Reality Check

Reality Check, Saturday, April 18. 2015

IN Thailand, incognito with Bhakti Sudhir Goswami

Well, folks, it's been quite a ride.



We started out in Mexico at Christmas and traveled to Cancun, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Thailand, Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, Cambodia, over to China, Los Angeles, California and back to Mexico. I met a lot of wonderful people who enriched my life and learned some valuable lessons. Along the way, I've written 267 blog-posts with varying degrees of insight and originality.

In Angkor Wat

That said, I've just been through some really tough times health-wise. It's not clear how much more time I have left. When you're younger you have all kinds of different little aches and pains, but when you get older, they gang up on you. It's too personal for me to list all the different slings and arrows I'm being hit with; but it adds up. It's not easy being a truth-seeker in this world. It all happens so fast that most folks just try to grab what they can and survive before it's all over. It's been nice knowing you.

 Not everyone gets the chance to use the human form of life to make inquiry into higher things; and a lot of us get stopped before we get too far: mostly by our own egos. We get sidetracked into bad habits and nonsense. I'm no exception. I'm not sure if after all this, I've really made any progress at all. I like to think I have and that I'm closer to the truth today than I was before. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the negativity.

Sometimes when I hear negativity I say, "don't curse the darkness, better to light a candle." But sometimes the candle burns out,  the cold wind blows, and the matches are wet.

I don't know how much longer I can keep this going. I think someone must be reading this: I have over 13,000 pageviews. I'm convinced I have a  good version going, but I'm sacrificing time and energy to writing and hope that some readers out there are getting some light. Maybe some of you can light a candle out there and I will know that the message is getting out.

Otherwise I'll just keep scraping words together and hope they catch fire somehow.

Prometheus

The greatest gift a teacher can give his students is not knowledge of a subject matter. The real thing is fire. It's crazy to let your students play with fire, but if you give something less you're cheating them. And yourself. So, I've dedicated a lifetime to giving people fire. Sometimes they went crazy with it. Sometimes they turned around and burned me. It doesn't matter. Whenever I discovered fire, I tried to share it with others. Prometheus gave fire to the mortals. After seeing that the animals had been given various gifts by the gods, Prometheus had pity on the humans. The birds had flight, the tigers had massive jaws, the horse had speed, but the humans only had their wits. As he saw them going naked through the forest, freezing to death, Prometheus had pity on them. He stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans. He taught the humans how to use fire: to cook, to forge iron and gold, to make weapons and tools. We've been going strong ever since.

But Prometheus was condemned for giving godly fire to mortals; he was exiled from Olympus and punished for his sins. Chained to a rock for all eternity an eagle picks his intestines with pointed beak. Every day the eagle slowly gnaws his liver away. At night, his liver is restored by immortality, only to be torn  again by the eagle.

Prometheus punished.

What Prometheus did was dangerous and for this he had to be punished. It's dangerous to empower others with ideas.
Consider Socrates. Another "Promethean" thinker.

1. The trial and execution of Socrates took place in 399 BC. Socrates was trialled on two charges: corrupting the youth and impiety (in Greek, asebeia). More specifically, Socrates' accusers cited two "impious" acts: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities".

Socrates: A Dangerous Thinker

 When he was about to leave this world, he said, "You, therefore, O my judges, ought to entertain good hopes with respect to death, and to meditate on this one truth, that to a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead, nor are his concerns neglected by the gods."

Socrates accepts his punishment: Death by Hemlock poison.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to leave this world yet. Like Socrates I've done my best to speak the truth. And like Prometheus, well, I've been doing my best to give out some fire: I've been blogging steady every day since November.

 I started with my own spiritual odyssey.

My journey goes on. I'm a talented story-teller. When I was a kid my family moved a lot. I was the socially awkward nerd with glasses and a book. I've spent thousands and thousands of hours reading: from greek myths to stories of ancient egypt, to the Puranas. I never got tired of reading. Reading makes the writer and the story-teller.
At some point I became a teacher. When I first came to Mexico I was teaching English in a little primary school called the Vasconcelos.


