Devotee: Maharaj, if a devotee falls down and becomes disconnected, is that worse than if he becomes a sahajiya?
Srila Guru Maharaj: Which is better, a poor man or a thief? One had money and lost it; the other is imitating that he is wealthy, by committing wrong. One who is disconnected may be reconnected again soon; but sahajiya means either that he had a real connection with the truth, became disconnected, then chose a wrong path, or that already he is engaged in the wrong path. So which is the better position: not to get the real thing, or to get the wrong thing? Which is superior?
In Srimad Bhagavad-gita it is mentioned that in tama-guna, the lowest position, one thinks ‘A’ to be ‘B’. In raja-guna, there is doubt whether this is real, or that is real. He cannot ascertain what is true; but to think that ‘A’ is ‘B’, and ‘B’ is ‘A’ — that is the worst kind of error. They are misguided; sahajiya means misguided. They are accepting matter as consciousness, so their position is more detrimental than that of those who have nothing, or who have lost their connection with the real thing. In a similar way, the conclusion of the mayavadi section who think that ‘merging’ into formless Brahma is the highest end, is more dangerous, because «a half truth is worse than a lie.»
se du’yera madhye visayi tabu bhala
mayavadi-sanga nahi magi kona kala
Association with those who are out-and-out sense enjoyers can never be so detrimental to one’s spiritual welfare as is the company of an impersonalist.
If one man admits «I have no money», and another, who really has no money, shows some counterfeit currency and claims «This is money», then his condition is worse because he is engaged in falsehood.
So to become a sahajiya is worse. He is deceived, his attention is captured by, engrossed in, a wrong conception. One person had some conception for some time and became disconnected, but he may again easily reestablish his connection, but the other has become captivated by a wrong conception, so to convince him of the truth is more difficult because his mind is possessed and captured by that prejudice. The first person has no engagement; the engagement he had is gone. But the second has mistaken one thing for another. He has taken matter to be divine, and that is worse.
Once, in my childhood, I heard this example from my teacher in school. He said that in America there is a school of music, and if anyone had some knowledge of music, to attend that school he had to pay double the normal fee, but those who had no musical knowledge only had to pay the standard fee. That is because they do not know anything, so they can be taught easily; but the others who had some knowledge of music had to pay double, because everything which they had previously learned would first have to be forgotten, and only then would they be allowed to start learning in the proper way. They had to be taught first to forget their previous prejudices, their misconceptions of musical science, so for them there was a double charge. It is something like that. In one case, no bhakti, no devotion; and in the other, in the name of devotion, some non-devotional thing has captured the man. That is imitation, and worse, it is offensive. Prabhupad Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur said it is vanchanam, to ridicule the devotees — Mahaprabhu, Rupa, Sanatan — it is to ridicule them because it confuses what is prema and what is kama. They are at opposite ends; and to accept kama in the name of prema is not only heinous and injurious to oneself, but it contaminates the whole atmosphere. So Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur says:
kame preme dekho bhai, laksanete bheda nai
tabu kama ‘prema’ nahi haya
tumi ta’ varile kama, mithya tahe ‘prema’-nama
aropile kise subha haya
keno mana, kamere nachao prema praya?
charma-mamsamaya-kama, jada-sukha abirama
jada-visayete sada dhaya
«Just give your attention to this, my brother: lust and love, their symptoms may appear as similar; still, lust is not love. But you have accepted lust in place of love, and if you give the certificate, that ‘this is prema’, by this mistake you only cheat yourself. By mistaking one thing for another in this way, you will never get anything auspicious. Lust is concerned with flesh and blood, but love is in the highest position of spiritual existence.»
So they are opposites, like the South Pole and the North Pole. One is concerned with this body, the other, with the Supersoul; a great gulf lies between them! There is the ocean of dedication, and the highest point of that dedication is gopi-prema. It only exists where Krishna is, and here there is only imitation.
koti-mukta-madhye ‘durlabha’ eka krsna-bhakta
«Out of many millions of liberated persons, a pure devotee of Krishna is very difficult to find.» We must consider all these things. Such dedication is possible only in the highest position of spiritual existence, the conscious area which is all-spiritual, and is not in any way concerned with flesh and blood. It is not concerned with the body.
