“The Path of Spiritual Realization” (SB 1.18.12)
Thompson describes bhakti yoga, the method of linking with the Supreme through the practice of devotion, as the ultimate path of self-realization. Other means of acquiring knowledge through a process of self-awareness can tend to enhance the false ego, or in other words, the latent conditional desire to dominate and control. Thompson explains that conversely, bhakti begins by eliminating a “superiority complex.” After a lively exchange with the audience, Thompson concludes that ultimately, bhakti yoga can be comprehensively understood through engagement with the process.
TRANSCRIPT: Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 1, Chapter 18, Text 12. “The Path of Spiritual Realization.” San Diego – January 4, 1989 / (066)
Reading from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto 1, Chapter 18, Text 12:
karmaṇy asminn anāśvāse
dhūma-dhūmrātmanāṁ bhavān
āpāyayati govinda-
pāda-padmāsavaṁ madhu
Translation:
We have just begun the performance of this fruitive activity, a sacrificial fire, without certainty of its result due to the many imperfections in our action. Our bodies have become black from the smoke, but we are factually pleased by the nectar of the lotus feet of the Personality of Godhead, Govinda, which you are distributing.
Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:
The sacrificial fire kindled by the sages of Naimiṣāraṇya was certainly full of smoke and doubts because of so many flaws. The first flaw is that there is an acute scarcity of expert brāhmaṇas able to carry out such performances successfully in this age of Kali. Any discrepancy in such sacrifices spoils the whole show, and the result is uncertain, like agricultural enterprises. The good result of tilling the paddy field depends on providential rain, and therefore the result is uncertain. Similarly, performance of any kind of sacrifice in this age of Kali is also uncertain. Unscrupulous greedy brāhmaṇas of the age of Kali induce the innocent public to such uncertain sacrificial shows without disclosing the scriptural injunction that in the age of Kali there is no fruitful sacrificial performance but the sacrifice of the congregational chanting of the holy name of the Lord. Sūta Gosvāmī was narrating the transcendental activities of the lord before the congregation of sages, and they were factually perceiving the result of hearing these transcendental activities. One can feel this practically, as one can feel the result of eating food. Spiritual realization acts in that way.
The sages of Naimiṣāraṇya were practically sufferers from the smoke of a sacrificial fire and were doubtful about the result, but by hearing from a realized person like Sūta Gosvāmī, they were fully satisfied. In the Brahma-vaivarta Purāṇa, Viṣṇu tells Siva that in the age of Kali, men full of anxieties of various kinds can vainly labour in fruitive activity and philosophical speculations, but when they are engaged in devotional service, the result is sure and certain, and there is no loss of energy. In other words, nothing performed for spiritual realization or for material benefit can be successful without the devotional service to the Lord.
om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya
cakshur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah
sri-caitanya-mano-’bhishtam sthapitam yena bhu-tale
svayam rupah kada mahyam dadati sva-padantikam
So the translation:
We have just begun the performance of this fruitive activity, a sacrificial fire, without certainty of its result due to the many imperfections in our action. Our bodies have become black from the smoke, but we are factually pleased by the nectar of the lotus feet of the Personality of Godhead, Govinda, which you are distributing.
So the process of devotional service is essential for spiritual advancement. It’s described that there are different approaches to this idea of elevation of one’s situation in life. There’s the path of fruitive activity according to Vedic regulations, and then there’s the path of jñāna, or intellectual speculation. And then there’s the mystic yoga systems, and there’s the process of bhakti or devotional service. And it’s described that actually for all of these processes to be successful there has to be some element of devotional service there. Nonetheless, there’s a tendency of people who adhere to these other processes to decry the idea of devotional service as being somehow inferior.
[5:02]
Actually, a key element there lies in the whole question of the inner motivation of the individual. Devotional service involves subordination to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, so one can hardly even conceive of devotional service without thinking of surrender and subordination. That’s essential for the idea of devotional service. Whereas all these other processes involve the prowess of the individual as a powerful entity capable of accomplishing various goals. So therefore, this mode of thinking is complementary to the false ego of the individual, so ultimately one can engage in these other processes in pursuance of a basic underlying desire to dominate and control – to be the superior in one’s particular situation. Whereas the very idea of devotional service eliminates this concept that one is the superior. So, for that reason these other processes tend to be appealing.
