Whom God

INTRODUCTION

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One who treats friends and enemies the same, who faces in the same manner honor and dishonor, heat and cold, happiness and sorrow, fame and infamy; One who is always free from attachment, always silent and satisfied with anything, without a fixed home, who is fixed in mind and who is devoted to Me, such a person is very dear to Me. 12.20 Those who truly follow this imperishable path of righteousness with great faith, making Me the supreme goal, are very dear to Me. Again Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Such a person, full of devotion is dear to Me— bhaktimān me priyo naraḥ (12.19).’

He is not ready to put down any more rules, which means He is almost ending His instructions. He is almost saying, 'This is the way, if somebody is like this then I love him, that's all. I am not interested in anything else.'

He says, 'One who is neutral towards friends and enemies, who is the same in honor and dishonor, heat and cold, joy and pain, free from attachment to the fruits of action, who remains the same in criticism and praise; who is thoughtful, who is content with whatever he gets, who does not care for any house and is resolute in mind, such a man, full of devotion is very dear to Me.'

A portrait of Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam

Here is a beautiful phrase, ‘One who does not care for any house and who doesn’t bother to build a house for himself, aniketah sthira matir.’

Let me tell you a story:

Illustration of a blue figure with a golden crown

Rāvaṇa lived for one kalpa (many thousands of years). Śrī Vyāsa lived for four kalpas. Rāvaṇa was building Laṅkāpuri, his capital in Śrī Lanka. He got Laṅkāpuri as a gift from Śiva and he was developing it. When Vyāsa came to the city, Rāvaṇa asked him, ’Oh Vyāsa, did you see my palace, and my country? How grand they look.’ Vyāsa replied, ‘Yes, I have seen them.’ Rāvaṇa showed him everything with pride and asked, ‘Why don’t you build a house for yourself?’ Vyāsa smiled and said, ‘My life is just four kalpas. I have no time to waste building houses. After all, I am going to live here for only four kalpas, why should I waste time building houses?’

Rāvaṇa lived for only one kalpa, for which he built such a big house. Śrī Vyāsa whose life was four times as long, thought it was unnecessary to waste part of his life building houses! ‘One who is not concerned about owning a house is full of devotion and he is near to Me, dear to Me.’ Kṛṣṇa concludes this chapter on Bhakti Yoga, Union through Devotion, saying that one who lives in dharma, righteousness is devoted to Him. Dharma is spiritual righteousness. It is not, and has nothing to do with rules and regulations laid down by society and religion. Human tendency is always to break rules. Societal rules seem to restrict one’s freedom of expression and movement.

Understand that you are no
sinner! Divinity resides within us.
Our only sin, the original sin, is
in not recognizing that we are
divine. Therefore we don't need
to strive to attain enlightenment.
We just need to become aware of
our inner divinity.

In this modern age, the path of
dharma, righteousness that Kṛṣṇa
talks about leading to Him, is the
path of meditation. When we
follow meditation, one
automatically gets into the
virtuous circle of conscious
awareness and completion that
takes us to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Meditation is a process of shutting the mind down by completing with all root thought patterns of the mind. In this process of reaching the no-mind state, the ego drops.

The barrier to the realization, that our true nature is divine, disappears. We become who we are. We realize we are complete. We realize we are one with the Divine.

Let us pray to the ultimate energy, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, to make us all experience the truths of Bhakti Yoga, that love is our very life. Let us pray to Him to give us the conscious experience of bhakti, devotional love, and make us experience and radiate eternal bliss, Nityānanda.

GOALS:

Impress upon the
students that the only
real sin is to not
recognize the divinity
within us. We don't
need to strive to attain
enlightenment. We just
need to become aware
of our inner divinity.