Hare, Krishna. So now we move onwards to the subsequent stages within bhakti. So which are the stages you have completed till now? Within bhakti, how many steps are there? 9.
So we have completed. Shraddha, that was curiosity, then sadhu sangha, that is association, then which is basically practice application. Then there is Anartha niruddhi. So Anartha niruddhi is basically the removing of Anarthas. And after that, there are 5 stages.
If we’ll discuss 1 by 1 now, and we’ll see if we can complete all of them today. So we have Nishta, then we have Gucci, bhava and prem. So, now there is, mishthais, we discussed is, it’s like a strong conviction. So from curiosity, we are moving toward conviction. Now there are generally faith and doubt.
They have they are seen to have one kind of relationship. What is the relationship within faith and doubt? Not only the normal kind of relationship that we think about. They’re opposites, isn’t it? So the word relationship doesn’t seem to be if you say opposite, what kind of relationship does India and Pakistan have?
Okay. Or what kind of relationship did the USSR and u USA have during the cold war? So normally we think of faith and doubt as opposites. So opposites means as faith increases, doubt decreases. And with this vision in mind, the idea often is that, doubt is like a demon.
And we pray to Krishna, destroy the demon of doubt. Now there is definitely truth through that. At the same time, within the tradition itself, there is another vision of doubt. So when we talk about mishta, it is not that all doubts get eliminated completely. It is, in fact, if you consider in the Bhagavatam, in the 3rd canto, there are 5 characteristics of intelligence that are described.
And so the first characteristic of intelligence is described to be doubt. So doubt is a characteristic of intelligence. Now what does that mean? That it is only an intelligent person who can have doubts. In many cultures, even no matter how liberal they are, they say you cannot have advertisements directed towards very small kids because kids cannot separate fantasy from reality.
And so there are kids’ toys. No. You cannot make targeted advis advisement for kids. Because kids, they say they don’t have the critical intelligence developed to know what is propaganda and what is reality. Now whether whether adults have that, that’s open to question.
But still, the idea is that it requires a certain level of intelligence to be able to doubt. No, maybe this is not true. And Prahupada says, in one sense, the spiritual journey begins with doubt. We say, how is that possible? It begins with a doubt about materialism.
That the world is promising us so much pleasure. Eat this, watch this, touch this, enjoy this. And the world is telling us the body is the source of so much enjoyment. But is the body actually a source of pleasure? Am I actually the body?
Is the world actually going to give all the enjoyment that it promises? So it requires intelligence to doubt that. So materialistic people, they just believe whatever propaganda is fed to them. Now I’m not saying all materialistic people, but those who believe the promises of materialism, at least for those people, what happens is, it requires intelligence to be able to doubt. And if one characteristic of the growth in bhakti is that our buddhi increases.
Krishna says, I’ll give you buddhi. Then if the buddhi is increasing, then the capacity to doubt should also be increasing. Which seems strange, isn’t it? On one side we say that as we grow spiritually, our faith increases and doubt decreases. But on the other side, we say as we grow spiritually, our buddhi increases.
And if intelligence is characterized, at least one character is doubt, then should our capacity to doubt also increase? Well, yes. See in this vision, faith and doubt both are tools for our spiritual journey. So if you’re driving a car, then faith is like the accelerator and doubt is like the brakes. And if we are going on driving a car, the car needs to have both.
The car has only accelerator and no doubt. No no brakes. The car is going off track or the car is crashing into some other car. We’ll not be able to stop it at all. So only faith.
So if you consider it, there’s only faith and no doubt. Now that can very easily to blindness, like blind faith, sentimentalism, fanaticism, that can happen. But on the hand other hand, if it’s only doubt, that’s all that’s like trying to drive a car by only pressing the brake. What’ll happen? It’ll just be a waste of fuel.
The car won’t move at all or the car will just go round and round and round. Isn’t it? So this is what is called not just skepticism, but it is cynicism. Cynicism means you just doubt everything. So we need a a wise combination of both.
Just like a wise driver, experienced driver, knows when to press the brake and when to press the accelerator. So it is not that when we come to the level of mishta, after we go to an earth and uruthi, it does not mean that we necessarily have to start believing every single thing that we hear from everyone. That’s not Nishta. What happens see, like, say, let’s go go back to the doctor example. If I have taken a treatment and I have been healed by the treatment, now that will mean that for me, I have faith that this treatment works.
Now does that mean that it say that say there’s allopathic treatment or ayurvedic treatment or naturopathic treatment? Now is it still possible that the naturopathic treatment could be good and still there is some naturopathic hospital where there is some scam done by some doctor? That’s possible. Now if the scam is done, we will be concerned. It is not that if the there are patients who are accusing or there are police who are accusing, we have to say it, you know, that it’s all a false thing.
Maybe it is true, but that doesn’t affect my faith in the fact that this treatment works. So so basically what happens is when we come to the level of Nishta, it is very strong conviction. But that conviction is based on understanding what are the essentials and what are the non essentials. So, yes, in a hospital, there might be a doctor who is on a scam, and that is concerning. But it is not that the hospital’s doctor doing a scam means that the the treatment itself is false.
So that capacity to differentiate, just like we talked about organized religion earlier, that it is always possible that there could be some people who do something wrong. There is one one, Christian gag. Gag is like a joke. They say religion was a very good thing, but it made a very big mistake. It got mixed with people.
Now, okay, religion could have stayed very pure, but if it if it there are no people involved, how is religion going to benefit people? And it is the Einstein also that science is a wonderful thing if you don’t have to earn a living from it. Once you have to earn a living, it’s possible that especially in America, they have this word called big pharma. Like, we have big tech, like big pharma. So sometimes some of these pharma these pharma companies, their budgets are more than the budgets of several countries.
And there’s some some of this far at least in India, you don’t so much advertise medicines. Sometimes, like, some health compliments, supplements they advertise. But you don’t have there’s a paracetamol or something like that. Isn’t it? But in America, legally, you can advertise medicines.
And then what happens when you advertise medicines that actually doctors go and doctors say, I heard this medicine is very good. Sorry. Patients go to doctors and give me this medicine. It’s almost like going to a doctor, like shopping. So now it’s it’s it’s sometimes becomes quite a racket.
Now are there ulterior agents involved? Does pharma want to make money? Obviously. But does that necessarily mean all the medicines given by mainstream allopathy are of quacks? Not necessarily.
Isn’t it? So there are essentials and there are non essentials. So when we say Nishta, that Nishta comes from the personal transformation that we have experienced. It does not mean that, say I had a wonderful experience with devotees, but that does does that mean that every single devotee is wonderful? Not necessarily.
Isn’t it? Devotees come from different backgrounds and not everybody is at the same level of purification. So our faith, where does it come from? So it comes from our experience and then we ourselves start understanding the difference between the essentials and the non essentials. And we say, is a hospital essential?
Yeah, of course we can say hospital is essential, but something being done wrong in the hospital does not invalidate the treatment itself. The 2 are separate things. So because we could say non essential in the the hospital admin. And there is the treatment. So like that, we can have the bhakti process.
And there can be the bhakti organization. That are now what happens is, any organization in the world, an organization like a skarn, it’s a huge organization. And there are different people and different people do different things at times. So it is not that. Nishtha means that it’s not uncritical faith.
Nishtha is realized faith. So there’s a difference between it is what? It is realized faith. Realized means, I have realized that this works for me. But realized faith is not uncritical faith.
So, of course, that does not mean that we will if any accusation is made anywhere against any devotee, we’ll immediately believe it is true. No. There’s a due process for evaluating it. It may be true. It may be false.
Can there be malpractices done by someone? Possible. Now we all have anarthas, and sometimes we may succumb to anarthas. Sometimes when those are senior leaders, they’re also human beings. They’re also in this world of temptation.
They may also succumb. So basically, even with respect to philosophy, we also start understanding what is the central aspect of philosophy and what are the non central aspect of philosophy. So our faith comes from the essentials. So when I started practicing bhakti, you know, I was very attracted to the scientific aspect of the scientific evidence for the existence of soul, scientific evidence for the existence of God. Now I will use the word scientific evidence.
I won’t use the word scientific proof because evidence contributes to proof. Now whether the evidence that is available, whether that contributes to the level of becoming a proof, that is something which every individual has to decide. That, okay, we have this as evidence of people who remember their past lives. We have this evidence of consciousness cannot be explained as coming from the brain. Because at this point, it’s the existence of soul.
Oh, yes. Is this proof? Well, in these areas, the word proof is quite subjective. No. You cannot give mathematical proof.
Like, sometimes we prove theorems in science. So there is evidence. Is the evidence persuasive? I find it persuasive. Somebody else maybe from a scientific mind, they may not find it persuasive.
That’s up to them. So that doesn’t make them a bad person. That just means that, you know, this evidence doesn’t is not sufficient for them. Maybe they need more evidence and that’s fair enough. So we need to understand that mishita, we understand what is essential.
So for example, so I was telling that my journey, when I read so I said I was attracted for the scientific logical explanation of things. And then I was told that Prabhupada said man didn’t go to the moon, and that really disturbed me. I said, no, this is considered to be the crowning achievement of humanity, and to say that is false. And then devotee showed me some, you know, there are some conspiracy theory movies and this and that. And now I read that.
And my nature is that, see, different people are driven by different things in bhakti. And I’ll come to that when we come to the next stage beyond nishtha. But see, for me, curiosity is very important. Like, for me at an intellectual level, I don’t need certainty as much as I need curiosity. I wanna keep learning.
So if I get an argument for theism, I would like to know how atheists respond to this argument so that I can respond better to it. So then when I went and started looking at what Naza says, Now Naza has its refutations to whatever is said about the moon. Now whether those refutations are just like one return punch or are they knockout punch, that depends. Now there are refutations of the refutations also. So this just goes on.
So anyway, I’ll come to how I resolve this eventually. But after this, so recently, you know, India launched this chandrayaan And then a lot of devotees were very disturbed. So is it we see it on television. I said, what is this? Television.
You believe what you see on television? What kind of fool are you? It’s all Maya. It’s all anybody can create anything. So then some senior devotees asked me, you know, how I was not planning to comment on it, but 2, 3 senior devotees and pro parties have also asked me, how would you answer this question?
So I made a recording. I give answers. I said, this is very good answer. You put in public domain. So then so what had happened, I had a lot of difficulty in accepting this.
And Prabhupad said, do you think you are cleverer than Prabhupad? Do you think you’re wise? I said, somebody asked this kind of question. You know, that is emotional blackmail. You know, it is basically, like, it’s, intellectual you know, sometimes if you don’t want somebody to speak speak, you put a gag on their mouth.
It like intellectually gagging someone by emotionally blackmailing them. So I just couldn’t accept it. Now that is an argument that every religious tradition uses. And you do think you are cleverer than Jesus? If Jesus says this, it is true.
Do you think you are cleverer than Mohammed? Quran says this, it is true. Every religion uses that argument. And now it’s not a question of whether I am saying I am clever. I want to know how do I make sense of this.
So my issue at that time was that, okay, the 1969 landing, there is a lot of conspiracy theories associated with that, and I find them persuasive. I went through quite a bit of this accusation and then the reputation and the accusation. So I find that persuasive as of now. But it and the reason why it’s persuasive is that they are supposed to have taken man to the moon in 1969. And after that, they have never taken man to the moon.
So now actually in this phone, the processor is better than what they had in 1969 for the moon mission. So if we have this level processor right now, why can’t we send people to the moon right now? So that is one thing. There are 2 different things over here. There is the mission to the moon, and there is a manned mission to the moon.
So after that, many countries have claimed that they have sent missions to the moon. And there is not much conspiracy associated with that. There is not and now could it be a conspiracy? Of course, it could be. Anything can be a conspiracy.
But there are countries which are, like, completely opposed to each other. Say China Russia and America are opposed to each other. China and India are opposed to each other. Right? So if China were creating a hoax, India would allow to expose it.
If India were doing a hoax, China would be ready to expose it. And there are well documented failures. This is the previous Indian mission. It almost went to the moon, and then it collapsed. Was it the moon or the Mars?
Moon, you know, moon only. That almost reached the moon, and before that, they collapsed. It’s just a few months before India’s mission, Russia’s mission. So if they’re hoaxing, why create a it it really requires a devilish mind to make a hoax and make the hoax a failure. Is it?
So anyway, at that time, so I started studying it and I read one I talked with the devotee scientist. And then he showed me that Prabhupada has made 6 different kinds of statement on this. So one statement is, you know, this whole thing was hoaxed. The second is that, yeah, maybe they went out of the earth, but the devtas diverted them somewhere and they didn’t go to the moon. And maybe they went to the moon, but they didn’t access the moon.
