There are three points in the spiritual path
NECESSITY OF SPIRITUAL EFFORT
There are three points in the spiritual path. The first point is about yourself. If you know that you are not God and also that God is not in you, the first point is over. You are only on the support of God since you are part and parcel of the creation and the whole creation is supported by God. Again here, the contact of the support also does not exist as in the case of a table supporting an object standing on it. The creation stands just by the will of God. The direct support of the creation is the will, which is a mode of awareness. In this way, you can say that the divine awareness is the support of this universe. By this, you should not think that awareness is an independent support and therefore, awareness itself is God. Here, God mediated with awareness is taken to speak about the creation. You can never even imagine the absolute God. Therefore, you have to start with the mediated God only. The awareness was generated by God and God got associated with it.
You cannot apply the logic of cause and effect in the generation of awareness from God. The reason is that your logic is always limited to an imaginable cause and its imaginable effect like mud and pot. Here, the absolute God is unimaginable and the generated awareness is imaginable. Therefore, you cannot apply the logic between two imaginable items to unimaginable God and imaginable awareness. Hence, the generation of awareness from God is also unimaginable. This generated awareness itself is again quite different from the ordinary awareness that exists in the world. The ordinary awareness is a work form of inert energy that exists in the nervous system. The awareness generated from God is neither work form of inert energy (because the first creation itself was awareness) nor is it the special function of nervous system (since matter was not created, the nervous system did not exist). You cannot say that the divine awareness is unimaginable and hence, itself is God. The background of that awareness is unimaginable and not the awareness itself. This divine awareness is as good as the ordinary awareness in essence. The only difference is that the background of this divine awareness is unimaginable due to the absence of its source (inert energy) and due to absence of the functioning nervous system. This awareness was pervaded by God and becomes the first incarnation. This awareness supports the further created universe.
You need not doubt that the first creation of the God was space or subtle inert energy (Atmana aakashaha..., Tat tejosrujata…). The awareness created by God was essentially the inert energy itself. Therefore, the Vedic statements are not contradictory. The conclusion of all this analysis is that neither you are God nor God is in you and you are also not in touch with God. You are only in touch with the mediated God and not with the absolute God. Therefore, you are in need of the spiritual effort by which you can please God so that you will become a very close soul of His inner circle. When a need comes to take human incarnation in the world, you have every chance to be selected by God for that purpose. In such case, you will be pervaded by God and you will be treated as the mediated God.
You become one with God for all practical purposes during this time. If there is a need of your continuity as God forever as in the case of Lord Krishna, you will be one with God forever. Even after the destruction of your materialized body in this world, a similar energetic body may be created and God may continue in that energetic body forever as in the case of Lord Krishna in Goloka. Thus, you have every chance of getting permanent monism (Advaita) with God. But, remember that you are God since you are treated as God as an electric wire is treated as electricity. This is only one angle of the view of the situation. In another angle, since electricity is always different from the wire, the concept of duality (Dvaita) is a simultaneous angle of perception of the same situation. A compromise between these two angles is Vishishtadvaita, which says that though wire and electricity are two items; both can be treated as one since they are inseparable. Thus, all these three concepts are the simultaneous views of the same reality.
The Most Important Aspect of Practical Effort
The second point is the path to please God so that you will enter His inner circle. This is the most important issue for the practical effort to be taken to achieve the goal. The above three concepts [Advaita, Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita], come into picture, when the goal is achieved. Even then, these three concepts are only the different theoretical views of the same practical truth. The practical truth is that God becomes one with you, when you are selected for His incarnation. Therefore, there is no need of too much debate on these three theoretical angles especially when the goal is not achieved by you. You should not waste your time on the theoretical debates of these three concepts. The most important point about these three concepts is that these three angles are relevant only in the case of a soul charged by God in the context of incarnation. Ignorant people extend this debate of the three concepts to God and ordinary soul.
