Govinda das: If somebody is not hearing from authorized Guru but reads from scriptures by himself, then what will be his fate? Radhanath swami: What is the qualification of a representative *of God? “tad viddhi pranipatena, pariproshnena sevaya”. He is enquiring submissively from his Guru and he is serving the order of his Guru. If someone is not doing that, even if they are initiated in our parampara, even if they are quoting all Sastras, they are not representatives of our parampara because this is the Guru parampara, not a Sastra parampara. The Guru is the manifestation of the conclusion of the Sastras. No matter how learned one is in the Sastras if one is not submissively hearing and serving the order of Guru, he is not really representative of our parampara at all. Prabhupada explains that a serpent has poison but the serpent is most dangerous when he has a jewel in his head”. When a person is very learned, very charismatic, very mystic then that person is most dangerous, because that jewel is attractive. You just want to embrace. The jewel just fascinates our mind. But still it is the serpent. Sanatana Goswami explains, “milk touched by the lips of the serpent becomes poisonous and even his Krishna Conscious philosophy which is milk when it istouched by the lips of the serpent becomes poisonous”, but as I said you cannot taste the poison. The effects will come later. The effect is, you will lose your faith in Gurudev and in the authorized parampara system. But everyone in this age, they like cheap things. Common people will glorify such Putanas like anything. Only a rare few are actually serious. And therefore Krishna gives them intelligence to take shelter of those who really and fully steeped in the true path of devotional service. Therefore, if someone is following some type of sadhana, we simply respect that. And we appreciate that. But we don’t become unchaste. We don’t hear submissively from them. We simply befriend them. And in formal circles, we are like that and In the more informal circles, that is for the more advanced devotees to take that project, not us. Interfaith doesn’t mean you start going to everyone’s lectures and reading their books. It means that when they come to conference and whatever or when you see them on the road, you simply offer your love, you offer your Guru’s love to them. You have affection for them. That’s all. Doesn’t mean you start studying them, hearing from them, reading them, taking shelter of them, taking guidance from them. Everything is here within our own Sastras, within our own parampara. Why do we have to go to other places for these things? Our shelter, our guidance, all information are right here. We don’t have to go anywhere else. Interfaith is just to help increase the religion of the world. And to see that there is common denominator in all religions. Everyone is approaching the one same Supreme God. That we will not deny. But at the same time not everyone is teaching pure and unalloyed unmotivated devotional service. And if we accept any principles submissively, thats less than that will poison our propensity of unmotivated, uninterrupted devotional service. This is how we must approach interfaith in a very sober way. Krishnananda das: When a person comes to this temple for the first time, what should we do to develop faith in him ? Radhanath Swami: Such a person should be educated. He should know what is Mayavaad. He should know what is Sahajiyism. He should know what is authorized Guru parampara. He should understand what is Sadhana Bhakti. If he is attracted to a person because of his ecstatic symptoms because of his ability to perform miracles,.or because of his charismatic power to speak, then that has nothing to do with the bonafide Guru. Bonafide Guru is a humble servant. The only thing he cares to reveal is that he is simply humbly presenting what his Gurudev has taught him and he is living by those principles. If you meet such a person, he is a Guru. Follow him.You can surrender to him. You don’t have to hold back anything. But these other most sensationalistic things or those other ideas that are mixed with Karmakanda , Jnanakanda, Mayavaad, you must understand that those things are misleading from the true path. And if we are sincere, Krishna, will guide us to a bonafide Guru. But then after He guides us, then we have to show our gratitude to Krishna by being chaste and faithful to that Guru He has given us. Otherwise Krishna will take him away. Radhakrishna das: What is the thumb rule in regard to devotees reading spiritual literature other than books written by Srila Prabhupada? Radhanath Swami: The thumb rule is after you scrutinisingly study all Srila Prabhupada’s books, scrutinisingly hear all of their tapes, in such a way that you actually can cite them, can quote them, you understand them, you have realizations of them. Then at that point just to get further data, for the purpose of preaching, you can read other books. But until you come to that platform, then reading all these books will only bewilder and confuse our faith. What is the need? Our Guru has already given us painstakingly these books for so many years. He has written exactly what we need to hear. Why should we waste our time just hearing from everybody else? We don’t even know who they are, what they are really giving. This is the thumb rule. Prabhupada said, 99% of the advancement you make by reading his books is not by the translations of the scriptures but by his purports because purport is exactly how he wants his disciples to understand. Otherwise, even the translation of scripture, you cannot approach them directly without the purport of the acaryas. Therefore even authorized books like the Chaitanya Bhagwat is completely one of the most authorized important books in our line. But if we want to know Chaitanya Bhagwat, we should hear. It is not really going to do us much good, reading it directly. But if someone who understands Prabhupada’s and Bhaktipada’s purports, if he explains to us the stories of Chaitanya Bhagwat with the purport of Gurudev, then that will have great benefit. But by just reading it directly and hearing the stories, we will not be able to understand. So this is the thumb rule. We should let those advanced senior devotees read these books, give us their understanding through their purports of the parampara. And other than