By HDG Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur
“May Thy overflooding non-evil-producing Mercy, Thou Ocean of Mercy Sri Chaitanya, be aroused towards me, by dint of its qualities that easily blow off all the dust-particles of sorrow, which are completely transparent, in which is manifest the all-encompassing supreme bliss, on whose appearance all wranglings over the Scriptures are concluded, which promote the madness of the heart by showering the tasty quality of mellowness, whose function of promoting the perennial flow of devotion ever ensures the balance of temperament and which mark the limit of the most exquisite deliciousness.”
We are unable to underhand what is beneficial or harmful by our own unaided judgement. This is so because we have a very distorted impression of the knowledge of our duty by the Reality, due to the want of all knowledge of the Entity Himself and because of our uncertainty as regards what we really desire. These imperfections make it quite helpless in choosing the right course of our activities. At such a crisis we have no other duty but to follow the adviser who sets by his own ideal conduct the example to be followed, for getting rid of all our wants and dangers.
What relish can there be in this decaying body, made up of the five decomposable elements and full of putrescence and impurity? Shall we not mind for a moment that this perishable and ever-changing body is liable to wrath, ambition, illusion, fear, grief, envy, hatred; separation from those we hold most dear, and association with those we hate? What relish can there be for material enjoyments when we are exposed to hunger, thirst, disease, decrepitude, emaciation, growth, decline, and death? The universe is tending to decay,—grass, trees, animals spring up and die. Mighty men are gone leaving their joys and glories. Beings still greater than these have passed away; vast oceans have dried—mountains have been thrown down, the pole star displaced, the cords that bind the planets rent asunder; the whole earth deluged with flood—in such a world what relish can there be for fleeting enjoyments? Living in such a world are we not like frogs jumping in a dried-up well?
To get rid of the deception of this false and treacherous seeming friend, we should be sincerely suppliant before the Supreme Lord and water our couch with tears; He will receive our prayers, have mercy on us and out of His naturally loving-kindness, appear before us as the preceptor, with all the proficiency in the scriptures and fully free from the hankerings of the senses, to rid us from the clutch of the wicked mind,1 which has flame all around and death within, to cut asunder all its knots and hitches and to dispel all our darkness of the heart as an elephant runs away from the darkest recesses of the jungle at the approach of the lion and the veil of darkness is withdrawn from the surface of the earth at the advent of Aurora. Then the mind will brood over its guilty woes like a scorpion girt by dire.
This world is full of good and evil. In our quest of the desideratum we, therefore, seek to find the best, to discard the worst, to follow the really desirable course, to eschew the undesirable path, to pray for our well-being, to give up what is harmful, etc. The evidence of the existence of such mentality is observable at times even in lower animals who are possessed of judgment of a crude type. As beggars for gifts from their giver we pray for the good, the best, the higher state, or well-being. We cannot regard as miserly or wanting in unstinted liberality and magnanimity the giver of mercy that does not produce our eternal harm. Realizing him to be endowed with the nature of the veritable ‘Ocean of Mercy’ we abstain from praying to him for any gift that is productive of undesirable consequences. We know that by our success in obtaining the gift of our prayer from any pseudo-preceptor we are inevitably liable to be overtaken by dangers due to the ignorance of the giver of such gift. It is this conviction that leads us to pray for the primary gift of the cognizant Autocratic Entity, the Form of the Truth, instead of His secondary alms overlaid with delusion.
At present our position is enriched by the process of obtaining supplies of three kinds of alms. We stand in need of enrichment of our mental faculty, for supplying our want of knowledge and experience. But we are also in a position to understand the necessity of procuring bodily and vocal alms.
In our present state of existence the aggregate of the begging endeavors of the five cognitive sense-organs procures the supply of our mental alms. The gross and subtle forms of both bodily and vocal alms require to be approved by the mental supply. Our supply of mental alms in exercise of the office of such controller takes into its consideration the respective claims of good and pleasant. For this end it becomes the one thing needful to pray for the non-evil-producing Mercy from the ‘Ocean of Mercy.’ The heart of man, subject to the triple misery is weighed down with sorrow. This sorrow is like the accumulated heap of dust. The Grace of that ‘Ocean of Mercy’ Whose non-evil-producing kindness dissipates with ease the accumulated refuse-heap of the triple misery, like the wind blowing away the dust-heap, should be the only object of our prayers. After the dust-heap is blown away the sky of the heart becomes perfectly clear. Thereafter the breeze, carrying on its wings the choicest odors, accomplishes the primary purpose of our activities. Although we can but pray for the abrogation of the absence of joy, the self-delight of the soul promotes the state of positive supreme Bliss.