So, the sages of Naimiṣāraṇya were engaged in fruitive sacrifice in accordance with the Vedic principles. So, the very idea of performing the sacrifice in accordance with the Vedic principles indicates that there is an element of bhakti there, or devotional service, because one must ask: Why perform this sacrifice in accordance with particular principles, and where are the principles coming from? So the very fact that one is accepting certain principles means that one is surrendering. One is not… one is accepting that one’s own will, or one’s own particular personal idea, may not be adequate, or in fact will not be adequate for proper pursuance of one’s goals. But rather one has to accept some higher order; and of course, the question then is: Where does the higher order come from? And if you think about it, well, the higher order comes from the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So even if one is engaged in sacrificial performances or other karma-kāṇḍa fruitive activities, still, in order to even pursue things, pursue fruitive activities in accordance to religious principles, one has to accept surrender to the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
So fruitive activity which has in it no element of surrender to the Supreme Personality of Godhead is what is called vikarma and involves very degraded activities without any regulation of the senses. Of course, even in these sacrificial activities, the ultimate goal of the sacrifice is Lord Viṣṇu. All of the different Vedic sacrifices, for example the different mantras, begin with oṁ, which is an extremely misunderstood word. Even the mantras to Śiva begin with oṁ, like oṁ namaḥ śivāya, and so forth. So oṁ refers to Viṣṇu – that’s actually the name of Kṛṣṇa. So all of these different sacrifices, in all of these different sacrifices, the mantras refer specifically to Lord Viṣṇu the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So that is recognized even within this sacrificial system. So devotional service is essential there.
Of course, we see that there are different modes of religious faith in which people approach God for the purpose of gaining fruitive benefits, but still they’re approaching God. So the idea of surrender to the Supreme Personality of Godhead is there, but at the same time people are thinking: Well, I’ll surrender to the Supreme Personality of Godhead in order to satisfy certain material desires. So surrender to God becomes a means to an end, and the end is actually exploitation for one’s own selfish purposes. So the better conclusion would be simply to surrender to God in order to carry out whatever desires God might have and if one comes to that conclusion one actually can come to the point of pure devotional service.
[10:09]
So another aspect or path of development that is pursued is this path of jñāna, or intellectual development. It’s described that through jñāna one can understand Kṛṣṇa in his Brahman feature, ultimately. It’s interesting to consider why that is so. Essentially the process of jñāna is, in the ultimate issue, negative because it involves determining what spirit is not. So in Sanskrit this is called neti neti. And it's interesting to see that the same idea comes up in various parts of the world. For example, in the Christian tradition it’s called to via negativa, which is the same thing: the negative way. In other words, determining what is not spiritual; and by eliminating everything that is not spiritual you arrive at an understanding of what is spiritual. The same is true, I understand, of Zen Buddhism – the idea is to negate everything material. So the reason that this intellectual process proceeds in this way is that through the mundane mind and senses one can only perceive material things. So if one is going to engage in a process of spiritual realization using the mundane mind and senses, there’s nothing to do but to examine different material phenomena and reject them as being not spiritual.
But of course, there’s the question finally of how can you understand that something is not spiritual unless you understand what is spiritual. It would seem difficult to do that. So, people proceed then on the basis of an intuition of what is spiritual. That intuition seems to be fundamental within the self of the individual. So unless you accept as a premise that there is some fundamental spiritual intuition, then it’s hard to see how an intellectual process of material discrimination could ever lead to a spiritual goal. So that fundamental spiritual intuition is there, but in the material state of consciousness it’s not very highly developed. So it’s described that Brahman realization is ultimately the result of this intellectual process. So this process leads one to a neutral state of spiritual existence. You could compare this to coming from the negative numbers up to zero, but it doesn’t lead to any understanding of the positive numbers. Also, the Brahman conception tends to be misleading in the sense that one of the things that one negates is material variety. So one comes to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as spiritual variety. Variety must be a non-spiritual thing. One concludes this on the basis of looking at material variety. So the tendency is to come to the conclusion that there can be no such thing as spiritual variety.
Of course, this has the drawback that one must then ask: Where does the material variety come from? Philosophers will define spirit as some kind of absolute, all comprehending form; and one might ask, by the way, where the idea of this is coming from? It would seem that there is an intuition behind this because you see people who have no scriptural tradition also coming up with this idea. So there seems to be a basic appeal to the concept of some ultimate unified source for all reality, and different philosophers seek to understand that ultimate source. You find even Albert Einstein trying to understand this, and so Einstein was pursuing what they called a unified field theory in physics. The idea is that it is not satisfactory if you have just many different things. The ultimate source, or the ultimate basis of reality, must be one thing. So Einstein was seeking that even though he wasn’t a follower of any scriptural tradition.
