Pursuing the purpose of fulfilling life’s goal of self-realisation and succeeding in it has a beneficial effect on the individual by making him free of the compulsion to perform actions. Adi Sankaracharya’s Tattwa Bodha spells out that just like the results of actions done in the past and present, the effects that may happen in the future also do not exist. The wise person has stopped identifying himself with the actions and results.
Results of actions may be compared to waves that bear joy and sorrow for the one who experiences it. The self-realised person identifies himself with the all-inclusive self. Hence the joy of experiencing something does not excite him. The sorrow due to pain does not depress him.
The master points out that while a self-realised person is performing actions, he is working without the strong sense of being the doer of the action. The inner attitude is one of love and surrender. He knows fully well and functions with the knowledge that it is not he who initiates and performs actions, but work gets started and executed too by the will of nature. Since he is aware fully well that he is not the doer and the actions happen through him, when the results of the actions come he neither enjoys like the one who firmly believes that he is the enjoyer of the results nor does he suffer.
There is a singular effect of understanding of the supreme self. In future, the jnani does not have to enjoy or suffer the results of actions done in the present moment. The advantages of practising something is always mentioned in the Shastras as phala shruti, because for most of us the driving force for any action is a desired result. Knowing that the result of self-realisation is an opportunity to be very restful and relaxed, might be reason enough to pursue that path.
The mind follows that which it respects and places on a high pedestal. When this statement that our future actions are destroyed by jnana is held in high esteem, the mind easily surrenders.
The description of a realised person here and the impact that results of actions have on him is compared to that connectivity which a drop of water has on a lotus leaf. There may be a few drops on a lotus leaf. When a strong wind moves the plant, the drop merges back into the lake. The leaf has no attachment to that water. In the same way, the future results of actions stay on the realised person like water droplets on a lotus leaf. When the winds of change blow, the drops fall away without impacting the self in him.