Knowledge is like sitting in your house without happiness or worry. Devotion is like travelling to the Lord by bus or train, which gives you happiness only. But service with sacrifice (Karma Yoga) is like travelling by aeroplane to the Lord, which involves full worry and misery only. To reach the Lord, only aeroplane is effective and therefore you hear that a divine aeroplane came down to take a devotee. A bus or train does not come down from heaven. The path is full with thorns. After reaching the goal also, you have to sit on the thorny thrown with thorny crown only. Lord Datta is said to be the ocean of bliss. This means that He is not enjoying the bliss but He makes His devotees to enjoy the bliss as said by Veda (Eshahyeva Anandayati…). The Lord transfers the evil effects of His devotees on to Him and always suffers. By this the devotees are blissful. Therefore, the path and goal are full of misery only and not the bliss.
The spiritual aspirant must always invite troubles and misery in his life, which are the real friends to give the advanced training. But if you analyse carefully, such misery gives you the real eternal bliss. This bliss is eternal because it is associated with misery and is not affected by misery. Thus, the real eternal bliss comes only through the misery in the sacrifice. The bliss that comes in the happiness of selfishness is always temporary. It disappears when the misery attacks it. Therefore, you must try to derive the internal bliss through the misery obtained in the sacrifice. Misery also comes by sins but such misery will not give the eternal bliss. Therefore, you should try to attain the eternal bliss by sacrificing every thing and every body in this world for the sake of the Lord in human form. Lakshmana, Bharatha, Hanuman etc. did the same. Even Jesus says that unless one sacrifices all the bonds and even is prepared to sacrifice the life by carrying his own cross for the sake of the Lord, He is not pleased with such disciple. The bliss rising from misery and associated with misery can never be effected by misery and therefore remains eternal. A person who is grown up by the poison only as the food cannot be effected by the bite of a serpent.
At the Lotus Feet of His Holiness Sri Dattaswami
Anil Antony
www.universal-spirituality.org
Universal Spirituality for World Peace [email protected]
