Srila Sridhar Maharaj: I must feel that I am unsatisfied with the environment of this world: life, death, torture, and all these things, janma-mrtyu-jara-vyadhi. If one is really a sincere seeker of a happy life, then he must try with his utmost endeavour to get freed from this environment and to find another place — home, back to God, back to home. And we are told from ancient times that we have got a home, and that that home is under the cooling shade of the holy feet of our Lord.
Practically, we must take into our programme and in our daily schedule, wholesale, how to get out of this nasty colony and go back to our home, sweet home. And why is it sweet? We are to discuss that with all our intellect. Although intellect is not qualified to know about that, still in the negative way also, we can calculate that the positive is there. In that plane, they are eager to take us in. They are honest. So, we want to live in that plane as our country because they are honest. There it is infinite, and no population will be suppressed there.
This plane here is not worth living in, so we must search for a place worth living in, and in the quest for that land we may pass lives after lives. In this search, there is no loss because where we are at present is undesirable, and if we are sincere in this feeling, then to search for what is desirable is not madness. We may pass lives after lives in search of a sweet home, and there will be no waste of energy in that endeavour. This is not unreasonable; rather, we find that this is finely reasonable.
Sastra and yukti. First is the sastra, revealed scriptures, the positive contribution. Then next, and subservient, is reason, yukti. Logic is subservient, and the positive extension from the world of truth is the real thing. That is the main thing and logic will be subservient. By logic of this domain we cannot know anything about the transcendental realm. Logic may be applied here, but the logic of chemistry may not work in the logic of theology wholesale. Everything has got its own logic. The transcendental world has got its own logic, but this mundane logic may help us partially, as an analogy.
To understand about the five planes of knowledge is infinite. Every unit is infinite. Infinite minus infinite — remaining is infinite! So, the infinite world is such that we are always in a relative position in the infinite. The infinite can never be finished. Everywhere there is centre; nowhere there is circumference.
Mahaprabhu Himself says, «I am hankering for the truth; I have not got it.» Truth is so wonderful, so wonderful an attainment, that Mahaprabhu, the highest, the Infinite Personified, He comes to teach us, and He also says that, «I am only near the verge.» Similarly, Newton told, «I am collecting a few pebbles from the seashore; the ocean of knowledge is extended before my eyes. I know more than you, because you, you fool, you say that I have finished knowledge, but it can never be finished. Only it can be touched, touched in a point.» Newton told like that about the scientific knowledge of this world. So, what about the infinite knowledge, how it should be! With what aspiration and patience and hope we are to approach that world! If Newton in the science of this mundane world can say like that, then we, who always speak of the higher infinite, what audacity do we have to think that by impatiently passing a few minutes or a few days or by stepping forward a few yards, we shall be able to know the Infinite! We are traitors to ourselves; we are not approaching the Infinite! We should not have so much courage and so much sincere hope for the best to get it, wanting only an easy result. We must be prepared. We are out for the Infinite, and we really must want to utilise ourselves, and not for our satisfaction. «Die to live», Hegel told. ‘Ideal reality’ is the name of his philosophy. Really, the ideal is real: ideal realism. Everything begins with idea, and then it takes shape; it materialises.
«He is for Himself», Hegel told, «Everything is for Himself, and we are for Him.» We are for Him. We are to search for our master and not for a servant, not an order-supplier or a canvasser, but master. And the master says, «Prepare yourself for My service to satisfy Me; for My satisfaction come to be available to the complete degree. Now that you have come within, you say that you will be allowed to steal something and go away? No! All rights reserved. All rights reserved: it is not very easy to have rights, to establish rights here in My plane. I am such a master? I am an autocrat. Because I am omniscient, I am an autocrat. You are vulnerable, and I am the guardian, the strong guardian.
«Try to put trust in My universal guardianship first. By understanding that I am your guardian, you will find peace within you. I am your well-wisher.
bhoktaram yajna-tapasam sarva-loka-mahesvaram
suhrdam sarva-bhutanam jnatva mam santim rchchhati
«I am the centre of distribution of goodness; I am over all. If you can think in such a way, then you can find peace within you wherever you may be. I am everything, but I am your real well-wisher at the same time. I have no apprehension from anyone, whoever he is and whatever position he may hold.»
Question: How are we to understand that Krishna is an autocrat, despot, liar, and our well-wisher?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: He is an autocrat because law comes from Him. The autocrat is above law; law emanates from Him. When there are many, there is law. When there is only one, there is no necessity of law. Are you satisfied?
