Whats the difference between a Maha purushan and the God Incarnate? All who were incarnations of the Lord were great souls but not all souls cannot be incarnations of the Lord. One who struggles hard to relieve himself of the bondage of birth and death and attains liberation is a great soul. He looked to himself to attain the liberation. He could have looked at others but he neither has the authority and has not been able to do it.
Controlling the mind is not an easy task. All his lifetime, without doing any other work, does not go to work, does not go abroad just sitting day and night and controlling the mind it cannot be said that in this lifetime itself he would be able to control the mind. Will he win over desire and anger, we cannot say. It may look as if desire and anger have left us but its not true, inside us the vasanas will be buried deep within. Say if we are in North India, we may have been accustomed to the food in the North India.When we come back home to the south, we find that they are making lots of sweets, sambar, rasam and when they serve this food, we say we dont like this food and dont want it. If on the other hand, we per chance go to a foreign land and land on a place where we cannot get North Indian food, then the tongue will be crying for "Vathakozhambu", its been long that I have not had this tamarind sambar!, how long it is that I havent had rasam. Is there a hotel where I can get rice and sambar nearby? Even maybe beg and have this. Why? because when we had it we ignored it and when in North India he used to day he doesnt have so much of liking for food, just 2 chapathis would be enough and I would have a light dinner, but now in this different land he is not able to contain himself. The reason being only when something is not available to be got, then the attachment deep inside surfaces out.
We normally seem to think as if we have conquered desire or anger or attachment to things but in reality its not that easy. Daily, say if we are habituated to drink coffee at 5 a.m, we cannot be without coffee even for a single day. Now as we seem to have lots of power cuts, we are unable to live without a fan or an aircon. If we are in the habit of sleeping in a bed, we cannot sleep on a mat. We are unable to sacrifice atleast 1 meal a day. People who have the practice with the betel leaves chewing are not able to be without it, One who has often the practice of having tea or coffee is not able to leave that. We are unable to let go to any of these small practices.
Say someone comes to see us at 4 pm for a period of 10 days and when on the 11th day he doesnt come, the mind worries what happened. Thus the mind being a slave to such desires and affections including desire, anger, jealousy, hunger, thirst, sleep - all these vasanas having brought down from his several previous births cannot be just won over a second and the most foolish thing is to even think we have won over them. All these are vasanas. Vedanta sastras tell this. What example is given for this is - Just looking at a mango or jackfruit tree, a pregnant monkey will be sitting there. This mother monkey will give birth to a baby monkey on the tree itself, it doesnt not have to come down to earth to deliver the baby. The small baby monkey will come out of the womb of the mother. Now this baby monkey is still in the tree and not on the earth, unlike the other animals like the cow which gives birth to its calf will fall down and get up several times in order to stand up. But for the baby monkey the surprising thing is that, once it comes out of its mother and as soon as it comes out, it will know that it will fall down to the earth and will automatically catch the branch of the tree with its hands. The mother did not teach anything.
How did the baby monkey catch hold of the branch, this is told in the vedanta sastra, man with thousands of his previous births over many pralayams and sristis may have been born as a monkey once. So we would have got some of the monkey behaviours that would have been brought down the several rebirths. Likewise when the jeeva took on the body of a monkey, it remembers all the behaviours of the monkey. Vasana therefore belongs to man. A small child in a cradle suddenly feels a shiver or a fear, who would have thought fear to the child. The child suddenly smiles, wherefrom the child has got the happiness in order to smile. If a sister or brother is born after this child, then if the mother shows greater love towards the new born child, the older child gets a bit angry and when no one is nearby pinches the newborn. The older one gets a possessiveness and jealousy. All this is something we have gathered as we were born. The vasanas are becoming known to us.
Thus anger and desire cannot be driven easily. "anEka janma samsiddhaha bahunam janmanamanthe" - only by extreme effort day and night can we get that. If someone says that we can do this with a click of our fingers, do not beleive that, we also need not beleive that we can conquer that. The practical beleives that this is not possible but being otherwise he lives in illusion and saying its possible to achieve whats considered not easily possible but only by extreme effort. He will be asking how to do meditation time and again thats all, he will never get to achieve success in meditation. Instead of doing meditation he will be involved in matters.
