In a soldier's stance I aimed my hand...
When I was young I had all the answers. I knew all there was to know about Sex, Love, God, and War. With amazing condescension and sanctimonious self-righteousness I taught and preached to people twice my age.
Bob Dylan wrote an paean to the death of this kind of arrogance in his song, "My Back Pages."
"In a soldier's stance I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs I preached, fearing not that I'd become my enemy in the instance that I preached...Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
In my salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood, as Shakespeare put it.
The 1970s were an age of uncertainty, of recession, or wars, cold and hot from Vietnam to the Berlin Wall. Abandoned by my family, I dropped out of society and took shelter of the only family who seemed to care: the Hare Krishnas. I learned the philosophy and the doctrine of Gaudiya Vaishnavism from Śrīla Prabhupāda and his followers and set out to preach it to the world.
We were blind and Prabhupāda give us light. Where the Bible preached hell hot and sin black, Prabhupāda preached Divine Love and the Holy Name. As the bombs burst over Vietnam and Cambodia and hate was preached from the pulpits of the Church, we made a joyful noise unto the Lord with cymbals and drums and brought the Hare Krishna mantra into the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Prabhupāda had given us gold. His books revealed the divine truths of the Vedas. He taught us the practice of bhakti-yoga, of spiritual realisation, of perfect love.
And all at once he left us. In 1977 he returned to the spiritual domain, before we had the chance to really know him.
In my youthful arrogance I had all the answers. I went to India and preached to the people there as if I knew what I was talking about. I soon discovered it wasn't as easy as I thought.
If Prabhupāda gave us gold, Śrīdhara Mahārāja gave us fire.
The Promethean task of transmitting fire to mortals is more dangerous. One may attempt to discredit fire by noting that it is dangerous, that it must be contained, that safety regulations must be observed when using it, that only those who are highly trained may be allowed to come close to the fire, and so on. But in the end, humans find the gift of fire more useful than dangerous. And fire's purity cannot be challenged. It is self-evident.
Here's an example of "fire."
"Wherever we can get that, we must accept it, even if it comes from the Ramanuja, Madhva, or Nimbarka sampradaya. As much as we get from them substantially, we accept, and we reject the so-called followers of our own tradition if they are mere imitationists. The son of a political leader may not be a political leader. A political leader may also have a political succession, and his own son, although brought up in a favorable environment, may be rejected. A doctor's son may not be a doctor. In the disciplic order also, we admit the possibility that they may not all come up to the same standard. Those who do not, should be rejected."
It was my arrogance to preach these words and words like these, believing that the self-evident nature of fire would be seen and felt by all. Here's more fire:
If the form can distribute the proper ideal then that is all right. But mere form cannot be respected. As long as it's doing service to the highest ideal, so long the form should be encouraged and that should have recognition. Otherwise deviating from the ideal that form is abusing itself. So we are not worshippers of form, we are worshippers of the ideal.
Srila B.R. Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj [18/19.02.83]
When religions decay, form generally outlasts substance; rituals continue to be observed, sometimes even intensified, but they move outside the selves of the people who practice them.
Ritual is celebrated but no longer believed; it may even become embarrassing.
Vital religions should be different. Kṛṣṇa consciousness should have a life beyond the merely ritualistic form. If Kṛṣṇa consciousness is to become more universal its followers must go beyond the merely formal.
