Aptavani-4
35
(3)
Prarabdha – Purusharth
What Is Purusharth?
Dadashri: What purusharth (independent effort; free
will effort) do you do?
Questioner: Of business.
Dadashri: That is not considered purusharth. If a
person were truly doing purusharth, he would bring in only
profits, but do you also not incur losses? You cannot call that
purusharth. That is just a ‘wound rope’ (karma from past life)
which is unwinding (discharging). How can you call that a
purusharth? If you are doing the purusharth, then why do you
incur a loss?
Questioner: That does happen too. And sometimes it is
even damaging.
Dadashri: No, the one doing the purusharth will never
incur a loss. Who is the one saying, “I am doing purusharth”?
All the people in the world are “tops” (spinning tops). A
person’s prakruti (non-Self complex of mind, speech and
body) is making him ‘dance’, and yet he will say that he is
“dancing”. If you gave him a powerful electrical shock, his bones
and entrails would explode. Even reading books and scriptures
is not purusharth. It is all evidential effort (naimitik purusharth;
his current purusharth is one of the evidences of his karma
discharge).
No one has understood what real purusharth is. “I am,