And, like, Prabhupad used the example. Suppose somebody lands in the Sahara Desert, and they look around, and they don’t find anything over there. Another is that they went to the moon, but it is a higher planet. So, basically, even if humans go to the heavens, if they don’t have the punya, they won’t say anything over there because it’s a higher domain of existence. Other explanations, Prabhupada says, you went to the moon, you spent 1,000,000 of dollars, you just came back with some stones.
What is the use? Then in the introduction, says, we have endeavored so much to raise our bodies to the moon, why not endeavor a little bit to raise our consciousness? That will bring far more meaning and satisfaction in our life. So if you see, now in the mainstream narrative, actually, I felt very angry because these other 4, 5 statements of they never told to me only. So now one statement, man didn’t go to the moon.
The other is, man went to the moon, but what is the big deal about it? So now how do we see all these? There are different statements. So the thing is, Prabhupa did not start the International Society For Moon Conspiracy Exposure. See, what is essential?
Prabhupada started the International Society for Krishna consciousness. So the essential point is Krishna consciousness. Now there are many other statements on contemporary issue that Prabhupada may have made. So the point is, overall, in the 19 sixties, there was a lot of excitement. Oh, we will go to the moon and that science is progressing so much.
And even that time, there was this faith that science will solve all human problems. It started decreasing slowly. Now people are interested in technology. Everybody knows technology. But the idea that science will answer all questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
Science will make people happy. That hope not many people have. That’s why many people in the west with technological advancement as well turning towards spirituality. So the point of Prabhupad is that don’t get too excited by all this. Don’t worry so much.
Don’t think that this is going to solve all the problems. So when Prabhupad himself has done a multiple set of statements, so is it necessary that to be faithful to Prabhupad, we have to accept only one statement? No. Prabhupada’s point is the essential is focus on Krishna consciousness. And this okay.
If somebody believes that man went to the moon. No. Is when if that person practices chant Hare Krishna practices bhakti, is at the end of the death at the door of Goloka? I would ask, do you believe man went to the moon or not? If you bully man to the moon, get out of Goloka.
Not that’s irrelevant. Isn’t it? So there are essentials and there are non essentials. So it is not that the faith become when we say our conviction becomes strong, that doesn’t mean that we just put aside all our thinking ability. Rather, we are able to think of what is more important and what is less important.
What is central? Like Prabhupada would say there is niyama there is principles and there are details. The principle is focus on Krishna consciousness. The detail is, well, in a particular thing, what happened? Did man actually go to the moon?
Did only unmanned mission go to the moon? Did it only not even go out of the space? That’s the detail. So, essentially, when we when we have this the stage of Nishtha, we basically, you can say put first things first. What is the first thing in bhakti is Krishna consciousness.
And we learn to avoid both. There is niyamagraha and there is niyamagraha. So we are able to avoid both of these. Niyam agrah means that we reject the principle itself. So niyam can be referred to the principle, it can refer to the specific rule or detail.
So we just reject the entire principle. Suppose tomorrow, some very strong evidence comes up saying that man didn’t go to the moon. Oh, you know, Prabhupada said man didn’t go to the moon. Now there’s evidence that has come up that man went to the moon. Therefore, Prabhupada was wrong.
Therefore, everything that he taught is wrong. Therefore, I’m going to give Krishna consciousness. No. We don’t do like that anywhere else in the field, isn’t it? So tomorrow you’re studying engineering.
So you’re studying engineering. And say you study IT, and then you find out that, you know, the use of silicon chips causes cancer. And this was known, but it was hidden. And the bad thing it was hidden. But does that mean all semiconductor technology becomes bad because of that?
Does that mean the whole field of IT becomes bad because of that? No. That one thing is an issue. So now as I said, even if it comes out that man went to the moon, that does not prove Prabhupada was wrong because Prabhupada is made of multiple set of statements, isn’t it? Why should faithfulness to Prabhupada be reduced to only one particular statement?
Isn’t it? Prabhupada himself has many multiple statements. Why reduce faithfulness to Prabhupada to one particular statement alone? So niyamaagraha means we reject the principle itself. And niyamaagraha means we insist on the details.
Agraha means insistence. We insist on the details as the proof of faithfulness. But in between would we? We accept the principle. And then what do we do?
We contextualize the details. That’s important, what does this contextualize mean? Contextualize means that we see what is being said where. There are 2 extremes and contextualize the balance. One is to absolutize everything.
The other is to relativize everything. Absolutize means what? This is what is said, that’s absolutely true. That’s why. So we cannot absolutize things.
You know, I saw once I was traveling by flight and I saw some person was reading a newspaper. Now how you hardly see anyone with newspapers. Now with any real media coming up, this was about 2016. I saw it and said that there’s some person who had died and said that India’s biggest mistake on gaining independence was that it did not follow the Bhagavad Gita. Okay.
I said that’s very interesting. Then I googled and found out the article, and this was more like a political commentator. And he said if India had followed the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna told Arjuna to fight. So as soon as Pakistan was formed, India should have attacked Pakistan and annexed Pakistan. We didn’t follow the Bhagavad Gita.
And that is why we are suffering now. Now whether India should have attacked Pakistan or not, that’s a political subject. That has nothing to do with following the Bhagavad Gita, isn’t it? See, there are Ramacharya, Madhvacharya, even Chakravartipath, they have all lived at the time when the Islamic aggression was going on. Maybe not Ramacharya so much, but definitely Madhavacharya and others.
But none of them have said to follow the. This is Muslims that are Adharmas attack. You know, that is a political matter that has to be dealt with. So do we did Krishna call Arjuna to fight? Yes, he did.
So absolutizing means we would say that everyone has to fight to follow the Bhagavad Gita. Now relative wise would mean that, like, what what does one one political leader, he made the whole Gita is metaphorical. He wanted to reach non violence, and he said that the Gita seems to call upon violence. So it’s all symbolic. It’s all metaphorical.
So, but contextualize means that there is a universal principle of the Gita is what? Do the will of God. Surrender to God. And at that particular point, the will of God is to fight for Arjuna. But that does not mean the will of God for all of us should be to fight.
So contextualize means what? We we look at the context, see the what is the specific guideline in the context, and then we look at the universal principle. And that universal principle is what is more important. See, in the 19 sixties, people were very excited with the idea of man are going to the moon, and that was a big distraction for people. See that, okay, you know, if science can advance so much that it can take us to the moon, then why do you need spirituality?
But in today’s world, yeah, Indians will become very proud that we we took, we went to the moon mission, but that doesn’t stop them from their spirituality. Is it is it see that time, the moon mission was a distraction from spirituality. Now criticism of the moon mission becomes a distraction from spirituality, isn’t it? They’re like, okay, India went to the moon. What’s the big deal?
I mean, it’s a big deal for some people in some context, a national level, it’s a it’s a big deal, but that if that is not an obstacle for people in the spiritual path, why highlight it? So what is essential and what is non essential? When we develop the Nishta, we get realizations. And then we get when we get realizations, we are able to understand clearly what is important, what is not so important. And of course, we talk with other devotees and with those devotees we understand.
So because it is that generally every every tradition comes with many different things associate with it. And it is not that every single thing is equally important. So I’m going to focus a little bit more on Nishtha before I complete this point, and we’ll move towards the next after that. See, ultimately, this is just a broad example. It doesn’t have to be only like this.
See if we consider Krishna is at the center. Now some people, different people may come to Krishna through different pathways. So what does that mean? Like some people may come from the philosophical pathway and they had questions about life. They had questions about the meaning and the purpose of life, and then they got answers.
That’s what brought them to Krishna. Now some people may come from the cultural pathway. Cultural pathway means that there’s many Indians who go to America. Initially, they want to have fun, but after they have children, they want to pass some of the values to their children. You know, we want to have some place that feels like home.
So when they come to its temple, they see their deities, their arti, their kirtan. They feel this is like a cultural home. So some of you may also, if you had a nice nice sort of pious upbringing. Then when you come to a hostel, you find, okay, you know, this is nice place. There’s somewhere nice nice something cultural nice is happening over there.
So for some people, they may come from the cultural perspective. Some people may come from the social pathway. Social pathway means what? That the modern world is extremely lonely. Often people are not trustworthy.
I saw one quote when I was in California. You know, there’s a person driving for a program. In front of the car bumper, it was written. The more I get to know people, the more I love my dog. So people betray us, God, a dog, always there.
Radhishya Puru, your best friend? In America, they thought it like a dog training manual. Because your best friend is who? A dog. Most people, the idea that God That is a word that people don’t get it in their mind at all.
Anyway, the point is that some people come from a social pathway. They want, oh, these are nice people. I want to hang out with these people. You know, they want a sense of community. They want a sense of belonging, and that is the reason why they come to Bhakti.
Some people may come from the psychological pathway. Psychological pathway means their minds are very disturbed by some things. Now these are not like completely watertight categories, but some people might be having some, their minds are very disturbed by something this has happened and that has happened. They’ve got a lot of anxiety, and they just come to the temple and they feel very peaceful. But you know, so such people, if the kirtans are very noisy, then they are ecstatic, but they feel it’s noisy.
They don’t like that. For some people when they come, such people, if there is a spiritual center in a very naturally scenic place, then they like it very much. They want peace. They want calmness. They want something which will just relieve the agitation of the mind.
So now what happens is Krishna can attract different people from different backgrounds. That is the expertise of Krishna. At the same time, what happens is what hap if I am coming from, say, from the philosophical pathway, what may happen is that, see, this is a path, but I may make the path into my shelter. So what do I mean by that? The path becomes the shelter means that why do I come here?
Oh, because the classes are so nice. The philosophy is so stimulating. You know, I learn so much over here. Now if that is that which is a path becomes my shelter, Then tomorrow, if, say, somebody would use a class which is not very philosophically stimulating, I said, why am I coming here? If there is some philosophical controversy and there is no resolution to that.
Sometimes what happens is that we are disturbed about something, and this used to happen with me a lot. Like in the Bhagavadam classes, sometimes devotees would speak things which are completely wrong. Like, they would take a verse, and they would massacre the verse. It’s like, you know, sometimes people don’t know Sanskrit. They take words, then they start explaining the words.
This word means this word means this. This word means that. But, you know, that word in Sanskrit doesn’t mean that. It sounds like it means that, but it doesn’t mean that. So anyway, so that is the curse of intelligence.
You can easily easily find intellectual faults in everyone else. But anyway, so I would get disturbed. And then I would go and tell my seniors, and they would say that, you’re sincere devotees giving a class. Appreciate that. Now I would be disturbed first, and then I would be disturbed that they are not disturbed.
I just it’s a serious thing. We are supposed to represent the tradition. How can you get the philosophy wrong like this? And I just don’t understand it. And then slowly, I started meeting different devotees.
Like, say, one devotee said, you know, today my whole morning program got disturbed. So what happened? You know, this devotee while he was moving the dia, instead of moving it 7 times, he moved it 9 times. It’s a. I said, you know, you didn’t have anything else for me to count on.
So now, what happens is clearly, for him, it’s like the culture is the shelter. You know, Krishna is worshiped through the precision of the ritual, and for some devotees, that is how they get the shelter of Krishna. Now this is Krishna is God, and we do this very precisely for Krishna. Krishna is very Krishna is all attractive, so Krishna can attract us in different ways. So they are not they said I was not nitpicking.
I was not just trying to find faults for sake, finding faults, nor was this devotee doing like this. But what happens is if their shelter is the the cultural aspect, it just becomes so messy. I was in America, and one devotee came to me and he said, you look good as a Mayawati. I said, what do you mean? So what had happened was that, you know, most of the time, almost 8, 9 months, I’m outside India.
And I travel alone, so I shave my head, and I’m a little absent minded. So sometimes while shaving, I shave off my shikhaals. So there was no shikhaals, and also my shikha, like very small. It is there, he says. So you have adopted the Mayawadi hairstyle.
That’s why he said, you look good as a Mayawadi. That. He said, you know, this is like a central symbol. This is what differentiates us from Mayawadis. He said it is better that you have long hair and other than have a head without a shikha.
Nobody else told me that. I asked my spiritual master. He said, it does it matter? Is it? Try to be careful, but it is not a big thing.
But for somebody else, it’s a big thing. Isn’t it? So like, for somebody, the cultural precision may be very, very important. And for somebody else, it may not be. Similarly, if somebody has come from the social pathway, you know, if for them, they see some devotee behaving improperly.