Question: Yes. Then, He is a despot?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Despot, but absolute good! If there would be any check in His despotism, then the world would be the loser, the environment would be the loser. Goodness must have its full-fledged flow. Is it bad? Can there be any objection to that?
Goodness must have its freedom to flow anywhere and everywhere. «The absolute good», we say, then what can we lose by giving Him autocracy? Should the autocracy be with the ignorant and the fools? Should the fools and the mischievous have autocracy? No! The absolute good must have full autocracy. Not that law will go to bind His hand, for then we will be the loser.
Question: Then, He is a liar?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Yes, liar, to entice us because we cannot understand the whole truth, the absolute truth. So, in order to entice us gradually, to draw us forward, He has become a liar. If He is all-goodness, then everything emanating from Him cannot but be good. Defect can only be found in other quarters. He is the owner. Everything belongs to Him. We are encroachers. He is not an encroacher although He shows sometimes in that way. But that is His play, lila, and everything belongs to Him. His lying is good. Whatever He says, is so: «Let there be water» and there was water, «Let there be light» and there was light. With such potential power at the centre, can any lying be there?
Question: If He is all these things — despot, autocrat, and liar — then how can we understand that He is also our ever well-wisher?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Why in this world has He given you freedom? Because free choice is necessary for feeling happiness; otherwise, He is one whole, He is everywhere, with no separate individual position. If you are to conceive any separate interest, separate individuality, then freedom is indispensable. Free cooperation can give you real happiness, but if freedom is snatched from you, you become a stone. Is that desirable? Is there any dearth of stones? Then?
Endowed with freedom, free choice to choose the good and dismiss the bad. Then, should it be thought that everyone will be bad so that then no free choice will be given to anything? Is this desirable? So, realise all these things within yourself and try to adjust with the centre. It is not that we are all right, and we must trace some defect in Him; we are not to foster that attitude. But He is all-good, and the defect is in us. By conferring free choice within us, He has not done wrong. We are to find that out. If there is not freedom of conception in us, we cannot have the position of enjoying happiness.
Question: Then, aslisya va pada-ratam pinastu mam …
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: From so low you are going to so high! Aslisya va pada-ratam pinastu mam. What do you want to say there?
Question: Is it just a manufacturing of our own mentality? Is it just our own conception that He has abandoned me? Or that He is here or He is not here? Or that He is with me or He is not with me?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: He is always with you, but still He is not with you at all. He is always being in the background, and He is not in the positive foreground. I cannot find Him because finding is of infinite character. He is infinite, and my position is very meagre, so I can never be satisfied.
He is with me in the background as the infinite character, but I only have my meagre conception; therefore, just how much can I get of Him? But I know the fact that He is bigger and bigger, whereas I am finer and finer. So, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are both contained — it cannot but be. The infinite character is in the background, and the finite character is before me. Because I have got small existence, how can I take part of Him? What I can have in my possession of Him, that is very meagre. The background says, «This is nothing.» So many others are also there. So many are holding higher positions, and that is also a relativity — relative life. Parts are always within the laws of relativity, including ourselves. In this material plane, we are unsatisfied. If I have got one state, then I want to conquer the whole world, then I want to conquer the whole solar system. There is no end. Even in connection with the physical infinite, we aspire to hold a higher position, and in the spiritual plane it is also such. There is also the realm of the type of satisfaction of losing one’s personality and entering into deep, sound sleep. That is found in Brahmaloka and Viraja. On one side of that we get good, and on the other we get bad. The property for exploitation is infinite, and the realm of service to the master, competition, that is also infinite. To have an individual position necessarily means to be in the environment of infinite: good or bad, healthy or diseased.
Question: What is Brahmaloka?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Brahmaloka is where we lose our material ego, material individuality, but do not get our spiritual individuality. Brahmaloka is the marginal position. It is no man’s land. The other side is in touch with the other realm, and this side is in touch with this plane, something like that. It is the border, the margin between the two. On one side is consciousness, and on the other side is matter. One side is light and one side is darkness. Just as in the evening, light and darkness are combined.
Question: Are Sankar and Buddha citizens of no-man’s-land?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Yes. One is on this side, nearing the land of exploitation, and the other is nearing the land of dedication. Brahmaloka is a little higher than Viraja. Viraja is the watery characteristic of prakrti, whereas Brahmaloka is light, purusa.
