dattaswami

Among knowledge, devotion and practice, which is the most important? [Reply to a question by Shri J. Prasad, Professor of Sanskrit, Central University, Hyderabad] Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! The first step is the attainment of the Sadguru and the attainment of complete spiritual knowledge from Him, which includes getting all doubts clarified from Him. This first step is the slowest step in the sense that this step takes almost all the time. The second step is the attainment of devotion which is a result of the spiritual knowledge. The third step is the attainment of practice, which is the proof of devotion. The fourth step is the attainment of the fruit of that practice. The second, third and fourth steps spontaneously take place after the completion of knowledge. They take a fraction of the time taken by the first step of knowledge. Knowledge is the slowest among all the steps taking many years and even many births. The spiritual process can be compared to a chemical reaction in which reactants are converted to products after passing through several steps. Reaction kinetics is the study of the rates of conversion of the reactants to products. When the first step of the reaction is the slowest, the time taken by the overall reaction to complete is determined by that first step. That slowest first step is called the rate determining step. The spiritual process is similar. The overall process begins with the attainment of complete spiritual knowledge from the Sadguru and ends in the attainment of salvation, after passing through two intermediate steps. The time taken for the overall process is determined by the time taken for the first step in the process. The subsequent steps follow almost immediately. This means that once you attain complete spiritual knowledge from the Sadguru, you have attained salvation. It does not literally mean that the attainment of complete spiritual knowledge itself is the salvation. But it means that once the spiritual knowledge is attained from the Sadguru, the attainment of devotion from the spiritual knowledge, the attainment of practice from the devotion and the attainment of salvation from the practice result spontaneously and immediately. Hence, we say that the attainment of true spiritual knowledge itself is the attainment of salvation. This is the meaning of Śankara’s statement that salvation results from true spiritual knowledge (Jñānādeva tu kaivalyam). =============== -By Shri Datta Swami (Visit our website: www.universal-spirituality.org) Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Vastu and Astrology in Modern Times Smt. Priyanka Sethepalli (USA) asked: I have a question that has been bothering me for a while now. It is advised that one should never buy a south-facing home as it is believed to lead to some problems. But it is also said that, depending on one's birth star (janma nakṣatram), a south-facing home is especially beneficial for certain people. To such people, the main door of the house facing south is more beneficial than a door facing any other direction. How true is this? Also, some business-owners particularly look for south-facing main entrances which they believe are lucky for them. There are so many variations in people’s beliefs and the Vāstu texts, all over India. I would love to have some clarity on this relation between the birth star of a person and the main door of the house facing different directions. Also, why does this matter seem to be so important in South India (especially for Telugu people) and not so important for people from other states of India? Expanding this further, do the same Vāstu rules apply everywhere, irrespective of the country you live in and the weather in that region? Thank you. Regards, Priyanka. South-Facing House Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Vāstu Śāstram is the ancient Indian science of architecture. It is part of Vedic astrology or Jyautiṣa Śāstram. According to Vāstu, the main door of the house should not face the south because Lord Yama, the deity of hell, is situated on the south side. It also says that you should not sleep with your feet towards the south and that instead, your head should be towards the south. The residents in a south-facing house receive bad results, which are having a second marriage, financial loss, lack of issues and sometimes even the death of the house-owner (Tasya bhāryādvayaṃ dhananāśaḥ, putrābhāvaḥ, kvacit kartṛnāśaḥ). It is also said that a south-facing property is beneficial for people who regularly kill animals and are involved in the meat business (Kirātānāṃ dakṣiṇā). If a person has already received one of the negative results, then the person might not get any other negative results. This means that a person who has already married twice or who already has no issues might not undergo a financial loss, in spite of having a south-facing property. The person faces the said bad results because of some sin committed in the past. But when the person has already faced one punishment for the sin committed, other types of punishments will not apply to the person. This is because one crime committed by him cannot have two punishments! Gaps in Understanding People misunderstand the very basis of astrology by thinking that they are perfect people who have never committed any sin. They feel that it is the bad planets that are unnecessarily giving them bad results during the respective planetary periods (daśas) or during the transits of the planets through different zodiac signs (gocāra). The fact is that the past sinful deeds and the past meritorious deeds done by the soul cause the planets to give bad and good results respectively, in the prescribed periods, as per the judgment of God. Note that in astrology, when we say planets, we mean the deities corresponding to the inert planets. These deities are angels who are God’s executives. The astrological scriptures were written by sages, so, it is better to follow astrology. The sages were highly devoted to God and were interested in the well-being of mankind. So, in following their instructions, you are not being cheated or exploited. If someone is trying to cheat or exploit you through some false tradition, you should certainly analyze it using perfect scientific logic. You should reject the false tradition through which the person is trying to cheat you for his own benefit. Modern people trying to interpret Vāstu do not perfectly understand the heart of the astrological scripture. It is said that one should select such a plot for constructing a house which has its south-west side at a higher level than the north-east side (Īśat paścima dakṣiṇonnata mahī…). This instruction was relevant to olden days when there was no common drainage system. As per Vāstu, the tradition was that elder issue should live on south-west side and younger issue should live on north-east side. This is assuming that the constructed house is divided between two issues. Only when this instruction is followed, will the water flow from the side of the elder issue to the side of the younger issue. But now, houses have a proper drainage system. So, this matter is not relevant and this instruction can be neglected. Some Vāstu principles are scientific and are based on principles of civil engineering. For instance Vāstu says that a beam should be put after a length of 12 feet (Dvādaśa pade parighā). Another example is that it is said that a well must be located in the northeast corner and that staircases to the upper floor should not be located in the northeast corner (Īśānyāṃ kūpaḥ na nisśreṇiḥ). This is to ensure that a person climbing down the staircase does not slip and fall into the well! It is also said that a road should not run straight into the the main door of your house (Vīdhiśūlā mukhadvāre). This is to ensure that when you are going out through the main door, a vehicle coming from the opposite side does not hit you accidentally. Astrology deals with the deities of planets, while astronomy deals with the inert planets. The deities are energetic beings or angels who have been blessed by God with divine powers. They deliver the fruits of both the past sins and the past meritorious deeds to souls, as per the prescribed schedule. They follow the judgment pronounced by God, the Supreme Judge. The deities of the nine planets are the executive powers of God. These planetary deities are ruled by higher deities. Whether you worship the planetary deities or you worship the deities who are above the planetary deities, you are ultimately worshipping God alone. There is no difference between the power and its possessor. The deities are God’s powers and God is their possessor. Astrology applies to the entire universe and it does not differ from one region to the other region on earth. But if you are a very strong devotee of God, you need not worry about Vāstu or astrology. Five Parts of Astrology Astrology is said to have five parts (pañcāṅga😞 (1) The first is jātakam, which is the horoscope prepared on the basis of the date and time of birth of a person. (2) The second is gocāra, which is the current or running chart of the planets, as applied to the zodiac sign based on the person’s name. (3) The third is vāstu, which is the plan of the person’s own house. (4) The fourth is muhūrtam, which is the time at which you start a certain task. (5) The fifth is mantra ārādhanam, which is the prayers to the planetary deities, to the deities above the planetary deities or to God Himself. When a person undergoes some form of suffering, the person should look for a defect in all these five parts. This is just like a disease, which could be caused by a defect in the blood, kidneys, lungs, heart or the digestive system. You have to try to diagnose where the defect lies before you attempt to remedy it through different forms of worship. There could be defects in one or more of the five parts listed above. For instance, your vāstu might be good, but the defect in your horoscope might be the cause for your present suffering. It is just like saying that your heart is fine, but your lungs might have a problem. There is also a special theory called Tājaka Siddhānta of Paṇḍita Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita, which involves the direct application of the gocāra on the horoscope itself. One important point must be noted because some say that the horoscope of the wife supports the husband. This is correct if the wife is unemployed and is dependent on the husband. But if the wife pursues her own profession, her horoscope is limited to herself alone. Similarly, the horoscope of a newborn child affects the parents. But as the child grows and develops its own life path, its horoscope ceases to have an effect on the parents. Among the five parts of astrology, the fifth part, which is devotion to God, is very strong, provided the person’s devotion is also very strong. My father was a great astrologer. He would often tell Me to concentrate on astrology because this subject is of great interest to everybody. Jyautiṣa Śāstram is the subject dealing with the jyoti or light (luminous planets). I would tell him that My focus is on the root light or Paraṃjyoti, who is none other than God (Paraṃ jyotirupa-sampadya…—Veda). He is the ultimate source that illuminates all the nine lights (planets). Finally, I revealed the correlation between astrology and spiritual knowledge. If the astrologer is helping society to believe in the unimaginable God through the unimaginable powers of the planets (deities), such an astrologer is basically a philosopher. A very strong devotee of God could indeed be very well off in all aspects, even though the first four parts are very unfavorable in his case. His well-being is the result of his devotion to God, which is related to the fifth part of astrology. Just because the bad effects of the defects in the other four parts are not seen in that specific person, one should not mistake astrology to be false. The aim of the sages in writing the astrological scriptures was only to help an ordinary human being. The first step in helping the person is to create belief in the unimaginable power of God through the unimaginable powers of the planets. If this first step is well-established, the second step of developing the devotion to God becomes very easy. Misunderstanding Leads to Blame for Astrology Neither astrologers nor the people consulting astrologers fully realize the fact that astrology consists of five parts. This fact should be kept in mind before unnecessarily blaming an astrologer or astrology as a whole for a failed prediction. I will explain this with an example. Suppose an astrologer suggested a good muhūrtam (time) for a marriage. The muhūrtam might actually be good. The astrologer might have also rectified some vāstu-related defects in the house of the newly-married couple. With this, only two parts, namely muhūrtam and vāstu out of the five parts have become favorable. What about the other three parts, namely jātakam, gocāra and mantra ārādhanam? The horoscope (jātakam) and the planetary transits (gocāra) might still be defective. Hence, the couple might face bad effects from the bad planets, which, of course, is the result of their own sins. Basically, the couple faces bad effects due to unresolved defects in the other parts of astrology. But people thoughtlessly blame the astrologer by saying that even though they performed the marriage as per the prescribed muhūrtam and after rectifying the vāstu defects of the house, the couple faced the bad effects. They either say that the astrologer is good-for-nothing or that the field of astrology itself is false. Before the marriage, if the elders in the family of the bride and the groom consult a good astrologer with the horoscopes of the couple, the astrologer can identify the defects in the horoscope. To rectify those defects he can suggest the couple to pray to the deities of the bad planets and to God. Note that the so-called bad planets (deities) are not bad. They are loyal servants of God. They only deliver the fruits of the soul’s bad deeds to the soul. Along with the prayers to the deities, the astrologer might prescribe some specific forms of charity to be done to beggars. The prescribed charity is related to the specific planets. This worship of the deities and the related charity comes under the fifth part of astrology called mantra ārādhanam. If the couple sincerely performs the prayers and also properly does the charity as prescribed, the problems will disappear. This is because the defects related to the horoscope (jātakam) and transits (gocāra) have been rectified and devotion to God or the deities (mantra ārādhanam) has also been developed. A good muhūrtam had already been chosen and the defects related to vāstu had already been rectified by the astrologer. Thus, all five parts become good and so, the problems of the couple disappear. Of course, it should be noted that the problems only disappear temporarily. They disappear permanently only when the souls attain complete reformation. But if the couple fails to do all the prescribed remedial procedures as suggested by the astrologer, they will face problems. Then they will again blame the astrologer saying that the astrologer is false or that astrology itself is false! The above concept can be more clearly understood by taking the example of the diagnosis and treatment of a patient. The patient is similar to the human being suffering from worldly miseries. The doctor is like God and the assisting compounder is like the astrologer. The disease to be cured is like the worldly misery. The five main clinical tests can be assumed to be a blood test, an ECG for the heart, a test of the kidneys, a test of the lungs and a test of the digestive system. They are like the five parts of astrology. Suppose the patient is suffering from a fever, which represents worldly misery. Let us say that the blood test and the ECG tests show no defect. Do the family members of the patient blame the doctor asking him how come the patient still has a fever even though the two tests came out normal? Do they say that either the doctor is good-for-nothing or that medical science itself is false? The doctor asked the patient to undergo the other three tests as well. On getting those reports, the doctor even prescribed the corresponding medicines. If the patient properly takes the medicines related to the other three tests too, the fever will subside. But the patient does not take the prescribed medicines and simply blames the doctor that even though the blood and ECG reports were normal, his fever is not subsiding! Astrology is a systematic science developed by sages for the temporary welfare of humanity. Even if a doctor fails in properly diagnosing and treating a certain patient, it does not mean that medical science itself is false. Since the public does not understand the overall framework of astrology as consisting of five parts (pañcāṅga), even a good astrologer gets misunderstood and blamed by the public. The remedies suggested by the astrologer involve prayers and the worship of God along with charity to beggars. Both worship and charity are good and they lead to an improvement in the person’s devotion to God. The devotion, in turn, leads to the reformation of the soul (Kṣipraṃ bhavati dharmātmā—Gita). =============== -By Shri Datta Swami (Visit our website: www.universal-spirituality.org) Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Oppose Injustice or Leave it to God? Shri PVNM Sharma asked: Swami! Sometimes You say that it is better to leave everything to God and sometimes You say that we should fight against injustice, as a part of God’s work. Can you please clarify our confusion? Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! The ultimate truth, which is the highest understanding of spiritual knowledge, is that God will certainly address every bit of action in this world. He will do it in His own way and not in our hasty way. Before punishing sinners for their sins, God gives them some time, which is an opportunity for reformation. If a sinner gets reformed, all the sinner’s punishments for that particular type of sin are cancelled by the grace of God. If the sinner who committed injustice against you gets reformed in this manner, then along with excusing the sinner’s punishment, God also compensates you for your loss in a big way. It does not matter to you, whether or not the sinner got punished since you do not get any compensation, when your enemy is punished. But if you are patient and you maintain full confidence in God, God will reward you with a very big compensation for your excellent patience and marvelous confidence in Him. You will be compensated, whether your enemy is reformed, punished or let free without punishment, in spite of not being reformed. Indeed sometimes, your enemy is let free without punishment, even though the enemy has not yet reformed. This happens in the case of a retaliatory sin. This means that you had harmed the person in the past, in this birth or in the previous birth and the person has only harmed you in return. But if your enemy harms you for the first time, he or she will be given a chance to reform. If the person does not reform, then the person will be punished suitably by God. Punishment is also a means to reformation, but reformation through punishment is only a temporary reformation. So, when you wish for God to punish your enemy, you are wishing your enemy well since you are wishing for the person’s immediate temporary reformation. With this understanding, you can pray to God to punish your enemy, if, based on a proper analysis, the enemy is found to have done some injustice. You should not pray to God to punish your enemy with an attitude of revenge. If you seek revenge, you too will be punished like Draupadi, who always prayed to Krishna to destroy the Kauravas for the sake of her revenge. Krishna had decided already to punish the Kauravas, even if Draupadi had not prayed to Him. It would have been a black mark on His divine administration, if the Kauravas had not been punished. So, the Kauravas were destroyed in the war, as per the will of Krishna. But due to Draupadi’s deep attitude of revenge, all her five sons got killed too. Sages have followed the procedure of punishing sinners for their temporary reformation and hence, they are considered to be the most sacred in the whole of humanity. They have the power of knowing the whole internal biodata of any soul, through their divine vision. They need not depend on God like us. We do not have such divine vision and we do not know whether the case is that of a fresh sin or a sin in return for a previous sin. Hence, we should leave everything to God. Sages immediately come to know whether the case is fresh or not. If it is a fresh case, they immediately curse the sinner. By punishing the sinner through their curse, they carry out God’s task of reforming the sinful soul. It is a form of divine service. We cannot do such divine service since we lack that divine vision as well as the power to curse someone. But a human being can also find out whether the case is fresh or not, through observation. If God punishes the sinner sometime later, it means that the case was fresh and the sinner did not get reformed during the time given by God. If the sinner does not get punished by God, in spite of not being reformed, we can conclude that it was the case of a sin committed in return for a previous sin. But we must be patient and observe the person over a long time, especially when the sinner has committed a sin against us. If the sinner gets punished, we need not punish the sinner again because one crime cannot have two punishments, as per the divine law. Moreover, God is omniscient and the sage also has divine vision. So, when any of them punish a person, they always punish in the correct measure, in proportion to the sin. When we are capable of punishing the sinner and we punish based on our limited knowledge, there is a risk of error. If the sinner has committed a sin in return, actually no punishment is due. Even if it is a fresh case of sin, we might not give the punishment that is exactly suitable to the extent of the sin. Our analysis and judgment especially go wrong in our personal case, i.e. when we have been harmed. When others have been harmed, we generally do not get involved because we feel that it is an unnecessary waste of our time. In fact, we should avoid getting involved in our personal cases. We should leave the judgment and punishment to God since there is high probability of error due to our biased analysis. But we should get involved in others’ cases, where there is a high probability that our analysis might be correct since we do not have any selfish interest in it. We should not leave others’ cases to God. By siding with justice in others’ cases, we are trying to serve God. God always works to establish justice and destroy injustice. Sometimes, you have sufficient strength to protect justice and punish sin, but you do not have sufficient strength in analyzing the case and differentiating between justice and injustice. In that case, you must take the help of a Satguru or guru in the analysis. If you are capable of analysis, but not capable of protecting justice and punishing injustice, you should take the help of a strong person who is capable of doing so. If you are capable of doing both, you can do both, but it is better to take the help of a second person, in order to avoid any possible error. Arjuna wanted to fight against the Kauravas because they had taken his rightful share of the kingdom and were refusing to return it. It was a personal case of Arjuna, where he had been harmed by the sinful Kauravas. If the Kauravas had simply stood against him in battle, there would have been no confusion in fighting against them. But good people like Bhīṣma and Droṇa also stood against Arjuna, in support of the Kauravas. Both Bhīṣma and Droṇa were his preachers since childhood. So, Arjuna must have felt that they were more capable of analyzing which side was justice and which side was injustice. This created confusion in Arjuna’s mind and he proposed to leave the war. But Arjuna took the help of the Satguru, God Krishna, in analyzing this case, which was his personal case. God Krishna analyzed the case wonderfully and answered all the questions of Arjuna. Bhīṣma and Droṇa might have been great in all other aspects, but, in this context, both were wrong in supporting the unjust Kauravas. Hence, the most important task is carrying out an unbiased analysis to find the truth. Once this is done, the actual corrective action takes very very little time. Even if some corrective actions take a longer time, it is not a major loss. It will take some time, but in the end, justice will be protected and injustice will be condemned. An ordinary human being should only follow the right means in order to achieve good ends. Only a Human Incarnation of God is capable of achieving good ends even through wrong means. Human beings should not try to behave like the Human Incarnation in following the wrong means to punish their enemies. Let us take the two cases of Sugrīva and God Rāma. Sugrīva was unjustly expelled from his kingdom by his elder brother Vāli, who misunderstood his brother Sugrīva. Sugrīva was not strong enough to oppose Vāli and so, he left the kingdom. Since it was the personal case of Sugrīva, his analysis might have gone wrong under the influence of his own selfishness. But when Sugrīva explained his case to God Rāma, Rāma decided that justice was on the side of Sugrīva and that Vāli had been unjust. God Rāma was the Human Incarnation of God and hence, was the perfect Satguru. When one is incapable of punishing the sinner in one’s personal case, one should first analyze the case with the help of the Satguru and find out which side justice lies. Then, the incapable victim should wait for the action of God to punish the sinner. This is one context in which I have said that one should leave the punishment of the sinner to God. This approach strictly belongs to this context alone. Now, take the case of Rāma, who was capable of carrying out an unbiased analysis of justice and injustice in His own case, as well as in others’ cases. Getting justice for Sugrīva was another’s case for Rāma, while punishing Rāvaṇa and freeing His captured wife from him was His personal case. In the former case, Rāma decided that Vāli was a sinner and punished him. Rāma was God and was not only capable of analysis, but also of punishing sin. Vāli blamed Rāma that Rāma had shot the fatal arrow at Vāli since Sugrīva had promised to help Rāma in getting Sītā back. So, Vāli claimed that Rāma’s judgment was biased and that He had a selfish interest in siding with Sugrīva and punishing Vāli. It was a totally false claim since God Rāma alone was fully capable and did not actually require anyone’s help in solving His own case. He immediately got involved in the case of bringing justice to Sugrīva and killed Vāli because He was omniscient and knew which side justice lay. He was totally impartial in His analysis. He was also omnipotent to punish anybody in creation. If one is like Rāma, capable of impartial analysis to determine the side of justice and also capable of punishing the sinner, one can act immediately, whether it is a personal case or the case of another person. This approach of immediately punishing the sinners in one’s personal case or in another’s case, is related only to this specific context. The approach and context are like the front and back sides of a coin. The coin is the action taken for the sake of the establishment of justice and the destruction of injustice. You should never apply one approach to the other context. =============== -By Shri Datta Swami (Visit our website: www.universal-spirituality.org) Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Is this world only a place of action or also a place of enjoyment of the fruits of actions? [Reply to a question by Shri J. Prasad, Professor of Sanskrit, Central University, Hyderabad.] Swami replied: You wish to know whether this human world only is a place of actions (karma loka) or it is only a place of enjoyment of the fruits of action (bhoga loka) or it is a place for both. The answer is that all the three possibilities are valid depending upon the path selected by the soul in life. If the soul is completely dedicated to spiritual path alone, the world becomes purely a karma loka for him. In this case, God completely stops giving him the enjoyment of good fruits and suffering for the bad fruits of his past actions. Both good and bad fruits disturb the soul in its spiritual progress. This is done to encourage the person to make greater progress on the spiritual path. Granting the enjoyments of the fruits of the deeds done in the past, distracts the soul and slows down the soul’s spiritual progress. When a student is totally dedicated to his studies, the university authorities encourage his academic progress in all possible ways and remove any hurdles in the student’s academic progress. The second possibility is that the soul is partially interested in spirituality, but is also partially interested in materialism. Such a person is partially encouraged and partially discouraged since the person is like a normal student involved in both studies as well as in activities leading to indiscipline. The third possibility is that the soul only leads a materialistic life. For such a soul, no encouragement to make progress on the spiritual path is provided. The world only becomes a place of enjoyment for the fruits of his deeds. The complete materialist is just like an indisciplined student who is not encouraged at all by the university. Such a student is usually subjected to disciplinary action. Thus, for totally spiritual people, the world only becomes a karma loka and not a bhoga loka. For totally materialistic people, the world only becomes a bhoga loka and not a karma loka. But the majority of people lie between these two extremes. They are partially spiritual and partially materialistic. For this majority, the world becomes both a karma loka and a bhoga loka. In fact, this world of human beings (martya loka) is originally meant only for doing spiritual actions, which are most crucial since they provide eternal benefit to the soul. Bhoga or the enjoyment of the fruits of the person’s deeds is preferably not given to the soul in this world to avoid distracting and disturbing the soul while it is involved in the spiritual effort. But it is important to remember that the fruits of one’s past deeds will not disturb a person only if the person is committed to the spiritual path, in accordance with the original purpose of this world. Hence, as per the original plan, this world of human beings (martya loka) is called as karma loka, as a whole. But, due to the fall of human souls in their attitudes, this pure karma loka may also become a bhoga loka entirely or a mixture of a bhoga loka and a karma loka for different individuals. These three types of souls are mentioned in the Gita (Aniṣṭamiṣṭaṃ miśraṃ ca). If a person is totally committed to the spiritual path, without a trace of deficiency, even the prārabdha fruit gets cancelled. Prārabdha is that part of the fruit of a soul’s deeds which has already been sanctioned to be delivered in the present life. If the prārabdha is not cancelled, it means there is some trace of deficiency in the soul’s spiritual effort. It is in view of this trace of deficiency, that Śaṅkara said that the prārabdha cannot be cancelled even for a person who is committed to the spiritual path. He compared the prārabdha to an arrow released from a bow, which cannot be stopped once it is released (Dhanurmukta śaravat). But the Gita says that all types of fruits of the person’s deeds are cancelled when the soul dedicated to the spiritual path attains complete spiritual knowledge (Jñānāgniḥ sarva karmāṇi…—Gita, Kṣīyante cāsya karmāṇi…—Veda). It means that even the arrow released from the bow can be stopped by the omnipotent God, in order to give full encouragement to the soul dedicated to the most valuable spiritual path. In spite of all our past sins, God has granted us this human birth as the last chance, so that we can dedicate this life to the spiritual path. This is the reason for the other religions saying that there is no human rebirth. Śaṅkara also said that it is very difficult to get the chance of human rebirth (Durlabhaṃ trayamevaitat…). He said that after attaining human birth, one should develop the climax of interest in attaining salvation and search for the Sadguru (Manuṣyatvaṃ…). It is based on this analysis that Swami Vivekananda said that we ourselves are writing our own destiny. It is our activity that decides whether this human world is to become a pure karma loka or a pure bhoga loka or a mixture of both. Human rebirth is recognized in Hinduism, but it is understood to be a very rare case. Even when a soul is dedicated to the spiritual path, due to some trace of deficiency in the soul’s effort, the soul might not be able attain the final goal in one particular birth. For such exceptional cases, God gives them a special opportunity of a fresh human rebirth (Yoga bhraṣṭo’bhijāyate…). Even Jesus said that such an exceptional power exists in the hands of the ominipotent God and it can be used in the case of an exceptionally deserving soul. However, it does not mean that every soul has this chance of human rebirth. It is not like students who fail in the examinations in March are automatically eligible to reappear for the examination in September and those who fail in September can again appear in March, endlessly. We have read all these books and we know all these quotations from the scriptures. But we are unable to link all the quotations in a proper way to develop a clear true and complete spiritual concept. Only the Sadguru, who is God Guru Datta has that capability! Hence, the importance of the Sadguru is praised in the Guru Gita. It is said “If you are unable to reach the Sadguru, what is the use, what is the use, O what is the use (Guroraṅghripadme…)?” How much was the confusion when all these quotations were not correlated? See how much clarity there is now, after all these quotations have been correlated in the most perfect way by God Datta? When there is confusion, the concept looks most difficult like a thick forest (Śabda jāla mahāraṇyam…). When there is clarity, the same concept looks like an open ground without even a blade of grass!

