19830918 Sunday Feast Lecture

The following is a Sunday feast lecture given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami on September 18th 1983, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jayapatākā Swami:

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ
paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande
śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam

I offer my respectful obeisances unto the lotus feet of His Divine Grace Abhaya Caraṇa Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, who has opened my eyes from the darkness of ignorance with the torchlight of transcendental knowledge.

(aside) Jaya Gaura-Nitāi!

So today is a very special day, it is the appearance of birthday of Lord Vāmanadeva, according to Vedic literatures there… God is one, and there are however unlimited forms that God has the potential to assume. That is known as ananta-rūpam or an unlimited number of forms, of which there are specially 10 incarnations which are very highly celebrated or most well known, one of which is the dwarf incarnation of Godhead known as Vāmanadeva. I don't know if you can see, this is the picture of Vāmandeva, the dwarf incarnation.

The Lord came as a dwarf brāhmaṇa priest and He went begging from His devotee Bali Mahārāja in order to trick him to give everything that he has. Although He could just take everything, it’s within His power, but it was His desire that it should be given willingly. So, He came as a dwarf brāhmaṇa or priest and He is customized that King would offer charity to a brāhmaṇa or the priestly class of person. So when He came then He asked for a boon. So the King said that, “What would you like?”

He said, “I want only three steps of land. How much land I can cover in three steps, you just give Me that, if it is within your power.”

The King said, “That is nothing. You take it. But why don’t You ask for more? Why don’t You ask for a village or for a city or for a kingdom? Why just three steps of land? I can give You thousands of cows, gold, you can build temples, anything.”

“No, all I want is the area of land I can cover in three steps.”

So that is the basic promise that was made. The professional priest of Bali Mahārāja, when he saw what was happening, advised Bali Mahārāja, “Don’t keep you promise. This is not an ordinary dwarf priest that has come here. This is in fact, God Himself has come as a dwarf, and if you give Him what He wants He will take everything. You won’t be able to give Him even three steps.” You see,

He said, “How can I lie?”

So his professional priest was giving various reasons how he could lie, saying that... it goes on. It's not important, of course. But he gave various reasons, how to avoid, but Bali Mahārāja, he refused. He said that, "The whole life I am supposed to worship God, here He has come right before me, and you are saying that because I have promised Him three steps of land, I shouldn’t give Him, because if I give it, He will take everything. Well if in fact it is God that’s come in disguise, I should give Him anything He wants, because it’s our duty to give everything to God. So even though you are my spiritual master I reject you. I keep my word."

So one of the lessons which the spiritual master of Bali was trying to use to convince Him that it’s alright to lie because, if you don’t lie, if you… if you in this case deny it even if you though gave your word,then you will save yourself, because if you keep your word, ultimately you will lose everything. And we need a body to do religious work. So this is the advice of his priest.

satyaṁ puṣpa-phalaṁ vidyād 
ātma-vṛkṣasya gīyate 
vṛkṣe 'jīvati tan na syād 
anṛtaṁ mūlam ātmanaḥ
(ŚB. 8.19.39) 

Translation: The Vedas enjoin that the factual result of the tree of the body is the good fruits and flowers derived from it. But if the bodily tree does not exist, there is no possibility of factual fruits and flowers. Even if the body is based on untruth, there cannot be factual fruits and flowers without the help of the bodily tree.

This is very cryptic. So His Divine Grace Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda has explained.

Purport: (He is our founder, his deity is there.) This śloka explains that in relation to the material body even the factual truth cannot exist without a touch of untruth. The Māyāvādīs say, Brahmā satyaṁ jagan mithyā: "The spirit soul is truth, and the external energy is untruth." The Vaiṣṇava philosophers [however, do not agree with the Māyāvāda philosophy.] (The Hare Kṛṣṇa movement are considered Vaiṣṇavas. We believe in one personal God, and Māyāvādas, that means that they are impersonalists, they believe that ultimately God is formless, so we not agree with the Māyāvāda philosophy) Even if for the sake of argument the material world is accepted as untruth, the living entity entangled in the illusory energy cannot come out of it without the help of the body. Without the help of the body, one cannot follow a system of religion, nor can one speculate on philosophical perfection. Therefore, the flower and fruit (puṣpa-phalam) have to be obtained as a result of the body. Without the help of the body, that fruit cannot be gained. The Vaiṣṇava philosophy therefore recommends yukta-vairāgya. It is not that all attention should be diverted for the maintenance of the body, but at the same time one's bodily maintenance should not be neglected. As long as the body exists one can thoroughly study the Vedic instructions, and thus at the end of life one can achieve perfection. This is explained in Bhagavad-gītā (Bg. 8.6): yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram. Everything is examined at the time of death. Therefore, although the body is temporary, not eternal, one can take from it the best service and make one's life perfect.

