Why is the soul’s connection with the Supreme established only through sound – and a specific mantra at that?

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Transcript

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With God, with Krishna Why does it happen? It happens through sound Instead of Any other stimuli Yeah The Fact, the Soul Is spiritual Whereas We have material senses right now So I have eyes I have ears and we perceive things through This so the present State Of the soul is compared To like a dream Now when we are sleeping Quite often The alarm and the alarm is Most often a sound The sound that awakens us From sleep, other stimuli also contribute But one of the most commonly Used stimuli for coming out of Sleep is Sound So similarly The soul That conscious, this is a little Technical but I think that will lead to the point Which I am saying The Upanishadic literature, the Gita Is one of the Upanishads It says that our consciousness Exists at four different Levels So our present level When we are, this is called Jagruti, where we are aware Of the external world Then when we sleep At that time we We are aware We may We dream, sometimes We remember our dreams, sometimes we don’t remember our dreams But we are aware at that time also So we are aware Of the thoughts in our mind, we say we are in a Dreamland, we are aware in the dream So the soul’s consciousness When it comes out Through the body, that is the Waking stage, when the soul’s Consciousness is only in the mind Doesn’t come out at the level of the body That is the sleeping, dreaming state So just as the soul’s Consciousness when it is less expressed When it is more expressed, we say it’s awake When it’s less expressed We say it’s sleeping So like that, when the soul’s consciousness Is at the material level From the spiritual perspective The soul is considered to be asleep And Spiritual sound is the Most evocative Stimuli by which The Consciousness can be Raised to the spiritual level, that means We can be awakened from our spiritual slumber However It is not only spiritual sound Spiritual sound is the most efficacious way But the process of Bhakti Yoga Involves using all our Sensory faculties So for example We eat food Sanctified food And we take, we’ll be having now At the end of the class So this is also a way We experience God Similarly If we go to a temple There are the forms of Krishna So those we see with our eyes So that is also a way We experience God But just as from sleep we can awake Most Commonly and most forcefully through sound Similarly, the same way From our spiritual sleep we can awaken through Spiritual sound And as far as the Many mantras are concerned Yes, there are Definitely many different sounds And any sound that is connected With the higher spiritual reality That means Any name of God from any Tradition has the Potency to awaken Our spiritual side At the same time The awakening Also depends on The Strength of the recollection That is evoked I’ll explain what I mean by this, the strength of recollection I gave the example that We are all in a state of amnesia We are all Suppose There was a wealthy young man Son of a billionaire He is going by a car Through a Hills area And the car slips off and falls Somehow he escapes from the car and he falls at the bottom of a valley At the bottom of a valley Where there are some tribals living Hits his head and forgets who I am Tribals sprinkle some water Somehow he has survived Tribals sprinkle some water He comes to consciousness He asks who are you I am My name is I can’t remember my name It’s scary Amnesia is such a strange thing You know A person May forget who I am And the person will remember how I can drive a car So what we remember What we forget It’s quite strange how it works But the point is When there is amnesia Suppose that person’s father comes to see Where is my son The father comes along And then The father recognises the son The son doesn’t recognise the father So then what is it One of the ways to cure amnesia Is by stimuli The father says this is your watch Do you remember this This was your phone This was your jacket This was your favourite pen This was the car which you loved to drive And then gradually As those stimuli Are As the person is exposed to those stimuli The Memory awakens And now the more Loved an object might be from the previous Life The life which is forgotten Then the stronger will be the recollection that is evoked So like that There are various mantras And there are various names of God Which are all spiritual sounds But many of those Are Many of the names Or many of the sound vibrations They are at various levels of connectedness With God So for example the name God Now it is connected With one attribute God is good Yes he is good, it is connected with one attribute of God But it doesn’t tell us Much positive about who God is What he does, what he looks like So there are various names of God Which are connected with God at various levels of intimacy So this Now this is a whole A whole big subject But the names which are there In this Hare Krishna mantra They are connected with God At a very close level because Krishna Is directly a name of God God has many attributes But all those attributes ultimately make him Attractive, supremely attractive And the name Krishna Refers to His all attractiveness The name Ram Refers to Ram In Sanskrit means one who is a reservoir of happiness So God Is, we are all looking for various things In life, ultimately we are looking for happiness So God is The source of all happiness, God is the source of Everything attractive And nowadays we live in a culture where We look for gender equality So there is in this mantra There is not just gender equality, there is more than Gender equality Now Hara refers to We chant the Hare Krishna mantra So Hara refers to the Feminine aspect of God So there is When we are chanting this mantra We are invoking God as the Divine couple, so Hare Krishna We chant this mantra So there is the feminine aspect of God And there is the masculine aspect of God So we are chanting When we chant this mantra It is a very deep And complete conception of God That is evoked And that’s why this can stimulate our Spiritual memory very fast But although We recommend the chanting Of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra We don’t say that this is the only way If someone Likes to chant some other mantra Someone is connected to some other tradition Where some other names of God are chanted That is also fine The important thing is to connect with God Our goal is not To convert people From one religion to another Because that conversion is horizontal We are Just going from one religion to another religion But The spiritual sound That actually leads not so much to conversion As to elevation We rise from being materialist To being spiritualist So we acknowledge That there are many ways In which people can rise towards God And we have found This way to be Especially efficacious It has helped us to rise fast And we have theological reasons why This is a fast way But we don’t say This is the only way If someone is inspired to move towards God By chanting some other names By chanting some other mantras Yes, that’s fine The important thing is that we rise towards God When Srila Prabhupada Who was the founder of ISKCON He was asked when he came to America Some Christian pastors came to him What do you think about Jesus? So Prabhupada said Jesus is our Guru This was quite surprising for them What they thought, this was a Hindu monk Why is he saying Jesus is our Guru? So Prabhupada said That Jesus had so much love for God That he was ready To lay down his life For the sake of God Anyone who has such love for God He is our Guru So our criteria is How much selfless love For God is there So we chant this mantra And we recommend the chanting of this mantra But what is more important Is not just chanting Of a particular mantra But the purpose that is served by that mantra That is the elevation of consciousness And if somebody is inspired To chant some other mantra To similarly elevate one’s consciousness That is also fine The conclusion which is to be achieved That is rising to a spiritual level of consciousness That is most important Does that address the question? Thank you