Virakrsna

So am I, I have every book, tape, photos and present day important classes. But remember, people have been walking around for thousands of years claiming they are in the last days, especially the bible belt mad Christians of the U.S.

The fact is, we are ALL going to leave these bodies, the last days for all of us starts when we are 50, even that’s not guaranteed. As we have seen, we may leave this body due to a heart attack etc at anytime

So always think of Krishna

weallshineon has this following quote as his signature.

Seems straight forward but there may be differing defintions for the term properly initiated.

Krishna is in our hearts, our rudder is the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Bhagavat-Guru. Until someone I trust comes along, thats the way it will stay!! Lord Caitanya is our rudder

Hari Bol

These are fascinating ideas.

 

Regards

Agree, this is even difficult to understand without realization. Even my local Temple president says now is the present but actually there is no present in the material world, it's always the past, what you reading is always in the past. Wow, the Goloka realm of the eternal present tiime of love and devotion is inconievable while we are trapped in this material body and mind.

As Bhadracharu das glorified Gour Govinda Maharaja, he cited another instance where in spite of extreme physical discomfort with boils in his arm and leg, Maharaja traveled 250 km to preach vigorously supporting namahatta devotees. He was also successful in establishing Bhuvaneswar Bhakti Vedanta Book Trust. Maharaja was also known for his long and deep Srimad Bhagavatham classes.

Such a great personality to associate with

If everyone was interested in nectar like this, then Jahnava nitai prabhu would never close down these sites.

This is story was told to me many many years ago. It was told me by a friend of mine who served Sudama prabhu, who left the planet in 1995.

His leaving was most auspicious with devotees having 24 hour kirtan.

Garlands and Tulasi were placed upon his body and he left to the chanting of the Holy Name.

Immediately upon his departure, an unknown Indian brahmin came into the room, looked around, and then left.

(It is said that if someone leaves their body and an unknown brahmin comes to the room, then that person has gone back home to Godhead.)

Please everyone out there, read Srila Prabhupada’s books and learn what spiritual life is all about. I believe this is also what Jahnava Nitai Prabhu wants also

Hare Krishna, thanks for your concern, hear I am sending one of my favourite incidence of Prabhupada By Rod Davis

Srila Prabhupada: “If you are completely sincere and genuine, then you do not have to find Guru, he will find you”.

An interesting ISKCON pastime I heard recently in Vrndavana about a hippie in 1966 that used to travel around in Ken Kesey’s psychodelic bus dance group, travelling around America handing out Kool-Aid drink laced with LSD and putting on plays in colourful hippie gear that set a trend among the 60’s youth.

Somehow one of Srila Prabhupada’s original Srimad Bhagavatam’s was in a small library section on the Kesey bus and read by such future devotee’s like Mohanananda dasa. One young hippie on that bus however, was not satisfied in just reading the amazing book Srimad Bhagavatam; he was determined to find the author of this wonderful Vedic text and was prepared to travel all around India until he found this amazing Sadhu if he has too.

When the Bus reached New York, Kesey and the Pranksters visited Leary in Millbrook, NY, at his psychedelic retreat called “The International Federation for Internal Freedom.”, it was founded when Leary was fired from Harvard University for doing research with his students on the hallucinogenic drugs LSD-25 and Psilocybin.

This young hippie however, stayed on the bus, kept reading the Srimad Bhagavatam, and never did met Leary at that time. Frankly he did not really care, he had had enough of LSD and realized God can NEVER be found in a pill and decided to go on a spiritual quest to India in search of the ’swami’ who wrote the Srimad Bhagavatam.

He then decided to leave the merry pranksters and leave for India; he bought a ticket and was on his way to the Kennedy Airport. On the way however, he had sometime to spare and went by Tompkins Square Park to see what the ‘acid head hippies’ were up to. As he went by in the taxi he saw this big crowd of hippies dancing, he was curious and told the taxi driver to stop, then went over, investigated, and found an elderly Sadu leading the chanting of Hare Krishna. He watched with some curiosity as he danced with the other hippies and wondered if the Sadhu he would eventually find in India, who wrote the Srimad Bhagavatam, would be like this Sadhu. Anyway the kirtan stopped and this Sadu began reading from the same book he was reading on ken Kesey’s Bus.

Now this young hippie just was even more determined to seek out the writer of the Srimad Bhagavatam seeing this Sadu also reading it. Eventually the reading stopped and this young hippie went over to the Sadhu and said

‘Sir, I am also reading this book also and I am now just on my way to the airport to fly out to India, I am determined to search all over India for this Sadhu’.