Jayapatākā Swami: So basically, there are two philosophies, one philosophy as I mentioned is the philosophy that there is ultimately a supreme being with a personal characteristic, form, qualities, pastimes, name etc. The other philosophy is that the supreme truth is ultimately impersonal… some energy, some impersonal light or source. So for those who are the impersonal philosophers, they say that the spirit is true, that everyone has got a spirit and that spirit is truth, but the whole material world is false. Therefore you should renounce the material world and just accept the spiritual life as being real. But this is completely different from the philosophy of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, not completely, but it’s… it’s basically different.

In Kṛṣṇa consciousness, we accept that the spirit is true, but that the material nature is not false. Nothing God creates is false, everything He creates is also real because He is real. So this material energy is also truth, but it’s a temporary truth. It’s form is not permanent, but the temporary truth can be utilized in order to achieve eternal truth. In other words we can use the temporary body in order to achieve realization of our real nature of our real self, of the supreme truth. So this is done by a process called yukta-vairāgya. The impersonal philosopher they would go to the Himalayas or in the forest and they would perform different forms of yoga or impersonal yoga called jñāna-yoga which is very difficult to perform.

One would sit in a... one place on a kuśa grass mat staring at the tip of the nose, controlling the breath, controlling the eating, not sleeping too much, not eating too little, not sleeping too much, not sleeping too little. Completely controlled, focusing on the eyesight on the tip of the nose, they will gradually control the thoughts and bring the inward breath into the outgoing breath, and this way they'll achieve a state called samādhi or complete concentration. That takes many years of practice, maybe even an entire lifetime or more. Requires sitting exercises, breathing exercises, extreme patience, one has to completely dedicate oneself to that particular type of realization at the exclusion of everything else. So, it’s not a very practical system for modern-day and age. You see. If people practice that, then they… then actually, I mean... in the cities, of course, they are doing a few of the exercises how to sit, mainly to keep good health, and circulation etc, but that is just the very basic, that’s the very first stage of the eightfold yoga system, you see.

The personalists, they follow the Vaiṣṇava system of nine-fold bhakti-yoga, based on hearing, chanting, remembering, praying, offering obeisances, rendering services, befriending the Lord, being the servant of the Lord and surrendering everything to the Lord. So in that process the system is called yukta-vairāgya, the body is neglected. Neither is it simply made the goal of life to serve the body, the body is a vehicle to take us through life ultimately to achieve complete perfection, to realize God, to realize the living force within the body.

If we analyze what is the body, we find that the body itself has got no consciousness. Just like if we put a tourniquet on our arm, within a few moments you can hit the end of your arm and that will be senseless. That means by nature your body doesn’t have any consciousness. In the Vedas it’s said, hṛd-deśe 'rjuna tiṣṭhati (Bg. 18.61). That the soul or the living force is within the heart, and through the blood the consciousness is spread throughout the entire body. So actually, when we cut off any part of the body from the connection by the blood stream, it will lose consciousness. So the body itself is just a dead lump of flesh, skin, bone, bone marrow, fat, blood, mucus and so on, you see. It’s just a very complex machine, made by the material nature on the desire of God, and it is activated by the presence of a living force, which is an anti-material particle, or a spiritual particle called the jīva-ātmā in Sanskrit, or you can say in English roughly as spirit soul, or the self, you see. That self never dies, it’s indestructible, it’s indivisible, it can’t be burned, it can’t be wet, it’s completely beyond any material level of existence. It’s smaller than an a… molecule. It is like one spiritual atom in it’s most subtle and dormant state. So when that is fully activated that’s called self-realization, that time the full potential of that soul, that spiritual atom is manifested. In material life, just a portion of it is manifested.

