Those material languages cannot help us to reach Vaikuntha-jagad, but when svarup shakti of Bhagavan can enter into someone then any language can work like magic, or even without any language – Part 5

All glories to Śrī Śrī Guru-Gauranga

Those material languages cannot help us to reach Vaikuṇṭha-jagad, but when svarūpa śakti of Bhagavān can enter into someone then any language can work like magic, or even without any language – Part 5

By Śrīla Śyāma Dāsa Bābā

Date: 12.06.2025

(continuation of the fourth part)

Gauḍīya Goṣṭhī Pati Śrī Śrīla Bhakti Siddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda said that Śrīla Saccidananda Bhaktivinod Ṭhākura delivered an originally English lecture on the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, in Dinajpur in 1869, "The Bhagavat – It's Philosophy, Its Ethics and Its Theology", where he said that—

"Gentlemen!

We love to read a book which we never read before. We are anxious to gather whatever information is contained in it and with such acquirement our curiosity stops. This mode of study prevails amongst a great number of readers, who are great men in their own estimation as well as in the estimation of those who are of their own stamp. In fact, most readers are mere repositories of facts and statements made by other people. But this is not study. The student is to read the facts with a view to create, and not with the object of fruitless retention. Students like satellites should reflect whatever light they receive from authors and not imprison the facts and thoughts just as the Magistrates imprison the convicts in the jail! Thought is progressive. The author’s thought must have progress in the reader in the shape of correction or development. He is the best critic, who can show the further development of an old thought; but a mere denouncer is the enemy of progress and consequently of Nature. “Begin anew,” says the critic, because the old masonry does not answer at present. Let the old author be buried because his time is gone. These are shallow expressions. Progress certainly is the law of nature and there must be corrections and developments with the progress of time. But progress means going further or rising higher. Now, if we are to follow our foolish critic, we are to go back to our former terminus and make a new race, and when we have run half the race another critic of his stamp will cry out: “Begin anew, because the wrong road has been taken!” In this way our stupid critics will never allow us to go over the whole road and see what is in the other terminus. Thus the shallow critic and the fruitless reader are the two greatest enemies of progress. We must shun them.

The true critic, on the other hand, advises us to preserve what we have already obtained, and to adjust our race from that point where we have arrived in the heat of our progress. He will never advise us to go back to the point whence we started, as he fully knows that in that case there will be a fruitless loss of our valuable time and labour. He will direct the adjustment of the angle of the race at the point where we are. This is also the characteristic of the useful student. He will read an old author and will find out his exact position in the progress of thought. He will never propose to burn the book on the ground that it contains thoughts which are useless. No thought is useless. Thoughts are means by which, we attain our objects. The reader who denounces a bad thought, does not know that a bad road is even capable of improvement and conversion into a good one. One thought is a road leading to another. Thus the reader will find that one thought which is the object today will be the means of a further object tomorrow. Thoughts will necessarily continue to be an endless series of means and objects in the progress of humanity. The great reformers will always assert that they have come out not to destroy the old law but to fulfil it. Valmiki, Vyasa, Plato, Jesus, Mahomed, Confucius and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu assert the fact either expressly or by their conduct.”

Most of the people could not understand the mood of those two great transcendental pioneers like Śrīla Saccidananda Bhaktivinod Ṭhākura and Śrīla Prabhupāda Bhakti Siddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Paramahaṁsa Jagad Guru when they started to preach in foreign languages like Bengali, English etc. Especially conservative scholars they always insist that śāstra cannot be expressed in any foreign language. Such conservative scholars they even think it offensive to rendering the ancient Sanskrit śāstras into mleccha-bhāsa (foreign languages). But Śrīla Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda respond to such dogmatic caste Brahmins in the following way— “If we think that the truth cannot be propagated in other languages, then our own understanding of the truth is limited and miserly, and we become divorced and inimical to the truth.”

To break this traditional ethos of India those two pioneers (Śrīla Bhaktivinod Ṭhākura and Śrīla Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda) set out to make a revolution in the field of bhāgavata-dharma, which was only accessible at that time to a few traditional caste Brahmins.

