Faith confirms the Absolute

February 6, 2010

by

Srila B.G. Narasingha Maharaja

(The Following article is based on a class given by Srila Narasingha Maharaja

at Sri Sri Radha-Damodara Temple in Vrndavana on October 20th 2009)

In his illumination on the eighth verse of Sri Upadesamrta, Srila Sridhara

Maharaja discusses faith in relation to what faith is and what it is not. This

is the Vedic process of learning. When you learn about something you must also

understand what it is not. Take gold for example - when you learn what are the

qualities of gold, you must also learn what is not gold. Learning what is not

gold is sometimes more important than learning what gold is, because you must

also be able to identify imitation gold.

The same goes for silk - what are the qualities of silk? It is smooth and it

has a certain shine to it. In the market a shopkeeper may say that a sari is

silk but actually it may be nylon, orlon, dacron - anything but silk! How do you

identify silk? If you have a very keen eye you can identify silk. You must pull

a small thread from the sari, burn it and then smell it. If it has a very

organic and natural smell then it is silk. If it smells like burning plastic it

is not silk. Similarly, you cannot know sandalwood by smelling it. You have to

taste it. Therefore you should know what a thing is not, otherwise you will be

cheated.

In the book The Loving Search For The Lost Servant, Srila Sridhara Maharaja

discusses faith in a very complete way. The Loving Search For The Lost Servant

is actually a thesis on faith, the subtlest thing in our experience. Srila

Sridhara Maharaja explains what is faith (sraddha), what is not faith and how

valuable it is to us in our search for Krsna. Faith is the most valuable thing

we have. But in his commentary it is mentioned that faith is not a product of

the mind. When you believe in something, usually that is a product of the mind.

Generally sraddha is translated as belief. Somebody may ask, " Do you believe in

Krsna? " We may reply that we believe in Krsna, but belief is in the brain - it

is a mental process of accepting and rejecting. Sraddha is on a subtler plane

than that and it takes place as a confirmation in the heart or the soul that

reality exists and that reality is Krsna. It is a confirmation of that which is

beyond matter and that which itself is not material. Matter cannot confirm what

is beyond matter. Only spiritual substance can confirm Krsna.

Srila Sridhara Maharaja was once offered LSD, and he was told the glories of

LSD and how it is supposed to uplift one's consciousness. The people who were

telling him this were so foolish that they offered him some hallucinogenic

drugs. He had been telling them that no amount of maya could produce Krsna; no

amount of matter produces a spiritual substance.

In other words, life does not come from matter. Matter is dead, and no amount

of matter gives birth to life. Life is living force. Matter never comes to life.

Life is an independent subject. It is an independent entity, an independent

spiritual substance. Sridhara Maharaja said that no amount of darkness produces

light and no amount of ignorance produces knowledge.

He used to laugh at the idea that you can get eleven ignorant fellows in a room

and have a vote on something and come up with the right solution. That is

impossible. And it is not that if you add just one more ignorant fellow then you

will get it right. That is what is wrong with the world today - ignorant people,

who don't understand what is the goal of life, run everything. Sometimes there

are people who know what the goal of life is, but they are not experts in the

science of Krsna Consciousness.

People gather to make resolutions. Prabhupada used to say, " Resolution,

revolution, dissolution, no solution. " This is the problem. Look around the

world! They have meetings, they resolve, pass laws and after a while people are

shouting in the streets with placards, then some of them go up into the hills

and start shooting at people. This is going on all over the world, because they

don't know what is the purpose of life and how to achieve it.

No amount of ignorance produces light - even great thinkers like Einstein died

in ignorance because their knowledge was only on the mental plane. Real

knowledge is described as that which explains the difference between matter and

spirit. It doesn't matter how advanced one is in any particular field of modern

science or cultural science if you don't know the difference between the body

and the soul. That is where knowledge begins. Einstein did not clearly

understand this. Through some of the statements that he made we may assume that

he had some intuition towards it, but he had no clear definitive understanding

and therefore one of the greatest brains of the modern world died in ignorance.