that we should be very humble and just accept that we do not know so much. We should just try to understand what Guru is telling me. And then you will never have problems or dangers in spiritual life. Radhakrishna das: Sometimes devotees are attracted by the charismatic personality and the eloquence of speech of devotees in our own sampradaya, what should be the qualities one should look for in the devotee whom one wants to associate with? Sril£ Bhaktipada often says, ‘ Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. Radhanath Swami: All you have to do is approach Guru or approach someone that you know the Guru has trust in, and ask, how much should I trust this person? And all your problems are solved. To try to figure out yourself is not an easy thing. But the actual basis of our philosophy is surrender. Even if a person is very dull in his personality and not very illucid in philosophy ,if the person is a surrendered sou! ,we should be falling at that person’s feet. And even if a person is very illucidly explaining and expounding all high philosophical principles and has tremendous charisma and tremendous potency in his personality, if that person is not a humble servant and a surrendered soul, we should just offer our obeisances from a distance. Because the shakti of the parampara cannot come through people who are not surrendered. Sanat Kumar das: Many people say that they are loyal to their Guru ,but when it comes to taking instructions from a representative of Guru, they are not willing to surrender. Radhanath Swami: That means they have no loyalty to Guru. Loyalty means to follow. If the Guru tells you not to take instiuctions from his representative, then you don’t take instructions. But if the Guru tells you to take instructions and guidance from his representatives then there is no other way to be loyal except to surrender to his representatives. This is another type of Sahajiyism that I have such an intimate high advanced relationship with Guru that I don’t have to listen to anyone else. This is like taking it all cheaply because Guru is not here to tell you do anything, but his representative is. So this philosophy that I can do whatever I want in the name of Gurudev, no problem; but your Gurudev wants you to surrender. He wants you to be the servant of the servant. Loyal to Guru means to follow this principle. A person who is not humbling himself to be the servant of the servant is not close to the Guru at all. It is all a show. It is all something cheap. And if we do not believe it, then we should ask Guru. But the point is such people never ask Guru because they know that Guru will say that this is correct. They do not want to ask because in their hearts of hearts, they know they are wrong. But due to false pride they think they know they better than their Guru. That is the essence of their problem. They think they know better than their Guru due to false pride. They want to justify their sense gratification. They want to justify their material prestige. And they do not want even Gurudev to interfere with that. That is a great problem. Such a person is cheating himself of the mercy of Krishna. He may get all prestige. He may get all sense gratification. He may get millions of followers. He may get all sorts of ecstatic opportunities to enjoy what he considers Krishna Consciousness. But such a person cannot get the mercy of Radharani. The person who gets the mercy of Radharani is the person who follows in the footsteps of her real servants. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taught us,” Gopī-bhartuḥ pada-kamalayor dāsa-dāsānudāsa. To aspire to be the servant of the servant of the servant. Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Ultimately Putana was given the liberation of being Krishna’s nurse in Goloka Vrindavan who is assisting mother Yashoda. This is Krishna’s kindness. When He directly comes in this world even all of these obstacles, all these demons who represent obstacles for our vision, He kills them. That’s most important for us to understand how He kills them. But He is so kind “Om apavitro pavitrovah, sarvavastham gato’pi van”. Even though they are against Krishna, because He personally kills them, His purity purifies them. When Krishna sucked the milk of Putana, the fact that she was touched by the mouth of Krishna, she was purified. But in the process of purification she had to undergo tremendous amount of pain. She was suffering very much. She was screaming in agony. “Leave me child, leave me” and the purification was quick purification. She suffered millions of births of pain within a minute. And after all that was out, when Krishna sucked , He sucked the poison out of her. What does that mean? All the poison that was within her, all the anarthas, all the exploitation within her, He sucked it out. And as he was sucking it out it was terribly painful. But then when it was gone she was a pure devotee. So from another point of view the story explains like this. That we all have poison within us. When we come to Krishna Consciousness, Krishna sucks that poison out from within us. When we chant his name,”Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare”, we are putting ourselves in Krishna’s association and by the mercy of the Holy Name, Krishna will suck the poison out of us and as it is coming out,” Oh, my God, it is painful. It is terrible but just let Him suck it out. Once it is out, we go back to Goloka Vrindavan. “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare” Nimai Pandit das: When we see devotees who do not surrender completely to Guru and Krishna, how can we prevent ourselves from forming a mental block towards them? Radhanath swami: All that you should do is you should not follow the instructions and the inspiration of such a person. If you have the power then you should preach to that person and help that person become a surrendered devotee. After all he is your godbrother. You should try to help him. But if he is not willing to listen to you, then you should respectfully avoid him. You don’t want to contaminate your own spiritual life. You can also pray for him. You can pray to Srimati Radharani “Please help this devotee to understand how to be the humble servant of your servant”.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 07:11:10 +0000
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