muralidhar_das

I agree with you here Prabhu. The Bhagavatam is not a book about geography or science. It is a book that explains Krishna.

Brhadbhagavatamrtam 2.2.186 Sanskrit commentary by Srila Sanatana Goswami, in which he states that souls who are merged in Brahman retain their eternal spiritual form (svarupa) forever The words "vigrahaM kRtvetyuktir" mean make a body. The liberated soul makes a body he can render service with - he thinks "I want a spiritual hand so I can offer a flower" and a spiritual hand comes out of his consciousness. This is what Sanatana Goswami says. The liberated soul makes "krtva" a body through contemplation (yukti, yoga). Click Krtva to see what it means.

Translation of Srila Sanatan Goswami's commentary to verse 2.2.207 of Brhadbhagavatamrtam which you can see in the attached image. The anadi-siddhas, the souls arising from Brahman and attaining sarupya mukti such as the 4 kumaras never got given any swarupa by any guru or by Visnu. That is absolutely clear from the Bhagavata. Their siddha form transformed into a devotional body. In the Priti Sandarbha, Sri Jiva Goswami writes that a liberated soul can manifest many bodies (as in the case of Tulasi who exists in many places) and that the liberated devotees does this BY HIS OWN WILL.

Srila Sridhar Maharaj translates the word "brahmanda" as solar system. Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada translates the word "brahmanda" as universe.

I don't have any information about "why" Srila Saraswati Thakura printed Sri Krishna Samhita two times, and why he promoted it. But my personal reason for discussing it here is not that I am a fundamentalist follower of "Sri Krishna Samhita" who is trying to fight against "tradition". It is simply that I feel the things written in Sri Krishna Samhita show us that it is not wrong to examine things from our "modern" perspective since we are all modern age people.

But according to your grand thesis all souls are in Vaikuntha and have never left Vaikuntha! Can't you see the absurdity of this philosophy you are preaching? Are we in Vaikuntha or are we in illusion in Maya? I think I'm in Maya but I've learned enough from Guru-Gauranga to understand that your theoretical ideas are illusions.

Can't you read?

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"> Originally Posted by muralidhar_das Srila Sanatana Goswami wrote in Sri Brhadbhagavatamrtam (1.2.195): vaikuntha vasino hy ete kecid vai nitya-parsadah pare krsnaya krpaya sadhayatvemam agatah Translation: Some residents of Vaikuntha are eternal associates of the Lord; others have attained the transcendental world by Krishna's mercy after having practiced sadhana. ------------- If souls are "always in Vaikuntha" then these words of Sanatana Goswami make no sense. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> What relevence has this verse of the Gita got to the statement I quoted by Sanatana Goswami?

You have foolishly taken one line of text and quoted it out of context. I feel you (whoever you are) are acting very dishonestly. You read a purport like this one in Brahma Samhita, you pick out a line that you like, and then make a claim that the statement you quote supports your concocted philosophy, then you broadcast this deception. Look at the purport again. It says jivas come from the tatastha shakti - that is their origin. Stop this dishonest behavior. There are souls who are liberated and merged in God's impersonal aspect called Brahma (brahman). The "nigarbha-yogī" atmarama souls who adore God in his impersonal aspect are listed as "santa bhaktas" by Sri Chaitanya. <!-- 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"> Originally Posted by Śrī Caitanya Madhya 24.164 ei saba śānta yabe bhaje bhagavān 'śānta' bhakta kari' tabe kahi tāńra nāma "These thirteen types of yogīs and munis are called śānta-bhaktas, for they render transcendental loving service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the neutral stage. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> They are impersonalists. They worship Krishna in the form of "formless Brahman". They can fall down into Maya. But the bhaktas in Vaikuntha never fall down. <!-- 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"> Originally Posted by Śrī Caitanya Madhya 24.155 sagarbha, nigarbha, — ei haya dui bheda eka eka tina bhede chaya vibheda TRANSLATION "The two types of ātmārāma-yogīs are called sagarbha and nigarbha. Each of these is divided into three; therefore there are six types of worshipers of the Supersoul. PURPORT The word sagarbha-yogī refers to a yogī who worships the Supersoul in the Viṣṇu form. The nigarbha-yogī worships the Supersoul without form. The sagarbha and nigarbha yogīs are further categorized: (1) sagarbha-yogārurukṣu, (2) nigarbha-yogārurukṣu, (3) sagarbha-yogārūḍha, (4) nigarbha-yogārūḍha, (5) sagarbha-prāpta-siddhi and (6) nigarbha-prāpta-siddhi. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> Such a great mass of souls who are of this temperament are existing, this mood of adoration of the Formless God, that compared to them the number of liberated devotees is very small. <!-- 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"> Originally Posted by Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 6.14.5 muktānām api siddhānāḿ nārāyaṇa-parāyaṇaḥ sudurlabhaḥ praśāntātmā koṭiṣv api mahā-mune TRANSLATION O great sage, among many millions who are liberated and perfect in knowledge of liberation, one may be a devotee of Lord Nārāyaṇa, or Kṛṣṇa. Such devotees, who are fully peaceful, are extremely rare. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->