When Einstein died, the secret service locked down his house and confiscated

everything in it. Gradually they released everything and returned it to his

family, but they kept all his papers because he may have been working on some

cutting edge theory. At that time, a friend of my father was in the FBI and he

went to Einstein's house. He had a camera and he took a picture of his desk and

somehow or other, this photograph came to my father. About 15 years ago I went

to pay him a visit and he showed me this picture and told me that this was a

photo of Einstein's desk just after he died. There were pens, papers and

different things on it and there was something else lying there on the

right-hand corner of Einstein's desk. It was a book but with the naked eye I

couldn't see the title. I took a magnifying glass and found that the book was

called The Philosophies of India. So he didn't die in total ignorance, but he

was on the path. On the other hand, as you know, Einstein was not sane. He was a

womanizer and a heavy smoker, but he had a hyper brain.

Einstein's knowledge was on the physical plane, that which is actually just a

minute aspect of life. Powerful knowledge is spiritual knowledge. The body grows

around the soul, not the soul around the body. This 'thing' that cannot be

traced is smaller than an atom but has managed to produce something the size of

an elephants body, a dinosaurs body, a whales body or a timingila's body. Yet

the soul cannot be found with any material instrument. Its presence is

understood by its symptoms and life is one of them.

Here, Srila Sridhara Maharaja says, " Imitation is not success, rather imitation

degrades. " For example, a lawyer of a certain status will have the respect of

the law board, but if he imitates a judge he will lose his status as a lawyer

also. He will be degraded and will be removed from the bar. Imitation is a type

of a fraud. Fraud produces some gain but that is all in the cheating business.

When that fraud is discovered, it degrades. Sridhara Maharaja is saying that in

the philosophy of life, in spiritual life, imitation degrades.

Then he says, " Mind is another thing, but the mind is not faith or sraddha.

Faith, sraddha, is connected to the soul and the mind is connected to matter. "

The mind and this table in front of me are the same because they belong to the

eight material elements - earth, water, fire air, ether, mind, intelligence, and

false ego. These are material elements and our body is comprised of them. We

accept that water is a part of our body. There is also fire in the body - if

your temperature goes beyond 107 you die and if it goes below 95 you die. There

are stories of some people who have spontaneously combusted.

These may just be rumors, but we find in the Bhagavatam that Sati sat down in

meditation and her body exploded into fire because of Daksa's insults to her

husband, Siva. She couldn't tolerate it so she sat down and burned herself in

the fire of mystic yoga. Fire is in the body and as we know fire is a material

element. " Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. " Dust to dust means that the body is

made of dust - ashes if you cremate it, dust if it is buried and stool if it is

eaten by the animals. That is what happens to every physical human body in the

world. This is the ultimate fate of the body. It comes from material nature and

it goes back into the material nature.

But the soul is something different and sraddha comes to help the soul.

Knowledge comes to help the mind. Bhakti-jnana is spiritual knowledge. Where

does it enter? It enters into the mind and it enables us to control the mind,

control the senses and then surrender the material elements of this body into

the process of devotional service to Krsna. At a point, knowledge says, " I have

done my job " and bhakti goes on and doesn't require any knowledge. Knowledge

retires.

In the beginning knowledge is very important. You can't simply say, " I am going

to perform bhakti based solely on my faith. " You have to have a proper

understanding. Proper understanding means that first you don't have any

misunderstanding. Some devotees don't have any standing on a particular

understanding. That is tolerable. There are many things that I have talked about

for years, but because of the language barrier some of our devotees don't

understand. They don't have any misunderstandings, therefore they have proper

knowledge. Vidya means knowledge and avidya means ignorance.

A hundred years ago a man that could fix a car had the same social status as an

I.T. student in India today, because at that time the car was a very advanced

machine. That is material knowledge. Material knowledge itself is actually

avidya. Real knowledge is spiritual. That is real jnana and it is identified as

bhakti-jnana, atma-jnana and tattva-jnana. These are all Sanskrit words

referring to knowledge that is beyond matter. This type of knowledge can save us

from misconceptions, because if misconceptions are there then bhakti goes on in

the wrong way. We may go on performing bhakti for a long time, but in the end it

doesn't produce the fruit of love. Knowledge is there to eliminate

misconceptions and guide us on the right path so that our sraddha increases.

