GOD'S REACTION TO OUR GREED

How God protects His true devotees and also does the best for them in this world and in the next?
A true devotee of God - he who loves Him in thought, word and action, examplified as Prahlaad, Dhruva, Jesus, Mohammad, Meera, Kabir or more - normally becomes an eye-sore of peers' hurt-ego because of the highly-coveted state of internal contentment of mind of such devotees. Almost all of them leave a permanent legacy on earth with huge following in posterity (the best on earth).

An ancient example is that of a virtuous king in South India, namely, Bali - grandson of God's great-devotee, Prahlaad. King Bali was advised by his Guru - ShukrAcharya - to do 100 yajnas to get blessings of Lord Shiva to become ruler of the whole earth. In order to correct Bali's earthly-greed to enlarge his kingdom's territory, Param-Brahm-Parmeshwar (God Almighty), appeared to King Bali as a Dwarf - Vaaman Incarnation - and begged for three steps of Bali's kingdom for doing a yajna. King Bali ridiculed the beggar for such a small demand and arrogantly granted Him His wish. Upon this, the Dwarf (Vaaman) increased His size and stepped across the whole of earth. In step-2, He extended his leap to cover the whole of the universe. This beggar then turned into Lord Vishnu and asked the king Bali as to where should He put His step-3, because nothing remained in God's whole creation. At this stage, king Bali immediately realized his folly of succumbing to his insatiable greed and desire to conquer the earth and finally, he offered to surrender his ego of mind by requesting Lord Vishnu to put His foot on his head. Lord Vishnu did exactly that and granted king Bali Bliss/Nirvaan. Posterity on earth still continues to fondly remember this great devotee-king as a role-model of total surrender to God and set up a tradition of celebrating ONAM in Bali's name, even thousands of years after.

CAUTION en route BLISS

God is our first and last Love with mind playing as a kaleidoscopic illusion. Caution is not to go astray, by intently observing own behaviour - the sole purpose of meditation/dhyan.

Acquisition of un-ending knowledge is not the aim of life - mental regurgitation of aquired knowledge blitzes realization - the sole purpose of knowledge.

Remember: pursuing any kind of rat-race with peers can make anyone lose the whole purpose of duty.

Selfishness is the biggest hurdle against achieving our real worth. It is like mouth insisting to keep all food to itself and not sharing with other parts of body - one's RealSelf. Beauty lies in how selflessly, one performs one's own duty - no matter what?

In case, one stays attached to the present - one chooses to block one's future to hang on as a fossil.

Indulgence in materialistic life is mostly a gain-in-pain.

Beyond all religions and sciences lies the REAL cause of all causes-and-effects. Art of living lies in tearing away illusion of kaleidoscopic mind and hug your True-Self, smililng in Eternal Bliss - derives Bhagwad Gita.

BEAUTY OF DUTY

Beauty inspires us to perpetuate, but Truth makes us eternal.

Love is the sole bond of life; once it becomes selfless and universal - one discovers the Real Self -- One-in-all and All-in-One.

Matter gives us body and energy gives us capacity to perform our duty. Wisdom inspires us to perform with humility.

There is more learning in series of efforts to success than in series of clinched successes.

Like i can relate with love and care to all trillions of different cells of my body, we may try to relate to all billions of humans and other living beings likewise and realize our one-ness ('Vasudev kutumbkam').

There may exist infinite possibilities of growth to chase happiness but, there is just one way to achieve eternal Bliss and that is total surrender to Absolute, advises Gita.

