krsna Posted April 7, 2005 Report Share Posted April 7, 2005 Sriman Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa Sri Ishopanishad: Mantra One ¡°Everything animate or inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the Lord One should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself; which are set aside as his quota, and one should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong.¡± One of the definitions of God is that He is the origin of everything, the original cause of all causes. Everything animate (living) and inanimate (nonliving) comes from Him. All energies emanate from Him. In the Bhagavad-gita the Supreme Lord states: ¡°Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and false ego -altogether these eight comprise My separated material energies. Besides this inferior nature, 0 mighty-armed Arjuna, there is a superior energy of Mine, which is all living entities who are struggling with material nature and are sustaining the universe.¡± -BHAGAVAD-GITA: 7:4-5 Since all energies emanate from the Supreme Lord, everything -both living and nonliving-is His. In this world, people are always fighting over property. They want to stake their claims of ownership on both the living and the nonliving. According to the Sri Ishopanishad, these people are like thieves fighting over stolen loot. If we look at the question from the relatively short- term view, we may find it hard to accept that no one is really an owner of anything. But if we adopt the point of view of the Sri Ishopanishad-which sees the universe not in terms of decades, centuries, or even thousands of years, but in terms of many millions of years-then we can understand this point. For example, who owns the moon? Both the Americans and the Russians, for instance, have contemplated mining the moon in order to build artificial planets called space colonies. According to the Sri Ishopanishad it is God who owns outer space, the earth, and, all living beings. A piece of God's property may be controlled to a limited extent by a temporarily powerful man or nation, but in due course-whether over hundreds of years or hundreds of thousands of years-such men die and such nations dissolve. The fight over God's property causes living beings great distress. If people could only recognize the truth of this first mantra- that everything and everyone belongs to God, and that as His children all living beings have a right to the necessities of their existence -then the world would be at peace. There is enough in the world to fulfill everyone's needs, but not enough to fulfill everyone's greed. In some parts of the world people are dying from severe undernourishment, while in other parts of the world people are dying from obesity. By nature's arrangement, a person can eat only a certain amount; this amount depends upon the size of his stomach, his ability to digest the food, and so on. An elephant's quota is fixed at a hundred pounds or so of hay a day; a bird's quota is fixed at a few seeds, or a little bit of fruit. A human being's quota also is fixed. A man's stomach is limited in size; thus, how much he can digest is limited. To eat more than can be digested is sinful. Some people in the West try to get around this natural limit by artificial means. Their desire for sense gratification is so great that it drives them to all kinds of crazy actions. In order to eat as much as they desire (rather than as much as they need), they have resorted to such things as shortening the length of their intestines so that fewer nutrients are absorbed from the food that they eat, and to taking pills that keep food from being digested. One of today's more popular methods was quite popular in ancient Rome as well-"vomiting. A person eats to his fullest, induces vomiting, and then fills his belly again. Some people spend all day like this, eating and vomiting. Another way in which people take more than their quota is by accumulating vast amounts of money and property-far more than anyone could possibly use in a single lifetime. Nelson Rockefeller, for instance, was so wealthy that he had dozens of huge houses, and in each of his houses he had huge golden beds. But he had only one body, and so he could sleep only in one bed at a time, under the roof of one house at a time. Greedy, wealthy people also have huge bank accounts that contain far more money than they could ever really need. This is another manifestation of greed. Such hoarding runs directly counter to the teachings of the Sri Ishopanishad. Why does a person claim ownership of a thing or of another person? To control it or them. And why does he want to control it? Usually because he wants to be the enjoyer of it. For example, a child claims ownership of a piece of candy so he can control it. Why does he want to control it? So he can enjoy the taste of it. He can't enjoy the taste unless he has control over it-unless he can pick it up and put it in his mouth. To "buy" a piece of candy from a store is to transfer the ownership from the store to the customer. After a customer has paid for the candy, he is given control over it. He isn't allowed to control it until he owns it; only then can he do with it as he pleases. If you walked into a store and started eating food off the shelves without paying for it, you might be prosecuted. You would be told you couldn't do what you wanted with the food until you became the owner of it. The owner of something is considered its rightful enjoyer. Seen in this light, the first mantra's declaration that the Supreme Lord is the ultimate owner and controller also declares Him to be the ultimate rightful enjoyer of everything and everyone. Everything that exists is meant to please Him. He is the center around which everything revolves. Unfortunately, a person who is materialistic, greedy, and self-worshipping wants to take the place of God; he sees himself as the center of the universe. He sees everything and everyone-the world, people, his family, animals, plants, the environment-as revolving around him. He sees everything and everyone as meant for his enjoyment. The world is full of such exploitative people, and they cause so many problems. If a person sees himself as the Supreme Enjoyer, he will automatically live a life of exploitation. He will not respect others or the environment, nor will he care for the well-being of others. He will lead a hedonistic life of unrestricted sense enjoyment, lording over everything and everyone. Although human in form, he will be no more than an animal who lives by the philosophy, "might makes right." However, serious students of the Sri Ishopanishad will know these truths: 1. I am spirit soul, not matter. I am a spark of God. 2. Although my essence is non-different from God's (i.e., spirit), I am not the Supreme Spirit. I am the dominated part and parcel of God. I am not God. 3. As a dominated part and parcel of the Supreme Spirit, my natural function is to be engaged in loving service to Him. I cannot find complete happiness in material sense gratification because I am spirit, not matter. I need spiritual food-loving service to God. Since my position is dominated-I am not the supreme controller-my natural activity is to render loving service to the Supreme Lord. To try to be the lord and enjoyer is unnatural and leads only to frustration and misery. On a practical level, if people lived by the first mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad, the effect would be great. These enlightened people would live as caretakers, not exploiters. Since they would see everyone as God's children, they would see the inalienable right of all God's children to partake in God's bounties. God's property is rightfully meant for the well-being and sustenance of all His children. Once individuals understand this, they will not see their private property-including their own bodies -as really theirs. They will see themselves as caretakers, not owners, of God's property. They will use what is in their possession in a manner that is consistent with the Absolute Truth of God's ownership. It is not that individual "ownership" of anything and everything must be, or even could be, banned. As children of God, each of us can possess His property and use it both for our own sustenance and for the welfare of our family, neighborhood, society, state, nation, and world. It is not that a theocracy of self-appointed "servants of God" should control all property. Indeed, nothing could be more dangerous and more against the meaning of the first mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad. So-called religious leaders who seek political power in order to control all properties and people deny the fact that all people are children of God, and that therefore all people have the right to possess and use His property for their sustenance and in His service. There is nothing more dangerous to real religion than fanatics who seek to lord over others by force in the name of God. Nor is false renunciation desirable. You may say, "God owns everything, therefore I am going to give up ownership of my watch. I'll throw it away." But how can you give up what is not yours in the first place? It's not possible. To say "I'm going to give away my watch" shows that you think you own the watch. Obviously you couldn't give away the watch if it wasn't yours. For example, if the watch belonged to your father, who merely lent it to you for a short while, you would not say, "I'm going to give up my watch." To give up what is in one's possession, to think "I'm going to give up all my things," is based on the illusion of ownership. Real renunciation is different. Real renunciation means to understand that everything in your possession isn't really yours-it is God's. The practical application of this understanding is the change in use of one's things. Instead of using possessions for your sense enjoyment only, if you are enlightened, you will use them for the glorification of God and the welfare of the people, who are all God's children. An individual, a family, or a government that understands the first mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad sees itself in the role of caretaker, not owner or exploiter. Sri Isopanisad Mantra Two "A person may desire to live for hundreds of years if he works according to this truth [of the first mantra], because that sort of work will not bind him to the law of karma. And there is no alternative to this way for man.".¡± The second mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad refers to karma-yoga, or devotional service. If a person understands the first mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad-that everything belongs to God, including one's body, possessions, and very self-and lives according to this truth by dovetailing his life in the loving service of God, then he is engaged in what is called karma-yoga. "Karma" means "action," and "yoga" means-"united with God" or "united with the Absolute Truth." Everyone is engaged in action. The law of karma means that there are reactions to every action and that a person must endure the reactions to his actions. As Jesus Christ taught, "As you sow, so shall you reap." A person is not the body; he is eternal spirit soul, residing only temporarily in the body. The particular body a person has is due to his past activities, his past life. No one chooses where they will be born, or even in what species of life they will be born. Some living entities are in dog and cat bodies, others are in bird bodies, and so on. So many different types of bodies are provided by material nature, and the particular type of body given to the spirit soul depends on his past karma and his desires at the time of death. The eternal spirit soul is bound up on an endless wheel of repeated birth and death caused by reaping the fruit of the seeds he has sown by his actions. Everyone is struggling for a long life, not caring that this will simply cause accumulation of karma and thus rebirths. Every action, good or bad, produces some karmic reaction. Actions that are "bad" create bad karmic reactions. A person who engages in heinous criminal actions or who lives simply like an animal, exploiting others, will have to eat the bitter fruit of such actions in the future. Actions that are described in scripture as "good" or "pious" create good karma. A person who wishes, after the death of his body, to enjoy a more pleasurable material life in some heavenly planet or on earth, is often very careful to engage in pious actions. His aim is increased sensual pleasure, both now and in the future. Thus, both "bad" and "good" karma create karmic reaction, which forces a person to take on another material body-even if it is in the heavenly material planets. And wherever there is matter, there is birth and death. As the Lord states in the jewel of the Vedas, the Bhagavad-gita: "For one who is born, death is certain; and for one who dies, birth is certain." -BHAGAVAD-GITA 2:27 The yogi or transcendentalist does not want to be born again in the material world. He wants to transcend the wheel of birth and death, which is full of suffering. Thus he does not want to create either bad or good karmic reaction. Must he then simply sit down and meditate silently until his body dies? Will any action create karmic reaction? Does he have to stop all actions, and if so, is this even possible? The second mantra is intended for serious yogis and transcendentalists. It says that if a person's life, his work-that is, his actions-are based on the understanding that God is the owner, controller, and enjoyer, then such actions will create neither bad nor good karmic reaction. Actions engaged in for the pleasure of God cause no karmic reaction. So one who dovetails his life in the loving service of God, who works in the Lord's service, creates no new karmic reaction. Such activity in devotional service is called akarma, or naiskarma. Because a person engaged in devotional service produces no karmic reaction from his activities, he does not need to take on any more material bodies. At the death of his body he returns to the spiritual world, and engages there in further loving service to the Supreme Lord. Mantra Two makes it clear that one who lives for the Lord's pleasure, who makes God the center of his life's work, can aspire to live for a long time in this world without any negative consequences. A long life will not bind him to the wheel of karmic reaction. He will not incur any karmic reaction no matter how long he remains here. Although appearing to live in the world of matter, the transcendentalist engaged in the loving service of the Lord, is not really in the material world; he is in the spiritual world. There is a primary difference between the material world and the spiritual dimension. In the spiritual world God is the central enjoying agent and the living beings are enjoying serving Him; whereas in the material world the living entities reject God's Lordship and struggle to be the lords and enjoyers. A pure loving servant of God-one who is conscious of the spiritual realm, yet who appears before those of us in the material world- is an ambassador or representative of the spiritual world. In other words, the Supreme Lord and His pure devotees can appear to exist in this material world without really being in it. To be in the material world means to be dominated by the illusory energy, maya. It means being under the laws of material nature- specifically the laws of karma. This mantra makes it absolutely clear that you can live in this world and not be under the laws of karma. By surrendering to the Supreme Lord, by serving Him out of love, you can be freed from the bondage of the illusory energy. Indeed, you, the jiva, the individual soul, have been placed under maya and the laws of material nature specifically because of your enviousness of the Lord. As soon as you give up such envy and want to be engaged in the Lord's loving service there is no need to be under maya's domination. So you are released. Remember, maya is the illusory energy of God. It is God's energy and is controlled by Him. Ultimately everyone is controlled by God and surrendered to God directly or indirectly. If a person wants to be the loving servant of the Supreme Lord, then he gets that. But if a person wants to be the Supreme Lord-master and enjoyer-then he is placed under the control of God's illusory energy. In this condition he is in the illusion of lordship but is in fact under the strict laws of material nature. By following this mantra a person changes his service-instead of serving maya he serves the Lord. A bona fide spiritual master, a fully realized soul, is not someone who has become master or Lord. A spiritual master is not someone who has defeated the power of maya. No. A spiritual master serves God instead of maya-but he is still serving. Everyone is dominated. Everyone serves. Our only choice is: do we serve God or maya? Do we surrender to and be dominated by God or by maya? To choose to serve God results in life, happiness and freedom. To choose to serve maya results in death, misery and slavery. Sri Isopanisad Mantra Three "The killer of the soul, whoever he may be, must enter into the planets known as the worlds of the faithless, full of darkness and ignorance.".¡± The human form of life is a life of great responsibility. There are 8,400,000 species of life, and the spirit soul-or self-transmigrates from one species to the next. The human form differs from the lower forms of life in one most important aspect: in the human form of life, the spirit soul has the facility to achieve self-realization-that is, a perfect understanding of his relationship with God. If a person perfectly understands his relationship with God, if he develops his love for God, then he can get off the wheel of birth and death. So the human form of life actually is meant to be the take-off point to the spiritual world, where there is no birth or death. Therefore, when a person comes to the human form of life, not only does he have the facilities that all animals have-sleeping, eating, mating, and defending-but also a higher facility. He has the ability to question: "Who am I? Why am I suffering? Why am I here? Is there a cause to all of this? Is there a purpose to my existence?" The third mantra says that a person who fails to utilize his human form of life for spiritual realization ends up, after this human body is finished, taking on a lower species of life. In other words, if a person lives like an animal-interested only in those things that interest animals (eating, sleeping, sex, and, defending) and not in spiritual development-then his next life will be as an animal or some other lower form of life. A person has no need of a human form if he won't use it to its fullest potential. Why have a human form and then live like an animal? To possess five muscles but use only four doesn't make sense. A person who uses only four muscles even though he's been given five will receive only four the next time around. In a large corporation or in government, the higher a person's office, the more facilities he's provided. A person in a high government office usually has at least one secretary, often more. He has telephones, automobiles, a nice, comfortable office, money at his disposal, and so on. A person in a lower position in the same company or organization does not have this kind of facility. Why? Because he does not have as much responsibility. So the more responsibility a person has, the more facility he has to work with in order to carry out his duties. Now, if a person in a high government office has a great deal of facility but uses it incorrectly-if, for example, he squanders money, wastes time, and so on-then his irresponsible actions will cause him to soon be demoted. By material nature's arrangement, at some time or other a person is automatically transferred to a human form of life-put into a higher office, with higher facility. This human form of life offers the facility to achieve spiritual perfection. If, however, a person neglects his responsibility and misuses his facility-misuses his time, his energy, his relatively comfortable position-then he will again descend to a lower species of life. Unfortunately, most people in the world do not appreciate that the human form of life is meant for more than just eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. Now, obviously economic development is necessary-people must have enough to eat; they must have the necessities of life to keep their bodies fit, healthy, and strong. And of course some defense is needed. But in today's society, human beings are interested in almost nothing but eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. For example, in the West sex is glorified to no end. But animals also have sex! Why does a human being have to spend so much time and energy around sex? It sometimes seems in the Western world that no one thinks of anything other than sex. This preoccupation is a tragedy, a waste of the human form of life. And if people are not engaged in thinking of sex, trying to figure out how to get sex, or worrying about some disease that was caused by illicit sex, then they are sleeping. Or they are thinking about how they can increase their enjoyment of sleep by getting new beds, new styles of mattresses, and so on. And if they're not thinking of sex or sleeping, then they are thinking of eating: in the material world, many people don't eat to live-they live to eat. And then there is the interest in defense, both individual and national. On the national level, all the nations of the world spend more and more money every day on defense. Some countries hardly have enough food for their people, yet they spend billions and billions of dollars every year on defense. Today, both as individuals and as societies, people in the world are almost exclusively concerned with these four things-eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. The dog eats, sleeps, mates, and defends. Every animal eats, sleeps, mates, and defends. How, then, are we different from any other animal? Some people would say that we're not different, but this is unacceptable. Human beings have the potential to understand their identity as spirit souls, parts and parcels of the Supreme Soul. And although we obviously need to take care of our eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, we must not make these activities our sole or primary interests. This is a great mistake. The third mantra says that a person who places all his interest on eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, kills his spiritual life and descends to a lower species in his next life. Unless people recognize the distinction between the body and the spirit soul and therefore the need for spiritual as well as material food-this world will become increasingly hellish. In his book Small is Beautiful, noted British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote: "Wisdom enables us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life necessarily sets man against man and nation against nation, because man's needs are infinite, and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material." It is a fact that no matter how much sense gratification a person gets, he will never be satisfied. Material food, material things, material sense gratification cannot satisfy the spirit soul within the body. Just as the body needs material food, so the spirit soul needs spiritual food. To try to satisfy one's spiritual craving with material things leads to endless consumption, greed, envy, violence, and war. Western people have as much sense gratification as one could ever want, yet they are not satisfied. Why? Because they are spiritually empty. They live in a hell of their own creation, which is full of anxiety, lust, greed, and anger. They do not know who they are. They identify their bodies as themselves. Thus they try to find happiness in mere bodily sense gratification. And thus they end up suffering, and causing others to suffer. Although such people are living, they are actually dead. And after their present bodies die, they will not take on other human bodies but will continue to remain dead: they will take on the bodies of lower species of life. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Four "The Personality of Godhead, although fIxed in His abode, is more swift than the mind and can overcome all others running. The powerful demigods cannot approach Him. Although in one place, He has control over those who supply the air and rain. He surpasses all in excellence.".¡± This mantra suggests many points of discussion. The first point is that the Supreme Lord is more swift than the mind. This means that a person cannot catch God with his mind. Sometimes people try to know the Absolute Troth by means of mental speculation. They think, "Maybe God is like this, maybe God is like that. Maybe the Absolute Troth is like this, maybe the Absolute Troth is like that." They try to achieve perfect realization of the Absolute Troth by following the ascending method. They try to use the power of their minds to ascend into the kingdom of God. But since God is swifter than the mind, no one can catch Him with his mind. Therefore, if a person wants to know the Personality of Godhead, he must give up the method of mental speculation. A person can come to know God perfectly only by submissively receiving the Lord. If God is pleased with a person, then He will increasingly reveal Himself to that person. It is useless to try to know God by the power of mental speculation. Only the process of humbly receiving God as He is, as He reveals Himself, leads to success. There is no other way. Arrogance alone makes a person believe that he can understand God by the power of his mind. However, the power of the human mind is limited, and God-His potencies, qualities, characteristics, and so on-is unlimited. So the limited cannot contain the unlimited. The limited cannot catch the unlimited. The yogic or Vedic process of coming to know the Personality of Godhead is called the descending process. This means that a person receives information from God which descends from Him. And he receives this information with an attitude of humility. He doesn't feel that he's qualified to know God. God reveals Himself to such a person in three ways: 1. Through scripture; 2. Through the Lord in the heart-the Paramatma. The Lord expands Himself and speaks to the heart of every living entity. So a person can receive information about the Lord from within his own heart; 3. Through guru, or the spiritual master, who is the representative of God. ¡°Just try to learn the truth by approaching a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render service unto him. The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth¡±. -BHAGAVAD-GITA 4:34 Guru does not mean an official, ecclesiastical representative of a particular church or faith, but rather means the self-realized, pure lover of God. Thus if a person wants to know about God, he must receive God from these three sources-scripture, the Lord in the heart, and guru. The second point made in Mantra Four is that the powerful demigods cannot approach the Lord. This mantra says that in the universe there are different living entities with different amounts of potency or power. Some are seen and some are unseen. This hierarchy, of course, is all relative: To an ant, a dog may seem to be a demigod; to a dog, a human being may seem a type of demigod. Actually, all living entities are spirit souls, equal parts and parcels of the Supreme Lord, but due to their particular types of material bodies, some have more power and some have less. In this mantra, "demigod" refers specifically to those living entities who, in the bureaucratic arrangement of the universe, are temporarily acting as directors of the rain, air, and so on. Demigods are actually nothing more than very powerful living entities. Some demigods are more powerful than others, but all demigods are under the supervision of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. And not even these powerful demigods can catch the Supreme Lord. In fact, they cannot even approach Him. As described in this mantra, this refers not only to their lesser power in relation to the Lord's, but also to their lesser excellence in all aspects. Nobody is as perfect as the Supreme Person. Someone may be very beautiful, wealthy, wise, kind, powerful, compassionate, and so on; but no one in this universe, not even any demigod, can compare to the Lord in such qualities. This verse does not mean that God's business is simply to act as an administrator of the universe. That's what demigods are for. There are countless millions of universes, and anyone who imagines that the only business of the Supreme Lord is to administrate those universes has a very limited concept of Him. In fact, God exists in His own kingdom-the spiritual world-and simply by His potency alone He directs and controls the demigods, who are the actual administrators of the bureaucracy of the material universes. In other words, every universe can be compared to a giant society or giant city. Every city needs a water department, a sanitation department, and so on. Demigods are like department heads- department gods-but they are not God; ultimately, they are under the domination of the Supreme Person. Less intelligent people worship the demigods for some material gain. For example, they'll pray to certain demigods for rain, or they'll pray for a good harvest, or they'll pray for something else. Actual knowers of God do not worship the demigods, nor are they interested in demigod worship (although they accept the existence of demigods, just like they accept the existence of more powerful people in this world). But materialistic people who are interested simply in material gain, simply in improving their eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, are very attracted to worshipping demigods. In fact, some superstitious people worship anything that they think will help them in their life of material enjoyment. They'll worship trees, rocks, or whatever. And those who are ignorant will worship ghosts -they'll go to graveyards and worship there. This is all due to ignorance. Such persons have not been educated about bona fide spiritual life. Real spiritual life begins when a person accepts the existence of the Supreme Lord. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Five ¡°The Supreme Lord walks and He does not walk. He is far away, but He is also very near. He is within everything, and yet He is outside of everything.".¡± With God, the inconceivable is conceivable. For a person with a limited fund of knowledge and a limited degree of faith in the inconceivable potency of the Supreme Lord. this mantra contains irreconcilable contradictions. It says "the Supreme Lord walks," yet says "the Supreme Lord does not walk." It declares that the Lord is "far away," then says "He is very near." It says "He is within everything," and then it declares that "He is outside of everything." A pure devotee of the Supreme Lord accepts the Lord's inconceivable potencies and therefore is not in any way doubtful that the inconceivable is conceivable with the Supreme Lord. In other words, a devotee faithfully accepts that all things are possible with God. There is an ancient story that illustrates this very point. One day Narada Muni-a famous, pure devotee of the Lord who has the power to travel at will anywhere within the material and spiritual worlds-was on his way to see the Supreme Person face to face in His kingdom. Before he left for God's kingdom, he came upon a mystic yogi who had been undergoing severe austerities and penances for many years, trying to achieve perfection in mystic yoga. Upon seeing Narada Muni, the yogi sensed that he was a great spiritual person, and asked Narada who he was. Narada Muni replied, "I am Narada Muni. I am on my way to see the Supreme Person" The yogi paid his respects and then asked Narada Muni, "Could you please do something for me? When you see the Lord. could you ask Him when I will be liberated from the wheel of birth and death?" Narada Muni agreed and went on his way. He then came upon a humble cobbler who lived under a tree. As soon as the cobbler saw Narada Muni, he stood up to pay his respects. He then asked Narada Muni, "You seem like a saintly person. Who are you? What is your business?" Narada Mum replied, "I am Narada Muni and I am on my way to see the Supreme Lord." The cobbler was very excited to hear this, and he asked Narada Muni, "Could you please do a favor for me? Could you ask Him when I will be liberated from the wheel of birth and death?" Narada Muni consented and went on his way. Narada Muni saw the Supreme Lord, and when he was just about ready to leave said. "Oh, yes, one more thing. There is a mystic yogi and there is a cobbler. Both of them want to know when they will be liberated." The Supreme Lord said. "You can tell the yogi that he will be liberated only after one hundred lifetimes. And you can tell the cobbler that his present body will be his last. He will be liberated because he is My pure devotee." Feeling very happy, Narada Muni was about to leave when the Lord said. "Oh, yes, one more thing-they will both ask you what I was doing when you saw Me. Tell them that I was threading elephants through the eye of a needle." Narada Muni then returned to the material world and first came upon the mystic yogi. The mystic yogi immediately asked Narada, "Did you see the Supreme Lord, and did He say when I would be liberated from this miserable material world? I've been engaging in so many penances and austerities. Obviously I deserve to be liberated quite soon. After all, I'm a very advanced yogi now. I'm a great mystic." Narada Muni replied, "The Supreme Lord stated that you are very fortunate and you will be liberated after one hundred lifetimes." The mystic yogi, extremely angered, expressed his doubt that this could be possible, saying, "I can't believe you. I don't even know if you really are the great Narada Muni. Tell me, if you really saw the Supreme Lord what was He doing when you saw Him?" Narada Muni said, "He was threading elephants through the eye of a needle." The yogi then laughed, saying, "That's ridiculous. Now I know for sure that you are simply a charlatan, you never saw the Supreme Lord at all. No one can thread elephants through the eye of a needle. I should have known you weren't really Narada Muni." Narada Muni continued on his journey and came upon the cobbler, who very humbly, respectfully, and expectantly greeted Narada Muni. "Did you see the Lord? Did you see the Lord? When did He say I would be able to come to Him?" Narada replied, "The Supreme Lord said that this body will be your last. Upon leaving this body, you will go to Him. You will not-- have to take on any more material births because you are His pure devotee. Your love for Him is unflinching." The cobbler was very happy upon hearing this, and out of sincere inquiry, wanting to hear about the activity of the Person whom he loves, asked Narada, "When you saw my Lord, what was He doing?" Narada Muni replied, "He was threading elephants through the eye of a needle." Upon hearing this, the cobbler jumped with joy and began dancing and chanting the names of the Lord, crying tears of love, sometimes falling on the ground, sometimes dancing. Astonished, Narada Muni asked him, "My dear friend, do you not consider that it is inconceivable that the Lord could be putting elephants through the eye of a needle?" And the cobbler, who lived under a banyan tree, picked a fruit off the ground, opened it, and said to Narada Muni, "My dear Narada, there are countless thousands of these little fruits that fall off this banyan tree. And in each of these fruits you will find there are hundreds and hundreds of little seeds. And in each of these little seeds the Supreme Lord has placed a giant banyan tree. For the Supreme Lord. nothing is inconceivable. He is truly wonderful." The Absolute Truth, the Supreme Lord, is both impersonal and personal, simultaneously. The impersonal feature of the Lord, known variously as the "Brahman effulgence," the "Void," the "ocean of effulgence," and so on, is without qualities or attributes. Because it is impersonal, obviously it does not contain the attribute of "walking." However, this impersonal feature of God is but an offspring of the eternal Personality of Godhead. Many transcendentalists know about the impersonal feature of God, but they don't know the Personality of the Absolute Truth. God is not only impersonal; He is a person with His own eternal transcendental form. Being a person, He can walk. The spiritual world is very far away. No spaceship can reach the outer limits of even the material world, much less the spiritual world. Even if a person traveled by spaceship for millions of years, he could not reach the spiritual world; and even if it were possible for a person to reach the "end" of the material universe in a spaceship, he would not be able to actually enter the spiritual world with his material spacecraft or his material body. The outskirts of the kingdom of God-namely, the impersonal feature of the Lord, the Brahman effulgence-can be reached only after piercing through the various layers of material elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and false ego. Furthermore, even if one reaches the Brahman effulgence, he must go even further to reach the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So it can truly be said that the Supreme Lord is very far away. Yet the Supreme Lord is also very near. Since He is the source of all energies, nothing can be separated from Him. Furthermore, He knows our every thought, deed, and desire. He hears and responds to His devotees' heartfelt prayers. Although His kingdom is so far away, He can appear before His devotees in less than a second. The Supreme Lord also expands Himself as the Paramatma, or the Lord in the heart of every living entity. Yet His original personal form in His kingdom is not nullified or diminished in any way. The Brahma-samhita describes how the Lord enters not only the universe, but also every atom in the universe. So we can see how the Lord can be both within everything and yet outside of everything. He is in His kingdom; yet, by His diverse potencies, by His energy, He is also present within everything in the universe. There is nothing but God within and without. Everything is a manifestation of His different energies, like the heat and light of fire. This means there is oneness among the diverse energies of the Lord. From time immemorial, practitioners of bhakti and karma-yoga have engaged in the practice of Deity worship. Deity worship is not idol worship, as the less educated sometimes contend. A person who looks upon and worships the Supreme Lord as He appears in matter (paintings, statues, and so forth) does not worship matter. He is not worshipping the statue. He does not worship wood, paint, paper, stone or gold. Rather, such a yogi fully appreciates the fifth mantra-that all energies are actually the Lord's energy, and that therefore He can appear in the form of matter without becoming material or coming under the laws of material nature. God is not wood or stone, nor is wood or stone God. But these objects are made of His energy, and He can utilize that energy to appear before those living beings who are trapped in the world of matter. And similarly He can receive their worship via such forms. One should not think that God is a wooden statue or painting; but, one should also appreciate that because of His inconceivable potencies, God can reveal His transcendental form, qualities, compassion, love, and other attributes via such apparently "material" energy. In other words, God converts His material energy into spiritual energy for His devotee. For the materialist however, the wooden or marble statue remains just that. The purpose of meditation is to keep the mind on the Supreme Lord. Deity worship especially helps the neophyte devotees. Deity worship instills in a person the conviction that God is not simply void or impersonal, but is in fact a person. And one can have a personal loving relationship with Him. In the Bhagavad-gita (9:26), the Lord states that, ¡°If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it.¡± -BHAGAVAD-GIT A (9:26) The person who engages in Deity worship is acting on this promise of the Lord as he meditates upon Him in his mind or externally, as He appears in the form of a statue, picture, and so forth. When such a devotee makes a little advancement he no longer sees paint or wood or stone when he looks at the Deity. He simply sees the Lord Himself and holds Him in the core of his heart. This practice of Deity worship immensely helps a person cultivate his personal, loving relationship with God. It makes the practitioner aware that although the Lord is very far away, He is also very near. He is actually one's closest friend and companion. In Mantras Four and Five we are being prodded to give up the teaching that God cannot do certain things. We are being taught to give up the habit of judging or trying to figure out God. If I could figure out God, then I would be greater than God. Therefore, God would not be God. For me to accept God as God, I must accept that His potencies are inconceivable-this is called faith. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Six ¡°That person who sees everything in relation to the Supreme Lord, who sees all living entities as parts and parcels of the Lord, and who sees the Supreme Lord within everything, never hates anything nor does he hate any being.".