The voice of The Harmonist says— “Ṭhākura Bhaktivinoda possessed a style that is easy, invigorating, cheerful, lucid, and uniform, and enriched with the fresh wealth of an ample vocabulary culled from the inexhaustible storehouse of Sanskrit and adapted into Bengali in a natural way. The Bengali language in the hands of Ṭhākura Bhaktivinoda has thus been transformed into a powerful vehicle for the conveyance of the sublimest and the most highly philosophical truths of religion, with an ease and precision that makes his works highly interesting and at the same time perfectly intelligible to the most ordinary reader, including women and children.”

Especially we can see that throughout history many have tried to squeeze that Absolute Truth in a box in form of all kinds of different dogmas, rituals and traditions etc. But it is a fact that the flow of pure bhakti can never be captured in this way.

aprākṛta vastu nahe prākṛta-gocara

veda-purāṇete ei kahe nirantara                                                   (Cc Madhya 9.194)

“Spiritual substance is never within the jurisdiction of the material conception. This is always the verdict of the Vedas and Purāṇas.”

And also, we know that—

ataḥ śrī-kṛṣṇa-nāmādi

na bhaved grāhyam indriyaiḥ

sevonmukhe hi jihvādau

svayam eva sphuraty adaḥ                                                          (Cc Madhya 17.136)

“Therefore, material senses cannot appreciate Kṛṣṇa’s holy name, form, qualities and pastimes. When a conditioned soul is awakened to Kṛṣṇa consciousness and renders service by using his tongue to chant the Lord’s holy name and taste the remnants of the Lord’s food, the tongue is purified, and one gradually comes to understand who Kṛṣṇa really is.”

They only reason for why the real ācārya appears in this world is to bring back the original flow of caitanya vāṇī, by eliminating everything else which stands in its way.

Gauḍīya Goṣṭhī Pati Śrī Śrīla Bhakti Siddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda Paramahaṁsa Jagad Guru said that— “Do not try to discover the nature of truth by the exercise of your imagination. Do not endeavour to attain the truth through experience of this world. Do not manufacture truth in order to satisfy your erring inclinations, or hastily accept anything for the reason that it satisfies such inclinations. Do not regard as truth anything that has been “built up” or has the support of a majority of people like yourself, nor as untruth anything that is rejected by the overwhelming majority. According to the scriptures there will be found hardly one in a crore of human beings who really worships the truth. What is proclaimed by the united voices of all the people of this world as truth may turn out to be false. Therefore, cease to confront the truth in a challenging mood. The truth is not brought into existence by such arrogance. One has to approach the truth in the spirit of absolute submission. It is necessary to listen to truth. Truth is self-revealing, and only when it is pleased to reveal itself can its actual nature be known to us, and not otherwise.” (The Harmonist 25.230 March 1928)

Śrīla Prabhupāda also used to say that— “Don’t try to comprehend everything by your puppy brains.”

Transcendental knowledge is only available to the service inclined sincere devotee by hearing from the authorized channel of guru-paramparā. Our material mind and intelligence are not able to grasp all those most subtle transcendental matters. If we are not humble enough and accept our own inability in regard to that absolute truth, and instead try to follow in the footsteps of foolish puffed up demons like Ravan, who out of his own audacity tried his best to build a stairway (in form of his empirical approach based on the external world) up to heaven, but at the end ended up empty handed. In the same way we also will only be deprived of that eternal amṛta (nectar) forever by following such a procedure.

Even great scholars like Sir Isaac Newton came to the conclusion regarding material knowledge by saying that— “What to speak of entering into the ocean of knowledge, I could not even touch it. I am just standing on the shore of that ocean, collecting a few fragments of broken stones.” If this is the case regarding material matters, then how can a tiny jīva like us claim to know actually something about that transcendental ocean of śāstra without the causeless kṛpā of sādhu-guru-Vaiṣṇava? That is for why Śrīla Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda wanted to give us a warning in the following way— “Without meaningful engagement in guru-Vaiṣṇava sevā, if we try to understand śāstra, then our effort will be nothing else then licking the honey bottle from outside, no entry at all into the transcendental subject matter.”