CREATION - QUANTIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Ancient scriptures declare: God alone exists without any beginning, middle and end. Creation, maintenace and destruction (trinity of management) of universe is God's child-play and He infuses His infinite consciousness into finite identies of greater (Maha-Devs) and smaller (Devs) gods and innumerable other demi-conscious beings. Scriptures have estimated that about 330 million permanent demi-gods (Devs or angels) and about 8.4 million perishable living forms work constantly to help mangement-trinity, to run the show - we call our universe. As and when these levels of consciousness express separate identies - they represent quantization of a continuum of consciousness which, scriptures refer to, as the Greatest Truth (Param-Satya). By expressing individualistic identies, all levels of consciousness become duty-bound in their characteristic pattern - basically all working in this universe - apparently for personal gain. About 8.4 million protoplasmic earthlings perform their duty on earth during their early (latent), middle (growth) and end (decay) phases of their life's growth curve. With a suitable intermission (death), the consciousness is reborn with better and better attributes (evolution). Ego-satisfaction, material achievements, comforts and beauty of life are some of the hidden driving forces that make all beings duty-bound. Because of this confirmed intermission, protoplasmic quanta are made to realize that they were doing their duty as mere watchmen and not owners. Those who remain attached to their achievements of the past have to suffer more pain of life than others. A sense of detachment is therefore, necessary to get the best of this quantized existence of life:  exhorts Gita.

GENUINELY HONEST

Real smartness lies in being genuinely honest.

Unless hearts melt, nothing happens except a deal.

No good saying is any worth, unless implemented.

Corruption in any society brings thieves and criminals on the top.

Selfishness is the major cause of chaos in this life.

"Survival of the fittest" may be the law of evolution but, has no justification for uncivilized human behaviour.

Powerful minds may matter now but, great minds matter always.

"To err is human" if subjected to correction and not a cover for justification of errors.

He, Who permeates everywhere as Omnipresent and All-knowing, knows our real intention of mind, word and action - implies Gita.

FORM VERSUS FORMLESS GOD

Most religions on earth claim that God is formless, and yet, all-powerful/omnipotent. Logic says, the moment our mind accepts that God cannot have form, we reduce at least one of His powers. Ancient wisdom stresses that all forms are indeed God's own forms - which tentamounts to essentially being formless. Yet, it lists 330 million functional forms of God (Raghunaath temple in Jammu, India clearly shows them physically).

Srimad Bhagwad Gita, the only scripture that describes God in first person with logical reasoning, dwells on this point. Gita certifies that worship of God in form or formless, invariable reaches God. At the same time, Gita asserts that all selfless-work,worship, meditation, perseverence, and penance - by thought, word and action - is indeed worship of God and that it MUST be dedicated to God with love. Thus, dedication can be done only by sharing fruit of actions with all beings with love - in line with the principle: 'all beings are one family or Vasudev kutumbkam' - share with friends, enemies and strangers alike (like our stomach shares food with all body organs and cells). Dedication of karma to formless God is thus very difficult for everyone to achieve: asserts Gita.

An amicable method of dedication of all activity of life on earth to God - the real dooer/'karta-purukh' is through an ETERNAL form of God, if any. Forms of All God's avatars including Krishna Himself, great teachers and religious guides are not eternal in their respective forms and cannot, therefore, be worshipped for eternal bliss.

In Gita, this riddle - which form to worship - was dealt with at length, as the ardent devotee represented in Arjun was a great thinker and questioner. After teaching vividly the code of ethics and conduct for man on earth, the brilliant teacher in Krishna, revealed Arjun (and few others, committed to Truth) a unique un-matched COSMIC/'BRAHM' experience of God revealing light of uncountable suns shining together (something like science calls, big-bang). From that brilliance appeared innumerable forms (pleaseant/unpleasant) all-fusing into one Virat form. Seeing Arjun scared to death, a pleasant smiling, loving and blessing Vishnu-form appeared and Arjun was enlightened to see that and requested again and again to see this form and, God obliged him and advised that, this Vishnu/Hari form can be worshipped as complete/'Purna' God or at par with Absolute "Par-Brahm-Parmeshwar' or "Param-Brahm". Krishna also made it clear that this 'knowledge of knowledge' is highly confidential, even to demigods and angels because they do not surrender there false ego of indivdualistic existence. Somuch so, egoistic king, Dhritrashtra, refused to accept this God's wisdom, despite being specially made available to him through his rath-driver, Sanjay and thus suffered extremely heavy losses.

