In plain words
the emperor Akbar. The grace of God has no reasons. To look for a reason at all is madness. Worldly affairs have reasons. But for the grace of God there is Prema without a cause. Not only the merit earned in this birth, but the merit earned through birth after birth too comes together. In this birth I have not earned enough merit, so why did You give me such darśan? But the fruit of past births comes and joins it. Emperor! When a boy has passed his B.A., what is its inner meaning? It means that he has completed primary school and high school and come on. Without completing those two, he cannot do the BA. If good fortune has come to you today, it is because in the past you have passed through all this and come on. When we say children are in their youth today, they have passed beyond childhood and come on. If we think, 'This is a ripe fruit,' it has come as fruit by the green fruit ripening. If the grace of God has come to me today, we have passed through all these in the past and come on. We must count in the old as well.
Here is a small example of this. We try to see the thing that is right in front of us at that moment. There is a stone. One big boy among the children came and kārulāḍu twenty blows with a hammer. It did not break. Then someone like old man S.N. Singh came. He came and struck it twice with the hammer. The stone split. 'Though so young a man struck twenty blows, it did not break. When so old a man gave two blows, it broke!' So he grew proud. What is the inner meaning of this? To these yuva two blows the twenty blows before them must be added. It is only because of the twenty blows struck before that it broke with these two blows. So it broke at twenty-two blows. If God has appeared before us today, we understand this fruit only when all that went before is added in.
Vallabhācārya went on showing this very thing as three kinds of picture. The first is the puṣṭi bhakta. The second is the pravāha bhakta. The third is the maryāda bhakta. The puṣṭi bhakta, the pravāha bhakta, the maryāda bhakta.
What is a puṣṭi bhakta? One who lives always in the contemplation of God alone. What is this like? The work he does is itself service of God. All the things he holds are the form of God. All the food he eats is God's prasāda. All the water he drinks is holy water. Every step he walks is a circling round God. Every look he gives is a seeing of God. One who lives in this way, they said, is a puṣṭi bhakta. All is filled with God.
What is God like? If one says, 'Kṛṣṇa, do You not hear my words? How much I am weeping! How much I am pleading! Does my plea not fall on Your ears?', then, they say,