Jnaana Saraswathi
Spiritual Discourses by Shri Datta Swami
Explore spiritual discourses covering all aspects of universal spirituality, philosophy, and divine wisdom from Shri Datta Swami.
Showing 15 of 5828 discourses
ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS IN SADHANA
It is a misunderstanding that the life history of every soul is written by God or destiny. God is certainly the creator of this whole world like the builder of the stage and the supplier of dress for a drama. He is responsible up to this level only. The story, dialogues and actions are written by the created self only. The self is pure awareness and is called as causal body, but is composed of several types of vibrations which are the feelings or thoughts or qualities. The various types result due to various mixing proportions of Sattvam, Rajas and Tamas. Some of these thoughts have become very strong since from several millions of births. Such solidified thoughts are like hard diamonds. The bundle of such diamonds is called as the subtle body...
SAMNYASA SIGNIFIES UNIVERSAL SPIRITUALITY
The saffron color of the cloth of a saint indicates the color of ripened fruit, which stands for the ultimate knowledge in the spiritual path. Without such knowledge, the saffron cloth is meaningless. Krishna never wore the saffron cloth, but He had the ultimate knowledge even from the childhood as we can see from His discourse given to the villagers in resisting the sacrifice to be performed to please Indra. The cloth is only a symbol of the concept and symbol alone without the concept is meaningless. Krishna is the saint without symbol and every present saint is not a saint having symbol only. Shankara is the saint with the symbol. Krishna and Shankara are equal because the inner concept is one and the same and the symbol is not at all important...
ATMAN, BRAHMAN AND SADHANA - I
The question is whether the Atman is knowable (Vijneya) or unknowable (Ajneya). There are statements in the Veda which say that Atman is unknowable (Yasyamatam tasyamatam, achintyam, etc.). There are also other statements in the Veda that say that Atman is knowable (Drishyatetvagraya Buddhya, Atma va are Drishtavah) These are two contradictory sets of statements. How can these two statements be correlated? The Advaita philosophers treat this problem in the following way: They say that Atman is unknowable (Ajneya) to ordinary people...
KNOWLEDGE TO SERVICE
[2nd Message on the Eve of Krishnashtami] Lord Krishna proved that knowledge is always the highest because knowledge is related to intelligence (Buddhi). Therefore, the Jnana Yoga is also called as the Buddhi Yoga by which you can certainly attain God (Dadami...). The knowledge gives devotion and you can attain God by devotion. Unless you know that the boy is your son, you will not love him. When you know more and more about God’s greatness, your love increases proportionally. Therefore knowledge generates devotion and also develops the devotion. Knowledge also leads to right action...
GOD IS ABOVE THE PERSONALITY
Energy is inert because it is only a property i.e., it is the work of God and so it depends on God. Energy appears as matter and awareness, which are its different forms. Beauty is a property of matter. The face of a girl is made of matter. Beauty is a form of matter. Apart from [physical] beauty, you also see the shine on her face, which is light. Apart from matter and awareness, energy also exists in the form of light, heat, sound, electricity etc. You are more attracted to her internal personality too, which consists of beautiful qualities like love, generosity...
GOD AND HUMAN COMPONENTS IN AN INCARNATION
Even a real human incarnation of God will not say that He is God. Krishna never said that He is God except on one specific occasion, which is [during] preaching the Gita to Arjuna. The human incarnation is a two component system in one phase. It is like the alloy of gold and copper existing in single phase. The human incarnation results when God enters a liberated soul, which is a human being. The human incarnation appears as an ordinary human being only. When copper is alloyed with a trace of gold, it appears as copper only. Unless you see it through a powerful microscope, you will not be able to find out the existence of gold in it. Similarly, the human incarnation appears as human being only and unless you are capable of intensive spiritual analysis...
MOST STRESSFUL TIME: DEATH AND AFTER
[Message on Dasara, Day-1] Goddess Durga fought with the demon called Mahishasura for ten days and got victory on the tenth day. Durga means protection. This protection has very little significance as far as the problems in this world are concerned. People do not realize the insignificance of these worldly problems because they have not witnessed the greatest problem, which is faced at the time of the death before going to hell. Unfortunately, this greatest problem is visualized at the exact moment of death when the person is unable to even express his feelings on seeing the messengers from hell. A line appears small only when a bigger line is present next to it. If the soul could witness the last scene during this life time itself...
THE PATH TO PLEASE GOD - MESSAGE ON HANUMAT JAYANTI
[Hanumat Jayanti Day, the birth anniversary of Hanuman] The festival of Hanumat Jayanti is coming in 2-3 days and happens to fall on this Monday. How to celebrate this festival? The low level of celebration is done when devotees worship Hanuman by offering leaves, fruits, special food items and prayers and then finally ask for worldly boons. The second middle level of worship is doing Bhajans on Hanuman with emotion, which represents the love for Hanuman. Since in the middle level there is no desire for boons, certainly the middle level is higher than the low level. But the best and highest level of worshipping Hanuman is to analyze what Hanuman practiced...
GOD'S ENTERTAINMENT IN THE RELATIVE REALITY
[Message on Dasara, Day-6] The continuous entertainment (Ananda) is possible only in the world when God exists in the relative reality. In the state of absolute reality, space also disappears and God alone remains. In this state, there is no question of any entertainment. If you take God into such a state of absolute reality, you are making God bored. There will be no necessity at anytime for God to cross space (Mula Maya) because God need not destroy this world completely and regenerate it. The show of the cinema is withdrawn but the film roll is never destroyed by any producer unless he is extremely mad. The dissolution of the world means only the closure of the show and the world in a subtle state remains protected...
Liberated Souls Form God's Family
[Message on Dasara, Day-2] Yoga means attainment. Attainment is meaningful if something other than yourself is attained by you. After traveling some distance if you say that you have attained yourself, it is meaningless. When you attain the superself (God), which is other than yourself, then only you can use the word Yoga. God in human form is attainable by your effort. God also has His limited family, which consists of a few liberated souls as you have your family. For you, your family is more important than the society, which consists of general public. You maintain business with society but love...
HINDUISM - MERITS AND DEMERITS
Today even a mosquito is killing the man by giving dangerous fever. The man used to say, “I will quash you like a mosquito.” This means that mosquito is the most negligible creature. But today the mosquito has become an instrument of Yama to kill the people! What is the reason for this? The situation is reversed. The souls must realize now about their own real strength. It has become zero. If the zero has a number behind it, it gets value of ten, hundred, thousand etc. But when the number becomes absent, any number of zeros is zero only. The soul becomes hero when it is backed by God. Arjuna realized this after the exit of Krishna...
SHANKARA BHASHYAM
Chit [awareness] is gold and Jnanam is a wonderful design expressed in that gold. All the value is for that wonderful ornament and not for the lump of gold present in it. Brahman means great. The greatness is of that ornament and not of gold. A lady is attracted to the ornament but a businessman sees only the weight of the gold. Similarly an ignorant person thinks that chit is Brahman where as a realized scholar thinks that a great preacher with exceptional knowledge like Shankara is Brahman. Chit is the awareness present in every living being...
THE CLOSEST INDICATOR FOR THE UNIMAGINABLE GOD
The existence of any item is experienced in two ways. 1) In the first way, the existence is realized by direct perception. You realize the pot existing on the floor by looking at it with your eyes. This is direct knowledge. 2) In the second way, the existence is realized by indirect inference. You infer the existence of fire on the hill by seeing the smoke generated from the fire and surrounding the fire. This is indirect knowledge. In the case of unimaginable God, the existence of God is realized by indirect knowledge only. Observing the unimaginable events generated by God called as miracles, which mainly include the unimaginable knowledge, you infer the existence of unimaginable...
LORD PRAISED KNOWLEDGE AT OUTSET IN THE GITA
The word Dharma means the characteristic property which stands for the identification of an item. The Dharma of fire is burning by which it is identified as fire. It is the expected natural behaviour of an item in the creation. If the fire is cool, such coolness is Adharma which means that it is not the expected property of the specific entity. The human being in this creation is a specified entity and is expected to show certain characteristic properties (Dharmas) by which he or she is identified as the human being. If the human being shows the characteristic properties of other specified items, it loses its identification. When God created various...
THE SOUL HAS BEEN MISTAKEN TO BE GOD
[Shankara Jayanthi] If the spiritual knowledge is perfect and complete, the devotion and practice are the spontaneous subsequent steps for which there is no need of any effort. If the practice is perfect and complete, the fruit is spontaneous. Therefore, all the efforts should be put only to gain the perfect and complete spiritual knowledge. Hence, Shankara told that knowledge alone can achieve fruit (Jnanadevatu…). The perfect and complete spiritual knowledge is possible only from God. But, God is unimaginable and therefore, the unimaginable God comes down in human form to give this perfect and complete knowledge. For this purpose, which is most important, God will never enter inert medium. The human form means the soul or awareness associated...