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muralidhar_das

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Everything posted by muralidhar_das

  1. Will you admit now that this statement of yours is wrong? Srimad Bhagavatam use the word indragopa to describe a reddish insect that can see with your eyes. An indragopa is not a microscopic creature that can only be seen with a microscope.
  2. You act as if you have given a proper analysis and refutation of the things I was saying. Twice, I asked you to show me evidence that a bacteria has the qualities of a soul, a person, but you didn't do that. You neglect the major issue, or maybe you ducked it. And your reply message was simply oozing with the obvious feeling of antipathy that you feel for me. I can live with that. No problem. But I don't like people to misrepresent what I am saying. Let me say, in my own words, what I have been aguing all along. A soul is a conscious, individual entity. A soul has the capacity of thinking, feeling and willing. As far as I can see, bacteria don't appear to be people. They are not thinking, feeling people with free will. Little bugs such as ladybugs and glowworms and the indragopa are individual souls. But I don't believe bacteria are.
  3. Yes ants are smaller than ladybugs and the Veda rishis would certainly have observed this. Perhaps when they were talking about indragopa it is just a generic name like "bugs". There is no doubt, however, that people can see an indragopa bug because the Bhagavatam verse above and the earlier Ramayana verse both describe how these red bugs were visible on the grass after monsoon rains. JNDas lives in a part of India where this does not occur. Maybe he should move on from the place he is at now, but somehow I think he is very fixated on remaining in his present state.
  4. Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.20.11 haritā haribhiḥ śaṣpair indragopaiś ca lohitā ucchilīndhra-kṛta-cchāyā nṛṇāḿ śrīr iva bhūr abhūt SYNONYMS haritāḥ — greenish; haribhiḥ — which is green; śaṣpaiḥ — because of the newly grown grass; indragopaiḥ — because of the indragopa insects; ca — and; lohitā — reddish; ucchilīndhra — by the mushrooms; kṛta — afforded; chāyā — shelter; nṛṇām — of men; śrīḥ — the opulence; iva — just as; bhūḥ — the earth; abhūt — became. TRANSLATION The newly grown grass made the earth emerald green, the indragopa insects added a reddish hue, and white mushrooms added further color and circles of shade. Thus the earth appeared like a person who has suddenly become rich. PURPORT Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī comments that the word nṛṇām indicates men of the royal order. Thus the colorful display of dark green fields decorated with bright red insects and white mushroom umbrellas can be compared to a royal parade displaying the military strength of a king. ========== Insects that are big enough to see. I guess this settles the matter once and for all JNDas.
  5. JNDas my Guru Maharaj said there is one sun in each solar system, each brahmanda. You may think a brahmanda is a "universe". You may think there is one sun in the universe. You may believe that to remain faithful to your Prabhupada you have to believe there is only one sun in the universe. As you wish, so it will be. You many believe a woman's brain is half the size of a man's or a thousand other things that have nothing to do with spirituality. Think whatever you want, since the jiva has free will. But for my part I like to think that a great missionary of Gaudiya Vaishnavism such as Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada came to the west through the power and grace of Sri Krishna Chaitanyadeva so that the Sri Krishna Sankirtana could spread to every town and villge. He didn't come to teach medicine or science.
  6. The indragopa bug is something that can be seen. Your idea that the indragopa, the smallest form of life, is microscopic is not supported by any scripture. Where in the Vedas is there any reference to cells, bacteria, or microscopic organisms? The idea that living bodies are composed of cells and that such things as bacteria exist is a discovery of European science. European science deals with physical nature; the Vedic scriptures are dealing with spirituality. Two different topics.