There is no relevance of these three concepts in the case of an ordinary soul, which separately exists. It is in touch with the supporting mediated God and this is not a special point at all because the entire universe is similarly supported by the mediated God. The case of an ordinary soul is the case of a wire in which electricity never entered. In this case, the electricity is a separate item and the wire is another separate item and there is no possibility of the debate of these three concepts here. In the case of electrified wire only, the debate is that whether the wire can be treated as electricity or the wire and electricity are still separate items even in the case of electrified wire. An ordinary wire, which exists separately without electricity, is not at all the case of any debate.
Pray to God in Your Mother Tongue
The path to please God is to develop devotion to God that finally results in practical service through practical sacrifice. The devotion comes only when your prayer is understood by you. The meaning of your prayer (Artha) creates a feeling (Bhava) in you that leads to devotion (Rasa). Therefore, your prayer consisting of a group of words (Shabda) should generate the meaning in your brain. When you utter the words in Sanskrit without knowing their meanings, the feelings and the final devotion can never be generated. When the devotion is not generated, there is no possibility of practical service to God. Whenever you do some practical service through practical sacrifice to any person you love, the basic reason is love. The same love is called as devotion in the case of God. Love is a word used in the case of ordinary persons and the same love in the case of God is called as devotion (Yaanah preetih...). Therefore, if the prayer is in your mother tongue, you will know the meanings of the words in the prayer spontaneously that generate devotion. In absence of such facility, the driving force for your love and service to God is only your desire for a specific fruit that can be granted by God. You utter the prayer in Sanskrit only due to your desire for the fruit that can be sanctioned by God.
Your love on God is only instrumental and not the goal. You like the fan because it gives cool air. Your love on the fan is only instrumental because the fan is an instrument to give you cool air. If it gives hot air, you will throw away the fan. Sanskrit was mother tongue of the ancient sages and our ancestors were also good scholars in Sanskrit. Therefore, these prayers in Sanskrit could generate devotion in their case. Today, you do not know the Sanskrit language and therefore, the prayer becomes ineffective in generating the devotion in your case. Either you learn Sanskrit to continue the present prayers or you pray in your mother tongue.
God knows every language since He is omniscient. Which prayer in Sanskrit was uttered by Kannappa to get salvation from the Lord? The fortune in Christianity and Islam is that all their prayers were in their mother tongues. This unfortunate situation exists only in Hinduism. Therefore, you should develop your devotion from prayers in your mother tongue so that your present instrumental love on God is transformed into real love to God. You must understand the personality of God that can attract your mind. This attraction to God is called as devotion. To understand the personality of God, you require the knowledge about God that can be communicated to you through your mother tongue or any language like English in which you are proficient. Jnana yoga means understanding the personality of God, which leads to attraction to God and that is bhakti yoga. This bhakti yoga results in practical devotion, which is service to God.
Arrive at the Real Form of God
The third and final point is about the real form of God. No form is God because God is unimaginable (Aroopa vadevahi... Brahma Sutra). The Veda also says the same (Aroopamavyayam…). Due to this point, people escape the practical service, which is expensive. They are prepared to spend their physical and mental energy in their leisure time when there is no possibility of any earning. Instead of wasting the physical and mental energy in the activities, which do not involve in earning in any way, they like to divert these two forms of energy to God by moving around God (Pradakshinam) and by praying to God through prayers so that God may help their earning. Hence, only the point of earning is again involved here also. Thus, the process of earning is continuous without any gap in the case of these people. Their love to God is instrumental only. Even if they spend some money to the works of God, it is done again on the basis of business only. They invest some money for God and aspire for the same money multiplied from God. Thus, the practical service is purely business and in this business, it is immaterial whether God is formless or with form. Since practical service is not possible in the case of formless God, these businessmen choose God with form.
Again for these people, it is immaterial whether God is in the form of a statue or in human form. Their requirement is that the form must have the potency to return their money multiplied. Some people doubt the return of money and hence, spend their physical and mental energy in leisure time only for formless God or with any form. Some people fix themselves in formless God only so that their mind will never bend to the possibility of practical service since the formless God can never be practically served. Some extreme people of this type feel that they are God so that they serve themselves practically. Such people do not donate food to anybody else and feel that they are feeding God while eating the food. Before eating the food, they read the verse of the Gita, which says that the food is given to God (Brahmarpanam...). Some of these people worship statues because a statue can never accept your practical service. They donate food to the statue and eat it as the remains [of food eaten by God] (Prasadam). Everything is leftover since nothing was eaten by the statue and it is a wonder that they call it as remains! All these are various channels of greedy psychologies of human beings, which are projected as sacrifice by their intellectual hypocrisy.