Is it not better to take inspiration from Rama than from Krishna? Swami replied: Rāma represents the path to God, whereas Krishna is the goal or God Himself. In fact, Rāma is also God, but only in the background since He hid His divinity and behaved like a human being. Similarly, for a long period of His life, Krishna also represented the path to God. Other than the stealing of butter and the dancing with the Gopikās in Bṛndāvanam, He too behaved like Rāma after leaving Bṛndāvanam. One should not misunderstand this and think that He got reformed and left His bad habits back in Bṛndāvanam! The correct understaning is that He completed His special work in Bṛndāvanam, which was the main purpose of His Incarnation. As Rāma, God had promised the sages that they would be born as the Gopikās and that He would be born as Krishna. He had said that in that birth, He would complete the main work of liberating the sages. Hence, He completed this promised work first, as soon as He incarnated as Krishna. His actions in Bṛndāvanam were related to the path of nivṛtti, in which He gave final salvation to the devoted sages, after duly testing them. He tested whether they could overcome their fascination for worldly bonds, when God competed with those worldly bonds. After completing this important work of nivṛtti, He never returned to Bṛndāvanam and only lived outside in the world to do the general work related to pravṛtti, as Rāma did. Hence, you will never find Krishna having repeated the sort of actions that He did in Bṛndāvanam, anywhere else or at any other time in His life, after leaving Bṛndāvanam. Once you understand those actions done in the initial part of His life as His tests for nivṛtti-devotees, you will find the rest of Krishna’s life to be exactly like that of Rāma. The latter part of Krishna’s life, like the entire life of Rāma, was only meant for guiding pravṛtti-devotees. Nivṛtti was limited only to the Gopikās and there were no other devotees of that climax level of nivṛtti to repeat such actions. Everybody is attracted to Krishna and wishes to follow His actions in Bṛndāvanam even though they are not God! No one is even of the level of the Gopikās, who were so attracted to God that all their worldly bonds had naturally dropped off due to their extreme devotion to God. Before criticizing Krishna, we must always realize that we are not of the level of Krishna or even of the level of the Gopikās. Every human being is to follow what Rāma practiced throughout His life (pravṛtti), the pravṛtti-part of what Krishna said in the Gita and what Krishna followed in His life after leaving Bṛndāvanam (pravṛtti). Krishna is to be mainly viewed as the Preacher, while Rāma is to be viewed as the practical Demonstrator of pravṛtti. It takes only a little time to explain a theory and hence, Krishna lived only for 125 years. He was 89 years old at the end of the Mahabharata and He lived another 36 years in Dvāraka, thereafter. Rāma showed every concept of pravṛtti in practice, which took a very long time and hence, Rāma lived for 11,000 years (Daśavarṣa sahasrāṇi, Daśavarṣa śatānica...)!

Why do elders discourage youngsters from following the path of practical spirituality? Swami replied: When king Bali was prepared to do the practical sacrifice of donating three feet of land to Vāmana, his preacher Śukrācārya discouraged it. Śukrācārya said that even though Vāmana, the receiver of that donation, was the Human Incarnation of God Viṣṇu, He was deceiving Bali by asking for that donation. Bali neglected the advice and agreed to give the donation to Vāmana after analyzing as follows: “Vāmana is not a fraud Human Incarnation who has come to deceive me by asking for a donation. He is the real Human Incarnation, who has come to deceive me through the donation. We should not get deceived by false incarnations and false devotees, since charity done to such undeserving people is a sin. But in this case, God Himself has come to me in human form and is trying to cheat me by asking me to do this practical sacrifice. I, being the grandson of the great devotee, Prahlāda, like God to the climax. I even like getting cheated, if the cheater is God”. Bali then gave the requested donation to Vāmana and he was cheated by Vāmana, who assumed such an enormous form that in one foot He covered the underworld and Earth. In the second step, He covered the heavens. Nothing remained to place His third step, so Bali offered his own head. Bali’s devotion to God was marvellous! But God cheated Bali so that heaven, which had been conquered by Bali, could be returned to Indra. But God made Bali the future king of heaven or the next Indra. Not only this, but God has now become the permanent gate-keeper of king Bali! Hence, the sacrifice done by the devotee to God is always repaid by God after multiplying it many-fold. A piece of cloth torn by Draupadī from her sari, to tie a bandage to Krishna’s bleeding finger, was multiplied to thousands of saris by Krishna and given back to her when she was in real need. Elders oppose your charity to the human form of God because many so-called Incarnations are not genuine. The fraud Human Incarnation is an undeserving receiver and charity done to him is a sin. Hence, the objection of elders serves as a warning to you to verify whether the receiver is actually deserving or not.

How could Krishna have had sex with the Gopikas at the age of twelve? Krishna is said to have been about twelve years old when He danced with the Gopikās and had sex with them. How is this possible? In any case, Rāma is the best since He is not surrounded by such controversies. What do You say? Swami replied: Everyone seems to be highly interested in the first twelve years of the life of Krishna. Based on it, they call Him a thief and a characterless person, even though we have clearly given the real explanation for His behaviour. His apparently negative behaviour was related to the path of nivṛtti, in which sages, who were highly advanced spiritually and had tried to attain God for millions of lives, were tested by Him through such behaviour. Why is nobody bothered about the rest of Krishna’s life of 113 years in which He lived just like Rāma? Of course, it is true that Krishna married several girls. But in every case, the reason for the marriage was the burning desire of the girl. His involvement with the married Gopikās was also due to the extreme devotion-filled desire of the Gopikās and not His own desire. In any case, polygamy was ethically allowed for kings in that time (Rājāno bahuvallabhāḥ). So, Krishna did not violate any ethical rule by marrying many women. You need not blame Krishna for adopting certain tricks in the Mahābhārata war. Even Rāma killed Vāli after hiding behind a tree. One cannot object to such tricks since the ends justify the means. If the end is justified, the means adopted can be crooked. The critical requirement is that the goal must actually be justified without any trace of partiality to favour oneself. God is never partial. He is only partial to justice. So, to protect justice, both Rāma and Krishna adopted certain tricks. God is omnipotent and can do anything at any age. How come nobody comments about a seven-year-old boy lifting a huge mountain on His tender little finger? When the boy Krishna so effortlessly lifted the Govardhana hill at the age of seven, why could He not have had sex at the age of twelve? Later on, Krishna is also known to have married 16,108 girls and have produced ten sons and one daughter through each wife! These examples clearly prove that He was the visible human form of the unimaginable God. Did you know that even God Rāma started His family life with Sita at the age of 12 years? In the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇam, Sita says that she was eighteen years old and Rāma was twenty-five years old while leaving Ayodhya for the forest (Mama bhartā mahātejaḥ, vayasā pañcaviṃśakaḥ, Aṣṭādaśahi varṣāṇi, mama janmani gaṇyate). She also says that she stayed in Ayodhya for twelve years after marriage (Uṣitvā dvādaśa samāḥ ikṣvākūṇām niveśane). This means that, according to her, Rāma must have been thirteen years old when He got married to Sita. In another verse, just before the marriage of Rāma, King Daśaratha told sage Viśvāmitra that Rāma being just twelve years old was too young to fight demons (Ūnaṣoḍaśa varṣo me Rāmo...). In this verse, the meaning of ūna is to be taken as one quarter (of sixteen) less than sixteen (16 – 4 = 12) and not one year less than sixteen (16 – 1 = 15) (Pādena ūnatvaṃ natu varṣeṇa). One quarter of 16 is called a pāda, which is four years. Only then does Daśaratha’s statement nearly coincide with the information given by Sita. The one-year difference between the ages of Rāma as stated by Sita and Daśaratha is not significant since there are two well-known ways of expressing age. The first one is to say that Rāma had completed twelve years of age and the other is to say that He was running thirteen. The Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇam thus, clearly puts the age of Rāma at the time of His marriage at twelve (or thirteen). The fact that God Rāma and God Krishna were omnipotent is of course the most important. But apart from it, we must also understand that there are significant physical differences related to health, size and longevity, between human beings in the various ages. In general, there is a gradual decline in the physical characteristics of human beings from the Tretā Yuga of Rāma to the Dvāpara Yuga of Krishna and further to the present Kali Yuga. In the Tretā Yuga, human beings are said to be as tall as a śāla tree (Shorea robusta) (Śālaprāṃśuḥ mahābhujaḥ). So, we should not try to assess the health and physical capabilities of people in those ancient generations from our point-of-view since we are like Lilliputs before them. Their health and physical capabilities were tremendous, compared to us and we need not doubt this point. But even if we find some things hard to believe, the omnipotence of God Rāma and God Krishna alone is sufficient to explain any impossibile event. It is quite common to form a negative impression of Krishna based on His record of having had illegitimate affairs with the Gopikās. Considering the relations between Krishna and the Gopikās as illegitimate affairs is a complete misunderstanding. But people today, still continue to have that misunderstanding even after the nivṛtti-background of those incidents has been clearly and repeatedly explained. If the liberal people of today, can still not understand this point, even after such a clear explanation, what about those ancient times, when society was conservative and no explanation of Krishna’s behaviour was available! Every king was hesitatant to give his daughter in marriage to Krishna. Even Rukmiṇī who was interested in marrying Krishna, was strongly opposed by her brother, Rukmi on the grounds of Krishna’s behavior. Finally, Krishna married Rukmiṇī since she sent Him a message that she would die if He did not marry her. Even Satrājit unnecessarily doubted Krishna due to Krishna’s past record of stealing butter. He thought that Krishna must have stolen His divine diamond!

