What is the nature of spiritual feelings?

Hare Krsna. We’ve heard that once they asked Srila Saraswati Thakur why the sadhus or the Vaishnavas are using the technology of the day.  And [that] his response was that, “Actually, only they should be allowed to use it.” They have the only legitimate use for these things. [It’s] not that they think, “Oh, we will use them for our mundane things, but you shouldn’t be using these things.” He’s saying, “No, this is the only legitimate use for them is the promotion of Krsna Consciousness.” So,

Pujala ragapatha gaurava bhange matala sadhujana vishaya range

Originally that way, vishay, vishaya, that things which appear to be mundane will be used in service to the raga-marg, to promote raga-marg which is ultimately what Krsna Consciousness is about – spontaneous devotion.

Any questions?

Question: I wanted to ask a question, I’ve heard in one of the lectures, that  the soul has its senses, its own senses. And the question is, do they somehow appear in the outer world? Or they are just used in the spiritual world, soul is not interested in using them in the material world? And how does the inner svarup reveals itself, if it reveals, in the outer world or just in the spiritual world?

Goswami Maharaj: Yes, well, it gets at the heart of the matter. It’s mentioned in the tenth canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam. The longest chapter – it’s called Veda-stuti, The Prayers of the Personified Vedas. This chapter is extraordinarily long and extraordinarily philosophical. Different personified Vedas, Upanishads are speaking and representing their conclusions which we like to say as a sidebar that Srila Guru Maharaj, and this will be in line with what you’re saying, we hear in Bhagavad-gita, to approach the Guru and Guru domain,

Tadviddhi pranipatena pariprajnena sevaya upadeksyanti te jnanam  jnaninas tatva darshina

So, first, pranipatena, bowing down, offering the highest aspect of ourselves to the least aspect of that plane and more than a symbolic, but a substantial gesture that finished with this world of experience, the ego-centric world. Prajnena, prajna, inquiring out of service necessity. Not inquiring to acquire something, to increase the circumference of exploitation, but withdrawing from the plane of exploitation, withdrawing from envisioning ourselves voyeuristically as exploiting units, but offering ourselves in service to the higher plane. Withdrawing from trying to exploit that which is lower than us to serve and dedicate ourselves to that which is higher. Upadekshantite gyanam gyanina statva darshina.That agent, tattva darshi, means “has seen, is seeing, experiencing the Truth.”

So Srila Guru Maharaj says, here it says like we hear the word darshan means ‘to see’. It also means ‘view’ or ‘view point’. Dashan is also synonymous with philosophy, a way of seeing thing. As Srila Guru Maharaj says, “Gaudiya Darshan means Mahaprabhu’s way of seeing things; Mahaprabhu and His followers, their way of seeing things.” So, darshi comes from drishi. Like we have the word rsi, people have heard of Maharsi, Rsi. So, again, rsis are seeing, experiencing, sharing their observations. Not sarshti, shrishti which means ‘to create’ as a mundane author crates a story, something that is a product of the imagination, the mundane world. They are observing. So Guru Maharaj says, “This points to what is being observed, in this context is eternal.” They are not creating something within the confines of time and space, but they are seeing, observing what is eternal and that’s being through their agency brought into this world and accessible by connecting with them through service and association.

So in the beginning of this chapter, Pariksit Maharaj is asking Sukadev Goswami that if the senses are mundane, then, the tongue is made out of flesh, you have a voice box, the ear, the eye – all these things made out of flesh. Then how can they vibrate spiritual sound? Personified Vedas means they are, in one sense, sabda sruti – personified sounds. And so this question comes at the beginning, how can there be a spiritual sound if that’s the fleshy tongue that vibrates and the fleshy ear that is hearing?

Like we hear, biologically they say, “Well, there’re millions of tiny hairs in the ear and then they vibrate and there is some liquid, and the cockley (?), and in this way.” We’ve all heard some description like that. And there’s always something similar for the eye, “Everything is reversed upside down, then it comes in.” [For] every sense there is something like that. So the question is a very good question, saying, “Factoring all of this in, what do we mean when we talk about spiritual sound?”  Or by extension nama, guna, rupa, lila? Nam – sound, rupa – the form, guna – qualities, lila – pastimes.