[15:04]
So… this intuition is there of an ultimate oneness. But if this ultimate oneness is the source of everything material, how is it that from oneness you have variety coming? This basic question is there. So if this question is addressed, one can consider the defect of the ultimate impersonal conclusion that one arrives at through this intellectual process of speculation. So it’s described that people can actually come to the stage of Brahman realization through this process. Lord Caitanya said that there are two ways in which people are becoming liberated: one is through devotional service and the other is through this process of intellectual speculation. But those who obtain liberation by that method ultimately fall down again because they don’t obtain a stable spiritual situation. So Śrīla Prabhupāda has compared that with flying into the sky in an airplane and not finding any place in the sky where one can reside or find a stable situation. So the result is that one has to come down again at some point. So that’s also the situation in the Brahman realization. Another aspect of this is that since the Brahman realization involves ultimately a negation of the idea of variety without the discovery of positive spiritual variety, the inner desire of the soul for variety is not satisfied in that state. And thus, one comes down to material activity again.
And then another aspect of, another path of development, is this path of mystic yoga which leads to realization of the Paramātmā feature of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So essentially the idea of the mystic yoga process is by controlling the senses we’re actually able to see the Supersoul within the heart. The idea is that we are not able to see the Supersoul because we are so much diverted by different sensory activities on the material platform. But if you’re able to actually control the material senses then it becomes possible to perceive the Supersoul. So that’s the mystic yoga process. So it’s described that all of these processes, in order to be successful, actually require some element of devotional service because ultimately for the process to work the benediction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead has to be there. If Kṛṣṇa is not favourable… is not favourably disposed to the individual who is pursuing some particular line of endeavour, then the endeavour will not be successful. So for this reason some element of bhakti is actually necessary. So one can say: Then why not simply engage in the process of bhakti? Why divert oneself to engage in all these other processes of development if bhakti is actually the essence in all of them? So, let us see, I must say in reading this I was not able to come up with any particular idea of what I should say. So are there any comments or questions? Maybe that may lead to something. Yeah?
Question: [unclear]
Answer: Yes, that’s what Śrīla Prabhupāda is referring to. Yes, perhaps one can. Yeah?
[19:57]
Q: You were referring about intuition and people without a unified religious system, like Einstein and the unified field, that there's an inherent idea that there’s something from which everything emanates, an absolute and one source. Suppose we were to counter that we were born in a world that’s random, and that’s the way it works. And just like computers, they have a tendency to form systems – it’s a way of processing information – and unless you process information you can’t function, so it’s just wishful thinking. It’s inherent nature in a random world to try and make order out of it. It doesn’t mean that there is order and it doesn’t mean that it’s the soul’s intuitive remembrance of there being a Supreme Personality of Godhead. It’s just a matter of the entity trying to process information and make sense out of a random irrational world, but [unclear]... a system or a god or an ultimate source, but just wishful thinking and it’s just the information processing nature of the entity.
A: Yeah, well in reply to that you can ask: Why does the information processing take place? Because… it’s the same old argument. The reason I’m hesitating to discuss it is because I discussed it before. But then we always discuss things again. Yeah, why should information processing take place? Computers don’t program themselves. People who are involved with computers come to a realization on this. There’s a tendency towards disorganization. If you let things just operate they tend to break down, and you don’t tend to find an orderly pattern emerging. Of course, this is a whole discussion because you can get orderly patterns, for example, the pattern of frost forming on a window plane is quite orderly and that’s just happening by a physical process. So one can say: Well, a physical process can produce order. But it can’t produce the kind of order that you see, for example, even in computers, for example. There you see a complex pattern which is not in any way required by the underlying material circumstances.
So why do such patterns develop, and why indeed do philosophers tend to arrive at the idea of explaining things in terms of some ultimate cause and so forth? They wouldn’t have to do that. Of course, many people don’t do that also, so there’s the whole line of reasoning which can be pursued along those lines. It’s known as the argument for design. One can go into that. So that amounts to an argument for a variegated spiritual source. So that whole line of argument can be looked at. So, yeah, Śrīla Prabhupāda is referring here to practical spiritual realization, as opposed to different intellectual processes. It’s described that when one obtains actual realization through bhakti-yoga one is not interested in the intellectual practices of realization and so forth. Of course, all realization of whatever it may be is of the same nature. Ultimately, you see, the comment that could be made is that mysticism is something ineffable, it involves ineffable states of consciousness – things that you can’t describe. People who criticize the idea of mysticism will always refer to this. However, anything that one experiences is ultimately not describable. You can only describe your experience to another person if the other person has had a similar experience, and somehow or other words exist in which there’s a mutual understanding. This in itself is a great mystery.
