Aptavani-1
65
A person will say, ‘today I did four samayiks and
pratikraman and read the scripture for two hours.’ The fool!
The prakruti makes him do it and he claims that he is doing it,
and if he truly is the one doing the samayik, let him try doing
it the next day. ‘I could not do samayik today’, he will say, ‘but
I did it yesterday.’ What a great contradiction between these
two statements! If you really are the doer, then you can never
say that ‘I can’t do it’. The very meaning of ‘I can’t do it’
proves that you are not the doer. The whole world is trapped
in this wrong belief. Prakruti makes a person renounce and it is
also prakruti that makes him acquire. Even the practice of
brahmacharya (celibacy) is forced upon one by one’s prakruti
and yet he claims he is practicing celibacy. What a contradiction.
Dualities such as attachment and abhorrence, kindness
and cruelty, greed and benevolence, truth and false are all qualities
of the prakruti, and the Self is beyond all duality.
The Self : With And Without Attributes
Many people say that God is without any attributes. You
foolish people! Why do you slander God in this way? They say
that a mad person has no attributes. Madness is an attribute of
one kind so how can one say that a mad person is without any
attributes? It means that by saying the Soul is without attributes,
is the same as saying the Soul is worse than a mad person; it
is like saying that the Soul is inanimate. The Self is neither
inanimate nor is it void of any attributes. It too has its inherent
qualities. By saying that God (Soul) has no qualities, people
embark on the wrong path. Come to me and I will give you the
correct understanding. ‘From the perspective of prakruti’s
attributes, the Self is without any attributes, and from its own
perspective, the Self is full of attributes.’ These attributes are
infinite : infinite knowledge, infinite vision, infinite energy and it
is also an abode of infinite bliss. How can it ever be referred