How can awareness be an item of the imaginable creation? Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! It is simple. If food is not given to the body for a long time, awareness disappears from that body. If awareness were eternal, it would not disappear from the body, even when no food is supplied to the body. The Veda also says that the awareness is born from food (Annāt puruṣaḥ). The word puruṣa means the awareness lying in the body (Puri dehe yat śete tat caitanyaṃ puruṣaḥ). As per science, when food is digested, inert energy is released. That energy enters the nervous system and gets converted into a specific form of work, called awareness. Awareness or ‘being aware’ means the work of transferring information from the senses to brain. If the supply of food is stopped, no inert energy is liberated and hence, awareness cannot be produced. Awareness continues to exist in the body for some days, even if we do not eat food, because the fats stored in the body are broken down to release inert energy, which, in turn, gets converted to awareness. Once the stored fats get exhausted, no more inert energy is generated and awareness disappears. Ahalyā, the living human being was converted into an inert stone due to a curse. Her awareness was converted into inert energy and the energy was converted into inert matter or stone. When Rāma released her from the curse, the reverse process took place and the stone-form of Ahalyā again became the living Ayalyā with awareness. Of course, this particular conversion was miraculous and can only be done by God using His unimaginable power. We cannot imagine how a living woman can be converted to a stone and vice versa. But the usual conversion of inert energy to awareness in a living body is imaginable by us. It also is ultimately under the control of God alone. The Veda says that God first created the inert five elements, followed by plants and finally, awareness. Thus, awareness is not eternally self-existent. It is a generated product, which was produced at the end of the process of creation. Creation is called prakṛti. Awareness is called parā prakṛti. Parā means the best. So, parā prakṛti means the best or most precious part of creation. If awareness itself were God, God would have said that He Himself is parā prakṛti. But in the Gita, He said that His creation or prakṛti consists of two parts: (1) Aparā prakṛti, which is the lower part of His creation and (2) Parā prakṛti, which is the best and most precious part of His creation. For parā prakṛti, He only said that it is the best part of His creation (Prakṛtiṃ viddhi me parām). He did not say that parā prakṛti is Himself. When somebody says that this gold is the best part of his property, it does not mean that the gold is himself! God has also mentioned in the Gita that parā prakṛti is awareness (Jīvabhūtām). God is unimaginable as per the Veda (Atarkyaḥ) and His creation is imaginable since we can see and understand it. Awareness, being a part of creation, is imaginable and also visible, as per the Gita (Paśyanti jñāna cakṣuṣaḥ). You can visualize awareness in the form of waves or pulses of inert energy on a monitor since awareness is nothing but a converted work-form of inert energy. www.universal-spirituality.org

One shall avoid the following vices:: There are six vices, which are 1) illegal sex (kama), 2) violence (krodha), 3) greediness (corruption of money), 4) fascination (moha), 5) Ego (mada) and 6) jealousy (maatsarya). The first three affect other souls and hence are considered to be strong sins or main gates to the hell as per the Gita. The latter three are not serious in case others are not affected. Illegal sex with some soul pains its life partner to a very deep extent. Violence to kill living beings for food and killing people for various reasons like rowdyism or terrorism is the greatest sin. Earning unlawful money by exploiting others is also a very serious sin since the affected persons suffer a lot. Out of these six vices, the first three are very serious leading the soul certainly to hell since these three sins are harming others. The latter three sins do not lead to hell provided there is no damage to others. If you have fascination to world, you need not go to hell if your fascination to your wife/husband or issues or money does not harm others. Similarly, your ego will not take you to hell as long as your ego doesn’t hurt others. Similarly, your jealousy towards others will not give any punishment in hell if it is not harming others. Sometimes, jealousy also helps you in your development. If you examine the first three sins, your anger/violence will certainly damage others. Similarly, your greediness for money is resulting in corruption by which you are stealing others’ money by which others suffer. Similarly, your illegal sex will certainly cause suffering to others. When Dharmaraja asked his grandfather, Bhishma, about the essence of justice, Bhishma replied that the essence of justice is that one should not do that to others, which, if is done by others to him results in hurting himself. Therefore, the criminal nature of the sin resulting in punishment is always due to only damage done by yourself to others. Hence, God in the Gita mentioned that only these three sins are the main gates to hell, which are violence, financial corruption and illegal sex. The foremost sin is violence to kill other living beings for the sake of food or some other personal grudge. God Brahma becomes furious by this sin because He alone is the authority to grant longevity. When you do not have power to give life to a killed living being, you do not have any right to kill any living being. The death sentence given by a judge should be ultimate. It means that before implementing death sentence to a living being, you should give several chances to the soul for rectification of sin by reformation. Reformation is the real aim of any punishment and not vengeance. You are hanging a person to death for the only reason that the criminal may kill another human being. If reformation is achieved and the sin is not practically repeated, there is no need of punishment. Similarly, killing a living being for food is the top most level of this first sin. You must always imagine that you are captured by a demon, which is going to eat you! Whatever agony you feel in that time and during the time of cutting your body by the jaws of the demon, the same agony is felt by that living being, being killed for the sake of your food! God Brahma represents the quality of Rajas and the anger in violence is also due to Rajas only. This is the qualitative link. The second type of sin is stealing by cheating or robbing others money by force. Money is Goddess Lakshmi and hence this type of sin makes God Vishnu to become furious. Today, almost everyone is a victim of corruption. Before cheating somebody for the sake of money, you should analyse the damage done to others especially poor people. You must at least avoid corruption in the case of poor people. If you rob the wealth of a sinner, that money should not be enjoyed by yourself and your family members. That should be spent to serve the beggars or should be spent for spiritual purpose. You may digest even most dangerous poison but not the sinful money, which will destroy yourself and your family. It is said that the sinful money earned by you comes like a railway engine to carry away by linking with your earned money through justice also, which is like a series of compartments standing on the track by the side of a platform (Anyaayenaarjitam vittam sahamoolam vinashyati). Vishnu stands for the quality of Sattvam, which is knowledge and analysis. You must analyze carefully whenever you earn or spend money. Most of the people spend money in the way that leads them to hell only. Expenditure or donation of money also leads you to hell. Everybody is spending lot of money on functions donating to relatives and friends, who have enough food in their homes. You spend lot of money on a function due to your desire to expose yourself based on ego. You deny food to a beggar dying with hunger. You calculate to give food to a devotee or spiritual preacher coming to your house, who helps you in elevating your spiritual knowledge or devotion. Money is never wasted because its expenditure will either bring good (Punyam) or bad (Paapam). Even if you throw money into river to call it as wastage, such act is also a sin. Hence, you should be very careful with deep analysis while earning or spending money. The third type of sin is illegal sex, which is based on blind lust linked to the quality of Tamas. God Shiva stands for Tamas and becomes furious due to this sin. Just you observe Lord Shiva, who burnt the cupid enraging lust in any living being. You must always meditate upon Lord Shiva to avoid this sin. If you are cheating a husband by going with his wife or cheating a father by going with his daughter, imagine yourself standing in the place of such husband and father! By which you are hurt, you should not do the same to others as said above by Bhishma. God created this world and is very particular of the justice, peace and balance of this society. You must avoid these three types of sins at least due to fear to hell created by God. This is the minimum and maximum expectation of God from a human being. God is not furious even if the human being is an atheist provided the atheist avoids the above three types of sins. Even an atheist is granted heaven if he/she follows the justice avoiding the sins. In fact, God maintains the atheists because they are also in Divine service. They do the service of God by acting as examiners to devotees. On hearing the criticism of God from an atheist, whether the devotion of a devotee is shaken or not is the test. They criticize theists doing sins and this develops alertness and care in devotees. They disprove the false miracles done by exploiters, which is very much essential to save the devotees from false trap of false devotees and pseudo human incarnations. If you are living as per this minimum and maximum expectation of God, He is pleased with you even if you are an atheist. He never encourages devotion. Devotion is the field started by human souls only and not God. God creates several obstructions to the devotion in the name of tests as we see the life histories of several devotees. Control of the three principle sins in this world, by which full justice and peace are established, is the main concentration of God in His preaching. The owner of an industry always puts primary effort in seeing that all the workers in the industry work with full justice, peace and harmony (Pravrutti). Arjuna asked the Lord for the reason that forces every soul to do the sin in practical situation. The Lord said that the wrong knowledge very strongly impressed on the mind of the soul for several births is the reason and the only solution for this is an equivalent impression of correct knowledge that destroys the past impressions, which are the six vices. A diamond alone can cut another diamond. After hearing true knowledge (Shravana), it should be memorized (Manana) continuously through the propagation till it becomes very strong decision (Nididhyaasa). Propagation is mainly beneficial to you than to others! Nivrutti is always the proposal from the side of the soul, which is to become very close family member of God passing through severe tests of God appearing to oppose this proposal strongly. In Pravrutti the entire responsibility lies on you in any risk whereas in Nivrutti God takes your total responsibility and hence Nivrutti is said to be the highest fruit (Nivruttistu mahaaphalaa). Pravrutti is the child catching the womb of mother-monkey (Markatakishora Nyaaya) with risk and Nivrutti is the mother-cat catching its child by mouth (Maarjaalakishora Nyaaya) without risk. Punishment given for a sin is only to change the mind of the soul and purify it. There is no trace of revenge in this. The hell is an indication of the intensive love of God to the souls through which God wants to reform the souls. The hell indicates the hectic effort of God put on the soul to reform it and not to leave the soul for its fate. A father may leave his son since he is not changing inspite of all his efforts. But in the hell God puts serious effort and succeeds to change the soul. Therefore, even thousands of fathers cannot be equal to God. God is not leaving the soul without changing it and this point is indicated by the punishment and hell. Therefore, there is no point of excusing the Prarabhdas if this true basis is understood. God will try to change the soul through preaching as far as possible. Punishment in the hell is the last resort. Once the soul is reformed all the sins are smashed since there is neither the necessity of preaching nor the necessity of punishment. In any religion, and in any region of the world, God-in-human-form gives a lot of stress on reaching the human level (pravṛtti) and warns souls to not fall down to the animal level (duṣpravṛtti). This is because the major lot of humanity is only in the bottommost animal level. Even if a soul rises to the human level or to divine level (nivṛtti), which is above the human level, it can easily slip and fall to the basic animal level due to its inherent human nature. Hence, a major part of any holy scripture is confined only to the glorifying pravṛtti and warning against duṣpravṛtti. Falling from nivṛtti to pravṛtti is not that bad since the fall affects only that individual whereas the fall from pravṛtti or nivṛtti down to the lowest level of duṣpravṛtti is very dangerous since it affects the peace of the surrounding world. Maintaining the peace of the world is very important for God. The world is like a board-game of Snakes and Ladders. Both ladders for climbing up and snakes for sliding down are present. Spiritual knowledge is thought to be mere theoretical gossip mainly related to nivṛtti. This is totally wrong since this very knowledge of nivṛtti also ensures at every step that the soul does not fall to the basic animal level. Thus, spiritual knowledge is highly essential for pravṛtti or practical life in this world. The way to cancel your sins All the punishments are only for reformation of the soul and not for revenge. The hell is created by God not with vengeance against sinners but due to kindness to reform the souls. God is always kind to reform the souls, which are His children since the souls are created by Him. The father will never have even a trace of vengeance towards his issues. Jesus always addressed God as father and He propagated this concept by saying that all your sins will be excused by God if you are reformed. Practical knowledge, the practical realization, which is the reformation, will cancel all your previous bad deeds or sins as told in Gita (Jnanaagnih….). Except this one way, there is no other way to cancel the sins and escape from all the present problems in the world and future torture in the hell. If you are not doing any sin, you are excused for all past sins The results of all your good actions will be separate and will not interfere with the cancellation of sins. God will give you good results for all your prayers and any prayer will not cancel even a trace of your sin. Similarly, your charity. If these good actions can reform you, then, your sins will be cancelled. Therefore, reformation of the soul is the only way by which God is pleased to cancel your sins. Even if you do not believe in God, it does not matter. If you are not doing any sin, you are excused for all past sins and you will live with immense happiness in the world and after death also. If you are doing a sin, you are going against the will of God You cannot please God by prayers and service simultaneously doing sins. If you are doing a sin, you are going against the will of God and you are insulting God. You cannot please and insult God simultaneously. Therefore, every devotee and servant of God should be careful about the concept of the sin and about the only path to cancel the sin. Avoid bad side of both good and bad deeds Let us examine the six so-called bad qualities or vices and see how each of them has both meritorious and sinful sides. Among them, the first three, are responsible for the majority of sins in the world. They are said to be the three main gates to hell as per the Gita. 1) Lust or sex (kāma😞 The meritorious side of sex is to generate issues which form the next generation. Sex with one’s rightful wife to produce children is perfectly justified (Dharmāviruddhaḥ bhūteṣu kāmo’smi—Gita). Even the intense desire for sex, which causes a person to engage in sex with one’s married partner frequently, is also justified. There are several uncertainties arising from gynaecological and other factors in conceiving a child. The time of the release of the ovum is uncertain, the life of sperm is short and so on. Hence, frequent sex becomes necessary for producing children. Thus, lust, which drives a person to have frequent sex, has a good side. But when a person using his or her freedom, chooses to engage in sex with an unlawful partner, in violation of God’s laws of worldly justice, the sex becomes sinful. It is this sinful side of the sin alone which is to be given up. An ordinary human being on the path of pravṛtti should not blindly give up sex completely without recognizing this internal sub-classification of the good and bad sides to each quality. A very few exceptional souls of the nivṛtti path, like Śaṅkara, Ramakrishna etc., left sex completely. But they did not leave it by any forced effort. It was a natural consequence of their extreme attachment to God. Such exceptional cases are out of the scope of pravṛtti or karmādhikāra. Karmādhikāra means the eligibility to do worldly work. People who follow the rules of justice given by God are said to be eligible to perform worldly work, which is the path of pravṛtti. But the eligibility of these exceptional cases, who are the stars of the nivṛtti path, far exceeds karmādhikāra. 2) Violence or anger (krodha😞 The originally-created good side of anger or violence is that teachers or parents can show anger towards their students or children, whenever they go on the wrong path. With this quality, teachers and parents can bring their students or children back to the right path in pravṛtti. An Incarnation of God like Krishna killing a devilish soul is the good side of violence (Vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām—Gita). Even a court putting a criminal to death is the good side of violence. However, an individual should not take the law into his own hands. Even God Rama, the embodiment of justice and peace, is described in the Rāmāyaṇam as “Sthānakrodhaḥ prahartā ca,” which means that He showed anger and even killed in the appropriate situation. The sinful side of anger and violence is getting angry with good people and hurting or killing them. 3) Greediness (lobha😞 Greed causes a person to not share his wealth with others. The original good side of greed is that a person does not donate his precious wealth to undeserving receivers but donates it to only to deserving receivers. The sinful side of greed is donating to undeserving receivers and not donating to deserving receivers. Unless you save money by avoiding undeserved donations, you cannot make well-deserved donations since most people have limited financial resources. Very few people are rich. Even if you are rich, the sinful side of greediness must be avoided and its meritorious side must be practiced. In the Mahābhāratam it is clearly told that both donating to the undeserving and not donating to the deserving are sins. The fourth, fifth and sixth vices namely moha, mada and mātsarya, also have both good and bad sides. As long as these three are within limits, they are not as dangerous, and they do not yield punishments in hell. But if they cross their boundaries and lead to sinful deeds, they become punishable. 1) Fascination (moha😞 Fascination to one’s family is the good side of fascination in pravṛtti. Fascination or moha towards God is even better in pravṛtti, and of course, it is essential in nivṛtti. But moha in unlawful relationships is sin in pravṛtti. Also, having fascination only for the worldly bonds of child, spouse and wealth, without having any bond with God, is the bad side of fascination in both nivṛtti and pravṛtti. Having a fascination only for the worldly bonds is not a punishable sin by itself. It is bad because it stops spiritual progress. But an extreme moha for the worldly bonds without any moha for God may lead the soul to commit punishable sins in pravṛtti. So, on the whole, moha for God is the good side of moha and moha for the worldly bonds is the bad side. 5) Pride (mada😞 The good side of mada is having self-confidence and the bad side is to have an ego. Limited pride is self-confidence. It is like the normal body temperature. If the pride grows beyond limits, it becomes ego, which is like a fever. If confidence drops down below a certain limit it is like an abnormally low body temperature, which is also dangerous. Low self-confidence makes the person afraid of even doing normal activities. In nivṛtti, a devotee can be proud of being a disciple of God Datta. But this pride should not take the negative direction of looking down upon other forms of God Datta. This is the bad side of pride which results from the ignorance of the spiritual knowledge preached by God Datta. 6) Jealousy (mātsarya😞 The good side of jealousy is to develop competition with people, who are better than us. It drives us to make efforts to reach their level or even surpass them and become the best. It is said that envy brings growth in knowledge, “Spardhayā vardhate vidyā”. The bad side of jealousy is pulling down those who are better than us, by false blame in order to become equal with them or suppressing others and pushing them below our own level in order to become better than them. In the cases of ego and jealousy, there is an additional danger. When both are directed to the wrong side in the case of the contemporary Human Incarnation of God, they lead to repulsion from the Incarnation. After passing into the energetic world, the soul also feels repulsion from the Energetic Incarnation. Owing to the repulsion from the Human Incarnation here on earth and the energetic Incarnation in the upper-world, the soul misses the chance to attain God here as well as there. So, avoiding ego and jealousy towards the Incarnation is very important in nivṛtti. Just as the so-called bad qualities have meritorious and sinful sides, the so-called good qualities also have both sides. Worshipping God is generally a good quality. The good side of this quality is worshipping God out of true love without aspiring for any fruit in return from Him. The bad side of this quality is worshipping God due to artificial love shown for Him. In such a case, the person’s real love is for the fruit that he aspires from God. Serving society is a good quality, which also has both good and bad sides. A politician doing social service to impress the public for the sake of getting votes is bad. His actual intention is to win the election, secure a powerful position and earn sinful money. The social service done by Mahatmā Gandhi, Mother Theresa etc., with the goal of genuinely helping needy souls, in the name of God, is the good side of social service. In ancient times, yajña was also a form of social service. During the yajña, hungry people were fed, and spiritual discussions and prayers to God were conducted. This is the good side of the yajña. The bad side of yajña is to do the same yajña for achieving heavenly pleasures after death or achieving worldly pleasures in this life, without developing any spiritual knowledge or devotion to God. During the time of Śaṅkara, the Pūrva Mīmāṁsā philosophy had turned to this bad side of yajña, and as a result, it was condemned by Śaṅkara. WWW.universal-spirituality[.]org Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Heaven and hell indeed exist as separate upper worlds. After the death of a soul on earth, the soul enjoys the fruits of its meritorious and sinful deeds in those worlds respectively, for a stipulated period of time. Thereafter, the soul takes a fresh birth on earth. The person’s life span on earth is separate from the time period spent by the soul in heaven and hell. Earth, heaven, and hell are all separate places. The places are different and the times spent by the soul in each place are also different. So, none is disturbed by the other. Earth is meant for doing deeds with full freedom. Hence, it is known as the world of actions (karma loka). Heaven and hell are known as worlds of enjoyment (bhoga lokas), where the fruits of the deeds done by the soul on earth are merely enjoyed. There is no freedom in those worlds. The fruits have to be enjoyed for the stipulated period, without any choice. No new deeds are done in those worlds. On earth, while the person is performing deeds, the enjoyment of the fruits of the deeds should not disturb the person. Similarly, while the soul is enjoying the fruits in the upper worlds, the performance of deeds should not disturb the soul’s enjoyment. Hence, the deed and its fruit are kept separate in place and time so that they do not interfere with each other. This is the general rule but there are some exceptions. One exception is that the fruits of very intensive deeds of a soul are to be enjoyed by the soul on earth itself. Another major and overall exception is that God can draw any fruit from the life cycle of a soul and grant it to the soul to enjoy at any particular time. This is done with a view to reforming the soul. The soul is the disciple and God is the Divine Spiritual Preacher. Hence, God closely attends to the activity of reforming the soul. So, the separation of the deed and its fruit in place and time is not a hard and fast rule. The place and time of delivery of the fruits of the soul’s deeds is ultimately decided by God, who is the Supermost Authority and the possessor of the supermost knowledge. His decision is most effective for reforming the soul and for providing eternal benefit to the soul. Every soul on earth is made of the three fundamental qualities: sattvam, rajas and tamas. Sattvam represents knowledge, softness of nature and devotion to God. Rajas represents ego, greed and activity. Tamas represents ignorance, rigid attachment to worldly enjoyment and inactivity. Each soul has its own specific ratio of these three qualities which remains approximately fixed although there might be slight changes. These three qualities are very intense on earth. Let us take an example of a soul having ratio of 60:25:15 in sattvam, rajas and tamas respectively. Let us say that the quantity of each of these qualities is in kilograms to indicate their high intensities. When the soul returns to earth after going to heaven and hell, this ratio does not change. However, the intensities of each of the three qualities greatly reduce. Thus, the soul which has just taken birth on earth has the same ratio (60:25:15) of the three qualities. The only difference is that now the quantity of each of the three qualities is in grams instead of kilograms. How did the quantity or intensity of each of the qualities reduce? The punishments in hell reduced the intensities of the soul’s rajas and tamas. Similarly, the enjoyment in heaven reduced the soul’s desire for happiness, which means, it reduced the intensity of sattvam. This ratio of the three qualities, as the soul returns to earth, is called sañcita. In the case of this example chosen by us, the soul’s predominant quality is sattvam (60%). It will give a birth to the soul in the family of scholars of spiritual knowledge providing a congenial environment to the soul. This predominant quality (60% sattvam) causing that particular birth is called prārabdha. As the soul lives on earth, the quantities of each of the qualities will increase from grams to kilograms. The ratio will still usually remain approximately the same (60:25:15). Occasionally, this ratio may even change to a large extent. It may change to a new ratio such as 80:15:5. It means that sattvam increased a lot in that particular birth of the soul. This happens when the soul comes in contact with a divine spiritual preacher. The added and deleted amounts of the three qualities leading to a large change in the ratio is called āgāmi. There is full freedom given to the soul on earth to change this ratio by acquiring spiritual knowledge and performing good deeds. Hence, it is said that even angels are eager to take human birth on earth! If the soul wastes or misuses the precious time of this rare human birth by spending it all in petty worldly matters, such a soul must indeed be given the rare title ‘the most unfortunate soul’. www.universal-spirituality.org