¡± This sixth mantra is a description of a person who has achieved the highest level of spiritual perfection. Such a person is sometimes referred to as a mahabhagavat, or uttama-adhikari. The great disciple of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Rupa Goswami, commented in this connection that the real test of how advanced a person is spiritually, is how he feels toward others and how he treats them. This is a fact. If a person's love for the Supreme Lord is perfect, then it will have expanded to all living beings. In a lower stage of spiritual advancement, a person may feel attraction and love for the form of the Deity in the temple. Indeed, he may be very respectful and dedicated to the Lord. But he does not respect or love others. Such a person is called a kanistha-adhikari. The late Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad, the modem world's foremost authority on the science of bhakti-yoga, describes the position of the kanistha-adhikari in this way: The kanistha-adhikari is in the lower stage of realization. He goes to one place of worship, such as a temple, church or mosque, according to his religious faith, and worships there according to scriptural injunctions. Such a devotee considers the Lord to be present at the place of worship and nowhere else. He cannot ascertain who is in what position in devotional service, nor can he tell who has realized the Supreme Lord. Such devotees follow the routine formulas and sometimes quarrel amongst themselves, considering one type of devotion better than another. These kanistha-adhikaris are actually materialistic devotees who are simply trying to transcend the material boundaries in order to reach the spiritual plane. While those who are in the lower stage of spiritual realization are called kanistha-adhikaris, those in the middle stage are called madhyam-adhikaris. Those in this stage of realization have the following characteristics: 1. They see the Supreme Lord, so they have no doubt about His existence. They dedicate their lives to His service out of love. 2. They see the devotees of the Lord. 3. They see those who are ignorant of the Lord but who are innocent and not inimical toward the Lord. 4. They see the atheists-those who reject the existence of God and who hate devotees of God. The madhyam-adhikari behaves differently toward these different entities. He worships and serves the Lord with all his heart; he makes friends with and associates with those who are devoted to the Lord; he tries to enlighten those who are ignorant yet innocent; and although he is neither discourteous nor disrespectful to the atheists, he does not make close friendships with them or try to instruct or enlighten them. The uttama-adhikari, who is in the highest stage of spiritual realization, sees no distinctions at all among different people. He does not discriminate between an atheist and a devotee of God. He sees all living entities as parts and parcels of the Supreme Living Entity, and thus tries to do good to all. The love of such an advanced yogi expands to all beings. His love is nondiscriminating and unconditional. Such a mahabhagavat or uttama-adhikari is not blind to the differences of bodies-for example, he recognizes differences among the bodies of cows, dogs, and humans-but he knows them to be external only. He sees that within the dog, cow, human, and other bodies is a spark of God, a spirit soul, an eternal person who is part and parcel of the Supreme Person. A spiritually perfect person does not see a "devotee" or a "demon," a "black" or a "white," a "Chinese" or an "American," a "general" or a "private," and so on. He sees through all such superficial designations to the person within, and he loves all persons. He sees all persons as parts and parcels of the Supreme Lord; and the same intense love that he has for God extends to all of God's parts and parcels. It is from such an uttama-adhikari that the world can learn real brotherhood. Such a spiritually advanced person is beyond sectarianism, fanaticism, and prejudice of any kind. ¡°The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle Brahman, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a dog-eater [out caste].¡± - BHAGA VAD-GITA 5:18 A serious practitioner of bhakti-yoga should desire to one day become an uttama-adhikari. It is not a post or official position. It is the highest stage of spiritual consciousness. And it is the real goal of life. A person may achieve many goals, such as getting material wealth, fame, worldly knowledge, and so forth; but all such goals are illusory. They are temporary. Not only do they not bring satisfaction, but they must be left behind at the time of death. Thus, such illusory goals cannot be considered the real goal of life. The real goal of life is spiritual perfection; and spiritual perfection is described herein in the sixth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad. One last point: Never try to imitate the characteristics of an uttama-adhikari. Rather, engage in the bhakti-yoga process with determination, yet be realistic about your present position, either as a kanistha-adhikari or madhyam-adhikari. Whoever seriously follows the process of sadhana-bhakti can actually achieve spiritual perfection. Only the lazy and the faithless will follow the path of imitation. Honesty with oneself, God, and others is always the best policy. Sincerity is the key ingredient to success in spiritual life. Duplicity and hypocrisy have no place in the quest for spiritual perfection. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Seven ¡°One who always sees all living entities as spiritual sparks, in quality one with the Lord, becomes a true knower of things. What, then, can be illusion or anxiety for him?".¡± Who am I? What is my essence? This age-old question is answered in Mantra Seven. Your essence is not material; it is spiritual. The Bhagavad-gita explains that two distinct types of energy exist-material and spiritual. Both the Supreme Lord and all living beings are spirit in essence, not material. In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Lord describes the spiritual quality or essence of the individual living beings as follows: Know that which pervades the entire body is indestructible. No one is able to destroy the imperishable self. Only the material body of the indestructible, immeasurable, and eternal living entity is subject to destruction. Therefore, fight, 0 descendant of Bharata. BHAGAVAD-GITA-2: 17-18 For the living entity there is never birth nor death. Nor having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying, and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. -BHAGAVAD-GITA 2:20 The self can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. -BHAGAVAD-GITA 2:24-25 To realize one's eternal, spiritual nature is the first step in self-realization. Such a realized soul meditates, "Aham brahmasmi-I am Brahman, I am spirit. I am eternal, I am not matter, I am not this body." All transcendentalists must first realize this point. A person who doesn't know that his essence is not matter, but spirit-who falsely identifies with his material body and mind-cannot be accepted as an enlightened person. One who knows that he is spirit soul-eternal, not temporary-is relieved from anxiety. Such a person is no longer in the illusion that he is the body. Being free from this illusion, he is free from fears of death. Practically everyone in the world, consciously or unconsciously, fears death. They live out their whole life struggling to set up a permanent living situation, with permanent meaningful relationships; yet in their hearts they know that they cannot stay here forever. Thus, there is always anxiety. Many people practice tai chi, chi gong, and so on (all of which derive from yoga) with the aim of keeping their bodies fit for a long time. There is certainly nothing wrong with keeping one's body fit-indeed, it is one of the aims of yoga-but unfortunately, many such people are trying to run away from the inevitable death of the body. Some mystic yogis strive to keep their bodies alive forever-but that is not possible. Even if one were the greatest yogi and could keep his body alive for thousands of years, that still is not forever. The struggle for physical immortality is seen as a needless struggle by those truly enlightened yogis who know that their body is but an outer garment that they are using temporarily. Actually, a person who knows that he is not the body is not at all anxious to hold on to it; he knows that his existence does not depend on the existence of the body-that he will continue to exist even after the death of the body-and that the temporary body is the cause of all sorts of suffering. The great Chinese yogi, Lao Tzu wrote: ¡°The reason I have great trouble is that I have a body. When I no longer have a body, what trouble have I?¡± Knowing that the material body-the material world-is full of suffering, the yogi keeps his body only in order to use it in a way that benefits others. Unlike those in illusion, he doesn't see the world as his real home. He sees it as a place in which to live only for as long as the Supreme Lord wants him to-only for as long as he can render loving service. Since he doesn't see the world as his source of security or happiness, he doesn't see his body as essential to his security or happiness. In terms of quantity, the individual spirit soul is not equal to the Supreme Soul. Just as a spark from a fire cannot be considered equal to the fire, or as a sun ray cannot be considered equal to the sun globe (despite the qualitative oneness) the individual spirit soul-the spark of the Supreme Spirit Soul-cannot be considered equal in all respects to the Supreme Lord. Unfortunately, this truth has not been realized by countless yogis and transcendentalists. Such people try to equate the minute spark of God with God Himself and thus go off the path. They correctly appreciate that a person's real essence is spirit, not matter. They know that a person is not the body. But then they fall into the trap of believing that the individual spirit soul is the Supreme Spirit Soul Himself. The chief historical proponent of such "I am God"ism philosophy was Sripad Shankaracharya. Shankaracharya lived and preached throughout India in the eighth century. The preaching of Shankaracharya and his followers was so strong that, practically speaking, it drove Buddhism out of India. Today, throughout India and the world, Shankaracharya's teachings (or slight variations of them) are still having a tremendous influence on people. In Calcutta, India, for example, we can see the ridiculous sight of a starving, sore-infested man meditating on the side of the road, "I am God I am God." In America and Europe, you'll find many so-called yogis and gurus who are directly or indirectly in Shankaracharya's line of teachers. One man, Swami Muktananda, attracted thousands of disciples in America with his "I am God" teachings. Muktananda states: ¡°Honor yourself, love yourself, worship yourself. The God who is within you, is you.¡± Rajneesh, infamous for his advocation of "free sex" among his thousands of Western disciples, writes: ¡°The word "brahmacharya" means that you have come to attain, you have come to know that you are the Brahman, the ultimate, the divine, that you are God Himself.¡± Satya Sai Baba. India's most famous contemporary mystic and "holy" man, says: ¡°You have not heard me fully. I say I am God. I say also that you are God The only difference is that I know that you and I are God, and you do not know it.¡± The idea of the "I am God"ists is that each of us is actually the Supreme Spirit, but that somehow we forgot our true identity as God and came under the spell of ignorance. So you are supposedly God, the Supreme Being, but you are now caught under the laws of material nature. You are supposedly the Supreme Spirit, but you are now bound on the wheel of birth and death. Swami Muktananda notes: ¡°. . . the highest consciousness becomes bound by limitations; its primal powers of omniscience, omnipotence, perfection, ever-lastingness and all-pervasiveness are experienced in a reduced condition. Although omniscient, He knows only a few things; though omnipotent, He feels helpless and acts effectively only in a small sphere. The Master of perfect bliss, He is ensnared in pleasure and pain, attachment and aversion. The Eternal Being cries aloud from fear of death, regarding Himself as mortal. Pervading all space and form, He grieves because He is tied to a particular place and a particular form. This is the condition of shakti poverty; it is the experience of all creatures caught in the transmigratory cycle.¡± So, according to the Mayavadi philosophers, God becomes bound up on the wheel of birth and death, and this is all due to His having forgotten that He is God. According to this theory, God needs to meditate and struggle against material nature to remember who He is. Being caught in ignorance and misery, God supposedly must then struggle to find Himself through "meditation." Muktananda says: ¡°God forgets His own true nature and looks for God. God worships God. God meditates on God, and God is trying to find God.¡± Such "I am God"ists fail to ask: "How can God forget who He is? How can God be overcome by ignorance and illusion? How can God, who is the Supreme Controller, lose control?" The fact is, God never forgets who He is. God never comes under the influence of the inferior, material energy. To say that God forgets who He is and that He must then meditate to remember is blasphemy. God by definition means "He who is the Supreme Controller, who is all-wise, all-powerful, the cause of all causes." God does not need to meditate to remember His identity. God knows who He is; He always has and He always will. ¡°0 Arjuna, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, I know everything that has happened in the past, all that is happening in the present and all things that are yet to come. I also know all living entities. But Me no one knows¡±. -BHAGAVAD-GITA 7:26 So there is no question of amnesia for the Supreme Lord. God never forgets His identity, nor anything else. He is not only unaffected by remembrance and forgetfulness, but He is actually their source. ¡°I am seated in everyone's heart, and from Me comes remembrance, knowledge and forgetfulness.¡±- .BHAGAVAD-GITA 15:15 God never becomes covered by maya or illusion. Ignorance can't cover God. It is one of His energies and it acts under His direction. ¡°All states of being- be they of goodness, passion, or ignorance- are manifested by My energy. I am, in one sense, everything-but I am independent. I am not under the modes of material nature.¡± -BHAGAVAD-GITA 7: 12 The Srimad-Bhagavatam confirms that Mayadevi, the personification of illusion, is afraid to show her face before the Lord. ¡°The illusory energy of the Lord cannot take precedence, being ashamed of her position, but those who are bewildered by her always talk nonsense, being absorbed in thoughts of "It is I" and "It is mine.¡± -SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:13 The Supreme Truth is light, and illusion is darkness. In the same way that darkness flees from the sun, ignorance flees from the Lord. Where there is Godhead-light-there can be no illusion. Just as there is no question of darkness on the sun, similarly there is no question of illusion or forgetfulness for God. We living entities are spirit in essence, but because we are not all-powerful, we sometimes fall under maya-ignorance. For protection, we must take shelter in the Supreme Soul, surrender to the Supreme Soul. Surrender means loving. Naturally, one who loves the Supreme Person dovetails her will with His. This is called devotional service, or bhakti. It is the soul's natural function to be engaged in the loving service of the Supreme Soul. The spirit soul who tries to enjoy separately from God-the soul who wants to be God-ends up chained to the wheel of birth and death by the karmic reaction to her self-centered activities. But God is not chained to the wheel of birth and death, because He is the Supreme Controller. The "I am God" philosophers who declare otherwise are simply atheists-materialists in disguise. They see themselves as God, and since they are limited, they say God is limited. They can't stand the idea of someone being greater than them. And because they are envious of God, they don't want to serve Him. Thus they remain unqualified to enter the spiritual world. Although the individual spirit soul or atma is of the same quality as the Supreme Lord-spirit in essence-this does not mean that the spirit soul is of the same quantity. The individual spirit soul is not all-powerful or all-wise. The spirit soul is controlled by so many natural and social forces that it is absurd to claim that such a dominated being is all-powerful. Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad writes: ¡°If the individual living being were equal to the Supreme Lord both qualitatively and quantitatively, there would re no question of his being under the influence of material energy.¡± In the fifteenth century, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu condemned the "I am God"ism of Shankaracharya, saying: ¡°The impersonalist "I am God" philosophy is so degraded that it has taken the insignificant living entities to be the Lord, the Supreme Truth, thus covering the glory and supremacy of the Absolute Truth with monism.¡± To say that God gets covered by ignorance is to say that ignorance, illusion, is superior to God. To say that God comes under the laws of material nature and suffers from birth and death-being forced to take on the bodies of ants, hogs, and dogs, is to say that God is powerless-that He loses control of His own creation! The individual spirit soul can come under the laws of material nature because he is not God. The individual spirit soul is not the Supreme Soul. The minute spark of God can come under the spell of illusion, but the Supreme Lord cannot. To claim that the individual soul is equal not only in essence but in position to the Supreme Lord is ludicrous. Sometimes a person who practices mystic yoga or chi gong will take to the "I am God" philosophy. The combination of these two -namely, increased psychic or mystic powers and the relief that the individual spirit soul is actually God-is disastrous. Such people often use their powers to mislead less intelligent people to worship them as God. Mystic or psychic powers, whether inborn or developed through yoga, chi gong, or whatever, are not spiritual. They are subtle material powers-that's all. A person can have great mystic powers and be able to impress people; but if he is not a loving servant of the Supreme Lord-if he claims that he is God or that we're all God-then he is not enlightened. He is not to be followed, and he is not to be trusted. An actual spiritually realized soul is not interested in power-psychic or otherwise. He is interested in rendering loving service to the Lord; he is interested in relieving people from their suffering condition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krsna Posted April 7, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 7, 2005 Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Nine “People who are engaged in the culture of nescient activities shall enter into the darkest region of ignorance. Worse still are those engaged in the culture of so-called knowledge.".¡± Unfortunately, most of humanity spends the majority of its time in the culture of ignorance. We cultivate ignorance by serving our tongue, belly, genitals, and other senses like obedient slaves. The vast majority of our energy goes into this mad pursuit of sense pleasure. Left with frazzled nerves, frustration, anger, jealousy, envy, greed, hate, loneliness, and confusion; we seek an escape in alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and a myriad of other legal and illegal consciousness dimmers. This is the cultivation of ignorance. Animals are in ignorance. They are only really interested in four things: eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. If a human being's life is also limited to the above four interests, then he is "human" in appearance only. In reality he's an animal; and after the death of his present body, he will be in a suitable body of ignorance. This is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita: “The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas. The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, tongue, nose, and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects.?-BHAGAVAD-GITA 15:8-9 A society of people who have no higher interest than sensual enjoyment is really a society of animals. There are also those who cultivate their knowledge of the material world so that they can assist the animal-like people in their business of eating, sleeping, having sex, and defending. They spend much of their time cultivating their so-called knowledge so that they can better manipulate matter, and thus increase the sense enjoyment of the people. For example, modem Western society has many universities, colleges, and schools, all of which cultivate knowledge. But why? For the sole purpose of improving the eating, mating, sleeping, and defending-centered lives of the citizens. But has there really been any "improvement?" Can we call supermarkets filled with foods that have more poisonous chemical additives than actual nutritional value an "improvement?" Can we call sex-mad, frustrated, venereal-diseased people an "improvement?" Can we call people who need pills to fall asleep an "improvement?" And can we call bigger and more efficient weapons an "improvement?" But even if we concede that there has been some improvement in the facilities for eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, the question remains: Has the real purpose of life been missed? We may lead a long and relatively comfortable life of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending; but we still must die. Then where are we? What was really gained? We are again thrown into the lower species of life and continue to suffer birth, diseases, old age and death. In this human form of life we can be liberated from the wheel of birth and death. We waste an extremely important opportunity if we engage simply in "perfecting" those activities that are common to all species of life (eating, sleeping, mating, and defending.) So according to the Sri Ishopanishad, people who cultivate so-called knowledge simply to "improve" or refine these four activities are worse off than people who spend all their time actually doing such activities. For example, persons who cultivate their knowledge of electronics, film. video, and so forth to produce pornographic movies or sexual stimulators are more condemned than those who watch such movies or use such machines. Similarly, highly educated people who spend all their time researching ways to enable people to eat as much as they like (as opposed to eating as much as they need) without getting fat are more condemned than those who use such products. And scientists who spend their lives finding new and "improved" ways of killing people, such as those who invented the atom bomb and other sophisticated weapons, are at least as condemned as those who use them. However, neither the Sri Ishopanishad nor any other Vedic literature recommends that we neglect bodily needs. The Lord states in the Bhagavad-gita: “There is no possibility of one's becoming a yogi, 0 Arjuna, if one eats too much, or eats too little, sleeps too much or does not sleep enough.?