Rupa Goswami says, atak sri krisna nam adi nabhavied grahyam indriye. That the name, form, qualities and pastimes of Krsna are beyond sense experience. But we should be cautious not to make erroneous conclusions on the basis of that. There are places in the Upanishads, Vedas where they say, apani padoja vana grahita. He has no legs, He has no eyes, He has no ears. So, we think the erroneous conclusion, “He is formless, nirakhar.” And form, senses, sound all of these things are something within this world, but that divine substance is beyond all of this, so we conclude: impersonal, formless.

But the second half says, “Although He has no eyes, ears, legs, etc., He can see, hear, touch, taste, smell and feel.” So, the Vaishnava acharyas are saying, what this points to is when it says He has no eyes, it means He has no fleshy eye, but can see. That means spiritual eyes, spiritual ears, spiritual senses. So, Rupa Goswami is saying, atak sri krisna nam adi nabhavied grahyam indriye, means this divine sound, divine form, divine qualities, divine pastimes and movement is beyond what can be perceived by the mundane eye, ear, mind, etc.

But sevon mukhe hijivaru shavam eva spurtiya da, saying, but the same tongue when electrified with seva, current, the current of seva brings illumination. Just like we have all this equipment assembled here. Without the electric current the apparatus is a shadow of itself, really. If we factor in Guru Maharaja’ is saying, “Reality is a thing plus its potential,”  the potential of all these electronic devices is only realized when they are infused with an electric current. Then they can see, record, do all of these things. So, what is most significant is that current which, which by parallel in this example, is seva. The current is seva. When the senses are infused with serving tendency as oppose to exploiting tendency, then they are in their natural, original function. Even within this world we know that while sleeping we have dreams when we see things there’s a type of seeing in a dream world, we feel things, we taste things, we hear things.  All types of sensual activities take place in a dream world.

So, it means that it’s not limited to [in] the external objective world. Also, when we find in Gita,

Indriyani paranyahur indriyeni biye param mana ha manasastu para buddhe yo buddhe paratastu sva ha

Krsna is showing us incrementally, step by step, how to walk into the spiritual domain and the spiritual conception of self, saying, “Superior to the objects of the senses, things which are seen, heard, tasted, touched, smelled, felt, are the senses themselves. Superior to the senses is the mind.” And we have this experience, too. If you’re absent-minded and this is a common expression in English, if someone says, “Oh, I didn’t notice it, I didn’t hear that. Did you say something?” “Yes! I’ve been talking to you! I’m telling you!” You say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was absent-minded. I didn’t see that, I didn’t hear that, I didn’t feel that.” Many versions of being absent-minded. So, what we can understand from that is the mind is really the seed of all these sensual activities. It’s the seed of hearing, of seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling, etc. The rest is an apparatus. As I’ve mentioned, “The body is the biological expression of the soul’s delusion.’ That’s the bad news. The good news is a hint, more than a hint, an indication that the soul has, in its innate position, full sensuous capacity. The soul can hear, taste, smell, feel, etc. This is the good news. All of these things are native to the soul in the soul world. It’s the soul’s presence within the body that’s enabling sense experience.

Srila Guru Maharaj has introduced his conception known as the subjective evolution of consciousness. And part of it is understanding something he calls chaya-bas or chidabas. And it is like this, chit means consciousness. So, we have what’s called the chit jagad. The spiritual world can be described in different ways, jagad means world. So, the chit jagad means the conscious world, the world of consciousness. Then there is the achit jagad means the unconscious world, the objective world. Srila Guru Maharaj is giving an excellent example by saying, “The whole objective world is like an iceberg floating in an ocean of consciousness.” We have to grasp this idea, the whole objective world is like an iceberg floating in an ocean of consciousness.

We know also from Jaiva Dharma, Bhakativinod Thakur reminding us that ice is not the natural condition of water, so when it’s in that unnatural state, you can say, “It’s hard, it’s this.” You can determine, observe so many attributes. But when it resumes its natural and normal state, it will be different. So, things like this table [knocks at the table], this is hard, it’s coated in lacquer, it has depth, height, width, color, weight. Those are all concepts: height, weight, length, breadth, dimensions, depth, color – these are all concepts. So Srila Guru Maharaj is telling us that an object is a cluster of subjective concepts. That’s what an object is – it’s a cluster of subjective concepts. And so that’s what one object is, that’s what the whole objective world is, it’s like an iceberg floating in an ocean of consciousness.

