From the Shadow of Brahma
BY: GEORGE A. SMITH
Nov 9, USA (SUN) — Srimad Bhagavatam 1st Canto, Text 18.
TEXT
sasarja cchayayavidyam
panca-parvanam agratah
tamisram andha-tamisram
tamo moho maha-tamah
SYNONYMS
sasarja--created; chayaya--with his shadow; avidyam--ignorance; panca-parvanam--five varieties; agratah--first of all; tamisram--tamisra; andha-tamisram--andha-tamisra; tamah--tamas; mohah--moha; maha-tamah--maha-tamas, or maha-moha.
TRANSLATION: "First of all, Brahma created from his shadow the coverings of ignorance of the conditioned souls. They are five in number and are called tamisra, andha-tamisra, tamas, moha and maha-moha.
PURPORT: The conditioned souls, or living entities who come to the material world to enjoy sense gratification, are covered in the beginning by five different conditions. The first condition is a covering of tamisra, or anger. Constitutionally, each and every living entity has minute independence; it is misuse of that minute independence for the conditioned soul to think that he can also enjoy like the Supreme Lord or to think, "Why shall I not be a free enjoyer like the Supreme Lord?" This forgetfulness of his constitutional position is due to anger or envy. The living entity, being eternally a part-and-parcel servitor of the Supreme Lord, can never, by constitution, be an equal enjoyer with the Lord. When he forgets this, however, and tries to be one with Him, his condition is called tamisra. Even in the field of spiritual realization, this tamisra mentality of the living entity is hard to overcome. In trying to get out of the entanglement of material life, there are many who want to be one with the Supreme. Even in their transcendental activities, this lower-grade mentality of tamisra continues.
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also in the mount of the congregation upon the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the pit!"
Isaiah 14.12-15
My God, it's analogous...of every single living being.
vidyam cavidyam ca yas
tad vedobhayam saha
avidyaya mrtyam tirtva
vidyayamrtam asnute
"Only one who can learn the process of nescience and that of transcendental knowledge side by side can transcend the influence of repeated birth and death and enjoy the full blessing of immortality."
Sri Isopanisad Mantra Eleven
Only! Only! Only! Only one who can learn the process of nescience and that of transcendental knowledge side by side can transcend the influence of repeated birth and death and enjoy the full blessing of immortality.
What is it that we should study then if not only the process of transcendental knowledge? Business? Technology? Politics? A million other things? What one of them besides the process by which we are liberated must we learn? The answer is simple. Besides the process by which we are liberated we must study the process by which we are enslaved.
That is not so simple and we must come to understand it thoroughly if ever we are to be free.
"Vidya or factual knowledge on the other hand, means to know thoroughly the process of nescient activities while at the same time cultivating transcendental science and thereby undeviatingly following the path of liberation."
The Science of Self Realization
The processes by which we are bound to and broken on the wheel of repetitive birth, disease, old age and death seem mysterious to us as we read or hear of them from the pen or from the lips of the Sampradaya Acharya, Srila Prabhupada. They are insidious and difficult to see, but we must come to see them and understand them thoroughly and this we are empowered to do by the Sampradaya Acharya.
How we replicate and take birth is a matter of biology, but how we are conditioned and how that conditioning determines how we think, act and even feel is by no means a transparency to Science, to Psychology, to anyone else upon such a grand scale as the Sampradaya Acharya one day envisioned that it would be, when the whole world took to the process of Krsna consciousness as we had expected it to do, way, way back them in our naiveté.
To the extent that we come to understand ourselves as we are, as the products of the process of nescience we can become free and from that pinnacle of perfection we can free likewise the entire world, providing truth and understanding, light and guidance to everyone. Is it any wonder then how Maya has attacked our movement so terribly, not from without, but from within?
DID Srila Prabhupada know that it would take many years, perhaps lifetimes for us to come to the position of spiritual and intellectual maturity that it would require of us to perform that task? It is my consideration that he did not, but that Krsna did and through His representative the Sampradaya Acharya, Srila Prabhupada presented a means to us to achieve this transformation of ourselves and the world. That is however neither here nor there, nor is it necessary for us to know the mind of Krsna's representative, only to advantage ourselves of his instructions and then one day after we have been successful in carrying out Lord Caitanya's mission we will know or such knowledge will not be of interest, as we see Srila Prabhupada in Krsna's pastimes not as the vision that he presented to us here, but as he is. Other things can be and must be known and understood more immediately.
The process by which we become conditioned living entities results in our creation, the creation of the conditioned living entities. What in the Hell, however does that mean? Well it means that we come under the illusion that we are these bodies and these brains, that we come to think of ourselves as being "human beings", that much is obvious, but it is not so obvious what a human being is.
Taking stock of ourselves as we are, not as spiritual beings but as false egos, is of paramount importance in our understanding of nescience. What, in fact do we actually mean when we talk about our false egos? Do we mean both our bodies and our brains? Yes, of course, but which bodies and which brains are we talking about? Only the appearances? Only the gross physical body? Only the human mind that allows us to think and speak, or are their other bodies, other brains that comprise us and which oppose us and counter us, that are in conflict with ourselves as we think of ourselves to be?
Actually the human being has a minimum of three different brains, three separate and distinct identities and each with its own ways of processing things. That brain of ours that reasons and explains things, that identifies itself as Bhakta George, Bhakta Raymond or Bhakta Ken, is really the weak sister of the three, the least of our identities. It is like the part of an iceberg that is visible above the sea while all the while, the greatest portion of it lays threateningly beneath the sea and whose potential for the destruction of even the careers of devotees well progressed on the path of spiritual perfection is enormous.
