Nomenclature of the Absolute (pg 31-34)
He should consider himself a non-entity in this mundane world. If he considers that he has something to do with this world and is in need of this world's acquisitions in the shape of intelligence or in the shape of some material objects such as land etc., he would be a failure in his transcendental march. But if a devotee knows his position well, he should not aspire to be great in the estimation of all the people in this world. He should simply ignore the opinion, good or bad of other people...
He should always be considering himself as the lowliest and most infinitesimal, and desist from participating in material activities or in some other mental processes that may be induced by Nature's productions. He should consider himself a non-entity in this mundane world. If he considers that he has something to do with this world and is in need of this world's acquisitions in the shape of intelligence or in the shape of some material objects such as land etc., he would be a failure in his transcendental march. But if a devotee knows his position well, he should not aspire to be great in the estimation of all the people in this world. He should simply ignore the opinion, good or bad of other people. He should patiently receive all that comes to him. He might be called a fool or he might be called an incompetent man. Still he should not show any aggressiveness to resist such insinuations. In this manner the soul is called upon to utter the Name of Krishna first. He should hear the Name of Krishna first. He should hear the Name of Krishna from an unconditioned soul who has no attachment whatsoever to the world. His model would be sufficient to follow and he will then come to know that chanting is possible for the soul all the twenty-four hours of the day without utilizing a single second for any other purpose. If he is found to be impatient, if he is found to be hankering after a position in this mundane world, he would become a defaulter in chanting the Name of Hari, the Transcendental Being.
Why does a person claim ownership of a thing or of another person? To control it or them. And why does he want to control it? Usually because he wants to be the enjoyer of it.
Krishna or Hari has got no mortal coil to come under worldly assessment as we have. He does not require any labour on our part, for chanting His Name with devotion involves no effort. So we should accept the views of Shri Krishna Chaitanya in our transcendental march, in preference to any other advice. The unalloyed soul should adopt a non-interfering policy both of the mind and of the body; and if we can thus isolate our position, we will find that we are relieved of all mundane anxieties in the shape of matter or in the subtle form of intelligence. Leaving aside these, the function of the soul is to take the Name of Krishna, as Krishna is the fullest representation of the Transcendence of the Absolute, of the ever-existing Divine Manifestation, and is All-Knowledge and All-Bliss.
He is Satchidananda, and that Satchidananda will prevail in us on our so welcoming the transcendental Word. If we are sincere He would come into our vision and we would easily discover Him. We must not be thinking that this material world is the full aspect of His manifestation, as our various senses cannot approach Him: our eyes cannot see Him, our nose cannot get the fragrance of His Body, the flowers that we offer cannot reach Him. We cannot relish Mahaprasadam if it has not been accepted by Him. In all that we do we must rely on Him as the Sole Enjoyer of everything and we are His subservients in every way. In the Gita Shri Krishna tells Arjuna this truth in the shloka beginning Yatkaroshi, Yadashnasi etc." [7]
As the Transcendental Name of Hari is identical with His Person in every respect, that Name Himself has all the attributes and every-thing connected with Hari; and as all are to be found in the Transcendental Name, we can safely follow in the footsteps of Shri Krishna Chaitanya. Whatever we desire we get from His Name. No ignorance can be ascribed to Him. He is enriched with all sorts of Rasa. Krishna Himself is full of all senses. He is embellished with all the Rasas required by His associates.
Unfortunately, a person who is materialistic, greedy, and self-worshiping wants to take the place of God. He sees himself as the center of the universe. He sees everything and everyone—the world, people, his family, animals, plants, the environment—as revolving around him. He sees everything and everyone as meant for his enjoyment. The world is full of such exploitative people, and they cause so many problems.
In the manifested world we find a thing which passes by the name of Rasa, which implies a relishing quality an object of taste. It is a perishable thing. But Rasa in Krishna is the emporium of all Rasas, in which all the five are included. We must not be under the impression that Rasa in Krishna's service is identical with the mundane Rasas which are inadequate and full of deformities. The Scriptures describe that Rasa of Krishna. In the beginning of the Bhagavatam this is what we find: Rasas are drinks which are relished by the soul's eternal senses and these have denominations different from those that are presented to us for a few hours or a few days. This worldly Rasa is not everlasting, But the eternal Rasa, which is not allied to any ignorance, presents no miserable face, no vanishing signs, like the Rasa of this mundane world, which have limitations imposed on them in order to give us to understand that even if we should amply rely on this spark here, we can go back to the higher Rasa if we are anxious to be eternal 'Rasikas'. Shri Krishna is 'Rasamaya' and we are to submit our loving service for the purpose of His tasting. We are to approach him not for our own enjoyment. These senses are really means for such enjoyment as should go to Him. We see all sorts of manifestations in Him, and the direction of perverted Rasas should be corrected so as to go back to Him and not merely end with us. We should always place ourselves in a serving mood, we should always welcome the Name of Krishna and bend our speech, thoughts and actions towards His services. On the other hand, if we desire to enjoy the Rasa ourselves through the medium of Krishna, that would simply degrade us to the lowest ditch of selfishness in which we assume the part of enjoyers of something worldly, but we are surely deprived of perfect Rasa. This Rasa in which we usually indulge is never expected to continue, as the components are of a trival [sic] nature. Whereas Krishna is 'Rasamritamoorti,' and if we depend upon that Ocean of eternal Rasa, we can look forward to give Him all facilities to enjoy our spiritual eternal activities. Enjoying Rasa from an appetite of the senses would only lead us to dealings with inanimate or transitory things. When we extract some Rasa from dependent objects then that Rasa can never be our continued companion. That Rasa would simply desert us, and we will have no satisfaction as we will only be tantalising our poor senses. But Shri Krishna is not likely to delude us by allowing us to keep our affinity for something else.
