If we carefully analyze our day to day actions, we should be able to find the answer to the question,

“What do we live for?”

Let’s begin the day. Here is the analysis of some typical actions, which almost all of us perform till the next day.

1. Get up. Why? Because sleeping is no more enjoyable. Because you need to do something, which is more important, which you are sure if not attended to will definitely bring in unpleasant circumstances.

Intention: To seek happiness by obviating less happy situations.

2. Brush Teeth: O God! The same thing every day! You do it to avoid unwelcome consequences of not cleaning teeth.

Intention: To seek happiness by obviating less happy situations.

3. Take Wash: Why? Because you enjoy taking wash or you want to take care of your body which needs cleaning or may be both.

Intention: To seek happiness through taking bath.

Intention: To seek happiness by obviating less happy situations.

4. Go to Work: Why? To take orders from your boss? To deal with stubborn staff? No! You work because you like the working environment or you wish to avoid unacceptable outcome of not working or may be both.

Intention: To seek happiness through work itself.

Intention: To seek happiness by acquiring something, which usually is money, that in turn will help you bring in happiness.

5. Love affairs: Why? When you are alone, it starts boring you. So you try to seek happiness, through love and sex relationships, from others.

Intention: To seek happiness through such relationships.

6. Go to sleep: What? Sleep again? You got up because continuous sleeping could not satisfy you! Your reply is, “Yes! But now I am tired of all activities. I need sleep.”

Intention: To seek happiness through sleep.

You will, thus, discover that each and every action of any living organism is directed to acquiring your own happiness. The actions might be in direct contrast with each other. For example, getting up and going to bed, switching on the music and switching it off and so many others but their aim is still to seek the same happiness through different actions, for happiness fades away when you are engaged in the same activity. Let the activity be any.

To simplify further, an individual remains in certain state of mind till it finds itself comfortable with that state and tries to change the state if the prevailing conditions no more yield any satisfaction to it and if the individual is

forced to continue in the same state, in which it is not comfortable, it faces the situation with some unpleasant feelings like tension, sorrow, grudge, anxiety and so on. Even the disclosure of such unsolicited feelings through expressions and weeping is to bring to notice of the persons around that, “I’m not happy. Could you please change my conditions? Could you please, at least, sympathize with me so that I’ll feel little relieved?” which is thus directed to seek happiness. Even if no one is present near by, the emotional expressions help lighten the grief.

The same is true when an individual is forced to change the condition in which he is still happy and gives many indications that tell us, “I don’t want change. Please let me be where I am.”

There are many synonyms for this feeling of happiness. Some of them are : Satisfaction, Relief, Peace of mind, Thrill, Excitement, Exhilaration, Ecstasy, Enjoyment, Joy.

In short, happiness is that good feeling which is welcome by everyone.

There are few philosophers who claim that there are in all five objectives for which an individual lives -

1. Happiness.

2. Life.

3. Knowledge.

4. Freedom.

5. Power.

These are very easy to understand, in that, life points to the will to live. No one wants to die. Knowledge indicates everyone’s curiosity to know more and more about the environment which he is associated with. Freedom is urge to remain free. No one wants to obey others or to remain captive. Power is desire to rule others. All of us feel that others should listen to us and behave as we wish them to.

You will notice that out of these five objectives, life, knowledge, freedom and power are sought so that the first objective, which is happiness, is fulfilled. Happiness reigns supreme. You are interested in life because you think, “If I live more I can enjoy more. Let me sacrifice the current enjoyment that I’ve access to.” But if you are sure that life will never bring you any happiness in future, you end up your life - commit suicide. Again, if you think it is a heroic deed to get killed for some cause, you opt for death rather than for any compromise. Will to live is to seek happiness through life. We are after knowledge, freedom and power till we do not suffer the loss of delight, loss of excitement in seeking them.

Therefore, no one should have any doubt about, “Everyone is only after his own happiness and not else’s through out all his life, through different activities.”

In order to reason, “Why everyone should seek happiness and not anything else?” you need introduction to classical Indian Philosophy, which states, “God is happiness and happiness is God. Happiness associated with God is Divine Happiness. Two important characteristic of divine happiness are that it is of infinite magnitude and that it never fades. It is eternal.” The philosophy further states, “Every living organism is composed of two sections. One is soul or spirit that is divine in essence; the other one is frame in which soul resides. This frame is made of flesh, bones, bloods and many others. The frame is collectively called as body. Body aims to satisfy soul through all its paraphernalia. It consists of intellect to make decisions, mind to create desires and to experience all sorts of feelings including happiness for soul and five senses - eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, tongue for tasting and for speaking, skin for touching and nose for smelling and inhaling. Because soul is divine in essence, it looks for happiness through mind, for divinity is associated with God, who is nothing but happiness infinite. While God is infinitely big, soul is an extremely small element having all properties similar to that of God. Although soul is similar to God, it is not God himself. It is neither originated from God nor is the constituent of God. It is a separate entity.”

Thus, if some one acquires this divine happiness, one would stop changing his actions, for you try to change any state only if you are convinced that there isn’t any excitement left in present state and there won’t be any happiness coming in even if you further continued in the same state.

Before we proceed, we need to establish immortality of soul and God with logical reasoning. Those who have strong faith in God and soul are really blessed, but those who haven’t can definitely come to certain conclusion with the help of some logic, though it is not possible to prove or disprove something which doesn’t fall within the domain of decision maker. For example, we can not decide the depth of sea with a scale of twelve inches, but we can definitely conclude that sea seems to be deeper that twelve inches. Logic is subject of human intellect and God provides necessary capability to intellect to build logic. It is very similar to construction of computer. Computer, as we all know, can perform many tasks, but can never have any feeling. Feeling is subject of mind while computer cannot have mind. Computers know about anything to the extent that human being empowers it to know. The point, I want to make, is God lies outside the domain of intellect and therefore, no logic could be as befitting as one would expect it to be. Yet we need to make some efforts.

Let’s begin.

To establish two main principles of classical Indian Philosophy, we will -

1. Note the observations and make use of some established scientific facts.

2. Build up logic.

3. Check with eye witnesses.

OBSERVATIONS :

1. There are laws existing in nature - laws that govern movement of object, laws that govern growth and decay, laws that govern creation and destruction, laws of magnetism, laws of gravitation, laws governing many other natural phenomena, laws of chemistry and the like.

2. Other than the objects, which are naturally existing, we need someone to create something artificial. The doer or creator is the one who initiates the creation process and monitors it till the output is obtained. In addition to doer, we need five more essential associates. They are will to create, decision to create, knowledge of the creation process, possession of required raw materials and the action of creation.

3. It seems we can not create anything, which is not existing in some form or other in the nature itself. To be more precise, we can at the most do synthesis of existing materials to form a new one or we can derive many materials from a single source through its decomposition.

4. Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed.

5. Further with interchangeability of mass and energy, we can visualize whatever we come across as the energy in different forms.

6. All of us are governed by desires that are created in our own mind. Each of us can have different desires. Even desires of one person change from time to time.

7. Biology tells us that body of newborn develops through sex relationships.

THE LOGIC:

1. Since laws are existing in the nature, someone must have made them and enforced them into action. Let us consider for example, law of gravitation. It tells that there is a force of attraction between any two objects, which is directly proportional to product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of distance between them. In order to enforce this law it is essential that the object itself should have knowledge, which can be stated as - “Although my distance from object X is more than the distance from object Y, object X has much more mass compared to the object Y and the ratio (m1*m2)/(r*r) tells me that I must approach object X and not object Y.” Apple, in the absence of such knowledge, instead of falling down to earth, would take path to any apple near by and get attached to it and still be in air. It is very well accepted fact in Indian Philosophy, which proclaims, “God acquires place in each and every smallest particle of each and every existing object and imparts knowledge to those particles so that the laws are established.”

