Dada Bhagwan
Dada Bhagwan (Ambalal Muljibhai Patel, also known as Dadashri) (November 8, 1908-January 2, 1988) was an Indian Spiritual personality and leader of a new religious movement. He was a native of Bhadran, Gujarat, India and inspired the Akram Vignan, a spiritual path to achieve self-realization and liberation.
There is a constant drip of poison falling over this world, however the manifest ‘Gnani Purush’ (completely Enlightened Being), the Sat Purush (Self realized being) and the Sant Purush (saintly beings) shower the world with sweet nectar (Amee).
There is a common misconception of defining the saints, the Self realized beings and the Gnani Purush as being the same. In fact, it is not so. A saint is someone who on the most part has destroyed the pollution of his knowledge and vision; who has made progress towards taking the steps to achieve the ways for self-knowledge and is helping others on that path. The Self realized being is someone who has achieved the supreme eternal truth. He has attained the ultimate soul, however he cannot help others attain the same but he can show them ways to attain it. The Gnani Purush is the highest of all beings. He is the complete, pure and the supreme unbound universal Soul. What is more He can help people attain the same state. The saints and the Self realized beings help people become free from worldly troubles but only the ‘Gnani Purush’ can help people attain the final liberation and break the cycle that perpetuates the worldly life. Simply put, the Gnani Purush can be described only as the embodied Supreme Soul.
For Him, there is nothing left to be known in this universe. A Gnani is someone who does not have to read books or scriptures; He does not need to turn a rosary nor does He have to do penance or renounce anything. A Gnani is such a being who is eternally established in the Self-form as the Soul; a being whom one has never seen or heard of in the past and yet He exists in reality. He can be experienced by those desirous of spiritual salvation. The Gnani’s speech in itself is an instrument which people with spiritual aptitude can know Him. It is a speech that emanates after touching the manifest Supreme Soul within and therefore, it touches people’s hearts and frees them from their sins, whereas the words of the others can earn people merit karmas but not destroy their sins.
Where currently the Kaliyug (the current time cycle) presents itself in it’s decorated and ornamental form, those who have received the incomparable Knowledge of Self realization from the present manifest Gnani Purush, are experiencing constant one-ness with their own Pure Soul and enjoying the pomp of Satyug (past time cycle of spiritual and moral virtues).
In India, Gnani's manifest inevitably. Every two to five years, there manifests a bogus person who calls himself the Gnani of scriptures, but an experienced Gnani comes around once in a thousand years. He can take spiritual aspirants in a step by step path towards Self-experience (Self realization)but he does not know what is self realisation.. He is a Gnani Purush of the Karmic path. As an exception and on extremely rare occasion, there will come in to existence the path of Akram Vignan (a non-sequential, short-cut spiritual path of Self realization), where the spiritual aspirant does not have to climb the steps but simply sit in the lift (elevator) that will take him to Self realization. The Akram path means the perfect and the complete path, where no traditional rituals of chanting the Lord’s name, penances, renunciation or any other forms of austerities are required. One simply has to know and understand the Knowledge given to him. Right and proper understanding leads to right and proper belief and the right and proper experience leads to right and proper knowledge, and the one who has known and understood will develop right and proper conduct. Such is the Akram path. Once in thousands of years, the incarnation of this Knowledge of Akram Science comes into existence in the person of a Gnani Purush. Hence the Akram Gnani Purush is unique and incomparable in the universe.
Through natures beautiful compilation, in spite of these terribly stormy times, such an Akram Gnani Purush, Shri Dada Bhagwan has indeed manifested; this phenomenon is as a result of the credit karmas of countless people from their millions of past lives, has come to bear fruits.
Those who have received His blessings attain, within one hour, a state of Self realization and the divine vision that makes them see the Soul in every living being and that, all animate beings are same as souls! As incredible as this may seem, it is indeed a fact that is being experienced by hundreds of thousands of people with merit karmas.
The worldly name of this extraordinary Akram Gnani Purush was Ambalal Muljibhai Patel, a native from the town of Bhadran in Kheda District in the state of Gujarat. He was born on November 8, 1908, in the house of his mother’s parents in the town of Tarsadli. His Mother Zaverba was like an incarnation of the Divine universal mother goddess Jagadamba. His mother’s influence impacted and changed the direction of his life. As a young boy, one day when he came home after beating up a boy in a fight, his mother told him, “Son, come home beaten by others but not after beating others. I will nurse your wounds and tie a bandage but what will become of other boy?”
In his young age, in accordance with his family’s traditional Vaishnav religion, his mother had him wear a tulsi necklace. One day this necklace broke. His mother told him, ‘Get another one or else people will call you ‘nugaro’ (guruless)’ to which he responded “The one who enlightens me is my Guru! I don’t want a Guru who is confounded in darkness himself!”