Even when our uncultured stock is augmented by the agency of knowledge born of the senses, mutually antagonistic modes of culture tend to increase our troubles. We are compelled to consider what propositions of our opponents are to be accepted and which are to be rejected. But the very attempt to solve this. difficulty adds to our distraction. May the ‘Ocean of Mercy’ bless us by His dispensation of the non-evil-producing Mercy which promotes loving relationship among the contending principles of the differing modes of teaching of the diverse schools of our teachers.
All so-called knowledge of this world is knowledge born of the fleshy senses. The knowledge that is received at the University or from physical Nature, may promote greater synthesis, analysis and development of the experience of this mundane world. It is not proposed to discard the knowledge that is imparted by the Universities (literally the academies of this world). But it is proposed to ascertain the relatio of Godhead with the same. To discard such knowledge is the barren form of renunciation (falgu vairagya). We learn this from the teaching of Sriman Mahaprabhu. ‘The discarding of entities that are related to Hari by liberationist, under the misapprehension that they are mundane, is called barren abnegation.’ The different branches of mundane knowledge are being applied in an improper way by mankind who have their faces turned away from Krishna. It is as if ornaments for the ear are being worn on the feet. It is necessary to admit the real utility of every entity. Extreme attachment to things of this world and extreme aloofness from all worldly concerns are equally removed from the function of the servant of Godhead. The servant of Godhead should cultivate affinities with all entities on Krishna’s sole account. We are apt to suppose that name and form are bound to embarrass in every case. Such an inference is derived from mundane experience. From where have name and form come to this w6rld? Where is their source? It is because there happen to be really name and form in that transcendental realm that the perverted reflections of those entities are cast in this world. ‘From Whom all these entities have their birth, by Whom they live, to Whom they go back and in Whom they enter, seek for That. That is Brahman.’
The Chit-Jagat or the transcendental world has got a full manifestive representation; whereas Mayik Jagat is a perverted reflection of that transcendental manifestation. We are endowed with senses which get an impression of the phenomenal world, the perfect original ideal of which lie in the Chit-Jagat. Every entity in Chit-Jagat is intelligent, cogent and harmonious; whereas matters here are not sentient to take any initiative. Chit-Jagat is known as Vaikuntha; whereas Mayik Jagat as Brahmanda. In Chit-Jagat there is only One Supreme Authority and the others are His true dependent or subservient; whereas in Mayik Jagat we find millions of masters or enjoyers with millions of enjoyed subservients. Chit is eternal and indestructible, whereas matters or products of Maya are of transformable and limited nature which proves their inadequacies and deformities. In Chit Jagat there is no ignorance whatsoever of free souls whereas in Mayik Jagat, mayik impressions of fallen fettered souls are always obscured with intervening materials.
The reflected part of Chit-Jagat i. e., this universe, is minimized according to the level where it is reflected. Original and perversion are opposed to each other. Water is the reflected plane and the original is perverted when it shows similarity ignoring the original position. Maya has a distinctive reference from Satchidananda. Maya has two different phases viz. (1) her efficient phase properly known as Maya. (2) her materialistic phase known as Pradhana. Mayadheesha (God) has no perversion and He has no reflection like mayaadheenas (jiva). The unperverted perfect reflection is His Prakasha-Bheda (different Aspect) ; whereas the perverted reflections have got similar activities with the differentiations of perversion.
Krishna has got innumerable Shaktis of which Tatastha claims the Intermediate position between Chit and Achit Shaktis. The pure soul is not created within time, but is ever-existing, unadulterated knowledge and is endowed with eternal bliss. Creation is restricted on the plane of Guna Maya. The Gunas or qualities disclose the obscured specification of tbe Eternity and this creation, sustenance and destruction within Time and Space.
