Spontaneous devotion

“The orig­i­nal inhab­i­tants of Vrind­a­ban are attached to Krishna spon­ta­neously in devo­tional ser­vice. Noth­ing can com­pare to such spon­ta­neous devo­tional ser­vice, which is called ragatmika-bhakti. When a devo­tee fol­lows in the foot­steps of the devo­tees of Vrind­a­ban, his devo­tional ser­vice is called raganuga-bhakti.” (p 53)

Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the devo­tees of Vrind­a­ban by con­ceiv­ing one­self to be one of them engaged in the pas­times of Radha Krishna is the essence of raganuga-bhakti. This is what Prab­huji taught me to do when he gave me sid­dha pranali and ekadas bhav (eleven moods of a cowherd girl in Vrind­a­ban). These eleven moods or aspects of me in my per­fect spir­i­tual body are my eter­nal iden­tity in rela­tion to Radha Krishna.

This style of med­i­ta­tion is widely prac­ticed by fol­low­ers of Sri Krishna Chai­tanya. It came down to me through the sid­dha pranali or per­fect line of gurus com­ing from Sri Jah­nava Thaku­rani. In this way there is a con­nec­tion with those who have gone before me to the eter­nal Goloka Vrind­a­ban and will be there wait­ing to wel­come me when I arrive. This is all rela­tional. The dis­ci­ple is related through the guru to the whole line who are all cowherd girls in Vrind­a­ban engaged in the ser­vice of Sri Radha. Again, this is pure grace which is passed on from guru to disciple.

By study­ing the writ­ings of those who came before me in this line and related lines, I can learn the dif­fer­ent ways in which they inter­act with the Divine Cou­ple and adapt their moods as my own. In this way, the spir­i­tual iden­tity of the prac­ti­tioner is devel­oped grad­u­ally until we iden­tify more with our spir­i­tual self than our out­ward self.

“The pri­mary char­ac­ter­is­tic of spon­ta­neous love is deep attach­ment for the Supreme Per­son­al­ity of God­head. Absorp­tion in thought of Him is a mar­ginal char­ac­ter­is­tic.” (p 54)

Deep attach­ment to Radha Krishna has kept me going all these years since I first fell in love with them. After leav­ing Swamiji, I gave up most for­mal devo­tional prac­tices. I wanted to see what is real and would stick no mat­ter what. I aban­doned the exter­nal, devo­tional prac­tices that no longer seemed to fit. I adapted those that were still ben­e­fi­cial and con­tinue those prac­tices. All along, that deep attach­ment, espe­cially to Radha, remained. That can not be given up.

“If one fol­lows in the foot­steps of the inhab­i­tants of Vrind­a­ban out of…transcendental cov­etous­ness, he does not care for the injunc­tions or log­i­cal rea­son­ing of the shas­tra (scrip­ture). That is the nature of raganuga.” (p 54)

When one real­izes the high­est goal in life, every­thing else pales in com­par­i­son. All that has been said and heard and all the rules and reg­u­la­tions no longer mat­ter much. One becomes fixed in who one is and spon­ta­neously acts in love, both on the exter­nal and spir­i­tual lev­els. Every­thing becomes spir­i­tual when seen in rela­tion­ship to Radha Krishna. We can live in Vrind­a­ban wher­ever we are and every­thing we do can be devo­tional ser­vice. Dual­ity can be tran­scended when we real­ize all is Krishna and Krishna’s ener­gies. The eter­nal is now.

“Krishna has many types of devotees—some are ser­vants, some are friends, some are par­ents and some are con­ju­gal lovers. Devo­tees who are sit­u­ated in one of these atti­tudes of spon­ta­neous love accord­ing to their choice are con­sid­ered to be on the path of raga-marga, spon­ta­neous lov­ing ser­vice.” (p 55)

By fol­low­ing the path of reg­u­la­tive devo­tion, I came to real­ize my love for Krishna in a con­ju­gal mood like that of the cowherd girls. I longed to deepen this rela­tion­ship. Swamiji wanted his dis­ci­ples to stick with reg­u­la­tive devo­tional ser­vice. It is a much safer, slower path of devo­tion than spon­ta­neous love (also more effec­tive for build­ing an organization).

My heart was burst­ing to delve deeper into the eso­teric pas­times of Radha Krishna. I went to see Prab­huji against the orders of Swamiji. Noth­ing could hold me back. He had the nec­tar and I wanted noth­ing more than to drink it. He watered the devo­tional creeper that had sprouted in my heart and allowed it to grow unhin­dered. When one longs for God/Goddess as the most dearly beloved, how can one be held back by injunc­tions which are detri­men­tal to the growth of love?

“How­ever, it is sim­ply a cheat­ing notion to think that the goal of life is for clerks, farm­ers, busi­ness peo­ple and ksha­triyas, etc., to ele­vate them­selves grad­u­ally to higher posi­tions in varna and ashrama and then finally to the posi­tions of brah­mana and san­nyasi. Such a con­cep­tion of occu­pa­tional duties is in terms of mate­r­ial advance­ment alone and can­not pro­duce any real progress for the soul.” (p 56)

Unfor­tu­nately, one of Swamiji’s endeav­ors was to intro­duce var­nashram dharma to the West. I quickly rose to the posi­tion of brah­min and san­nyasi. I func­tioned quite well in those posi­tions in Swamiji’s orga­ni­za­tion and in India. How­ever, when I returned to the West and left Swamiji and his orga­ni­za­tion, I could not main­tain such strict stan­dards with­out a sup­port sys­tem, and one did not exist for me in the West. I became a caste­less devo­tee and married.

Swamiji was very ambi­tious and wanted to change the world to his ver­sion of Krishna con­scious­ness which included var­nasharam dharma, the Indian sys­tem of four castes and orders of life. He believed his teach­ings were the best reli­gious sys­tem in the world for every­one. How­ever, the results were dis­as­trous for many of his dis­ci­ples. They were uprooted from their cul­ture and thrust into an arti­fi­cial “Vedic” cul­ture. When they left that way of life, they were faced with putting their lives back together so that they could func­tion in West­ern soci­ety again.

I have been doing that for 31 years. I feel good about where I am at now. How­ever, I still strug­gle with how to present the teach­ings of Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur in a way that will be widely accept­able to West­ern­ers and not cause major dis­rup­tion to their lives. This is my lat­est attempt. I hope you find it helpful.

I have been a spir­i­tual teacher for the past 39 years, and it is about all I have any inter­est in doing. I had a suc­cess­ful career as a Chris­t­ian pas­tor and teacher for eleven years. How­ever, there were too many com­pro­mises. For the last three years, pre­sent­ing my own under­stand­ings of spir­i­tual life with­out com­pro­mise has been my min­istry. It is spir­i­tu­ally ful­fill­ing if not finan­cially lucra­tive. This is the task I feel called to.

Swamiji had most of his dis­ci­ples live in com­mu­nal tem­ples and devel­oped a large world wide orga­ni­za­tion. Prab­huji, had thou­sands of dis­ci­ples, but most of them lived at home with their fam­i­lies. He had no insti­tu­tional orga­ni­za­tion that he cre­ated. I believe a more decen­tral­ized, loosely struc­tured asso­ci­a­tion of dis­ci­ples liv­ing “nor­mal” lives is much more desir­able. Orga­nized reli­gion is not con­ducive to spon­ta­neous devo­tional ser­vice. Insti­tu­tional preser­va­tion becomes too important.

Rather than try­ing to grad­u­ally ele­vate our­selves through the var­nashram sys­tem, it is bet­ter to sim­ply take to devo­tional ser­vice from what­ever posi­tion in life a per­son hap­pens to be in. That is most ben­e­fi­cial spiritually.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 17:34 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.