Jagat

I realize that I went on and on about ahaṅgrahopāsanā and āropa and concluded by identifying the latter with sādhāraṇīkaraṇa and mañjarī-bhāva . I realize now that it might not have been so clear. So I am going to try to explain mañjarī-bhāva in the light of this concept of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa . Sādhāraṇīkaraṇa is generally defined as the "universalization" or "generalization" of emotions, but I think that this terminology is obscure, when the perfectly good concept of "identification" comes closer to our understanding. The word "identification," which is useful in understanding both ahaṅgrahopāsanā and āropa , is here a term particular to psychology, "to regard oneself as sharing characteristics with another person." Unfortunately, this definition from the Oxford dictionary does not do credit to the unconsciousness of such a process, which is in fact what happens when one reads a novel or watches a film and identifies with one or m...

I responded to a posting on Advaitaji's Madan Gopal site , where I made reference to a Bengali verse from Kunja Bihari Das Babaji Maharaj's  Mañjarī-svarūpa-nirūpaṇa . Advaitaji, always wary of Jagat's every word, stated that this was sahajiyā-vāda . Of course, I have a hard time seeing any difference between orthodoxy and sahajiyaism, so maybe he was right. At any rate, I made a further comment which Advaita decided not to post. We had a little followup discussion on email, which Advaita thought of posting as a separate blog, but later had second thoughts about. Anyway, here is the brief posting that did not make it. For an advanced sādhaka, as I said, even trivial phenomena are inducements to ecstatic feelings and experiences of rasa. Less advanced sādhakas are indeed asked to observe restrictions on their hearing and chanting, i.e., put a Radha and Krishna label on everything. This is the meaning of the verse Kunja Bihari Dasji quotes near the end of  Mañjarī-svarūpa-ni...