Sometimes the children would get bored and ask me for a story. I told them the Ramayana. They loved it so much I made it a regular feature of my class. Once a week on Fridays I would tell Ramayana, stretching it out to make it last, savoring the actions of the characters, the smell of pine needles in the Panchavati forest on the banks of the Godavari. Sometimes when I'm walking down the street here in San Miguel de Allende, ex-students come up to me. Now bearded and in their 30s they say, "Don't you remember me? It's little Juanito from Second Grade." I scratch my head and look at the lumbering giant before and try to remember the innocent face he once wore so many years ago when we were looking up words in the dictionary together. "Juanito! Of course! you sat next to Toshio the Japanese boy." He grins. "That's me. I always remember the stories from Ramayana," he says and walks away, waving.

Ramayana

Now I'm telling stories from the Mahabharata on the blog. I'm trying to take my time and give them the attention they deserve. The problem is, for me to tell the story, I have to get in my time machine and go back 4,000 years to where Bhishma lived in Hastinapura.

Mahabharata

It's not easy to return in time and space to Vedic Hastinapura. I pray to Vyasadeva to help me. But sometimes I'm in midflight, there's a knock at the door and I have to answer. It's usually a man with a burro loaded with firewood or organic earth for plants. A wheelbarrow of fruit pulled by two young men with mangos and bananas and tomatoes. Or even, the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Firewood burros in San Miguel

I'm not complaining. I'm just describing the "creative process." Anyway, 267 blogposts later and here we are. I hope you enjoy these stories.  I hope they give you some light.

My idea is to retell the Mahabharata in a more universal way and reflect on the ancient wisdom traditions of India with focus on the teachings in the Gaudiya line.



I'm also trying to write and reflect on a lot of different subjects: maybe I'll turn it into a book someday: the true self, the Vedic vision of the universe, the nature of consciousness and transmigration of the soul, intelligence, language, and cognition, the chronology of the Puranas and the Vedic civilization, Vaishnava Ontology and Ancient, Vedic and Vaishnava metaphysical cosmologies. I'm interested in the ultimate path or self-realization, Avataras, the guru principle and the theology of mantras and the holy name. I'm interested in how scripture becomes revealed truth and the relationship between mythology, the collective consciousness, and human experience.

Indian Dancer

I enjoy writing the blog; I like the idea that others are keeping company with my ideas and sharing. I don't know who you are, but I look at the map and can see, aha! Russia! Aha! Ireland! Aha! United Kingdom. So thanks for checking in.

I'm reaching the end of my days. I love writing and sharing these ideas. But I have to admit, dear reader, that sometimes I grow weary. Drop me a line in the comments and let me know if you feel this is worth continuing. Maybe it's time for me to take a long vacation.

As always, truth-seekers, my sincere and humble dandavat, adios, sayonara, strastvuite, bon jour and see you later to all, Michael Dolan-B.V. Mahayogi.

Story of Prometheus

(As retold by James Baldwin)

I. How Fire Was Given to Men

In those old, old times, there lived two brothers who were not like other men, nor yet like those Mighty Ones who lived upon the mountain top. They were the sons of one of those Titans who had fought against Jupiter and been sent in chains to the strong prison-house of the Lower World.

The name of the elder of these brothers was Prometheus, or Forethought; for he was always thinking of the future and making things ready for what might happen to-morrow, or next week, or next year, or it may be in a hundred years to come. The younger was called Epimetheus, or Afterthought; for he was always so busy thinking of yesterday, or last year, or a hundred years ago, that he had no care at all for what might come to pass after a while.

For some cause Jupiter had not sent these brothers to prison with the rest of the Titans.

Prometheus did not care to live amid the clouds on the mountain top. He was too busy for that. While the Mighty Folk were spending their time in idleness, drinking nectar and eating ambrosia, he was intent upon plans for making the world wiser and better than it had ever been before.

He went out amongst men to live with them and help them; for his heart was filled with sadness when he found that they were no longer happy as they had been during the golden days when Saturn was king. Ah, how very poor and wretched they were! He found them living in caves and in holes of the earth, shivering with the cold because there was no fire, dying of starvation, hunted by wild beasts and by one another–the most miserable of all living creatures.