The real form of God is only human incarnation that exists before your eyes, which should not be also a photo or statue of the past human incarnation. The contemporary human incarnation is only the real and direct form, which accepts your practical service without any return. When you offer food to the live human incarnation, it is totally eaten by it and nothing is left over for you! Therefore, the real love to God should be present here, which is not instrumental. This contemporary human incarnation is the only real address of the absolute God since the absolute God exists in its body. The main aim of such living human incarnation is to guide you in the right spiritual path after clearing all your doubts. No other form of God can do this. The statues and photos are only representative models of God (Pratika), whereas the contemporary human incarnation is the direct address of God (Aparoksha). After worshipping the indirect models of God through rituals, which are not expensive, the spiritual aspirant realizes the truth through the preachings of the contemporary human incarnation (Satguru) and takes samnyasa, which is called as renunciation.
In this stage of samnyasa, all the statues are rejected and the aspirant sticks to his Satguru only and this stage is considered to be the highest because the love to God is real without any selfishness. Therefore, the real form of God is the contemporary human incarnation and the real worship of God is serving Him with full devotion attained by the prayers done in your mother tongue. The final goal is to enter the inner circle of God so that one day you will have the chance of becoming the human incarnation. Beware that your aspiration must be limited to become a humble servant of the inner circle of God. You should never aspire for the chance of human incarnation. As long as you aspire to become God, you can never become God. Your aspiration must be only to become a humble servant of God and remain in His close inner circle. Even after becoming the human incarnation, you should not forget yourself. If you forget yourself and feel that you are the absolute God, you will be immediately insulted by God like the human incarnation, Parashurama. You are God for the devotees only and not for yourself.
The Fruit is Linked to Practical Service
The worship of statues by offering food is also good in the beginning stage because it develops the theoretical devotion. But, you should not confine yourself to this theoretical devotion only throughout your life. The school is good for a child. But, as you grow, you should also enter the college and university. You should not remain in the school till your death. The theoretical devotion should lead to practical devotion. You can offer the food to the statue and develop the theoretical devotion continuously but, you should also offer food to the human form of God in course of time. If the human incarnation is not available, you can do practical service to devotees by which God is more pleased. In any case, your theoretical devotion must be transformed into practical devotion, which is the real sacrifice or practical service.
If you have developed the practical service by serving the devotees, the God in human form will certainly approach you one day or the other to receive the practical service from you. If you are confined only to theoretical devotion by serving the statues, God in human form will never approach you because you are not in a stage to do the practical service to Him. Since the theoretical devotion is not real love, God will never come to you since the reality in your devotion is absent. Though the theoretical devotion is unreal, it can help you in generating the practical devotion or service. A mental idea is not practically true but it can generate a practical truth. A false imagination of the tiger in the dream generates the real fear and sweat in the body even after you wake up.
An unreal thing can lead to real result and this point is mentioned in the commentary by Shankara. The mental form of the tiger is also a subtle truth because it consists of the subtle nervous energy. Thus, it is not totally unreal because total unreality can never generate reality. Therefore, the theoretical devotion, which is the form of subtle nervous energy (Mind) is also subtle truth and hence, development of theoretical devotion is also not a waste. But, it should be intensified and should be materialized and this is conversion of energy into matter. The fruit given by God will be in the same phase of your sacrifice. If you confine to theoretical devotion only, the fruit from God is also theoretical. As you praise God, God praises you. As you love God by your mind, God loves you also by mind. If you serve Him practically, the fruit from God will be also practical. The Gita says that the reaction of God will be in the same phase as your action to Him (Ye yathaamaam prapadyante...). Therefore, if you continue all your life in the theoretical devotion only, you are lost because the final fruit for you will be also theoretical.