Our own nature is such that we always show our smiling and pleasant face as acceptable representative of all our important body parts including brain, heart, arms, feet etc. Thus Gita advises that Lord Vishnu can be worshipped as representing the face of centre-sanctorum of infinite God for eternal bliss. Other parts (demigods,angels, etc) of God are only functional specializations for fulfilling temporary desires within the realm of perishable creation. Even prominent parts of Virat, thus change their forms upon being worshipped for bliss e.g. Mahadev becomes "lingam", Brahmaji shows ageing with white beard, Ma Shakti turns into Vashnavi/Durga, Ma Saraswati/knowledge disppears into realization, Lord Ganesh is resurrected as elephant-headed, Shiva-incarnate assumes monkey-headed Hanuman-form, etc. Thus Gita concludes: Complete God can be worshipped for eternal bliss, as clout of all powers and energies as a bright luminous sphere "Shaligram" or God's own favorite human face Lord Vishnu, depending on person's intellecutual calibre. Saints like Guru Nanak thus declared "Poora Prabhu araadhiaye, Poore de gun gai" meaning worhip only COMPLETE GOD for achieving bliss.

EVOLUTION AND RE-INCARNATION

Universe was created instataneously, assert ancient wisdom and many other scriptures, including science -  popularly known as 'big bang' viewpoint.

There are two levels of existence: 1) material with properties of matter,energy and matter-energy interactions, quite-like what St Einstein concluded as E(energy)=m(mass)cxc(square of velocity of light/radiation) and 2) spiritual: property-less, timeless and spaceless eternal existence. God too acknowldges in own words "Know that I Am the Original Seed of All Existences ...  I Am the Life of All that lives ... All states of being are manifestations of  My energies...All material nature exists within Me" (Srimad Bhagwad Gita 7.1,7.2 & l.9). This knowledge that nothing exists outside God, makes wise-minds fearless of death and brave to take on all aspects life constructively with confidence. In recent times, Mahatma Gandhi is a good example, who had this wisdom. As per this wisdom, all of us take birth, live/work, die and take re-birth (not necessarity on the same planet again) within infinite God.

On this earth, practically all living-beings desire to be better than their contemporary peers. This is what brings us back to this earth as a re-incarnate with better faculties (evolution). Thus, evolution is the path of growth, we desire in this birth. The only way to tide over desire is the desire of being perfect. Because God alone is perfect, a good seeker has, therefore, to submit ego/identity of present imperfect existence at the feet of eternally blissful ONE God (rather than submitting to imperfect demigods, angels,Godmen, Gurus, and successful persons), exhorts God in Gita. The logic is simple: if we submit (worship) perished or perishable, our a gains are temporary within the time-cycle (Kaal Chakra) of happiness-sadness.

In nutshell, faith alone is not enough, faith in Truth/Perfection/Bliss has got to be cultivated by perseverence in life, rather than opting for short-cuts to transitory success.

Everytime, we miss on Truth for short-cuts to success, we tend to extend our stay in illusion of gain-loss, growth-decay, incremental advantages of evolution.

God's logic is our logic too; login to Truth and verify your real credentials. Hyothetically, if i have to appear to my best performing body cell, i shall have to take form of same cell in its neibourhood; only then the dedicated hard-working cell shall feel blessed. Similary, water animals may see God in a big fish (Meen-avataar), amphibians in a big tortoise (Kachchyap-avatar), animals in a big wild boar (Varah-avatar) or lion-headed man (Narshingh-avatar), pigmies in universe-striding shortee (Vaaman-avatar), women in all-conquerring beauty (VishvaMohini avatar), tough men in muscle-king (Purshu-avatar), good men in law-abiding lovable man (Ram-avatar) and wisest humans in all-knowing human-cum-God form (Krishn-avatar). At each re-incarnation, God has got to be re-born within His own Cosmic form (Viraat Brahm).