Tal-lingam Bhagavan Sambhur. In the Brahma-samhita, it is told that a ray of light is coming to this watery substance. This watery substance is compared to prakrti. Prakrti means this external potency, the potency on which the misconception arises and from which it is born. There, some movement is created, and the ray within is sown amongst the misconceived things without. There is a free combination, and this world emerges from that common material, mahat-tattva.
mama yonir mahad-brahma tasmin garbham dadhamy aham
sambhavah sarva-bhutanam tato bhavati bharata
«O Bharat, material nature, known as pradhana, is the womb into which I cast the seed (in the form of the individual soul which is born of the marginal potency). From that place, all beings headed by Lord Brahma are generated. Aham bija-pradah pita: «I am the seed-bestowing father.» Tal-lingam Bhagavan Sambhur: «And Sambhu is My sense that gives birth.» That may be taken as Sambhu, Siva; the part of the Supreme that is coming within this prakrti and moving it, producing this world in the negative side. The world of lustre must be scrutinised and analysed, and we shall find that so many units are there. So many souls are there, but all are serving units, and I also can be enlisted and allowed to enter there amongst them. In Vaikuntha, the life of the plane of dedication, we can be newborn there and have our position.
Question: Is that the fourth plane and fifth plane of attaining knowledge?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: It is the third plane. The third plane Sankar recommended as the marginal position, and the fourth plane Sri Ramanuja Acharya recommended as the power-controlling, calculative service of the Lord in awe and reverence. Then, the next higher and most all-embracing solid circle is Goloka. Goloka means something like a football: a four right-angled, solid circle where there is no crookedness. There we find that, and that is the deepest plane spreading all through, all-pervading. That is Goloka. It is the all-pervading, all-embracing, and finest plane. That is the plane of love and beauty and automatic service. Automatic, not calculative. That is the plane of Krishna: the most universal, the most capturing, the widest, and the finest. Beauty is reigning there; the queen of love is managing there by Her potency.
The potency there is ahaituky apratihata, causeless and continuous. There is Svayam Bhagavan and Mahabhava. The highest conception of negative and the highest conception of positive, combined, of the highest quality. And that is love and beauty; it is Their reign, Their kingdom. It has been found out, and it is given to us by Bhagavatam and Mahaprabhu, that beauty is controlling. Love is controlling — that land is such. If we are tempted by that, we are to try for that. Only the attraction which originates from that plane can take us there. Agents from that plane come here, float on the surface, and give us an injection so that we can gradually move towards that direction. They give the injection of prospect. Such prospects there are! Will you come to take a certificate to enter into that plane?
It is from that plane, really from that plane, that the sound of the Holy Name emanates. By following that sound, we can be led there, but if an imitation sound comes, it may take us to some other plane and finish there. The sound has got so much depth. Like the homeopathic pill, apparently so many globules are one and the same, but the potency within is all-important.
Vaikuntha-nama-grahanam: not mundane sound, but we are to differentiate according to the depth of meaning in the sound. The word contains what depth of potency within? What depth of goodwill and knowledge? That very fine thing within the sound will exert itself ultimately and not the sound vibration only. The sound containing the bhava, the meaning, that is everything, and that is very important.
Question: The ninth offence against the Holy Name is to preach the glories of the Holy Name to the faithless. Is it an offence to give the Holy Name or a conception of the spiritual realm to the Sankarites, the Saivites, and other impersonalists?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: The field must be favourable for the seed to grow; otherwise, good seed cast onto the stone will be useless. Sraddha, the sisya, and the guru, each must be proper, and those symptoms have been given in the scripture. The healthy sisya attitude (disciple attitude) must be there, and also the field must be cultivated in a certain way. The soil and the seed, they both must be proper, then the crops will grow.
Question: You mentioned once that the Name can become counterfeit like shooting a gun using a blank bullet. Could you explain that please?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: If there is only sound, it is something like many globules of homeopathic pills without any medicine: mere globes. Mere sound, but nothing good within, will do the work of globules of sugar only, but not of medicine. Do you follow? The globules made of sugar, but having no medicine within, will have what effect? If we take that sort of globule of homeopathy without any medicine within, what will be the result? No effect. Similarly, the mere letters of the Name and not the Name Itself, will not be able to produce anything good. Namaksara bahiraya bate is the cover-sound; the sound without any real meaning within it. And because the real purpose and the real good is not behind the sound, it will produce false effect. You are sending letters with enquiry. Are all the points finished?
Question: No! In the last letter I wrote, there is a question about something I think Narad Muni said. How can we understand that the demon can cultivate more intensity than the devotee?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: It is easy to get more intensity in that section of lower purpose. That may be easily granted, but that intensity is of less quality. That takes them only to the verge, that Brahmaloka circle.
