What should be my Spiritual Endeavour to progress on the path of Spirituality?

Our spiritual endeavor ought to be in the direction of these four spiritual practices:

• Not hurting others
• Not seeing faults of others
• Cherishing purity in matters regarding money, sensual pleasures and pride (moral purity)
• Remaining surrendered to Gnani

Do not hurt anyone

The highest truth in this world is that no living being is hurt through the medium of our mind, speech or actions. This is the highest of all principles and is the ultimate worldly truth. Let’s understand how!

To cheat or torment someone, steal something, betray someone’s trust, cause someone mental distress or cause some great harm are the different ways by which one hurts others; the consequences of which are quite grave. The basic spiritual reason behind this is that God resides in every living being. So, if we hurt any living being, we incur severe liability.

Not only we take a birth in lower life-form where there is much more suffering but also our spiritual progress gets hindered. Such is the spiritual loss of hurting others. Committing such a spiritual loss on a continuous basis results in a decline of our spiritual awareness, which makes us blunt and insensitive.

The spiritual practice of not hurting any living being...

If one is desirous of spiritual progress but makes no effort to stop hurting others, it suggests a sign of digress. All spiritual aspirations must, therefore, be coupled first with efforts of not hurting others.

The simplest spiritual way of putting in this effort is to heartily intend when praying to God everyday: “Oh God! I don’t wish to hurt anybody in this world by my mind, my speech or my action. Please give me strength for it.”

It may happen that even after praying every day, we continue to hurt others. It is only when one’s anger, false pride, attachment and greed totally cease to exist that one really stops hurting others. That’s a long way to go! However, until then,we should make sure that we do not defend our acts of hurting others; rather, we maintain a practice to always stand in opposition of it by saying, “It should not be so! It is indeed wrong to hurt someone.” With true repentance in our heart, we will even pray to God, “Oh God, I have hurt this being. I sincerely apologize for my deed and seek your forgiveness. Please grant me strength so that I do not ever repeat this mistake.”

This constant awareness to not hurt anyone though is generally attained after self-realization and with the blessings of the Gnani Purush.

Do not see faults of others

Now, we have resolved that we do not want to hurt anyone; but what if we feel hurt by someone? When this happens, we immediately proclaim it to be the other person’s fault, isn’t it? However, do you know that any person that harms us in any way is simply an 'instrument’ through which the results of the wrong deeds (karma) done by us in the past get delivered to us? So, whose fault it is? Who had done the wrong deeds? We’ve got punished for our own past deeds today. Isn’t that complete justice meted out by nature then?

The spiritual practice of not seeing faults of anyone...

This is where Param Pujya Dadashri educates us with four spiritual doctrines that we can always apply in different situations of our life. They are as follows:

• ‘Whatever happened is justice!’
• ‘The Fault is of The Sufferer.’
• ‘Adjust Everywhere!’
• ‘Avoid Clashes.’

The in-depth study of these four principles serves as important spiritual endeavour, which unlocks your progress on the path of spirituality up to a great extent. To bring the best results in this endeavour too, one must first attain Self-realization.

In Akram Vignan, it is fairly easy to attain Self-realization. All that we are required to do is: Attend a two-hour Self-realization (Gnan) ceremony conducted by the Gnani (absolutely free of cost). Your work is done through His divine grace!!!

Thereafter, following the principles explained by the Gnani, we will realize that people definitely are faultless; the whole world is faultless; we are bound by our own mistakes, not theirs.

A nice video explaining this spiritual science of how we suffer due to our own faults, and not because of anyone else, is given below. When one understands this completely, it eliminates one’s habit of seeing fault of others.

Purity in matters regarding money, sensual pleasures and pride

To progress in spirituality, purity in our worldly interactions is necessary. Where there is impurity, nobody can ever attain anything. 

In this era of the time cycle, if anything has been given special predominance in worldly interactions, it is money, sensual pleasures and pride! Therefore, Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan has said, “If one is pure in worldly interactions, where there are not even thoughts related to sex and kashay (anger-pride-deceit-greed], and only after every kind of beggary has gone can the world be understood as it is.” Where there is no sort of beggary, neither for money, nor for sensual pleasures or even pride, the state of the absolute Self can be attained.

The spiritual practice of attaining purity...

Who has bound us? Who is stopping us from progressing on the path of spirituality? It is not any person or a situation but our own mistakes that are the biggest bondage. Some people have severe obstruction of pride, some have of greed and few have it in relation to sex.

As we are having atoms of anger, pride, deceit, greed, attachment, hatred, etc. within us, we end up hurting somebody or get hurt by somebody. When these faults go, we are able to progress without any hindrance. Hence, to find out our own faults and put in the right efforts to get rid of them become our biggest spiritual endeavours! When we see our fault and remove it, we will attain purity. As a result, we experience more and more liberation within. That is the spiritual result we want, isn’t it?!

Purity with respect to pride

Pride exists because one believes the other person is inferior. Therefore, do not believe anyone to be an inferior; rather always maintain, “He is superior to me.” Then pride will depart. Dadashri has given a lot of such small, small, but very vital keys to attain purity in pride. By using them, one can become free from all beggary and experience the bliss of the Self.

Morality and honesty bring purity of money

Regarding money, Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan advises, “You should take the right path; from it, you feel peace from within. It’s okay if you don’t have money, however there will be peace and happiness from within. Money acquired through wrongful means will not last and it will create suffering from within. Therefore, make a decision ‘To not proceed on the wrong path at all.”