Evolutionists speak of these separate brains in terms of evolutionary theory, but one need not believe in evolution to observe reality, to study and consider the functions of these very real material minds from the perspective not of evolutionists, but of Creationists, for whichever their origin, how they work and affect us is the same.
Below the paramarthic platform the single self is but a fiction, but we tend to think of ourselves as being single individuals, as having only a single material body and only a single and human brain. When however we begin to study our conditional existence we discover that we are several different identities, two of which are not subject to intellectual convincement for they do not think in human terms, they do not understand our words at all. While we may address them in human language imploring them to work together with us in sincerity they do not understand our words, instead they hiss with anger and envy, or bark and howl. They respond indeed only to feelings and to threats and to a primordial inclination, the one that brought us here in the first place and they have no intention; absolutely none, to relinquish their positions of power and control to us or to anyone, and as we, our human minds regard Krsna Consciousness as the greatest promise, they regard it as a death threat. These separate and individual identities that comprise our conditioned existence cannot be falsely renounced, cannot be denied, cannot be scorned by the functions of the cortex for if they are, they will simply bide their time and then at the worst possible moment for us they will take advantage and revolt.
The Sanskrit word asura that Srila Prabhupada translated into English as "demon" derives from two root words" "asu" - to enjoy, and "ramante - "the life breath". Asu means then simple to enjoy, and Ramante, the living breath. In other words, the word asura refers simply to a "lover of life", not such a bad thing to be in most peoples consideration, not an evil thing at all in actuality, simply a lover of life. What's wrong with that?
An "accident" of translation? Srila Prabhupada did not understand or appreciate the differences in connotations that are attached to the two different concepts, a lover of life vs a demon?
"Of course, Srila Prabhupada understands every Sanskrit word, knows where the sloka is in Bhagavad-gita, and know precisely what it's main message is."
Talks with the Sampradaya Acarya - Rocana das, Nov 8, 2006
But he did not understand the meaning of every English word and was unable to calculate the nuero-semantic reaction that his choice of words would have upon his descales reactions?
If we accept Srila Prabhupada's claim that he was writing under the direct dictation of Krsna, then the answer must be known, that whether he knew or did not know that, Krsna did know and that there is no accident, no flaw, no imperfection in his presentation, that his translation from the Sanskrit into the English was perfectly calculated by God Himself in accordance with time, place and our capacity. Had Srila Prabhupada translated asura into "lover of life", our reactions would have been different due to the very strong conditioning of Western Christian civilization which affects us not just on an intellectual level, but neuro-semantically, assuring a programmed response.
Srila Prabhupada goes on to explain that everyone is actually asuric, that it goes with the territory of being a conditioned living entity. Of course, we can become other than demoniac, but what we missed is that we are not now. Now we are lovers of life, lovers of the lives that we own and enjoy and which our other brains mean to keep enjoying and keep controlling as their own, no matter what our cortex may elsewise accept them to be.
"Srila Prabhupada began by explaining that everyone is actually envious of God and that's the reason why they oppose the philosophy of Bhakti yoga, which is what Krsna recommends in the Bhagavad-gita. Because of their enviousness, they propose something else."
Srila Prabhupada makes clear that although Bhakti yoga, Krsna consciousness, is presented as a much easier process than the other processes, at the same time it's a science and you're following in the footsteps of Rupa Goswami. Because it's a science, you can see your progress step by step and you can personally experience it"
Talks with the Sampradaya Acarya - Rocana das Nov 8, 2006
We can see our progress... so we can see that we are either enlightened or that we are not and if we are not, then we must ask why we are not. The answer to that, I believe, is because we have not come to understand our nescience thoroughly enough to enlist our other selves in our path to perfection or to block their efforts to dynamite our devotional careers. One other way that they accomplish this is by making us consider that we are devotees, when in actuality we are still practicing false renunciation and still wish to be God, if only secretly, secretly even to our human minds, secretly even to ourselves.
Anyway, obviously I am not perfect now, but that is nobody's fault but mine and I can still remember how at the temple on Capitol Hill in Seattle, the affect of the program under Rocana dasa's management was that you became self-realized within six months and Krsna Conscious to the degree that you became re-established in your eternal loving relationship with Krsna within a year and that wherever else time might take you, you never forgot Krsna after that. That was the whole point, wasn't it?
You can have a personal and loving relationship with God that you are cognitively aware of while you are still in your material bodies, although they are somewhat unadept to try to keep up with Krsna in a foot race or any other type of competition, but you can definitely still buckle up your helmet strap, arm yourself with yoga and go out there and "win one for the gipper" by understanding what the devotee's need to understand, and explaining it. Albeit I am far from expert, where else has this been mentioned? Others will pick up on it and understand it better and Krsna consciousness will unfold and enfold.... Maya is Titanic, standing at her feet one can perhaps appreciate her unlimited power to oppose the demons and to aide the devotees.
There are a lot of gurus out there who cannot claim as much as that lone president of a backwoods temple that the movement's leaders felt like they were slumming when they visited it, and could only think of selling it off as soon as they could, with no consideration for the disciples of Srila Prabhupada that they dispersed to the winds. But Lord Jagannath, Lord Balaram and Lady Subhadra never thought of it that way. It was there that Srila Prabhupada had said in witnessing a little ant that it should be our goal to make even the ant Krsna conscious, so that temple and all of its devotees had a special place in Their hearts, which the devotees still have, wherever they are.
George A. Smith
