the Maya enters your nature. Then you show the same Maya before the Lord. You treat the Lord as an outsider and also as a cheater. He never cheated you. He gave you this human birth even though your file of Karma recommends the birth of animals for you. He gave longevity, health and wealth and protected you several times in your life. Why should you cheat Him? You are not cheating your family members. Can’t you at least consider Him to be equal to your family members? If you say that Maya affects you continuously, how come you do not show Maya in the case of your family members also? If that were the case, the Lord would excuse you because you are showing Maya everywhere. This means that you are not treating the Lord equal to your family members. You are offering the food to Him with your hand and eating it yourself. You are putting your jewels on the statue of the Lord and taking them away the next day. The statue is in your house. Why don’t you keep the jewels on the statue forever? The wealth would still be in your house. Is it proper to take back the wealth that is donated to the Lord? When you donate something even to a human being, you never take it back. You do not consider that statue equal to even an ordinary human being. You say that the statue is not an inert object but is the living Lord in your eyes. If it is not a statue and is the living Lord, why are you doing such tricks? While giving jewels to the statue, the statue is the living Lord according to you, but when you take away the jewels you are treating it as an inert statue. If the statue is alive, then why is it not eating your food? Why is it not talking with you?
You will not accept the human form of the Lord because if you offer Him food He will actually eat it. If you give jewels to Him, He will wear them and not return them to you. On one side you say the statue is not inert. But on the other hand your practical behavior proves that the statue is inert. You are fooling the Lord. You are showing false love on Him. You want to impress Him so that He feels that you have real love on Him and then you want to get all your desires fulfilled.
Instead, show a drop of real love, which you are showing to your children. You are giving a pot of cow’s milk to your children. At least give a spoonful of the cow’s milk to the Lord. If you can’t give even a spoonful of cow’s milk, keep quiet. The Lord is not begging of you for your cow milk. If you cannot please the Lord, keep silent. He will not be furious with you. But don’t show false love and fool Him to get boons. Don’t give a potful of donkey’s milk, which is false love, and make the Lord furious. It is not wrong if you cannot please the Lord but it is the greatest sin if you fool Him by false love and try to get some benefit from Him. Without practical sacrifice that proves your real love, all your traditional activities and dramatic dress, like silk cloth, sacred ash on the forehead and garlands of beads on the neck, are only the means of cheating and fooling the Lord. You can fool a human being who is ignorant or has little knowledge. But the Lord is omniscient. Knowing this you are trying to fool Him! Are you not the biggest fool before Him?
Therefore have the shield of Maya when you enter the world but when you come to the Lord, remove the shield of Maya. Even if you treat the Lord as the statue in your prayer room, stop all these traditional foolish activities and be real. Since the statue cannot eat food, don’t offer food. Since the statue does not have life, don’t decorate with flowers. Don’t light the oil lamp when the electric lamp is present. Don’t burn fume sticks and camphor and don’t break coconuts as offerings. Just see the beauty of the Lord in the statue or image and fix your eyes on it. Develop attraction and love. Remember His qualities. If there is darkness, light the lamp. To remove the darkness, an oil lamp is not needed. The alternative electric light is there. Avoid the oil lamp in order to avoid unnecessary pollution. If you want good smell, burn the fume stick. Burning the camphor has no use and moreover it causes pollution. In order to satisfy your pleasure of vision you can decorate the statue with flowers. Whatever you do, do for your self-satisfaction. This self-satisfaction is the only fruit for all such actions. You can offer food to the statue, but it is also for your satisfaction only. Don’t expect any extra fruit from the Lord. You can break the coconut before the Lord and offer the broken pieces of coconut to the Lord. But since you are eating the coconut, don’t ask the Lord for any fruit for breaking the coconut. Therefore you can do all these things before statues and pictures with a divine feeling as if you are offering to the Lord. Your feeling is definitely better than the feeling of an atheist. But what I say is that by such feelings you have attained peace, satisfaction and happiness in your mind. Please do not ask anything from the Lord in return for these actions, because your sacrifice is not a real practical sacrifice. It is only the sacrifice of your words and feelings. It is not wrong as far as you don’t ask for any fruit for such actions. Once you ask the fruit from the Lord for such sacrifice of words and feelings, all those rituals become an attempt to fool the Lord.
I am not against rituals but I am against you if you say that you have practically sacrificed to the Lord through those rituals and if you ask for some real fruit from the Lord. By all these things you have obtained peace and happiness in your heart. Very good! Be satisfied with that fruit. Don’t boast that you have sacrificed something to the Lord and therefore don’t expect any fruit from the Lord. If you say that you have sacrificed to the Lord by these rituals, which are only sacrifice of words and feelings, you are the biggest actor and all your rituals are dramatic actions. If you want to sacrifice really to the Lord, search for the human form of the Lord, with the help of the Veda and do any little sacrifice that you can. In such sacrifice, if you aspire for anything in return, you will get the fruit, which is just equal to your sacrifice. If you sacrifice one rupee, He will give you one chocolate. If you sacrifice two rupees, He will give you two chocolates. Let the business be justified. Don’t expect ten chocolates for one rupee. But if you are not aspiring for any fruit for your sacrifice, then you are showing real love to God, similar to the real love that you show on your children. Then the Lord will give you infinite real fruit in a proper place at the appropriate time. Since you do not aspire for the fruit, leave the right place and right time to the decision of the Lord.
People do not accept the human form of Lord due to jealousy and egoism. They sacrifice the fruit of their work to the statues in temples. But who takes that money? A committee of devotees is taking that money and spending it. Therefore you have donated money to those human beings only, even though it appears as if you are donating to the statue. It is all a drama. If you analyze the drama you will understand the truth. Don’t you think that a great devotee or a spiritual leader is better than that temple committee? Don’t you think that the actual Lord in human form is better than even that spiritual leader? A committee of devotees spends the money offered by you within the purview of their divine knowledge. According to the level of their divine knowledge they will spend the money perhaps to construct a compound wall or to feed every fellow who visits the temple without discrimination. [Feeding every person visiting the temple is not appropriate since donation of food has to be done based on the deservingness and the need of the person to whom the food is to be donated. Indiscriminate donation of food or money, which is done without considering these two factors, is considered as a waste by the scriptures]. Therefore your money is wasted.
Instead, when you offer Guru Dakshina [donation] to a great spiritual leader or a great devotee, he will spend it for a good spiritual purpose like the propagation of the divine knowledge of the Lord. If you are fortunate to come in contact with the human form of the Lord, you can just forget about your Guru Dakshina [how He spends your donations] because even the world is not greater than Him and in whatever manner He may use it, you must forget about that. Getting the grace of the Lord is more important than social service to the world because the Lord alone can save you and not the world. Therefore give Guru Dakshina to the human form of the Lord and forget about it. This should be your first preference. When people offered Guru Dakshina to Sai Baba, they never tried to find out how He spent that Guru Dakshina. He was spending it secretly. He was testing the faith of the devotees in Him while submitting the Guru Dakshina. Even though an income tax officer was appointed to find out about the expenditures of Sai Baba, he failed even after observing Sai for a month.
You can recognize the Lord in human form with the help of the Veda because the Lord will have special knowledge and all the super powers. If He is not available, your second choice must be the spiritual leader because he may be either a partial incarnation of the Lord or a direct servant of the Lord. Such people will definitely serve the world in the best way. A managing committee of devotees who are mere human beings cannot utilize your fund in the best way. They waste the money due to their ignorance. Therefore never opt for this third choice. You need not blame the committee of devotees either, because that is the limit of their knowledge.