Sharing his own experience, Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan explains, “ ‘We’ had decided in childhood that, ‘As far as possible, immoral money should not be allowed to seep in at all.’ Today has been sixty-six years [for us], but ‘we’ have never allowed immoral money to seep in. That is why there have never been any conflicts in [my] home.”

When we adopt morality and practice honesty in our business transactions, we will not face any shortage of money. This is because the shortage that one experiences is essentially due to the stealing done in this life or in one of the previous lives. Where there is no stealing through the mind, speech and body, Lakshmiji (the Goddess of Money) shows her compassion there.

Stealing creates obstacles on our spiritual path. When one stops stealing overtly, that person gets birth in a high caste family; whereas stealing subtly, meaning with deception, greatly hurts not only one’s own self but others’ too.

Deception means one markets the goods saying, “These goods are pure.” Then, when it comes to selling, adulterated goods are sold. Over and above, the seller takes pleasure in doing the trick which means that she or he is further supporting the deceit. There is a big enmity between tricks [deceits] and money. The more these tricks are used; the less is the money gained (in the long run). While these tricks seem to give more money, this extra money leaves by causing pain and suffering in some way or the other. Thus, the overall monetary gains reduce in the long run. Therefore, there should be no deception at all; we must practice honesty by all means in all our worldly interactions.

The intention of being honest

Many of us believe that if one tries to run the business with honesty, the problems tend to aggravate. However, if a financial crisis arises while working honestly, it means there is only one difficulty. However, if we are following dishonest practices and the financial crisis sets in, it implies two types of difficulties. One will get over the financial crisis in due course of time but it is hard to become get rid of the difficulty that arises when nature is set to punish one for dishonesty.

On the other hand, honesty is a great ‘license’ of God. If we have this license with us, nobody will bother us then. Therefore, we should always have a clear pure intention of being honest.

Honest Intentions

If, at any time, impurity seeps into our intention, it is like adding salt to milk. Here, impurity means salt and our intention is the milk. In this illustration, everything that is wrong or impure implies ‘salt’. It could be an impure thought that arises in our mind or an impure intention behind any of our actions.

The milk becomes useless when salt is put in it, as tea cannot be made from that milk. Therefore, we must be careful enough to not let salt fall into our milk. It is okay if our intention is not magnanimous but there certainly should not be any impurity in our intentions. It is fine to have less milk; there’s no harm in it. However, we must never allow salt to fall into it.

Purity in matters of sensual pleasures

Those who are not satisfied with their hunger will roam around for food and when they see a restaurant, they will get stuck there. Is food the only sensual object of satisfaction? There are five senses through which pleasure from different objects are experienced. When you have not been satisfied with eating, you will be attracted to more food. Similarly, if you are not satisfied in sex, you will keep looking around with all kinds of sexual cravings.

The uninterrupted purity in matters of sensual pleasures through the medium of one’s thoughts, speech and actions is the exact prerequisite for final liberation.

In this era of the Kaliyug, this amazing feat is indeed possible through ‘Akram Vignan’! The one who attains such purity is guaranteed liberation in just one more lifetime.

Remaining Surrendered to Gnani

Liberation is attained through total surrender at the feet of the Gnani Purush.

Gnani is the guarantor of liberation and hence to progress on the path of spirituality, we will ultimately need to surrender into the lotus feet of the living Gnani !!! The true meaning of surrender is when we surrender all our wrong beliefs into the lotus feet of the Gnani. He fractures these wrong beliefs and helps us attain the right belief. 

The Vitaraag Lords have said, “There is nothing at all that needs to be done for moksha. Just seek the One who has become free Himself; the One who has crossed the ocean of worldly life Himself, and He has the power to help countless others attain the same. Seek such a liberated Gnani Purush and follow his footsteps without any fear. If you want to attain moksha, then you will never be able to do so without the presence of a living Gnani, without having surrendered totally (samarpan) to Him, without following His Agnas.”

Remaining sincerely surrendered to the Gnani is the most important spiritual endeavour!

The spiritual practice of surrendering also involves having complete trust on whomever we have surrendered totally. In whatever he says or does, we do not feel the need to use our intellect; we rather follow whatever he says with complete faith and remain sincere to Him.

Let’s learn about it directly in Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan words...

Dadashri: One certainly remains sincere to his spiritual guide (Guru). Even if the Guru scolds him, his sincerity does not budge. That is when, he will attain liberation (moksha). What is the meaning of sincere? It is to remain sincere to one’s own self. That means that one should remain sincere to the mind (mun); remain sincere to the intellect (buddhi); remain sincere to the ego (ahamkar). There should be no deceit with them. In fact, people deceive their very own selves, is that even befitting?

Questioner: Not at all.

Dadashri: Sincere means sincere! If a person remains sincere to his own self, then he becomes the absolute Self (paramatma), whether he meets or does not meet a Gnani (the One with Knowledge of the Self)! Now, if he remains sincere to his own self, then those circumstances will all come together. The extent to which one maintains sincerity with the (manifest) Gnani Purush that much of the Self (swaroop) manifests within.

To achieve that state, right now, what we can and must do is that no matter what the Gnani does or says, we do not get separated from Him – such should be our surrender. He breaks the veils over our Soul to get our work done. 

May all these points inspire you to put in your best spiritual effort so that you are able to progress well on the path of spirituality and achieve the ultimate goal of liberation (Moksha)!