Understanding Krishna Tattva

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so Satya Vratam Satya Parantri Satyam Satya Vratam Satya Parantri Satyam Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Satya Because we are attached, that is why we are suffering.
That is people’s idea of spirituality. And they think if I become detached, then this is the impersonalistic notion of spirituality. The bhakti understanding is that we are suffering because we are detached.
We are suffering not because we are attached, but because we are detached. We are detached in the literal sense that we have fallen away from Krishna. Detached also in the sense that our emotions have not… And because Krishna is the reality, Krishna is the ultimate Satya, so anything that is disconnected from Krishna, that actually is not Satya, that is a Satya.
In the Chaturthi Bhagavatam, he condemns the essence of all philosophy. And there he defines maya. Then he says, Whatever you see, be attractive.
But you don’t see any connection between that. That is maya. Anything seen in disconnection from Krishna, that is maya.
Now, the body is real, the soul is real. What is unreal is for the soul to think, I am the body, or this is my body, and it is meant for my enjoyment. So, the mayavadi idea of maya is that nothing exists now.
Everything except Brahman is an illusion. But that idea leads to a fundamental problem. If Brahman is Satya, Jagannithya, then where does the mithya come from? If Brahman is the only thing that exists, then where does maya come from? The Upanishads talk about Tattvatraya.
Tattvatraya means three truths. In science they call it matter, consciousness, and the Godhead principle. So, jiva, ishva and prakriti are the fundamental essence of existence.
And their idea is, all three are a product of maya. The only thing that exists is Brahman, and apart from Brahman, everything else is maya. But then, where does the Tattvatraya come from? Where does jiva, ishva and prakriti come from? Where do they come from? They are a result of maya.
Okay, where does maya come from? Actually, where maya comes from is a question which they just can’t answer. They try to juggle words and get away with it. Maya is a simultaneous, existent, non-existent, inconceivable entity.
How can something be existent and non-existent? It has to be existent or non-existent, one of the two. So, this is how they explain this. So, maya has two questions.
Where does maya come from? And if we are all God, then how can maya control God? How can maya cover God? These questions are fatal. And although the mayas try to juggle words and get away from these questions, they really have no satisfactory answer. Because, actually maya, jiva, ishva and prakriti are not maya.
We often use the argument that God has to be a person. Because, I, you, he, all of us, the children of God are persons. So, if the children are persons, obviously the father must be a person.
But their argument is, no, you are an illusion, because we ourselves are not persons. So, you are calling this fundamentally wrong. You say, I am not a person, you are not a person, he is not a person.
Now, that’s fine, that’s your philosophical abstraction. That’s your philosophical imagination. But we all see a sense of personality, which goes to certain emotions, which unless you share, I cannot come to know.
You have individual personality and individual emotions. I have individual personality and individual emotions. So, even if we say that this is the result of maya, then the argument comes, OK, where does this conception of personality come from? Where does the conception of individuality come from? Unless there is some personality, some individuality, somewhere existing, there will not even be the illusion of individuality and personality.
Even for us, to mistake something, to mistake one thing to be something else, a second thing must have existed somewhere else by which we will mistake it. Just like they say, actually this world is false. The only thing that is there is a rope.
But we mistake it to be a snake. And they say, oh, when you awaken the knowledge, you will see that there is no snake, there is only a rope. Fine, accept this reasoning, but take this reasoning a little further.
In there, in the illusion, the misconception, that this rope is a snake comes from. Unless I have had some experience of a snake before, I would not mistake the rope to be a snake. Like that, if we are all thinking ourselves to be persons, there must be some experience of personality, which is what we are mistaking our current personality to be.
So there has to be a reason for personality. That’s why the current understanding is of Krishnadevaraya, this world is a reflection of the spiritual world. So, the reflection exists.
If I see it, it is there. But if I go in and try to enjoy the reflected mango, I won’t get any taste. But the water which reflects the mango is there.
The reflection is, to my perception, there. And the real mango is also there. It is not at all between the reflection, the reality, and the reflecting medium, all are illusion.
