Many devotees have the dream of coming to live in Mayapur. That’s the place where Lord Caitanya inaugurated his sankirtan movement, and also the biggest Vaishnava community in the world. It is the spiritual capital of the world, so to say. Mayapur is described as being no different from Vrindavana, and in fact, all the holy places are present here. There are expansions of Kurukshetra, Naimisharanya, and even Jagannatha Puri, everything within walking distance.
The problem in coming to live in Mayapur is how to maintain oneself here. If one is prepared to live a renounced life, is always possible to find a hole in the wall somewhere and live by distributing books to the pilgrims or doing some menial service, but for the ones who have families or are not yet prepared for a life of renunciation things are of course more complicated.
One of the most controversial philosophical questions one can ask is how the jiva falls into the material world. At first, it may sound like a perfectly fine question, that a visitor could ask on a Sunday program, but it is actually extremely difficult to answer. There are many simple explanations, of course, but they are all flawed. It’s very difficult to understand this question while we are still in this material world.
Do the jivas fall from the spiritual world? Were we in Krsna Lila before falling into this material world, or have we just fallen here from the Viraja river, and that’s our first taste of Krsna Consciousness? Have we ever met Krsna before?
In several past articles, I mentioned the predicted golden age of Lord Caitanya. Srila Prabhupada comments about that in several passages, but there is a general misunderstanding that this is not based on the sastras, or that is just his personal opinion. That’s not true.
Some expect to find some special book, or at least a few complete chapters describing all details of the expected golden age, but that’s not how the sastras work. Most topics in the sastras are presented indirectly or merged into other information on the same verses. That’s why the only reliable way to understand the scriptures is through the explanations of self-realized souls. Without such guidance, one will miss even the most basic points, such as the fact that God is not impersonal, or that Bhakti is the highest path.
The process is that we get the conclusions from a pure devotee, and armed with such conclusions we study the sastras and try to understand the verses under this logic. One who studies the scriptures under the assumption that God does not have a form, for example, will interpret the verses under this optic, and thus conclude that it is indeed true, while another who starts his studies under the assumption that God has a form and executes pastimes, will find many passages that reinforce this conception.
Srila Prabhupada mentioned a Golden Age of 10,000 years in a number of conversations. When directly asked by Allen Ginsberg where such golden age is mentioned in the Vedas, Srila Prabhupada answered that it is mentioned in the Puranas.
The Jaiva Dharma has a very inspiring passage for householders:
“Kṛṣṇa has given you mercy. Make your families into Kṛṣṇa’s family and serve Kṛṣṇa. Follow the order that Mahāprabhu taught the whole world. In the world there are two situations: being a household and being renounced. As long as one is not qualified for renouncing, one should remain as a householder and serve Kṛṣṇa. Mahāprabhu was an example of the householder Vaiṣṇava for the first twenty-four years of his pastimes. For the remaining twenty-four years of pastimes, he was an example of a renunciate Vaiṣṇava. The householders should define their conduct by seeing Mahāprabhu’s household life. In my opinion, this is what you should do. Do not think that as a householder you cannot attain the supreme goal of Kṛṣṇa prema. Mahāprabhu gave his mercy mostly to householders. Even the renounced Vaiṣṇavas pray for the foot dust of those householders.”
In the book, this instruction was given by Paramahansa Babaji to Vrajanath, an intelligent and dedicated boy who was hearing about devotional service from him for long. Vrajanath was already in an advanced platform of devotional service. However, when pressed by his family Vrajanath decided to ask his spiritual master what path to take in life, he received this instruction.
Some believe that certain parts of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings were just “preaching strategies”, or deliberate lies told with the goal of making his preaching sweeter to certain audiences. The list includes points such as Prabhupada’s insistence that the soul has an eternal relationship with Krsna and such a relationship is simply forgotten when the jiva falls into the material world, giving brahmana initiation to ladies or saying that they could eventually also accept disciples and so on. The list is constantly growing.
This attitude of interpreting instructions from Srila Prabhupada and raising doubts about the honesty of the founder-Acarya sound to me dangerously close to the offense of interpreting and minimizing the glories of the holy names (arthavāda).
In the Mahabharata, we hear the amazing story of Abimanyu, the son of Arjuna and Subadra, who hold his own when surrounded and simultaneously attacked by most of the senior Kaurava generals. Abimanyu was eventually defeated and killed, but only after several hours of fighting and after destroying a considerable part of the Kaurava army and killing several generals.
The reason for this sacrifice couldn’t be nobler. The Kauravas attacked with a especial formation called chakravyuha, where the army was organized in the form of an unstoppable chakra, that had the goal of penetrating in the Pandava army and killing or capturing king Yudhisthira. Arjuna was the only one who knew how to enter and leave the formation, but on this day he was lured to a distant part of the battlefield and was not there to counteract it.
