A Dream of Lifetimes - II

Dear Readers, have you come to the second part of this topic without reading the first one? If so, I would request you to please come back after reading the first part. You may read the first part here.

And now, if you have finished reading the first part, please read on.....

Continuation.....

As each question was being answered , I felt more doubts welling up in me. Moreover, I felt listening further could clear me doubts. I actually began realizing that the ‘avan’ or ‘he’ Swami referred to was Swami in the form of Br, Aravind , more so with the realization that He has decided to clarify my doubts at any cost that day 

:)

Lets get on with the questions and answers :

 Swami says one should have contentment regarding the worldly matters. Does it mean we should have contentment even in our spiritual path?

 Worldly matters are finite. They have a beginning and end. So one should have contentment in respect of things which are finite. Spiritual field is endless. God has neither a beginning nor an end. A person doing Sadhana or a Sadhaka should not rest until he reaches his goal.

 It is said that without Divine grace, all effort is useless. If one has Divine grace, no effort is required. Is it true?

God helps those who help themselves. Haven’t you heard the story in this context in your Balvikas class during you 1st year?

(The story is given below for the benefit of those who don’t know)

Both, effort and God's grace go hand in hand. 

The story is of a man whose wheel got stuck to the mire on a rainy day. He stood there and prayed to Lord Anjaneya to pull out the wheel without putting an effort to do the same. So at that situation, he hears a voice from above saying that God helps those who help themselves. The man who realized this, put in his strength into pulling out the wheel and as he did this he felt a Higher Strength lending him a helping hand.

Thus, God helps those who help themselves. From this one can understand that individual effort and Divine grace go hand in hand. Without effort, grace will not be conferred; without grace, there will be no heart and sincerity in the effort. By the way, grace is ever present with us. It neither comes nor goes. Your effort should only tap the grace. This is what Swami says. (4th take home message)

 Swami, please don’t get angry with this question of mine. I know I am too small to ask such a question. But still, you know me. I am struggling to sleep. I need to know this answer. Is spiritual path very difficult to tread upon? Do we need any sort of deservedness for this?

 Will you abandon pursuing of wealth just because you are not capable of accumulating it in a life time? You will, at the least gather hundreds or thousands if not for lakhs or crores? Which path would you choose- the difficult path leading to happiness and bliss or the easy path leading to misery? We should take the path leading to right destination though it is very difficult. Thus, spiritual path may seem difficult in the beginning, but it is really not.

 It is said that even a blade of grass cannot move without His will. If everything happens according to His will, what is the role of man’s will? How can he blamed for his sins?

Even a blade of grass cannot move without His will.

 The scope of free will of man is very limited in this world. In your 4th year at Balvikas, when you learnt about Christianity, you came across this, “God made man in His own image!” Only man has this greatest blessing and privilege to overcome the laws of the Universe and become God Himself. This is the reason, free will has been given to him.

But from God’s point of view, there is no free will, for nothing exists other than God. But from the point of ego of an individual, there is free will. There is a general law or the God’s law along with the individual and society. The individual acts in the society according to His free will but all corresponds to the God’s law. Thus His will is the most important. (take home message 5)

Woke up! :)

The dream ended there and I woke up, both physically and spiritually, if I may say so. No sooner, I got up I began jotting down all that happened in the dream for I knew this is the Dream of lifetimes firstly, because all dreams where Bhagawan Baba appears, are indeed true and we see them just because He wills so. Secondly, this dream answered all my questions that troubled me since quite some time. Thirdly, this was the dream of Swami that I was gifted after a long time, say a year or so. 

Through this dream I understood that He has a plan, a Masterplan that He is plotting for us and that is the best. All we have to do is be patient, keep our hearts, minds and ears open to grasp His signals to move forward in life!

P.S: Actually as I sat down to write this,I realised that I did not remember the exact words spoken to me,though I remembered all the answers. It was then that I happened to pick a book from the book shelf, very randomly and it happened to be the book entitled, Helpline on the Sathya Sai Path authored by Shri.B.N.Narasimhamurthy. I randomly opened a page and found the answer to the second question, in the words that I was explained. This book contains questions answered by Swami Himself and I take the words above to be His too!

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