Like somebody comes to a temple, and they see a devotee yelling at someone else, and my god, is it how can a devotee behave like this? Now, yes, we don’t want this. It’s not a very pleasant sight to see a devotee screaming at someone, a devotee yelling at someone. But this devotee, you know, I was in one temple, and this I was staying at 1 Garhastha’s home, and they said, you know this temple president? You know, he yells at people.
He said, you know, when he yells, it’s like I’m reminded of, you know, Indian streets where there are goondas yelling at someone. So then I talked with the president, and then I told him. He said that tell them that I was worse than before I was worse than whatever Gundas they might have seen before. Is that right? Sir, he said, before, I would not just be yelling, I would be doing much, much more.
Now because of, I’m only yelling. So now, of course, we can say that, that kind of behavior is not to be entered not not good. But if somebody would have been saying, okay, you know. Okay. That devotee, that is a little short-tempered devotee, or that devotee has that’s just the way the devotee is.
Don’t take it so seriously. But some dude, how can you not take it seriously? See why? Because for them, they have found shelter of Krishna to the social aspect of bhakti. The social aspect means, oh, how nice devotees are, how well behaved devotees are.
Now is it important for devotees to be well behaved? Of course. But if we just want have we come to Krishna consciousness just because it’s a nice social club? No. Even if some devotees don’t behave well, that shouldn’t disturb us so much that we forget that I have come here for taking the shelter of Krishna.
So whichever path we follow, basically there will be a test And the test will be that it’s a test for you to guess what this is. This is and I failed the test. You didn’t this. There must be an earthquake. You know?
So, if I am standing here, and the ground underneath quakes, and that’s how it can feel. For somebody who has come to bhakti from the social pathway and say, the devotee who has always been very nice to them. If that very devotee starts becoming angry with them, that devotee starts chastising them, I thought devotees are such nice people. And there’s one devotee who says, you know, that initially when new people come, we feed them fried pakodas. When they become devotees, we fry them like pakodas.
Why have you not completed the service? Why are you going to do this? What’s so irresponsible? There is that. If when that happens now when the quake happens, it is our choice whether we run toward Krishna or we run away from Krishna.
So that’s something which we need to be deciding. Nobody else can decide for us. It is possible that we may say, if devotees behave like this, what is the point of practicing bhakti? Better let me give up the practice of bhakti. Or we can say that, yes, this is not good, but I have not come to Krishna consciousness just to hang out with nice people.
I have come here to gain Krishna. So this is where I understand we’re talking about the difference between the essentials and the non essentials. Yeah. I have come here for the philosophy, but I have not come here only for the philosophy. It is the philosophy that is taking me toward Krishna.
So sometimes, if there is some philosophical confusion, there is some philosophical controversy, no, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to get caught in that. I’m not going to let that become an obstacle between me and Krishna. So each person has to be able to recognize this difference that I’m not coming here. So we will all have a path to Krishna.
Now we all do all things. All of us hear classes. All of us, you know, we we associate with devotees. We are trained about how to have Vaishnav relationships. All of us will learn some of the cultural aspects of bhakti.
So in India, there’s not so many people come from the psychological pathway, but in the as mental health problems are increasing, many people come from that pathway also. But basically, all these are important at the same time. Now what is even more important is that we make sure that we keep moving toward Krishna. So we understand the difference between the essentials and the non essentials. And that’s how, yeah, this is not pleasant, but it doesn’t matter so much.
This is not going to shake my core faith in Krishna. This is not going to, this is not worth getting so worked up about that I become distracted from Krishna because of this. So with respect to this, Anishtha, we will I’ll make one more point that especially if you consider the cultural aspect. You know, there are in every tradition, there are liberals and there are conservatives. And again, the liberals and conservatives are like what?
The liberals are generally on the left, the conservatives are on the right. So now every tradition basically what happens is, if you consider this is the tradition. Now this this it’s coming from the past. Now around the tradition is the living moment. Moment means the moment as it is existing right now.
And then around it, there is the contemporary world. So now what happens is that the living movement needs to stay connected with the past. And it needs to stay connected with the present. So staying connected with the past, this is the primary concern of the conservatives. Staying connected with the present is the concern of the liberals.
So we stay connected with the past through faithfulness. We stay connected with the present through resourcefulness. So for example, when Prabhupada went to America, he did not give classes in Sanskrit. You know? In the the Chetan Chertang is Bengali.
Prabhupada knew classes in Bengali. Prabhupada give classes in the language that people understood. That is English. Like, say, Prabhupada, if you see our darshan arthi, the deities are recorded in a very traditional beautiful way. But a darshanarthi, it is western music to some extent.
It is. It is western music. There’s also female singing over there. So now the way it is done is it actually creates a very sweet devotional experience. So there is a traditional element to it.
There is a contemporary element to it. But the point is the remembrance of Krishna is enhanced. So now in any living tradition, there have to be both the conservatives and the liberals. We need to stay connected with the past. We also need to stay connected with the present.
So now some devotees may, by their own nature, may be more conservative. That means they want to stay connected with the past. And how strongly you are connected with the path, that is what gives them that faith. That that that is what the basis of their spirituality, you know, that, you know, I am doing what was told in the past. And that’s important.
That is what gives them the strength. And that’s wonderful. For some devotees, their strength might be from how much am I reaching out to people. How much am I connecting with people. Now everybody has to do one sense to do both.
But for some people, their primary strength may come from connecting with people and going out of their way to connect with people. So now, again, both can go towards extreme. If they’re we are too liberal, then what happens is we are so concerned about staying connected with the contemporary world that we don’t stay connected with the tradition at all. Then we just become a contemporary fashion trend. Isn’t it?
Everything, something new people are doing, we try imitating that. We lose connection with the tradition entirely. Oh, you know, people nowadays are using this musical style. People nowadays are using this kind of thing. People are already using this kind of thing.
They start adopting everything, and the tradition is lost completely. That we don’t want that if we’re just too liberal. On the other hand, if we’re too conservative, we end up becoming a museum exhibit. Museum exhibit means what? Oh, you know, from from 1977 to 2024, there is a group of people who used to live like this.
But now, we only have those people in the museum now. Nobody does like that. It just become completely irrelevant. So we want to avoid both these extremes. So some devotees may be more conservative, some devotees may be more liberal, but the important point is, are we connected with Krishna?
Are we connecting others with Krishna? That is more important. Otherwise, with respect to culture, you know, how much should we be conservative? How much should we be liberal? It depends.
In India, relatively speaking, some aspects of being culturally conservative might be easier. In in the West, the same level of cultural conservativeness, may not be so easily possible. So it depends, you know. When I was in America, in the West, like, the male female mixing is very common. But there was I was in Texas, you know, she was giving a class, and after that, one day, one girl, she asked a question, why do religions fight among each other?
So I answered the question elaborately. I talked about the 3 modes. I talked about how, you know, fights occur because of various reasons. She she was quite happy with the answer. So after the class, she came to me and she said, you know, different students were asking questions.
So one of she came to me and she said, you know, this question has been burdening me for so long. I’m so relieved by the answer. I’m so grateful. Can I give you a hug? So the preacher was the the local preacher, he’s the organizer.
I just looked at him and please save me. I I didn’t say that, but I just indicated to him. And he did save me, but in an entirely unexpected way. He said, he’s a monk. On his behalf, you can hug me.
His wife was right next to him. And his wife said, I am his wife. On his behalf, you can hug me. The 2 of them are in each other. So, now, it is quite a really experience.
Now I had been warned a little bit about this. See, in the West, the hug is just seen as a normal expression of affection. Now, see, if at that time I had been told by devotees before also. But he says, you know, that while we as a as a brahmachari, I cannot hug, but at the same time, you know, if I go on a, like, a morality trip, you know, what kind of question is this? You know, don’t you know that I’m a brahmachari?
I don’t even touch a woman. You know, she would have been offended. So we have to be culturally sensitive. She didn’t mean anything bad by what she was saying. She was only expressing her gratitude in the way she wanted to express the gratitude.
In the way she knew how to express gratitude. So the thing is, there are, like, being very liberal would mean, okay. Yeah. Sure. Cut.
Hug me. You know, we don’t want to do that. But being cons too conservative would mean, you know, to reject, there is the action that is being done, but there is a spirit behind that action. We can’t accept the action, but we don’t want to reject the spirit. If somebody is expressing some appreciation for something that has been done, then we don’t want to reject that.
Like, we know how now this is a because there’s a male female interaction over here, there’s a certain lens through which we see it. But if you look at it from a different perspective, you know that incident when Prabhupad was giving a class and a hippie suddenly came in, got up and started walking right towards Prabhupada. And I have been to 26th Avenue, to 2nd Avenue Temple. So like the Ghassan is here and right next to that is the restroom. And that hippie went into the restroom and he came out in a couple of minutes.
And then he said, Swamiji, I have kept some tissue paper for you there. And then Prabhupada, he could have said, you know, that I’m giving you a class. Why do I disturb something like this? Don’t disturb us. Have some etiquette.
But what did Prabhupada say? Prabhupada just said, just see everyone has service attitude in their hearts. You see, he also wants to serve. So that is Prabhupada’s presence of mind, but it’s also Prabhupada is being liberal. Prabhupada is not seeing that hippie, just creating a disturbance in my class.
What is Prabhupada seeing? That there is a certain attitude. Maybe he could have done it after the class got over, and maybe Prabhupad could have told him later about that. This was not appropriate. But the point is that there is an action that is done, and there is a spirit in which the action is done.
So sometimes if we are too rigid, just look at the action and condemn the person for the inappropriateness of the action. And if you are too liberal, you know that anybody can start doing anything in the class. And now we don’t want that. And so there has to be this balance. So when we talk about faith, that Mishtha is understanding what is essential and holding on to that.
And that which is non essential, okay, I don’t need to hold on to that. But we also respect that what I may think of as non essential may be essential for someone else. That’s a so then what do we do? Again, we will need like minded devotees. So if for me the philosophical aspect is very important, then I need to find out philosophical interested devotees and get my nourishment from them.
I may not get my nourishment from normal Bhagavatham classes. I may attend them because it’s a service, it’s a duty. So somebody who is very interested in the cultural aspect, they may also attend the normal culture, the morning program and other things, but their strength may not come for that. Maybe they do some of the specialized courses. They learn some yagna.
They learn some homma, and they do that as a service to the community. So we don’t have to give up what is essential for us, but at the same time, we don’t have to impose that everything that I think is essential has to be essential for everyone else. No. It’s not necessary like that. So that is how that Nishta helps us.
You know this tradition Kanishadikari? And after that is madhyamadhikari and after that is uttamadhikari. So basically, generally speaking, it is when we start coming from the anarthenivrutti, the Nishtha stage. This is where we start becoming a madhyama. So mad the key characteristic of madhyama is what?
The madhyama is not just caught in externals. The madhyama values the essential that Krishna can manifest everywhere, and Krishna can manifest in different ways. Prabhupada says in the act of instruction that the key difference between these three like, Kanishta sees Krishna only in the deities, nowhere else. So like, Kanishta may say Krishna only in the precision of the philosophy. Nothing else.
No. That is important, but Krishna manifests in many different places, many different ways. That capacity to appreciate that Krishna manifests in different ways, that is the sign that we are able to move towards Nishtha. So now, after Nishtha comes what? Ruchi.
Yes. So now when we talk about ruchi, essentially this is the it’s like if you consider the spiritual journey to be initially it’s like a steep climb. After that it becomes like a plateau. And towards the end it almost becomes slightly inclined downwards. It’s become like a home run.
The home run is where we just smoothly start moving forwards. So from here, from the state of Ruchi, there is almost no falling down. Because not only are the things that are going to pull us away from Krishna largely removed from our heart, but there is a gravity pull toward Krishna that is coming. We start getting attracted towards Krishna. So now we can say at one level, while we are in the material world, it is always possible to fall down.
And that is true because the material world Maya is always there, but the chances become extremely low. So even from the study of Nishtha, actually it becomes very strong that it is we have got the personal realization. It can still be shaken anytime it can fall, but it’s it’s the chances become much much lesser. If you’re climbing up a incline, then falling down is a little much easier. So goes on.
So till that stage, falling away is relatively much easier. So means basically it’s from this the stage here onwards, it like we has started getting the positive attraction toward Krishna. It is say, if this is the Earth and there is say, a rocket is launched. A rocket is launched and there’s a satellite that comes out of the rocket and, you know, we have that satellite that is shooting up. Now as long as it is in the Earth’s gravity pull, till that time, till the fuel is not there or the fuel stops pushing upwards, it’ll be dragged back down.
