Worldly life is indeed suffering – this is a fundamental truth; and therefore liberation from the cycle of birth and death is the ultimate purpose of every person’s life.
Nevertheless, this liberation happens in two stages:
1. In the first step, we get liberated from suffering, and hence we experience the spiritual inner peace; and
2. In the second and final step, we attain liberation from this worldly life forever (from the cycle of birth and death), and thus experience eternal happiness.
Let’s understand this in some detail now…
Every living being is hunting for happiness in this (relative) world.
The Enlightened One explains:
It settles for some happiness, but then experiences that there is no real happiness here, and so, moves onto the next relative (worldly) object; once again he hunts for happiness, he experiences that there is no happiness here either and again moves onto the next temporary object.
This cycle goes on life after life wherein one keeps taking different kinds of experiences and keeps concluding that there is no real happiness in this, there is something beyond this experience. In the process, one is silently progressing on the path of development. And ultimately when he realizes the Self (Self-Realization) and experiences the Soul, he tastes the real happiness and settles there permanently.
After Self-Realization (a firm conviction that ‘I am pure Soul’), we begin to experientially know and understand how real happiness lies with the Soul.
All along, due to ignorance of our Self, we wrongly believed our self to be the body and thereby thought that it is ‘I’ who is suffering. But by giving us this conviction (Gnan), the Enlightened One (Gnani) gives us freedom from the suffering, for the Soul is a permanent element and it is made up of eternal bliss. No suffering can come to the Soul (the Self).
Therefore, Self-Realization is called the first stage of liberation, wherein with the grace of Gnani, we realize ‘who am I’, and as a result, ‘I’ separates from the suffering that exists in body, and thus experiences freedom from suffering.
Thereafter, remaining in the company (satsang) of Gnani, we progress on the path of liberation by increasing the given awareness of the Soul. Gnani answers our questions and solves all problems, and under His guidance and supervision, makes us progress on the path of Moksha.
Following Gnani’s words, as we remain in more and more awareness of the Soul that ‘I am pure Soul, I am immortal, I am eternal’, at every step, the experience of the Soul enhances. Consequently, the karmas, bound in the stage of ignorance of ‘I am so and so, I am the doer’, which brought suffering in the body, keep shedding off; resulting in an experience of more and more bliss of the Soul.
With the help of Gnani’s grace and His divine power of speech and blessings, we are able to get good results. These results gradually lead us to a stage when our complete ignorance is gone, when all the charged karmas covering the Soul totally shed off, we attain the Absolute Soul. This is the second and ultimate stage of Moksha!!
So, life is suffering on account of Karma.
The mind, speech and body which we identify with are actually totally separate – they are actually a natural outcome as a result of our past karma. However, due to ignorance, thinking this world to be real, we wrongly believe, “I am thinking, I am doing, I am speaking.” And due to this wrong belief, we become one with (identify with) the mind, speech, body, intellect, ego, and again bind new karma. This bondage of karma gives rise to a new birth wherein we have to suffer the result of karma. And thus, the cycle of life and death, life after life, suffering after suffering goes on and on…
Through the Akram path, we attain freedom from Karma.
Here, in just two hours’ time, we attain Self-Realization, where Gnani, with his divine grace, burns our deluding karma and helps us gain the right understanding (the conviction) that, “I am not John (you may insert your own name here); I am pure Soul.” This process is known as Gnanvidhi, which is totally hassle-free and completely free of cost too.
To know more on this, please visithttps://www.dadabhagwan.org/schedule/
Thereafter, as explained above, following Gnani’s words, we are able to increase our awareness of the pure Soul – the Self, that gives us permanent happiness, and simultaneously, we finish all our karmic accounts with equanimity (neither attachment nor hatred towards anyone or anything), which gives us both, true happiness and inner peace.
Ambalal M. Patel was a civil contractor by profession. In June 1958, spontaneous Self-Realization occurred within Ambalal M. Patel. From this point on, Ambalal became a Gnani Purush, and the Lord that manifest within him became known as Dada Bhagwan. A Gnani Purush is One who has realized the Self and is able help others do the same. Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan used to go from town to town and country-to-country to give satsang (spiritual discourse) and impart the knowledge of the Self, as well as knowledge of harmonious worldly interactions to everyone who came to meet him. This spiritual science, known as Akram Vignan, is the step-less path to Self-realization.