Jagat

In the last three articles, Another look at Aropa and Vatsalya , Worshiping Krishna as the substratum in all beings and The natural loves and prema , I have been responding to Muralisvara Dasa's letter. In these posts we have established several things that beginner devotees find problematic. Indeed, it takes a bit of a paradigm shift to move from the beginning level of duality between God and man in aiśvarya to the eradication of this difference in mādhurya . This is the human dimension of love. To summarize: Without giving up the basic practice of arcanā , one has to cultivate the middle stage of devotion, which is, as we have all read in the Bhāgavatam: īśvare tad-adhīneṣu bāliśeṣu dviṣatsu ca | prema-maitrī-kṛpopekṣā ṁ yaḥ karoti sa madhyamaḥ || One who behaves with love towards God, friendship to those who depend on the Lord, with compassion to those who are innocent, and indifference to those who hate the Lord, is on the middle level of devotional achievement ...

I recently wrote an article in which I began to inquire into samādhi and bhakti-yoga . So, ever since I have been involved with hatha yoga, seeing what it offers to a bhakti-yogi, I have been fascinated by the insistence that many people make that the ultimate goal of all paths is one. Now in one sense, one has to agree, since nothing exists outside of God, and whatever the varieties of enjoyments on offer to us by the three gunas , it is all indirectly and directly interaction with God and nothing else, so how can anyone say that they are not all one? And it is certain that with a little awareness one will see the God present, though hidden, in the material manifestations, the mirages that we go running after in the desert. But the connoisseurs, those who are rasikas of the eka-rasa , want to know the mechanics of rasa and samādhi , because that is the promised land in the direction of which we have been pointed, somewhere beyond the desert. So, generally speaking, the yoga...

The other day I was attending Satyanarayana Dasaji’s Bhāgavata class and something came into my head when I heard it said that we are not these bodies. So I asked him the question, “If a devotee’s body is spiritualized when he takes initiation, then would he not identify with it as the sādhaka-deha ?” Babaji’s answer was no, the spiritual identity is internal, we do not identify with the material body. I told him I would prepare my argument and submit it to him when it was ready. My thinking goes like this: Vaishnavism is all about identity . “I am a servant of God.” That identity exists as a servant in the material body, which once we become sādhakas ceases to be, strictly speaking, material. This is the sampradāya-siddhānta : Since all the senses are engaged in devotional service, the body can no longer be called material. There is only one energy of God, which serves different functions, parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate . The appearance of difference is illusion. So, thi...