Dangers in Spiritual Journey (Jesus, salvation, soul, creation, mission)

[dattaswami]

Mr Antony asked about the information of dangers in spiritual journey.
Swami replied:
The only basic danger in spiritual journey is ignorance. The ignorance generates certain decisions. Based on these decisions you are slipping from the path. The ignorance does not like analysis by reasoning which is called as ‘Buddhi’. When the analysis is done the ignorance become weak and decisions are cracked. If this process of analysis is repeatedly done, it is called as memorization. Such memorization generates continuous knowledge, which is like the light. Then the ignorance and its decisions are crushed which vanish like darkness. You never slip in the path as long as this light persists. I give an example here. You are acting as a king in a drama. Your dramatic son is artificially killed on the stage. You are weeping on the stage. You are ignorant that he is your dramatic son. Such ignorance created a decision in your mind and you are feeling that he is really your son. Such decision gives you real pain. Now if you analyse that this is drama, your ignorance disappears and subsequently your dramatic decisions and dramatic pain vanish. But after a few minutes you have left the analysis and so the ignorance, its decision and its pain continues. The ignorance is mainly created by the wrong interpretations of scriptures given by demons who are born as some human beings.

Similarly if you analyze your self and identify that you are the soul and not the body, all the wordly bonds disappear. This is called as Salvation. Now you are qualified to attain and please God. With the help of the analysis of the scriptural knowledge you can identify the Lord in human form. Here also you must remove your ignorance that He is the human body. As you have recognized your self in the human body by analysis, you must recognize the super self or the Lord in that human body. Again by analysis you must recognize that yourself (Pursha), which is an item of the creation is totally different from the Superself (Purushotama). Such knowledge will keep you always in His divine service. Therefore the only danger is ignorance as mentioned by ‘Samat Sujata’ in Mahabharata (Pramadakhyo Mrutyuh…..). Lord Krishna started Gita with Buddhi Yoga only, which is the analysis leading to divine knowledge. Sankara also emphasized on the removal of ignorance by the analysis called as Jnana Yoga. Then only you can understand the statement of Jesus about leaving the wordly bonds for the sake of serving the mission of the Lord.