Tag: rupanuga

We have to conduct ourselves in such a way that naturally we can connect with that highest, purest spiritual conception from here.

The fifth and final installment of Prakrta-rasa Sata-dusani.

The following is a transcript of a class given by Srila Narasingha Maharaja on Srila Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Deva Gosvami Maharaja’s appearance day in Vrndavana at Sri Sri Radha-Damodara Temple on 12th October 2009.

It is said in the revealed scriptures that to understand the very meaning of religion, self-realization and to know God, one has to approach a bona-fide spiritual master through the proper process. A guru or acarya heads a certain sampradaya and brings down the knowledge of the revealed scriptures from the previous acaryas. He practices according to his spiritual master’s instructions and distributes those instructions through his disciples to deliver the fallen souls in this material world.

We did not venture to enter the details of madhurya-rasa. Our Guru Maharaja did not like it. But it will come irresistibly within you, you go on, sravana kirtana. Pujala raga-patha gaurava-bhange. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. It is so high. When it will come it will awaken within you. It won’t be awakened by any other person.

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura composed the verse, matala hari-jana visaya range pujala raga-patha gaurava-bhange, in 1930 on the occasion of moving the Deities of Sri Gaurasundara and Sri Sri Vinoda-Anandajiu from the old house at Ultadanga Junction Road to the new temple in Bagh Bazaar, Kolkata.

"Guru Maharaja, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, preached exclusively this Madhurya-rasa, but with great precaution. What is not that thing, he used perhaps 90% of his energy to point out the negative side - "This is not Madhurya-rasa" - and clear away the negative side. He had to spare, in his words, 'gallons of blood' to establish what is not that Madhurya-rasa."

It has been said that the disciple should see his guru as a direct manifestation of Srimati Radharani. Is such actually appropriate?

After Gaura Hari, who descended to purify this age of Kali, made Himself invisible to the eyes of the world, the preaching of His religion of love carried on more or less uninterruptedly up until the time of Baladeva Vidyabhushan. In the time that followed, though there were still many advanced devotees present on the planet, a period of darkness descended on Mahaprabhu’s school of devotion. Many heterodox sects came into existence that vocally claimed to be following Mahaprabhu, but in fact were simply using His name to promote their own false doctrines.

In the recent controversies amongst some of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas, those who present isolated and unusual examples of preaching as the rule, rather than as the exception to the proper Gaudiya conception, have simply increased the level of confusion. In particular the subject of the necessity of proper adhikara (qualifications) for hearing higher confidential topics regarding the Lord's lila has been greatly minimized by trying to establish the exception as the rule.