  7. Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary: <!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> Quote: <table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td style="border: 1px solid rgb(102, 102, 102); padding-left: 3ex; padding-right: 3ex;" bgcolor="#e0e0e0"> <dl><dt>⋙ indragopa </dt><dd>○gopa or ā mfn. Ved. having Indra as one's protector RV. viii, 46, 32 </dd><dd>• m. the insect cochineal of various kinds </dd><dd>• a fire-fly (in this sense also indra-gopaka) </dd></dl></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> According to Rig Veda, an insect that is herded (gopa) by Indra. A red insect that appears after heavy rain: <!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> Quote: <table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td style="border: 1px solid rgb(102, 102, 102); padding-left: 3ex; padding-right: 3ex;" bgcolor="#e0e0e0"> Flying quickly to meet their longed-for cloud, a jubilant row of herons looks like a long garland of white lotus flowers adorning the sky. With its new grass sprinkled with new-born red indragopa insects, the earth looks charming like a woman with a green blanket speckled with red conchineal wrapped tightly around her waist. -Valmiki Ramayana, Kishkindha-Kanda, chapter 1 (Sugriva Detects the Presence of Rama) </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> According to sage Valmiki, here in the Ramayana, the indragopa is a red bug that is big enough to be seen on the green grass that grows after monsoon rains began. It is not a microscopic bacteria - a thing that can only be seen with the aid of a microscope.
  8. In fact I am very well aquainted with cochineal and coccinelle for several years given the fact that coccinelle is a red colouring used in sweets. I regularly check packets of sweets my children want to eat to see if the red sweets contain coccinelle. Yes I did a quick copy and paste from a dictionary. Please excuse my sloppy scholarship. Perhaps I should be more scholarly and more submissive to the authority you think I should follow. But in fact I feel it is proper service to Srila Prabhupada if I give up being a blind-faith swallower of "vedabase data" and instead make an effort to try and find out the Truth. But then there are some people who think it is best if everyone blindly accepts every bit of data in the database, and every statement spoken by the various sages of the past. Such as the proposition that people who are keeping long hairs are rejected as disciples by a true Guru. Anyway, this is a digression. Here is the indragopa again from another source: Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary </dd> </dl> I hope Monier Williams is pukka enough for you. Q: What does the word “indragopa” mean. A: It is an insect that is herded (gopa) by Indra. That is, an insect that appears after heavy rain. Q: What colour is the indragopa insect? A: Scarlet red. Q: How can it be said that the indragopa is red? If an indragopa is microscopic or the size of a bacteria or a single human cell then they are too small to see. But as the Ramayana says, these red bugs on the green grass that were seen in South India by the Rishi look like a green blanket speckled with red cochineal. <o:p></o:p> In regard to your statements about how the Veda Rishis would have observed smaller creatures than ladybugs, so why would they say that ladybugs are the smallest creatures... My answer is that the Vedas are poetry and they were using ladybugs as a poetic symbol of small insects generally. <o:p></o:p>
  9. Well, what can I say. Lots of quotes from Srila Prabhupada saying that the different cells in a body are different living beings. Srila Sridhar Maharaj was quite clear, saying there is one soul in a living human body. I guess this is like the situation where you have lots of quotes where Srila Prabhupada says that souls fall down from Vaikuntha. Adios, amigos.
  10. There are 8,400,000 species of life according to the Vedas. aquatics, birds, men, plants are on the list. I haven't seen "bacteria" listed anywhere, even though there are a collosal number of species. The fact is, the Veda rishis did not describe bacteria. Or nuclear fission. Or DNA. These topics are outside the area of research of those Mystic Yogis. Bacteria are colored blue, eukaryotes red, and archaea green. Relative positions of some phyla are shown around the tree.
  11. I think the rishis probably were talking about little bugs like ladybugs when they talked about "indragopa" bugs. They were mentioning little bugs like these because those bugs were the smallest living things they knew about. And again, since you deigned to ignore my question about whether bacteria germs are people I will put this question to you again. And for your information I don't think the Veda Rishis were idiots. I think Veda Rishis presented information about how souls can attain Narayana - that is the purpose of the Vedas. But he Veda Rishis did not write science texts! Additionally, my Guru Maharaj said that there is one soul in a living body, and quoted the following verse in this regard Quote: <table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td style="border: 1px solid rgb(102, 102, 102); padding-left: 3ex; padding-right: 3ex;" bgcolor="#e0e0e0"> as the sun alone illuminates all this universe, so does the living entity, one within the body, illuminate the entire body by consciousness. (Gita 13. 34) </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> The translation is by "your" acharyya. Your Acharyya says "the living entity, one within the body, illuminate(s) the entire body" **************************** Bhagavad-gītā As It Is 13.34 yathā prakāśayaty ekaḥ kṛtsnaḿ lokam imaḿ raviḥ kṣetraḿ kṣetrī tathā kṛtsnaḿ prakāśayati bhārata yathā — as; prakāśayati — illuminates; ekaḥ — one; kṛtsnam — the whole; lokam — universe; imam — this; raviḥ — sun; kṣetram — this body; kṣetrī — the soul; tathā — similarly; kṛtsnam — all; prakāśayati — illuminates; bhārata — O son of Bharata.