SCIENCE AND GOD Science does not bother about God and is confined to the present life alone. Scientific rationality is confined only to physical knowledge. Even though there are several genuine miracles happening in this world, science does not bother about them. Atheists attempt to examine these miracles like scientists. But they differ from the silent scientists in their invariable strong negation of the miracles at the end of their investigation. Unless miracles are accepted, scientists and atheists will not believe in the existence of the unimaginable God. A scientist may become a believer in God, but an atheist will never believe. For believers in God, miracles are not necessary since they follow the advanced knowledge of nivṛtti. The unimaginable God is beyond space and time and He remains unimaginable due to this reason only. From the unimaginable God, imaginable space etc., were generated, which form this entire imaginable world. In the worldly logic, there is no single example of generation of imaginable item from unimaginable item because in the imaginable domain (world), there is no unimaginable item at all — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. The unimaginable God alone is the absolute truth and this world created by Him can’t be equally true with Him. If it is true like Him, it can’t be created or destroyed by Him. One truth can’t create or destroy another truth. Such creation, modification and destruction of worldly items by the unimaginable God are called as miracles or unimaginable events, which are seen in this world indicating His existence directly through scientific analysis. The soul is a part of this untrue world, hence, untrue, can’t stand as equal truth with the unimaginable God. World is not true before God, but, true for the soul — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. Space is something or subtle energy and not nothing. Nothing can be neither generated nor can disappear. Space is said to be generated by the Veda and is said by Einstein to disappear when all the matter disappears in the world. If it is nothing, it can’t bend along the boundary of the object. This means space is something like the other four subsequent elements, which are air, fire, water and earth. Of course, space is nothing like the other four elements with reference to unimaginable God since world is relatively true with reference to the absolute truth, called as the unimaginable God. Imaginable space can’t exist in its cause or unimaginable God before its generation itself. If it exists, its generation becomes false. This link between unimaginable God and imaginable space is also unimaginable due to absence of such link in the world. We can find the generation of imaginable item from another imaginable item only in this imaginable world. By this, not only God, but also, His link with space is unimaginable — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. The space or world looks to be infinite because its boundary is not attained by us even in our imagination. This universe is finite for the omniscient God since nothing is unknown to Him. If we reach the boundary of imaginable space or world, we will certainly touch the starting boundary of different unimaginable God and this can never happen. Due to this reason only, the space or world is constantly expanding so that even angels can’t reach the boundary of this space. Angels having energetic bodies move with tremendous velocity. The ending boundary of the water of sea is the starting boundary of different region, called as soil. The boundary of the universe exists, but, is unreachable to us, which means infinite, but, does not mean really infinite. If you follow the track of smoke generated from fire, you will touch its cause or fire. Similarly, if we reach the boundary of space, we will reach its cause or unimaginable God. This can never happen since unimaginable God having no space in Him before its generation, is beyond space and is always unimaginable to us — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. The unimaginable God created subtle energy or space so that an energetic body is created from subtle energy and remaining subtle energy is in the form of space, which is occupied by the created energetic body to be called as absolute space since such first energetic body will never disappear. The unimaginable God enters this first energetic body called as first energetic incarnation or Eshwara or Lord or Father of heaven called as Datta meaning that the unimaginable God is ‘given’ to the world for clear vision. Such incarnation is called as descended God because the omnipotent unimaginable God can alone cross the unimaginable link between God and space to come down. This first energetic body bound by space can’t cross this link to become ascended body. This first energetic incarnation enters other energetic bodies and human bodies to become energetic and human incarnations respectively in future. This Father of heaven merged by unimaginable God creates the five elements and souls gradually due to His unimaginable power, which form this entire world — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. Awareness means to know something (result) and also means the nervous energy that causes the knowledge (cause). The unimaginable God knows everything (result), without nervous energy (cause). The awareness of soul knows only little (result) since it is done by the nervous energy (cause). Soul is just a specific work form of inert energy functioning in a specific nervous system. It is only the rule of this creation that anything to know must be nervous energy and this rule doesn’t apply to unimaginable God. He knows everything (not little like the soul) without being nervous energy. By this speciality, the knowledge of unimaginable God is called as unimaginable awareness. Similarly, He can burn anything without being the fire. Hence, every soul is not unimaginable awareness or unimaginable God. Only the soul of first energetic incarnation and other souls pervaded by Him in the incarnations become unimaginable awareness. A soul becomes unimaginable God by the selection done by God and not by the effort of the soul — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. When the unimaginable God merges with imaginable medium like energetic or human body, we need not discuss this merge as monism or internal dualism or perfect dualism since these three mechanisms are confined to merge of imaginable items only. Since climax devotees desired to see the unimaginable God with their eyes, God becomes the medium through perfect monism only so that devotees are not discouraged. These climax devotees have no ego and jealousy due to which these devotees can digest the perfect monism. If the devotees have some ego and jealousy, the merge will be simultaneously external monism with internal dualism due to non-isolation of soul from God. If the devotees have full ego and jealousy, the merge will be perfect dualism simultaneously. This merge is confined to the incarnation only and not to be extended to every soul. However, Shankara applied perfect monism of God to every soul in the case of atheists having full ego and jealousy (I am the light). After sometime, ego and jealousy were reduced and Ramanuja told that soul is a part of God (Part of light is in me). After sometime, ego and jealousy disappeared and Madhva told that the soul is different from God even though both are awareness (I am in the light). The grading done in the incarnation shall be understood with reference to the then existing state of devotees since the real preacher cares more for the uplift of devotees from their existing state than the truth of the concept. Now, Datta Swami established that awareness or nervous energy is only imaginable soul and not the unimaginable God because today devotees developed excellent scientific analysis to digest the ultimate truth also along with devotion. By this, God became visible as well as unimaginable in nature — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. The first energetic incarnation along with merged unimaginable God is the common item in every medium and thus, same God is common in all religions even though media differ. Hence, only one God exists in all religions. Religion is the path to please the same one God. Religions differ due to the difference in the level, language, culture, etc., of different souls in different regions. The starting point or soul and ending point or God are same in every religion. Hinduism with many sub-religions is a mini representative model of world with various religions and in both (sub-religions of Hinduism and religions of world), we find internal unity in external diversity — like this, if one realizes, let him belong to Eastern religion or Western religion, such a person is omniscient. This is My logical conclusion. Science Vs Atheism Science keeps silent on the unimaginable God because it is unable to explain the unimaginable events called as genuine miracles, the source of which is unimaginable God. In any book of science, you don’t find a chapter called as ‘Refutation of God and Miracles’, whereas the books on atheism have only this one chapter! The silence of science is perfect indicating that God is beyond imagination being beyond space and this point is told by the scriptures also. Atheism blindly says that all miracles are magic without perfect examination and analysis. Ofcourse, certain fraud miracles also exist, which are actually magic and by this you shall not conclude that every miracle is magic. Atheism is always emotional and the intelligence sleeps in emotion. Science is always open to observation and analysis unlike atheism. Science also says that a hypothesis shall be accepted till it is disproved by the subsequent theory. Hence, you shall believe the explanation of the performer of genuine miracles at least till you disprove the genuine miracle also as magic. Science accepts the existence of unimaginable domain by accepting the unimaginable boundary of the universe. The unimaginable boundary of the universe and frequently exhibited unimaginable-genuine miracles establish the existence of unimaginable God, who punishes the sinners through unimaginable ways even if they escape the law here through tricks. By this, pravrutti is protected on which only nivrutti is based. If an atheist asks you to show the hell in this space, you must give the following argument:- In this infinite space, I can’t show the existence of hell to you. Similarly, since space is infinite, you can’t take me all around the space and prove the non-existence of hell to me. A 50:50 probability of existence and non-existence results here. A wise person shall select the probability having lesser risk. If you believe in the hell and do not do any sin, you are not lost in any way even if the hell is absent. If you take the other probability of non-existence of hell and do sins, you are totally damaged if the hell exists! Even an atheist shall think about this, if the atheist is wise enough. www.universal-spirituality[.]org Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Convincing the Adamant Atheist Shri Phani asked: How can we discuss and convince atheists, who are very adamant in their views? Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Such adamant behaviour of atheists is the result of the aversion that they have held in their mind towards spirituality and spiritual people for a long time. The reason for their aversion is the hypocrisy of theists who have been secretly doing sins while pretending to be righteous externally. These atheists are able to identify such hypocrisy and they react emotionally. Unfortunately, their emotion is misguided since they blame God, holding Him responsible for the hypocrisy of the theists. They should blame the sinful theists and not God. The atheists think that if the concept of God itself is removed, the hypocrisy based on God will be eliminated from its root. This conclusion of the atheists is quite foolish. Firstly, by removing the concept of God, the quality of hypocrisy is not removed. Secondly, the problem of sin increases even more since the public loses all fear and starts committing all types of sin fearlessly. I agree that theists are committing sins in the name of God. If the concept of God is eradicated, let us say that the sins done in the name of God might stop. But, apart from the sins committed in the name of God, what about all the other types of sins committed by people in the world? Will they stop too? Not at all! In fact, the theists of today, upon giving up their faith in God, will commit a hundred times more sins in the world. They will not even fear the various controlling agencies like the police and courts since they would have already tilted them in their own favor through corruption and influence. They would have lost all fear of punishment. Luckily, the theists of today, are greatly controlled by the concept of existence of God. Even though they commit some sins, they are afraid of committing more sins because they believe that God is omniscient and omnipotent. They know that He can punish sinners, even if they manage to escape the law of the land through crooked ways. The omniscient and omnipotent God shows us the evidence of His punishment of sinners in this world itself. Souls are punished for the intense sins committed by them, even while they are alive. Similarly, intensely good actions also yield rewards in this world, while the person is alive. Does Worship Cancel Sin? There is one concept propagated by priests, which is certainly wrong. Priests claim that sin can be cancelled by worshiping God. This is not true. The reason why the priest promotes this false concept, is to make money. The theistic sinner, who is afraid of divine punishment and is eager to find a way to escape from it, gets carried away by this concept. The priest demands money from the theistic sinner in order to perform some ritual-worship. It is basically a form of fraud. We must indeed criticize such priests and eliminate such wrong concepts from society through the propagation of true spiritual knowledge. But the atheist’s insistence on demolishing the very concept of God, in order to solve the problem, is very foolish. If your house is infested with rats, do you find a way to drive away the rats or do you burn down your entire house? In the present context, atheists want you to burn down your entire house in order to permanently eliminate the problem. Let us say, you have a toothache. A dentist says that he can free you of the toothache, once and for all, by removing all your teeth! Would you go to such a dentist? Emotion always kills a person’s intelligence and this is the case of the atheist. Eliminating all the sins committed in the name of God by rejecting the very concept of God is indeed burning down your house to get rid of rats! The Hypocricy of Atheistic Morality The atheist says that sin can be controlled even without the concept of God through moral education or ethics education. But tell Me, will anybody listen to you if you simply instruct people to not commit sin because sin is bad and not committing sin is good? It will simply not work! That is why moral science classes are removed from education. They are simply a waste of time! Moral education must be combined with the spiritual knowledge of God. Then alone can the desired goal be achieved. Atheistic moral education is bound to fail. The people to whom you are preaching your atheistic morality will immediately point out to you that following morality will result in some materialistic loss to them. They will ask you if there is any harm in committing sin if it gives some material benefits. You will say that they must fear the punishment given by the police and the law. But, they will tell you that they already have found crooked ways involving bribery, influence and force to escape the punishment. You will say that those techniques are not good and ethical. But they will not care at all for your ethics. They will say, “How does it matter if the techniques are good or bad? If they help me in getting materialistic benefits and enjoyment in this world, without facing any punishment from the law, they are good for me!” What can you say to them? Becoming an atheist is nothing but getting a free licence to commit any sin, whenever one gets the chance and whenever one can escape from the law. If you say that you will remain ethical and not commit any sin, even without accepting the existence of God, it is the biggest hypocrisy! If there is indeed such an atheist, God will congratulate him and declare him to be a far far better soul than the sinful theist. God’s maximum expectation from any soul in this world is for the soul to avoid sin. He never promotes devotion, asking souls to worship Him, since the path of devotion was discovered by devotees. God Exists Atheists need not pretend to be broadminded in allowing the concept of God just for its practical value in controlling sin, even though they do not believe it to be true. The concept of the existence of God is absolutely true. Hence, there is no need to create any concept merely for its practical utility in solving the problem of sin in the world. The concept of the existence of God is a million percent true! The atheist has to defend his position against miracles, which are practically experienced. God-in-human-form performs unimaginable events in the world, called miracles. They provide direct evidence of the existence of the unimaginable domain, which itself is God. But the atheist blindly dismisses even genuine miracles as magic tricks. Certainly, there are clever people who use magic tricks to cheat the innocent public into thinking that they are performing miracles. But the problem is that atheists consider all miracles as magic tricks. Shri Satya Sai Baba, the recent Human Incarnation, invited atheists and scientists to observe and disprove His miracles, showing them to be magic tricks, if they could. Several atheistic scientists became His disciples, after observing His miracles for a long time. If the atheist is a true scientist, he or she will have an open mind to study and accept the truth. Atheists without a scientific attitude are incapable of such a transformation. They will always remain adamant, adamant and adamant! Science studies any phenomenon without any prejudice and, at the end of the study, it accepts whatever conclusion follows. Atheism starts with a pre-determined adamant conclusion and using twisted logic, arrives at the same conclusion, at the end of the study! There is nothing you can do with such adamant atheists except saluting to them, falling at their lotus feet! God allows them to exist in this world since they are useful as examiners for testing the strength of devotees’ faith and devotion.