He’ll make reference to Barkley, Bishop Barkley and his theory which is represented in the slogan that, “The world is in the mind.” Now this is easily parodied, people will say, “Oh, you mean, like all of this it’s just in my mind, right?” That’s not what he’s saying. And as Woody Allan once joked, “If world is in the mind then that car I bought last week was really overpriced.” But that’s not what he means when he says that the world is in the mind. He means to say, “This whole objective world, all of these objects are floating in an ocean of consciousness. Consciousness is the basis. The subjective reality is the basis of the objective world.” That’s what he means to say, not that it doesn’t exist, but he’s tracing the source of this existence to consciousness, consciousness being the primordial substance.

So, Srila Guru Maharaj will say, how is it that the soul is chit by nature too, conscious, how can you go from chit jagad, the spiritual world, and start experiencing the objective world? It’s not just suddenly that that capability, capacity is there. So, he introduced this concept, chidabas or chayabas, saying, “The mind, the ego, intelligence, mind and senses are a shadow self of the original self.” That’s what it is. Chaya means shadow – chayabas.  Chitabas, a bas means a semblance of something. It’s just like a glove, you could say. You put a glove on your hand and you can handle certain things. Like I remember seeing years ago, when we were children, when they were showing like nuclear [I know, I’m gonna say the wrong thing] isotopes. If Ashutosh was here he could say exactly what it is. But, you know, radioactive material – that’s what I mean to say. And so they would show someone with robotic arms. So you see the man – he is controlling something and then these robotic arms, they are going, “And then he picks this and he’s pouring that, make sure you don’t spill it. Ha-ha-ha!” “The atom is our friend”. They used to have propaganda films like that when they’re introducing nuclear energy, “The atom is our fiend.”

It’s what in the Bhagavad-gita is called ugra karma, that the demonic introduce things into the world in the name of making the world better that are actually will destroy the world as we know it. And you can all think of your own examples. So that robotic arm, now we have a little more sophisticated, so-called virtual reality. And there are some similarities there. ‘Virtual’ as opposed to ‘substantial’. So Srila Gurur Maharaj said, “This shadow-like self, this shadow of the conscious self, enveloping the jiva soul allows it to navigate the objective world.” So we are seeing with these eyes, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, feeling. So, as I said, the good news is this is indicative of the soul’s innate position.

Even in genetic engineering we find that when they want to duplicate someone or something, like remember Dolly, the sheep? Gurudev said something like, “When they all become Dolly, the world’s finished.” So there was the first sheep, genetically cloned sheep, they called her Dolly. But still – how do they do that – this is the point I mean to make. They get some genetic material. It’s not like the old Frankenstein of Merry Shelly. What was the idea? The Doctor Frankenstein, he was collecting the parts from cadavers and sawing them together. And [he] took the brain – they had a brain of a really nice gentleman and then the brain of a criminal and Igor broke the brain of the gentleman. So they had to put some brain in there and they put in the brain of the criminal. So they’re assembling all these parts and then lightening comes down. “It’s alive!” And then Frankenstein… Not like that. It’s a little crude. Merry Shelly, I mean, she knew what she was doing, too. She was with a group of writers, like her husband and some others; they were in a castle somewhere. And they said, “Let’s think of scary stories.” She said, “I’ve got one.”

But genetic material means something very minute – this is the point I mean to make. DNA on a very miniscule on that plane, that’s where the full identity is located. That’s what I am trying to say. That’s what we learn from this is that identity – and I’m making a parallel here – that identity is located in an even subtler plane than that. But within that plane there is the full spectral range of sensual expression – seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, feeling. So if this body is the biological expression of the soul’s delusion and it’s taking shape and myriads, millions of forms,

jala janava lakhani Stavrala vinkshati krimaya rudra sankhya ka

Padma Purana says, just as you combine RGB or red-yellow-blue. Three makes nine, makes eighty-one, 8.1, 8 400 000, millions of varieties, of variations of life forms, based upon tama, raja, sattva: ignorance, passion, goodness. Millions of variations of that generaties, varieties of life forms. So as the body is based upon exploiting tendencies, when we withdraw from the plane of exploitation and become activated with the dedicating tendency under the guidance of sadhu-sastra-guru and vaishnav, then the svarup that you’ve mentioned – it’s under construction. It’s based upon dedicating tendencies. So as you can have a body here based upon the tendency to exploit, the spiritual form is based upon the tendency to serve and dedicate. So it parallels objective evolution, but here it is subjective evolution.