-BHAGAVAD-GIT A 6:16 Nor is sense gratification considered "bad.? Sense gratification comes and goes as a natural occurrence of the senses. For example, one cannot eat without tasting. The point is that a life that is centered around sense enjoyment, that makes sense enjoyment the goal, is a wasted life. Economic development is necessary for the maintenance of the body; so therefore it cannot be neglected. But to seek economic development simply for the sake of endlessly increasing sensual pleasure is foolish. No amount of sensual pleasure will ever really satisfy a person, so no amount of economic development will ever be considered "enough." This is why people in modern Western societies are still not satisfied, even though they are so economically advanced and thus have so much facility for sense enjoyment. They always want more. As the late British economist E. F. Schumacher points out: Is there enough to go round? Immediately we encounter a serious difficulty: What is "enough?" Who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues "economic growth" as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of "enough" There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: "Halt! We have enough?" There is none. What's really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness. A society that has great material prosperity but lacks spiritual purpose is really a poor society. A body without the soul is a dead body-even if it is nicely decorated with fancy ornaments. Life in this world is temporary. No one will be here forever. Human beings can fully appreciate this fact; most animals cannot. So human beings can consider long-range spiritual goals. They can-and should-ask: What am I going to do when I leave this body? Where will I go? Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Ten The wise have explained that one result is derived from the culture of knowledge, rind that a different result is obtained from the culture of nescience..¡± For one who lives a hedonistic life, a life in which nescience is cultivated, the results are envy, anger, greed, impatience, disrespect for others, anxiety, depression, hatred, ever-increasing lust, forgetfulness, frustration, dissatisfaction, duplicity, fear of death, and so on. On the other hand, for a person who cultivates wisdom or true knowledge-knowledge of his identity and his relationship with God-the results are inner peace, satisfaction, patience, respect for others, freedom from duplicity, compassion, joyfulness, remembrance of his spiritual identity, freedom from the fear of death, freedom from anxiety and depression, and so on. The negative social results of a society populated primarily by hedonistic people should be obvious to anyone. A society of self-centered, animalistic people who have no other interest than their own sense enjoyment cannot be at all peaceful or progressive-either materially or spiritually. On the other hand, the positive results of a society populated mostly by people who are serious about cultivating wisdom and spiritual understanding should be clear. lf the citizens are peaceful, satisfied, respectful of others, compassionate, selfless, and so on, then society will be progressive both materially and spiritually. The bhakti-yoga process of cultivating knowledge or wisdom is briefly summarized is follows: 1. A person should learn scientifically the distinction between matter and life. He should fully understand, through study and meditation, that he is not the material body or mind, but that he is in fact the spirit soul within the body. 2. A person should meditate upon the reality of his position. Every person is dominated by both natural and social forces. The individual spirit soul is not identical with the all-powerful Supreme Lord. The spirit soul is the dominated part and parcel of God; so all living beings are the children of God. One should cultivate and deepen this understanding. 3. A person should worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Such worship centers around the hearing and chanting of the names, words, glories, and pastimes of the Supreme Lord He should engage in devotional activities, such as offering his food, flowers, and so on to the Deity of the Supreme Person, offering obeisances to the Deity and to the spiritual master, and so forth. The cultivation of knowledge is also commented on by that authoritative text for yogis, the Bhagavad-gita. In its thirteenth chapter, the Gita tells of a person who is serious about making progress on the path of bhakti-yoga. This person is instructed as follows: 1. One should himself become a perfect gentleman and should learn to give proper respect to others. 2. One should not pose himself as a religionist simply for name and fame. 3. One should not become a source of anxiety to others by the actions of his body, by the thoughts of his mind, or by his words. 4. One should learn forebearance, even in the face of provocation from others. 5. One should learn to avoid duplicity in his dealings with others. 6. One should search out a bona fide spiritual master who can lead him gradually to the stage of spiritual realization, and one must submit himself to such a spiritual master, render him service, and ask relevant questions. 7. In order to approach the platform of self-realization, one must follow the regulative principles enjoined in the revealed scriptures. 8. One must be fixed in the tenets of the revealed scriptures. 9. One should completely refrain from practices that are detrimental to the interest of self-realization. 10. One should not accept more than he requires for the maintenance of the body. 11. One should not falsely identify himself with the gross material body, nor consider those who are related to his body to be his own. 12. One should always remember that as long as he has a material body he must face the miseries of repeated birth, old age, diseases, and death. 13. One should not be attached to more than the necessities of life required for spiritual advancement. 14. One should not be more attached to wife, children, and home than the revealed scriptures ordain. 15. One should not be happy or distressed over desirables and undesirables created by the mind. 16. One should become an unalloyed devotee of the Personality of Godhead and serve Him with rapt attention. 17. One should develop a liking for residence in a secluded place with a calm and quiet atmosphere favorable for spiritual culture, and one should avoid congested places where non-devotees congregate. 18. One should become a scientist or philosopher and conduct research into spiritual knowledge, recognizing that spiritual knowledge is permanent whereas material knowledge ends with the death of the body. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Eleven Only one who can learn the process of nescience and that of transcendental knowledge side by side can transcend the influence of repeated birth and death and enjoy the full blessings of immortality..¡± Some neophytes on the spiritual path may fall into the illusion that taking care of the body is somehow evil, or a sign of spiritual backwardness. Not only may they neglect the needs of their body, but they may go out of their way to actually damage the body. Such people actually hate the body; they see it as a source of misery, and thus they take out their anger on it. This is certainly a mistake. Masochism can never lead to spiritual perfection. The body is actually a most precious property of the self; it enables the self to engage in various devotional activities that can bring about a change in consciousness. A person's external activities affect his consciousness, and his consciousness affects his external activities. Knowing this, a bhakti-yogi consciously chooses to engage in particular external activities in order to bring about the desired spiritual consciousness. A person should recognize that his consciousness is polluted-that he has no love for God and no compassion for others. But he should not want to be in such a polluted condition. He should want to improve spiritually. So he must consciously direct his external activities in the process of bhakti-yoga, and thus gradually his love for God and his love for others will increase. So the body-the vehicle for engaging in the process of bhakti-yoga-is extremely useful. It should not be seen as an impediment or a burden, but rather as a valuable asset. Therefore, its well-being must not be neglected. This is the attitude of all intelligent students of bhakti-yoga. A bhakti-yogi lives in the world, as demanded by the needs of the body-but he is not of the world. He has his earthly home-but he knows that it is not his real home. He lives in the world and learns the transitory and basically unsatisfying nature of material happiness, power, prestige, honor, possessions, and so on. He learns that the material world is plagued by suffering. This suffering is caused by natural disturbances, such as earthquakes and floods. It is caused by other human beings. It is caused by one's own body, such as indigestion, headaches, appendicitis, and certain diseases. It is caused by one's own mind. The bhakti-yogi also learns how birth, death, old age, and diseases are always present-these realities cause great distress. Further, he observes the negative effects of hedonistic living. He sees that chasing after sensual pleasure simply leads to frustration (either because one is not able to get the desired objects, or because one has attained them but not been satisfied by them, or because one has lost them). He sees the anxiety and countless other personal problems caused by a life of gambling, illicit sex, intoxication, and the slaughter and consumption of innocent animals. Thus the bhakti-yogi simultaneously is learning about the beauty of the spiritual world. which is sat-chit-ananda-eternal and full of knowledge and bliss-and the temporary miserable nature of the material world. He tastes the sweet nectar of the holy names of God and the transcendental happiness derived from understanding his eternal, spiritual identity and his relationship with God. In this way, the bhakti-yogi becomes increasingly convinced that this misery-filled world is not his natural habitat, not his real home. He becomes more and more free from the illusion that real happiness can be found in sensual pleasure. He feels increasingly attracted to God, and therefore he experiences an increasing detachment from worldly, hedonistic consciousness. There is an old saying: the Buddhist tries to detach himself from the world, and the bhakti-yogi tries to attach himself to God. Practically speaking however, the effect is the same. If a person becomes attached to God, he automatically becomes detached from the world. However the processes are different. In the orthodox Buddhist system, a person must give up-all "worldly" activities-business, family life, occupation and so on-and join a monastery. But the bhakti-yoga process does not require giving up these things. It is not a matter of retreating from the world so much as living in the world in a different way. A person engaged in the process of bhakti-yoga also eats, sleeps, mates, defends, and does the work needed to carry out those activities. But in addition, he engages in the process of bhakti-yoga. Furthermore, his eating, sleeping, mating, defending, and work all become spiritualized because such activities are connected to his actual purpose in life-loving service to God. The bhakti-yogi works, eats, sleeps, exercises, defends, and so on with the aim of keeping his body and mind fit to engage in the process of bhakti-yoga. And if he chooses, he can get married and engage in sex life for the purpose of having children, so he can raise his children to come to love God and thus achieve spiritual liberation. So a person's entire lifestyle can be dovetailed with his deep purpose in life. Such a person is the controller of his body, not a slave of his senses. Most people are servants of their senses and minds-they are godas (go means senses; das means servant). A bhakti-yogi, however, strives to be a goswami (swami means master, so goswami means "master of the senses"). A goswami is not dragged around by his senses, but instead uses his senses for his own desired purposes. Although goswami is also a title, in fact the real meaning of goswami is controller of the senses, whether one is externally with the title goswami, brahmachari, householder, or whatever. A person who tries to be a goswami is careful not to engage in those activities that are harmful to his spiritual development. For example he refrains from taking intoxicants (including all sorts of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and so on); from having illicit sex; from gambling; and from eating meat, fish, and eggs. If a person engages in the process of bhakti-yoga and yet continues to engage in activities that are detrimental to spiritual progress, his spiritual progress will be very slow. This does not mean that a person must be completely free of all bad habits before he can even begin the process of bhakti-yoga. For example, in the Philippines, one teacher saved many young people who were addicted to heroin and other drugs by teaching them the process of bhakti-yoga. It took some time before they could completely give up all drugs, but eventually they did. Also, sometimes a person is still addicted to cigarette smoking or meat-eating. If he follows the process of bhakti-yoga, then gradually he will be able to give up such habits. It is a question of tasting a higher taste. If a person engages in the process of bhakti-yoga, he will gradually begin to taste the higher spiritual happiness and he will be able to give up all vices naturally. After he gives up such bad habits, then his progress will be very rapid However, the ridiculous people who engage in all sorts of sinful activities even after years of chanting the names of God are actually rejecting God, by their insincerity. They are simply sinning on the strength of the holy names of God. They think, "I can engage in all sorts of sinful activities because I am engaging in these devotional activities, and these activities purify me." They are like an elephant bathing in the river, who then goes onto the shore and throws dirt all over its body, then goes back into the river, and so on. Such an insincere person is not a true yogi. Actually- he is completely lost. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Twelve Those who are engaged in the worship of demigods enter into the darkest region of ignorance, and still more so do the worshippers of the impersonal Absolute..¡± People who are very materialistic and poorly educated are easily seduced into demigod worship. Behind the worship of a demigod is usually the aim of getting some material benefit-a good harvest, a good husband or wife, a successful business, good health, and so on. Often, people worship a particular demigod to satisfy a particular desire or to solve a particular problem, such as illness or personal poverty. Not only are they in ignorance already-but such demigod worship leads them even deeper into ignorance, into false bodily identification and materialistic, self-centered consciousness. Their envy and desire for power, fame, and wealth increase, leading them into deeper ignorance of their true identity as eternal spirit souls, dominated parts and parcels of the Supreme Soul. If they realized their true identity, they would also realize that it is to Him that they should be rendering loving service. But demigod worshippers often fall into the illusion that their demigod is the Supreme Lord Himself; thus they are led further away from the Lord. It is understandable that a person who is uneducated in spiritual matters could mistakenly conclude that a demigod or even a great mystic or sage is God. After all, the demigods and even some mystics have great power. Since a materialistic person is used to worshipping material power, it is not surprising that he may be so impressed by a powerful demigod or mystic yogi that he may worship him as the Supreme Lord. But an intelligent person is not so easily fooled. The ancient Vedic text, Srimad-Bhagavatam, records a most instructive incident: a conversation between Lord Brahma, the powerful demigod in charge of creating this material universe, and his disciple, Narada. Narada had thought that his spiritual master, Lord Brahma, was the Supreme Lord because of Lord Brahma's wonderful, powerful characteristics. After all, the creation of the universe is no small mystical feat! Yet Narada began to doubt that Lord Brahma was truly the Supreme Lord-the cause of all causes-when he saw that Lord Brahma evidently worshipped someone else. Following is a short portion of the conversation between Lord Brahma and Narada Muni to which we have added some brief purports. Sri Narada Muni asked Brahmaji: O chief amongst the demigods, O first born living entity, I beg to offer my respectful obeisances unto you. Please tell me that transcendental knowledge which specifically directs one to the truth of the individual soul and the Supersoul. My dear father, please describe factually the symptoms of this manifest world. What is its background? How is it created? How is it conserved? And under whose control is all this being done? My dear father, all this is known to you scientifically because whatever was created in the past, whatever will be created in the future, or whatever is being created at present, as well as everything within the universe, is within your grip, just like a walnut. My dear father, what is the source of your knowledge? Under whose protection are you standing? And under whom are you working? What is your real position? Do you alone create all entities with material elements by your personal energy? SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5: 1-4 After paying all his respects to Lord Brahma, his spiritual master, Narada refused to act with duplicity. He paid his respects to Lord Brahma as the creator of the universe, as an immensely powerful being and as, after all, his spiritual master. Yet he was not afraid to put his questions forward respectfully but directly. In the next two verses, Narada then again acknowledged the powerful position of Brahmaji: As the spider very easily creates the network of its cobweb and manifests its power of creation without being defeated by others, so also you yourself, by employment of your self-sufficient energy, create without any other's help. Whatever we can understand by the nomenclature, characteristics and features of a particular thing- superior, inferior or equal, eternal or temporary-are not created from any source other than that of your lordship, thou are so great. SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:5-6 In the next verse, Narada directly expressed his doubt that Brahmaji was God Himself, by saying: Yet we are moved to wonder about the existence of someone more powerful than you when we think of your great austerities in perfect discipline, although your good self is so powerful in the matter of creation.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:1 Narada knew that Lord Brahma had undergone strict austerities and penances; he knew that Brahmaji had achieved self-realization through such meditation practices. In other words, Narada logically suspected that since Brahma himself had undergone austerities, meditation, and so forth in order to achieve self-realization, he could not be God. Narada logically concluded that God would not need to undergo any process of self-realization in order to find out His identity. Narada understood that God, the Supreme Lord, has no superior to be worshipped. Since Lord Brahma obviously worshipped some superior power, and since he was enlightened by that superior power, Narada wanted to know all about it. He wanted to know about this Supreme Being. Unfortunately, many people interested in spiritual realization are not as intelligent or as careful as Narada. Many people blindly accept that the creator of this universe is the Supreme Lord, the cause of all causes, when in fact there are countless millions of universes, each with a creator, called a Lord Brahma. What to speak of such people who mistakenly worship the creator of the universe as God, millions of people worship mystic yogis-whose power is relatively insignificant-as God just because they can exhibit a few more psychic powers than an ordinary person can. Mystic yogis, by the practice of mystic or psychic powers, can do things that ordinary people consider very wonderful and miraculous. Such yogis then exploit the people, claiming that they are God Himself. And millions of foolish people believe such charlatans and follow them blindly. Narada is a perfect example of a bona fide disciple. Even though his guru, Lord Brahma, was immensely powerful, still Narada did not blindly accept him as the Supreme Lord Himself. Narada gave him all the respect due to God, since he knew that the guru is the representative of God and that scripture says to give the same respect to guru as to God. Yet still Narada did not blindly accept that his guru was the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. And what was Lord Brahma's reaction to his disciple's doubt? A fake guru wants his followers to believe that he is God Himself -that's why he tries to impress them with his mystic powers. If the disciple of a phony guru were to express doubts about his guru's lordship, the guru would surely be angered. So how did Brahma react when Narada asked the questions, "Under whose protection are you standing? And under whom are you working? What is your real position?" And how did he react when Narada asked, "Yet we are moved to wonder about the existence of someone more powerful than you when we think of your great austerities in perfect discipline. . . ." In response, Brahmaji was not angry. In fact, he was extremely pleased. As a bonafide guru, Brahma's happiness was in glorifying the Supreme Lord, and Narada's questions gave him the opportunity to do just that. Thus Lord Brahma replied: My dear boy Narada, being merciful to all (including me) you have asked all these questions because I have been inspired to see into the prowess of the almighty Personality of Godhead. Whatever you have spoken about me is not false because unless and until one is aware of the Personality of Godhead, who is the Ultimate Truth beyond me, one is sure to be illusioned by observing my powerful activities. I create after the Lord's creation by His personal effulgence [known as the brahmajyoti], just as when the sun manifests its fire, the moon, the firmament, the influential planets and the twinkling stars also manifest their brightness.