Tatastha has both the power of associating with temporal as well as eternal planes. Souls who have got their stations at Tatastha have got free will. Each of the individual souls by exercising his free will can abuse or properly use his independence. He has got two different fields in two different directions. He may choose one of these for his stage. When he is in an enjoying mood and considers ‘himself identical with the predominating Object or the Absolute he is said to be fallen and when he shows an aptitude for serving the Transcendental Predominating Object, he is freed from the clutches of limitation and is eternally associated in serving the Predominating Object. The souls in the Tatastha position are not one, but many in number. They are not to associate themselves with unalloyed Chit-Shakti or unalloyed Achit or Maya Shakti. In Tatastha position, souls do not show any activity but they are found to be in an indolent state
There is no element of hostile contentiousness in the Unitary Knowledge. It gives us constant attachment to Godhead and brings about the manifestation of the Real Truth. By this means it does not merely ensure the peace of our troubled heart but floods it with the supreme bliss. We are apt to adopt as wholesome and perfect certain principles in lieu of real existence, cognition and bliss, due to the prevalence of the element of mutual hostile rivalry among the triple qualities of raja (mundane active principle), sattva (mundane manifestive principle) and tama (mundane nihilistic principle). The principles thus adopted give rise to the desire for what is not proper in the act of combating the operation of the other principles born of the senses. This results in the state of greater restlessness of the heart by our activities being given different directions by our unbridled wishes. Sometimes inertia, making its appearance as the opposing principle of sensuous activity, offers itself under the deceptive garb of the peace that is sought. It is impatience that is detected in such temporary oscillating mood. It is the unbridled passion of the ineligible for the usurpation of a superior status. The line of thought that seeks to consolidate one’s foot-hold in such position or to utilize it in any other way, degenerates into the endeavor for effecting the merging into one of the specifications of knowledge, knowable and knower. It is under the lead of such impression that we welcome the line of undifferential thought in order by its means to get rid of the pressure of the sensuous urge, for good. As soon as we are liable to welcome failure in the shape of the proposal to eliminate all specification as between the subjective nature of the entity and its relation of affinity to or alienation from other entities, being tempted by the ambition of the attainment of an imaginary superior status, the judgment. that seeks to serve the real Truth is engulfed in the strong current of the aptitude for the worship of one’s own false ego. At times the irrepressible, violent, sensuous desire builds magnificent edifices in the mental realms of fancy and runs at headlong speed after the will-o-wisps. Some times infatuated by the tempting odors of the ‘sky-flowers’ in the shape of Hathayoga and Raja-yoga, etc., that pertain to the adulterated condition, we learn to neglect devotion to Godhead which ‘is the eternal aptitude of the soul.
In order to be enabled to get rid of these three kinds of misjudgment it is necessary to walk in the path of the perfect good by seeking a real footing in the eternal aptitude of the soul. The very moment that our intelligence is rendered inert by considerations of desirability we place ourselves more or less in the hands of our false self by getting dissociated from the eternal aptitudes of the soul, i. e. from the real knowledge of the self, as the result of improperly mixing up the eternal aptitude of the soul with non-eternal considerations. It is true that we necessarily discard the fruits of our labors when we happen to be relieved of the aptitude of enjoyment of the fruits of our activities. But the same abnegation of the fruits of our works in its turn hurls us once more to the bottom from the high summit. Left without support we welcome self-conceit by cherishing the desire for mastery. This deprives us of the Mercy of the Real Truth and causes the mentality that fancies the mundane entities of this perishable world as our saviors.
When we discover that these entities are powerless to fulfil our eternal desires we are at once attracted by the chance of adopting some other courses. As soon as the different eclipsing factors, viz. thirst for evil, good works and empiric knowledge and permutations and combinations of these, breed in us despair by the operation of the faculty that distinguishes between the eternal and the temporal, we make the attempt in right earnest for obtaining the help of the supporting entity (Ashraya). As soon as our desire for the attainment of the desideratum is able to find the satisfactory solution of our innate sense of rational and non-rational eternal and non-eternal, bliss and non-bliss, it reaches the unitary position by joining hands with the desire for well-being. This is the state of unadulterated devotion (bhakti), or serving aptitude. When this aptitude of the soul, free from all evil desire and uneclipsed by empiric knowledge, utilitarian work, etc. engages itself in the submissive service of the Substantive Entity Who is the Prime Attractor, replete with the eternal full-knowledge and continuous bliss, the triple mundane quality of this world, characterized by the relationship of mutual repulsion, is rendered incapable of lording it over us. It is only then that the eternal serving aptitude of our souls, or our worship, is properly offered so as to be fit for the acceptance of the Worshipped. We are then in a position to be disinterested spectators of the performances of differing mentalities. We no longer feel attracted towards the worship of Brahma, the tutelary deity of the realm ‘of mundane initiative, by those who are employed in the utilitarian activities of this work-a-day world for earning the profits of their labors. Neither do we experience any identity of interest with the worship of Rudradeva, the object of adoration of these desirous of relief from the sensuous urge, calculated to bring about the cessation of the state of misery by inertia generated by the eternal indifferential materialistic mood that manifest itself after the demolition of the twin gross and subtle material constructions by the abolition of all passing desires effected by such worship. The careful consideration of the extent of success in the attainment of the desideratum by those modes of worship, which now becomes possible, makes us change the course of our expedition from these directions and also dissipates the conditional aptitude on which ‘they rely for their continuance, which makes its appearance along with the proposal of uprooting the triple eternal function embodying the principles of existence, cognition and bliss, based upon the groundless assumption that an entity devoid of power is the substantive Reality.
We are agents who require help from outside to sustain our existence. The help that is coming to us at present is inadequate. Inadequacy is the normal condition of the present atmosphere. By examination by our rationalistic principle we require more help than our friends offer. We have five senses to pick up the knowledge of the present world. As seekers of the Truth we require that we should be endowed with more knowledge. Our thirst is not quenched by the ordinary knowledge deducible from sense-perception available from the empiric professors. This impulse leads us to inquire as to how we can have more knowledge than can be had here.
