Aptavani-1
15
self-effort. They keep talking about the same thing over and
over again and yet make no progress. Some rely on destiny
alone whereas others rely on self-effort alone. But support of
both concepts are crippled and lame. What do all the factory
workers, who toil from morning to night, get for their efforts?
Do they get anything more than a meal on their table? What
would happen if the fatalists were to sit idle?
When people make a lot of money they take credit for
it and claim it was through their effort and hard work. If they
incur a loss they will say ‘What can I do?’ and blame their
horoscopes or bad luck or the God above. The fools! They
take credit for good things and claim to be helpless when things
go wrong. And sometimes they even blame God for their failures.
Their horoscopes or the stars do not hinder them in any way.
What hinders them is their own internal negative ‘stars’ – their
obstinacy, excessive obstinacy, insistence on being right, insistence
on relative truth etc. I am without obstinacy. Where there is
obstinacy there is conflict, so when I am not obstinate about
anything how can there be any conflict? When everything runs
systematically, success is the end result but when there is a
break in the systematic process, people blame God. The effort
to convert that, which is disorderly, into order, is defined by the
world as independent effort (purusharth). If a person were truly
capable of doing purusharth, he would never incur a loss.
Purusharth knows no failures. It is a contradiction. How can
you do purusharth, when you, yourself have not become a
Purush (Self-realized)? True purusharth is the one that is done
through the extraordinary effort of the self. People are foolish to
believe that they are the doers when in fact it is their prakruti
(the formed complex of thoughts, speech and acts which is a
result of past life karma) that makes them do things.
Lord Krishna has said, ‘Odhavji, what can the weak
attain?’ Even the most renowned Jain spiritual master,