So basically, till the stage of Anarthi Nilita has not happened. Once we come to Nishtha, more or less, we have come out of the gravity pull of the material world. Now, now as I said, no example is absolute, but this is broadly that the force that pulls us down, that force becomes substantially weaker. And now on top of that, say if there is say if there is, we are going to some other planets, say we are going to the moon. And now the moon has its its gravity pull.
Now once we enter into its gravity pull, then what happens is that not only don’t we need something to push us towards there, rather there is something pulling us. So if this is if this is Krishna and this is the material world, Then from the stage of Ruchi onwards, it’s like we are in Krishna’s gravity pull. And from there onwards that’s why I said bhakti becomes it’s almost like going down and incline. It is we are being pulled toward Krishna. Now we may feel some pull even now toward Krishna, But quite often at this stage the pull toward Krishna is not that strong.
And we may feel a pull towards Krishna, but we also feel feel a pull towards Maya. And quite often the pull towards Maya is much stronger. But this is a stage where the pull towards Krishna starts becoming stronger and stronger. And then when we say bhakti is joyful. So when the inner struggle decreases, then the joyfulness of bhakti starts increasing more and more.
So from the ruchi onwards, it becomes more and more joyful. Joyfulness starts increasing. So now I’ll talk about see these are very advanced stages, and we can go into details of this at some other time, but I’ll talk primarily in terms of the we’ll have 3 metaphors. There’s the there’s the do you remember 3 metaphors? Journey, like a journey through a mountain track or whatever.
2nd is Health recovery. Like a health recovery. And 3rd is Relationship. Is like a relationship. So now if you talk on in the health recovery, there are two aspects to it.
There is one aspect is that the infection is removed and then after that there is what is called as recuperation. You have heard the word recuperation? Recuperation means that there is no more infection in the body, but the body has not recovered its energy. Like the disease took such a big toll that the body is still weak. So sometimes if somebody has a prolonged disease, then what happens is they say, okay, now you’re not the infection is not in the serious state.
Now you can be discharged from the hospital, but you can’t start can’t start normal activity. You will still be home and take rest at home. Or maybe sometimes the severe disease is there, they say go to a natural place where you can get a lot of fresh air, depending on the kind of disease we have. So there is the so basically with unearthniubruti, the infection more or less has gone. But from Nishtha onwards, basically what happens is the recuperation that the recuperation means our spiritual desires, they start awakening and they start strengthening.
Some may say other spiritual desires not there before. Yes, they are there, but they may be quite weak initially. They may not be very strong. They become stronger as we keep moving towards Krishna. So and especially when we when we become purified of the anartas, then these spiritual desires, they become manifest much much more.
It’s like the soul is actually jiva jago, what you say that the souls actually starts becoming awakened. So it is at this stage that so so from the perspective of recovery, it is from this stage, there’s no more germs. So if there are no more not much you can say always germs are there, but the germs are far below, limit of any causing any danger. So then it’s not a problem to the health at all. So the person at this end had no relapse.
Like sometimes, you know, somebody had cancer, and the cancer has gone into regression. They said that, okay, you just have to do some checkup once a year, once in 3 years. But it says now it is not at a dangerous level at all. And sometimes the cancer goes and it doesn’t come back at all. So like that, at this stage, it is primarily we are not battling with the disease anymore.
We’re only trying to regain our energy. We’re only trying primarily to recover, to heal. That is the spiritual awakening part. So now after this so the let’s now look at the relationship aspect. So in the relay, we will use this metaphor to understand the last, these four stages.
So ruchi and asakti. So it’s like in a relationship, the personal aspects of Krishna start becoming more and more prominent for us. See, although we may initially accept the God is is a principle and God is also a person. When we say God is a principle means what? God is the source of everything.
God is the in charge. God is the governing principle of material existence. Like we say, we have GODs, generator, organizer, as a destroyer. So that, like, God is the operating principle of existence. So the idea of understanding God as a principle is also important.
I’m not saying principle means it’s not a person, but the personal attributes may not be so important at that particular point. Say for example, if somebody loves their country. Now when they love their country, they may also respect and follow the head of state. Allow my country and this person is the head of the state. But somebody may have a personal faith and attraction and relationship with the head of the state.
They’re 2 different things. So if it’s the if we are attracted to the country and we are attracted to the principal that is the head of state, and whoever the head of state will respect. But when we have a personal relationship with the head of state, then it’s much more different. So another way to understand from our time’s attention is that there is the Aishwarya of Krishna and there is the madhuriya of Krishna. That there is his position.
Aishwarya means largely it’s we may still excel as a person, but it is his position that attracts us. Whereas, it is his personal qualities that attract us. So while we always want to have a personal relationship with Krishna, but in our spiritual journey, see initially we may seek, you could say, physical gifts from Krishna. Physical gifts means, Krishna, give me wealth. Krishna, give me health.
Krishna, please give me fame. Then as we move forward, we may start looking for subtle gifts from Krishna. Subtler gifts means what? We may look, Krishna, I want peace. Krishna, please give me intelligence so that I can focus on what is really important in my life.
So now this is a state of more greater advancement. Then we may even seek spiritual gifts from Krishna. Krishna, please let me remember you steadily. Krishna, please help me develop love for you. But if you see the gopis, they are not even asking for spiritual gifts from Krishna.
Our interest is in Krishna only. We go to Krishna because we want Krishna. So even seeking spiritual gifts from Krishna is good, but ultimately, we’re attracted to Krishna itself. Now this cannot be done artificially. Sometimes we can we can pretend, you know, as our devotee told Prabhupada that, Prabhupada, I want to serve you lifetime after life after life.
So Prabhupada said, don’t make me come back life after life to take your service. He said, no. Purify yourself and come to the spiritual world. So the idea is that initially we may even worship Krishna because, we may feel this material world is such a place of entanglement and Maya and illusion. I want to get out of this world.
So we must say that can that can be a subtle gift. It can be a spiritual gift also. But eventually, even if, like, the gopis, they are ready to offer the dust of their feet to Krishna. Why? Because they want to relieve Krishna of his headache.
So for them, Krishna and Krishna’s pleasure becomes the most important thing. So the personal focus on Krishna starts becoming much more at that stage. Now we can start from it from the beginning only. We do hear the philosophy, and it’s important to hear the philosophy that Krishna is a person. But the personal focus on who Krishna is, now that starts becoming more and more evident from the seeds of Ruchi onwards.
So Ruchi is it’s taste. It’s taste for devotional service. Now it could be taste for devotional service means somebody just allows to do daily worship. Somebody just loves to make garlands for Krishna. Somebody loves to cook for Krishna.
Whatever it is, they just love doing that. They say that this is what I can do for the rest of my life. And I don’t I don’t want any fame. I don’t want anything. This is what I just want to do life after life, or at least for this life.
So that that activity itself, that service itself becomes such a deep connection with Krishna. That’s wonderful. Now after that is a sakti. A sakti is attachment. So where it becomes more Krishna centered than service centered.
That means, yes, I love this service, but I love Krishna more. And whatever I need to do for Krishna, I will do that. Now we could say isn’t that surrender there right from the beginning? Of course it is there, but I’m talking here in terms of the experience of Krishna that a devotee has. That when there’s asakti, every aspect of Krishna starts becoming attractive.
That doesn’t mean that there is no personal dimension to it. There’s a personal dimension, no doubt. So the gopis are more attracted to Krishna as a youth. Mother Yashoda is more attracted to Krishna as a child. That is just natural, but still it is Krishna the person that becomes more and more the focus.
Now there are many esoteric aspects of this also, which I’m not going to go into. I’m just going to focus on the principle of the relationship over there. Now there is bhava, and lastly there is prema. So now this is the state where what you call as spiritual experiences. Now the word spiritual experiences nowadays used very liberally.
That, you know, anything that makes people feel good, they call it as spiritual experiences. But I’m using the word spiritual experience in a particular sense. See, what happens for us is, I say we are here and say we could say we are in the material world and above the spiritual world and say there is Krishna in the spiritual world. So I’m using the word spiritual experience more in the sense of the experience of Krishna. In the Chaitanya, Charita, Amrut, there is this word.
Unmad means what? Madness. So divyaonmad would mean what? Divine madness. Other word is premonmad.
Premonmad would mean what? The madness of love. So what happens with respect to the word madness? Normally, we use the word madness to say that the person is disconnected with reality. So somebody says, you know, I hear voices.
Oh, really? Where am I speaking? You can hear no. No. No.
I hear some voices. They seem to be constantly going on. Somebody’s telling me this. Somebody’s telling me that. If there’s nobody around and they say hearing voices, that means what?
There’s a normal reality we are perceiving, and that person is pursuing something else only. That’s what normally we call as madness, isn’t it? So this is, you could say, our physical reality. And you could say there is something like imagination. So where there is imagination.
So if that person is more caught in imagination than in the lived reality. The person is sitting peacefully on bed and says somebody attacking me, somebody strangling me. There’s no one there. That’s what we would call as madness. So this is what we call madness.
But then what happens is while this madness is an is a sign of lack of mental health, but there is a different kind of madness. That is, there is the physical or visible reality that we pursue. But what can happen is that sometimes in a devotee’s path, Krishna manifests. Or the devotee’s vision goes towards Krishna. So basically, this kind of spiritual experience can happen in 2 ways, that Krishna manifests to the devotee within physical reality.
So it is like when Krishna showed the Vishwaroopa. So Arjuna was there on the battlefield, but Krishna manifested himself over there. So it’s like it’s not that the person is transported out of physical reality. In physical reality itself, they have some other experience. Now every religious tradition has these kind of things.
In the Christian tradition, Moses is said to have he saw a burning bush, and the bush was burning. And he noticed maybe somebody set it on fire. Maybe it was a forest fire itself. But the bush was burning and burning, and he’s already exhausted only. It’s burning and burning and burning.
Then he heard a voice. This is sacred ground. Take out your footwear. And he says they took out his footwear and then he offered his respects over there. That that burning bush is considered to be God in that tradition.
He never saw God, but that is what he basically basically saw that that burning bush is God, and he saw someone disappearing. He saw the back of God. He says that. So the idea is sometimes in our physical reality, we see something extraordinary. We get a perception of Krishna.
Now this can this be imagination? It can be, but it doesn’t always have to be imagination. Krishna can reveal himself. Now sometimes it could happen, if you see, especially the last chapters of Chetan Charita Amrut, the last 5 chapters in the Antalilah, 15 to 20. They are describing largely the divine madness.
It starts from the 11th chapter. It’s the last 10 chapters, but especially the last 5 chapters. Sometimes it is Mahaprabhu just talking with devotees. He going for a walk. Maybe coming back from the Jagannath Puru temple or going to the Puri temple.
And the devotees were talking with him, and suddenly they say, he’s gone. Where has he gone? And they would say Mahaprabhu is running towards some tree. And then they would go there and says, I saw Krishna behind that tree. Krishna was playing the flute and calling me.
And I ran towards him, and he was no longer there. Oh, Krishna has abandoned me. Or sometimes Mahaprabhu would just fall unconscious. And then the devotees would do a lot of kirtan and he would come back. Then he would say, why did you disturb me?
Why did you do the kirtan? He said, I was in the spiritual world with Krishna. Radha and Krishna were talking and Krishna to Radharani Radharani to a Gunja, and I was watching, and I was seeing what they are doing. What are the confidential talks that are going what are the confidential talks that are they’re doing. It’s confidential talk that touch our hearts.
Mahaprabhu says, I was there. I was just hearing what Krishna is talking to Radharani. And then you did the loud kirtan, you called me back. Why did you call me back? So what is happening is Mahaprabhu would be transported to a spiritual level.
And the third is that there’s not only like a person goes to the spiritual level, but when they come back, there are some physical transformations. So it is so this is where for example, what happens is, there is you may have heard the story of that devotee who wanted to offer sweet rice to the Lord. And he didn’t have any money to offer sweet rice, so he did Manas Puja. And in his mind, he had made the sweet rice, and then he wanted to see how hot it is, and he touched it, and his finger got burnt. And actually his finger was burnt.
Or there’s the story of, Raghunath Goswami. You know, his stomach was upset once. Now he would hardly eat any food. And then the Vaidya said, you know, he has over eaten. He’s committing blasphemy.
He doesn’t even eat enough. You know? How do you think he’s over eaten? And then, well, the Swami said, actually, you know, there was a celebration in there’s a festival in the spiritual world, and there they had made gheer, and I ate a lot of gheer. So now sometimes that can have a so what is the experience on the spiritual level can have an effect at the physical level also.
