Articles from The Harmonist

Our senses and the body which are always making us acquainted with material goods and the desire for tasting their qualities, are like a receiving apparatus. The body is the place where the receiving takes place and mind is the criminal recipient–the false enjoyer. The soul of a conditioned man, the real owner, is asleep or as is more often the case, held a prisoner while the mind orders the senses to provide things for the enjoyment of itself and its colleague, the body. As the open and simple-hearted king who entrusted his all to his false minister to be managed and maintained for him, was in return imprisoned by the treacherous servant who enjoyed all his wealth and power, even so does the wily mind with the unwary soul.

A jiva is only a scintilla of the full spiritual power and is called marginal power because he exists on the margin where the bounds of the spiritual power meet those of the illusory power. He is not of the essence of the illusory power; still being only a minute particle he is liable to be overpowered by it.

This limited, changeable, phenomenal world is the perverted reflection of the absolute, perfect and eternal region which is the abode of God. The evidence of the scriptures clearly declares the above to be the nature of the difference between the spiritual and the material worlds. In as much as this material world is the reflected image of the absolute Reality it mimics, in a most perverted manner, the beauty of the original. Its beauty, however, is more false and useless even than that of the mirage and is no less fatal to the unwary who put their trust in it.

 If even after our initiation by the real spiritual preceptor we continue to stick to our home interests as our principal function and attened to matha interests as something secondary, then we are far away from a glimpse of even the threshold of the sphere of our eternal good…

The wife of a Brahmin suffering from leprosy was at the head of all virtuous ladies. She served a harlot to please her husband. She stopped the Sun in his course, brought her deceased husband to life and fully performed all the foremost duties.Leaving aside the fulfillment of one’s desires and selfish mundane enjoyment to favour the Lord, is the primary aim of a devotional life.

The Eroticism of the Religion of Sree Chaitanya is a matter of spiritual realisation and may be practised only by the most advanced devotees on the plane of fully spiritualised mind. It can have nothing to do with the impure mind and the physical body. The amour of the milk-maids is the highest activity in the state of grace, of the perfectly pure soul on the transcendental plane. The erotic mode is not wicked in itself. It is the source of the highest aesthetic and moral principles of this mundane plane. It attains its supremely wholesome and harmonising expression on the highest plane of the Transcendental Spiritual Realm of the Divinity. Till the eternal spiritual plane of activity is reached misapprehensions in one form or another are bound to occur and prevent the complete realisation of the nature of our own true selves and also that of the Divinity.

The samkeertana can be properly performed only by those who are freed from the bondage of the world. It can also be performed by conditioned souls under the guidance of the sadhus by the method of unconditional submission to the Name appearing on the lips of the sadhus. But in neither case it has the character of ‘Taur-Yatrika’ or dissipating performance of music, song and dance that is practised by persons who are addicted to the pleasures of the senses.