The most heinous thing is that one will play the part of Krishna and a lady will play the part of a gopi and they will unite, and in that way they will enjoy. To think this to be that, it is impossible. Any ordinary moral man will hate this. What to speak of the higher devotees, even an ordinary moral man will hate it.
The steps are shown to us:
adau sraddha tatah sadhu-sango ’tha bhajana-kriya
tato ’nartha-nivrttih syat tato nistha ruchis tatah
In the beginning is faith, then association with devotees, engagement in service, purging of faults, attainment of steadiness in devotion, spiritual taste, firm attachment, transcendental emotion, and pure love of Krishna. These are the steps.
And from another standpoint:
vaikunthera prthivy-adi sakala chinmaya
«The earth, water, fire, air, and ether of Vaikuntha are all spiritual.»
We must always remember this: «I am the offspring of tatastha-sakti, the marginal potency; that is where I was born, and I must go through svarup-sakti, which is higher than me. There the soil is of higher stuff than that of which I myself am made. The earth, the air, the water, the trees, birds, everything there is superior to me. And I am to enter there? It is not a small thing, not an easy thing. It is not within the power of the person who wants to go there to enter, rather it is completely dependent on the grace of his superiors: Guru-krpa, Vaisnava-krpa.
We have to walk there on our head, not on our feet. All are Guru; the soil is Guru, the entire paraphernalia is Guru, superior. I am made of a lower stuff, and that plane is of higher substance, so it is impossible to enter there at my sweet will. To approach that direction as far as mukti, liberation, may be easy, but thereafter we can only be drawn by their grace. It is not a matter of right that anyone can enter that realm. It is only the wholesale, cent per cent grace of a child of that soil which can take us there. Just as in court there is a guarantor, someone who stands as a guarantee for the subject, so some agent of that soil must take responsibility for me, and at his risk, I can go. Vaisnava and Guru, children of that soil, they will take the risk and bring me there. So without their grace, Vaisnava-krpa, Guru-krpa, Bhagavat-krpa, we cannot enter there.
No right — all grace. That grace can take me there. From our side, we have no right. I am a child of the marginal potency, but there the whole substance, everything, is made of a higher stuff than my own existence. I have my existence as a person, and there they are also all persons, but all there are of an existence superior to me. How then can this person stand on the head of those? Only for their service. Otherwise, it is inconceivable and impossible. Even to accept this principle is most difficult, what to speak of entering there:
bahunam janmanam ante jnanavan mam prapadyate
vasudevah sarvam iti sa mahatma sudurlabhah
«After many births, one who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me (Vasudev) realising that it is I who am both the source and substance of all that be. Such a great soul is extremely rare.»
And Srimad Bhagavatam states:
muktanam api siddhanam narayana-parayanah
sudurlabhah prasantatma kotisv api maha-mune
«O great sage, out of many millions of souls who are liberated and free from ignorance, and out of many millions of siddhas who have nearly attained perfection, there is hardly one pure devotee of Narayan. Only such a devotee is completely satisfied and peaceful.»
It is easy to think of, but hard to attain! No right can be established there; it is not as a matter of right that we can go there, so the ‘right-seeker’ will be totally frustrated. We must be prepared for «all risk, no gain.» But if somehow we can reach there, it will be «all gain, no risk!»
So to become a Vaisnava proper is almost impossible. It is only as a matter of grace from that level that we can go there; there is nothing we can do from our side. Only with complete surrender, complete self-forgetfulness, complete dedication to the interest of that place, can we hope to be taken there:
vaikunthera prthivy-adi sakala chinmaya
mayika bhutera tathi janma nahi haya
«The earth, water, fire, air, and ether of Vaikuntha are all spiritual. Material elements are not found there.»
Uddhava is a devotee of such quality that he prays: «If I can be a creeper there, I shall consider my fortune to have reached its highest extent.» In Vrndavan the creeper is such a valuable thing that Uddhava — about whom the Lord says, «You are My most favourite devotee; I love you even more than My own Self» — he is aspiring to take such a birth that will give him that position there. This is not mere hyperbole. When Uddhava is aspiring to be a shrub, to be some grass there, then how are we to prepare ourselves, that we shall walk over that place? I shall have to walk over the head of Uddhava? So, how much higher a conception must that place be?
And the sahajiyas — ridiculous! By imitation, here in the plane of flesh and blood, they think they will achieve that. They are the worst enemies, because by imitating in this way not only are they themselves going to hell but they are attracting so many others there also. They are not conscious of the facts, of what is what. So they have got their hated position in society; the general society has got hate for them, those ‘babajis’.
But we have to put faith in our Guru Maharaj who said, «It is my misfortune. I could not find a single Vaisnava in this Vraja Mandal.» Pressing his hand to his forehead he said, «It is my misfortune that I could not find a single Vaisnava in this great, holy place of Vraja Mandal.» That was his conclusion.
And after he had performed Vraja Mandal parikrama, he said about one babaji who was generally recognised as the best of the sahajiya ‘Vaisnavas’, as their leader: «He is a kanistha-adhikari. He may be considered as a beginner, to have admission into the infant class.» That man was considered unanimously as a siddha-babaji, to have attained the highest position among them, but Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur said, «He has got admission into the primary class.» In writing, in the Gaudiya newspaper, he stated this. And we are trained accordingly, and consciously, not with blind faith. He explained to us what is what; we tried to follow his directions, and we have also come to such conclusions.
Step by step we must approach the highest point. It is not mental concoction, imitation. Imitation is the worst. It is hateful, filthy. If in the name of that higher love we represent this fleshy connection with the body and the mind — then that is the most hateful thing. We must try to avoid it with our utmost will and energy.
Srila Kaviraj Goswami describes: Vaikunthera prthivy-adi sakala chinmaya, that the elements of that Vaikuntha world are all-spiritual, and the scientific survey of that land is possible to our soul’s eye. We must understand that, how it is true. And for that we must first understand what is the tatastha region: what is Viraja, what is Brahmaloka.
But we are in such a material position that we cannot even understand this lower process:
indriyani parany ahur indriyebhyah param manah
manasas tu para buddhir buddher yah paratas tu sah
What is our soul? We can’t follow, we can’t understand, what our own soul is! There is the world; we conceive it, we perceive it through our senses, so they are higher. The mind receives experience of the world through the senses, above the mind is the faculty of judgment within us, and above that is the soul proper. And then we approach the Supersoul area; through Viraja, Brahmaloka, eventually we reach Vaikuntha. There are so many layers to cross, but who is to cross, our own soul, we cannot even find him! We are far away from that conception, in a hopeless position, and we say that the highest conception of the Paramatma’s world is in our fist! That is foolish.
First we must feel our own soul, what is our real existence and identity in the spiritual position; then that soul will have to go higher and higher; by crossing more and more valuable planes he must go up. But first he must feel his own identity.
So, the sahajiyas, the imitationists, should be considered as the enemy. Like Quisling3, they are jana-satru, the enemy who has sprung up at home, the enemy within. This kind of imitation is the worst. Ordinary imitation may be bad, but imitation of the highest reality is completely repugnant and must be rejected because what is Supreme is being exploited in such a low, mean way. That is sahajiya.
We cannot see our own soul! That is our position. Absorbed in this gross matter of exploitation, we cannot even know what is our mind, of what substance it is made. Then, how can one understand what is the intelligence, buddhi, the faculty of judgment with us; or beyond that, the soul; or ultimately, the realm of the Supersoul? But we are living in this mundane world and imagining: «I have got the Lord of my dreams!»
3) Quisling was an influential Norwegian army officer during the Second World War who was in league with the enemy, the Nazi occupational force