At the age of 12, in school, He was introduced for the first time to the mathematics of the lowest common denomination. The teacher asked the students, “In all these numbers, which number is the smallest and indivisible?” Dadashri stood up and replied, “Sir, I have found God from this definition of yours. Every living being is a number and within every living being, that which is common, the smallest and indivisible, is God Himself!”
At the age of 13, He met a saint in his town whom He visited daily and served him sincerely. As a result, the saint blessed him saying “Go son, God will take you to moksha (final Liberation).” At this time, He challenged God. “If God takes me to my final liberation then if He tells me to get up, I have to get up and if He tells me to sit down, I have to sit down. I don’t want this kind of liberation. If He sits me in the place of final liberation and if his acquaintances come along, then he will tell me to move from there and sit somewhere else. What use is that? Liberation and having a superior are contradictory. I don’t want a superior over me neither do I want an underhand below me.”
He got married at the age of 16. During the marriage ceremony of joining hands with the bride, his head-dress slipped partially blocking his vision. While fixing it a thought occurred to him. ‘The marriage is taking place right now but sooner or later it is inevitable that one of us will become a widow.’ What a pinnacle of indifference towards worldly attachment even amidst an event that is filled with infatuation and fascination!
At the age of 18, He was in matriculation grade. His father and his older brother were discussing their intent to send Him abroad for further education and consequently arrange for a post as a governor (administrator of a province). Dada happened to overhear them and thought, ‘If I pass the metric exam, they will make me a governor. I don’t want to slave under anyone in a job all my life. I would rather open small shop and sell paan (betel leaf and nut shop) but I do not want a boss over me. So he would not study and instead would go out to eat ice-cream, fritters and snacks. One day in His English class, He told the teacher, “Sir, I wasted 15 years of my life trying to learn one language. In those 15 years I would have found God!”
He deliberately failed the metric exam and joined his brother’s contractor business. At the age of 20, he celebrated the birth of a son by distributing penda (sweets) to everyone. Two years later one evening He threw a big party for all his friends in a hotel. Everyone kept asking as to what was the party was in honor of. After the party was over, He told them “The guest that had arrived is now gone!” Similarly he celebrated the birth of a daughter by distributing pandas to everyone and threw a party for his friends to celebrate her departure as well!
His entire life was spent in helping others. He told all His loved ones, “Do not do any work for me, however if at any time you need any work, even if it is in the middle of the night, I will get it done.” He would help whoever needed His help. During His life, He earned lacks of rupees but he did not keep any fixed or liquid asset, nor even a penny with him.
In the contract business, He clearly told his partners, “We do not want to cut corners where cement and iron is concerned, like other contractors. Cement is the blood of a building and iron, the bones. If we take away blood and bones, what will remain? We will go hungry but we will not be unethical.”
If we were to put in his own words the state of his antah-skaran (the workings of the inner instrument of the mind-chit-intellect-ego) prior to Self realization, He had said, “Prior to Self realization, I could not find even a single particle or atom (parmanus) of greed or deceit in my nature, however there was a severe disease of pride within. How could that be ever endured? The slightest jolt to this pride within gave me intolerable suffocation. If in a hurry someone happened to address me with four letters of ‘Am-ba-la-l’ instead of six as in ‘Am-ba-la-l-bha-i’, it would create unspeakable anxiety within me and what is more, this anxiety would last for many days; it’s effect would not go away. That was all madness.”
Since there was no knowledge (true), there was a cohesive force of obstructions in the intellect within. His intellect was so highly developed that he would give free advice to many prominent businessmen in order to help them escape their predicaments. As a result one would see many cars of prominent rich merchants in front of his home.
Even at age 20, His thoughts were so elevated that He always felt that whoever met Him, should definitely benefit from meeting Him. Day by day this benevolent tendency grew and in the end resulted in sheer compassion for everyone.
An intense desire for achievement of salvation was evident in him from a very young age. He read and profoundly studied the Vaishnav, Swaminarayan and Jain religion. He also read the teachings of Saints Kabir, Akha and many others but found no gratification. In the meanwhile, at age 23, his partner, Shri Kantibhai, gave him a book written by Shrimad Rajchandra. After reading it, he said, “Until now I have seen many books but nothing anyone said appealed to me and satisfied my hunger. I liked Shrimad Rajchandra’s book but because I did not meet him in a living form, there too I did not get complete gratification. Despite this, I remained fully engrossed in him.” Before achieving Self realization, the battle with the ego was fought on daily basis and because of that he could not sleep at night. About his ego, he said, ‘One day the ego reached its climax. As it became unbearable, I made a package of my ego and placed it under the pillow. Then I could sleep a little and in the morning I said a respectful goodbye to it and offered it in the Vishvamitra River! It was only then the internal pain went away!”