So there are, there are transformations like this. In the Christian tradition, they have what is called as the passion of Christ. So where they say that, like, Jesus was crucified, so on his body there are the marks that came up. So they say if somebody meditates very much on Jesus, then those similar marks, they can come on the body of the great saints. Now, of course, not the I’ll I’ll talk about these experiences.
Why am I talking from other traditions also? I want to make this point that this whole idea of a person getting transported to a higher level of reality, there is some reality to that. You know in the Islamic tradition also there are dervishes. That they just go round and round and round and round and round. It seemed as if like some higher possession is there.
Even in the Durga Puja sometimes people say that they are possessed by someone. You see the people start dancing madly. Now of course, can this be fake? Of course it can be fake. But is it always fake?
Not necessarily. So now this we may say it’s the God is coming in someone. It could be imagination or it could be a person pretending, that’s possible. But it is also possible that there are higher realities and those higher realities intersect with our reality. Now in the Durga Puja, they have this test that they say that if you if the person actually possessed, then you take the dia, you’re doing aarti, bring that very close to the eyes of the person.
And normally, you know, how much we will be tried, Arvind had done this experiment, that if I know that I’m going to I know that I’m going to bring my finger very close to the eye. But even if I know it, as soon as I bring it, my eye will blink. I can fully try, but the blinking just does happen. You know, even if I know it, if I bring it if I keep it a little distance, it won’t happen. If you bring it very close, it will happen.
So their idea is all of you are trying it out. So they say that if actually the goddess is there, you bring the Diya very close to the eyes, still the person will not blink. Now don’t try this out. Now is that a solid criteria? Well, can somebody imitate it?
I don’t know. My point is that there there is a possibility of this, but there is also possibility of imitating this in some ways. So there are times when Krishna manifests in this world. So in the Christian tradition also, those who want a claim to sainthood, you know, they may artificially injure their limbs and create some scars over there. And they said this is actually sign of the passion of Christ.
So there are always people who want it cheaply. So Gaurav Vishalal Babaji would give the example that say if a woman is pregnant and she is very near to delivery, then she may scream. Now when she screams, at that time the entire family comes running. And then they give her some special attention and affection and through it all a child will appear. But suppose a woman is not pregnant and she becomes jealous, why is she getting so much attention?
So this woman who is not pregnant starts screaming. And now, she can scream as much as she wants. She may even fool people, but no matter how much screaming she does, no matter how much attention people give to her, there’s no child that is going to come from there. So like that, we can create a pretense of these symptoms of ecstasy, and we may also deceive some people by that. We may even get away by that.
But that manifestation of love for Krishna, that is not going to come. So these spiritual experiences are a reality. They do happen. But because there is a danger of imitating it, and there is a danger of people getting misled by such imitations, that’s why while these descriptions are talked about in Chaitanya Chaitanya, they are talking about in our tradition, our acharyas, especially from the time of Bhakti Santhritakore, they have relatively de emphasized them. They are not emphasized them so much.
So so now the key difference between bhava and prema. So I said during bhava and prema, both of these, the spiritual experiences started coming more and more. Can they come at the city of Nishtha or Aranthani Vruthi also? Possible. They’re rare, but they become quite frequent when it comes to the bhava and prema.
Now the difference is bhava is said to be like sunrise. As prema is said to be like the risen sun. That means at this day of Bhava, there is a perception of Krishna’s presence. But when the sun is risen, there is no perception there. That is the biggest reality.
Like we’re outside, the sun is there in the sky. It’s a constant awareness that the sun is there. So for a devotee at this point, it is Krishna doesn’t just become real. Krishna becomes realer than reality. That means, we have our day to day reality, but Krishna becomes a far bigger reality.
So you remember the original diagram that I had drawn? That in that initially, what happens is the world is big, Krishna is small. But here the world becomes small and Krishna becomes big. So this starts happening itself from the state of only. Krishna starts becoming bigger and bigger.
But by this time, it is Krishna becomes the central reality. Krishna becomes the defining reality. Krishna is all that matters. So vasudeva sarvamiti samahatma sudurlabaha. This is extremely rare.
So for us, the spiritual experiences at our level, we may not necessarily have the spudji experiences or perceive perception of Krishna. Now can Krishna come in our dreams? Well, who are we to say Krishna? What he can’t do? Isn’t it?
We cannot ban Krishna from coming in our dreams, isn’t it? Krishna can come. But the point is that we all know that we still have our Narthas. We have to deal with them. So I was telling that from Bhakti Sanathakur time onwards, our acharyas have adopted a much more pragmatic approach.
That is, yes, there are these higher states of ecstasy in the Bhakti Sanathakur, which proper translated nectar of devotion. There are signs of advanced devotion. And there are some signs which are immutable. And there are some signs which are non immutable. So the immutable would be what is called as the Now these symptoms of ecstasy.
That say a person starts, their hair starts standing up, tears are coming from their eyes, their body start trembling, they start rolling on the ground. These are these are Now they are to some extent immutable, but there is a whole list of characteristics that are non immutable. Say for example, avyartha kalatvam. Avyartha kalatvam is not wasting time. That a devotee is constantly thinking of Krishna and serving Krishna.
Or there is nama gane sadaruchi. So a devotee, it can refer to always eager to do kirtan, but also eager always eager to glorify Krishna. So that is the most important thing for a devotee. So like that there is also Virakti. Virakti is detachment from worldly things.
Samutkanta, enthusiasm to practice bhakti. So this is the list that is non immutable. And this is something non immutable in the sense that how long can a person keep pretending? You can put on a facade for some time. But those who stayed with Prabhupada, they saw Prabhupada was always the same.
Now Prabhupada, even if he read newspapers, he would read, but he was seeing Krishna conscious content there. Even if he was looking something something mundane, he was not looking at something mundane. He was actually seeing Krishna over there. He was always always conscious of Krishna. So these non imitable symptoms are much more important than the imitable symptoms.
And Prabhupada there were times when Prabhupada almost got transported to ecstasy. One time when one of his disciples asked her asked him, Prabhupada, can you tell us a little bit about the Goswamis and their love for Krishna? And Prabhupada said, that’s such a wonderful question. And Prabhupada’s face just lit up and he said, quote, quoting verses from the said, go Swami Ashta come saying that, hey. The go swamis were running around Vrindavan.
Hey, Krishna. Hey, Radharani. Where are you? We wanna see you. And he said that is that is very ecstatic state.
And when Prabhupada spoke that, Prabhupada fell silent. And the devotees who were sitting and watching I met several of the devotees who were there and that, and they said it was almost as if we felt. That when Prabhupada fell silent, like it was like Prabhupada left his body. It was almost as if while Prabhupada physically was there, it was like he was transported to some other realm. And he was there, but he was not there.
And it just went on for several long minutes, and then it was, like, slowly it’s almost like they felt like Prabhupada’s body was coming alive. And then Prabhupada, still with closed eyes, he said, Hare Krishna. And then Prabhupada said, let’s do kirtan. And Prabhupada the devotee started doing kirtan at that time. So there are a couple of times when Prabhupada seemed to go into spiritual ecstasy, but that was not what Prabhupada, presented as the proof of his spirituality.
Prabhupada focused on the fact that his guru had given him instruction and he had dedicated his life to carrying out the instruction of his guru. So Prabhupada did definitely exhibit the non emitable symptoms of advanced devotion, and that is how we can avoid being misled or being caught by externals. So if Krishna so once a devotee said to Prabhupada, or one well we share, he said, Swamiji, Krishna came in my dream yesterday. And Prabhupada said, alright. Just serve him today.
So what he meant by that is if Krishna comes in our dream, that is Krishna’s mercy on us. And that’s wonderful, But that alone is not going to transform our life. Ultimately, it is we who have to use our swicha. We have to use our free will to turn toward Krishna and to serve Krishna. So if Krishna comes in a dream, that’s wonderful.
We can see that as a blessing. But after that, what do we do? Oh, Krishna is real. Krishna really cares for me. Krishna wants to bless me.
Therefore, let me try to connect with him now. Let me try to serve him. If we use those spiritual experiences to claim that we are special. No. Krishna came in my dream.
You know, be careful. I’m a great Vaishnava. Don’t come into Vaishnava. Don’t come into Vaishnava. Otherwise, you don’t do.
So if we do that, then what are we doing is that Krishna is revealing I’m a bigger reality, but instead of being attracted toward a bigger reality, we are using that experience to get to make our ego bigger in this world, to get get bigger credit in this world. That is not very helpful. So if a devotee has some special experiences, we can be grateful. Are they real? Are they not real?
If you want, we can talk with some senior devotee and get some understanding. But whatever it is, even if it is our imagination, sooner imagination is about Krishna. And we can be grateful. We could have had some dream about some sensuality. We could have had some dream about some movie star or whatever.
If we had a dream about Krishna, that’s a blessing. We accept that as a blessing, but instead of claiming special credit because of the blessing, we see that that Krishna is calling me towards him. Let me reciprocate. Let me start practicing bhakti more seriously. So for us, there may be this the broad word uses paranormal experiences.
So if paranormal experiences, are they present or they absent? If they are present, wonderful. If they are absent, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that it is the normal process of bhakti. That is what is going to help us grow.
This is what is going to lead to spiritual growth. This is what is going to lead to spiritual growth. The normal process of bhakti. How we strive to develop our relationship with Krishna. How we take responsibility for serving Krishna.
How we do our sadhana. How we do the Buddha as well of transcending and transforming. How we take responsibility for that. There’s one devotee you told me, you know, that the first day I came to Radha Gopinath temple, I look at the altar and I saw Krishna winking at me. Now can Krishna wink at someone?
Well, you know the answer now from the previous one. So now was it real? He said, you know, I don’t know. Krishna never winked at me after that. Now was it real?
Was it not real? Whatever is is, he felt that by that, I felt Krishna wants me to come here. So he said I started coming. So but now so his question was, you know, Krishna winked on me at that. Why is Krishna not winking at me now?
Is he upset with me? Was he happy before I was practicing bhakti? So now that is a wrong conclusion to know. Maybe Krishna gave us some special mercy at that time. So I am not going to go on a mission to tell him that experience was false.
That experience was imagination. If that has brought him to Krishna and if he has that faith that that was Krishna, he said okay. There’s no need to no need to challenge that faith. But the point is that should not be that expectation or that experience should not be the central feature of our devotion. Yes.
Krishna call you Krishna. You have that special mercy. The important is a normal process for developing a relationship with Krishna. So follow that process and you will grow in your devotion. So that was Prabhupada’s mood.
Prabhupada’s focus was not on paranormal experiences in bhakti. It was on the normal process and committing ourselves. In the nectar of devotion, Prabhupada says that devotional service, He says, it is not what is that? Two things. It is not sentimental ecstasy, nor is it some kind of speculation.
Sorry, imaginative, sentimental speculation and imaginative ecstasy, I think. Something like that, isn’t it? Imaginary ecstasy, sentimental speculation. It’s substance is practical activity. So he says it is not these two things.
It’s practical activity. So, you know, if Krishna is a real person, then how would we relate with Krishna? Now if, say, we had a we had a sibling, we have a parent, we have a friend, then the various rasas, you know, we have atsaliras, sakiras, maduriras, whatever. If we have a real relationship, what would we do? We would do real activities in that relationship, isn’t it?
So that love is shown through its substances, practical activity. Now if a child comes back from home and the mother says, oh, I see you. I love you so much. I’m so happy to see you. The child says, mommy, I’m hungry.
I’m so happy to see you. Let me hug you. Mommy, I’m hungry. Oh, I’m so happy to see you, you know. Okay.
Varchar will say, I’m not happy to see you. I’m hungry right now, isn’t it? So, yes, there are expressions of love. No doubt. But one of the key expressions of love is practical service.
So this is again a non immutable symptom. Not anybody can keep doing practical service if they are not experiencing something through that service, if they’re not experiencing Krishna. In that way, each one of us can actually keep our relationship with Krishna real. And we will, by keeping that relationship with Krishna real, Krishna will become will slowly but surely keep becoming a bigger and bigger reality for us. So I’ll summarize what we discussed today.
We talked about the 5 remaining stages. The nishtha was what I spent a lot of time on nishtha. So in that, we discussed how faith and doubt, they don’t have to be opposites that faith and doubt both can be tools on the spiritual path because doubt is also characteristic of intelligence. So what happens as we grow spiritually that we start it like faith, there are essentials and then there are non essentials. So we missed our faith in our essentials increases and non essentials even if there are some doubts about it, It doesn’t matter.