  12. indragopa [gopa] a. m. n. protégé d'Indra — m. natu. zoo. coccinelle. indragopaka [-ka] m. natu. coccinelle | natu. vers luisant.
  13. The first Gaudiya Math temple in the West was opened in the 1930's in London and it is still there now, in the same place, 70 years later.
  14. JNDas here is a puzzle for you. Could you please show me some evidence that bacteria and blood cells show signs of being conscious individual souls? The capacities of a living being that we associate with "consciousness" namely thinking, willing and feeling, please demonstrate how bacteria exhibit these capacities. According to the Brahma Samhita the smallest form of life is an indragopa creature; and in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad it states that the indragopa is a scarlet insect - not a single cell organism. Below is a picture of an indragopa - a ladybug or coccinelle http://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/11.html
  15. I am not trying to say trees have no souls What I tried to say is that the Devata of a type of tree is controlling the many bodies of a type of tree, in the same way that Indra is controlling all the storms that are scattered all around the world. The soul in a body of a man is very tiny, according to the Vedas. But that soul can control the fingers and toes of its body. That is the idea I have about this issue. Thus, in my OPINION, based upon what I heard from my Guru, the goddess of smallpox is indeed the soul of all smallpox germs and there are not millions of souls in smallpox cells. AIDS in fact may be one "ghost" or it may be another form of the goddess of disease. Guruvani has already posted the quote from your Srila Prabhupada saying that the blood corpuscles get energy and go on their way throughout the body. The blood corpuscles are not individual people and neither are germs of bacteria. Bacteria are parts of the body of the earth, or parts of the "power" or shakti or a particular Deva. Like I said, I am not totally sure about all this, but this is my view or OPINION. And as far as books go, I believe "no book is without its errors" (to quote Thakur Bhaktivinode)
  16. Suchandra I can respect your feeling of faith in His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada. But please be mindful that there are other devotees in this world who have faith in other Vaishnavas besides your Srila Prabhupada. Some of these Vaishnavas I know were chanting Hare Krishna and following Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur for 70 years. Iskcon is not the only Sampradaya.
  17. Vigraha is saying that all souls are eternally liberated. But the scriptures say there are two kinds of souls, nitya-siddha and nitya-baddha, or in other words eternally siddha souls and souls in illusion. Vigraha (Gaura Gopala dasa) says the nitya-baddha souls are all nitya-siddhas. This is just plain stupid
  18. In regard to banyan trees and other plants, I have often wondered if a soul in the body of a tree really does have an awareness of the boundaries of its own body. When I said that the spirit of a tree may be like a ghost I was feeling this metaphor is appropriate. The ghost can haunt many bodies at the same time. I feel this metaphor is close to what I feel may be happening in nature. If you get a handful of leaves of the "african violet" plant and put it on a table and then take a chopping knife and cut the leaves up into hundreds of pieces then each of them will grow into a new plant, if you nurture them. Do you think souls suddenly get born when you chop off the individual eyes of a potato, since each of the eyes can grow and become a new plant?
  19. I can't understand the connection with Mayavada. Sorry. From one point of view only Krishna exists. He is everything. Every Thing. But he is savisesha-brahma and not nirvisesha-brahma. Krishna has features and potencies and the jiva souls are part of one of his potencies. Those jiva souls are eternal individual entities.
