Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 7 (ENDS). Swami Krishnananda

 

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Sunday 15, June 2025, 08:00.
Article 
Scriptures
Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 7. 
Sami Krishnananda
(Spoken on February 24th, 1973)

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Spirituality is different from all this. We cannot expect God to obey our command. We cannot and should not say, “God, do this.” Who are we to make God do certain things? We can only pray for the grace of God, whatever the form be in which it comes. We should not order God: “Let my business increase.” What is this sort of prayer, as if we know what ought to be good, what ought to be proper, as if we are omniscient?

This is the present type of interpretation of godliness in spirituality, which has become a trade these days, and a mockery, a joke, a humorous activity of people like any other form of business. It is good for nothing. It is worse than anything. We are not going to get anything from this God, from this kind of spirituality, but this tendency is in every one of us unconsciously. We may think that others are like this, and we are not like this, but we are also like this. Go deep into your own subconscious and see that you expect something of a very comfortable type from God.

Impersonal love for God is unthinkable, but that is spirituality: “Heaven or hell, good or bad, pain or pleasure, God is my goal.” If this attitude is implanted in our hearts, we can be said to be real spiritual heroes. God does not come to us always in the form of satisfaction and pleasure of the senses and the body. It is not that God will always make us a prime minister. God may make us a beggar, because there is no connection whatsoever between divine justice and the human concept of good and satisfaction.

To be spiritual is to be impersonal to some extent, and this understanding is superior to the calculative understanding of human nature. Any give-and-take policy is a commercial policy, and if this policy is to be applied even to divine existence and God-being, heaven help us.

Today, the unfortunate condition of spiritual life, the humorous forms which yoga has taken these days in all parts of the world – as I mentioned, the form of a trade, as it were – this type of living is worse than having no yoga, no spirituality. Misapplication, abuse and misunderstanding are worse than not having any knowledge at all, and deliberate misuse is still worse. So, we have to be guarded from all sides.

If we really want God, if we really want to be yogins, if it is true that we honestly ask for yogic perfection, this hypocrisy in our minds should go. We should not ask for consequences, results and commercial values to devolve upon us in our social and personal life. All this should be shed first; otherwise, what is vairagya, what is self-control? We keep cosily in our hearts the treasure of our personal prejudices of fulfilment of our own desires and do not want to give them up, and yet we seek God. Therefore, it is that we do not find Him because, really speaking, we do not want Him.

So, the scriptures give us a warning always that it is hard to find God because it is harder still to understand what God is, and more difficult to practise yoga. So let us be honest seekers of Truth, not hypocrites who put on the guise of yoga and practise the trade of spirituality. Nothing of the kind; this will not work. Do not put up an 'International Yoga House' advertisement or label in your house. No such thing will work. God is not interested in all these things. You may be an international yoga teacher, but the spiritual awareness has nothing to do with these advertisements, propagandas, labels and notice boards. Nothing of the kind. You should not have a notice board even in your mind, let alone outside. To love God and to be loved by God is difficult even to understand. Read the lives of saints, how they lived. They did not have international houses. They did not have palaces. They possessed nothing; they lived in rags, but they were the masters whom we worship today.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” 'The poor in spirit' is important to remember. When the world does not want us, God will want us, and when we are big in the eyes of the world, remember, we are small in the eyes of God. Difficult is spiritual life, difficult is religion, difficult is purity and goodness, harder is yoga, and God alone should come to our help. Therefore, daily prayer to God in this connection is essential.

End.

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