Tripura Rahasya

Sage Dattatreya

The Goddess Continued..

Thus you find that earnestness is the only requisite for emancipation. No other requisite is needed if the longing for emancipation is intense and unwavering. What is the use of hundreds of efforts in the absence of a real and unswerving desire for emancipation? That is the sole requisite and nothing else. Intense devotion signifies mental abstraction as the devotee loses himself in the desired object. In this particular instance, it will mean emancipation itself. For such unwavering devotion must certainly succeed and success is only a question of time - which may be days, months, years, or even the next birth, according as the predispositions are light or dense.

The intellect is ordinarily befouled by evil propensities and so nothing good flourishes there. Consequently, people are boiled in the seething cauldron of births and deaths. Of these evil propensities, the first is want of faith in the revelations made by the Guru and in the sastras; the second is addiction to desires; and the third is dullness. This is a brief statement of them.

Of these, want of faith is betrayed by one's doubts regarding the truth of the statements and by failure to understand them. The doubt arises whether there is moksha; and later misunderstanding leads to its denial. These two are sure obstacles to any sincere efforts being made for realization. All obstacles are set at naught by a determined belief in the contrary; that is to say, a determined belief regarding the existence of moksha will destroy both uncertainty and misunderstanding.