We see the doubt as a break and faith as a accelerator. So what happens is, so it could be a discussion about how Krishna is in the center and there could be various pathways by which a person comes to Krishna. The philosophical, the cultural, the social, psychological. Now I’m not saying these 4 are the only pathways. It’s sometimes a combination of 1 or 2 whatever.
But the point is that these are important, but if there is a quake over here. Now we don’t use that to go away from Krishna, but rather we keep running toward Krishna. We understand that, yeah, this, the philosophy is not my shelter. The behavior of devotees is not my shelter. The behavior of devotees is meant to inspire me to take shelter of Krishna.
And sometimes the behavior of devotees does not, then I have to still take shelter of Krishna. Hippropathy was a very devoted wife. She was a devotee of Krishna. She was a devoted wife. Normally, she served with her husbands.
But when her husbands could not give her shelter, husbands were devotees. At that time, she didn’t say, you know, you people are devotees. You can’t protect me. What is the use of my serving you and what is the my use of my serving your lord? Let’s forget it.
No. What happened was this community around her could not support her. So what did she do? She took direct shelter of Krishna. So our faith may be challenged and that time the very source of strength that is there for us, that itself may be shaken.
So we also discussed about the conservative and the liberal. That how there’s a living tradition and there’s a contemporary world. So the liberals are more connected with concern about staying connected with the contemporary world. The conservatives are more concerned about staying connected with the passive tradition. So faithfulness and resourcefulness both are required.
And we see each person will have their nature and accordingly, they’ll prioritize certain things. Then we discussed about what comes after? Ruchi. So in Ruchi, I discussed primarily about how, you know, we have come out of the earth’s gravity pull, and then we have come towards Krishna’s gravity pull or the material world’s gravity pull. So means this point itself is we have come out of that.
And from the point of Ruchi onwards, so we are entering into Krishna’s gravity pull. And from this point onwards, it’s almost like spiritual journey starts becoming feeling like downhill. So it becomes that opposition becomes the any opposing forces inside become much lesser. There may still be opposition, but that opposition is external opposition because we also want to transform the world. So then we discussed about asakti, bhava and prema.
So in that, I discussed about how especially discuss about 3 things over here. One is that how the focus on the person Krishna starts becoming more and more. It’s like initially it is physical gifts, then it is subtle gifts, then it is spiritual gifts, and then after that it is Krishna himself. That’s how we become focused on Krishna. Then I talked about spiritual experiences.
So essentially what happens is it is like either Krishna starts manifesting in our reality or our consciousness goes towards Krishna or our consciousness goes towards Krishna and there is some transformation that is manifested at the physical level. So this spiritual experience starts happening from the bhava stage much and more and more. Now there is spiritual growth, spiritual advancement. I use the word growth more than advancement, because in the in the West people find the word advancement as a very commercial or very like, a mercenary term, like in a professional advancement. They think it’s very mundane.
We use the word growth. So there are immutable symptoms. They are real, but they’re immutable, so we focus on the non immutable symptoms. And the non immutable symptoms is not so much imagining ecstasy or sentimental speculation. It is practical service.
So if we have a real relationship with a real person in this world, then we’ll be really committed to the service. And like that, through this practical service, Krishna will become realer than reality for us. The physical reality around us, Krishna will become a bigger reality than that. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
So should we have some questions? Yes, Prasanna. Any questions? Yes, Provost. Where is the mic?
Soji, like, you told that, after that stage of Ruchi or in the stage of Ruchi, the Susugam Kartavyam, gets to take place. Yeah, go ahead. At the stage of Ruchi, the gets to take place that we are experiencing everything being becoming joyful. We are experiencing more joy. But before that we are not experiencing that then.
What’s I’m not saying not experiencing. It is a mixed experience. It is not constant joyfulness. If there is no joy, we’re not going to continue at all. But it is that joy becomes much more of a natural thing.
See, it is we do experience some joy, some satisfaction, but there is also the struggle. The inner battle is there. Sometimes we struggle. Sometimes we we have relapses. And it is not that, you know, when we have a relapse, that time we also feel happy.
We will feel bad about it. So in that sense, it’s a mixed experience. So when Tharoorva says chant and be happy, you know, there is 2 ways of looking at it. One is that it is it is just one instruction and the other is it is 2 instructions. One instruction is chant and you will become happy.
2nd is chant and try to be happy while you are chanting. What it means is, there is a verse that 17 no, 1222. So what that means is chant and you will become happy. That’s one way of looking at it. Chant, that is one instruction.
Be happy is another instruction. So this particular verse you think 1222. What it says is therefore the wise people, the process of bhakti which gives supreme joy. Vasudevi Bhagwatya and to the lord Vasudevan. Therefore, the wise people practice with great joy the process that gives us supreme joy.
So what does it mean? Is it that the process gives joy, or we have to practice it with joy? So it’s like, say, suppose we have been sick for a long time, and we have got finally a treatment that works. Now we are not yet fully recovered. We’re not healthy.
But still there is a big relief that I finally got a treatment that works. And because the treatment works, I am happy to take the treatment. I look forward to taking the treatment. So in that sense, that that happiness is more of a gratitude that I had the path to recovering. I have the process for recovering, although I have not recovered right now.
So, you know, this is a chant and we’ll become happy. This is broadly the process of bhakti. That means you take the medicine, you will become cured. But this chant and be happy, this is the consciousness we strive for while practicing bhakti. So even while practicing bhakti, we can look at the things that are wrong in our life, and we can say, you know, this on earth has been struggling so long and it’s not going away.
What is the use of practicing bhakti? Or we can say that, actually, I’m this particular anartha is taking time to deal with, but I’m but that anartha has gone down. I have seen that change in my life. I am grateful that I have the process that works. Okay.
So there is joy, but the joy is sometimes something we have to cultivate consciously also. Does that make sense? Yes, Shubhrant, you mentioned that something may be non essential for one person, but then that that may be essential for another person. Can you elaborate it a little more? Because I I feel essential should be the same for everyone.
Of course. Somebody says that, you know, that Krishna is God. That is not essential for me. Well, the that is a core aspect of like Bhakti Radhaka Dha Hatha Dashemul Tatva. Like, Krishna is, is a person.
Krishna is the source of vultrasah. The Vedas are the means by which we come to know about Krishna. The Prema is the ultimate goal of it. There are there are 10 principles that Bhakti Anathakkuk talks about, then those are essentials. But when I’m talking about essential and non essentials, like some devotee may feel that ekadashi means, you know, you have to fast.
And some devotee may fasting nirjal or fasting as strictly as you can. That’s essential. That’s a key principle. Somebody else may say, no, maybe, you know, I have so much service to do and I’m doing this service. It’s okay.
I’ll fast from grains. But I take normal 3 minutes, I’ll take 3 minutes in this day also. So they may not consider that Ikadha should be that important in terms of practicing at that level of strictness. So that’s okay. Some devotees for them, shastric study may be the most important thing.
That is what nourishes me. Everybody needs to study shastra, but you cannot you cannot prescribe what will nourish someone. You see different devotees feel nourished by different things. So for some devotees, shastric study may be the primary source of nourishment. For somebody else, yeah, class is nice.
But after the class, when I sit down and talk with devotees on a one to one level, that’s what nourishes me much more. So we cannot mandate. We cannot legislate what will nourish someone. So in that sense, I’m saying that sometimes what one devotee may consider essential may not be what another devotee considers essential. So, like some devotees may be very driven by the mission of building a temple for Krishna.
Some other devotees may say that, okay, we want to cultivate our community. If we want to make a lot of devotees, temple will come on its own. We don’t want to prioritize that. So, both could be important. And for one devotee, that if the temple is not there, what is what is my service to Krishna?
For some other devotee, you know, is there a temple, but there are no devotees who are dedicated to serve Krishna? What is the point of having a temple? So who is right? You cannot really say one person is right and other is wrong. So within there are there are, of course, certain core essential practices of bhakti.
But beyond that, there may or may not be other things which are considered essential. Is it clear, what I’m saying? So there are many cultural aspects could be there. Say like, Prabhupada says that, say, women should part their heads in a particular way. They should tie their hair.
This, that. Now in the western world, you cannot tell people. People say it’s my autonomy. So devotees may or may not follow certain dress patterns. Just because somebody doesn’t consider the dress pattern as a central thing in bhakti, does that mean they’re not sensuous serious devotees?
For some devotees it may be very important. For some devotees it may not be that important. Now is it important? Of course it is important. But is it the primary thing in bhakti?
For some devotees it may be. For some devotees it may not be. Okay? Please, where’s the mic? Prudhi, in previous lectures we defined vritti as something positive inclination which is to be honed for Krishna.
Then we also hear statements like Patanjali says yoga means or there are like which have vrtti has a negative connotation, sir. Can you just elaborate? See, words have many different meanings in different contexts. Like, Krishna says I come to establish dharma. Krishna says, Isn’t it?
So I come to establish dharma and give up dharma. It doesn’t seem to make sense. So there are 2 different meanings of dharma over there. Krishna says dharma samstapa and arthaya, there he is using dharma to refer to social order, that I come to establish order in society. But when Krishna says sarva dharman prittha jya, there he is saying that you have multiple conceptions of duty.
You have your kshatriya dharma, that is you have to fight against your enemies. You have your kuladharma, that you should protect your kula, you should not destroy your kula and you are torn between these 2 dharmas. So give up all your ideas of what is your dharma and just focus on serving me, and I’ll take care of everything. So there dharma refers to duties. Like, say, sometimes somebody is working in a software company and they may be in 2 projects and one project leader says you have to do this right away and the other person says you have to do this right away.
And the person is told me, what do I do? Say, if you have access to the CEO of the company, and the CEO says, you know, sarodharman pratthaj. Just forget what the team leader says, forget what the team leader says, just do what I’m telling you. But they will be angry with me. I’ll take care of both of them.
So the word dharma has different meanings. So now the word pruti basically means the movements of the mind. In the going down the sutra, the word vrttis used in a positive sense. So the Patanjali Yoga Sutra, it is it is not very clear because it’s a very concise sutra, and it is more guideline about yoga. It does not give a very comprehensive world view.
It’s like if we have a d t worship manual. And the deity worship manual may not give elaborate philosophy over deity worship. It assumes that you already know the philosophy. You just want to know how to worship a deity. So the Yoga Sutra book is for those who want to practice yoga.
Now why to practice yoga? What is the world view behind that? That is not mentioned so much. So there, the idea is that the mind has material desires, and the material desires, if they stop, then the movement of the mind stops. So chitta vrutti.
It’s not just vrutti, it is chitta vrutti, yogas chitta vrutti nirodha. So all movement of consciousness stops. So quite often this verse is taken by impersonalists to say that actually the Yogasutras are impersonalists. But, you know, there is also Ishwar Pranidhan is there, Prapati is there. There are mentions of that also, which do indicate a theistic conception.
But specifically, in the Advaitic conception some you say the AdvaitaVad is what? That we that we become God. That is actually neo AdvaitaVad. They said that like AdvaitaVad is a deviation from Shastra and there is a deviation from AdvaitaVad also. So the the traditional Advaita wad is like Shankaracharya, and they follow they don’t say we have to become God.
That is not our philosophy. They say that we are we are not, theistic. We are not atheistic. We are transtheistic. Transtheistic means what?
Their idea, this is the soul, and say this is God. This is the subject of consciousness. There is the object of consciousness. And then in between there is the stream of consciousness. So, like, right now you’re looking at me.
So if you you are the subject, I am the object. And from you, your consciousness is coming towards me. So generally, in our tradition, we use duality to refer to heat and cold. But they say subject and object is also duality, and you need to go beyond that. So their idea of their idea of going beyond illusion is the subject is Maya, the object is also Maya.
So the idea of Jiva is Maya, the idea of Ishwar is also Maya. So the only thing that is reality is the stream of consciousness. So their idea is that this chitta vrtti, if there is no object, there is no subject. Then there’ll be no movement of consciousness. Because from where will consciousness go and to where will consciousness go?
There’s nothing except consciousness existing. So this is the impersonal idea of liberation, where consciousness just stops moving. That is not the the Vaishnav idea. The Vaishnav idea is Gange vaugam udhanwati. So so the Ganga keeps flowing toward the ocean.
The Ganga reaches the ocean, but still there is water which keeps flowing. So like that, the same metaphor is used by impersonalists and personalists. The impersonalists focus on the act of reaching the destination. The water merges the drop merges with the ocean, the drop is lost. The Vaishnavas focus on the process.