Srila Sanatana Goswami wrote in Sri Brhadbhagavatamrtam (1.2.195): vaikuntha vasino hy ete kecid vai nitya-parsadah pare krsnaya krpaya sadhayatvemam agatah Translation: Some residents of Vaikuntha are eternal associates of the Lord; others have attained the transcendental world by Krishna's mercy after having practiced sadhana. ------------- If souls are "always in Vaikuntha" then these words of Sanatana Goswami make no sense.

Prabhu I'm not trying to be evil and I'm not aiming to make you feel bad. Thakur Bhaktivinode said 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"> In the common-place books of the Hindu religion in which the rajo and tamo-guna have been described as the ways of religion, we have descriptions of a local heaven and a local hell; the Heaven as beautiful as anything on earth and the Hell as ghastly as any picture of evil. Besides this Heaven we have many more places, where good souls are sent up in the way of promotion! There are 84 divisions of the hell itself, some more dreadful than the one which Milton has described in his "Paradise Lost". These are certainly poetical and were originally created by the rulers of the country in order to check evil deeds of the ignorant people, who are not able to understand the conclusions of philosophy. The religion of the Bhagavata is free from such a poetry. Indeed, in some of the chapters we meet with descriptions of these hells and heavens, and accounts of curious tales, but we have been warned somewhere in the book, not to accept them as real facts, but as inventions to overawe the wicked and to improve the simple and the ignorant. The Bhagavata, certainly tells us a state of reward and punishment in future according to deeds in our present situation. All poetic inventions, besides this spiritual fact, have been described as statements borrowed from other works in the way of preservation of old traditions in the book which superseded them and put an end to the necessity of their storage. If the whole stock of Hindu theological works which preceded the Bhagavata were burnt like the Alexandrian library and the sacred Bhagavata preserved as it is, not a part of the philosophy of the Hindus except that of the atheistic sects, would be lost. The Bhagavata therefore, may be styled both as a religious work and a compendium of all Hindu history and philosophy. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> His words, not mine.

Why ask me? Ask Bhaktivinode Thakura. Ask him next time you wave incense at his feet.

Wow.... Please see that there is no need for you to feel disturbed. Bhaktivinode's statements take us to the point where we need to be. We need to see how things really are. The scriptures are books to help us attain spiritual understanding. They are not books about material topics.

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"> Originally Posted by Thakura Bhaktivinode In the common-place books of the Hindu religion in which the rajo and tamo-guna have been described as the ways of religion, we have descriptions of a local heaven and a local hell; the Heaven as beautiful as anything on earth and the Hell as ghastly as any picture of evil. Besides this Heaven we have many more places, where good souls are sent up in the way of promotion! There are 84 divisions of the hell itself, some more dreadful than the one which Milton has described in his "Paradise Lost" . These are certainly poetical and were originally created by the rulers of the country in order to check evil deeds of the ignorant people, who are not able to understand the conclusions of philosophy. . </td> </tr> </tbody></table> KB, here is the whole paragraph. I assumed you had already seen this book. Parts of it are printed in the beginning of "Search For Sri Krishna". Here is the entire paragraph: <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->

KB, you can download the entire Bhagavat Lecture here: www.mandala.com.au/books/bhagavata.pdf Thakura Bhaktivinode said that the hells described in the scriptures are QUOTE :: certainly poetical and were originally created by the rulers of the country in order to check evil deeds of the ignorant people :: UNQUOTE