There are three points in the spiritual path. The first point is about yourself. If you know that you are not God and also that God is not in you, the first point is over. You are only on the support of God since you are part and parcel of the creation and the whole creation is supported by God. Again here, the contact of the support also does not exist as in the case of a table supporting an object standing on it. The creation stands just by the will of God. The direct support of the creation is the will, which is a mode of awareness. In this way, you can say that the divine awareness is the support of this universe. By this, you should not think that awareness is an independent support and therefore, awareness itself is God. Here, God mediated with awareness is taken to speak about the creation. You can never even imagine the absolute God. Therefore, you have to start with the mediated God only. The awareness was generated by God and God got associated with it.
You cannot apply the logic of cause and effect in the generation of awareness from God. The reason is that your logic is always limited to an imaginable cause and its imaginable effect like mud and pot. Here, the absolute God is unimaginable and the generated awareness is imaginable. Therefore, you cannot apply the logic between two imaginable items to unimaginable God and imaginable awareness. Hence, the generation of awareness from God is also unimaginable. This generated awareness itself is again quite different from the ordinary awareness that exists in the world. The ordinary awareness is a work form of inert energy that exists in the nervous system. The awareness generated from God is neither work form of inert energy (because the first creation itself was awareness) nor is it the special function of nervous system (since matter was not created, the nervous system did not exist). You cannot say that the divine awareness is unimaginable and hence, itself is God. The background of that awareness is unimaginable and not the awareness itself. This divine awareness is as good as the ordinary awareness in essence. The only difference is that the background of this divine awareness is unimaginable due to the absence of its source (inert energy) and due to absence of the functioning nervous system. This awareness was pervaded by God and becomes the first incarnation. This awareness supports the further created universe.
You need not doubt that the first creation of the God was space or subtle inert energy (Atmana aakashaha..., Tat tejosrujata…). The awareness created by God was essentially the inert energy itself. Therefore, the Vedic statements are not contradictory. The conclusion of all this analysis is that neither you are God nor God is in you and you are also not in touch with God. You are only in touch with the mediated God and not with the absolute God. Therefore, you are in need of the spiritual effort by which you can please God so that you will become a very close soul of His inner circle. When a need comes to take human incarnation in the world, you have every chance to be selected by God for that purpose. In such case, you will be pervaded by God and you will be treated as the mediated God.
You become one with God for all practical purposes during this time. If there is a need of your continuity as God forever as in the case of Lord Krishna, you will be one with God forever. Even after the destruction of your materialized body in this world, a similar energetic body may be created and God may continue in that energetic body forever as in the case of Lord Krishna in Goloka. Thus, you have every chance of getting permanent monism (Advaita) with God. But, remember that you are God since you are treated as God as an electric wire is treated as electricity. This is only one angle of the view of the situation. In another angle, since electricity is always different from the wire, the concept of duality (Dvaita) is a simultaneous angle of perception of the same situation. A compromise between these two angles is Vishishtadvaita, which says that though wire and electricity are two items; both can be treated as one since they are inseparable. Thus, all these three concepts are the simultaneous views of the same reality.
The Most Important Aspect of Practical Effort
The second point is the path to please God so that you will enter His inner circle. This is the most important issue for the practical effort to be taken to achieve the goal. The above three concepts [Advaita, Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita], come into picture, when the goal is achieved. Even then, these three concepts are only the different theoretical views of the same practical truth. The practical truth is that God becomes one with you, when you are selected for His incarnation. Therefore, there is no need of too much debate on these three theoretical angles especially when the goal is not achieved by you. You should not waste your time on the theoretical debates of these three concepts. The most important point about these three concepts is that these three angles are relevant only in the case of a soul charged by God in the context of incarnation. Ignorant people extend this debate of the three concepts to God and ordinary soul.
