Bhaktisiddhänta Sarasvaté (2)

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February 21st, 2003, Friday (Païcami)

Appearance day of Çréla Bhaktisiddhänta Sarasvaté Öhäkura

(Fasting till noon)

 

 

The Movement of Unalloyed Devotion

Çréla Bhaktisiddhänta Sarasvaté Öhäkura

First printed in the Harmonist (Çré Sajjanatoñané)

Vol. XXVII, June 1929

443 Caitanya Era, No. 1.

___________________

 

The Sajjanatoshani was founded by Bhaktivinoda Thakura as the

journal of the present movement of pure devotion initiated by himself as a

follower of Sri Rupa Gosvami, the associate of Lord Caitanya, who was made

by Him as the original acharya of the principle of loving devotion. The

movement has spread widely since the foundation of Sajjanatoshani. A very

large number of sincere souls of this country have attained the life of

loving service to the Lord.

 

The assumption of the English garb by the journal is the result of

the extension of the movement, and is prophetic of the tendency of further

and world-wide expansion. The name Harmonist, which has been adopted by the

English Sajjanatoshani may appear at first sight to be also more

cosmopolitan than the older Sanskrit title which literally means "a female

who pleases the Lord's own." The Harmonist aims at promoting concord.

 

But the English title is not really different in its significance

from the original title of the periodical. Harmony is to be found in

spiritual service to the Lord alone. The Harmonist has dedicated herself to

the service of those, who are themselves loyal servants of the original

Source of all harmony. In contradiction to the service of the servants of

the Lord the vox populi and prospects of worldly enjoyment, the Harmonist

pins her faith in the Vox Dei and prospects of spiritual living based

thereon. She strives to please not everybody indiscriminately, but only the

servants of the Lord.

 

Unless the general populace prefer to obey the servants of the Lord

rather than following their own erring inclination for worldly

aggrandizement, there can be no real harmony in this world. To try to please

the servants of the Lord is the same as, nay, even higher than trying to

please the Lord. The Harmonist is prepared to serve the demon only if the

demon himself obeys the Lord and not otherwise. By trying to please those

who do not serve the Lord, the prevailing confusion will be further

confounded.

 

The method adopted by the Harmonist for the promotion of concord has

nothing in common with the methods adopted by the humanists who rely only on

themselves and their fellow-beings for attainment of their purpose. The

miseries experienced as a result of the discords of this world are generally

supposed to be due to ignorance of the laws of nature and the significance

of the moral order. By providing ethical instruction and opportunities for

the practice of social and humanitarian virtues, and by the diffusion of

knowledge of the laws of nature, for the efficient performance of virtuous

work, the humanist hopes to make all persons attain the peace of the

conscience. The plan and object of the Harmonist does not believe that

instincts of fallen souls can supply the real basis for rearing the

structure of universal peace and happiness.

 

The fallen souls naturally covet the things of this world for their

own selfish enjoyment. As the attempt to derive fulfillment from such things

is, however, doomed to perpetual failure, peace of conscience must

necessarily be sought elsewhere. Man must discard the guidance of his

limited and misleading understanding and seek for enlightenment from above

in a spirit of real humility.

 

The practical way to attain spiritual enlightenment is to serve the

servants of the Lord. The fallen soul must submit to receiving knowledge of

his real self and of his relation to the Supreme Soul from those who are

themselves enlightened. The limited understanding must not be allowed to

shut out the unlimited. When once the higher knowledge really makes His

appearance, the limited understanding will automatically realize the nature

and method of spiritual activities in the light that comes from the Source

of all light.

 

By trying to adjust our duties in the light of the will-o-the-wisp

of our distorted conscience, we are only guided by foolishness which we are

pleased to call by the name of free individual judgement. The real freedom

is an eternal quality of the spotless soul, who has no affinity with or

hankering for his own selfish enjoyment. Neither is the soul in his natural

condition of enlightened freedom disposed to the self-destructive vanity of

stoic passivity. The free soul's unremitting and sole concern is to serve

the Transcendental Truth which is obscured in his fallen state by the fog

created by the vanity of the stoic manner to which the soul subjects himself

by his own free choice.

 

The right to self-elected bondage to the hankerings of the flesh has

been adopted from time immemorial as the basic principle of the political,

social, and individual life of incarcerated humanity in his temporary

sojourn throughout this earthly prisonhouse of correction. The Harmonist

pleads for a revision of this basic principle of life in the light of higher

considerations. The light from the Source can alone guide us on the eternal

path. Our tiny individual lights are not independent sources of

illumination, but have to be continuously nourished, to be preserved by

contact with the Source of light. The connection between the Source and the

dependent light is severed by the vanity of having independent existence in

the fallen state.

 

It is therefore necessary to reestablish this interrupted

connection, not by the knowledge accumulated by the inductive sciences which

are themselves the product of the deceptive light of the soul in the state

of rebellion against the fundamentals of his own constituent principles but

by the knowledge that comes from the Fountainhead of all light who has His

transcendental abode in the shining realms of the Spirit. The method of

submissive listening to the tidings of the spiritual world, which transcend

without ignoring this phenomenal universe, from the lips of emancipated

souls who serve eternally and exclusively the real Truth is the only way of

obtaining the grace of divine enlightenment.

 

The Harmonist stands for this principle in theory and practice. She

is in principle and practice the eternal and exclusive servant of the

servants of the Lord, and her sole duty is to try to please only them and

thereby continue the method and purpose of Thakura Bhaktivinoda, who is

embodied in the Sajjanatoshani, the humble maid-in-waiting of the servants

of the Lord.