Abimanyu had heard from his father how to enter the formation, but he didn’t know how to escape it. Bhima offered to cover his retreat, by following him and keeping the opening so he could exit the formation safely. After all agreed on the details, Abimanyu fought very valiantly on his chariot, breaking the formation open and attacking it from the inside. Bhima followed him accompanied with the other Pandavas (except Arjuna), but they were stopped by Jayadrata, who displayed unparalleled prowess and was able to defeat not only Bhima but all the four Pandavas in their attack. As a result, the chakravyuha closed behind Abimanyu and he started his heroic struggle.
It may look now something very distant from our reality, but there was a time when Germany was separated into two different countries. East Germany was part of the Soviet Union, under authoritarian rule, while West Germany was a democracy and integrated into Europe. The division between the two countries was symbolized by the Berlin Wall, which divided the city into two. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the wall was quickly dismantled and people from East Germany suddenly became free to go to the other side. Many were so fed up with life in the Soviet Union that they just took their Trabant cars, drove to the other side, and just abandoned them, starting a new life, never to return. The Trabant was a really funny car. It was even worse than the Ladas people were driving in Russia. It was a tiny and uncomfortable car and propense to many mechanical problems. It was practically impossible to keep a Trabant in perfect working condition. However, good or bad, these were the only cars people had. When the opportunity arose to get out, they just drove the cars they had, without caring about the discomfort or problems. When they would get to the other side, they would just abandon their Trabants and start their new lives. Similarly, there is a clear division between the material world and the spiritual world, and life here is not very comfortable. We also have very uncomfortable cars (the material body) and they give us a lot of problems. However, these are the vehicles whe have. Therefore, when the opportunity of getting out appears, we should just take it, without caring much for the discomforts of other problems the car may have. If on the other hand, we want to first fix all the problems of the car before doing the trip, chances are we will never go, because there is going to be always something wrong with the car. We can imagine that if someone in East Germany would first try to somehow would want to first transform his Trabant into a nice car, he would never go anywhere because it was not really possible. Similarly, we have different problems in this life. If the body is not sick, there is some financial problem, political problem, or something else. The more we try to reach a comfortable situation, solving all these problems, the more we become entangled, because the situation is not really solvable. For each issue we can solve, two new problems appear. The idea of Krsna Consciousness is therefore to use the body and the current situation we have now as a vehicle to go to the other side, just using it the way it is since if we first try to fix the situation, chances are that we will become distracted and end up never going.
One topic that I have been considering for some time is the role of experimentation in Vedic knowledge. Of course, when we hear the words “experimentation” and “Vedic knowledge” together in the same sentence, the first reaction is to immediately argue that it is nonsense since we hear that Vedic knowledge is axiomatic and therefore there is no scope for experimentation. However, there are a few points to consider.
The first point to consider on this topic is that Vedic knowledge can be divided into two main categories: spiritual knowledge, about the soul, God, and our relationship with Him, and different branches of material knowledge that are taught in the scriptures, such as Ayurveda, cosmology and so on.
Naturally, when we speak about spiritual knowledge, experimentation is neither possible nor desirable. It’s not possible to make experiments with the soul or with God, since they are by definition objects of a transcendental nature that are outside the realm of test and experimentation. It’s not possible to measure or photograph the soul as we would do with some material object. The only way to get knowledge about transcendental topics is to follow the process given by Krsna Himself: to accept a bonafide spiritual master from a school that goes all the way back to Krsna Himself and to study the spiritual science from him.
However, we are also alerted that spiritual knowledge should not be accepted blindly. The disciple is supposed to ask relevant questions to properly understand the subject. At the same time, he is supposed to see the results of his spiritual practice in the form of freedom from material desires and the gradual appearance of love for Krsna. If one follows a so-called spiritual process for many years and as a result sees that his material attachments are increasing instead of diminishing, it’s a sign that there is something wrong with his practice, or with the process itself.
Srila Prabhupada explains that Krsna Consciousness is a scientific process. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, scientific method means “principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses”. In other words, a scientific process is a process where there are certain steps to be followed that lead to a reproducible result. Krsna Consciousness is therefore scientific because everyone who follows the process attains the same result, which is love for Krsna. It is something reproducible that is supposed to work in every single case.
So, in one sense there is no scope for experimentation, but at the same time, the process in itself is supposed to lead to a certain result. If one tries to follow the process and achieve an opposite result, it means something is wrong with his practice.
Apart from transcendental knowledge, the Vedas also explain different branches of material knowledge, such as astronomy, and Ayurveda, as well as social organization, psychology, and other branches of material knowledge.
