Obtaining God’s Mercy

“All of Me, namely my actual eter­nal form and My tran­scen­den­tal exis­tence, color, qual­i­ties and activities—let all be awak­ened within you by fac­tual real­iza­tion, out of My cause­less mercy.” Sb. 2.9.31 (p 44)

This is really the only way to attain God realization—through God’s cause­less mercy. God’s mercy is given through the guru, through the scrip­tures, through holy per­sons and directly within our heart. All of our striv­ings, all of our prac­tices lead to noth­ing with­out the mercy of God.

Of course they are also the means of grace. They open us up to God’s mercy. God’s mercy is there equally for all. It is cause­less. How­ever, some per­sons are more anx­ious to receive God’s mercy than oth­ers. They actively seek it out. Thus, they receive a larger share. It is our yearn­ing, our long­ing, our strongest inner­most desire that brings God’s mercy upon us. When we become sur­ren­dered souls and desire noth­ing more than the lov­ing ser­vice of Sri Sri Radha Krishna, how can they not respond when we are com­pletely depen­dent upon them?

God is unknow­able in this con­di­tioned state of mate­r­ial exis­tence unless God reveals her/his divine self to us within the heart. Our cries and calls of love will not go unanswered.

“The main char­ac­ter­is­tics of sadhana-bhakti are chant­ing, hear­ing and remem­ber­ing Krishna’s name, forms, qual­i­ties and pas­times. By per­form­ing this sad­hana, grad­u­ally prema (pure love) appears in a mar­ginal form, like a hid­den fire. When the jivas (liv­ing enti­ties) finally cast off their sub­tle body and attain spir­i­tual bod­ies, prema appears in its pure swarupa (form). This, Krishna prema is a per­fect object, which is not born from prac­tice, but rather it appears in the pure heart by hear­ing and other devo­tional activ­i­ties. Please note that sad­hana (prac­tice) is very nec­es­sary for this prema to man­i­fest.” (p48)

These are the means of grace. By chant­ing, hear­ing and remem­ber­ing, we are able to open our heart to love Radha Krishna and receive their love in return. Love is the answer. The more we love, the more we are open to love. If love does not flow from our heart spon­ta­neously, we need to prac­tice lov­ing Radha Krishna. The more we prac­tice, the more we become love, the more Radha Krishna are able to reveal them­selves to us.

Unless we are extremely blessed, it is very dif­fi­cult to fully expe­ri­ence prema in this con­di­tioned state. We may man­i­fest it to a degree, but its full real­iza­tion will occur when we give up this mate­r­ial body and enter the spir­i­tual realm in our per­fect spir­i­tual body. It may take many life­times to attain, but once we begin the process seri­ously, it is pos­si­ble to attain at the end of this life by the cause­less mercy of Radha Krishna.

“The prac­ti­tion­ers real­ize that Krishna alone is the object of remem­brance, and that He should never be for­got­ten. They under­stand that all rules—positive or negative—follow this prin­ci­ple of always remem­ber­ing and never for­get­ting the Lord. Thus, at this stage, the devo­tees reject a rigid, fanat­i­cal adher­ence to the injunc­tions and pro­hi­bi­tions and accord­ing to their indi­vid­ual qual­i­fi­ca­tion give up some of the injunc­tions and begin to prac­tice some items of devo­tional activ­ity that were pro­hi­bi­tions pre­vi­ously.” (p 49)

My ini­tia­tor guru, A.C. Bhak­tivedanta Swami, was a very strong advo­cate of fol­low­ing reg­u­la­tive prin­ci­ples, rules and reg­u­la­tions. I led a very strict, aus­tere life under his guid­ance for eight years. This reg­u­la­tive devo­tional ser­vice grad­u­ally opened my heart and devel­oped my love of Radha Krishna. Liv­ing in Vrind­a­ban, asso­ci­at­ing with more advanced devo­tees there, I real­ized there was a lot more, a whole other level of devo­tional ser­vice that Swamiji was not teaching.

Through the grace of devo­tees, I was able to find my sid­dha pranali guru, Lalita Prasad Thakur, who ini­ti­ated me into the path of spon­ta­neous love. This was a big infu­sion of grace. Within the year (1974), I stopped fol­low­ing Swamiji, his rules and reg­u­la­tions. I am free. I live freely. I fol­low my heart which has led me down a won­der­ful path, ever closer to Radha Krishna.

I don’t do all the spir­i­tual prac­tices I used to do. I fol­low the ones that work best for me—hearing, chant­ing, remem­ber­ing. I do things that were pre­vi­ously pro­hib­ited. I see them as gifts of God and am able to live more fully on both the mate­r­ial and spir­i­tual planes with­out imped­i­ments to the devel­op­ment of pure love.

I help per­sons dis­cover what works for them. I help them become free of guilt, shame, driven-ness, never feel­ing good enough, etc., because they are not able to fol­low all the rules and reg­u­la­tions some think it is nec­es­sary to fol­low. If this path of love is to become indige­nous to the West, its fol­low­ers must be able to lead a more nor­mal West­ern lifestyle. I am paving the way for that to hap­pen. God’s grace can even flow through a per­son such as me.

“The Lord has said, ‘When one is firmly fixed in devo­tional ser­vice, whether one exe­cutes just one or many of the processes of devo­tional ser­vice, the waves of love of God­head will awaken.’ Chaitanya-charitamrita, Mad­hya 22.134” (p 52)

It is not nec­es­sary to do every­thing. It is nec­es­sary to do some­thing. Find a way to remem­ber Radha Krishna and remem­ber them con­stantly. Chant, read, write, preach, paint, do what­ever you have a pas­sion for. It is our pas­sion­ate desire that opens us to grace and helps us progress. Paths with­out heart lead us nowhere.

“’There­fore, for a devo­tee engaged in my lov­ing ser­vice, with mind fixed on Me, the cul­ti­va­tion of knowl­edge and renun­ci­a­tion is gen­er­ally not the means of achiev­ing the high­est per­fec­tion within this world.’ Sb. 11.20.31” (p 53)

Swamiji placed a high pre­mium on knowl­edge and renun­ci­a­tion. He wrote many books and strongly encour­aged his dis­ci­ples to pub­lish and dis­trib­ute them as widely as pos­si­ble. He also encour­aged his dis­ci­ples to prac­tice renun­ci­a­tion so that they could fully devote them­selves to spread­ing his mission.

Many of his dis­ci­ples became very aus­tere only to find out that such a lifestyle was not sus­tain­able. Some openly adopted health­ier, holis­tic, sus­tain­able lifestyles of mod­er­a­tion. This is not an obsta­cle to devo­tion. Oth­ers expressed them­selves in unhealthy ways which destroyed their devo­tion and hurt oth­ers. If we do not make friends with our shadow, the body, the senses, and see them as God given gifts for our enjoy­ment and God’s, they become our enemy and seek to under­mine our true self good. False renun­ci­a­tion is never desirable.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 11:32 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.