MANAGEMENT OF DEEDS OF SOULS BY GOD God acts as Father as well as the teacher (Guru) in the case of any soul. Since God created the soul, He is the Father. But at the same time He is the teacher who trains every soul to come up in the spiritual path. Generally in the world the father is different since teacher is separate. But here in the case of any soul the real Father and the real teacher is only one and that is God. Therefore, God is always kind as Father and is strict and harsh as teacher. But the harshness of the teacher is apparent only and in reality the harshness is kindness only. Hence, basically God is always kind. God appears harsh as the teacher and appears kind as Father. Since, the teacher is basically kind even in his harsh attitude also, God is always kind in reality or in the basic sense. The souls have done continuous sins and continuous good deeds and if the results are to be given based on the same sequence and span of time, there will be continuous punishments for long time and continuous happiness for another span of long time. Then it will be summer for one year and winter for one year. But the kindest God has re-arranged our results in such manner so that our human life is made with alternative good and bad results so that there will be summer for two months and winter for two months so that the two years are made with alternative couple of months of summer and winter. Neither summer nor winter bores with continuity and both summer and winter with the span of one year each gets exhausted. The punishments are used to remove the ignorance and happiness is given as an interval between punishments. The punishments are also selected in such a way so that their intensity is suitable to the frequency of requirement for the transformation in the life again and again. This means that a particular soul requires a particular punishment of a specified intensity suitable to the degree of ignorance of the soul and based on the same, the duration of the punishment also varies from one soul to the other. According to the requirement, a suitable portion from the result of the sin is cut like a piece from a large cake. The size of the piece depends on the requirement of the nature of the soul. The sizes of the pieces of the salt (bad result) and sweet (Good result) cakes depend upon the duration of treatment and interval required by the nature of the soul. The salt cake is a medicine for the ignorance and the sweet cake is the food during the treatment for the patient-soul. The left over cakes are used for the external hell and heaven in the upper world. Whatever may be the place (hell or heaven or earth), the punishments are given for the treatment of ignorance only. In the earth the punishments are used as medicines but in the hell the punishments are used as the final surgery for removing the ignorance. In any case only the kindness of God is always reflected. Thus, God can be seen as Father or Teacher or Doctor giving medicines or surgeon doing operation and in all angles only the kindness is reflected always. He is always working constantly to uplift every soul. God works as Teacher, Doctor and Surgeon and at the same time the God with an attitude of the Father also observes the possible limit up to which the soul can withstand the treatment. Once the limit is reached, God will regain the attitude of Father withdrawing Himself from the attitude of Teacher or Doctor or Surgeon and as a Father He starts giving the food of happiness for some time. Remember that He is using the bad and good results of the deeds of the soul only in every action to uplift the soul. The deeds are done by the soul in a free atmosphere and God has no trace of interference and the same time all this treatment and food arranged alternatively makes the life cycle quite interesting to the soul without boring since continuity of anything is absent. Otherwise the soul would have got bored and the Samskara (strong feeling) of boring should have followed the soul and the soul must have developed repulsion to this world as soon as it is born in this world. God arranges the results of your deeds in your life cycle The results of sin are not only serving the purpose of alternative intervals in the continuous happiness but also serve as the cane for guiding the soul in the proper spiritual path. Due to happiness the soul becomes lazy and proud with ego and such continuous laziness and ego will ruin the soul. Therefore, the results of sin are required immediately to bring normalcy to the soul. After some time these punishments bring down the soul to the subnormal state and now good results are required to bring the soul up to the normal level. It is just like balancing the horse with a double chain controlling it from both sides or it is just like balancing the patient with the weakness caused by antibiotic medicines and strength caused by nutritious food alternatively. The treatment is very critical and balanced and is highly specific for each soul. Actually, the devotee need not ask God for anything. God is not only omnipotent, but also omniscient. He knows every problem of His real devotee. He is the Creator of problems (Vighnakartaa) and also the solution of problems (Vighnahartaa). Problems are created by God to enhance the speed of your devotion like the culvert increasing the speed of the flow of water in a canal. Due to increased intensity of devotion, God solves the problem also. Once the water crosses over the culvert, the falling water runs with high speed and the culvert is already crossed over. The intense speed of devotion to God itself is the solution of any worldly problem. Problems are useful culverts and not opposing enemies. Problem is always your real friend like the culvert. Problems are helping you in your practical spiritual effort like the laboratory instructors in practical classes. The preacher is like the professor explaining the concept in the classroom, which is to be verified practically in the laboratory of your worldly life. You have also asked these questions on the will of God only to throw light on some important point. Analysis of misery in life – the way to look at it A learned soul will not ask for stopping misery because God has already cut the salt cake to the required size and it has to be finished. The dosage of misery selected by God is like the dosage of medicine selected by the doctor who analyzes the disease properly. You should not decide about the use of medicine or its dosage. You are an ignorant patient and you are not aware of your internal structure. The doctor has scanned the internal organs and knows the dosage of the medicine. The doctor knows whether the medicines are to be used or whether the surgery is necessary in the hell. Therefore, you should not pray God to avoid the hell also. How can the patient say that the surgery should be avoided in his case? Even if the soul is thrown in to hell for surgery, the soul should see the kindness of the Doctor-God. Therefore, the soul, surrendered to God will never ask for the removal of misery. It should ask only for the removal of ignorance-illness. The method of treatment is selected by the Satguru-Doctor-God. Often, the patient cries due to the pain caused by the injection of medicine or surgery and prays to stop the injection of medicine or surgery like the ignorant child. The learned patient will not find fault with the doctor and the doctor will not bother about that pain. Kuchela (Sudama) was suffering with severe poverty and he did not pray Krishna to remove his poverty because he was a scholar of scriptures. The Lord also kept silent during his misery since the patient is learned and tolerates the pain of the injection of medicine. If the injection here is denied, the patient certainly needs surgery in the hell. The surgery is far more painful than the injection. Neither the Lord is unkind nor Sudama is ignorant. The father and son are learned doctors and therefore there is no need of the interference of any third party between them. Rukmini, the wife of the Lord being the mother of the souls recommended the case of Sudama to the Lord. The wife of Sudama was also highly emotional because the Lord being the friend of her husband is keeping silent. She was emotional due to the motherly pain on seeing her starving children. Both the women could not understand the truth, which was known both to the Father (Lord) and the son (Sudama). Some scholars ask God to exhaust all the sins by continuous punishments so that they can have continuous bliss. It is just like asking the doctor to give a dozen injections on one day itself. This is also another type of ignorance since the patient wants to take the full dosage of medicines immediately so that illness should disappear on the spot. You must leave every thing to the divine doctor and you should surrender to the doctor who is the best judge of the medicine and its dosage. If all the sins are exhausted, the soul will be bored with continuous happiness and the misery due to boring is generated. In the beginning (Kruta Yuga) there was continuous happiness because God created pure souls only. In course of time the continuous happiness bored them and misery was generated from the continuous happiness itself. Happiness is the mother of misery. The misery produced in the continuous happiness is special because it is generated without any sin. Therefore, God never created misery. Hence, both who like to stop misery and who like to continue the miseries are not wise because the patients are becoming doctors in their own cases. Even a doctor on becoming a patient consults another doctor. In such case the patient who is not a doctor acting as doctor in his own case is really pitiable. www.universal-spirituality[.]org Universal Spirituality for World Peace

There are three stages in the spiritual development of any human being in this world. They are duṣpravṛtti(doing bad deeds), pravṛtti(doing justice), and nivṛtti(complete love and surrender to God). They are related to a person’s fascination (overattachment or Moha) to worldly bonds. The three main worldly bonds of a soul are the bond with money, the bond with one’s life-partner and the bond with one’s child. A limited attachment to these worldly bonds is acceptable as long as it does not cross the boundaries of justice. Excessive attachment to these bonds causes the soul to commit injustice. Duṣpravṛtti is the lowest stage in which the soul is completely affected by the six vices. The six vices are lust, anger, greed, overattachment, ego, and jealousy. Such souls always support injustice and are severely punished by God here as well as after death in hell. They are attached to illegitimate worldly bonds and they often neglect or even cause harm to their legitimate bonds. In other words, they engage in illegitimate relations and illegitimate ways of earning money. Pravṛtti is the middle stage in which the soul possesses good qualities and always supports justice. Such a soul is blessed by God with happiness here and happiness in heaven after death. This soul rejects illegitimate bonds while maintaining a limited attachment to the legitimate bonds. Nivṛtti is the stage in which the soul is completely filled with the real love for God. Such a soul goes beyond justice and injustice. This soul rejects all worldly bonds, both legitimate and illegitimate, and is totally fascinated with having a single bond with God (Ekabhaktirviśiṣyate—Gita). In this stage, all the worldly bonds drop off naturally, as a result of the divine bond to God. There is not the slightest force involved in this detachment from worldly bonds. Nivṛtti means total detachment since all worldly bonds are totally dropped in this stage. If a person leaves his lawful wife due to his attraction for a prostitute, he is on the downward journey from pravṛtti to duṣpravṛtti. If a person leaves his lawful wife due to his attraction for God, he is on the upward journey from pravṛtti to nivṛtti. A soul starting from the lowest stage of duṣpravṛtti must first reach the middle stage of pravṛtti before proceeding to nivṛtti. The first part of the journey, from duṣpravṛtti to pravṛtti, is described in the Rāmāyaṇam and the Mahābhāratam. The second part of the journey, from pravṛtti to nivṛtti, is described in the Bhāgavatam. The Bhagavat Gita speaks about both these parts of the journey in both the upward and downward directions. Hence, it is recognized as the total authority for both ethical knowledge (pravṛtti) as well as spiritual knowledge (nivṛtti). True Nivṛtti Nivṛtti does not mean the dropping of all bonds since the mind cannot remain without any bond. Nivṛtti means the natural dropping off of all worldly bonds due to the formation of a single, extremely strong bond with God. If the mind is forced to not have any bond, it is both unnatural and impossible. A person’s soul is awareness and the thoughts and qualities in the awareness are the mind. The mind naturally seeks objects and develops bonds. Forcing the mind to be without bonds or thoughts is forcing oneself to become inert, like a stone. It is a pity that Advaita philosophers take a lot of effort to attain this unnatural forced state. They try to drop all their worldly bonds, feeling that the world is unreal and illusory. If all the worldly bonds drop off naturally due to the strong bond with God, then that state is correct. But these Advaitins do not have any bond with God because they feel that they are already God. Having a bond with oneself is meaningless! They neither have a bond with God nor do they have a bond with the world. This is a forced state of the mind which they call as the state of Advaita or monism. But unfortunately, it is neither the true state of monism nor can it be sustained for a long time. The Advaita philosopher Totāpuri criticized Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa for His inability to reach this forced state of ‘monism’. Later, one day, Totāpuri developed a severe stomach-ache. It was so unbearable that he even tried to end his life. But even that failed. Then, the universal Divine Mother appeared to him and preached to him the path of devotion to God, which is based on the fundamental dualism between God and the soul. It was the path that Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had followed all along. Hence, in all the three stages of duṣpravṛtti, pravṛtti, and nivṛtti, the soul always remains in a state of dualism with God. It cannot reach the state of God in which this world becomes unreal to the soul. Therefore, nivṛtti does not simply mean the dropping of all bonds. It only means the dropping of all worldly bonds due to the formation of a very strong bond with God, which is based on a fundamental dualism between God and the soul. From the angle of the soul, this fundamental dualism alone is true at all times. Monism is true only from the angle of the absolute God. Overcoming the Six Vices in the Journey Duṣpravṛtti is the result of the attachment to illegitimate sex (kāma), illegitimate anger (krodha) and illegitimate greed (lobha). The three are said to be the three main gates to hell in the Gita. Naturally, pravṛtti means rejecting the above three vices and adopting the opposite good qualities, which are legitimate sex, legitimate anger, and legitimate greed. Overattachment (moha) to illegitimate worldly bonds leads to duṣpravṛtti while limited attachment to legitimate worldly bonds leads to pravṛtti. Excessive attachment even to the legitimate worldly bonds is a danger because it provokes the soul to commit sins. The attachment to legitimate worldly bonds can be reduced by developing attachment to God. The attachment to illegitimate worldly bonds can be completely eliminated with a combination of the fear of hell and the faith in God. Faith in God, the fear of hell and the development of devotion to God together completely reform the soul. The soul then rises from the first stage of duṣpravṛtti, through the middle state of pravṛtti, all the way to the third stage of nivṛtti. The last three vices are illegitimate attachment (moha), ego (mada) and jealousy (mātsarya). They automatically get associated with the first three vices which are illegitimate lust, anger and greed. Moha is the overattachment towards worldly bonds. But the worldly bonds are related to lust and greed. So, overattachment is related to lust and greed. Similarly, one develops pride or ego due to materialistic achievements, which are related to greed. One also develops jealousy (mātsarya) towards fellow humans based on their worldly achievements. So, the last three vices are based on the first three vices. Therefore, only the first three are stressed in the Gita as the three main gates to hell. Avoid bad side of both good and bad deeds Let us examine the six so-called bad qualities or vices and see how each of them has both meritorious and sinful sides. Among them, the first three, are responsible for the majority of sins in the world. They are said to be the three main gates to hell as per the Gita. 1) Lust or sex (kāma😞 The meritorious side of sex is to generate issues which form the next generation. Sex with one’s rightful wife to produce children is perfectly justified (Dharmāviruddhaḥ bhūteṣu kāmo’smi—Gita). Even the intense desire for sex, which causes a person to engage in sex with one’s married partner frequently, is also justified. There are several uncertainties arising from gynaecological and other factors in conceiving a child. The time of the release of the ovum is uncertain, the life of sperm is short and so on. Hence, frequent sex becomes necessary for producing children. Thus, lust, which drives a person to have frequent sex, has a good side. But when a person using his or her freedom, chooses to engage in sex with an unlawful partner, in violation of God’s laws of worldly justice, the sex becomes sinful. It is this sinful side of the sin alone which is to be given up. An ordinary human being on the path of pravṛtti should not blindly give up sex completely without recognizing this internal sub-classification of the good and bad sides to each quality. A very few exceptional souls of the nivṛtti path, like Śaṅkara, Ramakrishna etc., left sex completely. But they did not leave it by any forced effort. It was a natural consequence of their extreme attachment to God. Such exceptional cases are out of the scope of pravṛtti or karmādhikāra. Karmādhikāra means the eligibility to do worldly work. People who follow the rules of justice given by God are said to be eligible to perform worldly work, which is the path of pravṛtti. But the eligibility of these exceptional cases, who are the stars of the nivṛtti path, far exceeds karmādhikāra. 2) Violence or anger (krodha😞 The originally-created good side of anger or violence is that teachers or parents can show anger towards their students or children, whenever they go on the wrong path. With this quality, teachers and parents can bring their students or children back to the right path in pravṛtti. An Incarnation of God like Krishna killing a devilish soul is the good side of violence (Vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām—Gita). Even a court putting a criminal to death is the good side of violence. However, an individual should not take the law into his own hands. Even God Rama, the embodiment of justice and peace, is described in the Rāmāyaṇam as “Sthānakrodhaḥ prahartā ca,” which means that He showed anger and even killed in the appropriate situation. The sinful side of anger and violence is getting angry with good people and hurting or killing them. 3) Greediness (lobha😞 Greed causes a person to not share his wealth with others. The original good side of greed is that a person does not donate his precious wealth to undeserving receivers but donates it to only to deserving receivers. The sinful side of greed is donating to undeserving receivers and not donating to deserving receivers. Unless you save money by avoiding undeserved donations, you cannot make well-deserved donations since most people have limited financial resources. Very few people are rich. Even if you are rich, the sinful side of greediness must be avoided and its meritorious side must be practiced. In the Mahābhāratam it is clearly told that both donating to the undeserving and not donating to the deserving are sins. The fourth, fifth and sixth vices namely moha, mada and mātsarya, also have both good and bad sides. As long as these three are within limits, they are not as dangerous, and they do not yield punishments in hell. But if they cross their boundaries and lead to sinful deeds, they become punishable. 1) Fascination (moha😞 Fascination to one’s family is the good side of fascination in pravṛtti. Fascination or moha towards God is even better in pravṛtti, and of course, it is essential in nivṛtti. But moha in unlawful relationships is sin in pravṛtti. Also, having fascination only for the worldly bonds of child, spouse and wealth, without having any bond with God, is the bad side of fascination in both nivṛtti and pravṛtti. Having a fascination only for the worldly bonds is not a punishable sin by itself. It is bad because it stops spiritual progress. But an extreme moha for the worldly bonds without any moha for God may lead the soul to commit punishable sins in pravṛtti. So, on the whole, moha for God is the good side of moha and moha for the worldly bonds is the bad side. 5) Pride (mada😞 The good side of mada is having self-confidence and the bad side is to have an ego. Limited pride is self-confidence. It is like the normal body temperature. If the pride grows beyond limits, it becomes ego, which is like a fever. If confidence drops down below a certain limit it is like an abnormally low body temperature, which is also dangerous. Low self-confidence makes the person afraid of even doing normal activities. In nivṛtti, a devotee can be proud of being a disciple of God Datta. But this pride should not take the negative direction of looking down upon other forms of God Datta. This is the bad side of pride which results from the ignorance of the spiritual knowledge preached by God Datta. 6) Jealousy (mātsarya😞 The good side of jealousy is to develop competition with people, who are better than us. It drives us to make efforts to reach their level or even surpass them and become the best. It is said that envy brings growth in knowledge, “Spardhayā vardhate vidyā”. The bad side of jealousy is pulling down those who are better than us, by false blame in order to become equal with them or suppressing others and pushing them below our own level in order to become better than them. In the cases of ego and jealousy, there is an additional danger. When both are directed to the wrong side in the case of the contemporary Human Incarnation of God, they lead to repulsion from the Incarnation. After passing into the energetic world, the soul also feels repulsion from the Energetic Incarnation. Owing to the repulsion from the Human Incarnation here on earth and the energetic Incarnation in the upper-world, the soul misses the chance to attain God here as well as there. So, avoiding ego and jealousy towards the Incarnation is very important in nivṛtti. Just as the so-called bad qualities have meritorious and sinful sides, the so-called good qualities also have both sides. Worshipping God is generally a good quality. The good side of this quality is worshipping God out of true love without aspiring for any fruit in return from Him. The bad side of this quality is worshipping God due to artificial love shown for Him. In such a case, the person’s real love is for the fruit that he aspires from God. Serving society is a good quality, which also has both good and bad sides. A politician doing social service to impress the public for the sake of getting votes is bad. His actual intention is to win the election, secure a powerful position and earn sinful money. The social service done by Mahatmā Gandhi, Mother Theresa etc., with the goal of genuinely helping needy souls, in the name of God, is the good side of social service. In ancient times, yajña was also a form of social service. During the yajña, hungry people were fed, and spiritual discussions and prayers to God were conducted. This is the good side of the yajña. The bad side of yajña is to do the same yajña for achieving heavenly pleasures after death or achieving worldly pleasures in this life, without developing any spiritual knowledge or devotion to God. During the time of Śaṅkara, the Pūrva Mīmāṁsā philosophy had turned to this bad side of yajña, and as a result, it was condemned by Śaṅkara. www.universal-spirituality.org Universal Spirituality for World Peace