Just as I do just as the river keeps flowing towards the ocean, similar devotees consciousness keeps flowing towards Krishna. So chitta vrtti nirodha is more of the impersonalist idea of liberation. The Vaishnav idea is that How about the gopis that describe that? What is the first line? So the consciousness constantly keeps flowing towards Krishna.
So within the impersonal within the devotional idea, it is that the subject and object are not moha. Our conception of the subject and our conception of the object is the moha. To think that I’m the subject I’m the body, that is moha. And to think that the object will be some sense object in this world, that is moha. So we have to refine our understanding of the subject, and we have to refine our understanding of the object.
The object is Krishna, and the consciousness keeps flowing. Okay? Yes, bro. Okay. Yes.
Very Krishna, Prabhu. Yeah, please. So in morning session we were discussing about Tarangarangani and usamy, that in Tarangarangani we take pleasure in peripheral and usamy we want to sew off. So one thing I wanted to know, can you explain little bit more how to come out of these tendencies? And another thing is that sometime we are told if we are not feeling enthusiastic then we shouldn’t act enthusiastically.
So is that not also kind of showing off or it’s different than, this Tarangarangani and Usami? Okay. So how do we come out of it? It’s not, it’s not something that we can come out of immediately. It is, a gradual process as long as we know that I should not get caught in this.
There’s one devotee who once was doing kirtan in Prabhupada in the same temple. So as Prabhupada was going to take darshan, so Prabhupada just patted him on his shoulder. Nice kirtan. And as Prabhupada was going by, he said, but, Prabhupada, sometimes I feel proud. And Prabhupada just looked at him, smiled.
What’s wrong with that? He was patted him back and went to it. We said, what’s wrong with that? Pride is a demoniac quality. Isn’t it pride is the cause of illusion and bondage?
But the point Prabhupada was making as far as we can understand it is that if we have some pride then it is better that we do something devotional by which we seek respect. Then we do something non devotional and seek respect from non devotees. Isn’t it? Then by doing something devotional, gradually, we’ll start realizing that, say, somebody likes singing and they want to become a very good singer, and they want to be praised by others for how good their kirtan is. That’s fine.
But through that process, gradually, they will start realizing that actually the satisfaction that I get when I glorify Krishna, that is so much more than when others glorify me. But they will get that gradually. So it’s like first it’s like first we start practicing devotional service, then we we start practicing devotional service. That time, it’s mostly like we are only doing the service. Then there is mixed devotional service, and then there is pure devotional service.
So it doesn’t matter. Initially, we may want fame. We may want praise. But the point is we don’t get stuck over there. So like I said, first, we may want physical gifts, then we want subtler gifts, then we want spiritual gifts, then we want only Krishna.
So as long as we understand that, okay, this is the stage I am at, maybe at this stage I need this, but I want to go ahead from this also. So then we’ll be able to move forward. And, what’s the second question? Yeah. So see, it depends on why we are acting.
Between the external and the internal, when there is a difference. And it will always be there. That’s just a part of being human. Sometimes some devotee 1 one devotee told me I mean, many devotees have told me this. You know, if they’re trying to develop a relationship with someone, this happens with husband and wife sometimes many times.
You know, if if I could only see into this person’s mind, I would understand how they think, and then I could understand them better. I could relate with them better. I I often tell you, you know, if we were able to see each other’s minds, not a single relationship would survive. Isn’t it? We all have thoughts and desires and emotions that we are not proud of.
Isn’t it? You know, nature has given us a natural buffer in terms of that what is inside the mind is not visible to everyone. So it is it is a good thing. You know? Otherwise, if we could start seeing each other’s thought, you think like this about me or this kind of desires?
What kind of human being are you? You know? We would just all relationship will be fragrant. So the point is there’s an external internal difference. What is the reason?
That could be at various levels. Now the lowest reason could be deception. Deception means that I I am talking with you sweetly so that I can earn your trust, so that I can stab you in the back. So it’s all very cold and planned and calculated. So this is definitely bad.
We could call this also as hypocrisy. So if we are dealt so that means here, there is a difference between the external and internal, and there is no attempt to even resolve the difference. It is the difference is something which I’m building so that I can exploit it in the future. So sometimes this difference may be because of pacifism. Pacifism means what?
That, you know, I don’t want to confront you. So this is so important for you. I don’t like it, but I just go along with you. So, like, a teenage kid, may not want to come to the temple when the parents want them to go in, but my parents will get upset with me. So although I don’t want, I’ll go there.
And they want me to bow down to the wall, they want to do this prayer, I’ll do it. This is slightly negative, but still you could say this is okay. This is definitely not as bad as as because of deception. Then sometimes it might just be out of culture. Culture means that, see, sometimes we may be very angry with our elders also, but a culture behavior means that I’m allowed to yell at my elders no matter how angry I am.
So that’s a sign of respect. That’s, say, husband and wife may have may be very upset at each other, but if they are quarreling and they see the child suddenly come into the room, both of them, they have that mutual understanding. Let’s let’s not let’s talk about this later. We don’t want to traumatize or trouble our child with our problems. That’s that’s a good thing.
It’s out of culture if certain things we don’t talk in public. Talk in public or in front of those. Now sometimes, it may be out of discipline. Now the difference between culture and discipline is culture is where it’s just the training that we have and that’s what we naturally do, but discipline is more like a conscious intention. So any activity that we do say, suppose somebody was trying to become an athlete, it’s not that every day they look forward to doing a workout.
Every day they like to do their physical training or whatever they do. They may like to play the game, but the training for the game, they may not like it. But discipline means even if I don’t feel it, I want to do it. So here, it’s like although the difference is there, we are trying to decrease the difference. Over a period of time, as the culture is practiced, do we start understanding the other person, the other person starts understanding us.
And then what happens is that respect is not just an external issue. That respect, that affection, that naturally comes. Over a period of time, when we practice discipline, that discipline becomes a habit. We start seeing the benefits. So the external internal difference decreases.
So for us, as a discipline, when we do it, when devotees say, if you don’t you don’t feel like it, still you do it. That’s that’s a good thing. So but we should also be trying to develop the emotion. So when we say somehow or the other, So what does that mean? Sometimes stupid.
Can you see if there is some over here in this? No close. It might be then the outer compartment. See, sometimes we feel our way to actions. That means that I feel like doing something, and therefore I do it.
And sometimes we act our way to feelings. That means by doing the action, the feelings start coming. So in bhakti, both can happen. So means so when you feel, it’s a subtle body. Action is the gross body.
So sometimes the devotional activity, the devotional service, it will start from the subtle body and go to the gross body. Sometimes it will start from the gross body and then go to the subtle body. It depends whichever way it works. Okay? Any other questions?
Yes, bros. Hare Krishna Brew. Thank you for the wonderful class. I wanted to ask about, evolution. As you said about the moon moon theory, there is like, sort of lot of different opinions within our society also.
So, this thing actually I think happens a lot when we, somehow hear the same opinion more number of times. So our mind accepts this at as the prominent opinion or the only opinion. And naturally our mind has a tendency to see things in terms of binary like 1 0 and black and white. So we often reduce the things to very simplistic things. So about evolution, like, many devotees I’ve heard and they have a point also like, Darwin’s theory of evolution has already been debunked.
That we know. And Propath also, like, was heavily against that. And I think Propath was against it because it was pointing towards atheism. But that was the main issue. But then there is a new concept of theistic evolution where they say that Darwin’s evolution is wrong and even biologists don’t approve of it.
But right now, the evolution, concept that is there, in that they say that, it is like very different approach. And they have lots of evidences also to explain it. Like bacteria developing some mechanisms when they are in nylon and other things. That’s okay. I’ll just explain that.
So, see, the term evolution itself is a slippery term. So what do we mean by the term? That’s important to understand. So there is no universally accepted, even within mainstream science, there is no one absolutely accepted definition of evolution that will describe all its usages, But broadly, we could divide into 3 parts. One is evolution as observation or as observed phenomena.
Now there is no debating with that. Like when the COVID pandemic was there, the virus mutated. So this happens all the time in laboratories, and there are devotees also who are working in these fields. So there’s observed mechanism. So now one of the skills that Krishna learned among the 64 skills was planned breeding.
Now how do you take roses, there’s a bright red rose and there’s a yellow rose. Can you bring the 2 roses together and create a rose of a different color? So that Krishna also learned. It’s cross breeding. So basically, we have no issue with observe with something that is an observed phenomena.
Krishna himself learned about it. So this is perfectly okay. 2nd is evolution as a inferred mechanism, that species change. That is something which is observed. Now does that mean that there is a causal mechanism that can explain everything about the species?
So, you know, there is survival of the fittest or survival of species, but survive a mechanism that explains the survival of species, does it necessarily explain the arrival of the species? They are 2 different things. So is the inferred mechanism true? Well, the evidence for one species changing into another species, The evidence for that is extremely thin. Now, of course, evolutionists can argue that this happens over cosmic time, the very vast time scale, then we can’t observe it.
There may be some truth to that. Now we may say that we have seen some fossils of some intermediary species, But the question is how do we not know that how do we know that that is an intermediate species? It could very well be that was a species that was existing, and that’s not existing now. That this was a species between this and that. So the point is, could it be an inferred mechanism?
It could be. But is it the evidence for this is not very strong? Both the evidence is not very strong, even the theoretical mechanism of how it could happen. There are many things talked about. There’s sexual selection, and there is see, natural selection was only one of the mechanisms which Darwin proposed.
Now many species many scientists talk about sexual selection, and there are other mechanisms talked about. Genetic nutrition is one of the most prominent, mechanism we are talking about, but whether mutation can bring about a completely new species. The jury is out for that. The evidence for evolution as an inferred mechanism is fairly thin, not just in terms of the evidence, but in terms of the in the theoretical mechanism how it could happen. So now even if this is true, that itself is it doesn’t really create a problem for the Vedic tradition.
The Vedic tradition does describe as the species came from, say, in a particular way. From Brahmaji, this came, and that came, and that came, but none of those are describing how the species appeared on the earth. So cosmically or at the level of cosmos, the species may have appeared at a particular place in a particular way, but after that, on Earth, they could have appeared in a way that might be compatible with evolution. I’m not saying that it is how it happened. I’m saying that there is it is not intrinsically incompatible.
That is not supporting the theory, but that is also saying that if the theory is true, that does not falsify Shastra. Now the real problem is where evolution becomes an all explaining ideology, where evolution becomes a tool for rejecting God. So we no longer need God because evolution is true. Now most scientists, serious scientists, even evolutionists will say that we don’t present we don’t support this, but unfortunately, evolution has been used by atheists to try to debunk the idea of God. So it is at this level where evolution becomes an alternative explanation, which leaves no room for God.
That is what we are primarily against. So and Prabhupada’s critique, if you see in even the book from book, Life Comes from Life, Life Comes from Life, if you look at the original transcript, because what happened is Prabhupada had an elaborate discussion and not all of that was published. The devotees wanted to keep the book of a manageable size, so they selected some of the conversation. So if Prabhupada in the elaborate book, if you see other transcript within the Vedas, if you see over there, what Prabhupada says is that we are not against the knowing spirit of the scientist. Knowing spirit means spirit of wanting to know.
We are against their atheism. So now is atheism intrinsic to evolution? Well, it depends on which aspect of evolution are we talking about. If we consider if we mean evolution as observation or observed phenomena, there’s not the atheistic about it. If we refer to evolution as an inferred mechanism, well maybe it is true.
We could say it like the theory of gravity. A theory of gravity itself does not disprove the existence of God. So like that could it be a mechanism that God has created by which the, by which the species manifest in this world? Maybe it is. That’s what you’re talking about, theistic evolution.
Maybe it could be. It doesn’t intrinsically challenge God’s existence, but is the theory as strong as Newton’s laws of motion? Definitely not. The evidence for that is quite weak. So the evidence for the first as an observed mechanism sorry, as an observed phenomena, that’s very strong, and there’s no need to to challenge that or confront that.
But the real issue is with when evolution becomes an explanatory alternative to God, and there it leaves no room for God. It almost like exile exiles God to scientific nonexistence. That is where we have a serious issue with it. Okay. So now some devotees may say the inferred mechanism is also not acceptable for us because Shastra doesn’t teach it.
Okay. That’s what so that could be a more conservative explanation, and that’s what some devotees may accept. Some devotees may say, okay, we don’t really know. Because in the Bhagavatam itself there are different places where the specific origin of species in the universal sequence itself. The way it is described in 3rd canto is slightly different from what is described in 6th canto, which suggests that the species evolve in different ways, during different ukas.
