Jo Piya Ruchi Maha Ruchi Rakhe [How to attain para (divine) bhakti?]-4

Part 4 – Surrender

With an intense yearning for the highest bliss i.e. Divine Love of God we have set out on a journey back to our Divine home.  But a journey without the knowledge of right directions will lead us nowhere. If you wish to get out of the room, but you keep trying to get out through the wall without any knowledge of the door, you are not going to get very far.  Likewise in spiritual journey it is essential that along with desire we find the most suitable path to attain Divine Love and then follow it with faith. The Vedic scriptures which are an authority on spiritual knowledge clearly tell us about the path we ought to follow. Spirituality is not a matter of metal concoction; there are appropriate procedures and guidelines that need to be understood.  Shree Jagadguru Kripaluji Maharaj has summarized the path of attaining God in His ecstatic and profoundly meaningful keertan ‘jo piya ruchi mahaṁ ruchi rākhē’.  Even as He has concisely revealed the essence of attaining Divine Love in each line, with good understanding an aspirant can derive the benefit of a lecture from each of these lines.

Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj says in the first line:

“jo piya ruchi mahaṁ ruchi rākhē, prēma rasa soī chakhē rē”

“That soul, who keeps his or her desire in the desire of the Divine Beloved, will get Prem Ras”.

He has succinctly described the first condition which is also very powerful.  It is powerful because this is where we need to make corrections.  In the material realm, due to the conditioning of our past countless lives we have learnt only to desire selfishly.  Even lovers invariably desire their own happiness and not the other’s.  When a person in the material realm fails to fulfill the wishes of his/ her lover it results in arguments and fights.  And therefore we carry this mental conditioning to the spiritual realm as well.  We serve the God and Guru for our happiness and not their happiness.

We go to our Guru and say, “Guru Ji, I have brought some Rasgulla for you.”

Guru Ji says, “My stomach is upset right now, I don’t feel like eating Rasgulla.”

And we selfishly retort “But Guru Ji, I have bought it for you with so much of love and affection. How can you do this?  You must fulfill my desire, or I will be very disappointed.”

So who is the servant in this case?  We apply the formula of material love in the spiritual realm and expect the Guru to serve us whereas in the spiritual realm the soul merges his/ her desire with the desire of the God and Guru.  The soul attains happiness in whatever makes both of them happy and consequently there are no fights.  The soul must remember its position as an eternal servitor of Lord.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjun asked Shree Krishna, if he could attain Him by doing jaap, a hundred Ashvamed Yagyas (fire-sacrifices), by visiting all holy places on the planet earth or reading the scriptures every day?Shree Krishna rejected all these sacrifices and declared that there is only one way to attain Him: “You need to surrender yourself to Me!”

sarva dharmān parityatjya, mām ekam saranam vraja

(Bhagavad Gita 18.66)

“Arjun, God is attained by His Grace, not by your effort! And, His Grace is received when you surrender to Him. So, you have to surrender.”

The six aspects of surrender are as follows:

ānukulyasya sankalpah,

prātikulyasya varjanam,

rakshishyatiti vishvāso,

goptrtve varanam tathā,

ātma-niksepa-kārpanye,

sad-vidhā sarānagatih

(Hari Bhakti Vilas 11.676)

However the first point of ‘ānukulyasya sankalpah’ covers all the points and it is to desire in accordance with the desire of the Beloved.  If a soul realizes just this aspect and applies it in life, he/she is surrendered. But this requires sacrifice. In other words, Love does not mean making God do what we want. Love means sacrificing our independent desire for His sake.  That is, we will not get Divine Love or Prema Ras by fulfilling our desires. We will get Divine Love by sacrificing our desires.