So the human body is a very special body because compared to other forms of life... according to the Vedic understanding, there are 8,400,000 species of life, which are divided basically into aquatics, immovable objects like trees, etc. into birds, reptiles, birds, animals and finally human species. And the soul transmigrates or reincarnates in taking on these various… through these various species.

The species are already there. They don’t evolve. Darwin’s theory of evolution has no basis in the Vedic understanding. It’s a complete concoction. According to the Vedic understanding, the seeds of each species are already there, given by God and they develop in within their own category. They don’t transform into a new type of charac... but the soul, the living force that will go on between one form to the next. So finally when we the spirit achieve the human body at that time we have our maximum potential of spiritual understanding, that time we can actually expand our consciousness to really understand who we are and who God is, but in animal or reptile or bird they don’t have the same potential.

So this body, if it’s used simply to maintain itself, simply for eating, simply for material sense gratification, this is considered to be practically a misuse of the valuable intelligence of a human being. It’s practically using it as an animal would. That the actual intelligence of the human being is meant to understand the subtle difference between matter and spirit.

Having understood the difference between matter and spirit, then one will lead a life which will be balanced, between material maintenance of our body and our family, and spiritual realization. That is called yukta-vairāgya, or renunciation by utilization of our maximum potential, as compared to complete renunciation as is practiced by the impersonal yogīs. So, basically the spiritual master of Bali Mahārāja was telling him that, “You need a body. If you give everything to God, then you won’t have a body left. So then how you will perform religion? Therefore you should take back your promise.

Of course Bali Mahārāja didn’t accept all these logic, because he too had the basic faith that "If I give everything to God then I won’t be a loser." Since He has personally come before him, so subsequently... there is another prayer which describes about the nature of surrendering to Kṛṣṇa, because Bali Mahārāja, his fame… today the appearance day that was celebrated, the great devotee is one of the twelve great authorities of bhakti-yoga or devotional service, Bali Mahārāja, the King who was delivered by Vāmanadeva the dwarf incarnation of Godhead, many millions of years ago. So Bali Mahārāja, he was the example of completely surrendering to God. So I'd just like to read a verse here from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam which describes this point.

madīyaṁ mahimānaṁ ca
paraṁ brahmeti śabditam
vetsyasy anugṛhītaṁ me
sampraśnair vivṛtaṁ hṛdi 
(ŚB. 8.24.38) 

You will be thoroughly advised and favored by Me, and because of your inquiries, everything about My glories, which are known as paraṁ Brahmā, will be manifest within your heart. Thus you will know everything about Me.

Purport (Explanation by Bhaktivedanta Swami): As stated in Bhagavad-gītā (15.15), sarvasya cāhaṁ hṛdi sanniviṣṭo mattaḥ smṛtir jñānam apohanaṁ ca: the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Paramātmā, is situated in everyone's heart, and from Him come remembrance, knowledge and forgetfulness. The Lord reveals Himself in proportion to one's surrender to Him. Ye yathā māṁ prapadyante tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham (Bg. 4.11). In responsive cooperation, the Lord reveals Himself in proportion to one's surrender. That which is revealed to one who fully surrenders is different from what is revealed to one who surrenders partially. Everyone naturally surrenders to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, either directly or indirectly. The conditioned soul surrenders to the laws of nature in material existence, but when one fully surrenders to the Lord, material nature does not act upon him. Such a fully surrendered soul is favored by the Supreme Personality of Godhead directly. mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te (Bg. 7.14). One who has fully surrendered to the Lord has no fear of the modes of material nature, for everything is but an expansion of the Lord's glories (sarvaṁ khalv idaṁ brahma), and these glories are gradually revealed and realized. The Lord is the supreme purifier (paraṁ brahma paraṁ dhāma pavitraṁ paramaṁ bhavān [Bg. 10.12]). The more one is purified and the more he wants to know about the Supreme, the more the Lord reveals to him. Full knowledge of Brahman, Paramātmā and Bhagavān is revealed to the pure devotees. The Lord says in Bhagavad-gītā (10.11):