The elderly gentlemen Sadhu chuckled to himself and said to the young hippie

‘You do not have to go to India, I am here in New York, I am the translator of this book the beautiful Srimad Bhagavatam” The young hippie was without words; he was ecstatic and had tears in his eyes and fell at his feet. Then Srila Prabhupada, the elderly Sadu said to the young hippie” Just see, if you are completely sincere and genuine then you do not have to find Guru, he will find you”

Hare Krishna! All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

Srila Prabhupada explains that all of us are all looking for a way to establish our original eternal relationship with Krishna as follows - “Established means re-establish. It (our perpetual ’svarupa’) is already established. We have got different types of relationship. That is called svarupa-siddhi. When you are perfect in spiritual life, you will understand automatically. Nitya-siddha krishna-bhakti. When one becomes perfectly spiritually realised, then he understands what is his relationship is. This relationship is eternal”. December 7, 1974, Bombay.

 

Here are a few quickies I heard from some senior disciples. I'm not a real good story teller so please overlook my shortcomings. These stories were told during a “Jayananda Night” a few years back, and so are from my memory as best as I can recall.

 

Jayananda Prabhu was known to always be working on the sankirtan vans. As such his clothes got all soiled from the grease and he had oil under his fingernails and on his face. At one point, after working on a vehicle, he walked into the temple room to listen to a lecture by Srila Prabhupada. When he entered the room Srila Prabhupada stopped his lecture and told the entire audience “Just see, Jayananda looks just like Lord Caitanya”. Jayananda blushed purple.

 

Jayananda also hated to spend the temple’s money and as such tended to wear rags for clothes (very worn out clothing with holes and grease stains). At one point a senior devotee told him that all the devotees looked up to him, and as such it wasn’t appropriate to look so unkempt. He told Jayananda to take $30 or so, and go to the store to buy some new clothes. Jayananda refused. Finally, this senior devotee dragged Jayananda to the clothing store. Jayananda tried on a pair of pants and the other devotee said that he should buy them. But Jayananda didn’t want to spend his spiritual masters’s money on himself. So instead he told his friend that they should just try walking out of the store with him wearing them.

 

As they exited a cop pulled him aside. Immediately Jayananda confessed. He said he couldn’t bear to spend his guru’s money, they were beggars and needed the money to pay the rent and facilities. The cop took them to the police station, all the while Jayananda explained that they were poor, with no money, and he couldn’t bear to buy new clothes for himself. The cop brought him before the Judge, and again Jayananda explained his case, fully admitting guilt, but explaining that the devotees were poor, and he couldn’t spend this money on himself when the devotees were barely maintaining their temple. After hearing the whole case, the judge set a fine, and from the back of the court room, the cop who arrested Jayananda, came forward with the money to pay this fine.

 

Once during an all night book distribution marathon, the devotees were getting very tired but everyone wanted to continue pushing forward during this marathon period. Jayananda pulled into a coffee shop and bought a bunch of cups of coffee for the devotees. One devotee asked “Should we offer this coffee to Krsna?” Jayananda said “No way, Krsna doesn’t drink coffee”.

 

Jayananda also brought out the best in every one, inspiring them through his own example. In one case, he made friends with an elderly lady who owned a flower shop. She would always ask “When is the next Janmashtami, Jimmy?” because she like to decorate the deities with flowers.

 

Every year in order to help get the permits for the San Francisco Rathayatra, he would bribe the city commissioners with loads of pies. There was one black lady on the city council who especially like “Jimmy” as he was known to them. One day, another devotee came to the council meeting to get the permits. This black lady asked “Where’s Jimmy?” and she was informed that Jayananda Prabhu had passed away from cancer just recently. The whole city council was so upset that they cancelled the rest of that days proceedings in his memory.

 

Anyways, I hope I told these well enough. Please feel free to add any that you have heard.

 

Gauracandra

Beautiful pastime, has anyone got anymore wonderful stories with the devotees of Lord Krsna?

Sometimes one who is very alert so as not to commit sinful acts is victimized by sinful life again. I therefore consider this process of repeated sinning and atoning to be useless. It is like the bathing of an elephant, for an elephant cleanses itself by taking a full bath, but then throws dust over its head and body as soon as it returns to the land.

