Today we have a simple question. Does God perform our actions? In other words, does God control what we do and think? It’s a very important topic. And some statements of our scriptures, if not correctly understood, can cause someone to actually understand the wrong thing - completely backwards.
For example, it is said in Kaushītaki Upaniṣad that God makes us do good actions and God makes us do bad actions. Now if someone takes this literally, they’ll understand in the wrong way.
“Parokṣhavādo vedoyam,” Ved Vyāsji says in the Bhāgwatam that this vāṇī of Ved, the writings of Ved, the words of Ved are ‘parokṣhavād’. It means, again in Hindi,
“Shabdārth kuch hain aur uskā bhāvārtha kuch aur hain.”
In other words, the literal meaning, if you were just to translate word for word it would mean one thing and the actual meaning is something else completely. This is the nature of Ved. This is why one can’t interpret Ved simply by becoming a Sanskrit scholar. You have to actually be a God-realized Saint with a Divine mind. That’s why Ved says,
आचार्यवान्पुरुषो ही वेद ।
Āchāryavān puruṣho hi ved.- Chhāndogya Upaniṣhad 6.14.2
“Only the one who is surrendered to a Divine God-realized Saint can understand the real meaning of Ved.”
Therefore,
उत्तिष्ठत जाग्रत प्राप्य वरान्निबोधत ।
Uttiṣṭhata jāgrat prāpya varānnibodhat- Kaṭha Upaniṣhad 1.3.14
“O humans, awake, arise and seek knowledge from a true God-realized Saint.”
‘Prāpyavarāt’ (means the one) who has already attained God. Go to them to get the true knowledge, otherwise,
श्रुति-पुराण-बाहु कहे उपायि । छूटे न अधिक अधिक अरुझाई ।।
Shruti-purāṇa-bahu kahe upāyī chhūṭena adhik adhik arujhā-ī.
“If you go and study the scriptures on your own, you’ll become more and more entangled in a web of confusions.”
Therefore, to attain correct knowledge, we have to go to the God-realized Saint. So, in this case and in every case nowadays, we can go to the lotus feet of the most acclaimed scholar of Kaliyug, Jagadguru Shree Kripalu Ji Maharaj. And he explains that according to this statement of Vedas, Brahma Sūtra has also said,
“Parāttu tac-chruti.”
What does this mean? Understand through an analogy:
When the rain falls, it causes a seed to germinate. What plant grows out of that seed? It depends on the DNA. You might get a thorny bush out of one seed and you might get a mango tree out of another seed that produces sweet fruit. So, will you blame the rain if you get a thorny bush? Will you shake your fist at the clouds and say,
“You gave my neighbor a mango tree and you gave me a thorny bush?”
The clouds will say, “We just make the seeds germinate.”
What is the seed itself? What is the programming in the seed? What is the DNA of the seed? (It means) that the rainwater doesn’t change; it just brings it out, allows it to express. Jo andar hai, wo bāhar vyakta ho jātā hai. (जो अंदर होता है, वही बाहर ज़ाहिर होता है।) So, in this way, if we understand that God gives souls the power to think and perform actions, then that’s like the rain falling on the seeds. But what actions we perform depends on our own inner machinery, in other words, our mind, our antahkaraṇ. How pure or impure is it? Accordingly, it will produce that quality of thoughts and we will perform that quality of actions.
In Gita, Shree Krishna says,
न कर्तृत्वं न कर्माणि लोकस्य सृजति प्रभु: ।
न कर्मफलसंयोगं स्वभावस्तु प्रवर्तते ॥Na kartṛtvaṁ na karmāṇi lokasya sṛijati prabhuḥ.
Na karma-phala-saṁyogaṁ svabhāvas tu pravartate.- Gita 5.14
Shree Krishna makes it very clear in the Gita. He says,
“I am not the one performing the actions of the souls. I give the power to perform those actions,” and ‘svabhāv-pravartate’, “according to the inner nature of that person, they will perform the actions.”
So, is God responsible for us performing actions? In one way, yes, because if He didn’t give us the power, we couldn’t perform any action. But the quality of that action is up to us. Both sides are true.
यन्मनसा न मनुते येनाहुर्मनो मतम् ।
तदेव ब्रह्म त्वं विद्धि नेदं यदिदमुपासते ॥Yanmanasa na manute yenāshurmano matam.
Tadev brahm tvaṃ viddhi nedaṃ yadidamupasate.यद्वाचाऽनभ्युदितं येन वागभ्युद्यते ।
तदेव ब्रह्म त्वं विद्धि नेदं यदिदमुपासते ॥Yadvacha’nabhyuditaṃ yen vagabhyudyate.