"Out of compassion for them, I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge the darkness born of ignorance."

teṣām evānukampārtham
aham ajñāna-jaṁ tamaḥ
nāśayāmy ātma-bhāvastho
jñāna-dīpena bhāsvatā

Jayapatākā Swami: So basically, what’s being said is that whether we like it not, we are all forced to surrender to God. Either directly or indirectly, because the material nature, the material energy is one of the extensions or energies of the Lord. So everyone in the material world is being forced to act according to material laws. When our body is hungry we have to feed it. When we want to feel something then we will run after that. When we will want to taste something we will run after that. In various ways we are forced to serve the material nature. So in effect we are also surrendering to God, but that’s indirect, that’s without any God consciousness. But we are forced to serve in one way or another. But if rather a person directly recognized that material nature is product of God, of Kṛṣṇa, and that ultimately He is the controller of everything and He is our eternal master, so we should serve Him, that surrender frees one from the mechanical control of the material nature and puts one directly under the shelter of the Supreme Lord. That considered a liberated state, jīvan-muktaḥ sa ucyate (Brs. 1.2.187). So the choice is there for every conditioned soul in the material world.

We are originally unconditioned souls, but we have somehow or another become entangled in the material world and taken on various types of material coverings. So as our choice, whether we want to purify our consciousness and return back to our original spiritual consciousness, or if we want to maintain our conditional life in the material world, suffering disease, old age, death and again rebirth in our next life. So the choice is there for those to actually to surrender to the Supreme Lord, then He reveals Himself, His inner secrets, and those who are indirectly surrendering unto the material nature, of course it’s not a purposeful or a willing surrender, it’s being forced just by the laws of nature. For them, the real form of the Supreme Lord is always a mystery, it’s always kept a secret.

So today we find in the world that there are so many nations, and these nations are all claiming that their country is theirs, “this is America”, someone else is claiming “this is Russia”, someone else is claiming “this is China”, someone else is saying, “this is India”, and then in the whole world there is so many various types of national interest which are conflicting with each other, creating wars, creating hot, cold wars, economic differences and so on. So this is basically due to a illusory idea that the human being is a proprietor, but ultimately God is the proprietor of everything, and any nation is simply a caretaker.

200 years ago there was not America here, there was a place of Red Indians. Before that who knows who knows who was here. You see. Now we claim, “this is America.” We don’t know 50 years from now what this place will be, you see. But the land is always here, you see. That is given by the Supreme Lord. So ultimately, if the whole world took that attitude that the real proprietor is not the individual national interest but it’s the ultimately the Supreme Lord, and if everyone recognized that they were ultimately the servant of the Supreme Lord, and that therefore all other living beings are of the same spiritual quality and should be working for the same supreme interest and interest of all, the part and parcels of the Supreme Lord, then you can actually have one peaceful world. There could actually be a unity on the basis of real spiritual knowledge and understanding.

In the Vedic times, we find that at that time the whole world was under one administration, and at that time there was actually a peaceful and harmonious situation as much as can be experienced in the human species. So in any case, this is the basic peace formula given in the Bhagavad-gītā, that if the people actually recognize the Supreme Lord is the proprietor of everything... He may be known by different names as the Father of Jesus, or else Allah, or else Kṛṣṇa, in different countries and different places, but ultimately there is one Supreme Lord, He is the real proprietor, and if real spiritual knowledge about the identity of all the living entities is understood, then there can actually be a universal harmony established, otherwise the present materialistic society does not hold any hope open to create any kind of lasting peace in the world, because by the very definition, every group of material bodies is in competition with every other group, and sooner or later that competition becomes hot enough that a war breaks out, and then now, war means nuclear wars, in many cases. Right now there are 40 wars going on in the world, according to latest statistics I heard, but all it takes is one nuclear war to turn this whole society and civilization upside down. So the real solution can easily be achieved, if actual spiritual understanding is propagated. The sectarian religions like Christianity and Mohammedans are fighting in Beirut. The sectarian religions of Hinduism and Muslims, they are fighting in India and Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Buddhists and the Hindus are fighting in Śrī Lanka. There are Protestants and the Catholics, they are killing each other in Ireland. None of these are based upon scriptural or real spiritual understanding. It is due to some materialistic conception of caste and sect. So the actual message of the Bhagavad-gītā is that real religion is not simply a dogma but it is a science of what is the self, what is the Supreme Being, and what is our factual relationship which should be the primeval wall of science to actually substantiate that, rather than try to prove that there is no God. Rather if they try to prove their presence and existence of the spirit soul, in the body of an anti-material particle, that will be their real credit. That could be proved, whether or not they can prove God that is a different thing, but they can prove the existence of a soul through so many different, inferences, you see. Understanding that the quality of the spirit soul between different bodies and ultimately the supreme proprietorship of God, then there can be the only hope for a worldwide unity and peace.