There is no relevance of these three concepts in the case of an ordinary soul, which separately exists. It is in touch with the supporting mediated God and this is not a special point at all because the entire universe is similarly supported by the mediated God. The case of an ordinary soul is the case of a wire in which electricity never entered. In this case, the electricity is a separate item and the wire is another separate item and there is no possibility of the debate of these three concepts here. In the case of electrified wire only, the debate is that whether the wire can be treated as electricity or the wire and electricity are still separate items even in the case of electrified wire. An ordinary wire, which exists separately without electricity, is not at all the case of any debate.
Pray to God in Your Mother Tongue
The path to please God is to develop devotion to God that finally results in practical service through practical sacrifice. The devotion comes only when your prayer is understood by you. The meaning of your prayer (Artha) creates a feeling (Bhava) in you that leads to devotion (Rasa). Therefore, your prayer consisting of a group of words (Shabda) should generate the meaning in your brain. When you utter the words in Sanskrit without knowing their meanings, the feelings and the final devotion can never be generated. When the devotion is not generated, there is no possibility of practical service to God. Whenever you do some practical service through practical sacrifice to any person you love, the basic reason is love. The same love is called as devotion in the case of God. Love is a word used in the case of ordinary persons and the same love in the case of God is called as devotion (Yaanah preetih...). Therefore, if the prayer is in your mother tongue, you will know the meanings of the words in the prayer spontaneously that generate devotion. In absence of such facility, the driving force for your love and service to God is only your desire for a specific fruit that can be granted by God. You utter the prayer in Sanskrit only due to your desire for the fruit that can be sanctioned by God.
Your love on God is only instrumental and not the goal. You like the fan because it gives cool air. Your love on the fan is only instrumental because the fan is an instrument to give you cool air. If it gives hot air, you will throw away the fan. Sanskrit was mother tongue of the ancient sages and our ancestors were also good scholars in Sanskrit. Therefore, these prayers in Sanskrit could generate devotion in their case. Today, you do not know the Sanskrit language and therefore, the prayer becomes ineffective in generating the devotion in your case. Either you learn Sanskrit to continue the present prayers or you pray in your mother tongue.
God knows every language since He is omniscient. Which prayer in Sanskrit was uttered by Kannappa to get salvation from the Lord? The fortune in Christianity and Islam is that all their prayers were in their mother tongues. This unfortunate situation exists only in Hinduism. Therefore, you should develop your devotion from prayers in your mother tongue so that your present instrumental love on God is transformed into real love to God. You must understand the personality of God that can attract your mind. This attraction to God is called as devotion. To understand the personality of God, you require the knowledge about God that can be communicated to you through your mother tongue or any language like English in which you are proficient. Jnana yoga means understanding the personality of God, which leads to attraction to God and that is bhakti yoga. This bhakti yoga results in practical devotion, which is service to God.
Arrive at the Real Form of God
The third and final point is about the real form of God. No form is God because God is unimaginable (Aroopa vadevahi... Brahma Sutra). The Veda also says the same (Aroopamavyayam…). Due to this point, people escape the practical service, which is expensive. They are prepared to spend their physical and mental energy in their leisure time when there is no possibility of any earning. Instead of wasting the physical and mental energy in the activities, which do not involve in earning in any way, they like to divert these two forms of energy to God by moving around God (Pradakshinam) and by praying to God through prayers so that God may help their earning. Hence, only the point of earning is again involved here also. Thus, the process of earning is continuous without any gap in the case of these people. Their love to God is instrumental only. Even if they spend some money to the works of God, it is done again on the basis of business only. They invest some money for God and aspire for the same money multiplied from God. Thus, the practical service is purely business and in this business, it is immaterial whether God is formless or with form. Since practical service is not possible in the case of formless God, these businessmen choose God with form.
Again for these people, it is immaterial whether God is in the form of a statue or in human form. Their requirement is that the form must have the potency to return their money multiplied. Some people doubt the return of money and hence, spend their physical and mental energy in leisure time only for formless God or with any form. Some people fix themselves in formless God only so that their mind will never bend to the possibility of practical service since the formless God can never be practically served. Some extreme people of this type feel that they are God so that they serve themselves practically. Such people do not donate food to anybody else and feel that they are feeding God while eating the food. Before eating the food, they read the verse of the Gita, which says that the food is given to God (Brahmarpanam...). Some of these people worship statues because a statue can never accept your practical service. They donate food to the statue and eat it as the remains [of food eaten by God] (Prasadam). Everything is leftover since nothing was eaten by the statue and it is a wonder that they call it as remains! All these are various channels of greedy psychologies of human beings, which are projected as sacrifice by their intellectual hypocrisy.