Rupa Goswami has harmonised it in his explanation.
yad arinam priyanan cha prapyam ekam ivoditam
tad brahma-krsnayor aikyat kiranarkopama-jusoh
Just as there is the sun and its ray, there is similarly Krishna and Brahmaloka, the ray of His domain. The asuras, they get their final shelter in Brahmaloka, kirana, the world of lustre. And the devotees, they enter into the transcendental cosmic area according to their choice and their innate quality. The gradation is there in His family and in His paraphernalia. A maidservant enters a room by a door and a newlywed wife also enters by the same door, but each occupies a far, far different position from the other.
kamad dvesad bhayat snehad yatha bhaktyesvare manah
avesya tad-agham hitva bahavas tad-gatim gatah
It is easy to capture more intensity in the lower quality, but in the higher order it is difficult to attain. So, easily the lower section get their sanction, but it is hard for the devotee who wants to enter into the harem of Krishna amongst His internal servants; that is a little difficult. It is common sense.
The oneness of Krishna is not all one and the same. One is on the outskirts of the compound, and another is at the very centre of the compound. Difference is there. This is to be discriminated, and Rupa Goswami has given the solution. The solution of originality of harmony has been given by Rupa Goswami in Laghu-bhagavatamrta which is most critical. There it is given sevonmukhe hi jihvadau: to take the Name or do any service must have that one quality present to be named as devotion: the serving tendency must be there; otherwise, the external show is not the real thing. «I am taking the Name, a hundred crores of times», or all these things. It is all lip-deep, and that won’t fetch any higher value. But the depth must be considered. The intensity must be reckoned, and that will lead us to get Krishna. According to that reckoning, we may get to the outskirts of Krishna’s domain or we may be allowed to enter into His confidential realm; this sort of consideration is there. So, this is the way to harmonise things, good and bad. It is not one and the same, because it is, after all, a discriminating, differentiated plane, not a static hazy one. Krishna means differentiation. When Krishna is at the side of Srimati Radharani, He is fullest, and when Krishna is at the side of other gopis, He is one degree less.
In so many ways, His attitude or His presence is measured by the devotees. How much intensity? How much love? There is also differentiation there in Vrndavan — in many ways there is always differentiated character.
Question: Sometimes we feel the intensity very strongly …
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: What to speak of us, we are to understand these principles first. To attain to that position is imaginary and a story-like thing, like a fable. First, let us enter into the area. But we need not be discouraged — grace is there! Grace has got no limit. There is no fear of being bankrupt about Krishna. There is no question of Krishna being bankrupt there! Infinite! But to our faith it is difficult, very difficult, to get that, but His grace is there. Grace is not conditional, for it may come to any place. No one is sufficiently low that he cannot get His grace. Grace is free; it can embrace anyone. The most fallen may be graced, and one who is puffed up with his own qualities may be neglected.
preme matta nityananda krpa-avatara
uttama, adhama, kichhu na kare vichara
Sri Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami, the author of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrta, says, «Nityananda Prabhu is mad in His distribution, in His magnanimity. He does not stoop so low as to consider that, ‘This one is qualified, this one is not.’ Sometimes the flood comes and inundates everyone. His movement is such.» Sri Kaviraj Goswami continues, «Only that chance captured me. It was not by any consideration of my capacity or my fitness, but by some causeless inundation the flood came and captured me: the flood from Nityananda Prabhu, by His grace. This is my position. Shamelessly, I am giving an announcement that I have got a drop of the grace of Nityananda; otherwise, I would be faithless. Faithless! I have got Rupa, I have got Sanatan. That is to say that I have got appreciation for these stalwarts, these devotees. That I have got this and that, I cannot deny, and what I am giving to you in this scripture is not possible without grace. It is high. I can never deny this: that what I am giving here is high. What is given through me in this book, Sri Chaitanya-charitamrta, is of the highest order. If I don’t say so, then I would be faithless and unthankful. But it is not mine; it is extended to me by the higher authorities by their causeless mercy. It has captured me. I have been selected as their instrument, as their means. I feel that what is there is of a very pure and high type, but I cannot claim it to be my own; it is someone else’s property. It is resting in me. It can be withdrawn at any moment. It is so uncertain, but still it is, I can’t deny, and it is the most beautiful thing, that also I can’t deny.» Grace means independence. Grace means separate independence of the giver.