And then arose the grand day of the acquisition of the Enlightenment of perfect Self-knowledge! It was in the month of July in 1958, Dadashri was sitting on the last wooden bench on platform 3 of Surat railway station. He was returning home to Baroda from Sonaghad, waiting for the train. He had finished his supper before sunset; it was around 5.30 pm. During the next hour He spontaneously became enlightened with the Knowledge of the entire universe. In this knowledge he acquired the answers to questions such as: Who an I? What is this universe? How does it run? Who is God? What does He do? Where does he live? Etc. All the views of the entire universe came into His vision. Since that moment, he constantly remained in that same state of being the Pure Soul. While describing the condition at that time, He says, “In 1958, this knowledge came into existence and I became a Gnani (Enlightened Being). Before that, I too was ignorant of my real Self; I was egotistic and then I became ego-less. Even though I was sitting on a bench at the time, I experienced the boundless bliss, as if I were sitting in the Siddha Gati (the state of final salvation). As such how can I narrate the knowledge of the experience that is beyond words? This ‘Akram’ is a wonderful science that has manifested; otherwise in the ‘Kramic’ path (the step by step spiritual path) nothing would be gained even if you were to go back and forth following instruction.”
When someone asked Dada how He attained this knowledge, He would reply, “It happened but natural! It would not happen (to you) even if you were to copy or imitate me. So, come to me and receive your final liberation.”
People asked Him what he used to do in terms of what did He read in order to attain this knowledge and he would say, “There is no relation between scriptures and knowledge. Scriptural knowledge does not bring about a conclusion; a conclusion comes from knowledge that is experienced. I have not done any bargaining in my business my entire life. Since my childhood, I cared not for my own happiness but for the happiness of others. That seed of compassion was sown and as a result, knowledge cannot help but come to light. Moreover, the one whose beggarliness is completely gone (removed) will get enlightenment of knowledge, without fail. For me, all beggarliness was gone in every aspect. I had no desire whatsoever; no desire fame, respect, money or followers. I had no desire of any kind at all and it was only then that this status of Gnani was attained.”
The status of Gnani is not attained by accident. The intentions and self-effort of infinite life times helps the selection of that status. A Gnani means he has become completely faultless himself, he has made his vision completely faultless and he sees the entire world as being faultless. A Gnani is the embodiment of the form of final salvation. He is a savior who is completely impartial. His speech is accepted by all and approved by all religions. He makes the Jains realize the egoless speech of Lord Mahavir, the Hindus the Gita of Lord Krishna, the Muslims the God’s message and the Christians the words of Jesus Christ. Everyone relates to Him as his or her own God. The Gnani Purush is not the owner of his body or his speech. He says that His speech is a ‘tape recorder’ that is talking. His Self realized state was not known to anyone for four years. Later in 1962, His cousin’s grandson was instrumental in opening the magnificent gates of Knowledge for everyone. Today hundreds of thousands of people seeking Self realization are able to achieve the same Knowledge within an hour, and experience the happiness of being free despite being in an embodied state living a worldly life! This is His phenomenal and extraordinary accomplishment. Yet, He lived in a state of being simply instrumental and a complete non-doer ship. This Knowledge is very quickly effective and keeps people motivated for their salvation in the eternally established aim of the pure Soul by completely and perfectly purifying and the inner and the outer being.
Giving freedom from the austerity of penance, renunciation and other rituals of the Kramic path; He is regarded as the Vitraag (free of all attachments) Scientists of the magnificent short, direct and non-sequential (Akram) Path of Self realization. In spite of living the worldly life, He was in a state of complete unattached and that is the highest wonder of present time! What is more He becomes an inspiration for even a family man to advance and succeed on the path of ultimate spirituality. Despite being involved in the roguish business of contract, He remained in a state completely free of worldly attachments till last moments.
In the beginning Dadashri remained very inconspicuous. Slowly more and more people began to receive Self realization from Him, through his one hour long spiritual scientific process of separating the Self from the non-self. People were delighted with their experience of the bliss of the Soul within. On this path of direct Knowledge, without having to undergo the austerities of rituals of chanting, penance, service, worship, fasting, meditation or yoga, there prevails a constant awareness that the body and soul are separate. The body state is gone and the Soul state is permanently there. It is the experience of thousands that the awareness of ‘I am a pure Soul and the Knower and the Seer of the mind, speech and the actions of the body’ prevails effortlessly. After that no worries, tension or pain touches one from within; such is this wonderful and awe-inspiring knowledge.