“If they only had fire,” said Prometheus to himself, “they could at least warm themselves and cook their food; and after a while they could learn to make tools and build themselves houses. Without fire, they are worse off than the beasts.”

Then he went boldly to Jupiter and begged him to give fire to men, that so they might have a little comfort through the long, dreary months of winter.

“Not a spark will I give,” said Jupiter. “No, indeed! Why, if men had fire they might become strong and wise like ourselves, and after a while they would drive us out of our kingdom. Let them shiver with cold, and let them live like the beasts. It is best for them to be poor and ignorant, that so we Mighty Ones may thrive and be happy.”

Prometheus made no answer; but he had set his heart on helping mankind, and he did not give up. He turned away, and left Jupiter and his mighty company forever.

As he was walking by the shore of the sea he found a reed, or, as some say, a tall stalk of fennel, growing; and when he had broken it off he saw that its hollow center was filled with a dry, soft pith which would burn slowly and keep on fire a long time. He took the long stalk in his hands, and started with it towards the dwelling of the sun in the far east.

“Mankind shall have fire in spite of the tyrant who sits on the mountain top,” he said.

He reached the place of the sun in the early morning just as the glowing, golden orb was rising from the earth and beginning his daily journey through the sky. He touched the end of the long reed to the flames, and the dry pith caught on fire and burned slowly. Then he turned and hastened back to his own land, carrying with him the precious spark hidden in the hollow center of the plant.

He called some of the shivering men from their caves and built a fire for them, and showed them how to warm themselves by it and how to build other fires from the coals. Soon there was a cheerful blaze in every rude home in the land, and men and women gathered round it and were warm and happy, and thankful to Prometheus for the wonderful gift which he had brought to them from the sun.

It was not long until they learned to cook their food and so to eat like men instead of like beasts. They began at once to leave off their wild and savage habits; and instead of lurking in the dark places of the world, they came out into the open air and the bright sunlight, and were glad because life had been given to them.

After that, Prometheus taught them, little by little, a thousand things. He showed them how to build houses of wood and stone, and how to tame sheep and cattle and make them useful, and how to plow and sow and reap, and how to protect themselves from the storms of winter and the beasts of the woods. Then he showed them how to dig in the earth for copper and iron, and how to melt the ore, and how to hammer it into shape and fashion from it the tools and weapons which they needed in peace and war; and when he saw how happy the world was becoming he cried out:

“A new Golden Age shall come, brighter and better by far than the old!”

Excerpt from Guru and His Grace

Here's an excerpt from Shri Guru and His Grace for all the faithful.

Descent of the Revealed Truth

Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the spiritual conception of the highest level, descends by flowing down from one level to the next, just as from the peak of a mountain the Ganges flows in a zigzag way, from one peak to another. 

The Ganges flows in a zig-zag way.

Sometimes the water of the Ganges mixes with the current of the river Saraswatī. That water is not to be considered Ganges water. When the water of the Saraswatī joins the current of the Ganges, it is considered to be Ganges water. When the two rivers meet, the water that flows away from the Ganges is not the Ganges; but when the Saraswatī’s waters enter into the current of the Ganges, it becomes the Ganges. There is a saying that whatever water is deep within the current of the Ganges riverbed is the real Ganges water. That water will purify us, whatever its point of origin may have been.

The purifying potency of the water has nothing to do with the water we can feel and see. What can we see with our physical eyes? The current of the Ganges is pure. When the spirit and sanction is there, it is a living thing and can purify everyone.

Dead mantras

So, the very gist of the Guru-paramparā, the disciplic succession, is śikṣā, the spiritual teaching, and wherever it is to be traced, there is Guru. One who has the transcendental eye, the divine eye, will recognise the Guru wherever he appears. One who possesses knowledge of absolute divine love in purity—he is Guru. 

Otherwise the guru-paramparā is only a body paramparā: a succession of bodies. Then the caste brāhmaṇs, the caste goswāmīs, will continue with their trade, because body after body they are getting the mantra, but their mantra is dead. We are after a living mantra, and wherever we can trace the living tendency for a higher type of devotional service we shall find that there is our Guru. One who has that sort of vision awakened will be able to recognise the Guru wherever he may appear.