Tadev brahm tvaṃ viddhi nedaṃ yadidamupasate.यच्छ्रोत्रेण न शृणोति येन श्रोत्रमिदं श्रुतम् ।
तदेव ब्रह्म त्वं विद्धि नेदं यदिदमुपासते ॥Yachchhrotreṇ na shṛiṇoti yen shrotramidam shrutam.
Tadev brahm tvaṃ viddhi nedaṃ yadidamupasate.यत्प्राणेन न प्राणिति येन प्राणः प्रणीयते ।
तदेव ब्रह्म त्वं विद्धि नेदं यदिदमुपासते ॥Yatpraṇen na praṇiti yen prāṇah praṇīyate.
Tadev brahm tvaṃ viddhi nedaṃ yadidamupāsate.- Ken Upanishad
“A person cannot even think without God’s power. A person would not even be alive without God’s power. A person would not be able to see without God’s power. A person would not be able to speak without God’s power. A person would not be able to hear without God’s power.”
So, He is giving life to our soul and that gives us the ability to think and perform actions. God gives us, and every living being, the power to perform actions, but after receiving that power, which actions we choose to perform is in our own hands. (Bhagwān humko aur har jīva ko tat-tat karma karne ki shakti de dete hain, lekin us shakti ko pāke hum kaunsa karma karenge wo hamāre hāth me hain.)
We control what actions we do. God doesn’t control it any more than Gangaji is flowing. So, anybody can go to the bank of Gangaji. You can have a ritual bath. You can take some water back to your house, use it for cooking, cleaning, washing, drinking. Someone can jump in Gangaji on purpose and drown themselves. All that range of possibilities are there. Is Gangaji responsible if someone makes a wrong use of the water? No. Gangaji is flowing for everybody. In the same way, Bhagwān is giving the power of life to every soul and the power to perform karm. But what karm we decide to perform that is 100% up to us.
So, where it says ‘sādhu karm kārayati’, God makes us do good actions, it means God gives us the power and without that power nobody could have done any good action. And ‘asādhu karm kārayati’, God makes us do bad actions, it means God gave us the power and we misused the power. Yes, you can blame God indirectly. If you didn’t give me the power, I couldn’t have done any wrong action. But that’s not God’s fault, is it? Any more than it’s Gangaji’s fault if someone misuses her water. If God were the one performing our actions, then there would be a lot of logical inconsistencies in the way things are set up.
For example, we undergo the consequences of our previous lives’ actions, don’t we? We are rewarded for good actions and we are punished for bad actions.
पुण्येन पुण्यं लोकं नयति पापेन पापम् उभाभ्याम् एव मनुष्यलोकम् ।
Puṇyen puṇyaṃ lokaṃ nayati pāpen pāpam ubhābhyām ev manuṣhyalokam.- Prashna Upaniṣhad
If someone does a lot of good actions, they can be rewarded with a limited stay in swarg. If someone does a lot of bad actions, they could be punished by having to spend some time in naraka.
अवश्यमेव भोक्तव्यं कृतं कर्म शुभाशुभम्।
Avaśhyamev bhoktavyaṃ kṛitaṃ karm śhubhāśhubham.“Everyone must undergo the consequences of their past good and bad actions.”
So the question is, “If God were the one performing our actions, if He were the one controlling us and making us do good sometimes and bad sometimes, then shouldn’t He reward Himself for our good actions and punish Himself for our bad actions? Why should we have to be punished when He is the one making us do wrong?”
And this type of belief can lead to justification of any kind of wrong action.
“Oh, did I hit you? God must have made me do it. What can I say?”
You can get away with anything with that kind of philosophy. So Shree Kripaluji Maharaj says,
“Someone who follows this wrong philosophy will go down the wrong road to who knows what extent, justifying any kind of wrong action. They’ll destroy themselves in a spiritual sense.”
Again, if we are to believe God performs all of our actions, God controls all of our actions, then a question would be: God made some souls do bhakti. And by doing bhakti, they attained Him and they got perfect Divine bliss forever. And God never made us do bhakti. He made us do just a mix of good and bad actions. And because of that, we’re being reborn again and again in this world, since eternity till now, unlimited births with unlimited suffering. So what did we ever do to God? This is injustice!
He made Tulsidasji and Mirabai and all these souls do bhakti. They attained Him and got perfect bliss forever. And instead of making us do bhakti, He made us do normal worldly actions and we’re suffering as a result. So why couldn’t He make us do bhakti? Well, the answer is He didn’t make those souls do bhakti. He gave them the power just like He gives us and they decided to do bhakti. They made the determination that I have to attain God in this life. And they followed that path and reached their goal.