So as we heard Raghunath Das Goswami, revering even the lower species, the insects of the Dham, saying,

Yat kin chit ri ghuma ki katha mukham goste samastam hitat sarvananda mukunda doitam lila anukulam param

Said, mukunda doita – they are dear to Krsna, because they are lila-anukul – they are favorable to the pastimes. So, as we told, you don’t find yogis in Vrindavan, but you do find bumble bees, birds, different types of beings like that who are absorbed in that chit-jagad, in that chinmoi Dham. Vaikunthera priti vyade sakale chinmoi: where everything’s constructed out of consciousness. But not just generic abstract consciousness, but consciousness enriched with dedicating tendency, not consciousness, polluted by exploiting tendencies. Serving in heaven, not reigning in hell. So the chinmoi jagad: all the forms there made out of consciousness and their forms [are] expressions of particular types of dedicating tendency. We see in the Goloka-mahatmiyam section of the Brihad-bhagavatamritam the whole structure is from Sanatan Goswami, sambhanda-gyan acharya. Finally praising to the extreme Goloka Vrindavan. The last seventy-eighty verses of the book begins with glorifying the soil of Vrindavan. And then – the leaves and the grass, and the creeper, and the flowers, and the trees, and then – the bumblebees, and the birds, and the peacocks, the clouds. The clouds are conscious.

Sometimes the clouds, they are also stunned in ecstasy, but wanting to serve, so suppressing their ecstatic tendencies, observing the pastimes of Krsna and the cowherd boys, the clouds make umbrellas for them to shield them from the sun. And start raining like little flowers, raindrop flowers, flower raindrops. They are also participating. Everything in the spiritual world is conscious, the directions are conscious. So the Goloka Mahatmia, glorifying everything, the rivers, it’s a gradation. The rivers are spiritually conscious. The Jamuna – she can appear as a river or as a person.

Sometimes we see children, they go to school, and they have a play for the children. The child may come home and the mother will say, Oh, what part do you play? And a little child will say, very happily, “I’m a flower!” “Oh, must be very beautiful flower.”  “Yes! I’ m a flower.” They have a part to play. To be a flower in the spiritual world is ten million times more wonderful than that. So we have to reconceive the possibilities, reconceive the potential.

As Krsna’s senses are interchangeable, so are his devotees’ senses interchangeable. They can taste by seeing. Sometimes when they see – Krsna’s so beautiful – they are drinking Krsna’s beauty with their eyes. So not only is there sensual capability, but they’re all interchangeable. The eyes are not limited to seeing, the ears are not limited to hearing.

Angani yasya sakalendriya vitti manti pasanti panti kalayanti jaram jaganti…govindam adi purusham tam aham bhajami

So to answer that question it’s the largest chapter in the tenth canto, so you can understand, the answer is quite involved, but in a nutshell, according to Srila Guru Maharaj, the answer is that, “Yes, matter – and it’s very consistent with what he says all along – yes, matter cannot generate spirit.” So the tongue,

Namakar bahiroi bata nabu kabunoi: the tongue can’t vibrate Krsna-nam. Like going from down to up – it cannot produce Krsna-nam, we’ll say. Atah sri Krsna nama adi nabavied: beyond the capacity of the senses. But if Krsna chooses to descend, then even the mundane can be infused with spiritual substance, not the inverse. The mundane cannot generate the spiritual, but the spiritual can use the mundane for expression.

So when the heart is under the influence of Krsna-nam, then the tongue can vibrate Krsna-nam. So, as we said initially, Saraswati Thakur’s motto, pujalaraga pati… vishaya range saying: raga marg – that divine abode, plane that we’ve just discussed – that’s far above. To try [to] bring it down here, it’ll become adulterated, polluted, degraded. It will no longer maintain its integrity. But here we can take the things of this world, as we told initially – the cameras, the lights, the Internet – all of these things, and they can be infused with the serving tendency – that’s possible.

We’ve heard the story that with regard to rasa – that divine, nectarine liquid, substance,

Nigama kalpa taror galitam phalam

The prayojan-tattva shloka of the beginning of the Bhagavatam, saying, “i]It’s all directed towards this divine substance.” Radha-rasa suddha-nidhi.