 

When Parīkshit Mahārāja inquired how a human being could free himself from sinful activities so as not to be forced to go to hellish planetary systems after death, Śukadeva Gosvāmī answered that the process of counteracting sinful life is atonement. In this way Śukadeva Gosvāmī tested the intelligence of Mahārāja Parīkshit, who passed the examination by refusing to accept this process as genuine. Now Parīkshit Mahārāja is expecting another answer from his spiritual master, Śukadeva Gosvāmī.

 

Śukadeva Gosvāmī, the son of Vedavyāsa, answered: My dear King, since acts meant to neutralize impious actions are also fruitive, they will not release one from the tendency to act fruitively. Persons who subject themselves to the rules and regulations of atonement are not at all intelligent. Indeed, they are in the mode of darkness. Unless one is freed from the mode of ignorance, trying to counteract one action through another is useless because this will not uproot one’s desires. Thus even though one may superficially seem pious, he will undoubtedly be prone to act impiously. Therefore real atonement is enlightenment in perfect knowledge, Vedānta, by which one understands the Supreme Absolute Truth.

This is an important point bija reveals.

Very interesting reading of the devotee's realizations on this difficult subject matter.

What is nitya baddha BODYLESS consciousness? What is the Impersonal Brahmajyoti or Brahman?

The Impersonal Brahmajyoti or Impersonal Brahman is not a place where one goes; it is not some empty place or void, it is rather a dormant state of bodilyless consciousness the marginal living entities or souls in the baddha-jiva condition, go once they are free themselves from the ethereal and biological material bodies, provided by Maha-Vishnu FROM within his mahat-tattva creation.

However this place is also just a further dream state seperate from the mahat-tattva the marginal living entity enters (as baddha-jiva dream manifestation) and is also a temporary state of consciousness one enters.

This motionless individual inactive dreamless baddha-jiva consciousness within the impersonal aspect of the Bramajyoti, can also be active or energetic in the mahat-tattva (material creation)

This nitya-baddha inferior self, or the secondary dreaming state of the marginal living entity, is actually a bodyless condition of the jiva until it is provided bodily form or a vessel for expressing their desires, provided by Maha Vishnu within his dream creation.

This nitya-baddha bodilyless consciousness is the inferior dreaming condition that all marginal living entities can activate if they choose to use their free will to ‘dream’ of self importance and indulgence.

Srila Prabhupada- "There are many energies, but they have been divided into three principal ones: the external energy, the internal energy, and the marginal energy. We living entities are the marginal energy. Marginal means that we may remain under the influence of the external energy or we may remain under the influence of the internal energy, as we like". From "The Journey of Self Discovery - His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

In other words, the marginal living entities secondary conscious projection is known as the baddha-jiva soul within the maha-tattva.

The marginal living entity actually has two aspects of consciousness; one is 'eternal form'of sat, cit, ananda, Vigraha or ones perpetual Krishna Conscious bodily form (nitya-siddha) that is imperishable and never fades away, due to being eternally etsablished within the 'eternal present' of Goloka, while the other is a non-Krishna conscious dreaming bodilyless state (nitya-baddha)

The living entities, as their nitya-siddha body, are properly situated within the Lord’s internal energy as a perpetual bodily servants that is known as ones perpetual 'Svarupa'.

When the marginal living entity misuses their independence and try to act as enjoyers or lords; they are transferred to the material energy or mahat-tattva, not as their nitya siddha body, but as a secondary dreaming consciousness called nitya-baddha.

The Lord has three basic energies: internal, external and marginal.

The living entities don’t belong to the marginal energy, because they ARE the marginal energy or tatastha sakti, that is embodied in their original full constitutional foundation, which is expressed as nitya-siddha in their innovative perpetual position.

Tatastha simply means the abilty to choice the land and the ocean or Goloka and the mahat-tattva. The The marginal is therefore known as "tatastha sakti"

The nitya-baddha consciousness is the result of the jiva-tatastha executing its dormant free will to choose between Krsna and their own plans of existence. When the baddha-jiva lower self enters a dormant inactive state of consciousness, they can only enter the impersonal aspect of the Brahmajyoti, ONLY after being liberated from the mahat-tattva, which is really and factually the Impersonal aspect of the Spiritual Sky or Brahmajyoti, or their own individual consciousness.

That means, although we are properly situated within the Lord’s internal energy in our ‘svarupa’ body eternally beyond mundane time and space, we always have the propensity to misuse our independence and try to act as enjoyers or lords that immediately disqualifies us from being aware of our ‘svarupa’ body, and instead try to lord it over Krishna’s material energy that is under the jurisdiction of the sleeping and dreaming Maha-Vishnu.