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur presents another point taught by Thakura Bhaktivinode. The avataras of Visnu appear in the world to attract different souls with different stages of "evolutionary growth". (not Darwin's evolution, of course, but a stage of evolution of consciousness). <!-- 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"> Originally Posted by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura Professor Albert Suthers: -- In the scriptures of India, adorable Deities have been represented as creatures of the lower creation like fish, tortoise, boar, etc. Is this approved by the sense of decency of civilised humanity? Some again are in favour of supporting such representations as allegorical symbols. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura: -- Imagination does not find a place in Vaishnava Philosophy. In it or in the Shrimad Bhagavatam which is the highest scripture for all men in the universe has been described the topmost ontology about God, million times better than what the most civilised races of humanity five thousands years old, nay, as old as several millions of eras, can conceive of even in imagination. The eternal transcendental forms of God that descend or are manifested according to the gradual evolution of the aptitude for offering service by the totally purified soul quite aloof from the regions of the body and mind, when man becomes the worshipper of the ultimate Reality at the loftiest stage of civilisation, are never the idols of imagination or allegories like unreal things manufactured in the mental factory of man or like the imaginary animal deities of the barbarians such as the tiger-god, serpent-god, horse-god, etc. The worship of the Vishnu Incarnations, like Fish, Turtle, etc., is not fabrication of imagination like that of one of the five deities of the Henotheists formed out of imagination, based on the coinage of set speeches like the imaginary conception of the forms of Brahman (as in the Panchadasi of the monistic school). The Henotheists do not admit the Transcendental Personality of Godhead. The sects of figurative allegorists like the Theosophists are not real theists, cherishing, as they do, doubt against the Personality of God and for that reason they want to curtail god's Omni-potentiality and his Transcendental Names, Appearances, Attributes, Sports by means of allegorical description. The Vaishnava philosophy or that of the ever-existent religion of India has never supported the atheistic doctrines of such professors of imaginary forms of Brahman, or figurative allegorists. It is about the doctrine of pure and real Avatara-vada (cult of Incarnation) that the philosophy of the ever-existing Indian religion has said. As the pure and real doctrine of Avataras of Fish, Turtle, etc. of the Vaishnavas is not a kind of imagination of the barbarian taste, nor the idolatry of the Mayavadins on the basis of their aphorism of forms of Brahman, imagined for the convenience of practicants, nor the allegorical description of the psychists, so it is not the Anthropomorphism (i.e. representation of the deity as having human forms), as devised by the so-called civilised section of the people, nor Therianthropism (i.e. representation of one's tutelary deity in a combined man-and-beast form), nor even Apotheosis (i.e. elevating man to the dignity of deities). These are respective types of the idolatry of the menatal speculationists of the inductive school. In imitation of Mayavada, the evil fruit of the Indian civilisation, Anthropomorphsim was invented in Greece and Rome and Therianthropism in Egypt, etc. When the new doctrines got access in those countries along with the commodities produced by the Indian civilization which were based on the imagination of the anthrophysites like the Indian Mayavadins who exalted man or beasts to the status of God with the attribution of divinity to them calling jivas and the poor as 'Narayana' with gratification of the senses in the back ground, then the mental speculations of those respective countries adopted the cheap vitiated Indian dogmas and, labeling new names on them, passed these doctrinal commodities into the forum of religious tenets. But the true Vaishnava philosophy of India never indulged in any such doctrine based on imagination. Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has refuted all such imaginative doctrines or idolatries and rejected both Anthropomorphism and Therianthropism. He vouchsafed the Shastric teaching, viz., that he must be a heretic and sinner who looks upon God Narayana as equal to deities like Brahma, etc. Anthropomorphism i.e., representation of the Deity with human form and attributes, resembles the tenet of the Bauls of Bengal attributing divinity to the head of their sect, professing, as they do, though wrongly, to have perceptorially descended from Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Such tenets are the mental imaginations of atheists like the Bouddhas and of the Bauls as above, running contrary to the teachings of Shri Buddha-Vishnu and Shri Chaitanya-Vishnu respectively. The Mayavadi sect too has adopted similar principles. The really scientific philosophy of the Shrimad Bhagavatam and the preachings of Shri Chaitanya Deva have, of course, accepted the human bodyas the Divine Manifestation; but that human body is not the creation of anthropomorphism, nor of the Baul doctrine, but it is the eternal, transcendental Sachidananda Body, the Cause of all causes, the highest Sportive Entity. When the human soul can acquire the wealth of all the sciences in perfection, then only is opened the door of the foremost mystery of true science. According to the Vaishnava Philosophy, the Sportive Manifestation of God is of two kinds. One kind is the creation of the material and spiritual universe and its systematization with inviolable rules. The school of intelligent empiricists can to a certain extent experience this type of God's Sportive Manifestation. The second kind is the Descent of God's Transcendental Sport in this created universe. It is the jivas who are the attendants in His Sports. They become attached to matter having deviated from their own essential nature as the result of their desire for enjoyment. But when again the soul of a jiva, gains true wisdom of the transcendental region of God at the feet of a representative of His, i.e., a true devotee His, he begins to get back his pure essential nature gradually unfolded, and God's Transcendental Eternal Forms appear as the objects of his worship according to the comprehension of His service in the graded evolution of acceptance of His protection, self-surrender or theism. So in such a case there remains no room, even in the slightest degree, for any form of imaginative doctrines of the so-called civilised or uncivilised human minds, whether apotheosistic, anthropomorphic, henotheistic, theosophic, theriomorphic or therianthropic. The real, eternal and transcendental Divine Forms reveal themselves to the pure souls according to the nature of their serving mood in the evolutionary growth there. The only cause of these Divine Descents is the intense Mercy of God towards jivas. In Europe the theories of physical evolution of Darwin and Lamarck have been considered. But it is in the Vaishnava Philosophy alone that we see the fully scientific and real conception of each eternal and transcendental Divine Form for worship by the freed souls according to their evolutionary growth of serving mood. We can notice the different stages of animal life from the invertebrates to the fully grown human beings. These stages have been classified by the Indian sages of a scientific outlook in ten orders, viz, (1) the invertebrate, (2) testaceous or shelly, (3) vertebrate, (4) erectly vertebrate (as in the combined form of man and beast), (5) mannikin, (6) barbaric, (7) civilised, (8) wise, (9) ultra-wise and (10) destructive. These are the historical stages of jivas. According to the gradation of these stages as indications of evolution of the serving mood of the jiva soul, there are manifested the ten Incarnations of God, viz., Matsya (fish), Kurma (Turtle), Varaha (Boar), Nrishmha (Man-Lion), Vamana (Dwarf), Parasu-rama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha and Kalki, as worshippable Deities with eternal transcendental Names, Forms, Attributes and Sports. Those who have acquired a true knowledge about Incarnations with a thorough culture thereof, will be able, with the grace of the philosophers trained in the school of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, to appreciate the ontology of Shri Krishna, specially the intense sweetness of His Sports at Braja (i.e. Vrindavana and the neighbourhood.) </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote -->