For example, can you explain what it means to see a sunset? Could you explain that to a person who is blind from birth, what it’s like to experience a sunset? So the experience is just actually known. So similarly, the result of bhakti-yoga ultimately is a matter of experience, and persons on the platform of devotional service can understand that experience, whereas those who are not on that platform cannot understand it. Ultimately you can’t convey it to someone who doesn’t have the experience. But there’s nothing unusual about that because you couldn’t convey even knowledge of the sunsets to someone who was unable to see. So ultimately the process of communicating bhakti-yoga is to instruct people in how to engage in certain practices in which the same experience will be awakened within them, so that they can also have the direct realization. So the whole framework of the Vedic literature provides a system whereby one is able to come to direct realization of one’s relationship to Kṛṣṇa. So, another comment?
[25:57]
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, Dhruva Mahārāja was engaging in devotional service for a very strong material desire. That can be done, and it’s described that whatever your motive – whether you have desire for material activities or liberation or you're free of desire – it’s a good idea to engage in devotional service. So, in the case of Dhruva Mahārāja, he had this rather intense desire to… essentially, he had been insulted, he was… his karmic situation was he had extreme pride as a kṣatriya, and so he’d been greatly insulted by his stepmother, not allowed get on his father’s lap and so forth. So he wanted to acquire this kingdom very intensely. So he was engaged in devotional service for that purpose by Nārada Muni. So he was performing these very extreme austerities which are practically inconceivable, or physically impossible actually for us, but then you have to consider that he was the grandson of Brahmā. So if your grandfather is Brahmā, these things are probably easier than if you’re a few more generations removed and living in the Kali-yuga. But when Lord Viṣṇu actually appeared before him, at that point he realized the actual nature of bhakti because he actually saw Lord Viṣṇu.
This of course raises an interesting question. Previously he was meditating on the form of Lord Viṣṇu – he’d actually made deity forms, that was one part of Nārada Muni’s instruction. But then when he was just meditating, he was meditating on the form of Lord Viṣṇu, but there seemed to be a difference when he actually saw Lord Viṣṇu. Because if the form of Lord Viṣṇu which he was meditating on was non-different from Lord Viṣṇu, then what is the difference? Anyway, you could raise that question. Yeah?
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, the answer is that the seed… you may think it’s nothing because your senses are so blunt. But the seed contains, if you look, say, at modern biochemistry – here is where biochemistry can come to the rescue – you look within the seed and you find, you examine the DNA and the different chemical structures there, you find at the seed is extremely complicated; and the modern idea is that the seed contains programming that produces the whole tree. So the tree is actually, so to speak, stored up within the seed. It’s not that something is coming out of nothing, it's just that something large so that you can see it is coming out of something small which you can’t see. So… but it’s not that you really have more variegatedness than you had before. All the different patterns of the twigs, the fruits, the leaves and so on are coded in the DNA. So one can ask: Well where did the coding come from? One has to explain that. So that’s not a very good answer – the Māyāvādīs will have to go back and try again. Yeah?
[30:42]
Q: [unclear]
A: Yeah, they’re reproductions of the same image too, as you can see.
Q: [unclear]
A: Well you do find that in the material world, that’s what reproduction is. You make many copies of the same bodies over and over again, combining the different features. So in the material world you have reproduction of these different patterns; you can mix them together and produce different combinations. But the question is: Where does the original information come from? If you say it's eternally there in the material world you have a problem because there’s a tendency of destruction in the material world. So how can order eternally exist in a setting where a continual process of destruction is going on? This is a problem. If you say that it's been there for infinity, or an infinite amount of time, and if it's not eternally in the material world – where does it come from? It has to come from somewhere other than the material world. So, and then what do you mean by material? If by material you mean everything which can be understood more or less mechanically, then that means what it comes from, if that’s nonmaterial, that is something that you can’t understand mechanically. That argument can be made. So what is it? Well, we’re following the jñānī process here. Since that process doesn’t directly tell you, then you don’t know what it is. But whatever it is, it's not mechanical and it’s a source of information. So what is that? One comes to the conclusion that there must be such a thing. What is it? So let's see… Yeah?