No, it’s real. So our understanding, which is the actual conclusion of any scriptures, is that this world is real. Our personality is real.
And Krishna is a real Supreme Personality. And there are real relationships between them. So, the Mahabharata idea is that this relationship and this world is an illusion.
And even the relationship with God should be developed so that we get out of the illusionary relationship with this world. And then naturally, we develop the relationship with God also. And we become one with God.
The idea is that, yeah, if we develop relationship, if we do some bhakti, so that then bhakti will give you some higher emotions by which you can get out of the lower emotions. But then eventually, you have to go beyond bhakti. Now, Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita very clearly, 7.7, There is no truth superior to Him.
Even the slightest way. When Krishna is speaking mathaha, He is not referring to some Brahmin. He is referring to Himself as the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
So, therefore, Krishna is the highest. And, as devotees, we understand, the cause of our suffering is, when we become detached from Krishna, then we experience illusory emotions. Now, what do we mean by illusory emotions? The scriptures differentiate between bhavana and vasana.
Bhavana is deeper. Vasana is superficial. So, love is the bhavana.
Now, lust is the vasana. Now, what is the difference? Let’s take a simple example to understand it. A small child comes along and we tickle his stomach.
What happens? His child laughs at him. Now, he is really laughing. And, we can see him laughing.
Stop, stop, stop. He is laughing. He is tickling, he is laughing.
Is that happiness? Then, we can just make a marathon. And, let’s keep tickling each other for the rest of our lives. And, all of us will enjoy.
We all typically understand that, yes, tickling may produce some happiness, but, some physical stimuli produces some physical reaction. But, that does not touch the innermost core of our hearts. Real happiness is, when deep within our hearts are satisfied, our faces are smiling and there is a laugh.
So, similarly, vasana, lust, actually touches us from external. And, through the stimulation of our senses, it touches our mind, it agitates our mind a little bit. And, it gives us excitement.
It gives us pleasure. But, just as the pleasure of tickling is a superficial pleasure, the pleasure of lust is also a superficial pleasure. Although, it is much more deeply entrenched in our psyche.
And, that is why many people consider that as the ultimate goal and ultimate truth of life. They think that, sex is what makes life worth living. Why is sex really the source of happiness? When the prostitutes say, how can you tickle me? How can you do it? Somebody says, oh, they are not doing it out of love.
But, yes, people do it out of love. And, they have a divorce within one and a half years. Why? So, love is an emotional originating from the soul.
And, then expresses itself through the mind to the body and the senses. Whereas, lust is something which originates basically in the body and the mind. That is where it comes.
So, vasana is mostly body and mental. And, bhavana completes it much deeper. Today, most people mistake lust to be love.
And, they don’t know anything higher than the natural love for Krishna. That is, not at the level of the body or at the mind or the senses, but at the level of the soul. And, that relationship, when revived, gives the deepest satisfaction to the heart.
And, that is why, the great sages in the past, they are ready to renounce this world so that they can develop love for Krishna. But, the important thing is not to renounce the world. The important thing is to develop love for Krishna.
Therefore, Krishna comes to this world to reveal to us how there is wonderful reciprocation of love between Him and His devotees. So, God has two aspects. One is called immanence and the second is transcendence.
So, we all have heard the word transcendental, isn’t it? Krishna is transcendental. The transcendent means who is beyond matter, beyond matter and beyond material world. So, Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita describes in the 8th chapter, 10th verse, about another world, beyond this world.
So, that is my eternal abode. When all in this world is destroyed, that is the abode of Krishna, where He resides, which is beyond this world. In the 15th chapter, after describing this material world, through the intriguing analogy of Upside Down Dimensions, then Krishna describes that is another abode, Sun or Moon.
Now, Vishwanath Chaturthi Thakur, in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, on this verse, he says, Abide, Krishna, like these three objects, the Sun, the Moon and the Fire. Because, like the Sun is the source of light and light enables us to see. So, it is when that abode is not illuminated by the Sun, that abode is beyond the power of the eyes to see.