Initiation into the mantra means to impart real knowledge and devotional sentiment from one to another. And that must be genuine. Nothing can be known about a homeopathic globule by an outer physical inspection, but the potency is within. So also within the mantra the important thing is the type of thought or sentiment which is imparted through that sound. 

The impersonalists have got the same mantra, and are also chanting the Holy Name of Kṛṣṇa, but that sort of name will vanish in the Brahma-jyoti. They won’t be able to cross the Virajā, the river between the material and spiritual worlds. Śrīla Bhakti Vinod Ṭhākur says that when a mayāvādī chants the Name of Kṛṣṇa, his chanting of the Name of Kṛṣṇa is just like thunder to the holy body of Kṛṣṇa. It does not produce any soothing effect.

The Gauḍīya Maṭh deals with reality, not with the frame. We are trying to understand what is what in the spiritual thought-world. We are not enchanted or captured by the mere form. We are interested in the step-by-step development in spiritual thought. In his Upadeśāmṛta (10), Śrīla Rūpa Goswāmī has said:

karmibhyaḥ parito hareḥ priyatayā vyaktiṁ yayur jñāninas
tebhyo jñāna-vimukta bhakti-paramāḥ premaika niṣṭhās tataḥ

“Out of many materialists, one may be a philosopher. Out of many philosophers, one may become liberated and take to devotional service. Out of many devotees, one may attain pure love of Kṛṣṇa. He is the best of all.” We are interested in understanding this gradation: what is the Virajā River, what is the spiritual sky, the planet of Lord Śiva, the Vaikuṇṭha world of Viṣṇu, Lord Rāma’s Ayodhyā, and then Kṛṣṇa in Dvārakā, Mathurā, and Vṛndāvan? 

We want to know the realistic view of the whole gradation of devotional thought. Kṛṣṇa shows this gradation in the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam (11.14.15) where He says:

na tathā me priyatama ātma-yonir na śaṅkaraḥ
na cha saṅkarṣaṇo na śrīr naivātmā cha yathā bhavān

“Neither Brahmā, nor Śiva, nor Saṅkarṣaṇ of Vaikuṇṭha, nor the Goddess of fortune Lakṣmī Devī, nor even My own self is as dear to Me as you. You are My favourite, Uddhava.”

We have to follow the spirit; otherwise after Jāhnavā Devī, the wife of Lord Nityānanda, up to Vipin Goswāmī, from whom Bhakti Vinod Ṭhākur took initiation, there are so many unknown lady gurus. Through them, the mantra came to Vipin Goswāmī, and from him Bhakti Vinod Ṭhākur received the mantra. We accept Bhakti Vinod Ṭhākur, but should we count all those ladies in our disciplic succession? What was their realisation?

Slaves of the truth

We are slaves of the truth. We are beggars for the pure current of truth that is constantly flowing: the fresh current. We are not charmed by any formality. I will bow down my head wherever I find the river of nectar coming down to me. When one is conscious that the Absolute Truth is descending to him from the highest domain, he will think, “I must surrender myself here.”

Mahāprabhu says to Rāmānanda Rāy:

kibā vipra, kibā nyāsī, śūdra kene naya
yei kṛṣṇa-tattva-vettā, sei ‘guru’ haya

“Wherever the truth appears, wherever the nectar of divine ecstasy descends, I shall offer myself as a slave. That is my direct concern.” Whatever form it takes doesn’t matter much; the form has some value, but if there is any conflict, the inner spirit of a thing should be given immense value over its external cover. Otherwise, if the spirit has gone away and the bodily connection gets the upper hand, our so-called spiritual life becomes sahajiyā, a cheap imitation.

When we are conscious of the real substance of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the real wealth we are receiving from our Spiritual Master, then our spiritual life cannot be sahajiyāism, imitationism. We must be aware enough to detect our Guru’s advice when we find it in another. One who is awake will see, “Here is my Guru’s advice; I find it here in this man. Somehow or other, it has come here. How, I do not know, but I see my Guru’s characteristics, his dealings, and behaviour in this person.” When we are able to recognise a thing for its intrinsic value, then, wherever we find it, we cannot neglect it.