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:9-11 Lord Brahma also put forward this same conclusion in another Vedic scripture, the Brahma-samhita, where he prayed: I serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Govinda, the primeval Lord, whose transcendental bodily effulgence, known as the brahmajyoti, which is unlimited, unfathomed, and all-pervasive, is the cause of the creation of unlimited numbers of planets, etc., with varieties of climates and specific conditions of life. BRAHMA-SAMHITA (5:40) Lord Brahma continued in his reply to Narada: I offer my obeisances and meditate upon Lord Krishna [Vasudeva], the Personality of Godhead. whose invincible potency influences them [the less intelligent class of men] to call me the Supreme Controller.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:12 Brahma expressed the same sentiment in the Brahma-samhita. The Supreme Lord is the Personality of Godhead Sri Krishna, the primeval Lord in His transcendental body, the ultimate cause of all causes. I worship that primeval Lord Govinda.?-BRAHMA-SAMHITA (5:1): Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad praised the attitude of the spiritual master and demigod, Lord Brahma, writing: Brahmaji is conscious of his actual position, and he knows how less intelligent persons, bewildered by the illusory energy of the Lord, whimsically accept anyone and everyone as God. A responsible personality like Brahmaji refuses to be addressed as the Supreme Lord by his disciples or subordinates, but foolish persons praised by men of the nature of dogs, hogs, camels and asses feel flattered to be addressed as the Supreme Lord. The twelfth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad declares that those who worship the demigods as God enter the darkest region of ignorance, but that those who worship the impersonal feature of God-the brahmajyoti or Brahman effulgence-are even worse off. One who worships the impersonal Brahman as the cause of all causes is considered to be in a very bad position: he is entirely incapable of achieving the true goal of life-namely, love for the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Once a person concludes that God is impersonal, then love for God becomes unachievable. After all, no one can love an impersonal force. Furthermore, one who has merged into the Brahman effulgence is unaware of his own individual existence and of the individual existence of the Supreme Lord in that merged condition. So being unaware of his own existence as an eternal spirit soul, and being unaware of the existence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the impersonalist remains lost. Worse, actually-when he descends from his merged condition, he is in the illusion that he has achieved perfect spiritual realization. After having the experience of temporarily merging into the Brahman and then returning to his body, he may wrongly conclude that he is God and that everyone is God or that the world is God. Thus, he becomes practically an atheist in that he denies the existence of the Supreme Lord. As far as he is concerned, the impersonal Brahman has become the world and all living beings, and therefore the world and all living beings are God. In other words, the impersonalist becomes an "I am God”ist. Thinking of himself as God, he sees no need to worship any other being or to take shelter in any other being. Indeed, he believes he is the only being in existence and that the manifest world is just a dream springing from his mind. He may try to take the position of the Supreme Lord, believing himself to re the Supreme dominator and enjoyer of all that he surveys. This is the darkest region of ignorance. He may try to act on the illusion that he is God and that the world is his playground He may become, in other words, a "super-hedonist." One such "I am God"ist, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), formerly a professor at Harvard University, declares that no one exists except oneself, and that after merging with the impersonal Brahman, one returns to the world and is the world and is everyone. If you come back into form from having merged with God you fill the forms [bodies] though there is no one home, it is just more lila, the dance of God. The late Swami Muktananda a well known "I am God"ist who had thousands of followers, wrote: Assuming physical bodies, He appears as separate entities. According to the "I am God"ist the apparent existence of others is just an hallucination. And since you are God, you are the creator of the laws of the universe (or as Ram Dass puts it, "You are the laws of the universe"). And since you are the laws of the universe-since you are God-then there is no higher person or law to which you must subject yourself. Your will, your desire, is God's desire-God's will-so there is no need whatsoever to check or control your desires or actions. As another "I am God"ist, Werner Erhard puts it: What you're doing is what God wants you to do. Be happy. So according to the "I am God"ist, since you and l-each of us-is God, whatever you and I and others are doing is what God wants us to do. You can re engaging in the most illicit or the most heinous activities, but since you are God, you are doing the will of God. Your will is God's will. In other words, the "I am God"ist does not feel the need to harmonize his will with God's will. He relieves his will is God's will, because he relieves he is God. As Swami Muktananda advised his students: Meditate on your Self, honor and worship your own Self. Kneel to your Self, because the supreme reality, the highest truth lives within you as you. Many of these "I am God"ists end up as the most extreme of all hedonists-having illicit sex with their disciples, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking, eating meat, and engaging in all kinds of debauchery. They declare that they can do so without being contaminated karmically because they are so "spiritually advanced" At the moment the Western world (as well as India) is crawling with such charlatans. One who worships the impersonal Brahman as the cause of all causes is in a very dangerous position. To conclude that God is impersonal is to put oneself in an unprotected position. Everyone needs someone to love and serve eternally. If a person, a spirit soul, doesn't come to know the eternal Supreme Soul, then he obviously cannot place his love-his natural desire to serve-on the Supreme Lord. And if a person doesn't come to know and engage in the loving service of the Supreme Lord, then his tendency to love and serve will be directed toward the world and the forms of this world. Consequently, he will again become attached to the temporary material world. However, although those who worship the impersonal feature of God are in a very dangerous position, this does not mean that they cannot make advancement. There are many examples throughout history of great yogis who were not only realized in the impersonal Brahman, but were also very sincere. Due to their sincerity, they went beyond their limited vision of the Absolute Truth (i.e. their experience of the impersonal feature of the Absolute Truth) and became great devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead For example, there are the Kumar brothers and there is the great Sukadev Goswami, who spoke the Srimad-Bhagavatam thousands of years ago to King Pariksit. Although they were realized in the impersonal feature of God, they did not fall into debauchery or illicit activities, or try to live in the world as if they were God. They were fortunate enough to come into contact with the Supreme Personality of Godhead or the devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and thus went beyond their limited realization of the Absolute Truth. Two types of people engage in the worship of the impersonal feature of God: those who are sincere and those who are insincere. If those who are sincere come into contact with a bona fide spiritual master-one who knows the Supreme Personality of Godhead- then they will go beyond the impersonal Brahman. They will move into the highest dimension of spiritual life-rendering loving service to the Supreme Person. But those who are insincere will be envious of the Supreme Person and will not want to hear anything about the worship of someone other than themselves. They will be repelled by the thought of worshipping a being who is superior to them. Such insincere persons cannot make progress. Furthermore, they tend to fall down into all kinds of debauchery and illicit activities, such as drinking, taking intoxicants, engaging in illicit sex, and so on. The devotee of the Supreme Personality of Godhead does not condemn those who worship the impersonal feature of God, but rather tries to enlighten them further, admitting that "Yes, you have realized the impersonal feature of the Absolute Truth. But now, if you want to become actually spiritually perfect, then please worship the Supreme Personality. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Thirteen "It is said that one result is obtained by worshipping the supreme cause of all causes and that another result is obtained by worshipping that which is not supreme. All this is heard from the undisturbed authorities who clearly explained it.¡± Everyone worships something. The hedonist worships the senses and the objects of sense enjoyment-for example, the sex organs of the opposite sex or even (in the case of homosexuals) the same sex. The hedonist also worships food and the tongue that tastes the food. Money also is worshipped, because it facilitates sense gratification. And what is the result of worshipping sense enjoyment, the senses, and the objects of sense pleasure? Frustration, confusion, anger, hatred, emptiness, fear, and finally, rebirth again into the material world. In other words, a person who worships matter-who is attached to enjoying the material senses-ends up, after the death of his present body, taking on yet another material body. This is called reincarnation, or transmigration of the spirit soul. So reincarnation is not causeless. It is the result of a particular type of worship. The mind of a person who worships the objects of the senses is always immersed in thoughts of such sense objects. Indeed, such immersion is the essential definition of worship: that which one always thinks about and wants to have. If a person worships the senses and sense objects throughout his life, then at the time of death his mind will automatically be immersed in such thoughts. This is why the person will be forced to take on another material body. As the Lord states in the Bhagavad-gita: Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail. BHAGAVAD-GITA 8:6 The Srimad-Bhagavatam states: The subject matter which attracts the dying man is the beginning of his next life. The relationship between the spirit soul (the person), the mind, and the gross physical body is as follows: The spirit soul, or self, can be compared to a naked man; the mind can be compared to his underclothes; and the gross body (made of earth, water, fire, air, and ether) can be compared to his outer garments. At death, the gross body (the outer garment) is removed, but the mind (the undergarment) is not removed. So at the time of death the self leaves the gross physical body behind, but is still covered by the subtle material body (the mind). This is described by the great sage, Narada Muni, in the Srimad-Bhagavatam: The great sage Narada stated: "The living entity acts in a gross body in this life. This body is forced to act by the subtle body composed of mind, intelligence, and false ego. After the gross body is lost, the subtle body, the mind, is still there to enjoy or suffer, thus there is no change." SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 4:29:60 And the Srimad-Bhagavatam further states: The caterpillar transports itself from one leaf to another by capturing one leaf before giving up the other. Similarly, according to her previous work the living entity must capture another body before giving up the one she has. This is because the mind is the reservoir of all kinds of material desires.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 4:29:76-77 Throughout life, the hedonist worships the objects of the senses and sense enjoyment, and thus cultivates a particular mentality. Then, after he leaves the gross physical body, the particular mentality he cultivated remains as a covering and acts as a type of nucleus, around which a new gross material body develops. In other words, the type of gross material body that a person takes on in his next life is determined by the "shape" or the nature of the subtle material body, the mind This is confirmed in both the Srimad-Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad-gita: The mind is the cause of the living entity's attaining a certain type of body in accordance with his association with material nature. According to one's mental composition, one can understand what the living entity was in his past life as well as what kind of body he will have in the future, thus the mind indicates the past and future bodies. -SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 4:29:66 By virtue of the processes of the subtle body, the living entity develops and gives up gross bodies. This is known as transmigration of the self. Thus the self becomes subjected to different types of so-called enjoyment, lamentation, fear, happiness, and unhappiness. SRIMAD-BHAGA VATAM 4:29:75 The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas. The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, tongue, nose, and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects. BHAGAVAD-GITA 15:8-9 According to scripture and the great spiritual masters, a person's transmigration from one body to the next is the result of his worshipping that which is not supreme. Some so-called spiritual masters teach that worshipping demigods will produce the same result as will worshipping the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the cause of all causes. But this conclusion is based on ignorance. In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Lord states that people worship demigods because they are contaminated by material desires: “Those whose minds are distorted by material desires surrender unto the demigods and follow the particular rules and regulations of worship according to their own natures. BHAGAVAD-GITA 7:20 There are transcendentalists who worship the impersonal feature of the Absolute Truth-the Brahman effulgence-with the hope that one day they can merge into it and lose their individual, personal identity. Many people throughout the world, including some Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Muslims, yogis, and practitioners of chi gong, see the merging into this ocean of white light as the ultimate goal. Sometimes such a person gets a glimpse of this Brahman effulgence (the ocean of light that emanates from the Supreme Person) and thus becomes even more motivated to continue his practice, spurred by the increased hope that one day he will be able to completely merge into the light. If worship of the Brahman effulgence is successful, it leads to a temporary merging into the Brahman at the time of death. However, this merging is not eternal-although the spirit soul is unaware of his actual identity as an individual while in that condition-in fact, he is still an individual. And every individual spirit soul, by nature, is eternally active and needs to love and be loved In the merged condition the spirit soul's need to be active and to love and be loved is not taken care of; therefore, ultimately the spirit soul is again forced to descend to the world of matter-the world of birth, diseases, old age, and death. And in this material world, which is completely alien to his actual eternal spiritual essence, he engages in various activities, creating good karma and bad karma, and places his precious love upon one temporary form after another. This thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad confirms that a person's future is in his own hands. The individual spirit soul is responsible for his own future. It is not that God arbitrarily decides that, "This person is to be reborn in a dog body, this person is to go to the demigods, and this person gets to come to My abode, My kingdom." No. The Supreme Lord wants all His children to come back to Him, to love Him, and to be happy. But we are endowed with free will. We can choose to worship Him-the Supreme-or to worship something that is not the Supreme. We can choose to serve Him or to serve something else. We are responsible for our future because our future is the result of our present activities. As this thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad states, if we worship the Supreme cause of all causes then we will have a certain type of future; if we worship something other than the Supreme cause of all causes, then our destiny will be something else. So the choice is ours. We do have a degree of freedom by which to determine our own future. Each individual's destiny is really in his own hands. Indeed, in the Bhagavad-gita the Supreme Lord states that He actually knows the desires of every living being and that He gives them a particular future according to their desires. If a person has certain desires in his mind at the time of death, if his mind is molded in a certain way, then God-through material nature-provides him with a particular type of body so that he can enjoy just as his heart desires. For example, if he wants to enjoy like an animal, then he gets an animal body. So God actually gives us our desires. The eighth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad states: The Supreme Lord has been fulfilling everyone's desires since time immemorial. SRI ISHOPANISHAD In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Lord declares that He is not envious of, or angry it, those who worship the demigods instead of Him. Indeed, He states: I am in everyone's heart as the Supersoul and as soon as one desires to worship the demigods, I make his faith steady so that he can devote himself to some particular deity. BHAGAVAD-GITA7:21 So if you want to worship a particular demigod, then the Supreme Lord knows this and actually helps you direct your concentration upon that particular demigod. This is a very important point: The Supreme Lord gives you what you desire. If you don't want to worship Him, He won't force you. In this connection we should mention something about fanaticism. A "religious fanatic" tries to force other people to worship God in the same way that he worships God. But, in fact, God does not force anybody to worship Him. All fanatics should try to understand this point. Surely, if they appreciate that God is all-powerful, then they should also be able to appreciate that He has the power to force everyone to worship Him. However, He does not do that. And since God does not force living beings to worship Him; since God does not force His children to pay homage to Him; since God does not force His children to remain in His kingdom but in fact creates a material world for those of His children who don't want to serve Him, then why should someone who is supposedly a servant of God use force? The truth is that the fanatic does not know that real worship of God means love for God, and that no one can be forced to love God. Someone can be forced to say he loves God, but not to actually love Him. Unfortunately, the fanatic does not understand this difference. Equally unfortunate, in part as a reaction to fanaticism, many so-called spiritual masters have popularized the slogan, "All paths lead to the same place." This 'liberal" philosophy may be attractive to people who are too lazy to study and to attempt discrimination between one path and another. This philosophy may be attractive to those who don't want to make the effort to decide which path in life they will follow. But this philosophy is not at all attractive to those who really want to know the Truth. "All paths lead to the same place" is complete nonsense. A person doesn't need to be a great scholar to understand that different paths lead to different places. If you go to a train station, you can't get on just any train and expect to get to your desired destination. Each train goes to a different place. You can't get on a train Los Angeles and expect to arrive in New York. It is true that certain trains may go in the same general direction; for example, they may all head south. But one train may go only to the first city, and then return to the original embarkation point. Another train may go all the way to the third city, but may stop there. Thus, even if a person worships the impersonal feature of the Lord, the Brahman effulgence, or practices a method for merging into the impersonal Brahman, he still falls short of the goal of reaching the supreme cause of all causes-the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna clearly refutes the idea that all paths lead to the same place: Those who worship the demigods will take birth among the demigods; those who worship ghosts and spirits will take birth among such beings; those who worship ancestors go to the ancestors; and those who worship Me will live with Me. BHAGAVAD-GITA 9:25 If a person worships the Supreme Personality of Godhead, then he will go to Him. That is the Lord's promise. As the Bhagavad-gita states: “Men of small intelligence worship the demigods and their fruits are limited and temporary. Those who worship the demigods go to the planets of the demigods, but My devotees reach My supreme abode. BHAGAVAD-GITA 7:24 “Always think of Me, become My devotee. Worship Me and offer your homage to Me. Thus you will come to Me without fail. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend. BHAGAVAD-GITA 18:65 “From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again. BHAGAVAD-GITA 8: 16 That these truths have been handed down by the great spiritual authorities is confirmed in this thirteenth mantra of Sri Ishopanishad. All this is heard from the undisturbed authorities who clearly explained it. The ascending method of gaining knowledge is of no value when it comes to the Absolute Truth or God. The power of the senses and mind are limited. The material mind and senses cannot penetrate into the anti-material or spiritual dimension. Therefore, for information about the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one must link up with a bona fide spiritual master in disciplic succession, or parampara. Parampara refers to an unbroken line of spiritual masters who have handed down the Absolute Truth. For example, I didn't manufacture the teaching being presented here; I received it from my spiritual master. And where did he get it? From his spiritual master. And his spiritual master got it from his guru, and so on. A bona fide disciplic succession begins with God Himself. Our disciplic succession begins with Govinda, Sri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He spoke the Absolute Truth to Lord Brahma, the creator of the universe. Lord Brahma handed it to his disciple, Narada. Narada taught it to Srila Vyasadev. Vyasadev then put this transcendental information in writing for the first time. These writings are called the Vedic literature, and the Sri Ishopanishad is an important part of this literature. So although the Vedas were written by Srila Vyasadev some 5000 years ago, in fact they were handed down orally long before that. Our disciplic succession can be traced back to Srila Vyasadev, Narada Muni, Lord Brahma, and Sri Krishna. More recently in our line of disciplic succession (500 years ago), Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in India. Lord Chaitanya is the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. This is confirmed in scripture. “Sometimes I personally appear on the surface of the world in the garb of a devotee. Specifically, I appear as the son of Sachi in Kali yuga to start the sankirtan (chanting of the holy name) movement. BRAHMA YAMALA “In the Kali yuga the Supreme Lord comes as one who always chants the holy name of Sri Krishna, who is Sri Krishna Himself, and whose complexion is yellow.CHAITANYA-CHARITAMRTA 1:3:52 I shall appear in the holy land of Navadwip, as the son of Sachi Devi. KRISHNA YAMALA “In the age of Kali when the sankirtan or chanting movement is inaugurated, I shall descend as the son of Sachi Devi. VAYU PURANA “One who sees the golden colored Personality of Godhead, the Supreme Lord, the supreme actor who is the source of the supreme Brahman, is liberated. MUNDAKA UPANISHAD As the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Chaitanya could have started a new disciplic succession; but He did not. Instead He became the disciple of Sri Isvara Puri, a bona fide spiritual master in the Brahma Sampradaya. Lord Chaitanya did this to serve as an example. If a person wants to know the Supreme Personality of Godhead perfectly, then he should approach a bona fide guru. In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Lord says that not only should a seeker of Truth approach a bona fide guru, He says that the seeker must do it. This is also Stated in the Mundaka Upanishad. In order to learn the transcendental science, one must approach the bona fide spiritual master in disciplic succession who is fixed in the Absolute Truth. MUNDAKA UPANISHAD 1:2:12 The thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad refers to the great, undisturbed authorities. A person who sees the Truth-who knows the Supreme Personality of Godhead-is no longer disturbed by the whirlpool of material nature. To know the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the cause of all causes, is to be liberated. In the material world, people are afraid of death. This is due to ignorance. A person who knows the truth-that his essence is spirit, that he is the eternal part and parcel of the Supreme Spirit, and that the Lord will give him full protection-is undisturbed by fears of death. In the material world, people experience a variety of disturbances because they have placed their love and attachment onto the temporary names and forms of the world. A wise person places his love directly onto the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Such a person is not disturbed by the thorns of worldly love. In the material world, people are always disturbed by the demands of the senses and the mind. The senses are like wild horses that drag a person this way and that. But someone who tastes the nectar of pure love for God is satisfied within, and thus can easily tame the mind and senses. Such a person is undisturbed by the demands of the senses. He is the master of the senses, not the slave. Materialistic people are always feeling empty inside because they don't really know the true purpose of their existence. A self-realized soul knows full well that the purpose of his existence, eternally, is to render loving service to the Supreme Person. Such a wise person is not disturbed by feelings of meaninglessness and purposelessness. Only one who is himself undisturbed by the whirlpool of material nature can help others out of that whirlpool. A drowning man can't save another drowning man. Material existence is like a vast ocean filled with whirlpools, sharks, and big waves. The tiny spirit soul is struggling in this ocean of material existence, suffering from birth, diseases, old age, death, and so many other anxieties and troubles. Since the spirit soul is in essence spirit, he does not in fact belong in this material ocean. The material world is not his natural home. So the question is how to get out. Some people try to climb out by the power of their own sense perception and mental speculation, or mystic yoga. This is called the ascending process, since they try to ascend out of the material field by their own efforts. But the parampara system is a descending process. It is based upon the recognition that the Supreme Lord is a fully conscious person. God-the Absolute Truth-is not a lifeless rock or an impersonal void. He is a person, and He descends to lift the struggling spirit soul out of the material ocean. All the spirit soul has to do is accept the Lord's offer of help, grab hold of the Lord's hand If the spirit soul foolishly rejects the Lord's offer of assistance, preferring instead to try to free himself by his own efforts, then he is doomed by his pride and enviousness to struggle for all eternity. Only those who are too proud and too envious of the Supreme Lord reject His offer of help and try to know His very existence. If they deny His existence, they surely cannot sincerely pray for His help. Prayer, in fact, means not only asking for but also humbly accepting the Lord's offer of help. The parampara is the Lord's hand The guru is the Lord's confidential friend and envoy. He is empowered by the Lord to save the struggling spirit soul. The guru is not a drowning person; he is a liberated soul. A non-liberated soul cannot be guru-although many such enslaved souls like to pose as such. Being free, the bona fide guru can free others. Knowing the Supreme Lord, he can introduce Him to others. Being a pure lover of the Supreme Person, he can teach the confidential science of love for God to others. Seeing the beautiful face of the Lord, he can help others see Him too. Being the confidential lover of the Lord, he can change the hearts and minds of materialistic persons by his transcendental influence. As the pure lover of God who holds the Lord close to his heart, his chanting of the names and glories of the Lord can pierce through and melt the hardest of hearts. In other words, he can change lovers of mammon into lovers of God. He can convince the struggling spirit soul to give up his independent struggle for liberation and take shelter in the Supreme Person. To reject the guru is to reject the Supreme Lord As the Lord's confidential servant and representative, the guru is not different from the Lord Himself. This is confirmed by the Supreme Lord: One should know the acharya [guru] as Myself and never disrespect him in any way. One should not envy him, thinking him an ordinary man, for he is the representative of all the demigods.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 11:11:21 O my Lord! Transcendental poets and experts in spiritual science could not fully express their indebtedness to You, even if they were endowed with the prolonged lifetime of Brahma. You appear in two features- externally as the acharya, the spiritual master- and internally as the Supersoul- to deliver the embodied living being by directing him how to come to You.–SRIMAD BHAGAVATAM 11 :29:6 Since the spiritual master is the very hand of help that is being offered to the struggling spirit soul, to reject the guru is to reject the hand of the Supreme Lord. Since the guru is the external manifestation of the Lord's compassion, to reject him is to reject the Lord's love. Looking at it from a slightly different angle, since the guru is the confidential, loving servant of the Supreme Person, to reject-or worse, blaspheme-him is to be extremely displeasing to the Supreme Lord. In the same way that a mother or father rejects a person who rejects or blasphemes their good child, or that a person rejects someone who rejects or blasphemes his close friend, God rejects anyone who rejects or blasphemes His confidential servant, the spiritual master. This is why the confidential servant of the Supreme Person, Jesus Christ, said that those who reject him will be rejected by the Supreme Father, and those who accept him will be accepted by the Father. Jesus also stated that he would reject those who rejected his Father. That is the nature of love. If you reject my beloved, then I will reject you. If I reject your good friend, then you will reject me. A person who wants to advance spiritually must learn these laws of spiritual love, otherwise he cannot make any advancement. The descending process is very simple: The Supreme Lord descends in the form of His representative, the spiritual master, scripture and the Lord in the heart, the Supersoul. And all a person need do is accept Him, receive Him, listen to Him and follow Him. People must give up the concept that God or the Absolute Truth is impersonal, and without consciousness and will. They must stop thinking of the Absolute Truth as a mountain that they will come to "know" in the same way that they would climb to the top of a mountain-by their own strength, ability, and intelligence. When a person climbs a mountain, the mountain stands there passively. It does not decide to take a walk in the middle of the climber's ascent! Therefore, a mountain climber doesn't feel he needs the mountain's permission to climb it. Nor does he expect the mountain to assist him-for example, by lowering its summit. To get to the top of the mountain, a person must use the ascending method. But the Absolute Truth is not a mountain. The Absolute Truth is a conscious person. Indeed, it is the Supreme Person. And everyone knows that dealing with another person is nothing at all like dealing with a nonconscious or inanimate object such as a mountain. You can unilaterally decide to climb a mountain, but you cannot unilaterally decide to get married. Why not? Because you are dealing with another person. And when you deal with another person, you need to take into account the will and the pleasure of that person. You mav want to marrv a particular person but that person may not want to marry you. You may want a relationship with someone, but they may not even want to see you.>p> The first thing that someone who wants to know God must realize is that God is a person. And not only is He a person, He is the Supreme Person. Therefore, whereas one might be able to fake or trick his way into a relationship with an ordinary person, he cannot successfully use such tactics with God. God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't be overpowered or deceived. He knows your every thought, feeling, and desire. Once the spirit soul who aspires for the Truth, realizes that the Truth is a person, he must completely reconsider his method of coming to know the Truth. He must give up the ascending process-it may work fine in dealing with the inanimate world, but it is useless in dealing with other people. Once a person recognizes that the Absolute Truth is also a person, he realizes that to "know" the Truth means to have a favorable relationship with the Truth. You can't know God in the way that you may know that 2 + 2 = 4, or in the way that you know how to build an automobile engine. To know God is to have a confidential, loving relationship with Him. So the question is, "How do I go about developing such a relationship?" And that leads one to the guru. As the confidential loving servant and friend of the Supreme Lord, the guru can introduce you to the Lord and teach you exactly how to cultivate your relationship with Him. That process is called sadhana-bhakti yoga. The aim of the sadhana-bhakti process is to raise a person's consciousness to the point where he truly desires to please God. In other words the process increases a person's faith in and love for God. Once a person really desires, above all else, to please the Supreme Person, then the Supreme Lord is drawn to him. In other words, the Lord is attracted by the devotee's love. A guru is a guru because he's undisturbed by the whirlpool of material nature. The thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad confirms that being undisturbed is a characteristic of a bona fide spiritual master. This person has transcended the material modes of ignorance, passion, and goodness. He is situated on the platform of purified goodness, or pure bhakti. Unfortunately, some people claim that a person is a guru or spiritual master by appointment, election, or heredity. This is because they are disturbed by the material forces of ignorance and passion. Their lust has covered their intelligence. Because they desire to lord over others, because of their envy, such rascals sometimes claim that their guru appointed them as the "next" spiritual master. This reveals that they do not know what a guru really is-a pure, confidential, loving servant of the Supreme Lord. A person cannot be "appointed" a lover of God. Each individual must himself make the decision to surrender his life, his heart, his love, his will, to the Supreme Person. No one else can do it for you. I can introduce my disciples to the Supreme Person and encourage them to love and surrender to Him, I can teach them the purifying process of sadhana-bhakti, I can be an example to them, I can beg them with all my strength; but I cannot make the decision for them, I can't love God or surrender to God for them. A bona fide guru does not wave some kind of magic wand over the heads of Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krsna Posted April 7, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 7, 2005 Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Twelve Those who are engaged in the worship of demigods enter into the darkest region of ignorance, and still more so do the worshippers of the impersonal Absolute..¡± People who are very materialistic and poorly educated are easily seduced into demigod worship. Behind the worship of a demigod is usually the aim of getting some material benefit-a good harvest, a good husband or wife, a successful business, good health, and so on. Often, people worship a particular demigod to satisfy a particular desire or to solve a particular problem, such as illness or personal poverty. Not only are they in ignorance already-but such demigod worship leads them even deeper into ignorance, into false bodily identification and materialistic, self-centered consciousness. Their envy and desire for power, fame, and wealth increase, leading them into deeper ignorance of their true identity as eternal spirit souls, dominated parts and parcels of the Supreme Soul. If they realized their true identity, they would also realize that it is to Him that they should be rendering loving service. But demigod worshippers often fall into the illusion that their demigod is the Supreme Lord Himself; thus they are led further away from the Lord. It is understandable that a person who is uneducated in spiritual matters could mistakenly conclude that a demigod or even a great mystic or sage is God. After all, the demigods and even some mystics have great power. Since a materialistic person is used to worshipping material power, it is not surprising that he may be so impressed by a powerful demigod or mystic yogi that he may worship him as the Supreme Lord. But an intelligent person is not so easily fooled. The ancient Vedic text, Srimad-Bhagavatam, records a most instructive incident: a conversation between Lord Brahma, the powerful demigod in charge of creating this material universe, and his disciple, Narada. Narada had thought that his spiritual master, Lord Brahma, was the Supreme Lord because of Lord Brahma's wonderful, powerful characteristics. After all, the creation of the universe is no small mystical feat! Yet Narada began to doubt that Lord Brahma was truly the Supreme Lord-the cause of all causes-when he saw that Lord Brahma evidently worshipped someone else. Following is a short portion of the conversation between Lord Brahma and Narada Muni to which we have added some brief purports. Sri Narada Muni asked Brahmaji: O chief amongst the demigods, O first born living entity, I beg to offer my respectful obeisances unto you. Please tell me that transcendental knowledge which specifically directs one to the truth of the individual soul and the Supersoul. My dear father, please describe factually the symptoms of this manifest world. What is its background? How is it created? How is it conserved? And under whose control is all this being done? My dear father, all this is known to you scientifically because whatever was created in the past, whatever will be created in the future, or whatever is being created at present, as well as everything within the universe, is within your grip, just like a walnut. My dear father, what is the source of your knowledge? Under whose protection are you standing? And under whom are you working? What is your real position? Do you alone create all entities with material elements by your personal energy? SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5: 1-4 After paying all his respects to Lord Brahma, his spiritual master, Narada refused to act with duplicity. He paid his respects to Lord Brahma as the creator of the universe, as an immensely powerful being and as, after all, his spiritual master. Yet he was not afraid to put his questions forward respectfully but directly. In the next two verses, Narada then again acknowledged the powerful position of Brahmaji: As the spider very easily creates the network of its cobweb and manifests its power of creation without being defeated by others, so also you yourself, by employment of your self-sufficient energy, create without any other's help. Whatever we can understand by the nomenclature, characteristics and features of a particular thing- superior, inferior or equal, eternal or temporary-are not created from any source other than that of your lordship, thou are so great. SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:5-6 In the next verse, Narada directly expressed his doubt that Brahmaji was God Himself, by saying: Yet we are moved to wonder about the existence of someone more powerful than you when we think of your great austerities in perfect discipline, although your good self is so powerful in the matter of creation.