BG 9.13 – Sri Radhastami

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna.

It is a great honor and privilege and pleasure to be here at the lotus feet of Sri Sri Radha-Shyamasundara on the auspicious occasion of the Radhastami celebration in Sri Vraja-dhama in the presence of so many dear godbrothers and wonderful devotees. 

I thought today to read a verse from the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, Chapter Nine: “The Most Confidential Knowledge.”

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

TEXT 13

mahātmānas tu māṁ pārtha

daivīṁ prakṛtim āśritāḥ

bhajanty ananya-manaso

jñātvā bhūtādim avyayam

TRANSLATION

O son of Pṛthā, those who are not deluded, the great souls, are under the protection of the divine nature. They are fully engaged in devotional service because they know Me as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, original and inexhaustible.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

In this verse the description of the mahātmā is clearly given. The first sign of the mahātmā is that he is already situated in the divine nature. He is not under the control of material nature. And how is this effected? That is explained in the Seventh Chapter: one who surrenders unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, at once becomes freed from the control of material nature. That is the qualification. One can become free from the control of material nature as soon as he surrenders his soul to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That is the preliminary formula. Being marginal potency, as soon as the living entity is freed from the control of material nature, he is put under the guidance of the spiritual nature. The guidance of the spiritual nature is called daivī prakṛti, divine nature. So when one is promoted in that way – by surrendering to the Supreme Personality of Godhead – one attains to the stage of great soul, mahātmā.

The mahātmā does not divert his attention to anything outside Kṛṣṇa, because he knows perfectly well that Kṛṣṇa is the original Supreme Person, the cause of all causes. There is no doubt about it. Such a mahātmā, or great soul, develops through association with other mahātmās, pure devotees. Pure devotees are not even attracted by Kṛṣṇa’s other features, such as the four-armed Mahā-viṣṇu. They are simply attracted by the two-armed form of Kṛṣṇa. They are not attracted to other features of Kṛṣṇa, nor are they concerned with any form of a demigod or of a human being. They meditate only upon Kṛṣṇa in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. They are always engaged in the unswerving service of the Lord in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

COMMENT

This verse describes how the mahatmas or great souls are placed under the guidance of the divine nature or Srimati Radharani, and on the auspicious occasion of Sri Radhastami, we want to know how we can place ourselves fully under Her guidance and be engaged in devotional service under Her protection. 

In 1976 I arranged a program for Srila Prabhupada at Birla house, the home of the wealthiest man in India, and I presented a list of proposed topics to Mrs. Birla, Gopikumari Birla, and gave her the choice of which topic she could advertise for Srila Prabhupada, and she chose the topic, “How to be Successful in Life.” Of all the topics she chose that one and all the guests, invitees to the program, were people whom we would all consider to be very successful in life. But that is the nature of material success, you can never be successful. You always want to be more successful which means relatively you are unsuccessful.

One time the richest man in the world was John Paul Getty and a newspaper reporter asked him, “You are the richest man in the world, you have everything that money could buy. Can you tell us in a word what is your philosophy?” He said, “Yes, I can. More.” [laughter] So whether you have one dollar or a hundred billion dollars, as long as you are in material consciousness, you want more, which means you are not satisfied, which means you are not successful.

So when Srila Prabhupada came to the program, he gave a very interesting definition of success. He said that there are two energies—the material energy and the spiritual energy—and the material energy is personified as Durga-devi and she rides on a lion and has a trident or triśūla with three points. The three prongs indicate the threefold miseries of material existence: adhyātmika, ādibhautika, and ādidaivika: miseries caused by one’s own mind and body, miseries caused by other living entities, and miseries caused by acts of nature. And she is always piercing the conditioned souls with these miseries, punishing them like the warden of a prison. We are like prisoners of the material energy and Durga-devi is punishing us. 

Opposed to the material energy is the spiritual energy personified by Srimati Radharani. So success in life is to become free from the control of the material nature, free from the punishment of Durga-devi, and to come under the protection of Srimati Radharani. That is our success in life. 

How is that effected? That is achieved by surrendering to a great soul who has surrendered to another great soul who has surrendered to another great soul, ultimately who has to surrendered to Srimati Radharani and Krishna. That is paramparā. We cannot surrender to Krishna directly. We have no such facility in our present stage of bondage, but we can surrender to someone who has surrendered to someone who has surrendered to someone all the way back to Krishna. And for us here, that means Srila Prabhupada and those who are surrendered to him.