We are also found to believe that there is agency who is not furnishing the requisite knowledge because we are proving ineligible for admission to the plane of adequate knowledge. This is the source of the theistic conception regarding necessity for the existence of the Absolute Knowledge as distinct from the knowledge of apparent truths. Hence also the conception of the necessity of the coming of the special agent of the Absolute Knowledge as the supply of the agents of empiric knowledge who alone are ordinarily available here.
We should seek for the fountainhead of all knowledge. If we do not do so we find ourselves poorly supplied. Our capacity for retention of knowledge also leaves us when we choose to be conversant with local temporary, apparent truths. The symbolical deceptive knowledge is presented when we neglect to seek the connecting thread of all knowledge. Time comes when our physical equipment parts from all its seeming possessions.
The theistic conception refers to a Fountain Head where Knowledge is Full, Ever-existing, and which can impart incessant Bliss. We are pleasure-seekers through the senses. The empiric view, does not offer the facility to supply us with incessant Bliss.
There must be a theistic view. We have to scrutinize the position of absolute Knowledge, Existence and Bliss required by us. We must seek for the place where the absolute Knowledge, Existence and Bliss is to be had.
In mathematics, we get glimpse of the fourth dimension. We are practically restricted to the third dimension by our senses except for a Very hazy idea of direction only. Unless the Fountainhead could be traced we cannot cease from seeking or from being debarred and led astray from Knowledge that supplies an enduring basis for true existence. We are thus compelled by the very direction of all our activities to seek after things which should be called Absolute. Or, to sum up, as we pass our days in the non-Absolute region we should have the impulse to have access to the transcendental region where these dimensions are an inclusion and nothing of an exclusion.
If we are not to have Full-knowledge, unending Life, uninterrupted Bliss, this life would be pessimistic existence. We shall then submit to be born, grow and pass away without tackling the inadequacies of the phenomena. We should trace the Fountain-Head, the Real Cause from Whom all these have emanated, not being content with the Agnosticism that prevails more or less at present. We should seek for more knowledge than we get from our senses. We hope that some clue of the transcendental world should be received by us through a particular process unknown to us with sensuous habits who are busy with phenomena only, concocting many ideas about the future life. Some subscribe to metempsychosis, some to this only life, for completing all preparations for peace at the long end. These varying opinions do not satisfy for the reason that they are secular. The tentative solutions offered by speculative philosophy are tainted by this radical defect. They give particular views that do not satisfy, being based upon mundane condition investigated through the senses.
The Absolute Knowledge, Existence, Bliss can give all that we are in need of. We are not in a position to advance one step beyond these three dimensions.’ We are restricted to the partial view. We cannot get the whole impression of a globular sphere at a glance,—some turning for transformation of the angle getting the full view. We get the view of only a quarter of the all-round. We see 180 degrees at a time. If we require to see at our backs we have to turn our head to that direction. Then half the sphere is exposed.
At a glance we see only a quarter of, the sphere of existence. So we are lacking in simultaneous grasp of the whole idea. We should not, therefore turn Agnostics etc. When. we fail to have the full view fully at one time we should know that our determination of self is but an infinitesimal part of the Fountain Head from Whom many things have emanated. We should on the contrary, trace Him from where deviation is not possible. Challenging part is to have no lien to deviate from the Fountain Head.
Any deviation is only part and parcel of phenomena, not the whole thing. The immanent and transcendent are ignored. We’ engage in one thing with the whole attention, but the exposition of the thing gives a partial idea. If the attributions are eliminated the original thing is sought in which many things are incorporated. Incorporation itself gives very little of the whole integer. The Absolute Truth reserves the right of not being exposed to our senses. Our senses fail to get at the whole thing at a time.
Our brain cannot accommodate fullness, Ever-existence beginning or ending of time. So the position of the Absolute should be traced in the person of the Absolute. The Absolute was in the beginning, is posting every present phenomenon. That will disturb the process of transformation and will destroy the phenomenal position. All knowledge will be distinctive and will destroy and put a stop to these things.
But that thing should be traced out. We should acquire the conception of the thing through the senses at present. Sound gives impressions of objects at a distance, like abstracted ideas from the concrete. Abstract ideas like charity etc., in a subtle form tend to captivate the brain in favor of perception and conception of things through the senses. Sound conveying impressions of phenomena requires corroboration from the four other senses and the mind as well.
We reject sounds whose validity is required to be testified by the other senses. The transcendental sound has got a distinctive character. The sound from the fourth dimension received by the ear has got a special potency to clear out all restricted ideas and to include everything of phenomena. Present sound is meant to be restricted to the third dimension, to be transcended by the fourth and higher dimensions. The transcendental sound clears out all impediments that block the path of the sound.
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