A swami had a desire to perform meditation and be able to see the bhagavan. So he decided that to do meditation he would need a meditation hall thinking that if there was a separate hall then only he could meditate. Thinking where he could build one such hall, he chose not to build one close to where there would be lots of people milling around but instead there should be a nice hill, a river running nearby, place should be silent etc where he could meditate. So he started searching for such a place talking to a few people and in course of time tried to find places but each and every time he found that in one place there would be a hill but no river and likewise river with no solace and ultimately after lots and lots of searching for years found a place. He then printed bills to collect some money and build the temple. By the time he finished building he was aged 90 years. When he finally sat down to meditate he got only sleep. Like that without matters, in order to come to the bhagavan, you need not even shake your hands. You have a fruit and a book and pick that up you need a hand. But the bhagavan residing in your heart, you need not do anything. So to know the bhagavan in your heart what you need do to. So to get to know the difference between a ordinary man and the lord incarnate.
An ordinary man cannot just attain the bhagavan in a single lifetime because its not just so easy to win over anger and desire. Looking back say 100 or 200 years, whether it is advaita or visishtadvaita or dvaita there were several vidwans who had mastered these. These vidwans did not boast themselves as jnanis. What is great about upanyasams today, they have done lakhs of such and very talented then. Being great people they knew the distinction between saying and experience and understood them well. Just speaking 10 words, they did not claim themselves as jnanis or say they spoke to bhagavan etc., Because they had understood well. Talk and experience are entirely different.
If you need experience, without the grace of the bhagavan, man cannot win over the mind, reason being in this world what all that we cannot get rid of is MAYA. Did we create the maya ourselves. Did we ask for money and attachment to it? Did we ask for attachment to all the family members? Even looking at a thing and possessing it, all these desires were given to us by the bhagavan who created all of this within his creation. All these desires were created by this bhagavan and whoever created this only can deliver us from this as well and you cannot by yourself get releif from this maya. Just like the affection we have for the child, wife, house, career, body all this is created by the bhagavan. Try as you might whatever you do you cannot come out of this on your own. Only bhagavan must grace you to come out of this only then you will get deliverance. So if one doesnt do bhagvath bhakhi, saranagathi how will one get deliverance.
So if you understand what is meant by abhyasa it is enough. In a house we have a loft and on top of the loft there will be certain items kept. So a child will not be able to get to the items in the loft but it will try to catch it by jumping up to reach it. Immediately the father or mother who come up behind them would help to get the bat from the loft, the child thought knowing fully well that he or she cannot reach the loft but still makes an attempt while somebody from behind comes and fulfills it. A small child will crawl and attempt to reach us, It will get hold of our feet and then lift its hands up and look up to us to lift him up as it doesnt yet know how to speak.
So by its action it asks us to lift it up. Just like the mother picks up the child and holds it to her chest and feels happy, therefore the attempt by the child is to crawl and come up to the feet of the mother whereas the fulfillment of the request is by the mother. Likewise the expression of the desire to see bhagavan, deliver us from the samsara sagara and need liberation being performed always is saranagathi and that is abyasam. I dont want this janma, I wish to come and be at the eternal feet of the lord - the desire first being borne out of what we have heard, we also start expressing it likewise. But this has to come from the depths of the soul. Just because somebody said you should not say again. So to get it from the soul, you need the grace for that as well. At first you can tell it in a false way, or mechanically - these words to get fulfilled is only bu his grace and without that nothing is possible. To get the desire to attain bhagavan, HIS grace only is the means, to get satsangham also HIS grace alone is the means, to get the Guru also HIS grace is the means, Guru Upadesam also HIS grace is the means, to keep going forward in this path also HIS grace is the means, to get around the obstances as well HIS grace is the means, to get his Holy feet also HIS grace is the means, to attain HIM also HIS grace is the means. From the origin, middle and end of ones satsangha HIS grace alone remains. That is the truth. The grace is the avalambanam. We need to get hold of that. Thats what we need to keep remembering always.
So for an ordinary being to get delivered from the clutches of maya, one lifetime is not enough, how can he then do upadesha for the other. Since he himself is not matured to get out of this maya, how then can he advise the other and show him the path. Thats why the incarnations of the Lord just did not come to do sadhana alone, just did not come to this world to get rid of maya and attain bhagavan, but were born with the bhagavath anubhavam and as part of the lord himself, with all the ornaments of the bhagavan to come into this world come as full beings (they need not do any japam, anustanam and purify themselves). Mans lifetime is very less, even if one lived for 125 years still its less and for the lord incarnations if they come here to do meditate or perform anustanams where is the time for them to perform the action that is the purpose of their incarnation.
So the incarnations of the Lord are one who are born with the experiences of the Lord himself.
Mahans are ones who were born as ordinary mortals, come under the grace of a mahapurusha, they in their lifetime or in the coming lifetimes having constantly done abhyasa, winning Maya, they strive to attain liberation,
This is the difference between the mahapurushars and the Lord incarnations.
Radhe Radhe