Once a few students approached Śrīla Bhakti Siddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda by asking him the following question— “If we don’t learn reading and writing then how can we study śāstra? Śrīla Sarasvatī Ṭhākura reply was— “I have imbibed the meaning of all scriptures by observing the exemplary character of Śrīla Bhaktivinod Ṭhākura and my Gurudeva Paramahaṁsa Babaji. One cannot realize the true purpose of śāstra by expertise in grammar or by memorizing roots and endings of words. If that where so, then the great worldly professors would have comprehended the factual import of śāstra.”  (Gauḍīya 17.27 -28.475)

Śrīla Prabhupāda also used to say that— “The śrauta vāṇī from the mouth of Śrī Guru only enters completely into the ears of one in whom sevā vṛtty is present to its fullest extent. The śruti cannot be infused into the holes of the ears that remain blocked by contaminations, ears covered with attraction to activities devoid of service to Hari-guru-Vaiṣṇava such as karma, jñāna, yoga, and tapasyā. The succession of eternal sound (nitya śabda) descending from the transcendental sky (paravyoma) that enters into ears intent on service (sevonmukha-karna) is called ‘śruti’. Instead of knowledge polluted by the faulty vision of exploitation (visaya darśana), the jīva, who is imbued with the four defects beginning with brahma, must understand the flawless ‘āmnāya’, the root of knowledge (jñāna mula).“ (Spoken by Śrīla Bhakti Siddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura at the Albert Hall, Calcutta, on 11th August 1929)   

Unfortunately, it is obvious that from time-to-time scriptures always have become the target of unqualified individuals (who even may act as ācāryas or spiritual leaders) who try to pollute the pure siddhānta vichars with their own concocted material ideas. And that is for why the descend of pure devotees like Śrīla Saccidananda Bhaktivinod Ṭhākura and Paramahaṁsa Jagad Guru Śrī Śrīla Bhakti Siddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Ṭhākura is absolutely necessary, because otherwise the whole devotional field becomes corrupted and disordered. That is why Śrīla Prabhupāda used to say that— “The only duty of an effective ācārya is to protect and preserve siddhānta vāṇī vaibhava”.

Most of the people are not aware about the fact—that they are following just blindly some distorted and corrupted beliefs or traditions passed through many generations. Half-truth is more dangerous than complete lie. It is a fact that if the majority of the population speaking lie, then that lie can become accepted one day as so-called truth. But even more shocking than that is when any society, community or group accepting that so-called truth as absolute, which finally leads to a whole culture based on lies and nothing else. And perhaps even more shocking than that is that—when that culture is passed on to the next generations, then this will ultimately end up in a so-called tradition based on all kinds of untruth.

To illustrate such a scenario we would like to mention one funny incident. Once there was a traditional village festival where Brahmins arranged one huge yajña. As all the pre-arrangements were almost done by the elderly Brahmins of that community, one cat started to roam around in that sanctified area. To stop the cat from further contamination one of those Brahmins started to bind that cat on a tree. In this way all the festivities continued without any disturbance. After some years passed by, again the time for one big yajña arrived, and as usually all Brahmins where busy in their respective duties. That time the elder sons of the Brahmins where the main pujaris. So according what they have learned and seen from their elders they applied the same procedure by making all arrangements accordingly. The funny part is that at one point one of this Brahmin boys said— “We have to arrange one cat and bind it on the tree, I saw it with my own eyes in the arrangement of the last yajña.” “It is part of the yajña”—he further said. Well! The cat was arranged and all continued. In this way we can see how easily things are carried on by different traditions which are all based on misinterpretation. 

Also, we can remember how and when Śrī Krsna – The Supreme Lord Himself – questioned the religious traditions followed by those Brajavasis under the guidance of Śrī Nanda Baba and those elderly gopās, which no one would ever was questioning. But ultimately Śrī Krsna showed them how to break through their traditional concepts followed over a long period of time. 

As soon as there is a rigid clinging to one tradition and people follow only the externals of that tradition without understanding the actual essence behind, then the natural flow disappears within some period of time, and instead of a growing and evolving spirit everything becomes stagnant and mechanical. Śrīla Prabhupāda Bhakti Siddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura would very often say that— “Bhakti is the natural function of the soul.”

…..to be continued