You must not kill any living being for the sake of your food or for offering to God (applicable for all religions and all people including atheists) Instead of killing a goat he or she can donate that money to very poor widows, children who cannot work, aged people so that they will utilize the money properly like buying medicine and basic food(not non-veg food) etc. The killing is the greatest sin You must not kill any living being for the sake of your food. God has given enough vegetable food that contains all the ingredients present in the non-vegetarian food. After all, the source of ingredients of any flesh is only vegetable kingdom only. Eating the non-vegetarian food is not a sin because same ingredients exist in both vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods. But, you have to kill a living being for the sake of non-vegetarian food. The killing is the greatest sin. You may argue that you have not killed the living being directly. Such argument cannot stand. Since you are eating the non-vegetarian food, the living being is killed. You are responsible for its killing. Therefore, you are the principle shareholder of the sin. There is nothing wrong if you eat a living being after its natural death. In Hinduism, there is a sect of people called ‘Kapalikas’, who eat the dead living beings. Therefore, they do not acquire sin. The tsunami is always due to anger of God since you are killing the living beings present in water for food. The earthquakes are due to killing of living beings that exist on the earth. God in the form of Buddha and Mahavir preached the non-violence and severely opposed the killing of living beings. God in some other human forms might have followed the practice of non-vegetarian food in order to join with non-vegetarian people so that, certain other higher aspects to be preached might have been taken into consideration. That does not mean that God has encouraged the killing of living beings through non-vegetarian food. He might have kept silent on this issue in order to give importance to other serious issues. God follows the ignorance of the students in order to become friendly with them. To control a running bull, you have to run along with it for some distance before controlling it. All these are the basic concepts of nivrutti, which are the core of pravrutti. By following the ethics of pravrutti, you will avoid God becoming furious with you. Then, through nivrutti, you can please God. On one hand, you are making God furious by not following the ethics of pravrutti and how can you please God through nivrutti simultaneously? NEVER KILL ANIMALS! IT IS A GRAVE SIN My dear disciple! Listen Me. Non-violence is the roof of the justice. The animal nature shall be killed and not the animal! If you succeed in pravrutti, God will drag you in Nivrutti also. [The greatest sin is violence (ahimsaaparamodharmah), which means hurting or killing any good living being. People have misunderstood that animals are to be killed in sacrifice done for God. The Veda says that the animal to be killed is the rigid ignorance and stupidity of the animal-nature and not the actual animal itself (manyuhpashuh - Veda)! The word ‘ajaa’ means goat as well as food grains stored for three years (so that they are not useful for germination) from which the flour is prepared and a paste of it is used to prepare the statue of the animal. Such statue of animal is to be cut as a symbolic act. Without understanding the latter intended sense, people have started killing the goats in sacrifice! Any animal including cow or bird of soft nature should not be killed for the sake of food. Scripture says that a Brahmin should not be killed, but, Ravana (Brahmin) was killed by God. Brahmin means any living being (including human being) that does not harm you even if you harm it (ghaatamnaghaatayetviprah). The deity of justice surrendered to God Datta in the form of a cow. Cow slaughter means slaughter of justice. If justice is slaughtered, the cow is slaughtered and not reverse. Any soft-natured animal including cow or bird or human being should not be slaughtered. Slaughter of justice is the whole and slaughter of Cow is a part of it. This is the essence of the climax of justice. If you are not doing the three sins mentioned in the Gita, God will be very much pleased with you and pushes you in the path of Nivrutti also to make you His nearest and dearest!] Plants only have the mechanical process of respiration but they do not have a nervous system for the generation of awareness. Mechanical respiration itself is called life (prāṇamaya kośa). But it is not the real meaning of life. Real life is found only in animals, which are zoological beings and not in plants, which are botanical beings. The real meaning of life is the awareness generated by the nervous system (manomaya kośa). The awareness is produced in the nervous system as a result of the oxygen supplied by the process of respiration. But the mere supply of oxygen, without a functioning nervous system, cannot be called life. - By Shri Datta Swami www.universal-spirituality.org Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Do not ask any thing from God which is either related to present or future. When you ask some thing in present or some thing in the future, it clearly means that you are reminding Him about the corresponding reaction that is to be immediately implemented in the need. This indirectly means that God is not alert as you are. This is insulting God. Due to such sin the requirement is not answered. If you are asking to protect yourself or somebody else, it indirectly means that He is not aware of the things to be done due to the irresponsibility and this also indicates that He is not as kind as yourself. It means that God has potency to help but not kind enough to render the help. On contrary, it also means that you lack unfortunately the potency. It means if you fortunately have the potency you could have immediately responded and helped. Therefore, when ever you ask for anything it clearly means indirectly that God has some type of defect, which does not exist in your case. When you ask Him to fulfill the desire it looks as if that your desire is constitutionally justified. But God is not positively reacting due to either lack of positive response immediately or due to lack of knowledge of the constitution or due to lack of kindness to help the needy. All these points are very very subtle. But God is the most subtle and therefore, the knowledge of this analysis will certainly restrict you from asking any fulfillment of your desire. Never bring present and future before God. Confine to the past always before God. Look back at your past life. Hundreds of incidents are there where you were helped by God. Even if you dispose some incidents through the incidental probability of success or through the efficiency of your efforts, certainly there are plenty of instances in which the help from God is clearly evident. At least remember those few incidents and express your gratefulness along praise to God for His kind help that was already done. The word Krutajnata means remembering the past help. Kruta means the past help done. Jna means identifying it by analysis. If you confine to praying the Lord and thanking Him always about the past helps from Him, the Lord will be immensely pleased. Then the present and future are spontaneously taken care of by the God. But do not adopt this technique with a mind that you will be helped by God in the present and in the future by following this procedure! You should really follow this path and you should really forget the present and the future. When large number of people came to hear the message from Jesus, they were hungry by the noon. This point was brought to the notice of Jesus. He never asked God to provide food for those hungry people who came to hear God’s word. Had He asked for that, He would have insulted God. God knows His responsibility very well towards the devotees who came there to hear about Him. God has the power to fulfill His responsibility even in the last fraction of second. Had Jesus told God to bless the devotees with food, it clearly means that God is not as kind as Jesus. Jesus never asked for any thing. He came to know that there were four breads. He took them and showed to sky. He thanked God for providing those four pieces of bread. Immediately the present was responded and the four breads became four thousand breads. This application of analysis is limited to Nivrutti only. You should not extend this to Pravrutti. When you are hungry you have to beg the other souls because they are not omniscient to know that you are hungry. Pravrutti and Nivrutti should never be mixed. www.universal-spirituality.org Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Devotees are confused about who is Father , Son and Holy Spirit. Today all their spiritual doubts will be clarified for ever. God comes to this world by entering a deserving devotee existing on this earth called as SON OF GOD to become human incarnation of God. The original God is unimaginable, and invisible. Such God enters an energetic form in the upper world and is called FATHER OF HEAVEN. This Father of heaven enters to a deserving devotee existing on the earth to become SON OF GOD or HUMAN INCARNATION OF GOD. Thus Jesus was such SON OF GOD to whom FATHER OF HEAVEN ENTERED for the mission of divine knowledge propagation in this world. Whoever has seen alive Jesus that time had seen Father of heaven only, this is the only way for human beings here, when any human being meeting present SON OF GOD he had seen the Father of heaven. This was the reason why Jesus told to Philip that when he had seen Jesus he had verily seen Father of heaven only. When the same God enters formless energy it become Holy Spirit. Thus: Unimaginable absolute God = Father of Heaven = Son of God (God-in-Flesh or Human incarnation) = Holy Spirit Let us analyse in detail these divine knowledge. The energetic incarnation in which unimaginable God merged is meant by the word ‘Father’. Son means the human being component selected by Father in which the Father gets merged and such son is called as human incarnation or Son of God. Since the unimaginable God exists in both Father and Son, both are one and the same because anything done by Father and Son must be the same due to the same common unimaginable God. Hence, there is no difference between Father and Son since both are the incarnations of unimaginable God only. Both are like the two hands doing the same work and two legs walking in the same direction. Jesus is the human incarnation like cotton shirt and the divine Father of heaven is the energetic incarnation like silk shirt of the same person called unimaginable God. Jesus says that the Son of God (Himself) will judge the souls and not the Father. The meaning of this statement is that though Father and Son are one and the same, you have to call the mediated unimaginable God by the name of the Son of God only since the Son of God (human incarnation) is relevant to this humanity and not the Father (energetic incarnation), who is relevant to the energetic souls present in the upper world only. When a person staying in the state of Tamilnadu says ‘our chief minister’, he is only referring the chief minister of the state of Tamilanadu only and not the chief minister of Orissa though both are the same chief ministers only. When you are staying in a state, the chief minister of that state is only relevant to you to approach for any grievance and not the chief minister of other state. This statement reveals only the stress of relevance of human incarnation for the humanity. The human being believing the human incarnation is always blessed by the absolute God, who exists in that very human incarnation only and such devotee crosses over from death to life. Here death means the state in which God is forgotten (Ref.: Sanat Sujitiyam of Mahabharata) and life means the state in which God is always remembered. It is crossing over the worldly bonds to reach bond with God. The believer in the human incarnation participates in the propagation of the knowledge of human incarnation and such a divine servant will not be judged in the upper world since his/her file will be kept inactive in cold storage. Other ordinary souls are judged and dispatched to the concerned upper worlds like heaven and hell as per the judicial inquiry of the file of the soul. In a question answer form I am giving the answer 'If Jesus is Almighty God, why did He fear dying and was so stressed that He sweated blood the night before?' Answer Swami replied:- Jesus is a human incarnation of the Father of heaven in whom the unimaginable God is existing in merged state. The human incarnation is a single face resulting by the merge of two components:- 1) The God component and 2) The human being component. When current enters the metallic wire, the properties of wire (like the colour of metal, leanness as wire etc.,) are not at all disturbed. The wire attains the property of current as additional property, which is giving shock when touched.This new property of the current attained by the wire also does not disturb the normal properties of the wire. Jesus, a devoted human being, is selected by God to undergo the suffering of sins of deserving devotees of God. It is the love of God to undergo suffering for the punishments of His beloved devotees standing in climax of devotion. Emmanuel is the word that means God came down to save His people and not to save all the people. The interpretation that God came to save all the people is not correct, but, it is useful to convert everybody into devotee of God through sympathy by saying so as per the Arthavaada (Arthavaada is a lie used to do some good work and such lie is not wrong.). Hence, the soul, called as Jesus, was selected by God for this purpose because of its divine virtues like kindness, patience etc. The soul was also willing to do this work of God and hence, such good soul is selected by God. But, when this good soul is associated with a human body, the soul develops some sort of attachment to the body due to the virtue of friendship. This association became naturally strong in the case of Jesus, in course of a long time of life for more than 30 years. Due to this long association, the soul is superimposed on the body due to excess of love to the body. You can find such superimposition in strong love of a boy and girl since each one feels that he/she is the same as the other partner! This is the nature of human soul even though it is merged with the God, who is non-interfering with the personal qualities of the soul. If you go to the house of your friend and stay for a few days for your personal work in that city, you will mind your work without interfering with discussions between your friend and his wife! Due to this freedom of soul, the association of body imparts tremendous love on the soul to such extent, in which the soul feels that it is the body. By this, the suffering of body is experienced by the soul. The expected suffering of the punishments of the devoted souls by Him was viewed by Jesus as tremendous one. Hence, He suffered a lot to say that He sweated blood. Sweating blood explains the intensity of suffering as a figure speech and need not be taken as reality. The next day suffering is going to be so high that even Jesus prayed to avoid the punishment, if possible. But, He immediately remembered His acceptance already given to God and told God that let the punishment take place since it is the will of God. Even after crucifixion, He cried with thirst based on the human nature and questioned God for leaving Him so. Actually God didn’t leave Him, who is also equally experiencing that suffering being merged with Jesus through the Father of heaven. Due to this homogenous and perfect merge only, we call the human incarnation (God in human form) itself as the ultimate God. In fact, God is appearing through the human form and is the master of the soul as well as the human body. God takes the place of the soul and the soul is degraded to the level (phase) of the body. Hence, the ultimate suffering is experienced by the ultimate God through Father of heaven and Jesus. Even then, the media of unimaginable God (Father of heaven as first energetic body and Jesus as human body) also undergoes suffering in the service of God. Jesus, Father of heaven and the ultimate unimaginable God are three, who underwent the suffering and this is the meaning of the statement of Jesus, who told that He will resurrect the body in three days. This is also the meaning of the word Aatreya in the name Dattaatreya. Aatreya means not three, but, one since al the three merged perfectly to become one. Every human soul tries to become God seeing the status and fame of human incarnation having miraculous powers. If the actual suffering of the human incarnation for the sake of its devotees is realized, people will run away from such monism with fastest speed! Hence, in reality, it is not the fruit of the effort of the soul, but, it is the duty assigned to the servant by God. Once, a devotee came to Shri Satya Sai Baba and asked Him to transfer His state to him. Immediately, Baba agreed and gave His state to the devotee, by keeping His hand on the head of the devotee. Then, the devotee heard thousands of cries asking Baba for help in the difficulties. Even by hearing so many cries, the devotee felt as if his head is breaking into million pieces! The poor devotee doesn’t know the later state in which the devotee becomes God through human incarnation and undergoes the suffering of all those, who cried for help!! Had he known this subsequent fact also, he would have become mad. This is the reason why Paramahamsa said that He would like to be an ant biting the sugar and not to be the sugar itself to be bitten by the devotee-ants! www.universal-spirituality[.]org Universal Spirituality for World Peace

Jesus, the Human Incarnation, said that He will come again. Some people think that He will only come again once and not multiple times! Fantastic! If a relative visits your home for some time and while leaving says that he will come again, does it mean that he will only come again once? When Jesus says “I will come again” it means, He will come again and again in the form of different Human Incarnations, to lift up all devotees. The Incarnation will keep coming again and again untill His work of uplifting devotees is completed. The Gita says that God will come in human form again and again whenever there is a necessity for Him to incarnate (Yadā yadā hi...). Of course, there is a merit even in the misinterpretation that He will come only once. It makes souls take their reformation more seriously. They must urgently get reformed because it is the last-but-one chance to get reformed before the final dissolution of the world. Altogether, these verses indicate that the soul on earth can reach the ultimate divine goal only through the Human Incarnation since the Human Incarnation alone is relevant for humanity.