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:1 Narada knew that Lord Brahma had undergone strict austerities and penances; he knew that Brahmaji had achieved self-realization through such meditation practices. In other words, Narada logically suspected that since Brahma himself had undergone austerities, meditation, and so forth in order to achieve self-realization, he could not be God. Narada logically concluded that God would not need to undergo any process of self-realization in order to find out His identity. Narada understood that God, the Supreme Lord, has no superior to be worshipped. Since Lord Brahma obviously worshipped some superior power, and since he was enlightened by that superior power, Narada wanted to know all about it. He wanted to know about this Supreme Being. Unfortunately, many people interested in spiritual realization are not as intelligent or as careful as Narada. Many people blindly accept that the creator of this universe is the Supreme Lord, the cause of all causes, when in fact there are countless millions of universes, each with a creator, called a Lord Brahma. What to speak of such people who mistakenly worship the creator of the universe as God, millions of people worship mystic yogis-whose power is relatively insignificant-as God just because they can exhibit a few more psychic powers than an ordinary person can. Mystic yogis, by the practice of mystic or psychic powers, can do things that ordinary people consider very wonderful and miraculous. Such yogis then exploit the people, claiming that they are God Himself. And millions of foolish people believe such charlatans and follow them blindly. Narada is a perfect example of a bona fide disciple. Even though his guru, Lord Brahma, was immensely powerful, still Narada did not blindly accept him as the Supreme Lord Himself. Narada gave him all the respect due to God, since he knew that the guru is the representative of God and that scripture says to give the same respect to guru as to God. Yet still Narada did not blindly accept that his guru was the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. And what was Lord Brahma's reaction to his disciple's doubt? A fake guru wants his followers to believe that he is God Himself -that's why he tries to impress them with his mystic powers. If the disciple of a phony guru were to express doubts about his guru's lordship, the guru would surely be angered. So how did Brahma react when Narada asked the questions, "Under whose protection are you standing? And under whom are you working? What is your real position?" And how did he react when Narada asked, "Yet we are moved to wonder about the existence of someone more powerful than you when we think of your great austerities in perfect discipline. . . ." In response, Brahmaji was not angry. In fact, he was extremely pleased. As a bonafide guru, Brahma's happiness was in glorifying the Supreme Lord, and Narada's questions gave him the opportunity to do just that. Thus Lord Brahma replied: My dear boy Narada, being merciful to all (including me) you have asked all these questions because I have been inspired to see into the prowess of the almighty Personality of Godhead. Whatever you have spoken about me is not false because unless and until one is aware of the Personality of Godhead, who is the Ultimate Truth beyond me, one is sure to be illusioned by observing my powerful activities. I create after the Lord's creation by His personal effulgence [known as the brahmajyoti], just as when the sun manifests its fire, the moon, the firmament, the influential planets and the twinkling stars also manifest their brightness.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:9-11 Lord Brahma also put forward this same conclusion in another Vedic scripture, the Brahma-samhita, where he prayed: I serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Govinda, the primeval Lord, whose transcendental bodily effulgence, known as the brahmajyoti, which is unlimited, unfathomed, and all-pervasive, is the cause of the creation of unlimited numbers of planets, etc., with varieties of climates and specific conditions of life. BRAHMA-SAMHITA (5:40) Lord Brahma continued in his reply to Narada: I offer my obeisances and meditate upon Lord Krishna [Vasudeva], the Personality of Godhead. whose invincible potency influences them [the less intelligent class of men] to call me the Supreme Controller.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 2:5:12 Brahma expressed the same sentiment in the Brahma-samhita. The Supreme Lord is the Personality of Godhead Sri Krishna, the primeval Lord in His transcendental body, the ultimate cause of all causes. I worship that primeval Lord Govinda.?-BRAHMA-SAMHITA (5:1): Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad praised the attitude of the spiritual master and demigod, Lord Brahma, writing: Brahmaji is conscious of his actual position, and he knows how less intelligent persons, bewildered by the illusory energy of the Lord, whimsically accept anyone and everyone as God. A responsible personality like Brahmaji refuses to be addressed as the Supreme Lord by his disciples or subordinates, but foolish persons praised by men of the nature of dogs, hogs, camels and asses feel flattered to be addressed as the Supreme Lord. The twelfth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad declares that those who worship the demigods as God enter the darkest region of ignorance, but that those who worship the impersonal feature of God-the brahmajyoti or Brahman effulgence-are even worse off. One who worships the impersonal Brahman as the cause of all causes is considered to be in a very bad position: he is entirely incapable of achieving the true goal of life-namely, love for the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Once a person concludes that God is impersonal, then love for God becomes unachievable. After all, no one can love an impersonal force. Furthermore, one who has merged into the Brahman effulgence is unaware of his own individual existence and of the individual existence of the Supreme Lord in that merged condition. So being unaware of his own existence as an eternal spirit soul, and being unaware of the existence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the impersonalist remains lost. Worse, actually-when he descends from his merged condition, he is in the illusion that he has achieved perfect spiritual realization. After having the experience of temporarily merging into the Brahman and then returning to his body, he may wrongly conclude that he is God and that everyone is God or that the world is God. Thus, he becomes practically an atheist in that he denies the existence of the Supreme Lord. As far as he is concerned, the impersonal Brahman has become the world and all living beings, and therefore the world and all living beings are God. In other words, the impersonalist becomes an "I am God”ist. Thinking of himself as God, he sees no need to worship any other being or to take shelter in any other being. Indeed, he believes he is the only being in existence and that the manifest world is just a dream springing from his mind. He may try to take the position of the Supreme Lord, believing himself to re the Supreme dominator and enjoyer of all that he surveys. This is the darkest region of ignorance. He may try to act on the illusion that he is God and that the world is his playground He may become, in other words, a "super-hedonist." One such "I am God"ist, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), formerly a professor at Harvard University, declares that no one exists except oneself, and that after merging with the impersonal Brahman, one returns to the world and is the world and is everyone. If you come back into form from having merged with God you fill the forms [bodies] though there is no one home, it is just more lila, the dance of God. The late Swami Muktananda a well known "I am God"ist who had thousands of followers, wrote: Assuming physical bodies, He appears as separate entities. According to the "I am God"ist the apparent existence of others is just an hallucination. And since you are God, you are the creator of the laws of the universe (or as Ram Dass puts it, "You are the laws of the universe"). And since you are the laws of the universe-since you are God-then there is no higher person or law to which you must subject yourself. Your will, your desire, is God's desire-God's will-so there is no need whatsoever to check or control your desires or actions. As another "I am God"ist, Werner Erhard puts it: What you're doing is what God wants you to do. Be happy. So according to the "I am God"ist, since you and l-each of us-is God, whatever you and I and others are doing is what God wants us to do. You can re engaging in the most illicit or the most heinous activities, but since you are God, you are doing the will of God. Your will is God's will. In other words, the "I am God"ist does not feel the need to harmonize his will with God's will. He relieves his will is God's will, because he relieves he is God. As Swami Muktananda advised his students: Meditate on your Self, honor and worship your own Self. Kneel to your Self, because the supreme reality, the highest truth lives within you as you. Many of these "I am God"ists end up as the most extreme of all hedonists-having illicit sex with their disciples, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking, eating meat, and engaging in all kinds of debauchery. They declare that they can do so without being contaminated karmically because they are so "spiritually advanced" At the moment the Western world (as well as India) is crawling with such charlatans. One who worships the impersonal Brahman as the cause of all causes is in a very dangerous position. To conclude that God is impersonal is to put oneself in an unprotected position. Everyone needs someone to love and serve eternally. If a person, a spirit soul, doesn't come to know the eternal Supreme Soul, then he obviously cannot place his love-his natural desire to serve-on the Supreme Lord. And if a person doesn't come to know and engage in the loving service of the Supreme Lord, then his tendency to love and serve will be directed toward the world and the forms of this world. Consequently, he will again become attached to the temporary material world. However, although those who worship the impersonal feature of God are in a very dangerous position, this does not mean that they cannot make advancement. There are many examples throughout history of great yogis who were not only realized in the impersonal Brahman, but were also very sincere. Due to their sincerity, they went beyond their limited vision of the Absolute Truth (i.e. their experience of the impersonal feature of the Absolute Truth) and became great devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead For example, there are the Kumar brothers and there is the great Sukadev Goswami, who spoke the Srimad-Bhagavatam thousands of years ago to King Pariksit. Although they were realized in the impersonal feature of God, they did not fall into debauchery or illicit activities, or try to live in the world as if they were God. They were fortunate enough to come into contact with the Supreme Personality of Godhead or the devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and thus went beyond their limited realization of the Absolute Truth. Two types of people engage in the worship of the impersonal feature of God: those who are sincere and those who are insincere. If those who are sincere come into contact with a bona fide spiritual master-one who knows the Supreme Personality of Godhead- then they will go beyond the impersonal Brahman. They will move into the highest dimension of spiritual life-rendering loving service to the Supreme Person. But those who are insincere will be envious of the Supreme Person and will not want to hear anything about the worship of someone other than themselves. They will be repelled by the thought of worshipping a being who is superior to them. Such insincere persons cannot make progress. Furthermore, they tend to fall down into all kinds of debauchery and illicit activities, such as drinking, taking intoxicants, engaging in illicit sex, and so on. The devotee of the Supreme Personality of Godhead does not condemn those who worship the impersonal feature of God, but rather tries to enlighten them further, admitting that "Yes, you have realized the impersonal feature of the Absolute Truth. But now, if you want to become actually spiritually perfect, then please worship the Supreme Personality. Sri Ishopanisad: Mantra Thirteen "It is said that one result is obtained by worshipping the supreme cause of all causes and that another result is obtained by worshipping that which is not supreme. All this is heard from the undisturbed authorities who clearly explained it.¡± Everyone worships something. The hedonist worships the senses and the objects of sense enjoyment-for example, the sex organs of the opposite sex or even (in the case of homosexuals) the same sex. The hedonist also worships food and the tongue that tastes the food. Money also is worshipped, because it facilitates sense gratification. And what is the result of worshipping sense enjoyment, the senses, and the objects of sense pleasure? Frustration, confusion, anger, hatred, emptiness, fear, and finally, rebirth again into the material world. In other words, a person who worships matter-who is attached to enjoying the material senses-ends up, after the death of his present body, taking on yet another material body. This is called reincarnation, or transmigration of the spirit soul. So reincarnation is not causeless. It is the result of a particular type of worship. The mind of a person who worships the objects of the senses is always immersed in thoughts of such sense objects. Indeed, such immersion is the essential definition of worship: that which one always thinks about and wants to have. If a person worships the senses and sense objects throughout his life, then at the time of death his mind will automatically be immersed in such thoughts. This is why the person will be forced to take on another material body. As the Lord states in the Bhagavad-gita: Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail. BHAGAVAD-GITA 8:6 The Srimad-Bhagavatam states: The subject matter which attracts the dying man is the beginning of his next life. The relationship between the spirit soul (the person), the mind, and the gross physical body is as follows: The spirit soul, or self, can be compared to a naked man; the mind can be compared to his underclothes; and the gross body (made of earth, water, fire, air, and ether) can be compared to his outer garments. At death, the gross body (the outer garment) is removed, but the mind (the undergarment) is not removed. So at the time of death the self leaves the gross physical body behind, but is still covered by the subtle material body (the mind). This is described by the great sage, Narada Muni, in the Srimad-Bhagavatam: The great sage Narada stated: "The living entity acts in a gross body in this life. This body is forced to act by the subtle body composed of mind, intelligence, and false ego. After the gross body is lost, the subtle body, the mind, is still there to enjoy or suffer, thus there is no change." SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 4:29:60 And the Srimad-Bhagavatam further states: The caterpillar transports itself from one leaf to another by capturing one leaf before giving up the other. Similarly, according to her previous work the living entity must capture another body before giving up the one she has. This is because the mind is the reservoir of all kinds of material desires.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 4:29:76-77 Throughout life, the hedonist worships the objects of the senses and sense enjoyment, and thus cultivates a particular mentality. Then, after he leaves the gross physical body, the particular mentality he cultivated remains as a covering and acts as a type of nucleus, around which a new gross material body develops. In other words, the type of gross material body that a person takes on in his next life is determined by the "shape" or the nature of the subtle material body, the mind This is confirmed in both the Srimad-Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad-gita: The mind is the cause of the living entity's attaining a certain type of body in accordance with his association with material nature. According to one's mental composition, one can understand what the living entity was in his past life as well as what kind of body he will have in the future, thus the mind indicates the past and future bodies. -SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 4:29:66 By virtue of the processes of the subtle body, the living entity develops and gives up gross bodies. This is known as transmigration of the self. Thus the self becomes subjected to different types of so-called enjoyment, lamentation, fear, happiness, and unhappiness. SRIMAD-BHAGA VATAM 4:29:75 The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas. The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, tongue, nose, and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects. BHAGAVAD-GITA 15:8-9 According to scripture and the great spiritual masters, a person's transmigration from one body to the next is the result of his worshipping that which is not supreme. Some so-called spiritual masters teach that worshipping demigods will produce the same result as will worshipping the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the cause of all causes. But this conclusion is based on ignorance. In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Lord states that people worship demigods because they are contaminated by material desires: “Those whose minds are distorted by material desires surrender unto the demigods and follow the particular rules and regulations of worship according to their own natures. BHAGAVAD-GITA 7:20 There are transcendentalists who worship the impersonal feature of the Absolute Truth-the Brahman effulgence-with the hope that one day they can merge into it and lose their individual, personal identity. Many people throughout the world, including some Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Muslims, yogis, and practitioners of chi gong, see the merging into this ocean of white light as the ultimate goal. Sometimes such a person gets a glimpse of this Brahman effulgence (the ocean of light that emanates from the Supreme Person) and thus becomes even more motivated to continue his practice, spurred by the increased hope that one day he will be able to completely merge into the light. If worship of the Brahman effulgence is successful, it leads to a temporary merging into the Brahman at the time of death. However, this merging is not eternal-although the spirit soul is unaware of his actual identity as an individual while in that condition-in fact, he is still an individual. And every individual spirit soul, by nature, is eternally active and needs to love and be loved In the merged condition the spirit soul's need to be active and to love and be loved is not taken care of; therefore, ultimately the spirit soul is again forced to descend to the world of matter-the world of birth, diseases, old age, and death. And in this material world, which is completely alien to his actual eternal spiritual essence, he engages in various activities, creating good karma and bad karma, and places his precious love upon one temporary form after another. This thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad confirms that a person's future is in his own hands. The individual spirit soul is responsible for his own future. It is not that God arbitrarily decides that, "This person is to be reborn in a dog body, this person is to go to the demigods, and this person gets to come to My abode, My kingdom." No. The Supreme Lord wants all His children to come back to Him, to love Him, and to be happy. But we are endowed with free will. We can choose to worship Him-the Supreme-or to worship something that is not the Supreme. We can choose to serve Him or to serve something else. We are responsible for our future because our future is the result of our present activities. As this thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad states, if we worship the Supreme cause of all causes then we will have a certain type of future; if we worship something other than the Supreme cause of all causes, then our destiny will be something else. So the choice is ours. We do have a degree of freedom by which to determine our own future. Each individual's destiny is really in his own hands. Indeed, in the Bhagavad-gita the Supreme Lord states that He actually knows the desires of every living being and that He gives them a particular future according to their desires. If a person has certain desires in his mind at the time of death, if his mind is molded in a certain way, then God-through material nature-provides him with a particular type of body so that he can enjoy just as his heart desires. For example, if he wants to enjoy like an animal, then he gets an animal body. So God actually gives us our desires. The eighth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad states: The Supreme Lord has been fulfilling everyone's desires since time immemorial. SRI ISHOPANISHAD In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Lord declares that He is not envious of, or angry it, those who worship the demigods instead of Him. Indeed, He states: I am in everyone's heart as the Supersoul and as soon as one desires to worship the demigods, I make his faith steady so that he can devote himself to some particular deity. BHAGAVAD-GITA7:21 So if you want to worship a particular demigod, then the Supreme Lord knows this and actually helps you direct your concentration