The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 13.5. Swami Krishnananda.
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Saturday, September 04, 2021. 7:09. PM.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
CHAPTER-13. The Supremely Friendly Power - 5.
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)
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I shall tell you another story. God’s love for man is greater than man’s love for God. This is a startling feature in spiritual history. There was a great saint living in a village who was reputed to be capable of seeing God every day and speaking to Him. In the night he encountered God, and he had a daily conversation with Him. Everyone respected him so much, that this is a person who speaks to God every day. In the daytime he had devotees around him and gave instruction, but in the night he would be speaking to God.
One lady, it is said, who had some distress of her own, was coming every day and prostrating herself before the saint, keeping in his presence a little sweet porridge in a mud vessel, offering her obeisance, and going without uttering a single word as to why she was doing that. The saint also uttered nothing. Every day this was happening. She would come and prostrate herself, keep this porridge, do namaskar, and go away. It appears a year passed when neither she would say anything, nor he would say anything.
After a year the saint asked, “Why are you coming every day and doing this prostration and keeping this porridge before me?”
Then she opened her mouth, it seems, and said, “Great Master, I have heard that you speak to God every night. Would you kindly convey my sorrow to him, and speak my feelings?”
He said, “Yes, I shall.”
“I have no issue. I want one child. This is my sorrow. If possible, speak to God. If God wills, it shall be.”
“I shall speak, yes. I shall speak to God,” he said.
Eagerly the lady went, waiting for the dawn. Then she rushed to the saint and asked, “What is the message from God?”
The saint said, “My respectable mother, what can I tell you? God has said no, you cannot have an issue.”
Her heart was breaking. “If God Himself is not considerate to me, who else will help me? I shall end my life today.” Thus thinking, she did not return home. She ran to the bank of a river, wanting to die, to drown herself in the water. With dishevelled hair she ran, weeping and beating her breast. “I shall not live any more when God Himself is not willing to help me.”
On the way, it appears, she met a spiritual man looking like a crazy one with dishevelled hair, dirty looking. He accosted her. “Mother, where are you running?”
She did not speak. “I do not want to say anything. I am going to die.”
“Why are you going to die?” he asked.
“I do not want to speak to you. Why are you interfering with me?”
Then again he asked, “What is the matter with you? Let me hear one word.”
Then somehow, reluctantly, she uttered the whole story. “God has refused my request. Therefore, there is no point in my living in this world.”
“What is the request, and what was it that God denied?”
“Just a simple, little, petty thing. I want to have an issue. It is not going to be.”
“What is this? For a little thing you cry and want to end your life? How many issues do you want?”
“One,” she said.
“You shall have two. Why are you worrying? Go. I am telling you, you shall have two, not one. Go back home and be happy,” he said.
She could not easily swallow this message because how could a man say something against God Himself? Anyway, a good word is always a good word. A kind word, even from a baby, is solacing. Even if an enemy speaks to me kindly, it shall satisfy my heart. She went back home and gave up the idea of dying. She had, exactly after a year, a little child, and when another year passed, two children. Two years afterwards the lady came to the very same saint who had said that God had refused. She brought the two little babies and made them stand before the saint, with the same porridge once again.
The saint could recognise her, though she came after two years. “Oh, you have come,” he said. “Who are these two little children?”
“Yours. They are your children, Master. They are your children.”
“You have two children?” He could not understand how God could behave in this manner. “He has told me that it is not possible. Now how has this happened? I shall quarrel with God tonight. He has defamed me. My face has become black. What is the matter? Tonight I shall have a quarrel with God.”
That night he faced God. “Lord, what have you done to me? You have made me a fool.”
The Lord said, it seems, “No, my dear boy. I have done nothing. It was true that that lady could not have a child; therefore, your request was not possible. I had told a fact. I love you very much because you are after Me.” This saint was after God, and therefore, God loved him. “You love Me, and therefore, I have love for you. You are perpetually after Me, but that crazy person who said that the lady can have two children was a person after whom I am. Though it is true that you are running after Me, he is the person who I am running after.”
Now, how could there be anyone whom God is pursuing? We want God, but is there any possibility of God wanting somebody? You may say that you cannot understand this situation that God wants any of us, but you will be surprised that God wants every one of us, and we shall have no problems if that great omnipotency is with us. There is nothing which He cannot do for us in critical moments of sorrow, dejection and moods of helplessness, politically, socially, or in any sense of the term, if we really want, if we feel totally helpless and know that we have no capacity of our own. ‘Really’ is to be underlined. Do not pretend that you want God; you must really want Him, because the question of pretension arises only when you feel that you do have some strength and if His assistance comes, it is an additional strength. That kind of thing will not work. Even before you start thinking, He will know what you are going to think, so no deception is possible here.
In all the illustrations of the lives of saints and devotees, God came at the last moment, at the point of death, as it were, though death did not take place. He will not allow us to die, but it will appear we are going to perish. The prana is going; the last moment has come. At that time a miracle takes place.
Such crucial occasions we read of in the lives of saints and devotees in the epics and the Puranas. God is with us; an Avatara takes place. Incarnation shall be the manner in which God works in this world for the the salvation of mankind. This is a very, very touching message we have at the commencement of the Fourth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.
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