And, this Moon, which we have explained as the Devata, on the Soma day, it actually shadows the mind. And that is why there are phases of the Moon, full Moon, no Moon, like people who have entered the Soma day, aggravated at that time. So, he says that actually, even with the mind, we cannot conceive that abode.
That is why, it is not illuminated by the Moon. And, what about, it is beyond fire? So, this fire is associated with speech. He says, fire is speech.
I have heard, fire is speech. So, he says, we cannot describe. So, we cannot see with our eyes, we cannot conceive with our mind, we cannot describe.
But, that does not mean that it is not attainable. There are two aspects. One is to say that, the impersonalist, to describe the absolute truth as Brahman, they use the word, anirvachaniyam.
The Vishnu Acharya used the word, archintya. Archintya means what? Inconceivable. And, anirvachaniyam, anirvachaniyam means, vachan means what? Speech on words, yes.
Nirvachaniyam means, that which cannot be described by words. So, anirvachaniyam. So, their understanding of God, absolute truth, Brahman is that, Brahman is anirvachaniyam.
That actually, you cannot describe it by words. So, one of Sri Aurobindo’s first all-world disciples, Ravindra Swarup Prabhu, in the 1970s, when he was the general president of Srilanka temple, he was a very serious devotee, very wonderful scholar. He had done his PhD in religious studies.
When he was joining ISKCON, he was completing it. When he completed, then he joined ISKCON. So, that kind of impersonalist organisation had come there.
And there, Buddha meditated all over Srilanka. Krishna meditated and became the love divine. Jesus meditated and became the sacrifice divine.
Buddha meditated and became the enlightenment divine. You meditate and become the supreme divine. Britain propaganda, that we can become power.
Expressly manifesting, and explicitly manifesting the envy towards the consciousness of their programme. It will not look good. I shall make you speak.
I will captivate you. For two hours, they will speak. That’s what I do to the whole audience.
How I meditate, you can become God. And then, this is the problem also, because the devotees, Hare Krishna devotees, they were in Shri Avanthi, they could stand out among all the other American audience who were dressed in different ways. Actually, it was a hippie crowd.
So, hippies would often dress in unconventional ways. But still, nothing was as unconventional as the devotees’ dress. Because there were people who would shave off their head, but the devotees would shave and keep something left.
Some people would wear hand gloves, but the devotees would wear only one hand glove. And that hand glove, just one finger comes out of the hand glove. They wear a pyjama around their legs, and they lie down.
Some people have their Halloween costumes, where they imitate animals. So, they have a tail. But these devotees wear a dress in which there is a tail in the front and in the back.
There are outrageous things. When they were introduced to Krishna Consciousness, and now they were dancing on the street. The devotees spread out among all the people.
And then, at the end, they ask questions. And the audience was also quite interested. They understood, this is from some other order, they are going to become fire workers.
So, nobody has raised hands. You said that God, He, And they had some people, some followers, staged in the audience. They also expected.
Do not understand the truth. For two hours, when he was speaking words, they were not illusions. This is really considered absolute according to their own philosophy.
He is Anantarajan. They can have unlimited words to glorify Him. Even if they glorify unlimited words, we cannot glorify Him completely.
We cannot describe Him completely. That is perfectly agreed. But, Krishna, the perfection of words, is to use them to glorify Krishna.
Not to glorify the mundane or the Karnapuram. Anyway, when he is describing Krishna, for one incident, for one description, he will sometimes give twenty analogies. And he just mesmerised, seeing the beauty of the analogies that he is using.
And he says, even after giving these twenty analogies, actually, you know, so we don’t say that we conquer Krishna by our words. But still, we perfect our tongue, we perfect our intelligence, by using it to glorify Krishna. So, we accept that Krishna is Achintya.
Achintya means what? He cannot be understood by our intelligence. We cannot catch Him with our intelligence. But surely, we can use Him to glorify, use our intelligence to glorify Him.
So, sevonmukhe atahashvikrishnanam adi sevonmukhe chirbharam svayam eva sphuraty anam … cannot be pursued, cannot be grasped by our senses. But, sevonmukhe chirbharam adi. Then we do seva of Krishna, starting with svayam eva sphuraty anam.
Krishna reveals Himself. Now, even if you have pure loyalty to Krishna, you will never understand Krishna fully. He understands Krishna enough to fall in love completely with Krishna.
So, the Kena Upanishad describes, he who says he knows, does not know. And he who says he does not know, knows. He who says that I know the Absolute Truth, he does not know, because the Absolute Truth is unlimited.
And he who says I don’t know, knows. I mean, there are two categories. There are two categories.
If you don’t know, you don’t know. If somebody says, I don’t know, that means he knows. What it means is, just like somebody has never experienced the ocean.
He says, I don’t know the ocean. There is a scuba diver, he’s going deep into the ocean, gone, gone, way, way, way to the depths of the ocean. He knows the ocean according to his capacity.
He who says he does not know, actually knows. So, therefore, as devotees, we don’t try to master Krishna with our senses. But we certainly serve Krishna with our senses.
In the Christian theology, there is not much description of God even, positive description, like yesterday we were discussing. There is no description of the form of God. To justify this absence of knowledge of God, the absence of positive knowledge of God in the scriptures, by saying that God is unknowable to us with our intellect.
And therefore, there will not be knowledge of God available to us. The Muslims have justified by saying that God does not have any form. And of course, we are devotees who have studied the Quran and faith, God’s hands, God.
So, there are so many verses in the Quran itself. Actually, God having form is well described in the scriptures, in all the scriptures. But, the principle is that in the Chirayat Christian literature, there is not much positive description of God’s personality and God’s self-existence.
God’s self-existence means, God as he exists independent of the world. God’s one function is to maintain us. But what about God’s own personal life, God’s self-existence? So, the Christians say that actually God is so great that He is unknowable to us.
We perfectly agree with that. God is so great that He is unknowable to us. But if God is really all-powerful, if God is really omnipotent, then He should have the ability to give us the knowledge to understand, to give us the ability to understand.
If we say that God cannot give us the ability to understand Him, that means. Christians say that actually with our senses we cannot reach the Supreme Lord. That is impossible for us.
But, we can use our senses to glorify the Supreme Lord. And when we use our senses to glorify the Supreme Lord, we become beautiful. Actually, in the 89th chapter of the 10th Kshantakshana Bhagavatam, Nargoli goes to Narayanaji, asks him a question, that our senses are material, God is spiritual, and how can we describe, how can we describe the Supreme Lord with our mental senses? This is a very profound analysis.
He says that when he hears that Krishna is a young boy with a complexion like a freshly formed rain cloud. Then what does the Christian do? He imagines a bluish black rain cloud and he superimposes categorically that the superimposition of two imagined objects cannot produce the Supreme Personality of God. Therefore, he says, the conditioned soul cannot think of Krishna.
With the material senses, he cannot think of Krishna. But, the Bible scriptures tell us to think of Krishna. Krishna so many times in the Bhagavatam says, that always think of me.
So, when we, with our senses, try to think according to the description of scriptures, then, it’s not that we should think of Krishna, we should convince Krishna that we are thinking of Him. When Krishna becomes pleased by our effort to think of Him, then Krishna reveals Himself in our hearts. And when Krishna reveals Himself in our hearts, then, that is not the product of our imagination being exercised.
That is the product of Krishna revealing Himself. So, therefore, you have to understand that my spiritual advancement depends on Krishna’s mercy. I cannot think of Krishna without Krishna.
But, we can surely try to think of Krishna according to the scriptures. And when we do that, then, Krishna reveals Himself. Our senses should be used in the service of the Lord of the senses.
We have talked about this in connection with Krishna transcendence. So, Krishna exists in His own spiritual abode beyond this world. As I said, Sathya Vratam, Sathya Param, Sathya Veer Param is beyond this world.
And in the Christian tradition as well as the Islamic tradition, this understanding is clear that God is beyond this world. In fact, Islam is only among the progeny. They do not consider God to be omnipresent.
They say God is omniscient by His knowledge, but they don’t think that God is present everywhere. But they consider that God, Allah is present on His throne above the seven heavens. Now, like He is formless, how is He present on the throne? It’s just that if you ask questions like this, they will say, Shaitan is around.
You are in the world of the deluding people, and you will be punished by Allah for that. Allah is beyond our intelligence, and don’t ask questions that are beyond your intelligence. Now, it’s one thing that we also say that some things are inconceivable, but what is the inconceivability about that? There is no inconceivability about that.
There is very clear understanding about that. Actually, for example, they don’t accept the idea of karma. Because of this, they get into a lot of trouble.
What is actually? Allah’s test to you. Fine, Allah’s test to you also is the Krishna’s test. But the real problem is not that Allah is testing us, but the real problem is why does Allah test different people differently? Imagine, all of you go for an exam, and everybody gets a different question paper.
And some people get a very easy question paper, some people get a very simple question paper, and you get a answer. You get a And then you for that, He heard from some of the most famous sceptics in European philosophy and he became a sceptic and he said I became a high priest in the temple of scepticism worshipping the deity of what is it? deity of rational nithilism nithilism is everything so he said if you present any philosophy to me I will find out poison this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong it will give me so much joy if you present any philosophy I will find out poison and then he said this went on for almost a year can you tell me what is wrong a sceptic can never tell me what is right understand if I am sceptical I am searching for faults I may be able to find faults in everything but I will never so I told him my latest realisation he said we are all we are all being sufficiently sceptical really, how can we increase our scepticism how can we increase our scepticism yes, we should become sceptical about scepticism yes, I am saying that scepticism can show me the truth it will be like you are walking on a tight rope without any net below I don’t even know if the rope is there I just thought by sceptical argument you can prove that you yourself don’t exist the only thing that exists is your scepticism actually I realised if you go for argument simple criteria I decided if I hear about some philosophy then who is teaching the philosophy at best I will become like that person somebody is teaching a philosophy at best by following a philosophy I will become like the person who is teaching the philosophy I don’t want to become like that safely and eagerly such a disarming sincerity of purpose such a deep concern for everyone that he spoke he invited to the Mantralaya Maharashtra then he was asked to give a talk after the talk there was one critical view Darwinian evolution put all this to the purpose during my I also read about Darwin as in his biography the more his theory became successful the more his personal life became successful he eventually lost all his aesthetic sense he couldn’t relish poetry, he couldn’t relish music he couldn’t relish art he couldn’t relish literature even not relishing devotion even mundane such a thing he couldn’t relish why? everything is a product of movement so he died of fame that’s when I decided to him it cannot be the absolute truth and I don’t want to follow it so we can under his consolation we have forums where you can ask questions and answer them as scepticism you will never arrive at any real understanding when you follow the process by following the process we get realisation we get translation so in the Christian tradition God is considered transcendent and so there is no knowledge of God available to us now before Christianity there were the Greeks and the Romans in Europe the Greeks and Romans they had an idea of the emanence of God emanence means God is present within nature God is present within nature now andantarastra paramanu chayantarastra he is situated in every atom andantarastra paramanu he is God present in nature yes he is present in nature because of his presence in nature only nature is functioning the body sorry the shiva daksha and shiva is the super soul of the body the karaka daksha and shiva is the super soul of the universe and the karma daksha and shiva is the super soul of the mantra it permeates all this and that’s how actually matter acquires the ability to do against it as I was already telling you the Islamic religion does not consider God to be only present and because of that they don’t understand how God manifests as the being when Krishna is present everywhere and because he is present everywhere when he chooses to he can manifest from where ever he wants so when the devotees pray to him if we say God cannot manifest through matter then we are limiting God we get contaminated by our contact with matter matter is so powerful that it can contaminate God also since we are already in matter then how contaminated we will be it’s called idol worship we accept that God is transcendent