upon that particular demigod. This is a very important point: The Supreme Lord gives you what you desire. If you don't want to worship Him, He won't force you. In this connection we should mention something about fanaticism. A "religious fanatic" tries to force other people to worship God in the same way that he worships God. But, in fact, God does not force anybody to worship Him. All fanatics should try to understand this point. Surely, if they appreciate that God is all-powerful, then they should also be able to appreciate that He has the power to force everyone to worship Him. However, He does not do that. And since God does not force living beings to worship Him; since God does not force His children to pay homage to Him; since God does not force His children to remain in His kingdom but in fact creates a material world for those of His children who don't want to serve Him, then why should someone who is supposedly a servant of God use force? The truth is that the fanatic does not know that real worship of God means love for God, and that no one can be forced to love God. Someone can be forced to say he loves God, but not to actually love Him. Unfortunately, the fanatic does not understand this difference. Equally unfortunate, in part as a reaction to fanaticism, many so-called spiritual masters have popularized the slogan, "All paths lead to the same place." This 'liberal" philosophy may be attractive to people who are too lazy to study and to attempt discrimination between one path and another. This philosophy may be attractive to those who don't want to make the effort to decide which path in life they will follow. But this philosophy is not at all attractive to those who really want to know the Truth. "All paths lead to the same place" is complete nonsense. A person doesn't need to be a great scholar to understand that different paths lead to different places. If you go to a train station, you can't get on just any train and expect to get to your desired destination. Each train goes to a different place. You can't get on a train Los Angeles and expect to arrive in New York. It is true that certain trains may go in the same general direction; for example, they may all head south. But one train may go only to the first city, and then return to the original embarkation point. Another train may go all the way to the third city, but may stop there. Thus, even if a person worships the impersonal feature of the Lord, the Brahman effulgence, or practices a method for merging into the impersonal Brahman, he still falls short of the goal of reaching the supreme cause of all causes-the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna clearly refutes the idea that all paths lead to the same place: Those who worship the demigods will take birth among the demigods; those who worship ghosts and spirits will take birth among such beings; those who worship ancestors go to the ancestors; and those who worship Me will live with Me. BHAGAVAD-GITA 9:25 If a person worships the Supreme Personality of Godhead, then he will go to Him. That is the Lord's promise. As the Bhagavad-gita states: “Men of small intelligence worship the demigods and their fruits are limited and temporary. Those who worship the demigods go to the planets of the demigods, but My devotees reach My supreme abode. BHAGAVAD-GITA 7:24 “Always think of Me, become My devotee. Worship Me and offer your homage to Me. Thus you will come to Me without fail. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend. BHAGAVAD-GITA 18:65 “From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again. BHAGAVAD-GITA 8: 16 That these truths have been handed down by the great spiritual authorities is confirmed in this thirteenth mantra of Sri Ishopanishad. All this is heard from the undisturbed authorities who clearly explained it. The ascending method of gaining knowledge is of no value when it comes to the Absolute Truth or God. The power of the senses and mind are limited. The material mind and senses cannot penetrate into the anti-material or spiritual dimension. Therefore, for information about the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one must link up with a bona fide spiritual master in disciplic succession, or parampara. Parampara refers to an unbroken line of spiritual masters who have handed down the Absolute Truth. For example, I didn't manufacture the teaching being presented here; I received it from my spiritual master. And where did he get it? From his spiritual master. And his spiritual master got it from his guru, and so on. A bona fide disciplic succession begins with God Himself. Our disciplic succession begins with Govinda, Sri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He spoke the Absolute Truth to Lord Brahma, the creator of the universe. Lord Brahma handed it to his disciple, Narada. Narada taught it to Srila Vyasadev. Vyasadev then put this transcendental information in writing for the first time. These writings are called the Vedic literature, and the Sri Ishopanishad is an important part of this literature. So although the Vedas were written by Srila Vyasadev some 5000 years ago, in fact they were handed down orally long before that. Our disciplic succession can be traced back to Srila Vyasadev, Narada Muni, Lord Brahma, and Sri Krishna. More recently in our line of disciplic succession (500 years ago), Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in India. Lord Chaitanya is the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. This is confirmed in scripture. “Sometimes I personally appear on the surface of the world in the garb of a devotee. Specifically, I appear as the son of Sachi in Kali yuga to start the sankirtan (chanting of the holy name) movement. BRAHMA YAMALA “In the Kali yuga the Supreme Lord comes as one who always chants the holy name of Sri Krishna, who is Sri Krishna Himself, and whose complexion is yellow.CHAITANYA-CHARITAMRTA 1:3:52 I shall appear in the holy land of Navadwip, as the son of Sachi Devi. KRISHNA YAMALA “In the age of Kali when the sankirtan or chanting movement is inaugurated, I shall descend as the son of Sachi Devi. VAYU PURANA “One who sees the golden colored Personality of Godhead, the Supreme Lord, the supreme actor who is the source of the supreme Brahman, is liberated. MUNDAKA UPANISHAD As the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Chaitanya could have started a new disciplic succession; but He did not. Instead He became the disciple of Sri Isvara Puri, a bona fide spiritual master in the Brahma Sampradaya. Lord Chaitanya did this to serve as an example. If a person wants to know the Supreme Personality of Godhead perfectly, then he should approach a bona fide guru. In the Bhagavad-gita, the Supreme Lord says that not only should a seeker of Truth approach a bona fide guru, He says that the seeker must do it. This is also Stated in the Mundaka Upanishad. In order to learn the transcendental science, one must approach the bona fide spiritual master in disciplic succession who is fixed in the Absolute Truth. MUNDAKA UPANISHAD 1:2:12 The thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad refers to the great, undisturbed authorities. A person who sees the Truth-who knows the Supreme Personality of Godhead-is no longer disturbed by the whirlpool of material nature. To know the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the cause of all causes, is to be liberated. In the material world, people are afraid of death. This is due to ignorance. A person who knows the truth-that his essence is spirit, that he is the eternal part and parcel of the Supreme Spirit, and that the Lord will give him full protection-is undisturbed by fears of death. In the material world, people experience a variety of disturbances because they have placed their love and attachment onto the temporary names and forms of the world. A wise person places his love directly onto the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Such a person is not disturbed by the thorns of worldly love. In the material world, people are always disturbed by the demands of the senses and the mind. The senses are like wild horses that drag a person this way and that. But someone who tastes the nectar of pure love for God is satisfied within, and thus can easily tame the mind and senses. Such a person is undisturbed by the demands of the senses. He is the master of the senses, not the slave. Materialistic people are always feeling empty inside because they don't really know the true purpose of their existence. A self-realized soul knows full well that the purpose of his existence, eternally, is to render loving service to the Supreme Person. Such a wise person is not disturbed by feelings of meaninglessness and purposelessness. Only one who is himself undisturbed by the whirlpool of material nature can help others out of that whirlpool. A drowning man can't save another drowning man. Material existence is like a vast ocean filled with whirlpools, sharks, and big waves. The tiny spirit soul is struggling in this ocean of material existence, suffering from birth, diseases, old age, death, and so many other anxieties and troubles. Since the spirit soul is in essence spirit, he does not in fact belong in this material ocean. The material world is not his natural home. So the question is how to get out. Some people try to climb out by the power of their own sense perception and mental speculation, or mystic yoga. This is called the ascending process, since they try to ascend out of the material field by their own efforts. But the parampara system is a descending process. It is based upon the recognition that the Supreme Lord is a fully conscious person. God-the Absolute Truth-is not a lifeless rock or an impersonal void. He is a person, and He descends to lift the struggling spirit soul out of the material ocean. All the spirit soul has to do is accept the Lord's offer of help, grab hold of the Lord's hand If the spirit soul foolishly rejects the Lord's offer of assistance, preferring instead to try to free himself by his own efforts, then he is doomed by his pride and enviousness to struggle for all eternity. Only those who are too proud and too envious of the Supreme Lord reject His offer of help and try to know His very existence. If they deny His existence, they surely cannot sincerely pray for His help. Prayer, in fact, means not only asking for but also humbly accepting the Lord's offer of help. The parampara is the Lord's hand The guru is the Lord's confidential friend and envoy. He is empowered by the Lord to save the struggling spirit soul. The guru is not a drowning person; he is a liberated soul. A non-liberated soul cannot be guru-although many such enslaved souls like to pose as such. Being free, the bona fide guru can free others. Knowing the Supreme Lord, he can introduce Him to others. Being a pure lover of the Supreme Person, he can teach the confidential science of love for God to others. Seeing the beautiful face of the Lord, he can help others see Him too. Being the confidential lover of the Lord, he can change the hearts and minds of materialistic persons by his transcendental influence. As the pure lover of God who holds the Lord close to his heart, his chanting of the names and glories of the Lord can pierce through and melt the hardest of hearts. In other words, he can change lovers of mammon into lovers of God. He can convince the struggling spirit soul to give up his independent struggle for liberation and take shelter in the Supreme Person. To reject the guru is to reject the Supreme Lord As the Lord's confidential servant and representative, the guru is not different from the Lord Himself. This is confirmed by the Supreme Lord: One should know the acharya [guru] as Myself and never disrespect him in any way. One should not envy him, thinking him an ordinary man, for he is the representative of all the demigods.?-SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 11:11:21 O my Lord! Transcendental poets and experts in spiritual science could not fully express their indebtedness to You, even if they were endowed with the prolonged lifetime of Brahma. You appear in two features- externally as the acharya, the spiritual master- and internally as the Supersoul- to deliver the embodied living being by directing him how to come to You.–SRIMAD BHAGAVATAM 11 :29:6 Since the spiritual master is the very hand of help that is being offered to the struggling spirit soul, to reject the guru is to reject the hand of the Supreme Lord. Since the guru is the external manifestation of the Lord's compassion, to reject him is to reject the Lord's love. Looking at it from a slightly different angle, since the guru is the confidential, loving servant of the Supreme Person, to reject-or worse, blaspheme-him is to be extremely displeasing to the Supreme Lord. In the same way that a mother or father rejects a person who rejects or blasphemes their good child, or that a person rejects someone who rejects or blasphemes his close friend, God rejects anyone who rejects or blasphemes His confidential servant, the spiritual master. This is why the confidential servant of the Supreme Person, Jesus Christ, said that those who reject him will be rejected by the Supreme Father, and those who accept him will be accepted by the Father. Jesus also stated that he would reject those who rejected his Father. That is the nature of love. If you reject my beloved, then I will reject you. If I reject your good friend, then you will reject me. A person who wants to advance spiritually must learn these laws of spiritual love, otherwise he cannot make any advancement. The descending process is very simple: The Supreme Lord descends in the form of His representative, the spiritual master, scripture and the Lord in the heart, the Supersoul. And all a person need do is accept Him, receive Him, listen to Him and follow Him. People must give up the concept that God or the Absolute Truth is impersonal, and without consciousness and will. They must stop thinking of the Absolute Truth as a mountain that they will come to "know" in the same way that they would climb to the top of a mountain-by their own strength, ability, and intelligence. When a person climbs a mountain, the mountain stands there passively. It does not decide to take a walk in the middle of the climber's ascent! Therefore, a mountain climber doesn't feel he needs the mountain's permission to climb it. Nor does he expect the mountain to assist him-for example, by lowering its summit. To get to the top of the mountain, a person must use the ascending method. But the Absolute Truth is not a mountain. The Absolute Truth is a conscious person. Indeed, it is the Supreme Person. And everyone knows that dealing with another person is nothing at all like dealing with a nonconscious or inanimate object such as a mountain. You can unilaterally decide to climb a mountain, but you cannot unilaterally decide to get married. Why not? Because you are dealing with another person. And when you deal with another person, you need to take into account the will and the pleasure of that person. You mav want to marrv a particular person but that person may not want to marry you. You may want a relationship with someone, but they may not even want to see you.>p> The first thing that someone who wants to know God must realize is that God is a person. And not only is He a person, He is the Supreme Person. Therefore, whereas one might be able to fake or trick his way into a relationship with an ordinary person, he cannot successfully use such tactics with God. God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't be overpowered or deceived. He knows your every thought, feeling, and desire. Once the spirit soul who aspires for the Truth, realizes that the Truth is a person, he must completely reconsider his method of coming to know the Truth. He must give up the ascending process-it may work fine in dealing with the inanimate world, but it is useless in dealing with other people. Once a person recognizes that the Absolute Truth is also a person, he realizes that to "know" the Truth means to have a favorable relationship with the Truth. You can't know God in the way that you may know that 2 + 2 = 4, or in the way that you know how to build an automobile engine. To know God is to have a confidential, loving relationship with Him. So the question is, "How do I go about developing such a relationship?" And that leads one to the guru. As the confidential loving servant and friend of the Supreme Lord, the guru can introduce you to the Lord and teach you exactly how to cultivate your relationship with Him. That process is called sadhana-bhakti yoga. The aim of the sadhana-bhakti process is to raise a person's consciousness to the point where he truly desires to please God. In other words the process increases a person's faith in and love for God. Once a person really desires, above all else, to please the Supreme Person, then the Supreme Lord is drawn to him. In other words, the Lord is attracted by the devotee's love. A guru is a guru because he's undisturbed by the whirlpool of material nature. The thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad confirms that being undisturbed is a characteristic of a bona fide spiritual master. This person has transcended the material modes of ignorance, passion, and goodness. He is situated on the platform of purified goodness, or pure bhakti. Unfortunately, some people claim that a person is a guru or spiritual master by appointment, election, or heredity. This is because they are disturbed by the material forces of ignorance and passion. Their lust has covered their intelligence. Because they desire to lord over others, because of their envy, such rascals sometimes claim that their guru appointed them as the "next" spiritual master. This reveals that they do not know what a guru really is-a pure, confidential, loving servant of the Supreme Lord. A person cannot be "appointed" a lover of God. Each individual must himself make the decision to surrender his life, his heart, his love, his will, to the Supreme Person. No one else can do it for you. I can introduce my disciples to the Supreme Person and encourage them to love and surrender to Him, I can teach them the purifying process of sadhana-bhakti, I can be an example to them, I can beg them with all my strength; but I cannot make the decision for them, I can't love God or surrender to God for them. A bona fide guru does not wave some kind of magic wand over the heads of "select" disciples and infuse them with love for God. His mercy is for all. It is not selective. Those who claim that a person can become a guru by appointment deny the very essence of bhakti: the individual's personal surrender to God. Yet they have the nerve to pose as great spiritual masters. Some of them even admit that they do not have perfect self-realization, that they are still disturbed. Yet they claim that it doesn't matter because they were "appointed" acharyas. Sometimes appointment is done by a group of persons through a voting process. "Electing" is simply a group's method of "appointing." But a bona fide guru is not appointed, elected, or fired. Another so-called guru, whose claim to guruship was the fact that his father was a guru, said that his drinking, womanizing, and meat-eating did not in any way disqualify him from being a guru. His argument was, "A person is guru by birth, not by qualification." This is all nonsense. Such people are teaching that the blind can lead the blind. Unfortunately, they and their followers will all end up in the ditch. Indeed they are already in the ditch and are destined to remain there. If a person wants to become undisturbed by the forces of material nature-if he wants to become free from illusion-he must find a truly realized spiritual master. “Just try to learn the truth by approaching a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render service unto him. The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth.? BHAGAVAD-GITA 4:34 If a person is not self-realized, if he does not know the Absolute Truth, then he cannot help others to become so realized The thirteenth mantra of the Sri Ishopanishad further confirms that a person is a guru by qualification-not by election, appointment, birth, or anything else. A person must be self-realized and therefore undisturbed by the whirlpool of material nature before he can be considered guru. Those who claim that a person is guru by election, appointment, birth, and so on are teaching exactly the opposite of the Bhagavad-gita, the Sri Ishopanishad, etc. Their teachings are completely opposed to the Absolute Truth being handed down via disciplic succession. So how can they dare claim to be representatives of the disciplic succession? A person is a guru if he passes down the Absolute Truth as it is. lf he tries to alter it, or if he teaches something that contradicts the conclusion of scripture and disciplic succession, then he cannot be accepted as a bona fide guru. Even if he was formally initiated by a bona fide guru-if he teaches something contrary to the essence of the parampara or scripture, he must be considered not in disciplic succession. -END- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 5, 2005 Report Share Posted May 5, 2005 Haribol, Krsna das. Again, you have demonstrated your computer expertise in providing a complete transcript of this excellent book. Dont want to compliment you too much, but you are very appreciated on this forum. Hare krsna, your servant in cooperation, mahaksadasa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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