Maharajji Kripalu– How to Find God
According to Maharajji Kripalu, every soul continues to pursue the one thing it truly longs for: Divine Bliss. We are seeking Bliss at every single moment of our lives. Even after dedicating all of our resources, we have not found Bliss. The reason is that there are two fields in which we desire: Maya and God. We have accumulated much in the mayic domain to the extent that we have become Indra hundreds of times. With maya, you experience happiness from your family, friends, pets, jobs, and wealth. For all the combinations of happiness this world provides, they don’t mean anything and are insignificant in reality. The mayic world is full of unrest and anxiety, devoid of true happiness. True happiness lies only in God’s domain. Grasping this concept does not take much intellect. For example, there are two individuals in front of you, named Ramesh and Dinesh. If someone were to tell you that the person on the left is Dinesh, you can assume confidently that the one on the right is Ramesh. This same logic is applied to Bliss. If we can’t find Bliss in this world, it can be confidently assumed that it must be in God’s field. But most of us have chosen to believe that unhappiness is situation specific and that it is only bantering us. We must understand that unhappiness is a universal trait for anyone that follows maya. So the question is - How do we find God’s Bliss? We can’t visualize God anywhere. There are Deities, but we want to see His actual form so we can ask Him to give us that Bliss.
Attaining Bliss from God is not as difficult as it seems. There are three ways to attain something from one another. We can choose to use force and simply take it from him. We can be more allusive and steal it from him. We can get down on our knees and beg, until he gives it to us. Now which one can we apply to God? Forcing Him into submission is impossible. Stealing from Him when He is everywhere at once and at every time erases this alternative. Even if you were to take something, he would already know that you preconceived the thought before it is acted upon. This leaves us with one option: begging. Asking him in a specific language is not going to work. You have to beg him as if you are a toddler. We do not remember what it was like to be a newborn, when we had no notion of language. We only let out cries to let our mother know that we wanted something. When we did let out these pure cries, they were effective, and created the desired effects we wanted. We need to cry like an infant, signifying the stage when we were the most defenseless. We need to go back to a time when we did not even recognize our mother, yet longed for her care. We simply cried. God says, “Don’t come to me with strength. Become powerless, destitute, without any means, and humble.” There are three maxims written by Gaurang Mahaprabhu that we must abide by. Be more humble than a blade of grass. Tolerate more than a tree. Do not desire respect for you. Desire respect for all.