There is an example of this in an instance regarding Aurobindo Ghosh of Pondicherry. He was the first leader of the Anarchist Party and practically the founder of the revolutionary movement in Bengal. In 1928, a case against him was proceeding in Kolkata High Court. A famous attorney, Mr Norton, was in charge of the prosecution. Aurobindo had absconded, and when the case was going on, he was not to be found anywhere. Norton was concerned. How to find him? Aurobindo’s English was very good English. He had been educated in England from childhood and could speak English even better than many Englishmen. Norton began to search through different papers and magazines for Aurobindo’s writing.

 Finally, he found Aurobindo’s style of writing in the Amrita Bazar Patrika, a Bengali newspaper. “Here is Mr Ghosh!” he said. The editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika was summoned to court to find out whether Aurobindo Ghosh had written the article. Norton examined him:

“This is your paper. You must know who has written this article. You are the editor.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you know this man, Aurobindo Ghosh?”

“Yes, I know him. I consider him to be one of the greatest men in the world.”

“As the editor of this newspaper do you know who wrote this article?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Has Mr Ghosh written this article?”

“I won’t say.”

Norton asked him, “Do you know what is the punishment?”

“Yes. Six months imprisonment.”

“You are ready for that?”

“Yes, I am ready for that.” Holding up the newspaper article, Norton said, “Here is Mr Ghosh! I rest my case.”

He saw Aurobindo in his writing, and in a similar way we must see, “Here is my Gurudev!” Our Spiritual Master would also sometimes say of one of his disciples who had departed, “Bhakti Vinod Ṭhākur came to me, but I could not recognise him.” Those whose divine vision is awakened are always seeing signs of divinity everywhere.

One Kṛṣṇa in many Gurus

We must have the vision to recognise the presence of our Guru’s temperament. Mahāprabhu says, “Mādhavendra-Purīra ‘sambandha’ dhara, jāni.” When Mahāprabhu met the Sanoḍiyā brāhmaṇ, upon seeing his movements, He at once detected that this brāhmaṇ must have some connection with Mādhavendra Purī. He said, “Without his connection, I could never find such symptoms of transcendental ecstasy. It must come from Mādhavendra Purī.” So, we must know Kṛṣṇa consciousness in truth. It is said Āchāryaṁ Māṁ vijānīyān, the Spiritual Master is not to be differentiated. One thing is coming down from the Supreme Lord, so the oneness of continuity is not to be ignored. Guru can be here; Guru can be in another body also. The same teacher may come in a different body to inspire us; he may come to give us new hope and higher education. The substance should always be given a higher value than the form.

The followers of form are imitationists

First understand the degree of purity in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The followers of form are only imitationists; they want only to exploit Mahāprabhu and not to serve Him. They are our worst enemies. They are traitors; they have taken the garb of Mahāprabhu’s sampradāya, and they are saying something bogus. This is cheap marketing; they are extensively selling adulterated things very cheaply. They have no inner necessity to attain the purest thing (pūjala rāga-patha gaurava-bhaṅge). Although he was such an exalted Vaiṣṇava, our Guru Mahārāj never presented himself as a great devotee. He always used to say, “I am a servant of the servant of the Vaiṣṇavas.” That was his claim. And he would say, “The higher devotees are my Guru. They are so exalted.” First come and practise all these things, and then you can hope to reach the goal. It is not so easy, or so cheap. “Out of many liberated persons, a pure devotee of Lord Kṛṣṇa is extremely rare” (koṭi-mukta-madhye ‘durlabha’ eka Kṛṣṇa-bhakta).

Kṛṣṇa consciousness is an internal thing, and those who cannot see the internal truth will make much of the external cover. We do not support that. Rather we are interested in the real spirit. All the opposing elements who are interested in externals cannot touch us. Dogs may bark, but the barking of a dog has no importance. Because they make so much of the outer thing, they have no real purification of the heart to accept the pure thing, to discriminate what is purity, or what is love of Godhead, prema, after which even Brahmā and Mahādev aspire.

Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati