Guardiões da
Devoção
Devoção
The Real Name, Shadow and Offense
by Srila Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Maharaja
Devotee: What can help an intellectual to develop sastric vision? Srila Sridhar Maharaj: The other, internal aspect must be awakened, and then intellectualism will vanish. The intellectual cover will vanished automatically. Intellectualism cannot be utilized, but that causeless, eternal wealth within, that must be awakened. Karma-jnana (fruitive work & intellectualism), they are foreign things, foreign covers.
vasudeve bhagavati bhakti-yoga prayojitah
If somehow, with the help of the scriptures and the devotee, His agent, we can develop our devotion, bhakti, then, the proper knowledge, and proper very indifference towards the worldly things will follow. Healthy knowledge, proper knowledge, and healthy energy will follow if the real thing within us awakens. We must be adjusted with that, not this mundane knowledge or energy – that is something else. Energy, the capacity to work, to move, and knowledge, the proper conception; that will be the result of our devotion.
Sambandha-jnana, or to know what is what.
A new world will awaken within us; we will know what is what. Misconception will evaporate, will retire, and the proper conception will evolve from within us – sambhanda-jnana. “I am such-and-such to my Lord – to the Lord’s friends, and to my Lord’s lovers.” We will know all these things; and what sort of knowledge – what sort of movement should be ours in this environment, new environment. In this way, readjustment will come from within. This will have to retire, this knowledge and this sort of energizing will retire; will have to fade away, like darkness.
Misconceptions may be utilized only when the proper conception has come, when the professor will say, “In this way you are misconceiving things. Your proper conception is this; but did you misconceive this thing and that?” “Yes sir, I thought like that. Now, I see the real thing is this. This is not mine, what to speak of mine, I also belong to Krsna, my Lord. I am monarch of all I survey, or everything is enemy to me, apathetic to me. I awoke one morning, and found He was famous. My overlording mentality was wholesale gone, that everything belongs to me. I am not master, rather I am a slave, I do not hold the position of a master, what to speak of having, or possessing so many properties. Even I am a property to another Possessor.” And the calculation must begin from that plane, and a new land will be found.
I do not belong to me; what to speak of the world belonging to me. That aspiration, and that sort of aggression, “I shall conquer the whole world by the atomic energy.” Such a false notion of the suffering human intellect, thinking that he is holding the highest position, challenging God, “God is only a myth, only an imaginary thing.” From that we need a wholesale, radical cure. I do not belong to myself; I have my eternal master.”
But they will say, “This is slave mentality. Gaudiya Math is spreading slave mentality in our country; this is most objectionable. This will destroy the military spirit of the land. So, you can’t be encouraged to spread slavery. That they are nothing, they do belong to Him, the country does not belong to us, no interest, eh! What are they? Go, hence, and live in the Vaikuntha. We won’t allow you to spread this poison into the country.” What shall we say?
We may come down to Bhagavad-gita Krsna supported war, but not from this stand-point.
yada yada he dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata
abhyuthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srjamy aham
(Bhagavad-gita 4.7)“Sometimes, the world is so powerfully attacked by the atheistic influence, that I have to come down again to re-establish some sort of religious environment here. And the dreaded enemies are killed, and the good thinkers are given certain relief in their lives. For this I have to come.”
Devotee: About two weeks ago, a young 10-year-old boy that I knew was killed in an accident. And he shouted, “Krsna, Krsna.” Someone so young, what will be his destination?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Young or old, in the plane of flesh and blood, that is no qualification. The mentality is to be examined. In a particular place we may have some namabhasa. When Gnadhi was shot twice in the chest, from a few yards away, he cried out, “Ha Rama, Ha Rama, Ha Rama.” And he fell, his spectacles were thrown, and within half an hour he had to pass away. But he pronounced “Ha Rama, ha Rama.” He was going to deliver a religious lecture, but his mentality was full of this national progress. It will work in that plane, on behalf of that nation building.
What was this boy’s mentality? Sometimes namabhasa may come, not sudha-nama. A peculiar particular case it is possible. It depends on the mental system, the external acquaintance, and the inner awakening; what is its relation to Krsna.
Before his sannyas, one day when Mahaprabhu was chanting, “Gopi, Gopi, Gopi,” taking the name and one tantric came to give some advice to Him: “Pandita! You scholar, you know the sastra. You were chanting ‘Gopi, Gopi,’ what is the good effect of that? You should chant Krsna-nama. It is mentioned in the sastra, that if you chant the name of Krsna you may get some benefit; we find this in the sastra, many Puranas. But why do you chant, ‘Gopi, Gopi’?”
Mahaprabhu collected a rod and began to attack him: “You fellow, you are coming from the opposite camp. You come to convert the followers of Krsna?” He ran to beat him, to give him a good beating. He fled, and then began a conspiracy in order to give a good fight to Mahaprabhu.
“He may be a child of the noble family, but we are not less. We do not hold a lesser position than He. We are also coming from a good society, and a good family … And He will come to punish us? To beat us? We shall also see how to beat Him.”
Then Mahaprabhu took another course, “korila pippalikhanda kapha nibarite ulatiya aro kapha badila dehete” “Oh, I came to make a drastic treatment of the cold, but I see that what I came to give, that has an opposite reaction. The highest type of medicine I administered, but I find that the patient is such, that this is increasing his disease. Then what to do?”
“I came to work-out relief for the people, and the people they are standing against Me, the well-wisher, the relief giver. Then, what may be the remedy for them?”
Then, He took another course. “I shall become sannyasi. They think that I am one of them. They have come from a respectable family, I am also coming from a respectable family, as if I am one of them. But I must have to take another chance to help them.” So, he went to take sannyasa. He was taking the name of “Gopi, Gopi,” and neglecting Krsna. When He was advised to chant the name of Krsna, He was enraged. What is the underlying thought here? “Krsna, Krsna,” we may chant the name, but the underlying, background purpose, should be judged. But still there may be some effect sometimes, not always.
damstridamstrahato mleccha ha rameti punah punah
uktvapi muktim apnoti kim punah sraddhaya grnanA hog is attacking a Muhammadan, and the Muhammadan shouts out, “Ha rama, ha rama!” Ha rama means, “Oh weh! That is a hog coming to attack me.” But anyhow, that Rama came to him, and it had some influence. It is possible.
Valmiki said, “ma-ra, ma-ra,” he could not pronounce the name of Rama in a direct way. Brahma and Narada came to prove the efficacy of Rama-nama. It is mentioned in the sastra,
rama rameti rameti rame rame manorame
sahasra-nama-bhistallyam rama-nama-varananeA thousandfold result we can find from Rama-nama. “This Ratnakar Dasu, he is the most notorious type of dacoit, a heinous person, let us make an experiment with him.” So they asked him to chant the name of Rama. They tried, but he could nto pronounce it. Then they said, “Chant ma-ra, ma-ra. Go on, repeat it.” And he started, “ma-ra ma-ra-ma-ra-ma-ra-ma-ra-ma-ra. This is just the opposite of Rama. Then, after some time chant the name of Rama.” Then he could say Rama, Rama.
In this way, the mental plane, the attitude with which we are to accept, and the latitude we can conceive, the quality we can conceive depends on that. Because, it is vaikuntha-nama, nama is infinite and the nama is equal to the person whose name it is. The sound aspect, is one and the same with the original aspect of the thing – that is vaikuntha-nama. Here in this world, a man may be blind, but his name may be Padma-lochan, lotus-eyed. But really he is blind. The name and the figure they may be different. But in Vaikuntha, in the infinite world it is one and the same.
Nama-aparadha is there; namabhasa is there. By namabhasa we can get some relief from this worldly bondage; and by nama-aparadha we may be more entangled in this mayic world. Namakshara-bahiraya this physical sound, cannot represent the real name which is supernatural, that is, its own aspect.
eka krsna-name jata papa hari
pataki sadhya nai tata papa koriOne name of Krsna can remove so much ignorance, that a man has got no power to commit so much sin. But what is that name? We are taking that name so many times, but we do not get the result of even one name. So, this ordinary name, this superficial, this mayic name and that name has got great difference. That name is one and the same with Him, and that comes down to our level. We cannot chant it by dint of our tongue or lip. Not lip-deep, but heart deep. And beyond heart also it reaches to the land of Krsna. Krsna comes here; the name Krsna, He comes through the heart on the tongue – that is Krsna-nama.
Krsna, in the form of sound, he is coming down from the transcendental world into my heart, and from my heart, controlling all my nervous system, he is coming to the lip and dancing here. That is Krsna-nama; the initiative is in the transcendental world, and not produced from the physical plane. Spiritual sound has to, reality has to come down to this plane. He can come down, but we cannot go up there easily. He is super-subject, and we are object to Him. So, we cannot interfere with His independence; only by the negative, by our attraction, by our surrender we can attract Him to come down to our level.
atah sri krsna-namadi na bhaved grahyam indriyai
sevonmukhe hi jivadau svayam eva spurathy adah“It is not a production of our senses. When we are with a very intense serving attitude, he Himself comes down attracted by our serving nature, which is out of His grace.” And then He can influence this element and produce sound, and there is dancing there. That is the vaikuntha-nama, real name.
We cannot produce it. Our sound of our production, physical or mental production, that is not He. He is separate, and He can come everywhere, in any form, in any plane, controlling them.
prakrtim svam adhisthaya sambhavamy atma-mayaya
(Bhagavad-gita 4.6)“When I come here, by the force of My internal potency, I remove this external potency’s influence, and appear anywhere and everywhere. The external energy is forced back.”
When the plane is flaying over in the sky, it removes the air, wind, and forcibly passes. So, by removing this influence of the material things, He has to come with His own force here, to appear. “I have got my own potency, and by the power of that potency, I remove this gross potency here, and live and move here, and act here.” The law of this nature cannot apply to Him. He has got special power, with the help of that He subdues the law of this nature, and he comes here and there, whatever He does – with His own potency. Wherever He goes, the laws of nature withdraw from that place, and give Him way.