Sraddha is the investment of Radharani in the jiva. That is true because Her

name is Sraddha Devi. She is Bhakti-devi and she is Sraddha-devi. Faith comes

from Radharani. She has the most complete faith in Krsna, more so than any other

entity in existence. She is the ultimate. Anyone who has faith in Krsna should

know that it comes from Radharani. But if someone says, " I believe in Jehovah "

or " I believe in Allah " - that 'faith' doesn't come from Radharani. That is on

the mental plane. That is not sraddha. Sraddha doesn't go anywhere except to

Krsna. Sraddha comes from the spiritual world. It transcends matter and it is an

experience that confirms reality and ultimately encourages us towards

surrendering to Krsna.

Faith in these other religions is based upon the modes of material nature.

These religions are known as the religions of the Yavanas and Mlecchas. The

Mlecchas were originally performers of human sacrifice and the Yavanas were

degraded ksatriyas of the Vedic civilization. These religions are not

transcendental. They may carry some information - some plane of well-being and

goodness in them - but they don't cross over the material world into the

transcendental world.

In fact, the initial understanding amongst the Jews was that they will inherit

the earth. The earth was the prize - not heaven. Christians created Heaven

hundreds of years later. Jews don't go to heaven, Jews inherit the earth and

even some Christians thought the same way for hundreds of years. These religions

are not about transcending the material world and ascending to some other plane

of existence. That idea entered through Gnosticism, a religion that had

connections with ancient India and Persia. The basis of the Abrahamic religions

is that God made the earth and that is what we get - not some other place.

But Krsna consciousness has always seen the earth as a temporary home, like a

transit lounge in an airport. Don't try to get too comfortable! Take advantage

of the facilities, but don't try to live here. The world has many advantages and

many wonderful things - but be careful! Behind that wonder lurks a danger. Jivo

jivasya jivanam.

We go to a forest, sit on a mound and we think, " This is so peaceful! " But if

you take a camera and put it in the grass, you will see spiders chewing the

heads off grasshoppers, frogs sticking out their tongues and eating bugs.

Everything is screaming! Even the grass is crying, " I want light, I want water! "

Everything is screaming but you can't hear it. You think that it is so peaceful

and so much better than the big cities, but that is relative to your plane of

suffering. It seems peaceful, but there is no peace in the jungle. There is not

a moment's peace. There is no peace anywhere in this world. There is only

anxiety, but relatively we think, " Oh! This is nice! "

These other religions don't cross over the world of matter into the

transcendental realm. Transcendence is unidentifiable by the mind or even the

intelligence. Although you can get very close with the intelligence, ultimately

intelligence is only matter. Transcendence is purely spiritual. Intelligence can

suggest something is there. Your intelligence may say that there is intelligence

behind this universe, but intelligence cannot understand transcendence, because

intelligence is a material element.

That which confirms transcendence is faith. Transcendence is beyond the

physical, mental, and intellectual experience, and faith confirms its reality.

The mind and intelligence only suspect its reality. They cannot verify this

reality. Now, my faith can't verify Krsna to somebody else. That is not what

faith is for. Faith verifies reality for you. Initially, the strongest proof you

have is that it says so in the Vedas - but it says something else in the Bible

and in the Koran. What it says in a book is not final. Ultimately, knowing is an

inner reality of realization and it is the realizations of sages that is written

in the books. The books explain the experience of the sages in the plane of

faith and they try to direct us towards that experience through faith.

The Bhagavad-gita describes faith in the modes of nature and then describes the

transcendental plane of visuddha-sattva. That is where real sraddha is found.

Faith transcends mundane reality - faith confirms the Absolute.

View online: [http://gosai.com/krishna-talk/106-faith-confirms-the-absolute.html ]

____LET US NOT MAKE OUR STOMACH A GRAVEYARD. LET US NOT EAT FLESH. LET US BE VEGETARIANS AND STAY HEALTHY. Animals are to be loved, not eaten. Eating flesh is good neither for the mind nor for the intellect, not even for the body. It distorts the basic character of human. Think Soul is Soul and it came from the Supreme Soul...God Head Krishna

Chant:Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare HareHare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare