Jagat

I linked three articles from the blog to Facebook recently and received numerous responses, comments and questions. The blog set records for pages read over the past few days, so clearly the subject elicits interest from a substantial section of the spiritually inclined, as it should. So I am elaborating on some of the answers I gave in the Facebook comments and posting them here. Will not associating sexuality with spirituality lead to promiscuity? I am ambivalent about the sahaja sadhana you advocate, maybe it will be possible for the very advanced, but not everyone. The possibility of deviation from any prescribed path is always present. Sadhana is about attaining a high level of spiritual purity and it is easy to be misled by thinking you have become very advanced. This then inevitably leads to trouble. But try to understand. What I am proposing is not merely about physical sex. That is why I think I will stop using the term "sex desire" and call it "love des...

I would like to thank the friend who has sent me the following quotes from Bhaktivinoda Thakur's writings and, being concerned about the spread of Sahajiyaism, asked how I would respond. In view of my initiation into the disciplic line of Bhaktivinoda Thakur through his son Lalita Prasad Thakur, my friend finds it strange that I should be promoting Sahajiya ideas and wonders where I got them from. I have previously explained that I did not get them from my dīkṣā guru, but later through my own inspiration, through the grace of the Inner Guru, and from a śikṣā line. As the following quotes show, this would not have met with Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur's approval, nor in all likelihood that of Lalita Prasad Thakur, nor indeed of any of the orthodox Vaishnavas who follow the rāgānugā path in Braj or Gauda Mandal. Although I continue to bow down to all of these mahātmās, by whose grace I have made some small progress in spiritual life and indeed by whose grace I have come to ...

I was thinking about a section of the Bhakti-rasayānam by Madhusudan Saraswati that made a big impression on me when I first read it so many years ago. Madhusudan says that the goal of spiritual practice to transform the mind by reshaping it into the image of God. How does one shape the mind? In this, Madhusudan’s insight into the efficaciousness of bhakti is remarkably modern: he says that the mind is like a piece of sealing wax that softens on being placed near a source of heat; when overwhelmed by an emotion, it takes on the shape of whatever happens to come into contact with it. Then, subsequently, when the emotion subsides, the mind is left marked with formative impressions, just as the wax is after cooling off. These impressions are called vāsanās or saṁskāras in Madhusudana's terminology. We know that childhood experiences leave deep imprints on the subconscious that are indeed hard if not impossible to efface. These are the discoveries of depth psychology, which has i...