So so is the inferred evolution as an inferred mechanism for bringing about the manifestation of various species on earth possible? It may be possible. So I think there are 3 different things over here. That first is, is the evidence for evolution as a mechanism strong enough on scientific terms? That’s a question which science itself has to answer.
Even if the evidence is strong enough, is there an is there a satisfactory, explanatory mechanism for how it will happen? See, first is, did it actually happen this way? 2nd is, if you say it happened, that is there a mechanism by which you can explain that, how it happened? Because science, the specialty of science, is not just that it can make things happen. It is also that it can explain the mechanism by which things happen so that it can be repeated.
The miracle of science is not just that this power the light is on or we can I have message on Zoom? The miracle of science is that this can be understood and repeated. So evolution as an inferred mechanism that’s when the evidence, not just the evidence, but the explanatory theoretical explanation has to be there. And 3rd aspect is if there is a theoretical explanation, does that rule God out? Does that contradict the Vedic scriptures?
Does it contradict the Vedic conception of God? See in our tradition, I would say the Christian tradition has much more problem with evolution than what we have. And it’s not a criticism of Christianity. It’s just that Christianity is a very history centered tradition. Now of course Christians also try to interpret the 7 days of creation in metaphorical ways and all that, but, you know, there it is it is much more difficult.
In our tradition, God is also time. Krishna also manifests as time. So if Krishna if Krishna is not just acting once in creation, at the start to set the creation motion, but Krishna is acting as Kalam, then Krishna can bring about changes in nature. Krishna can bring about changes in organisms so that they can adapt to the changes in nature also, and that would be still within Krishna’s plan. So again, I am not saying that this is how it happened, but I am saying that it doesn’t have to be incompatible.
So if the inferred mechanism so this, it’s okay. This is question mark. This is an absolute no. And for mechanism, we’ll have to consider 3 factors. Is the evidence there?
Is there a mechanism for it? And then, is that compatible? Compatible firstly with theism and then compatible with Vedic Shastra, or you could say Vedic theism. So I would say it’s a nuanced question if you go deeper into what evolution means. Okay?
Thank you. Okay. We will I don’t want to go to overtime. Who else? Yes, go behind.
Hi, Krishna, go. Many times we hear heart and mind. So is it like they are different or What is different? Heart and mind. We know that also is it like in the conceptual understanding of mind, is it different or same?
So it’s a little complicated question, but I’ll try to answer it as simply as I can. The term heart itself has two different meanings. There’s a biological organ, you know. If somebody says you broke my heart, and other person says let me do an x-ray to check. The first one say I feel like breaking your head now.
Isn’t it? So there’s a biological organ, the heart, and then there is the seat of emotion. Whatever it is. So most of the time when we use the word heart, see, we may show the symbol of the heart, which can further lead to the confusion. Isn’t it?
But we are not referring to the biological organ heart. So the word heart has two different meanings. So now what happens is that for us the seat of emotion can be the mind or it can be the soul. So there is no such thing as a distinct entity or object called the heart within the Vedic conception of the self. So when while we are in the material conception of life, for most of us, our emotions, they exist over a range.
So, like, I talked about superficial desires and deep rooted desires. So superficial desires, they come in the mind, they stay for some time, they go away. And there are deep rooted desires. So for example, if we have a particular varna, if we have particular nature, then acting according to that nature is a very deep rooted aspiration. It is not just a superficial desire.
So like that we can say that there are we have emotions which are associated with us at various levels. So when we are not very spiritually evolved, our initially we could say, when you are spiritually unevolved, often our mind is the same as the heart at this stage. But as we become spiritually evolved, then the it is the soul. That means or rather put it another way, when we are spiritually unevolved, our heart is filled with material emotions. When you can spiritually evolve, our heart is filled with spiritual emotions.
So for those who are very advanced, then what happens is their emotions are largely spiritually centered. So then sometimes so this is a broad conceptual understanding, but in actual life the terms may be used not so black and white. So for example, Mahaprabhu says So what does he mean? Now the mind itself has become spiritualized. That means that while the mind isn’t as a material tool in the material world, but even that material tool can become filled with spiritual emotions.
So the seat of emotions, the center of my emotions is all all like it is in Vrindavan which is centered on Krishna. Okay? So Hare Krishna. Go one more question. So like we know that soul is situated in the heart and consciousness is spread spreaded throughout the body.
So, like, so is there any specific, reference or we can say that mind is situated, throughout the body or like that? Well, first of all, whether the soul is situated in the heart is open to debate. The soul is situated in the region of the heart. See the soul is a spiritual entity. Whether a spiritual entity even needs a physical location, that’s open to question.
So basically within Sankhya, the idea is that there are these 5 vayus, which are like 5 vectors prana, apaan, samanya, an udan, and the 5 vayus, they are like 5 vectors, and the 5 vectors pull in different directions. And very simplified understanding, but the neutral point of all those 5 vectors is where the soul floats, and generally it is in the region of the heart. But it doesn’t have to be there all the time. There is the whole concept of Kundalini where the prana rises and the soul is situated at the center of the prana. So does the soul rise also?
It depends. So I would say that that doesn’t have to be like a where generally the soul is in the region of the heart, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t ever be any exception. The soul is not tied to a physical location. Now, with respect to the mind, I haven’t been able I haven’t come across any specific praman for this, but I’ll make an inference. It’s like if you consider the earth, water, fire, air ether, these are the 5 gross elements.
Now are they situated at a particular place in the body? Well, they are distributed, isn’t it? So there is no reason to say that the gross elements, if they are distributed, the subtle elements have to be localized. The subtle elements could also be distributed. So like if you consider, say, the ego.
You know, some people, for them, their ego ego is, at a sense, my sense of identification. For some people, their ego may be very much identified with their face, how I look. For some people, their ego may be very much identified with their biceps. For somebody, their ego may be identified with the particular bodily organ. So the ego, the sense of identity, that may vary.
For some people, it might be with their brain, their IQ. For some people, it might be their physical their running ability, their playing ability. So that so that would mean that while the ego is distributed throughout the body, but it may be concentrated in a particular region because of which they identify a lot with that. So with this, the same could apply to the mind also. Like, we also say that there is different kinds of intelligences, isn’t it?
Some people have a high musical intelligence, some people have a high interpersonal intelligence, some people have a high verbal intelligence. So now we consider that just a physical faculty. It’s an ability. Not physical, it’s an ability. Yes, it is in some way connected with buddhi, but now is the buddhi localized or is it distributed?
My understanding is it distributed and it may be concentrated more in particular areas, which may be gross or it may be subtle because see these are subtle elements. Like, if you consider a computer. Now where is the software in the computer? Well, you could say that it is the softwares in this particular drive. Okay.
But, you know, the drive is a conceptual thing. At least in modern computers, you know, you open the hardware, you don’t see this is c drive and this is d drive. Isn’t it? That’s so you could say once if there there’s a virus in the computer. So is the virus in this particular location?
Has the virus gone throughout? So these are the when you take the subtle and try to talk about the subtle software is subtle and hardware is relatively gross. So it’s not that simple to correlate it. So I would go in the favor of that. It is it is generally distributed, but it may be localized in the sense that it’s concentrated in particular areas.
Now while depicting, we may depict it as, you know, it’s around the soul, but that depiction is not so much about the physical location as it is more of the conceptual nature, that the subtle body is closer to the soul, the gross body is further away from the soul. So it’s more to depict not the location as the, as the proximity. Okay. Okay. Wow.
How much time do we have? Sorry. Where is the mic? Who has not asked till now? Yeah, please.
We’ll stop by 7:30. Is that okay? Yeah. Hi, Krishna, bro. So, bro, one one thing I wanted to ask about, can you tell about Nishthit bhajan kriya and Anishthit bhajan kriya?
Where do they fall in the like, this bhakti journey that you that we discussed? And Well, Nishthit bhajan kriya is only associated from Nishtha onwards. Anishtudhbhajan kriya is before Anathana Naruthi. Okay. So because we have not ourselves experienced the transformation, so we are still, you know, a little iffy.
Maybe I should do this, maybe I should not do it. Like, if I have taken a treatment for 15 days, but I have not seen much effect, then I ask, should I continue this treatment? Should I not continue the treatment? But, say, if I’ve done it for, say, 3 months and I’ve seen the change, then I feel much more inspired to continue it. And, like, we have heard about this, dushkirtuta and, dushkirtuta, the avradhas leading to, you know, dushkirtuta, all these.
Are they part of unearthni vritti or they are part of like, where do they fall and, shall we have to cross them also or they are under these 6 stages of unearthni vritti? Can you explain this? Aparadota and all these things. See, the thing is that k. So the thing is that, it’s, different acharyas have analyzed things in different ways, and sometimes it’s not so easy to, like, take one conceptual frame and put it on another conceptual frame.
Like, say, we he said that there are 4 kinds of people who come to Krishna. But then Bhakti Rudakkur also take note that people approach God at 4 different levels: fear, desire, duty, and love. Though can we really equate fear, desire, duty, and love with artho, jiggyasur, artharthi, and jnani? It’s not that simple. Some people say that, you know, fear, desire, duty, love are associated with but then it’s not that simple.
So is it that every single person who is Artharthi is in Rajoguna only? Like somebody may be in Sathoguna, but their their child may be very sick and they need some treatment for their child urgently. And they come to God, please please arrange for some Lakshmi. That may not be Rajasik at all. It’s not that they want a bigger house than their competitor or something like that.
So we can use conceptual frames, and they do work, but we cannot reduce reality to conceptual frameworks. Like any conceptual framework is like a map. A map can help us navigate the territory, but the map is not the territory. And, you know, when you say this is the bond this is the border. This is where Bengal ends.
This is where Orissa starts. If you’re traveling along, there might be not a neat boundary. Now Bengal has ended at this particular point. If you say this river separates the 2. Okay.
Does that mean half of the water of the river is in Bengal, half of the water belongs to Orissa? And it’s like a vast river. Where is the half line of the water? It’s just life is not that simple. So that’s what I’m saying that conceptual frames when we use, there’s no need to become too technical about those things.
Having said that, with respect to the aprads, generally speaking, if you go to the foundational definition of aparad, aparad is that which turns us away from Radha, from Krishna, from the energy which connects us with Krishna. Or another way to understand the aparad is that the underlying principle of apra is that that which is spiritual, we see it as material. We devalue something spiritual. So from that perspective, we can say that generally aparads would not happen once such person is going to the level of ruchi from that point onwards. But it is possible in rare cases that somebody may exhibit some ego and they may fall, but generally the aparads are more likely in the anartanivrtta stage or before.
But once the anarthas are gone, they are less likely. So while there is a there is a conceptual framework for analysis, but I wouldn’t go into, like, a very rigid correlation. We can’t say that somebody at Bhaav can never commit a prata. It’s very very unlikely, But there might be possibility for that, ma’am. Okay?
Okay. One last question. There was something here. Okay. Let me stop with this..
Hare Krishna, Prabhu. I have a confusion. Like in the Shastra we have the 10 avatars of Lord Vishnu. So like, in the Darwin theory also life started from the water and the first incarnation of Vishnu started like matsha. So is it the right concept to believe, like, life started from, like, matsha and after that complex evolved?
And, like, is it the right concept or wrong? I have this confusion. See, science and scripture are 2 distinct bodies of knowledge, and sometimes some attempts are made to try to have some, like, creative correlation between the two. Now what is the point of that going to create a correlation? Bhakti Sanathata Gurud also talked about this.
So at one particular point, in one one conversation, he mentions this. The point of it is to say that that the idea of evolution itself, it is not unprecedented. That that does in Prabhupada also talked about spiritual evolution. The soul goes from lower bodies to higher bodies. That is also evolution.
So we could make some creative correlations. Now is that an indication that the creative correlation is possible? Does that mean that a theory itself is true or the theory is taught by the Vedas? No, that is a very different point. Because if you consider the aquatics, the ideas that life within theory of evolution, it began with aquatics and then other species came about.
But when the aquatics were there, there were no other species. But if you see within the Vedic tradition, Matsya avatar is described. At that time, the human beings were also there. I said, like, the Lord came as a fish, but that does not mean there were no human beings. So just that there is some creative similarity between the Shautars and between the Darwin theory of evolution or at least some aspects of theory of evolution.
That itself cannot be used to say that the theory is true or that theory is predicted in the Vedas or that theory is supported by the Vedas. No, it’s a creative correlation that is in just interesting to note. It does not, it itself does not establish the theory is truthness or the theory is validity. K? So thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
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