Q: [unclear]
A: Well, that’s exactly the problem with the process of jñāna, namely that one ultimately concludes that there’s something beyond the material domain, but one cannot come to any positive appreciation of that by the material intellectual process. So then where does that leave you? If you actually engage in the austerity required to then… instead of just speculating about it, you actually separate your mode of existence from the material continuum. That’s what you could call practical jñāna as opposed to mere theoretical jñāna. On the theoretical side, you just do what scholars do. You indulge your senses like anything while at the same time engaging in different speculations. So that leads to nothing but publications. It increases the volume of libraries. But if you engage in what you could call the practical jñāna process, then you say: Well, if this is material, and for some reason I think this is not desirable, and then one can ask: where does that idea come from also? Why does one think that? But if one does so then one ultimately comes to a neutral state where one isn’t interacting with material things. But there’s no positive spiritual life either, so one has managed to come to zero. So ultimately it’s not satisfactory. Of course, there are different ideas of Brahman. The Māyāvādī ideas of Brahman refers to something non-existent. In other words, there is no such a thing as the Māyāvādīi concept of Brahman. The actual Brahman, which is the effulgence of Kṛṣṇa, is in itself variegated for one thing, because after all, it’s coming from Kṛṣṇa. So, it must be a variegated reality. So… yeah?
[35:52]
Q: [unclear]
A: Yeah, that’s precisely what it does apply to because all these fruitive sacrifices were basically… oh, I should repeat the question: Does the difficulty in performing sacrifice in Kali-yuga refer to demigod worship? So basically that’s what it refers to because these different sacrifices were directed towards different demigods, basically. Essentially, one doesn’t directly approach Lord Viṣṇu for fruitive results actually. One approaches different demigods. So that’s the kind of thing that is difficult in Kali-yuga. For that reason, it’s interesting, you’ll see that religion in the mode of ignorance is very much flourishing in Kali-yuga. That’s going on like anything. But worship of demigods according to the proper regulations is not a very common thing at the present time, although of course it still goes on, but it’s more difficult. Yeah?
Q: [unclear]
A: Yeah, people take to what corresponds to their modes, so in any case, any other question or comment? All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda
[Lecture ends, conversation continues]
Q: [unclear]
A: Yeah, well the question is: Why do you see such uniformity and how is it that people have an idea of one higher spiritual reality which is… has oneness? Why oneness?
Q: [unclear]
A: Yeah, but the point is, how is it that that comes about, because looking at nature, looking around and seeing things – what do you see with your senses, or perceive with your eyes, which indicates that there is one unified reality? Because you see what they call a blooming buzzing confusion if you just look around. There are just all kinds of things going on, why not adopt pure polytheism? Of course, one standard, the thing that people read in history books, is people were polytheistic and then became monotheistic. But actually if you look at it, the history of religion, you find that wherever there appears to be pure polytheism there’s actually an underlying monistic philosophy existing. That was true of the Greeks even. They had their monistic ideas also. Aristotle was teaching about a sort of Māyāvādī monistic concept of god as actus purus, pure actuality without any change or transformation. It’s very much like Brahman and so forth. So, where do people… how is it they come up with that? Because you would think that if the sense data was flowing in and the computer back there was just grinding away its processing it, you would not come up with a conclusion like that.
[40:39]
Q: There is a kind of a commonality in things that are living. Things that are living – they are born, they grow old, and then die.
A: Sure is, for what?
Q: No matter how variegated they are, all living things do this.
A: So, what?
Q: There is a big commonality.
A: There is commonality: the air’s the same wherever you go, and water’s the same, and flesh is the same.
Q: Proteins are proteins are proteins!
A: Sure, and sunlight is basically the same.
Q: Carbon is carbon is carbon.
A: But the air is different from the flesh and behaviour of volcanoes is different from that of amoebas, so where’s the commonality? So why philosophy anyway? Why does philosophising take place? Right! Where does it come from?
Q: ‘Cause we have these huge brains, we have to do something with them!
A: Locusts have big brains too.
Q: Maybe they philosophize! We don’t know!
A: Well, so the question can still be raised. I mean, one can wave one’s hands and say, “Oh, I know an evolutionary process produces this,” but still the question can be raised as to why people tend to uniformly come up with the same kind of mystical ideas and report the same kind of mystical experiences also. So the explanation might be that there’s some sort of non-sensory input that has a commonality, and that’s what they are reporting. Maybe consider that?
Q: Hare Kṛṣṇa!