If God were the one controlling all of our actions, then there would be no need for Him to reveal any scriptures. See, the scriptures are like the instruction manual, right? They give the guidance for how to live one’s life. He could have just written one shlok or one mantra and just said,
“Whatever I want you to do, I’ll make it happen, because I’m the one controlling your actions.”
And instead, a hundred thousand mantras in the Vedas of vidhi-niṣhedh - means ‘do’s and don’ts’. This is right, this is wrong. Do this, don’t do that. What would be the need for all of that guidance, for all of those rules? He could have just said,
“Whatever I want you to do, I’ll have you do it.”
So it’s obvious that this is not the situation. God is not the one controlling our actions. God gives us the power to perform actions and we have to decide what to do with it. And that’s why everything else in this system is in place. That’s why there’s swarg to give us incentive to perform good actions. That’s why there’s narak to put the fear in us of doing wrong actions. That’s why there’s ‘chaurasi lakh yoni’, 8.4 million species into which a soul can be born to receive the outcome of their actions. That’s why God manages this whole law of karm, where each and every thought is counted as a karm and we get the results of that karm, which He has to give to us. A karm can’t produce its own result. So look at how much intensive labor is required on God’s part to track all the soul’s actions and give them all their results. He’s doing all of that so that we will learn from our actions and understand that first we have to become good. And once a person becomes good, they’ll wonder,
“Is there anything more than this? Because by being good, I get worldly rewards. I enjoy material prosperity. But that doesn’t give me perfect happiness.”
Even if you gave everything, enough of everything to everybody on earth, still nobody would be happy. So is there something more than that? Yes. Then the scriptures and Saints tell us,
“Yes! You have to do bhakti and attain God. When you attain God, you’ll get perfect happiness.”
रसो वै सः, रसं ह्येवायं लब्ध्वानन्दी भवति,... ।
Raso vai saḥ, rasaṁ hyevāyaṁ labdhvānandī bhavati,...
Taittirīya Upaniṣad says, “God is that bliss that you’re looking for that will make you perfectly happy forever. Only by attaining Him can you attain perfect happiness.”
So now you understand that ordinary souls like us do not have our actions controlled by God. We control our actions, so we decide to do wrong or we decide to do right or we decide to do bhakti and attain God. We shouldn’t be sitting around waiting,
“Oh, when God wills it, then I’ll do devotion.”
जो करै सो हरि करै‘
Jo karai so Hari karai’
that statement by Kabir Das, “Jo karai so Hari karai,” (”Whatever is done, God (Hari) is the doer”). That’s for a God-realized Saint. That’s after a soul completely surrenders to God and attains Divine bliss, then that soul has nothing more to attain. So why would they do any karm? They’re already perfectly blissful. Then whatever that soul is doing, God is controlling. That is true for the God-realized Saint, not for the ordinary soul like us. So we shouldn’t sit around waiting for God to make us do actions which will result in us attaining Divine bliss. We have to do it. Sometimes we’ll say to someone - and I don’t have to preach to you on this point because you’re all here on a Sunday - but let’s say, I am giving a satsang at somebody’s house and I announce that,
“Oh, you know we have satsang every week at Radha Madhav Dham from 12 to 1. You should come.”
And many times people will give an answer like, ‘Jab Bhagwān kā bulāvā hogā, tab āūngā’. In other words, what they say is,
“Yes, when God invites me, or when God calls me to come to Radha Madhav Dham, then I’ll come.”
So then I ask them, “What will that look like, that God calling you? Will you get an email from Shree Krishna? Will He send you a WhatsApp message, “Hey, go to Radha Madhav Dham for Sunday satsang?””
How do you know that my standing in front of you right now inviting you to Radha Madhav Dham, how do you know Krishna didn’t arrange that? How do you know that isn’t Krishna telling you to come to Radha Madhav Dham?
So we shouldn’t make excuses like that and just wait that,
“Oh, when God gives me the idea or makes me feel like going to Radha Madhav Dham.”
No, no, no. God has arranged for Radha Madhav Dham to be here. Krishna has arranged for all of us to know about it.
So how much lābh (benefit), how much benefit, we extract from Radha Madhav Dham, that much is up to us. So keep coming to Radha Madhav Dham, keep listening to the lectures of Shree Kripaluji Maharaj and try to understand the path. What is the path of bhakti. You can learn by coming to Radha Madhav Dham, listening to the lectures of Shree Kripaluji Maharaj, listening to the lectures on your own on His YouTube channel, and even if you want to join us, every day for satsang you can.
So let us spend a few minutes doing kirtan now, and as we do the kirtan, I’ll ask you all to focus your mind on Radha and Krishna by doing roopdhyan. Just visualize the form of Radha Krishna, that They are with you right now, and as we do that, we’ll do some chanting.
