Our Father
ur mein sada se rah govind radhe, jiva brahm sut pitu sang bata de
This couplet is from the book Kripalu Bhakti Dhara, and the explanation of it follows:
Forever. Forever means eternal, that which is without a beginning. As individual souls, we have always existed, and our hearts have also existed ever since. And God, of course, always exists. Thus, all three are eternal. You may question how the heart can be eternal when the body itself will cease to exist after a few days? No. You get a subtle body before this material body ends, and there is a heart in that subtle body too. Wherever you go thereafter, celestial region or a hellish one, whichever life form you take, each body has a heart. And in that heart both the soul and God reside together, as a child and his guardian. God as the father and the soul as his son.
अमृतस्य वै पुत्राः। The Vedas state that they both reside together. No father in the material world can stay with you forever, not even for twenty-four hours. Why? Why can’t he stay for twenty-four hours? Suppose you stay awake and cling to your father all day long. But what happens in the dream state when you are asleep? Where do you go and where does your father go? You have left his company now, have you not? And this happens every single day. Thus, for him to remain with you each day, and that too, forever, is utterly impossible. Even if you still claim to be together, then for how long can this continue? Either of you will die someday. If you contend that both of you will die together by consuming poison, you will still have to go your separate ways according to your respective deeds. You all have had countless such fathers and countless sons in different life forms.
But God never left your side. Whichever form you took He accompanied you, right from the womb itself. Even the soul enters the mother’s womb while the body is being formed. And simultaneously God accompanies the soul. This is the consciousness that permeates the entire body, and the reason why it hurts wherever you are pricked by a needle. Why? Is the body conscious? No, the body is inert, but the soul that has entered it has made it conscious. The moment that soul departs, you say the body is dead. Now, whether you prick it with a needle, stab it with a spear or burn it in a fire, it experiences no pain.
Therefore, to provide consciousness to the soul, God must be with us always. He makes all the arrangements in the mother’s womb to form a body for you. What arrangements? The food that the mother eats nourishes both the mother and her child. What an excellent arrangement this is! Everything is so well-arranged inside. There is no apparent manager, no doer to be seen and you assume everything happens on its own. You may wonder how it happens when the body itself is inert? How does something so scientific happen from a single drop of a cell that transforms into such a wonderful body with millions of veins? All this happens due to the presence of that consciousness (God) and the mother’s intake of food that gives strength, power, and energy to her child to grow into four pounds, two pounds or six pounds.
In this way, God never leaves you, even after death. From the womb to everywhere you go, He will accompany you always.
An English translation of a discourse originally given in Hindi by:
Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj
5 October 2006
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