Once in Bombay a very prominent Hindu gentleman came to meet Srila Prabhupada and he lamented that, “India is a land of mahatmas but there are always having so many problems. Being blessed by the presence of mahatmas, India should be flourishing, but instead we have so many problems. Why?” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “The reason is that you cannot distinguish who is a mahatma and who is not a mahatma.” And this is a very important point because if we are going to surrender to a mahatma as a representative of Krishna we have to be able to recognize who is a mahatma.

Here I think of another interesting and instructive incident that took place. Srila Prabhupada had a friend in Bombay named Dr. Patel and Dr. Patel would accompany Srila Prabhupada every morning on his walk on Juhu beach. They would have very lively discussions. Dr. Patel was hard to figure out because sometimes he spoke like a Mayavadi, but whenever Prabhupada would accuse him of being a Mayavadi, he would say, “No sir, I am a Vaishnava.” So, one morning Srila Prabhupada happened to criticize a popular religious figure of India and Dr. Patel became very upset, and he said, “You cannot speak about him like that.” And what did Srila Prabhupada say? “I am not saying. Krishna is saying. Na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ māyayāpahṛta-jñānā āsuraṁ bhāvam āśritāḥ: if someone does not surrender to Krishna he falls in one of these categories, duṣkṛtinaḥ: miscreant; mūḍha: fool or rascal; and so on.” But Dr. Patel was really livid with rage and he began to shout at Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada was shouting back at him [laughter]. Both were shouting at each other. Now Dr. Patel had a group of friends, cronies, they admired him and followed him. He was their leader. But even they were trying to restrain him. They were saying, “Swamiji has a heart condition. Don’t upset him so.” And they were trying to pull him away and Prabhupada’s disciples, we wanted Dr. Patel to go away [laughter], but it was hard to separate them. It was like in a boxing ring, the referee is trying to separate them, but they just keep pounding into each other. Finally they took Dr. Patel away.

Afterwards Tamal Krishna Goswami went up to see Srila Prabhupada in his room and he said, “What is Dr. Patel’s position? It is very hard to understand him.” And Srila Prabhupada replied by telling a story that there was once a man who was very expert in many languages. He came to a village and whatever language the people spoke to him in, he would reply perfectly in the same language. Nobody could figure out where he was from, what his native tongue was. So it was a big topic in the village and finally one man said, “I will find out what is his original language.”

So one day when that man was not looking, the other person came up behind and gave him a very strong slap on the back [laughter], and that expert linguist began cursing in his own language [laughter]. So Srila Prabhupada said, “Dr. Patel was like that, he could speak very expertly like a Vaishnava, like a Mayavadi, like a Sanskrit scholar, like a nationalist—he could speak many languages—but when I hit where it really hurt, his true language came out.”

But then Tamal Krishna Goswami asked, “But then why do you keep accommodating him on your walks?” Srila Prabhupada replied, “We have to engage everyone.” And that’s was Prabhupada’s magnanimous mood. As long as someone wanted to associate with him, Prabhupada wanted to give him the chance so that gradually he could make progress in Krishna consciousness. Srila Prabhupada did not reject anyone, but he did say, “From now on, no more talking on the morning walk. We will just read Kṛṣṇa book.” 

But the next morning for the first time in many years Dr. Patel did not come on the walk. For one or two days there was no Dr. Patel. And then one day Srila Prabhupada was walking in one direction near the sea and Dr. Patel was walking in the opposite direction quite some distance from the sea. And the way he describes it, he was planning to walk by Srila Prabhupada—he wasn’t going to see him—but something in his heart made him come to Srila Prabhupada’s lotus feet and he bowed in respect and he said, “Srila Prabhupada, I am sorry, but I’ve been taught to respect all the accredited saints or mahatmas of India.” And Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes, and my business is to say who is a saint and who is not a saint.” [laughter] 

So here in the Bhagavad-gītā we get the clear definition who is a mahatma. As Srila Prabhupada says, a mahatma develops in association of another mahatma or mahatmas. There are so many verses in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam that recommend serving great souls. Mahat-sevāṁ dvāram āhur vimuktes: by serving great souls, the door to liberation opens, and by serving materialistic people, the path to hell is opened.