Selfless fruit of work means, donating hard earned money to God for His mission. God comes to this world in human form in every human generation known as Human incarnation of God ( www.universal-spirituality.org). The Gita says that the sacrifice (donation to God) of the fruit of one’s work(money) is the final step of the spiritual path (karma phala tyāgaḥ, tyāgāt shāntiranantaram). The employee who sacrifices his energy (work) respects the employer who sacrifices his money (the fruit of work) to the employee in return. The employer does not respect the employee as much. A lot of energy, when condensed, becomes a small quantity of matter (E = mc2). Hence, the sacrifice of the fruit of work (money or matter) is greater than the sacrifice of work (energy). We also see in the world that the climax of real love exists only where there is practical sacrifice of the fruit of work. Actually, theoretical love is greater than practical sacrifice because theory is related to awareness and awareness is greater than inert practice. But the practice is the proof of the truth of the theory. God is not in need of your practical sacrifice at all. He tests you for your ability to do practical sacrifice only to prove the reality of your theoretical love. Hence, you must also express theoretical love towards Him while doing practical sacrifice to Him. As told in the Veda, you must be attentive, respectful, full of faith, fearful and shy as you perform the sacrifice. You must always remember that He is not a beggar even though He might look like a beggar. He can take any form to test how real your theoretical devotion is based on your practical sacrifice. The fact is that He is the actual donor of even your energy (work) and the fruit of your work. Swami Vivekananda wept seeing the terrible poverty of India in spite of its excellent spiritual knowledge and its excellent devotion to God. The reason for this situation is that practical devotion is weak in India. In the West, practical devotion is high and so, they are blessed with a lot of material development. The Veda says that God is just a reflection of the devotee (Rūpaṁ rūpaṁ pratirūpo babbūva). When both theory and practice are associated together, they form the complete real devotion. It is like scented gold. It does not matter who the devotee is and which form of God he or she chooses to worship. The relationship between these two is the devotion, which decides the value of the fruit. The initial stage of the relationship between God and the devotee is certainly based on business. But it should result in a real relationship in the course of time. Any initiative is always defective in the beginning, just as a freshly kindled fire gives off a lot of smoke. But after sometime, the smoke disappears and the fire burns brightly. Similarly, the devotee’s attraction to the fruit in a business-like manner is not wrong in the initial stage. It becomes wrong only when that initial stage continues forever. Two partners in a partnership business became life-partners, in the course of time. In the initial stage, both were very careful in calculating their respective shares of the profit in the business. But later on, when they both became life-partners, there is no such calculation. Each of them feel that the total profit is his or her own. As per the need, one extends help to the other. Draupadi tore a piece of her sari and gave it to Krishna as a bandage when His finger was wounded. Krishna only needed that small piece of cloth at that time. When Draupadi was being unclothed in the royal court by the wicked Duśśāsana, Krishna rescued her by giving an infinite number of saris, which was her need. Such is the real bond between a devotee and God.

Should devotees approach a doctor for the cure of their illnesses? You have said that one should approach a doctor for the treatment of one’s illness because medical science is also given to humanity by God alone. God alone has created all medicines. Hence, according to You, taking the medicines prescribed by a doctor is not undivine. Can You please explain this elaborately? Swami replied: Scripture says that science is given to humanity by God alone (Vijñānametat sarvaṃ Janārdanāt—Viṣṇu Sahasranāma Stotram). The Veda also says that God caused medicinal plants to grow from the earth (Pṛthivyā oṣadhayaḥ). What is undivine in this? I have come across some hypocritical devotees saying that they are not taking any medicine for their headache since God will cure them. By such behavior, these hypocrites want to distinguish themselves from ordinary people so that the public will treat them as someone special and respect them. This is not true devotion. It is a cheap method of drawing the innocent public’s attention towards them! Scripture says that your sin will trouble you in the form of illness and that to cure it, you should first use medicine, then worship the planets and finally worship God. (Pūrvajanma kṛtaṃ pāpaṃ, vyādhirūpeṇa bādhate, Tat śāntiḥ auṣadhaiḥ dānaiḥ, Japahoma surārcanaiḥ). These three are sequential steps that one should follow to cure illnesses. The first step is taking some medicine from a doctor. You must have faith in that doctor in order for the medicine to work properly. So, while taking the medicine, the devoted patient says that the doctor is God and that the medicine is the holy water of the Ganges (Śarīre jarjarībhūte, vyādhigrasta kalebare, auṣadhaṃ jāhnavītoyam, Vaidyo Nārāyaṇo Hariḥ). Such a devotee has so much real love and faith in God that God will charge that doctor so that he will give the correct medicine to the devotee. The medicine too, will work effectively by the will of God. Is all this not a part of devotion to God? Similarly, in the second step, when you show your horoscope to an astrologer, the astrologer will be charged by God to calculate the chart correctly, make the correct prediction and suggest the correct remedies, which are capable of removing the problem. Astrological remedies involve the worship of the planets (planet-deities). The planets are only the executive powers of God and they assist God in implementing the constitution written by God in order to govern souls. The power is not different from the possessor of the power. When you worship the power, you are, in effect, worshipping its possessor of the power. If you wish to honor a poet with a garland, do you offer one garland to the poet and another separate garland for his poetic talent? The planet is characterized by its unimaginable power, using which, it catches the sinner at correct place and at the correct time to deliver the punishment. Planets also similarly give the appropriate benefits to souls. These benefits are the good fruits of meritorious actions done by good persons. The Sanskrit word for planet is ‘graha’, which means, ‘that which catches’ (Gṛhṇāti iti grahaḥ). It means that the planet catches the soul, wherever it may be, at the exact time to deliver the good and bad fruits of the soul’s deeds. Hence, the planet is not different from God. The unimaginable power of God itself is reflected through the planet in executing the delivery of the fruits of the soul’s deeds. The planet is like the lens which refracts the light of the sun. The sun is compared to God and its light is compared to God’s unimaginable power. Astrology is called Jyotiḥ Śāstra. Jyotiḥ means light and it refers to the radiant planets. So, astrology or Jyotiḥ Śāstra is the science or knowledge of radiant planets. But spiritual knowledge, which is the knowledge of God, is the root Jyotiḥ Śāstra. This is because, God is called the Paraṃ Jyotiḥ or the ultimate Radiant One. It means that God is the original Light that illumines the nine lights or planets. So, if the problem is not solved by worshipping the planets, then as the last resort, one should worship God to get rid of the problem which is the punishment of one’s sin. This is the third step in curing your illness or solving your problems. If God is willing to help you, you will be cured in the first stage itself. This first stage of curing the illness through medical treatment is the arrangement made by God for the benefit of all souls including atheists. The devotee who wants to establish his separate identity, rejects this first stage of medical treatment and proceeds to the next step to prove that he is a high-level devotee. A devotee arranged the speech of a scholar in his house and invited many devotees to attend the speech. At the entrance of the house, the host placed a large bucket of water so that the devotees could wash their feet before entering the house. All the devotees used that water to wash their feet before entering. When the egotistic scholar arrived, he did not use the water that others were using, to wash his feet. He waited outside, expecting the host to bring water in a separate vessel, especially for him. He did this to distinguish himself from the other devotees! Is he not an egotistic fool? All the water, no matter in which container it is brought, belongs to the host. The entire arrangement for washing the feet of devotees was made by the same host. The case of the hypocritical devotee who rejects medicine and wants God to specially use His miraculous power to cure his headache, is similar to the above egotistic scholar!

Why are miracles shown only to certain blessed devotees and not to others? Miracles are shown to some great blessed devotees for inspiring them for God’s work. What about others, who are also willing to do God’s work? Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! A doctor adopts different treatment methods to cure different patients depending on the specific needs of each patient. He might give oral tablets to a patient who can digest the medicine. He might give an injection to another patient who has a weak digestive system, so that the medicine directly enters his bloodstream. The reason for second patient’s poor digestion might be that he had already been given oral antibiotics, which caused hyperacidity. The first patient should not misunderstand the doctor of being partial to the second patient since the injection given to the second patient will cure his disease faster. The treatment method depends on various aspects of the patient’s condition. God is also called the doctor for curing the disease of worldly fascination (Bhavaroga Vaidya). The patient cannot be the judge of which treatment is to be adopted by the doctor. The doctor alone is the best judge of which treatment should be given to which patient. Jesus told the doubting Thomas that those who believed in God without witnessing any miracles are far more blessed than those who believe in God after witnessing the miraculous power of God. After crucifixion, Jesus reappeared before His disciples and Thomas doubted the Jesus who stood before him. Jesus showed him the wounds on His hands caused by the nails during the crucifixion and told him the above statement. Miracles are meant for the devotees who are in the lowest state of theism as well as for atheists. Devotees believe in God. But they feel uncomfortable in believing that a specific human being is God. Actually, the same God, in whom they believe, has come as that Human Incarnation. These devotees are in a mixed state of belief and doubt. They require the Human Incarnation of God to exhibit a miracle before believing in Him. Miraculous powers are certainly used by God to help real devotees overcome their worldly problems, if He has the hope that they will progress spiritually after getting relief from their worldly stress. But this hope should come from the side of God and not from the side of devotee. God alone knows the past, present and future of any soul (Tānyahaṃ veda sarvāṇi…—Gita). But there is one objection to miracles. Even a demon can perform a miracle because he might have obtained that power from God through long and severe penance. Even certain devilish people get some miraculous powers by worshiping ghosts. Hence, performing miracles cannot be the sole identity-mark of a Human Incarnation. Moreover, miracles can lead devotees on the wrong path. The miracles increase their selfishness and fascination towards the world because many miracles are done by the Incarnation in response to devotees’ ardent prayers to solve their worldly problems. Devotees, thus, use the Incarnation’s miraculous powers for solving their worldly problems, which increases their selfishness and attachment to the world. When one problem is solved, a hundred other problems flare up. It is just like the fire, which is not quenched by pouring ghee (clarified butter) in it, but instead flares up even more. So, miracles have harmful side-effects. The unique identity-mark of the Incarnation is true and excellent spiritual knowledge (Prajñānam Brahma—Veda, Jānītvātmaiva—Gita). No one other than the Human Incarnation of God possesses it. Besides, it does not have harmful side-effects like miracles. Apart from identifying the Human Incarnation, the true and excellent spiritual knowledge has beneficial side-effects. It leads to the spiritual progress of the devotees. It gives the right direction to devotees, decreasing their selfishness and fascination for worldly bonds. It also simultaneously increases their attraction towards God. Krishna showed the miracle of the cosmic vision to Arjuna because Arjuna was in doubt whether Krishna was actually God. Arjuna clearly expressed his doubt to Krishna in the Gita (Kathametat vijānīyām—Gita). Arjuna, by himself, was highly devoted to Krishna. He was the reborn sage Nara and Krishna was the reborn sage Narāyaṇa, who was a Human Incarnation of God. But Arjuna doubted the divinity of Krishna in that birth because he was playing the role of an ordinary human devotee, who believes in God, but disbelieves in the human form of God due to the repulsion between common media. Hence, we have to say that the level of Arjuna’s devotion in the Gita was very low. When the patient is in such a low state, injecting him with the medicine of the biggest miracle such as the cosmic vision becomes inevitable. Let us take the case of Rādhā. She was in the highest state of devotion since she had sacrificed all her worldly bonds for the sake Krishna. Suppose, the same Rādhā blames Krishna by saying “You have shown such a big miracle to the great deserving Arjuna. You never showed such a miracle to me. Perhaps, I am undeserving”. How can we understand this situation? We will be forced to conclude that even though Rādhā is in the highest state of devotion, the poor Rādhā is affected by the divine māyā of Krishna. That is why she is speaking like this due to meaningless jealousy towards Arjuna! The devotees who have not seen Krishna’s miracle of the cosmic vision, can ask Arjuna about his experience of the miracle. They can believe that the miracle really happened because Arjuna is a truthful fellow-devotee. Gaining knowledge in this manner from close well-wishers is considered to be an authority of knowledge (śabda pramāṇam). Is it necessary that you should see everything with your own eyes and only then believe? Suppose your father has travelled to Mumbai city and he tells you all the interesting things about the city, do you not believe him? Do you say to him “I will not believe you unless I see everything with my eyes”. Do you not have even the least faith in your own father? If you cannot believe him, you are just like the mad atheist! The true spiritual knowledge is indeed far far greater than miraculous powers. Several devotees were greatly attracted to the satsaṅga of Shri Paramahamsa. One day, He was crossing the river Ganges by boat for which he paid just two rupees to the boatman. At the same time, a saint, who had acquired miraculous powers from God, crossed the river by walking over the water. After both had crossed the river, the saint proudly told Paramahamsa that he had spent thirty years to attain that miraculous power. Shri Paramahamsa calmly replied that the value of the saint’s thirty-year penance was just two rupees! In contrast with this saint, Śaṅkara, due to His excellent spiritual knowledge, became famous as the World Preacher (Jagadguru) in thirty-two years! Jesus said that one should not test the omniscient and omnipotent God by asking Him to show a miracle as a proof of His divinity. The poor fellow who asks God to prove Himself through miracles, is ignorant. He is an innocent and emotional person, who does not know that miracles are not the real proof of the divinity of God because even demons and evil people who are experts at black magic, can perform miracles. One should test the spiritual knowledge of the preacher to identify whether or not he is God. Shirdi Sai said that you should not test the preacher by asking questions whose answers are well-known to you. Instead, you should ask your genuine doubts in the spiritual knowledge after offering your salutations to the preacher, in full surrender, and after doing some sacrificial service to the preacher. You cannot rely only on miracles for the identification of God since they can also be experienced elsewhere from undivine persons. This is called ativyāpti. Ativyāpti is the defect or error in knowing something because the cause or the indicator (hetu) is also found in some other unintended result (sādhya). For example: Horns are taken as the cause of the identification of a cow (result). But horns are also present in a buffalo. Similarly, if miracles are taken as the cause of the identification of divinity (result), the same cause also exists in the case of a demon, which is another result. In fact, even though Rāma did not perform any miracle, the sages recognized Rāma as God. This is an example of avyāpti. Avyāpti is the error in knowing something when the stated cause or indicator is not found in the anticipated result. Miracles, which were assumed to be the cause of the identification of God, were not found in Rāma, even though He was an Incarnation of God. Another example of avyāpti is as follows: Saying that a white-colored skin is the identifying characteristic (cause) of a cow (result) is an avyāpti. This is because, we know that there are cows with red and black colours also. The white color is not necessary for the animal to be a cow. For accurate identification or authoritative knowledge (pramāṇam), one must carefully analyze and ensure that the identification is free from the errors of both ‘avyāpti’ and ‘ativyāpti’. In the case of miracles as an indicator of divinity, ativyāpti occurs because divinity can be absent, even though miracles are exhibited. Similarly, avyāpti also occurs because divinity can exist, even though no miracle is exhibited. The correct indicator (cause) for identifying the Indian cow is the prominent loosely-hanging skin below the throat, called the dewlap. A prominent dewlap is found in all Indian cows without exception and so, there is no defect of avyāpti. Also, no other animal has such a prominent dewlap like the Indian cow. So, there is no defect of ativyāpti. Thus, the Indian cow (gotvam jātiḥ) can be faultlessly identified by the presence of a prominent dewlap. Can we say that the unimaginable nature is the correct inherent characteristic by which we can unmistakably identify God? If you say so, the question comes as to how the visible-imaginable Krishna could exhibit God’s unimaginable nature. This objection can be resolved by saying that the unimaginable God merged with Krishna and showed the unimaginable nature. Krishna, the visible-imaginable human being-component in the Incarnation, did not exhibit the unimaginable nature. If the unimaginable nature were inherent in all human beings who are visible and imaginable, all human beings would have exhibited it. But it is not so. In the case of Krishna, we say that the unimaginable God merged with Krishna with perfect homogeneity. So, there is perfect monism between the unimaginable God and Krishna. Some may argue that since the unimaginable God is capable of even separating from the selected human being, a perfect monism cannot be accepted. Our response to this argument is that whether to have perfect monism with the selected human being or not, completely depends on the will of God. In some Human Incarnations like Krishna and some Energtic Incarnations like Datta, the monism is perfect and the unimaginable God never separates from the medium in which He has merged. In other Human or Energetic Incarnations, the merging of God with the medium might have perfect monism as far as the limits of our understanding are concerned. But beyond the limits of our imagination, some dualism may exist between God and those media. Since that dualism is beyond our imagination, from our point of view, the monism between God and the medium is perfect in the case of all Incarnations. If God never separates from the medium in a certain Incarnation, there is certainly perfect monism. But even if God separates from the medium in a particular Incarnation, there is still monism from our point of view since that dualism is beyond the limits of our imagination. This should be our conclusion about the analysis of a Human Incarnation. The Incarnation cannot even be said to be like a eutectic alloy of two metals. The eutectic alloy, after all, remains only as a homogenous mixture of two components at the molecular level. It never becomes a single item with perfect monism. Depending on the will of God, a Human Incarnation may be like a mixture (eutectic alloy) or like a single item with perfect monism. Miracles can sometimes even bring blame to God. Krishna gave life to the son of sage Sāndipani whereas He did not give life to His own nephew, Abhimanyu, who got killed in the war. Subhadrā misunderstood her brother Krishna and blamed Him for not bringing her son, Abhimanyu, back to life, even though Krishna was capable of doing so. Krishna told her that the original unimaginable God present in Him in a merged state, was not willing to do that miracle. He said that He was only a puppet in the hands of the absolute unimaginable God. The actual hidden reason for not bringing Abhimanyu back to life was that Abhimanyu was an incarnation of a demon. So, in His mind, Krishna was actually very happy about the death of Abhimanyu. The omniscient God has a million angles to analyze in a situation, before deciding to perform a miracle or not. We can analyze any situation only from two or three angles, at the maximum. We can never understand the final decision of God and we often misunderstand Him.