The real form of God is only human incarnation that exists before your eyes, which should not be also a photo or statue of the past human incarnation. The contemporary human incarnation is only the real and direct form, which accepts your practical service without any return. When you offer food to the live human incarnation, it is totally eaten by it and nothing is left over for you! Therefore, the real love to God should be present here, which is not instrumental. This contemporary human incarnation is the only real address of the absolute God since the absolute God exists in its body. The main aim of such living human incarnation is to guide you in the right spiritual path after clearing all your doubts. No other form of God can do this. The statues and photos are only representative models of God (Pratika), whereas the contemporary human incarnation is the direct address of God (Aparoksha). After worshipping the indirect models of God through rituals, which are not expensive, the spiritual aspirant realizes the truth through the preachings of the contemporary human incarnation (Satguru) and takes samnyasa, which is called as renunciation.
In this stage of samnyasa, all the statues are rejected and the aspirant sticks to his Satguru only and this stage is considered to be the highest because the love to God is real without any selfishness. Therefore, the real form of God is the contemporary human incarnation and the real worship of God is serving Him with full devotion attained by the prayers done in your mother tongue. The final goal is to enter the inner circle of God so that one day you will have the chance of becoming the human incarnation. Beware that your aspiration must be limited to become a humble servant of the inner circle of God. You should never aspire for the chance of human incarnation. As long as you aspire to become God, you can never become God. Your aspiration must be only to become a humble servant of God and remain in His close inner circle. Even after becoming the human incarnation, you should not forget yourself. If you forget yourself and feel that you are the absolute God, you will be immediately insulted by God like the human incarnation, Parashurama. You are God for the devotees only and not for yourself.
The Fruit is Linked to Practical Service
The worship of statues by offering food is also good in the beginning stage because it develops the theoretical devotion. But, you should not confine yourself to this theoretical devotion only throughout your life. The school is good for a child. But, as you grow, you should also enter the college and university. You should not remain in the school till your death. The theoretical devotion should lead to practical devotion. You can offer the food to the statue and develop the theoretical devotion continuously but, you should also offer food to the human form of God in course of time. If the human incarnation is not available, you can do practical service to devotees by which God is more pleased. In any case, your theoretical devotion must be transformed into practical devotion, which is the real sacrifice or practical service.
If you have developed the practical service by serving the devotees, the God in human form will certainly approach you one day or the other to receive the practical service from you. If you are confined only to theoretical devotion by serving the statues, God in human form will never approach you because you are not in a stage to do the practical service to Him. Since the theoretical devotion is not real love, God will never come to you since the reality in your devotion is absent. Though the theoretical devotion is unreal, it can help you in generating the practical devotion or service. A mental idea is not practically true but it can generate a practical truth. A false imagination of the tiger in the dream generates the real fear and sweat in the body even after you wake up.
An unreal thing can lead to real result and this point is mentioned in the commentary by Shankara. The mental form of the tiger is also a subtle truth because it consists of the subtle nervous energy. Thus, it is not totally unreal because total unreality can never generate reality. Therefore, the theoretical devotion, which is the form of subtle nervous energy (Mind) is also subtle truth and hence, development of theoretical devotion is also not a waste. But, it should be intensified and should be materialized and this is conversion of energy into matter. The fruit given by God will be in the same phase of your sacrifice. If you confine to theoretical devotion only, the fruit from God is also theoretical. As you praise God, God praises you. As you love God by your mind, God loves you also by mind. If you serve Him practically, the fruit from God will be also practical. The Gita says that the reaction of God will be in the same phase as your action to Him (Ye yathaamaam prapadyante...). Therefore, if you continue all your life in the theoretical devotion only, you are lost because the final fruit for you will be also theoretical.
51-55, M