Srila Bhaktivinode Thakura writes in Sri Chaitanya Siksamrtam 6.5: <!-- 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"> Originally Posted by theist I don't care if it is all just a literary vehicle by which Krsna chose to tell His story through some inspired transcendenatlists. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> And earlier, I said:

This is the point of view ISKCON people give when they are confronted with this. If you want to see things in that way, go right ahead. But how about this statement from The Bhagavata Lecture which is not prefaced by any disclaimer: This is Thakura Bhaktivinode's personal point of view.

It's a fact that I have displayed a six arm form in the past. In a dream I once saw myself as a spider - I was wandering around my web and looking for someone to bite. When I awoke I realized I must have been a spider in some recent past lifetime. ================================= Changing the subject... If you take the view that the Bhagavatam is describing "material" events in the material world, you are as much a heretic as someone who says the Bhagavatam is "mythology". The people living in India 5,000 years ago had a very different world-view from the view of "reality" of modern day people. Dreams, myth, magic, hypnotism, superstition, group-think and other psyhic elements that effected the people would have caused them to see the world around them in an entirely different way from the way we see "the world". I personally believe that the vision of reality Sukadev had is closer to reality than the view of things that people like me who are conditioned by the modern-day environment are seeing. Sukadev knew that if you say a mantra with proper pronunciation you can invoke psychic "forces" such as Indra, Surya or Visnu, and thus Sukadev's words are pregnant with mystical content. But at the same time if we try to reduce Sukadev's words to "stories" about material history we will never get the true message he was presenting. I don't have time to type out the things that are written in Sri Krishna Chaitanya, Volume 2, by proessor Sanyal, discussing this point. But Professor Sanyal goes to great lengths to explain that Saraswati Thakur strongly preached that the Bhagavatam is not a book about "history".

More from Sri Krishna Samhita:

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"> Originally Posted by muralidhar_das I guess I'm different from most people on this forum. I have a background in science. Years ago I went to university and learned the science of Psychology. ......................... </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END TEMPLATE: bbcode_quote --> You are right there.

I guess I'm different from most people on this forum. I have a background in science. Years ago I went to university and learned the science of Psychology. I studied the usual stuff: statistics, metrics, theories of the self, physiology, biology, etc.. After that I was lecturing at the university for a while - psych, media and technology. You talk about how evolution has been debunked. Believe that if you like.... Looking at the picture I've attached, I feel quite certain that some men are closely related to apes. Notice the way Her Royal Highness is looking at the big monkey. Does she love animals? Maybe not this one.

Which devotees are you talking about here? Srila Bhaktivinode Thakura? The people who follow his line of thought?

Further to this, I know Mahaprabhu existed as a living being and because of the fact that reincarnation is a fact of life I know that Mahaprabhu is still existing somewhere. People saw Mahaprabhu manifest 4 arms, manifest as Balarama, manifest as Radha-Govinda. Bob Marley once sang, "the live god is a living man". My God is a living person, I have no doubt he exists and I'm sure he is not a fairy tale because as Krishna says in the Gita, "For the soul there is neither birth nor death.... souls just change bodies just like changing clothes".

This is exactly how I feel