He is a Spiritual Being and not an Achit, insentient. He has not only to enjoy Rasa but He is full of Rasa. And if we want to be in touch with eternal Rasa, we have to become transcendental Rasikas. In case we seek for temporary Rasa we would receive Vi-rasa, perverted Rasa. Krishna has monopolised all real Rasas. He is the Fountainhead of all the Rasas. The Name is a very storehouse of all the Rasas which we should seek without making any difference between the name and the Object pointed out by the Name, unlike the differentiation we find in this temporal world. Krishna is identical with the word Hari, His Colour, His Size and the Attributes and Activities. Krishna is Himself Eternal. The Name of Krishna is Eternal, and does not mean any object of Nature's. Nature's phenomena have nothing to do with Krishna Who is not a transitory manifested view of this world. These are all temporary things and we must not be confusing the leela of Krishna with them. If we do so, such a conception would be erroneous, for we should refrain from mistaking the mundane thought for that of transcendence. We should make our position clear here. He is full in Himself. All sorts of activities are manifested in Him. He is the store of all. If we want to exercise our senses we resort to others' help. But in the case of Krishna it is quite different. He does not require any assistance from anybody. He is Nitya, Suddha, Poorna and Mukta in Himself; He is unconditioned. Nothing can wrap Him. This talk of Krishna, His Name, the Transcendental Name, is identical with Krishna but that is not the case with other things than Krishna. When we name something of this world we necessarily give the opportunity of examining its validity by different senses. The taste, smell, sign and perceptions offer to examine the personalities of things. But Krishna does not require such examination as He is not an Object of sensual jurisdiction. He is the Autocrat. He does not care to be helped by us.
If a person sees himself as the Supreme Enjoyer, he will automatically live a life of exploitation. He will not respect others or the environment, nor will he care for the well-being of others. He will lead a hedonistic life of unrestricted sense enjoyment, lording over everything and everyone. Although human in form, he will be no more than an animal who lives by the philosophy "might makes right."
So the ordinary name, that is a name which does not mean Krishna, has got a different significance. We must not bring all names of different gods, men, lower creation and insentient objects which are under the deluding influence of Maya in the same category as that of the Absolute Krishna. We would be very foolish if we considered that the Name Krishna is but a word in our vocabulary and that Name was given to a hero only whose deeds were recorded in history. This is not the case with the Transcendental Name which history and other mundane subjects cannot possibly comprehend. The Name is completely identical with Krishna, the Divine Personality. So His Name is not different from Krishna Himself, as such difference can stick to temporal and limited objects only.
In the iron age of materialism people are very fond of speaking of the relativity of knowledge, and by their empiric argumentative powers they hasten to classify everything under motion and matter. If only we utter the Name of Krishna every contending phase would be transformed into harmony and we would get perfect concord. But we do not chant the Name of Krishna leaving aside all that is detrimental to the chanting. So, being in an atmosphere surcharged with erroneous impressions, we cannot expect at the very outset to utter the Name properly without difficulty. We never welcome Krishna properly by uttering His Name; in the course of the chanting hundreds of irrelevant things intervene owing to our uncontrolled desires.
We are full of many mundane impressions; so we have to guard ourselves against those ten offences that should not be committed during the chanting of the Name of Hari. Without getting rid of the ten offences we cannot make any actual progress. Let us consider these offences in detail:
History has shown us that our tendency to colonize and exploit other regions has always backfired. This planet can be made a happier, more peaceful place to live in, but the change will have to come from within the hearts of all of us living here.
(1) If we show our affinity towards men who have thought that only the process of uttering the Name of Krishna will not do us any good; the preceptor or bonafide Sadhus being faulty, we would be committing the first offence. (2) The second offence will occur when we think that Krishna is not the only aspect of Hari and place some other name of delegated gods from our experience of this mundane world in the position of Krishna so that their names are installed instead of Krishna's Transcendental Name; this will be no doubt an offence. As the Word Krishna alone has the full denomination of the Divinity we seek, no other word can replace the word Krishna. All other words are shadowy and incomplete expressions of Krishna, whereas the Word Krishna can give us all Bliss in case we do not cripple our vision to witness the actual sight of Krishna. If we denounce this we would be committing the second offence. So we should be careful not to consider the Name of Krishna as on a level with the names of others. As the Word Krishna is enriched with all sorts of equipment, all sorts of attributes that are possible here, so in tracing the Fountainhead of everything, we are to resort to the Word Krishna and to no other word. The other words have got crippled meanings. The full significance of the Name Krishna cannot be obtained in our vision, if we neglect Him. The word Brahman cannot claim the full representation nor can the word 'Paramatman' or Oversoul, not to speak of some other concepts of men.
If we consider that curd is the same as milk it would be sheer folly. Milk has got quite another individuality. When the Word Krishna is substituted with some other we find some other conception of Godhead. The word 'Krishna' can give us the full impression of the Object of our love and worship but the word 'Rama' cannot give us the full aspects of Vishnu in all Rasas. All the different aspects of the Personalities of Krishna should not be considered to have all Rasas in them. He is void of all Gunas or qualities. So Satchidananda is the ever-existing, the All-Blissful and All-Knowledge. He accepts all who show a particular aptitude to serve Him. Leaving aside the Name of Krishna for the sake of other names of gods known as Brahma, Shankara etc. we find that we cannot get in them the same relation as we expect in Krishna, the Avatari. So this is an offence to the Name of Krishna.