Anyway, India, is the land of the mango. Here we have some very nice mangos – but one or two. In India there are, maybe, a hundred or more. I forget how many, but there are a lot. So in the “olden times” a king from Middle East would send a minister to India as it was coming under Muslim rule. And when the minister would come back – or there Embassador – he’s telling them the wonderful things that are available in India, like the mango. And so the king’s always hearing about these mangos, mangos! “They are so, you won’t believe, how wonderful this nectarine taste of this fruit, it’s inconceivable, it’s beyond!..” And he’s saying, “Why don’t you bring me some?” He said, “Well, I’ve tried to bring them, but by the time it takes so long, the journey, they are rotten halfway.” And the king’s still eager. So first thing we learn, you’re trying to bring them, bring what in that higher world down here – it gets rotten before it reaches. It can only descend out of its own necessity, not out of our curiosity or our force, by force to bring it down.

So anyway, the ambassador, trying to remedy the situation, he said, “All right, I think, I can give you the mango experience.” So he took some tamarind and some turmeric, and some sweet water and juice and he made a concoction. And then he had his beard and then he put that in his beard, cause some mangos have beards, put that in there. Then he told the king, “Suck my beard.” So then the king’s going [sucking sounds]. And he said, “Now you know what is mango.” So for those people, cause they don’t wanna go through the trouble of actually trying to make their approach towards the substantial spiritual domain through modest, natural growth. They want to try (?) bring that divine substance down here, they will get some sort of experience. But it won’t be the real thing.

So we hear in places in Bhagavad-gita,

Rasoham apso kauntaya prabhasmi sasisurayo pranava sarvam…sabda ke purusham nashu

As an example, Krsna’s saying, “Rasoham apsu kantoy: I’m the taste of water. Prabhasmi sashi surayoh: the light of the Sun and moon.” Actually, whatever you can see is Krsna. There is a way through proper thought, you wanna call it meditation, you can call it that, where you can trace everything back to the central conception of the Absolute. It’s only in local context and the confines and constriction of time and space that it’s assumed any other identity or appears to be not related to Krsna. As Madhvacharya said with regard to words – like horses – the local context is like putting reigns on a horse, you can make it go this way or that way. He said, “But if you release the horse from the reigns, it will run according to its own necessity. So all the words we use, they have the reigns, they’ve been reigned in by local context, if you release them and they will run according to their own necessity, they will run to Krsna conception.”

So the Vraja-gopis have been separated from Krsna for so long and Krsna is in Mathura at that time and He sends Uddhava as His representative to give a message to them. When in one place he is advising that they engage in meditation or understand that the Lord is in the heart, so He’s always with them. Or all these elements you can trace them back to the Maha Purusha, they’ve sprung out, so everything would be able to remind them of Him, they become angry. Vishvanath Chakrobarthy Thakur says, They’ve shown that prem is superior to jnan. They don’t wanna hear all these things – that the Lord is in your heart or all the elements are essentially Krsna – in that way. But Krsna also says to them that His message – cause each message that has been deflected by the gopis – then Uddhava says, “No, I have more messages, hold on.” He says that, “One thing Krsna is saying is that, ‘When someone’s right in front of you, they are not so present in your mind.’” Cause they’re right in front – all of your attention is to who is before you. But in their absence they are very much present in your mind. He said, “So I want to,” – and that’s really being present with someone – he’s saying, “Although we may be physically separated: my form I here, your form is there, but due to that separation or that absence, I’m very much present in your mind and hearts, as you are in mine. And in that way we are really together in a substantial way. Cause just being physically near one another is not the most intimate type of association.”

So – the senses, the mind, the intelligence, according to Guru Maharaj – all [are] shadow representations of the spiritual aspects of the same. So in Bhagavad-gita Krsna says,

Bhumira gita apo analo vyukham bina prakritir ashhadha

Earth, water, fire, air, either, mind, intelligence and ego – He said, “These are my inferior energie. And that so – mind, intelligence – inferior.” And jiva-bhuta? Aparei ami tastva …  prakritya vedime param. Jiva is para-prakrti – superior energy to all of those things. So that means the mundane mind, the mundane intelligence, these mundane elements – they are covering jiva. But jiva in her pristine glory has mind, intelligence, senses – everything. And that we connect with those. What are we told? Hrishikeno hrishikesho sevanam bhaktir uchyate: by engaging the senses in the service of Krsna. That will awaken their natural serving tendency, so that the mundane aspect gradually diminishes and vanishes all together, and the spiritual golden self comes out. Hare Krsna.