So Bali Mahārāja, today of course is his day of triumph because he surrendered to God, and surrendering to God then he achieved all perfections, although it seemed like a defeat at first, but in fact for him it was the greatest triumph and that’s why we observe today as a very special holiday. We thank you all for coming here. We have a slide show of a festival that we held in July 12, in Calcutta.

(aside) Is it set up? Meantime I can ask if there is any questions.

Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Yes.

Question: I was just wondering when you say (inaudible) to me, could it (inaudible)

Jayapatākā Swami: One of the verses we read today

Question: (inaudible) at the time of death...

Jayapatākā Swami: Well, if you have that peculiar memory, then you would be guaranteed the success by chanting that one mantra. But most people don’t… are unable to maintain that kind of trained up thought. The Bhagavad-Gītā (8.6) describes, yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram, That at the time of death whatever you think about, wherever your mind, your consciousness is situated, that destination you will achieve as your next birth. So normally you chant, you'll get a benefit for that, but subsequently your mind will go different places. So if one is in the habit of chanting every day, then it’s very easy that at the time of death you can fix your mind on Kṛṣṇa, on God and then you'll achieve God.

If a person, for instance, is thinking of his girlfriend at the time of death, then the next body he will get will be a girl’s body, and if the girl is thinking of this boy… her boyfriend, then she will get a man’s body. So if you think of God you go back to God, you see. That’s why the information on the factual identity or the… the nature, nomenclature of the Supreme Lord, is given for the advanced transcendentalists so that they can fix their mind on the concept of the Supreme Lord, which will not be imaginative which will be complete and pure.

Question: Didn't you stress that the Lord is upon the earth, is all over the earth...

Jayapatākā Swami: The whole universe.

Question: The whole universe, and the reason why He is, is He created it, in other words, He made it. On that basis alone, wouldn't it mean that private property is wrong, because it would mean that God was not the only one, that an individual could come and He could (inaudible) somebody else to live and use the Earth which is covered by all mankind and achieve the property as the sole owner? (inaudible) ...at the same time recognize that God is the sole owner...

Jayapatākā Swami: You see, God is not only the owner because He creates the world. You see… according to the… according to the Vedas, that there is nothing but God. That ultimately there only is God, but He is within everything, and He is outside of everything at the same time. Then actually this material world, the universe, the million of universes in the material world, beyond that there is just a fraction of His total energy, there is a complete spiritual universe which is many times bigger than the total material universes, and this all the extension of His own energy. He was one just like the sun and He expands sunlight. From the sunlight then just like water vapor comes and creates clouds and so… so ultimately everything is an extension of God’s energy, and when He wants to He winds it all back inside Himself again and then there is only Him, and then he puts it out again, in as far as the material world...

So he gives a code for human kind. Other words, people in material world, they are going to have a certain consciousness, and He already understands that every person has got certain rights for maintaining their body and soul together. To do that, they have to have a livelihood, they have to function, and so in the code book of Manu which is the basis of many of the legal systems in the world, the Manu-saṁhitā. There it is described that the proprietorship of a man land is allowed under certain conditions. Otherwise people won’t take any responsibility.

Comment: Oh, well, a lot of people use land without owning it. I've seen a lot of signs (inaudible)

Jayapatākā Swami: Yeah, but that proprietorship isn't... in a real sense, as you said it's just a lease.