Hold on! You would ask, “God is happiness. How come happiness can do all such things?” Well, to clarify this doubt, you may be referred to somewhat similar principle from modern science - the law of conversion of energy and mass. The question, whether the happiness which is something abstract, can assume a concrete form or not, can be compared with conversion of energy into mass. The difference is, energy and mass both can be measured as they do fall within the intellect’s domain. But God being beyond the domain of intellect, the exact process of how it is achieved will never be comprehensible to human intellect. God accomplishes all this through one of his powers, known as Maya. Another important distinction is, “Infinity minus infinity is equal to infinity.” Therefore, God, even after occupying each and every smallest particle, can still have distinct appearance.

2. Since nothing can be created unless six necessary prerequisites are fulfilled, one can argue that creation of universe can not be consummated in their absence. We are quite certain that it is impossible for human beings to create such a vast and complex universe. Let alone the creation, human beings are finding it difficult to understand its existing structure including its exact size. So it could be someone else, who is much more powerful, has created such a neat arrangement with amazing prowess. This must be God and he is expected to be omnipotent.

3, 4 and 5. It is well established fact that everything can be regarded as energy in some form or other owing to the discovery of conversion of energy into mass and the other way around. Along with it, if we consider another principle from thremodynamics, which states that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed, what it comes to is God, Soul and Maya, which are in existence, will remain in existence for time infinite and that they must be in existence since time infinite. The question, whether God and soul can change forms from one form to another, cannot be dealt with human intellect because of their divine character, but whatever forms they are in can never be other than divine. That what happens when soul moves from one body to another. It thus essentially remains divine, but its outward look seems to be changing. In the same way God can also assume various forms keeping his divinity intact.

6, 7. Although biology deals with metamorphosis of newborn, it can only tell us about development of newborn that can be observed and recorded. It cannot tell us, “ How exactly desires are created? What is the mechanism to use physical energy according to one’s desire?” Mind is not same as the brain that we possess. All our inputs, which are so well coordinated, indicate that there must be only one central instrument that receives all inputs, maybe at the same time and scans them for associated feeling. This feeling is then passed on to soul to get judgment whether this is the happiness that soul is looking for. Soul reverts back through intellect, “No, this is not the kind of happiness I am looking for. I need something that is divine, something that is ever lasting.” Mind creates another desire, fulfills it through senses, tries to seek happiness and the cycle continues. Please note if mind were successful in bringing in divine happiness at any moment of past, it would have stopped creating any further desire from that moment onwards. Mind, which is weak, cannot sustain the infinite happiness. Unless mind becomes strong enough to sustain the happiness of infinite magnitude, it can never fetch the divine happiness to soul. The process of cleansing the mind to enable its transformation from weak to strong, from material to divine is known as purification of mind or purification of heart.

Believe it, for your owns sake, that this cycle has no beginning. Since time infinite, intellect, mind and senses are trying to satisfy soul, but without any success! Soul, mind and intellect together form one set. They are inseparable from each other.

EYEWITNESSES

To mention some of them, who have experienced this divine bliss, is not at all a tough job. Here is the partial list:

Nanak, Kabir, Tukaram, Tulsi, Sur, Meera, Jesus, Mohammed.

Thus we have established two main principles of Indian Philosophy which are stated below.

1. God, Soul and Maya have no beginning and they will remain in existence for time infinite.

2. Soul, along with its intellect and mind, travels from birth to birth.

Yes, your question will now be, “What about Darwin’s theory of evolution?”

To consider the theory, let us assume that earth was a firing ball long, long ago. All over the earth there was nothing but fire. Slowly it cooled down. While cooling down, circumstances were so created that first living organism came into existence. With the advent of science, it should not be difficult to simulate conditions of high temperature and high pressure. Why can’t anyone create living organism from inanimate substances by simulating such conditions? The trouble is, no one knows what these conditions are that led to creation of first living being. How far can one believe in a claim, which is not yet well formulated? The fact is, soul, which is a divine entity and an integral and most important part of any living organism, can never be result of any material process. Even the scientific theory of creation of world is doubtful, for we haven’t yet observed any star giving out its parts which started revolving around it to form a solar system like ours. Don’t you think we should be able to notice such happenings in this vast universe somewhere?

Another logic would be that atmospheric conditions are expected to be stabilized at least by the period when reptiles got evolved, for none of the reptiles can survive in drastic conditions. This leads to another inference that the difference between atmospheric conditions in the assumed period of reptiles and that of mammals is not drastic. Therefore, the process of evolution should not come to halt even today. We must notice at least some cases from reptile class, where newborns show gradual change that will turn them into mammals eventually.

I wonder what Darwin’s reaction would have been to following case study.

A person sets out for a world tour. He visits many countries and collects a lot of information about existing mankind. One of his findings is, color of human beings changes gradually from black to white. He therefore concludes white persons could be thought of evolved from black persons or black persons could be thought of evolved from white persons. He also finds that human beings can be arranged according to their heights, say from two feet to seven feet and therefore the conclusion, “Seven feet persons are evolved from two feet persons, because you can see all intermediate stages.” These all are absurd claims. Just arranging something in some order can never be proof of something, which is later in order, is evolved from the earlier one in the order. It may be that all of them are created at the same time.

Further, if hydras evolve from amoebas, then amoebas should not be existing at all, for circumstances compelled amoebas to evolve into hydras and all amoebas were subjected to same circumstances! Thus, according to this theory, we should see only human beings on the earth and no one else. All others should be available as fossil records only!

The theory of organic evolution, proposed by Darwin, is thus most ridiculous one.

Let us get back to our discussion on happiness. The main cause of failure in acquiring satisfaction of soul is that we never contemplated seriously on, “What is happiness? Where shall we look for it?” Let us begin our discussion on this important topic.

The happiness is always of infinite magnitude and it is everlasting. The two important adjectives, which are frequently used to describe this happiness, are Infinite and Eternal. All right! We are after the happiness, which is infinite and eternal. The major hurdle is the query, “Well, it might be true that there exists such kind of happiness, but my argument is, I do experience happiness through senses and it is very hard to take away mind from these pleasures, for materialistic or mayic pleasures are easily accessible.”

Let us dwell upon the mayic happiness for a while.

1. Is there any object, which is liked by all without any exception and with equal degree of excitement in it? It’ll be hard to find such object because each of us has different taste. Some love sweets, some do not. Some enjoy wine, some find it nauseating. Some are fond of music, some find it cacophonic.

We must, therefore, realize that happiness is not there in the object, but it has origin in our own concept. It is evident from the fact that despite the object is same, it has different appeal to different persons for simple reason that every mind perceives the object with its own evaluation. As this evaluation varies from person to person, the same object fetches varied amount of joy to different individuals. To some the same object may not be enjoyable at all. Not only that, few of remaining may have strong dislike for the same object. Thus, the mayic pleasures are conceptual or psychological in origin. Mayic happiness is conceptual happiness. Your own concept about any object brings in happiness to you and it is your stupidity that you think the object has capacity to make you happy and therefore, you must be after that object. Thus, you get completely distracted.

Following illustration elaborates it further. A student, who is non-smoker, comes in contact with friends who smoke. One of them offers him smoking stick. Before deciding on to accept the offer, the non-smoker thinks, “Cigarette smoking could be enjoyable. Let me try.” Thus, prior to smoking, he assumes certain amount of happiness in it. He might have thought that the happiness could be derived from style of smoking or that smoking is considered to be adopted by people having modern thinking or owing to any other viewpoint. While smoking, he receives that happiness which he has conceptualized in smoking and naively thinks, “Smoking is really enjoyable!”