Following a religion strictly and simultaneously following the universal spirituality of all world religions are one and the same concept. I illustrate this by an example. You have the required medicine for a specific disease in a single bottle. If you strictly take 4ml of the medicine per day from that single bottle only, your illness is completely cured, since the quality of the medicine is same in all the four bottles. 4ml per day from a single bottle or 1ml per day from four bottles stand to be the same in both quality and quantity. Firm belief and strict discipline in using the medicine must exist whether you take the specific quantity of the same medicine from one bottle or from four bottles. You cannot say that a person strictly following the use of medicine from one bottle only, rejecting other bottles, as blind fool in the sense of curing the illness by using the medicine. When you scold the same medicine in other three bottles, it reflects your foolishness of theoretical ignorance. But, in practical sense, there is no loss if a conservative devotee follows the use of medicine from a single bottle rejecting the other three bottles. Even in the case of a wise man with broad mentality (of universal spirituality) using the same medicine in the same quantity from all the four bottles, the conservative and severe sincerity and firm faith on medicine is the same as that of a conservative blind devotee using the same medicine from a single bottle. As far as the faith on the medicine and the practical usage of specified quantity of medicine is concerned, both universal devotee and conservative devotee are one and the same. Of course, the conservative devotee is not at all blamed in following the use of medicine from a single bottle, but, is blamed for scolding the same medicine in the other three bottles due to ignorance. Instead of scolding, the conservative devotee must be silent about the other bottles and should concentrate on the single bottle about which only he has total faith. You may say that even if the patient scolds other three bottles, the medicine of his selected bottle will not affect in its quality and function. You are perfectly correct, but, you are crossing the limits of simile and applying the concept to the outer restricted area of limits of the simile. Here, the simile is inert medicine and not a living person. This is the limit of the simile and concept is applicable to simile as long as you don’t scold the medicine of other three bottles. The medicine here is compared to God, who is not inert, but has awareness to the extent of infinity based on which we say that God is omniscient. If you praise a person in one dress and scold the same person in other dresses, is he not hurt since he is not like the inert medicine? Since the God in all religions is one and the same, all your praise to God in a specific form of a specific religion goes not only waste, but also, make God to become furious. Hiranyakashipu was a strong devotee of Lord Shiva, but, scolds Lord Vishnu. Both Shiva and Vishnu are different forms or external medium of the same inner unimaginable God. Lord Vishnu appeared as Narasimha and killed the demon. You should note that Lord Shiva did not protect the demon at all! What is the reason? The reason is that Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu are the same one entity wearing the external media or forms called Shiva and Vishnu. This is the concept between two sub-religions called Shaivism and Vaishnavism in the same Hindu religion. This story is one and the same whether it is in micro-level (sub-religions of Hindu religion) or at macro-level (world religions like Hinduism, Christianity, Islam etc.). The first part of the scripture presents the severe discipline and firm faith in the medicine to be followed by every devotee of each religion. In the second part of universal spirituality, the revered Prophet Mohammed warns every devotee of each religion not to scold forms of God of other religions. Allah is one external form represented by Islam religion. Jehovah is another form of God presented by Christianity. Brahman is another form of God presented by Hinduism and so on. God is one and the same present in all the world religions. You are advised to respect and serve your father sincerely. If possible, realize the fathers of all other people also equal to your father and respect and serve them. If it is not possible, respect and serve your father only and not scold and insult others’ fathers. Seeing own defects and merits in others is the path of self-construction. One should always see the defects in himself/herself and in his/her religion and merits in others and other religions so that one can rectify the self and own religion. By this, one will be in the correct path of construction. Today, everybody sees his/her merits only and always defects in others, which is the path of self-destruction comprising ego to self and jealousy to others. My religion is universal religion and hence, I criticised Hinduism also and praised other religions in certain points. You should not misunderstand Me that I am criticising other religions because I am Hindu. I don't belong to any specific religion. I belong to universal religion, which comprises only merits of all religions. I have criticised Hinduism in several points and praised other religions in those points. For example:- I criticised blind recitation of scripture without explaining the meaning in rituals whereas in other religions I appreciate the scripture being read from book and explained by the priests. () ---------------------------------- From the divine message of Shri Datta Swami (Universal Spirituality for World Peace)

What does Jesus mean by 'many rooms' in the Bible, John14:1-4? Shri Anil asked: Given below is an excerpt from the Bible (John 14) for reference. 1 Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. 2 In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going away to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going. Swami replied: Many rooms means many levels of devotion. It means that devotion must be developed step-by-step in the case of ordinary devotees. A blessed devotee, who had attained a high level devotion in the previous birth, may be reborn in this birth and continue from the same high level of devotion in this birth and may rise to higher levels. You cannot compare the high level of devotion attained by that devotee with the ordinary levels of devotion of other devotees. You cannot say to the ordinary devotees that that particular devotee could reach such a high level of devotion in this very birth, whereas they could not reach the same height. It will discourage the ordinary devotees. The reality is that the exceptional devotee who reached that height of devotion, had already reached a very high level in the previous birth. In the present birth, he continued from that same level to progress a little further. Jesus, the Human Incarnation, said that He will come again. Some people think that He will only come again once and not multiple times! Fantastic! If a relative visits your home for some time and while leaving says that he will come again, does it mean that he will only come again once? When Jesus says “I will come again” it means, He will come again and again in the form of different Human Incarnations, to lift up all devotees. The Incarnation will keep coming again and again untill His work of uplifting devotees is completed. The Gita says that God will come in human form again and again whenever there is a necessity for Him to incarnate (Yadā yadā hi...). Of course, there is a merit even in the misinterpretation that He will come only once. It makes souls take their reformation more seriously. They must urgently get reformed because it is the last-but-one chance to get reformed before the final dissolution of the world. Altogether, these verses indicate that the soul on earth can reach the ultimate divine goal only through the Human Incarnation since the Human Incarnation alone is relevant for humanity.

How can God be unimaginable when He can be known through scripture, inference and experience? When God is known from inference and scripture, God cannot be said to be unknowable or unimaginable. It is also said that God is known by experience alone (Anubhvaikavedyaṃ Brahma). Experience is possible only in the case of known or knowable items. In view of this, how can we say that God is unimaginable? Swami replied: You have referred to ‘knowing’ God through inference, scripture or experience. But such ‘knowledge’ of God is only confined to knowing the existence of God. It does not mean knowing the nature of God. We experience the shock given by an electrified wire. With the shock, we have only experienced the existence of electricity and not the nature of electricity. Electricity is a stream of flowing electrons, which we have not experienced. From the shock that we experienced, we can infer that electricity must exist in the wire. We have not inferred the nature of the electricity. The testimony or ‘word’ of reliable persons, in the form of a written book also stands as an authority for knowing the existence of electricity. In the book, those reliable persons state that they too have inferred the existence of electricity by experiencing the shock. Again, they too have not experienced the nature of electricity. In this example, electricity stands for God and the shock is the miraculous knowledge which is experienced. Thus, scripture only expresses whatever can be known through inference. So, in the context of knowing God, there is no difference in the two authorities namely, scripture and inference. The Veda, which is the most ancient and most well-preserved scripture, says that only the existence of God can be experienced through inference (Astītyeva upalabdhavyaḥ). It further says that the one who says that he knows God, does not know anything about God while the one who says that he is unable to know anything about God except His existence, is the knower of God. The latter, at least, has that much correct information about God, that nothing other than His existence can be known (Yasyāmataṃ tasya matam, mataṃ yasya na veda saḥ). The Veda also says that we must remember that God is always unknown and unknowable and that we must forget the idea that God is known or knowable (Avijñātaṃ...). There are several Vedic statements which say that God is beyond words, beyond the mind, beyond intelligence and beyond logic. In short, we can conclude that God is unimaginable (Yato vāco..., Yo buddheḥ..., Naiṣā tarkeṇa..., Na medhayā..., Aśabdaṃ..., Atarkyaḥ...). He is said to be smaller than the smallest and bigger than the biggest simultaneously, which means that He is beyond the concept of volume or space (Aṇoraṇīyān...—Veda). He is the generator of space and hence, He is beyond space since space cannot exist in its generator before its generation. Any entity which is beyond space, must be unimaginable since we cannot even imagine such an entity. All these scriptural statements make it very clear that getting any knowledge of His nature is impossible and that it is only possible to get the knowledge of His existence. Let us consider the example of inferring the existence of the unseen fire on the mountain upon seeing smoke. Observe the following five statements: There must be fire on this mountain (Agnimānayaṃ parvataḥ). This statement is the final inference, which depends on the following statements. The reason is that I can see smoke rising from the mountain (Dhūmatvāt). This is the observation of smoke, which is the effect. Wherever one sees smoke, there must be fire. This statement is a generalization (Yatra yatra dhumaḥ tatra tatra vahniḥ iti vyāptiḥ). I have observed the link between smoke and fire in the kitchen (Yathā mahānase). The above generalization is based on this observation. Here, both the cause (fire) and the effect (smoke) are observed together. Fog looks like smoke but is not caused by fire. This is a case where the generalization given by Statement 3 fails (Bāṣpāmbudhūme avyāptiḥ). This example of inferring the existence of fire upon observing smoke is being compared to inferring God upon observing a miracle. In an inference, the unseen cause is inferred upon observing the effect (Liṅga parāmarśo anumānam). Here, it is important to note that, as per the fourth statement, it was possible to perceive fire, which is the cause. But in the case of God, it is impossible to perceive Him. When we perceive a miracle, which is an unimaginable event, we infer the existence of its unimaginable Cause (God). Here too, only the existence of the unimaginable Cause is known and not the nature of the Cause. If you say that the knowledge of the existence of the unimaginable nature itself is the knowledge of the nature of the unimaginable Cause, it is meaningless. Nothing of the nature of that Cause is even imagined by you since it is unimaginable. The existence of the cause of an unimaginable action can be inferred. But the nature of that Cause must also be unimaginable. An imaginable event is caused by an imaginable cause whereas an unimaginable event must be caused by an unimaginable Cause alone. Thus, analyzing the inference-authority from various angles, we conclude that only the existence of the unimaginable God can be known and not His nature. Opponent: You mentioned above that an unimaginable source is inferred to be the cause of an unimaginable effect while an imaginable source is inferred to be the cause of an imaginable effect. The world we see around us is knowable or, at least, imaginable. Based on the above logic, the cause or creator of this imaginable world (effect) must be an imaginable item. In other words, God must be imaginable. Swami: If your logic is to be accepted, the imaginable soul should be able to create at least an imaginable atom, if not the whole imaginable world. The imaginable pot-maker does produce the imaginable pot, but he creates it using the already-existing clay material and the rotating potter’s wheel, which is a tool. God-in-human form can miraculously create the same imaginable pot without either the clay or the wheel! This is the difference between an ordinary soul and the Human Incarnation of God. The Incarnation’s creation of the pot is unimaginable and the God present in the Incarnation is also unimaginable. The imaginable human form in the Incarnation is not the creator of the pot, which is created in this unimaginable way. A human being, whether it is an ordinary human being or the human being-component in an Incarnation, can only make the imaginable pot in the usual imaginable way using pre-existing clay and the potter’s wheel. But before the creation of the world, no part of the world existed. Hence, it is obvious that the world must have been created in an unimaginable way alone and not in an imaginable way. Therefore, the Source of the unimaginable miracle as well as the Creator of this imaginable world is one and the same unimaginable God. The imaginable inert energy is not that unimaginable Creator who created this imaginable world in an unimaginable way. The energy is inert. It is not intelligent to be able to design and plan this wonderful world. From the angle of planning and designing, we say that the unimaginable Creator who produced this imaginable world in an unimaginable way, is Unimaginable Awareness. Unimaginable Awareness does not mean the imaginable awareness that is produced in the course of the creation of the world. The awareness produced in the course of the evolution of the world is not unimaginable. It is completely imaginable. It is produced from the imaginable food, which, in turn, comes from imaginable plants (Oṣadhībhyo annaṃ annāt puruṣaḥ—Veda). This imaginable awareness is nothing but the imaginable inert energy functioning in a working nervous system. It is a work-form of the energy. The ‘work’, in this case, is the work of transmitting information from the senses to the brain. The inert energy is the essential ‘material’ that constitutes awareness. When both the ‘material’ which constitutes this awareness and its work, which is the process of knowing, are known, the awareness is altogether imaginable. But the energy gets converted into awareness only in a physical nervous system and not anywhere else. So, the pre-existence of both matter and energy are essential for the production of the imaginable awareness. Due to absence of both energy and matter before the creation of this world, we cannot have any knowledge at all about the ‘material’ which constitutes the Unimaginable Awareness. Even the process of knowing (work) is unknown in the case of Unimaginable Awareness. The only common point is that both the Unimaginable Awareness and the imaginable awareness are able to know. The final result of being able to know is qualitatively common between the two. But even in that result of being able to know, there is a lot of quantitative difference. The Unimaginable Awareness knows everything whereas the imaginable awareness knows very little. The commonality, which is the quality of knowing, is as thin as a hair, at best. The difference between the two is vast as well as fundamental. Apart from the huge quantitative difference between their abilities to know, the constituent material of one is imaginable whereas that of the other is unimaginable. This means that the imaginable and the unimaginable awarenesses are inherently or fundamentally different. The negligible hairline commonality between the two in that both are able to know, is only an associated quality and not an inherent quality. In terms of the inherent constituent materials of the two, there is not even this hairline-commonality. It is as if each of the two items has a small dust particle associated with them. Those two negligible dust particles are all that the two items have in common, while both items are inherently different. Those negligible dust particles, which they have in common, can never bring even a trace of monism between the two. The Gita says that the original unimaginable God (Parabrahman) is neither existent (Sat) nor non-existent (Asat). This statement is not mutually contradictory (Anādimat parambrahma, na sat tat nāsaducyate). It means that the unimaginable God is not existent in the same way as an imaginable item such as a pot is existent. The reason for the difference is that God is unimaginable whereas the pot is imaginable. God is not existent because, in God, the relative existence does not exist. At the same time, God is also not non-existent because His existence can be inferred through the experience of His miracles and miraculous knowledge. The absolute existence of God negates the idea that God is non-existent. On one hand, the Veda says that God is exisent because of His absolute existence (Sadeva somya...). On the other hand, the Veda also says that God is non-existent because the relative existence does not exist in Him (Asadvā idaṃ...).

WHY ANIMAL BIRTH IS ALLOWED God is loving every soul and is helping every soul in this world. He never hates any soul. The punishment in the hell is also to reduce madness of materialism of the soul. Suppose, one son becomes mad, the father will take him to the doctor and admits him in the mental hospital where shock treatments are given. Can you say that the father is angry with the son? Similarly, the hell is for the last sort of trial to transform the soul. The madness is never cured and the son has to be retained in the hospital only forever. Same is the concept of the permanent hell. These souls cannot be brought into this world because they will bring Chaos in this world, just like the mad son cannot be brought out of the hospital into the society. Some souls are born as birds, animals etc., Here also only the love of God reflects. As a human being the soul was always interested in eating, drinking and sex only. The soul never turned to God. In such case there is no use of the intelligence of the human category, which is meant for analysis of truth. Therefore, the soul is placed in the cycle of animals, which are also happy like the human beings in eating, drinking and sex only. The human being may think that he may loose his beautiful wife and may have to live with a she-buffalo if he is born as he-buffalo. But the point is that when the soul is born as he-buffalo, the she-buffalo is as beautiful as the present ‘Miss world’!. The grass will be as tasty as the sweet dish in the meals today. The soul cannot estimate the happiness of the animal while remaining in the human body. The same happiness is received by the souls in all types of bodies from eating, drinking and sex. What ever he desired, that is given to him by God without any disturbance. In the human life the spiritual knowledge is often disturbing him in achieving the continuous happiness from eating, drinking and sex. Therefore, God favored the soul by such animal-birth and this is not punishing the soul. This means God is helping even His enemies. A father will never harm his issue even if it opposes him. He wants always the happiness of the child continuously. The devoted souls want to be with God and derive the divine bliss constantly. God provides opportunity for such devotees also to make them happy constantly by guiding them in achieving the real and highest devotion to Him. Therefore, you can see the same love of God on a devoted soul staying in His abode as an angel and also on a he-buffalo enjoying with the she-buffalo in a mud pond. Both are continuously happy in their own fields! At last God provided what ever the child desired. Of course He tried to convert the soul in the he-buffalo into an angel. When He failed in all His efforts, He has sanctioned the firm desire of the soul. Therefore, God helped all the souls, whether those loved Him or not. Somebody told that man is an animal with two legs. Science says that man is evolved from animal. The main difference between animal and human being is that animal doesn’t discriminate good from bad. The common points between animal and man are food with drink, sleep, fear and sex (Aahaara Nidraa bhaya maidhunaani). If the human being is limited to these four items only throughout the life, the human being is called as animal with two legs instead of four legs. Such human being is thrown into the lifecycles of animals and birds forever because these only four items are available in animals so that the human soul in the body of animal can fully concentrate on these four items only throughout the life. The liking of the soul is fulfilled by the divine father and this should not be treated as anger of God. The main aim of human life starts with the recognition of God and in fixing the main aim of human life as attainment of the grace of God before this rarest human life ends. The analysis of human faculties and human behavior etc., involves various concepts of mere living of a person in this world. When the spectrum is limited to the worldly life only without touching the divine life, what is the use since the main aim is not touched at all? A student admitted in the college for studies is also admitted in the hostel. The academic life in the college is far better than the hostel life since attaining the degree is the main aim. Of course, absence of all hostel problems gives peace that helps the academic studies. If this peace is not used for the main academic studies and is used to have good health, which is useful in enjoying the luxuries, such peace is useless and solutions for hostel problems are also insignificant. The direction of the worldly life is important in deciding good or bad. www.universal-spirituality[.]org Universal Spirituality for World Peace