These different branches of knowledge teach us how to do things in the best way, so we can get good results: maintain our health, have a prosperous family life, maintain a prosperous society, better understand the present and future with the help of astrology, and so on.
Just as spiritual knowledge, these different branches of knowledge are not supposed to be accepted blindly. One is supposed to study under a teacher that is well-versed in the subject, see the knowledge working in practice, and then be able to apply it. At the same time, his application of knowledge is supposed to bring good results. If a doctor is killing his patients instead of curing them, this is a sign that he is doing something wrong. The original knowledge may be correct, but by the result we can easily understand that the application of this particular doctor is not proper.
What makes many of these branches of spiritual knowledge especially difficult to master is that in many cases there is not a surviving parampara. There are many schools of Ayurveda, for example, but one will be hard-pressed to find one that has an unbroken parampara that goes all the way to Lord Danvantari. The same goes for Vedic astronomy and most of the other areas that I mentioned.
When Srila Prabhupada was discussing the model of the Vedic Universe for the ToVP with his disciples, they tried to find some Vedic astronomer that could explain the Universe as described in the Puranas. They could not find it. Most of the understanding we now have on this topic came from disciples of Srila Prabhupada who could find bits and pieces of knowledge from different sources and gradually use them to form workable theories. They had to rediscover a knowledge that was long forgotten, so to say.
In such a process, experimentation can play a role, because the knowledge is supposed to describe observable phenomena. If one studies verses about the orbit of the sun, for example, but comes to a model that doesn’t reflect the way the sun moves in the sky, it’s probable that his interpretation is incorrect. If one uses formulas described in the Jyotish sastras to calculate the position of planets, but the result is different from what we see in the sky, it means he is not understanding it correctly. Similarly, if one applies some treatment described in the Ayurveda, but it leads to a worsening of the condition of the patients being treated, it probably means that there is something wrong with his understanding or application.
Apart from Ayurveda, astrology, or astronomy, another good example of this line is Varnasrama. We have descriptions of how Varnasrama is supposed to work in the scriptures, but we don’t have any example of a working Varnasrama society we can study, nor any school with a parampara that goes all the way back to the times Varnasrama was current in society. As a result, we need to create a working system from the bits and pieces of knowledge we have available. One may think he found the secret sauce, but his theory will have to be tested and show results in practice. Just because we are creating a model based on the bits and pieces of knowledge we get from the scriptures, doesn’t automatically means the model is correct.
In other words, experimentation in this case works as a system of checks and balances that can help to detect improper understanding or application of Vedic knowledge. Without such a system of checks and balances, we can easily end up with stereotyped formulas that don’t work in practice, but that we try to push as axiomatic knowledge just because it is “vedic”. As a result, instead of attracting intelligent people who can further understand and refine our understanding of Vedic knowledge, we end up with fanatical people that further deviate it.
In my humble opinion, this is a very important point to consider, because fundamentalist applications of knowledge from the scriptures can often bring very bad results.
When Srila Prabhupada was present on the planet, he initiated about 5,000 disciples. At the time it was something unprecedented, not only because he accepted so many disciples (something that is discouraged by Caitanya Mahaprabhu himself, being very risky), but especially because he accepted disciples from amongst the sinful mlecchas and yavanas of the west. Considering that the guru has to assume the sinful reactions of his disciples, we can only imagine how dangerous it was.
Another problem Srila Prabhupada had to face was how to train his disciples. Traditionally, gurus would have personal contact with their disciples and train them day-to-day. The disciple would live with the spiritual master for at least one year before accepting initiation and would continue personally associating with him for a long time afterward. By this continuous contact, the guru could not only teach the disciple but correct any shortcomings he could display.
The Bhagavad-Gita 3.33 brings up an interesting reflection: “Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for everyone follows his nature. What can repression accomplish?”
Much could be discussed about the role of repression in spiritual life. On the one hand, one has to live a regulated life and avoid actions and habits that are harmful to himself and others. One should not at very least avoid using drugs, sleeping with other’s wives, lying, stealing, and so on. In this sense, a certain dose of repression is essential not only in spiritual life but for civilized life in general. When everyone is encouraged to be “free” and follow every whim of their minds and senses, chaos issues.
Especially when one is starting in the spiritual practice, some repression is necessary, because at this stage he is still not in a spiritual platform and he has to change his habits in order to follow the spiritual process. However, as Krsna points out in this verse, repression is not a good solution in the long term. Repression is just like holding our breath. One can hold his breath for a minute or two, but one can’t hold his breath forever. The idea is that one may hold his breath for a few seconds when he is passing through an underwater passage for example, but he is expected to breathe again as soon as he reaches the other side. Only a fool will expect to be able to hold his breath indefinitely.