  20. I agree that there are souls in tree bodies. But I'm a practical person theist. Think about this... if you get a branch of a banyan tree and put it in some moist mossy soil it will grow roots and become another tree. My contention is that the single "ghost" or devata of the banyan tree may be simultaneously present in many trees we see growing in different places. When we talk about the universal form we are not talking about a sat-chit-ananda body that is eternal. Rather, we are talking about a conglomerate body that encompasses (and surpasses) the beings in the whole of creation. The hairs on the body of the universal form are, in my view, jivas, not Visnu. Does that answer your question?
  21. Sri Sridhar Dev Goswami Maharaj has described that every thing has five features associated with it: 1) the particular thing (object), 2) the devata, 3) Guru, 4) Baladeva, and ultimately Svayam Bhagavan 5) Sri Sri Radha-Krishna. In the materialistic conception of life we see an object such as a man as a particular physical object. A man is a particular thing. But where do the boundaries defining my human body begin and end? My body is a state of flux - food, breath, the light entering my eyes, the words going out my mouth - my body is simply a part of nature and it is always Maya and never Me. The devata refers to the concept or universal which is controlling any particular thing. Every object has an idea (concept) associated with it. Seen from the plane of consciousness that concept is called a devata. This idea is the concept of "doggishness", "slug consciousness", "fish consciousness" etc. These ideas push animals to act out of "instinct" so that they dog barks instinctively when it feels threatened, and defecates when it feels that kind of urge. The force of the devata manifests through individual dogs and fish so they act instinctively and without showing any intelligence. But we human beings are not controlled by instinctive thoughts in the way animals are. The instinctive knowledge (devata) is something we can overcome through using our intelligence. Moreover, we are told by Srila Sridhar Maharaj that we should not be concerned with seeing how the devata is existing within objects and controlling objects, since the desire to get knowledge of the devatas, the desire to get an understanding of the mechanics of their Powers (siddhi), is a manifestation of the Maya shakti. Above the devatas is Guru. In Srila Sridhar Maharaj's teachings about Sankhya, he says Guru indicates the pure consciousness (buddhi) that enables the jiva to see things as they really are. The consciousness of Guru descends within us and enables us to see the things in nature with divya-jnana, or proper vision. When we see nature in the way the suddha-vaishnavas see it, we see how things are in Reality. At that time, when I know what is real and what is false, I become able to be my own Guru, according to Srila Govinda Dev Goswami Maharaj. Baladeva is the spiritual manifestative energy known as sandhini shakti. When one acts under the direction of Sri Guru in a mood of full surrender he automatically comes in contact with Baladeva who is controlling the whole of Nature Beyond this is the lila of Radha Govinda. I cannot go there now. I'm in the stage where I'm trying to see Reality through the grace of Sri Guru.
  22. What about this: <!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> Quote: <table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td style="border: 1px solid rgb(102, 102, 102); padding-left: 3ex; padding-right: 3ex;" bgcolor="#e0e0e0"> SB 2.10.23: When there was a desire to perceive the physical characteristics of matter, such as softness, hardness, warmth, cold, lightness and heaviness, the background of sensation, the skin, the skin pores, the hairs on the body and their controlling deities (the trees) were generated. Within and outside the skin is a covering of air through which sense perception became prominent. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> the hairs on the body and their controlling deities (the trees) were generated deities means devas. deities means individual souls who are the contollers of a particular category of things. indra has an influence over storms that are moving in the skies all over the world, a tree deva has an influence over all the trees of his category. <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->
  23. Shaligram hailed Vrinda devi saying: In the beginning there were no physical bodies and no material world. Then the eye to see things evolved from consciousness. Then the ear to hear something outside ourself. Then the feeling of space and air. When the skin that feels SENSATION manfested, the trees also became manifest from Brahma (Brahman). Souls sleeping in Brahman that were interested in experiencing the feelings felt by trees entered into the differentiated form of different categories of trees. They are the tree devas. They are different from specific individual trees in the same way that a flute song is different from the individual notes of the song. In this way, the world evolved within time and space.
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