Purification Through God’s Holy Names

[Gauracandra]

This week’s Srila Siddhaswarupananda television program discusses how we can purify ourselves through the chanting of God’s Holy Names.

 

Everyone in the material world is covered by reactions to previous sinful activities. Because he has a material body he has built in suffering. The spiritual quest is a quest of purification. As long as you are covered by reaction, both good & bad, you will have to be reborn to experience birth, disease, old age, and death.

 

Your essence is spirit, part and parcel of God. The body exists in the material dimension and cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. We have talked about this before.

 

So how can I become purified of my previous reactions? To do this we must understand how to purify the lust in our heart that causes one to continue to engage in sinful activities. How can I become purified of my enviousness of God?

 

In our previous discussion we talked about how some so-called Christians say that God came to this world as Jesus to make a blood sacrifice by dying on the cross in order for us to become purified. They say that a blood sacrifice was needed. However, there is no evidence for this in scripture, logic, or in our heart. Their idea was that God had to sacrifice. This assumes that God was sacrificing to someone. But God does not worship anyone except Himself. He just looks in the mirror. When He does this it is natural, when we do it, it is a perverted reflection. We have talked about this before and if you want a transcript of those programs we can send them to you.

 

How can you be purified of that lust to lord it over the material world? It is a wonderful thing to understand that God is above the material conception. This idea that God must sacrifice is an eclipsed view of His power and magnificence. In scripture we find that God can purify each of us if we simply accept, receive, and repeat His Holy Names.

 

He appears as His names. They are non-different from Him.

 

Psalms 54:1 “Save me oh Lord by thy name.”

 

How can anyone miss this? How can they say that God must bleed and die in order for us to be purified.

 

Psalms 124:8 “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

 

Are they saying that God will help us materially? No. In the Srimad Bhagavatam it is stated that there is no other way, no other way, no other way but the chanting of the Holy Names of the Lord. In the Padma Purana we read “There is no difference between the Holy Names of the Lord and the Lord Himself.”

 

It is stated by all bonafide teachers that the Holy Names of the Lord are available to us for purification.

 

Lord Caitanaya has stated “Glory to the sri-krsna-sankirtana, which cleanses the heart of all the dust accumulated for years and extinguishes the fire of conditional life, of repeated birth and death. This sankirtana movement is the prime benediction for humanity at large because it spreads the rays of the benediction moon. It is the life of all transcendental knowledge. It increases the ocean of transcendental bliss, and it enables us to fully taste the nectar for which we are always anxious.”

 

Not only does the Holy Name purify me, it also gives me a taste for what we are looking for. Some people are looking for nectar in ice cream, sex, surfing, in money. We are looking for that nectar and it is always on the horizon. That is how we are in life. We are always craving. Lord Caitanya is saying that what you really want can be found in the Holy Names of the Lord. Then you will experience true satisfaction.

 

“O my Lord, Your holy name alone can render all benediction to living beings, and thus You have hundreds and millions of names, like Krsna and Govinda. In these transcendental names You have invested all Your transcendental energies.”

 

God is not limited. He has so many names. I’ll be talking in the future about religious fanaticism. There are those who believe God is limited to their conception. But He has so many names and the great saintly persons tell us to repeat the Holy Names of God.

 

How does God appear in this material world as His Holy Names? There is an ad for a “talking Bible”. It’s a pretty good idea but they have a few odd ideas about God. In this talking Bible they have God’s voice booming and reverberating. But that is not how He appears. He appears on the tongue of His pure devotees. Those who love Him purely repeat His names. As we hear from such saintly persons we become purified, and as our purity increases, then the full manifestation of the Lord appears to us. This is called disciplic succession. It is a descending process through a living servant of God. It enters into our ears.

 

Let me tell you a little more about Lord Caitanya. You might not know much about Him. He appeared 500 years ago in Navadwipa. When we say that He was God, there must be scriptural evidence for this. [Next, he quotes 3 or 4 different scriptures describing the appearance, name of His mother, and activities for Lord Caitanya] He came as a devotee with the purpose of getting others to hear and chant the Holy Names of the Lord. We are following His instructions and if you would like to learn how to become purified by chanting the Holy Names of the Lord then please contact us at the Science of Identity Foundation.