One more is here. There are a husband and a wife. Wife is exceptionally beautiful and has excellent figure. Husband loves his wife in and out. He is sure that his wife is loyal to him. If conditions permit, he wouldn’t want to live without her even for a moment. One day he comes to know that his wife is flirting with one of his friends. He gets disturbed. His love reduces. Another day he receives information that his wife is colluding with her lover to murder him so that both of them can avail of his property and live happily together there after. He feels frustrated. In certain circumstances, he might decide to take revenge by killing her or he might divorce her. Let us assume that he decides to kill her. He pulls his revolver from drawer and aims it at his wife with his finger on the trigger. At this very moment, her lover drops in. To save his darling, he fights with her husband.

The object, which is wife, is still the same as she was earlier. There is no change in her beauty. She is equally charming. Her husband can no more derive any delight through her. Her lover finds her most appealing. Husband’s concept of his wife has taken a drastic turn from the best to the worst. Where lies the happiness? In husband’s concept of his wife! Be ready now for a shocking revelation! Happiness does not lie in beauty. Happiness is not an attribute of beautiful objects, but its origin is in your own concept of beautiful objects that such objects bring you happiness. Similarly, happiness is not an attribute of melodious sound or of delicious taste or of gracious perfumes or of sex or of any other such element. It is the creation of mind itself. Do you agree? You should, if you have logical bend of mind.

2. Is there any object through which you can extract same amount of happiness continuously? Of course not! It only means that no mayic object has capacity to satisfy you completely however coveted the object may have been! In whatever large amounts may it available! The happiness derived through any object gradually diminishes as you continue your association with it. So why not try to seek that happiness which will stay with you forever? You must realize that, “Unless the happiness that lives with you permanently is attained, you can never come to rest. The truth is, your objective has always been to seek such happiness only. You never, never wanted to have the enjoyment that is short-lived. It’s just that because you can not lay your hands on everlasting happiness, you claim you are happy with your lot even though consciously you’re confident that there cannot be any thing like everlasting happiness.”

There is something more to it. Mind will create desires till you are satisfied forever. Well, if the desire that is created is satisfied, you would want to have more of it, for mind develops attachment to those object which fetch you joy. You’ll take all sorts of pain to seek that object, to preserve that object, to protect that object. The more you receive, the more you desire and the more you become restless, because you have to make more efforts to collect more of it. You get more worried. “What if someone steals it from me?” All sorts of tensions and fears are developed. Sometimes you lose sleep at nights. Your search for potential rival is on. The suspect may be just innocent and he may not be interested in your possession at all. Still you believe you must prevent him getting any further, for it would be a risk to not to take preventive measure! If, in course of time, you fail to fulfill your desire, you become upset, you get exasperated, you are nervous. Let us see where you started and where you ended up.

You wanted to be happy. You ended up in worries, tensions, fears and just little bit of illusive happiness. Do you think you are really very smart? On the whole, you are a loser, for unwanted feelings outscore acceptable ones. And what if there exists God? The punishment, in the form of sufferings of hell and in the form of afflictions in subsequent lives, is yet another gain! Where do you stand? You must come out of this vicious circle. The more is the delay, the more are the efforts you will need to make to get out of it. It is extremely transparent that there is no escape till one gets out of the grip of mayic pleasure, which is devil in disguise.

Yet another query is, “One can accept there is no true happiness in this world, but one must accept that world is full of sorrows, miseries and sufferings.”

It is, therefore, necessary to discuss this topic in depth. Consider another illustration. The players in the act are - husband, wife, son, husband’s friend, house-boy and neighbor. All of them have affections to each other. Then comes the news - husband is dead in an accident. Let us note the reactions.

Wife becomes totally nervous. She cannot put up with the news and collapses of fainting. Son starts weeping. Friend feels extremely sad. House-boy looks gloomy. Neighbor does remark that it is very bad news, but continues with his routine work as usual.

Now there is another news - husband is alive! It was a case of mistaken identity. Let us note the reactions again.

Wife gets excited. She again cannot put up with the news and becomes unconscious because of unbearable joy. Son sheds tears of happiness. Friend feels extremely happy. House-boy looks cheerful. Neighbor remarks that it is very good news and continues with his routine work as usual.

The rule then is, “If you are happy in possession of any mayic object, you’ll be unhappy to the equal extent when you lose the possession of that mayic object. The degree of happiness and unhappiness are exactly same.”

Thus, the origin of misery is again in our concept of assuming happiness in mayic objects or persons. Constant thinking on these lines will reveal the hard facts of the life and will create a firm decision - “The world is devoid of happiness or misery and no one, no matter whatever efforts one can make in that direction, can love anyone else till the everlasting happiness is attained.” Once you have acquired eternal and infinite happiness, you can think of making others happy with sharing your happiness with them, for you have infinite reservoir of happiness with you which others are trying to seek, but are not yet successful. Well, let us see love relationships.

You love any person only if you are sure that he or she will bring in happiness to you. Your love for anyone is directly proportional to the amount of happiness that you think you can obtain from the said person, for that matter, even an object. You hate those persons, who you think can damage your interest and your hatred for anyone is directly proportional to the amount of damage that you think the said person or object will bring to you. You are neutral to those persons who you think neither bring in happiness to you nor damage your interest. This is evident from both the earlier examples featuring husband and wife.

With the help of unwavering decision that there is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world, you will succeed in not having any attachment, positive or negative, for any mayic person or object. The reason is attachment stems from conceptualization of happiness in any object and hatred, enmity spring from threat to such conceptualization.

Here are few more brain-teasers on this topic! Creating any desire and fulfilling it is like putting your foot into the mud then washing it by clean water and then thinking, “See how clean is my foot now! It was so dirty few minutes before!” without realizing that you yourself made it dirty by putting it into the mud. Do you need explanation? Well, it is given below.

You are sitting comfortably in your drawing room. You think, “I should enjoy some food delicacies.” You approach a shop nearby. Being Sunday the shop is closed. Your urge is strong. You drive to city. Get into good restaurant. Eat food. Come back to house and again sit comfortably in the drawing room. What is the difference between the initial and the final stages? Nothing! Thus you create desire. Take all sorts of pains to fulfill it. Fulfill it ultimately. And feel satisfied all about it. Hadn’t you created desire, there wouldn’t have been any restlessness. In other words, you create restlessness first and pacify it later on.

There is a man. He is a worker. His earnings are quite sufficient to run his household and to take care of his family. On day he thinks, “I must start business.” Before deciding on business, he needlessly thought that he was unhappy with his current sate of affairs and should look for more money or higher status. Well, he is successful in business and now has four Mercedes cars and a costly apartment. Still he thinks that he needs to diversify into other venture to grow. Again he thinks exactly same, as he thought before starting the business, that he is unhappy with his current sate of affairs and must look for more money or higher status. What is the conclusion? Desires are like black holes. They will never get satisfied completely. Desires will consume every thing, whatever it may be, offered to them and will be ready with other demands. In other words, before acquiring any object or status, you think those objects will make you happy and you will not need anything any further. After acquiring those objects, they do give you pleasure but it is short-lived and later on it becomes a routine work without any excitement which was present when the objects were new. Yet another important conclusion is, “You needlessly think persons at higher level in the society are more happy than persons at lower level in the society. The reason is, the happiness depends on thinking and the line of thinking of persons from every class is same. They derive equal amount of happiness from the objects available to them.”

Let us elaborate it further. A lawyer saves up money every month and eventually buys a car. The lawyer has a servant. Servant too saves up money every month and eventually buys a bike. Lawyer is very happy about his car. Servant is very happy about his bicycle. Lawyer keeps on roaming unnecessarily to his friends to show them his new possession - the car. So does the servant. He too keeps on roaming unnecessarily to his friends to show them his new possession - the bicycle. After few months, Lawyer has a long tiring drive and he, after getting to home, complains, “Driving car through out the day is too tiring!” His servant too has to visit many places in the city and therefore, does a lot of bike riding. He too, after getting home, complains, “Riding bike through out the day is too tiring!” If you tell servant that your employer is equally unhappy, the servant would react, “You should not play jokes on someone’s misery. He is, after all, having car. He has such a glamorous position in the society. How can he be equally unhappy as I am?”

Although the external positions of the lawyer and the servant in the society are quite a distance apart from each other, their internal feelings are exactly same. You, therefore, must get out of the illusions like, “More money, more happiness! Higher status, more happiness! More power, more happiness! ”

The truth is, the enjoyment that any dog derives from eating its food is exactly equal to the enjoyment that a very rich person derives through eating delicacies.

Before you obtain any material object, there are pains in planning and executing that plan. After you obtain the object, there are pains in preserving and protecting the object. If you lose the object, there are pains and only pains.

It is said that the greatest of all is God, but desires stand on top of God. For given chance to them, they will never allow you to get anywhere near God.

Let us check with what makes you to develop friendship with others. It remains that when you are sure you can receive certain amount of happiness from any person, you develop friendship with that person. Well, happiness depends on concepts. Therefore, an interesting finding is you develop friendship with those persons who conceptualize happiness in the similar objects which are of interest to you. To be more critical, you can separate the friendship in two classes. One is friendship at a particular instant and the other is friendship over a period of time. The instantaneous friendship is the liking for any person at that particular instant. The overall friendship is derived from rational thinking of usefulness of a person over a period of time. The instantaneous friendship comes to an end at a particular instant when lines of thinking of two persons do not match. Not only that the friendship ends, but you may develop hatred or dislike for your friend at that particular instant if his or her actions are such that they imply his or her interests to be different from yours. You cannot enjoy friendship with other persons at such moments. What I mean is, at that moment you do not like your friend to be with you because he is not conducive to seeking your happiness. Thus, instantaneous friendship comes to an end although overall friendship can continue.

Since it is impossible for any two persons to think alike through out the life, for that matter even for a day, no two persons can remain friends continuously even for a day. It is common experience that our thoughts change continuously. There are times when you think of God. There are times when you think of high values. There are times when you think of enjoying life. And there are times when you get agitated and act in a way which is not permitted by high values. Indian philosophy describes these four levels of thinking as Divine, Satwik, Rajas and Tamas. Some of the thinking patterns pertaining to these classes are listed below.

1. Divine thinking: You think of God to be almighty, kind and loving. You worship him and offer him prayers. You repent for your past sinful acts and resolve for non-indulgence in such activities in future.

2. Satwik thinking: Your thinking is governed by high ethical values. You get engaged in charity deeds and display altruistic tendencies.

3. Rajas thinking: You desire gratification through legitimate sensual indulgence.

4. Tamas thinking: You plan and execute sinful and criminal acts. You feel lazy or get overpowered by anger and other beastly instincts.

Out of four states Satwik, Rajas and Tamas are propelled by Maya and divine state is propelled by God and his persons - saints. Divine thinking is the best, Tamas is the worst and Satwik is better than Rajas. This is the hierarchy of persons. After knowing the philosophy, you should not be surprised to watch that Godly thinking is placed above all charity and service actions. Godly thinking has capability to relieve a person permanently from all sorts of sufferings without any distinction of any sort, based on religion, nation, caste, creed, financial status, social status and so on. Charity deeds are not capable of relieving beneficiary or benefactor from sufferings of all sorts, for they lack divinity as understood by infinite happiness. Such actions do not help open up your mind towards realization of God, as beneficiary thinks he is receiving material benefit and benefactor thinks he is bestowing material benefit. Therefore, such actions can never bring in eternal and infinite happiness to anyone of them.

So, there are four moods through which person keeps on revolving through out his life- Divine, Satwik, Rajas and Tamas. Yet another factor is surrounding atmosphere. Atmosphere has considerable effect on your thinking. Why there should be difference in thinking of any two persons? The answer is, every individual has passed through innumerable lives and he, in each of his past life, had performed many actions under the influence of many other persons, theories, philosophies. Every action, that is performed, leaves its mark on your mind. This inscription is called as Sanskar in Indian philosophy. The property of such mark is it induces you to get engaged in the same activity because of which the mark is formed. Thinking of every individual is guided by these marks which are inscribed since time infinite. It would mean, if someone is repeatedly engaged in same kind of activity, Sanskar or mark pertaining to that kind activity becomes predominant which can be observed as a personality trait. The variation in predominance of any mood can be called degree of particular Sanskar to show its strength. The higher is the degree, the more is the stubbornness to get engaged activities related to that Sanskar. In other words, the higher is the degree the stronger is the Sanskar. On account of variety of Sanskars every individual thinks differently than others. Which mood will be dominating depends on type of Sanskar active at any moment, its degree and effect of surrounding atmosphere. Changes in active Sanskar are brought about by necessity of acquiring happiness by some means or other.

Let us assume that there is couple. Both of them are governed by rajas mood. Wife’s rajas mood is much stronger than her husband’s. Wife proposes a concert visit and husband promptly agrees to it. Both of them leave house. While going to concert, they come across a bookstall. Since there is enough time to go to concert, they get into bookstall to see the range of books available. They come across a book on God realization. Husband picks it up and scrolls trough it. His Rajas mood, which was not strong enough, gets subdued as a result of divine atmosphere provided by book. Wife is getting restless, for they might miss the concert if her husband continued reading the book in which she has no interest at all. Husband’s mood gets totally changed. He says to his wife, “Is it necessary that we must see the concert today itself? Can we plan it tomorrow after office hours? Because this book seems to be very good, I want to read it in leisure time, for I can grasp better when I am fresh rather than when I am tired, as it usually happens after working hours and some refreshing after office hours is always welcome. Therefore, we will certainly go to concert tomorrow.” Wife gets annoyed at this. Husband is totally out of Rajas mood. He tells his wife, “OK. You proceed to concert. I’ll go home read this book peacefully.” So, wife proceeds to concert and husband gets back to home. Wife returns from the concert after few hours. Both of them try to justify their viewpoint and reach the level of verbal dispute.

The point is friendship is based on support that you think you get for your concept of happiness from other person.

The final conclusion is “No husband loves his wife for wife’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to his own soul. No wife loves her husband for husband’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to her own soul. No father loves his offspring for offspring’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to his own soul. No offspring loves his father for father’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to its own soul. No mother loves her offspring for offspring’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to her own soul. No offspring loves its mother for mother’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to its own soul. No friend loves other friend for other friend’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to his own soul. In short, no one loves anyone else for else’s happiness, but to fetch happiness to one’s own soul.”

The detachment, then, is feeling lack of liking and hatred in this world for any object or any person. Persons and objects will still be there. You will be neutral to them. If they exist or not, it doesn’t bother you at all, for you have no interest in them since you have realized that happiness has never been in any object or person however beautiful, enchanting, entertaining it might have been. It was there in your own thinking that such objects or persons brought you happiness. If this decision is firm, hatred vanishes automatically, for you don’t foresee any threat to incoming happiness since you know that it is not there in the first place.

Following are some examples of detached activities.

You have to attend an interview. You don’t have dress in good condition. So you go to market to buy a dress. There are many shops in the market with various displays of shoes, paintings, furniture and the like. Neither do you get into those shops, nor fight with those shopkeepers on the pretext “I am looking for a dress and how come you are selling shoes?” You just proceed till you come across the shop that displays garments. You are neutral to all other shops. You are detached from these shops.

In any maternity hospital, duty of nurse is to help deliver child. If child is born dead, it doesn’t affect the nurse. She just informs parent, “I’m sorry. Child is born dead.” If child is in good condition, it still doesn’t affect her. She just informs parents, “Congratulations! You have got a son!” But that is not the case with parents. They feel extremely grieved in first instance and very much delighted in the second one. Nurse is working in detached fashion parents are not.

Bank cashier counts currency notes and delivers them to customer. He is detached from those notes. His attachment is with those currency notes, which are there in his pocket.

You will discover that many of your daily actions are performed with detachment. You’ve attachment only for select few in this world. They are mainly your family members and your friends.

It seems to be very easy to reach much coveted stage of detached or neutral behavior. In contrast, if you recognize that everyone has infinite history of his own and that everyone is trying to seek the same happiness and that such happiness is not attainable till one acquires art of detached behavior, you will admit it must be extremely difficult to become neutral.

While attempting to become indifferent to mayic persons and objects, the inscriptions or Sanskars, which are carved onto the mind, try to take you towards the mayic personalities and objects since this is what their behavior is. No one denies that constant thinking on material objects and persons to expose their reality, which makes you realize that everyone is struggling to get its own happiness. And that if someone finds that you can be utilized in acquiring his or her personal happiness, he or she tries to keep cordial relationship with you, will bring in detachment from mayic persons, but only momentarily. In the exactly same way, if you constantly contemplate on the happiness that you get out of material objects of vision, sound, taste, smell and touch to disclose that such happiness is ephemeral. And that you will be forced to be after those objects again and again, without any end. Thereby implying your becoming prey to the wheel that goes round and round generating all sorts of undesirable effects in terms of sufferings, tensions, sorrows, fears, you will develop detachment to material objects too, but again momentarily. The reason is force with which Sanskars will drive you towards your past habits is many times irresistible.

We have so far observed that Sanskars make mind dirty and they must be wiped out to make the slate clean or to make the heart pure. They get stronger when supplied with same type of material to them. Therefore, first step is to exercise control on all sorts of worldly desires and since mind cannot remain quiet even for a fraction of a second, the second step is to divert all of them into the channel of divine realm. We will discuss this topic in depth little later while describing spiritual exercises. Control and diversion together can bring in desired effect. You can see that without control, mind will always be in the material world and you will never be able to divert it. Similarly, if you lack diversion, control will be ineffective because controlled mind will fall back onto material world in search of the happiness.

To start with, any spiritual aspirant must adopt following steps.

1. You must contemplate regularly and again and again on basic objective of each and every living organism, which is nothing but to seek its own happiness. Therefore, stop thinking that someone from mayic arena can be your well-wisher or can be your friend. Repetitive contemplation is necessary because you, in the absence of adequate defense, would find it difficult to cope up with material attractions.

2. You need to understand that whatever happiness you receive from material objects and persons is short-lived, evanescent and will never make you happy forever and therefore, there is no point in accumulating more and more of any of material objects.

3. The more you allow your senses to indulge in their subjects, the more will be the demand of the senses for the same subject. You must adopt the policy of permitting bare minimum contact, which is necessary for subsistence, with mayic objects and mayic persons.

4. The philosophy of overcoming senses with supplying them more and more of their objects is a total foolishness. It is not only foolish to provide for uncontrolled desires, but detrimental as well. If you adopt such philosophy, you will be departing from your objective of seeking eternal happiness; you will end up in added woes, sufferings and in more forceful and unsatisfied desires.

5. You will have to take care of your physical requirement of food, water and air, for you can seek happiness if your body is not distracting you from concentrating on God. Such distractions may be possible if you develop bodily disorders, owing to mal-nourishment of your physique.

6. The world is made available to you not for seeking temporary gratification of your senses through it, but to make use of it to get permanent ecstasy of infinite magnitude. The world is contrivance created for utilization and not for enjoyment.

By now it should be crystal clear that the feelings related to happiness, sorrow, grief etc. are entirely the creation of mind itself and mind plays pivotal role in controlling your outward visible actions. In fact, any physical action is possible only if the decision to that effect is taken by intellect and then passed on to mind for taking necessary action. It attests to one more important principle of Indian philosophy. It states, “Mind is the sole cause of liberating or unleashing the flow of eternal, infinite, divine happiness. And of bondage through short-lived, rubbish, ravenous material happiness which always culminates into sufferings, miseries and puts soul into unending, soul-searing cycle of birth and death.”

Therefore, in spiritual realm, your outward actions of any of your physical organs are never taken into account. Action, act, deed or karma is nothing but what you think. Your thinking alone is taken into account while determining your future. The future effects of your actions are outcome of your thinking and of only thinking. Hence thinking and actions are used synonymously at many places in Indian philosophical literature. Your thinking is thus capable of fetching you highly sought eternal and infinite happiness.

Thinking has only two categories; one is divine and the other one is material or mayic. Although there are many classes in both of the categories, materialistic or mayic thinking takes you to doom while divine thinking takes you to spiritual realm of infinite exhilaration. Therefore, mayic thinking is not at all acceptable however good it might have been. It is in support of yet another principle of Indian philosophy. “Any deed, no matter how good it might be with respect to charity, kindness, affection, is a sin if it is devoid of any divinity and the worst seemingly sinful act is a religious deed if mind is totally absorbed in divine thinking.”

Another major obstacle in seeking divine happiness is ego. Ego too, is one of the fantastic creation of mind itself, which is pampered through out in your pursuit of happiness. Ego tries to develop feeling of self- importance. Many times ego defies all sorts of logic just out of fear of losing importance and deprives you of having the pleasant experience, which you could have otherwise had. Any spiritual aspirant, even materialistic person for that matter, has to control his egoistic whims through excellent reasoning. As you will discover if ego projects itself directly in opposition to life, knowledge, power etc., it usually gets defeated.

Here is an illustration. Consider a patient approaching a doctor. He bows to all the conditions that doctor imposes on him, without having his ego hurt. He thinks he is acting most sensibly by not allowing ego to refrain him from obeying to doctor. He’ll never be cured otherwise! His life is at stake!

You must, therefore, decide firmly that ego is your slave serving you in your attempts of seeking happiness and not your master to hold you back from acquiring something that you want to, especially when it is divine. The places where you should allow ego first place are the ones where it prohibits you from getting engaged in sinful and criminal acts on the basis of thinking like, “O! I worship God. How can I get indulged in such libidinous and ravenous acts? These actions are sub standard! O! I, who preach philosophy of divine love, I, who practice spiritual exercises regularly, I, who wear saffron clothes, I, who keep lord’s images in my house and in my office, I who wear necklace which holds picture of God or saint, cannot associate with actions that will take me away from my Lord. ”Ego, then, when comes to you from association with God, compels you to accept your short comings, doesn’t permit you to indulge in fault finding, opposes mayic ego that stands in your way against acquiring eternal happiness. If ego induces you in exactly opposite thinking, it must be crushed down with all force. This, as you will notice, is one of the diversions of thinking from material to divine area.

Another way to counter materialistic ego is to realize your exact status in this cosmic system. Where do you stand in the cosmic system, which is so gigantic? What is your position in the entire universe, which is comprised of huge stars and planets located at distances which ordinary person, like you and me, can never think of? Where does the solar system stand in the cosmic society? Then the earth! Then your nation, your state, your district, your city, your house and ultimately you! Not even a point on the map of entire universe!

Well, let us see what there is beneath the skin- blood, flesh, partly digested malodorous food-stuff, urine, sewage, cough and what not? It’s total garbage neatly packed with the help of bones and skin! What’s so remarkable about it? Do you take pride at the intellect, which is so great that, time and again, it could not decide what exactly you are after? Even after infinite lives? It is still getting overwhelmed with little revelations of the capabilities of the natural forces around you, like electricity, power generation, computers and so on, which have diverted your attention from the constructor of the universe itself! Is the mind worth mentioning? It has always been demanding materialistic, rubbish, transient happiness that rolled you through uncountable nerve breaking pains, sufferings, sorrows, births, deaths and many other dreadful experiences! What exactly are you proud of? After you realize that you are, in fact, a helpless creature, controlled by mayic desires and other natural forces, suffering from innumerable afflictions since time infinite, you will develop much needed humility. Humility doesn’t mean bowing to requests made by each and every other person, but it is proper understanding of your precarious and vulnerable disposition.

If you boast of scientific progress, please bear in mind that whatever progress mankind has achieved through science, has potential to destroy entire mankind itself! The use of highly devastating atomic arsenals is, after all, governed by human beings or thinking of the persons who have control over such arsenals. Thinking, therefore, if not controlled well, can spell mass destruction of this living planet. Again, how far has this scientific progress assisted in reducing internal tensions, in getting internal satisfaction, in having peaceful life? The truth is, persons who are more exposed to industrial revolution work under more psychological pressure which is one of the unwelcome feelings! Are you gaining or losing?

If you have assimilated what has been spelled out so far, you would agree with the philosophical principle which can be stated as, “Lord, when graces someone or showers his compassion, which can not be attributed to any reason, takes away all material possessions including wealth, beauty, prestige and relatives.” It is obvious. Sanskars get stronger when supplied with corresponding atmosphere; ego swells with all precious mayic possessions and both of them act directly against acquiring divine happiness. You must think any loss of any of mayic assets as compassion of God. You need to realize that God is rendering his help to you by taking away those objects, which will hinder your spiritual progress. Instead, if you keep on thinking the other way around and start blaming God, who does everything just out of his compassion, which cannot bear the miserable sight of suffering soul, you should take it for granted that you would continue your calamitous spell of mayic voyage from death to death for time infinite! Until comes the moment of realization that every happening in this universe that affects you in some way or other is planned and executed entirely for your benefit, for there is nothing that God can draw out of tiny soul and of rubbish mayic garbage, you should not expect to move, even an inch forward, in spiritual venture. The total credit for creation of this universe goes solely to Lord’s natural and boundless compassion.

Well, you might wonder, “Why do we need spiritual guide or teacher or guru to establish contact with God or to seek divine happiness? And who could be such guru?” Our discussion will now be focused on this new topic - Saint or Seer or Sage or Guide or Teacher or Guru or Master or anything else you want to name it.

Guru is the person who is successful in acquiring infinite and eternal happiness. Spiritual or divine happiness, as we all know, can be perceived only through divine mind. God who is divine can be seen only through divine eyes. His divine words can be heard only through divine ear. He can be understood only through divine intellect. He can be touched to only through divine skin. Divine fragrance of his divine body can be smelled only through divine nose. The divine taste of his divine food can only be felt by divine tongue. Guru, thus, is the one who has everything divine - senses, mind, intellect and soul, which has always been divine. By divine we mean something that has capability to grasp infinite magnitudes. He, therefore, can read your infinite past actions and Sanskars created because of them. Well, let us first see how he helps us.

The very first thing is he tells us that there is something which is beyond human perception and it is the spiritual world of infinite and eternal excitement. He tries to convince us about existence of God and infinite happiness associated with God. He creates confidence in us that one can acquire infinite happiness, provided one goes according to his preaching. Here you need to exercise extreme caution, for accepting someone as saint would mean giving him complete authority to control you. It is as good as putting dyeing patient in the hands of doctor and as you would realize, improper choice would invite disaster. You must check his preaching against classical Indian Philosophical literature, mainly Vedas and Puranas, which detail out various ways of acquiring infinite happiness. Only if you confirm supporting principles for seeking divine happiness to the saint’s preaching, you should accept him as your Guru and never otherwise. He should be able to expel all your confusion regarding God, Soul and Maya. Although it is not possible for material intellect to comprehend anything that is divine, at least the decision that one cannot know anything of divine world till one has divine intellect should be infused into your mind. He builds up preliminary ground so that any individual can accept existence of God and start paving his way towards God realization.

You will observe that if he tells something, it appeals to you with force. The reason is, he puts all his divinity into all of his actions and divinity is what soul is after. You will notice that in his presence your mind shows tendencies towards spiritual thinking and spiritual aspirations. The materialistic losses no more bother you with the same intensity as they used to before. On top of all this, he gives you certain insights of spiritual world through various spiritual experiences.

He struggles with your Sanskars. Sanskars, which are of materialistic nature, always oppose any divine attempt. All the divine thinking can be transcribed into your mind only after overcoming these Sanskars. The less is the predominance of the Sanskars, the less is the opposition to the saint. In other words, the purer is the heart, the greater is the attraction of saint to you. It is, therefore, quite understandable that in life of any saint there are people who are so against him that if permitted, they would kill him; on the other hand there are people so impressed by him that on just one order of their master, they would embrace death. When you think of God or any other pure, divine personality like saint, all you do is allow your mind to be controlled by that divine personality. Thus, whether you love him or hate him, you derive benefit from him, albeit the ultimate joy that one would experience after reaching perfection through hatred will be way below the joy that one would experience after reaching perfection through love. Therefore, no saint preaches spiritual practice through hatred to God. It is a saint, who actually cleans your mind by wiping out old Sanskars till all of them are removed completely. He tells you to get engaged into variety of activities, which your past Sanskars permit and which are the best to avoid acting them against your divine interest. It is, therefore, said that you must follow his instructions accurately. During the process, you sometimes come across extra tension, extra labor, added pains. All of them are outcome of internal process of purification of heart. The fact is, majority of burden is handled by saint; only little is left to you which you need to bear, for it is your mind that is under going purification process and these hardships cannot be separated from the mind that is under process. When you find it beyond your endurance, sustenance, you deviate from the spiritual path although you were sure, if you had continued with your efforts, you would have been successful in acquiring divine experience. Further, due to materialistic ego, which always tries to impute failures to someone else to keep your importance intact, you nevertheless blame saint. You need to develop a lot of endurance if you would want to take up spiritual course. Endurance to sustain lashes to which your ego might be exposed to and endurance to bear physical and psychological strains to which your body and mind will be subjected to. After the mind reaches the state of complete purity, saint transforms it into divine one and then comes the infinite happiness or God to you. It is, therefore, said that saint does all the labor of cleansing and God is companion of a person whose heart is already pure.

Well, the need is felt. How to know that a person is a saint? Few criteria of knowing a saint are already given in earlier paragraph. As mayic senses, mind and intellect can perceive whatever presented to them only in mayic perspective, no one will come to know the divinity associated with saint’s actions before one acquires divine intellect. This is the reason for not realizing God’s divinity in our day to day life even though he is present in each and every smallest particle of every object. The instruments that we possess are incapable of grasping divine God. Therefore, saint, who is totally divine from inside out, will also appear to be an ordinary person lacking any divine implications to us mayic people. His actions, as discussed earlier, are guided by his divine intellect, which you would realize, is God’s intellect that saint gets after purification of his heart. Divine intellect is capable of grasping infinite magnitudes. Whenever there is a mention of pure heart or pure mind, it should be noted that it refers to pure mind as well as pure intellect. Many times word mind is used to denote mind and intellect collectively, when both of them are considered together without their finer bifurcation. Hence, the argument that you would accept existence of God only after seeing his divine form, according to any of your fascination, can only mean your understanding of basic principles needs further strengthening. Well, we cannot see saint in divine form. There are few important practices that saint do not follow. They are -

1. He never tells you that you would get materialistic possessions by performing so and so rituals.

2. He never tells you that he would cure your physical diseases by divine power.

3. He never performs miracles.

Materialistic gains or losses are governed by everyone’s past actions and no one, including God, can do anything about it till Sanskars pertaining to those effects are removed from your mind. Therefore, there cannot be any divine cure for any of the diseases, for God is the only source of all divine powers. Saint, who is well aware of this fact, can never promise anyone of materialistic possession against one’s destiny. Even if we assume saint can confer such grants, he would not do so because you are, as it is, fully immersed into the dirty waters of mayic pleasures and are unable to strive for divine happiness and are suffering from innumerable afflictions. And on top of it, if saint confers materialistic gifts, you, instead of getting released, will get more entrapped in siege of devilish mayic pleasures. He is not at all interested in any publicity and therefore, never engages into show of miracles, but he can give insights of spiritual world to those who would further consolidate their faith in God and work with increased vigor towards attainment of divine happiness.

Few points, which would help to know saint’s reality, are -

1. Given spiritual atmosphere, the spiritual love that saint possesses gets revealed in the forms of physical states of ecstasy, tears and so on.

2. Your faith in God gets stronger and stronger, day by day.

3. You attachment to worldly objects and persons shows gradual reduction.

4. You develop liking for God and subjects related to God.

5. Your doubts get settled.

6. You find concentrating on God much easier in his presence than otherwise.

Although whatever is stated above sounds all right, you need to spend some time with any saint. You must follow the spiritual exercises that he wants you to and only then you can decide whether he is a saint or not.

Few things that saint can do are:

1. He can act as a perfectly materialistic person.

2. He may get engaged in such outward actions which pious person would never dream of getting associated with.

You, therefore, must not go by external appearance of any saint, but you should try to see what there is in his heart through constant association of few days or months with him and try to decide about him.

The code of conduct that you should adopt while dealing with saint is:

1. Give him utmost respect, for he is the one who is constantly striving for your betterment.

2. Never think of him as ordinary mortal person and act in a way that might show even a slightest disrespect to him. It would be automatic if you’ve desire to seek God, as you would know that he is the person who is assisting you in achieving your goal by taking a lot of pains which you will be made aware of only after you will have realized God.

3. You should take all his preaching, orders, requests or anything else you want to call it by with a sense of his compassionate look at you and with complete faith. As you will admit, you abide by any prescription only if you have faith in the doctor that he will cure you. Please remember that you will remain obliged to him for infinite time, since he is the one thorough whose efforts you will acquire the infinite happiness. If you go against him and think otherwise, there is no other way through which you can achieve your target. The reason being you do not know about your infinite past lives and Sanskars created thereof and this is the main cause for keeping you away from God. Therefore, it is said that if you commit offense against God by thinking ill of him, you would get rid of the Sanskar that made you think against God if you behave according to what saint tells. On the contrary, if you commit offense against saint, there is no one except saint who can tell you how to tackle those Sanskars. Thus, God cannot absolve you of this sin of offending any saint.

4. Treat him in a way you would treat the most important and the most precious possession of your life.

5. Always think of his happiness, for his happiness lies in making you happy permanently.

6. Don’t try to emulate any of his actions, which are seemingly sinful and which will disturb your concentrating on God. His actions are controlled through divine power and are calculatedly capable of lifting up the soul that is affected by such actions to certain extent from mayic sufferings. While your engagement in such actions, without having any divine powers, is the omen pointing to your disaster, for your mind will demand more and more pleasures through sinful acts. Not only you will have to bear all the effects of such acts, but in addition, you will need to make added efforts to overcome Sanskars created by such actions, whenever you will think of seeking infinite happiness in any life in future. Therefore, you should follow only that what saint tells you to follow and not more nor less.

7. You will notice that if you are humble, saint can work with your mind better. Therefore, humility is the best policy while approaching any saint.

8. After knowing that he is well aware of exact status of your mind, only the one who is not interested in acquiring divine happiness can behave with him with duplicity.

Once you know that the saint is genuine one, rest is very easy. All that you have to do is, to follow his instruction meticulously. Till then what can we do? We can definitely keep on requesting God, “You, who know that I’m ignorant and that I’m not capable enough to judge who is saint and who is not, please introduce me to genuine saint who can guide me and help me to reach you. Although I’ve never thought of you and I’ve always been engaged in sinful, lustful activities, I take recourse to your boundless compassion and dare request you to fulfill my wish. You, who are almighty, can certainly do that, can’t you?” Your prayer must reflect your sincere desire and repentance for past sins. Don’t give up. God, time and again, has showered his compassion on many and there is no reason, whatsoever, why you should be an exception.

Let us now see what is available in divine world. Everything in divine world is always infinite and eternal.

1. Mukti: Mukti is freedom from all sorts of materialistic pains, anguish and restlessness. It is very much similar to the deep sleep in which you neither experience thrill nor you feel sorrow. It’s a total peace. The removal of unwanted feelings which is achieved through Mukti, is so gratifying that if any person gets it, he would never come out of it for infinite time. This, in fact, is the result of killing of mind itself. Since soul remains singularly without associated mind, it doesn’t experience any feeling either way. This is the destination of followers of Gyan Marg or Path of Knowledge. It is more commonly known as formless God or abstract from of God.

2. Parmatma: Parmatmic form of God lies in between total abstract form in which Gyanis remain absorbed and total concrete form through which devotees get happiness. It is the destination of Yogis. Those who follow different yogic methods of purification of heart, always feel the presence of God in their own heart, in some form or other. They end up in getting Parmatmic form of God as final reward.

3. Bhakti: Bhakti is devotion. Devotion is very much like love, which essentially involves two different personalities altogether. Bhakti is the final destination of followers of Bhakti or love. This is the only way where initial and final companion is the same, namely love. Thus, Bhakti allows you to have all sorts of relationships with God. Whatever relation you want to assume, you are free to do so. You will agree that romantic relationship is the best, the closest and the most enjoyable.

From point of view of experiencing divine bliss, five relationships with God are described in Classical Indian Philosophical literature for spiritual aspirant seeking infinite happiness through devotion. These relationships are -

1. God is your king and you are one of his subjects.

2. God is your only master and you are his servant.

3. God is your only close friend and you too are his close friend.

4. God is your only son and you are his mother.

5. God is your only fiancé and you are his fiancée.

The first one is subject’s mood, second one is servant’s mood, third one is friend’s mood, forth one is mother’s mood and the last one is romantic mood. Your aim should be devotion through romantic mood, which allows you to have divine elixir of the ultimate level.

Spiritual Exercises: You need to practice two types of exercises - one in solitude and the other one during your day to day work since you will have to behave according to what your Sanskars dictate. While you are in solitude try to listen to lectures delivered by saint with full concentration. Go through his philosophical writings and contemplate it over and over. Listen to devotional songs and try to meditate on God’s pastimes. Make him as beautiful as you would want him to be. Adorn him with the ornaments and the dresses of your choice. Make him stand or sit in front of you. Ask pardon for past sinful acts of yours. You would appreciate true repentance is always accompanied with tears. If you lack tears while asking pardon, be sure that you’ve not yet felt guilt for your sins. Curse yourself. What does make you not to accept your past sins? Are you so great that you cannot weep even in front of God? That too, for getting pardon for your own sins! Well, sometimes you might take refuge to saying that, “I’m after all mayic soul and I request you to accept me along with my all short comings.” But be sure not to repeat the sinful acts and if you do, don’t leave spiritual exercises, for only through spiritual exercises you would eventually succeed in getting rid of past sinful habits. Remember that unless you overcome your past sinful habits, there will not be real progress in spiritual direction, for your earnings are nullified by your expenses.

You can adopt any of five moods described earlier. Do not think of God to be the creator of universe or to be all-powerful while practicing spiritual exercises through different moods. Devotional practice is, after all, a love affair. Love can exists only if there is not a feeling of awe for other personality. You need to think of him as your king, master, friend, son or beloved. You will never forget that whichever from you visualize him in is divine. It is full of transcendental beauty and transcendental happiness. You will remember that he is present every where. You will also make sure you will not demand anything, right up to Mukti, from him. You will think of him and only him. The reason is, if you think of any other personality, your mind will get engaged into materialistic world, which you must avoid, for you very well know that mayic personalities or mayic objects make mind dirty and divine personalities or divine objects make it pure. Most important of all is, you will love him for his happiness and not because you want to get relieved from sufferings, sorrows and worldly pains. This love, which is devoid of any selfish motive including that of acquiring happiness, is usually referred to as selfless love or unselfish love. Even though it is true that no one can think of other’s happiness till attainment of infinite happiness, this type of thinking, after reaching perfection, will put you in highest echelon of spiritual world with the exciting experience of the highest quality. This is accomplished when saint puts the real selfless love into your heart.

All these moods should be adopted through thinking. Subject’s mood is not accepted by many as worth trying because of the remoteness of relationship between King and his subjects. By adopting servant’s mood, you can think God is your master and try to serve him through various ways. Friend’s mood allows you to think that he is your friend and you do behave with him as the friend, without any connotation of any of his divine powers. Through mother’s mood, you think he is your only dearest child and you must take complete care of your divine child as any other mother does. When you switch to romantic mood, he is your only beloved and you are his darling. Sometimes you can think that he is very near to you, that you are having experience of his touch, embrace and so on. Other times you can think he is not paying any attention to you. He has departed you. You long for his beautiful sight with beautiful dresses and ornaments. You languish to see his beautiful eyes with extremely entertaining sidelong glances. You wish to hear fascinating sound of his divine flute. You want to hear his words, which are full of sweetness and affection. But he is not near by. Your desire grows fervent, intense. Because it is not met, you start weeping. Your desire to see him is fervent, yet you tell him, “Although I’m suffering from this unbearable fire of separation, you come to me only if you’ll be happy in doing so.” This is the practice of devotion through separation.

While in solitude, devotional songs pertaining to Lord’s costumes, beauty, pastimes help a lot to visualize his existence. Mind, which fails to extract any happiness in earlier stages, needs assistance from outside in the form of devotional songs. You need to sit with alertness, for lazy postures allow mind go out of control. Sankirtan, which essentially involves singing devotional songs together in a group assisted with musical instruments, helps in the best possible way to control the mind and to divert it to divine area.

While performing day to day activities, it may not be possible for you to think of him all the time. You can adopt following practices. Wherever you go, take him with you. Show him each and every of your works. Keeping his picture in some form or other always helps to crystallize visualization of his form more clearly. When you eat or drink anything, offer him, for he is your beloved and he could also be equally hungry or thirsty. Although your eatables are very simple and they must be like that to exercise control over instincts of taste and to avoid attachment to food stuff, when he eats, try to feed him lavish and extremely delicious food according to any of your fascination. After he finishes his lunch or dinner, you eat the remainder as his gift to you. You can take walk with him every day in the morning, which will help your health as well. So, there are many ways with which you can keep yourself engaged with him. While doing so, you must think that you are a beautiful girl of sixteen years and that Lord is a handsome boy of sixteen years. Don’t forget that both of you have transcendental forms. Lord will appear in the same form in which you want him to be, after purification of heart, accompanied with infinite happiness.

You should spare at least four hours every day for devotional practice in solitude. You can worship Radha and Krishna both or any of them singularly. Radha is spiritual love incarnate and Krishna is spiritual happiness incarnate.

Finally some don’ts:

1. Don’t let any one know that you are, now a day, thinking of God. Keep your spiritual practice a total secret. If anyone points it out, just ignore him or her by telling, “I’m not a person worthy of following any spiritual discipline.”

2. If you will get some spiritual experiences, treat them as top secret. Don’t even dream of telling them to anyone else, even for other’s benefit. The reason is, by telling your spiritual experiences to others you coddle your ego and thus, start traveling in reverse gear. Another point is other person may not appreciate what you are talking about and you would get disturbed to see his apathetic gesture. When saint and God find it difficult to convince materialistic persons to give up their ways, you will never meet with any success.

3. All the experiences that you get are through Guruji’s grace. Therefore, please remain indebted to him, for he has helped you to come this far. Your Guru can render his help to you even if he is sitting on top of mountains of Himalayas. Therefore, be assured that he is always with you anytime, everywhere.

4. Don’t read any materialistic material like newspapers, storybooks and so on. Watching TV and movies is totally out of context. All these type of activities will never allow you to concentrate on God when you’re alone or otherwise. Instead of God, you will keep on thinking of stars and starlets, players, politicians and so on.

5. Don’t read any material other than which is supplied by your Guru or other than that he has asked you to go through, even if such material is related to seeking divine happiness from any other saint or scriptures. The reason is it provides for distraction. Of course, if you are convinced that the person whom you were following to is not a genuine saint, you can read else’s literature to decide about him. Once you decide about any saint as genuine one, please stick to him and don’t associate with any other saint or any other spiritual literature.

6. Don’t scoff at other saints and their philosophies. Just be neutral to them. Take the approach that you don’t know any thing about them and you don’t wish to know any thing about them, for you have discovered that your master is capable of taking you to your ultimate destination of spiritual world of infinite happiness of highest quality.

7. Don’t think any form of God to be inferior to the one, which you follow. One God resides in all forms, in different gestures. Therefore, there is no question of inferiority or superiority among them. It’s just that you are following the one, which appeals to you most.

8. Don’t ever think that if you change over to Krishna, the one, which is your current form of worship, will get annoyed and will act against your interests. Krishna, in fact, is your God with more loving and more beautiful complexion and with debonair disposition. It is like a wife who always likes her husband in elegant dresses and admires his elegant styles. In the same way you should not be afraid of changing from any other form of God to Krishna if you wish to taste the excitement of conjugal relationship with the supreme personality.

9. Don’t disrespect any other spiritual aspirant.

10. Don’t look down on any other materialistic person, for you don’t know his exact spiritual standing and even if you know about it, please realize that each and every living organism is capable of attaining eternal and infinite happiness, earlier or later.

11. Don’t look at else’s faults and shortcomings. This cossets your ego. Yet another implication is you prove that you are still imperfect if you see imperfections in others. A child, who is innocent, can never know if someone is acting with deceit. The difference in child and you would be that child’s mind is not absorbed in thinking of God, while that of yours is.

12. Don’t get annoyed if your mind repeatedly falls back onto mayic personalities and mayic objects. Try to visualize God wherever your mind goes. May it be the dirtiest place! No person or place can have any existence if God is not present there! Mind, after knowing that it will have to think of God wherever it goes, will eventually stop wandering here and there. Remember that you are away from God because mind wanders. You are trying to get control of your mind through spiritual exercises. Therefore, do anticipate such difficulties and don’t get disheartened. Just keep on trying again and again. Controlling the mind will become easier and easier as you continue with spiritual exercises. You will observe your visualization is getting clearer and clearer, slowly and slowly. You will need reduced efforts to control your mind. You can attend perfection only through practice. If you leave spiritual practice, where will you end up? In the same materialistic environment, where there is no happiness at all! Where you will never be completely satisfied no matter how long you try! Where your position is so vulnerable that you get easily over powered by devouring desires which caused the whole disaster! Therefore, you should never abandon spiritual exercises. Just be after it and you will be successful, one day. Thus, it is very clear that at any moment either you advance or retreat. If you retreat, you will have to recover the distance whenever you try next.

Hence the famous proclamation, “Awake, arise and approach saint immediately. Listen to him, please him through all sorts of services and attain the infinite happiness. And do not stop till you are successful.” Until you come across a genuine saint, it would prove beneficial to regularly revise this philosophy and carry out spiritual exercises mentioned earlier.