So we are fortunate that somehow or the other we have come in touch with Srila Prabhupada and his line of disciplic succession and so we have the opportunity to associate with genuine mahatmas. The basic qualification of a mahatma is he is surrendered to Krishna and having surrendered to Krishna he is placed under the internal potency. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ. When one surrenders to Krishna, he is not only a mahatma but a very rare mahatma. Srila Prabhupada considered his disciples who had surrendered to Krishna through him to be rare mahatmas.

This paramparā, surrendering to a great soul who is surrendered to another great soul who is surrendered to another great soul goes back through disciplic succession, as we see so beautifully depicted here. Eventually in our line we come to Rupa Gosvami, Raghunatha dasa Gosvami—the Six Gosvamis—and Svarupa Damodara Gosvami and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Now as you may know, Lord Krishna’s associates in Vrindavan in kṛṣṇa-līlā appeared as associates of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in gaura-līlā, and the same types of relationships and interactions that they had in kṛṣṇa-līlā, they also had in gaura-līlā, of course with some differences. But if we take Raghunatha dasa Gosvami as an example, when he came to the lotus feet of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Jagannatha Puri, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu placed him under the care of Svarupa Damodara Gosvami. Svarupa Damodara Gosvami you could say was the secretary of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Raghunatha dasa Gosvami was the assistant to His secretary. And we find the same type dynamic in kṛṣṇa-līlā because in kṛṣṇa-līlā Raghunatha dasa Gosvami is Rati-mañjarī and Svarupa Damodara Gosvami is Lalita-devi and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Radharani and Krishna. So, just as Rati-mañjarī would serve the Divine Couple under the guidance of or protection of Lalita-devi, so Raghunatha dasa Gosvami was serving Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu under Svarupa Damodara Gosvami. Later when Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu wound up His manifest pastimes, Raghunatha dasa Gosvami went to Vrindavan and took shelter under Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami. He was extremely attached to Rupa Gosvami just like Rati-mañjarī would serve Srimati Radharani under the guidance of Rupa-mañjarī.

So the same types of relationships existed in gaura-līlā as in kṛṣṇa-līlā, but the forms were different. Many of the devotees who had the forms of gopīs in kṛṣṇa-līlā had the forms of men in gaura-līlā. There was little difference in mood of course, but the same basic relationships were there. 

This is a very esoteric topic but I have taken the liberty to discuss it today because it is a special occasion and I, under the protection of many great souls here, so I am sure that if I get into trouble or put us all in trouble, they will intervene and save us. But there is another reason and that is to make the point that by serving Srila Prabhupada and our paramparā in disciplic succession, when we come to a certain stage, they themselves will arrange for us to come under the protection of the divine energy in more specific ways. We don’t have to go outside looking here and there for someone to do that for us because it is built into our process of paramparā and so although when we read the verse from the Bhagavad-gītā, it might seem, “Well, this is general, coming under the protection of the divine energy in a general way, but what if I want to come under the guidance of the divine energy in a more specific way?” But that will automatically happen when we are ready, when we are qualified, because the same people that we are seeing in the form of our acharyas in the paramparā, they are also there in gaura-līlā and kṛṣṇa-līlā. So we just have to surrender to them which means to follow their instructions strictly, and if we do, everything else will follow, but we have to do our part as you all are trying.

In Bombay one Indian gentleman came to see Srila Prabhupada and he was crying, “Swamiji, Swamiji, please save me, please save me! Only you can save me.” And Srila Prabhupada said, “I cannot save you. You have to save yourself, but I can give the process by which you can save yourself.” So, the mahatma, the saints, the spiritual masters give us the process by which we can save ourselves, but we have to take up the process seriously.

On another occasion in Bombay one of Prabhupada’s disciples sitting before him, Prabhupada was on the vyāsāsana, he asked, “Srila Prabhupada please give me your mercy that I may follow your instructions.” And Srila Prabhupada’s lips curled in disgust. . . Srila Prabhupada was an ocean of love but he expressed his love in different ways and we shouldn’t misunderstand and think that he was all roses. He could also be like a thunderbolt. So his lips curled in disgust and he said, “My mercy is that I have given you my instructions.” He said, “If you are in a well and someone sends down a rope and you are in the bottom of the well and you are praying, ‘Please give me your mercy that my fingers will curl around the rope,’ is that a very good idea? No, you have to hold onto the rope and then he will pull you out of the well. So his mercy is that he sends down the rope and he’ll pull you up, but you have to hold onto the rope. That is your part. That is your minute independence.” 

But even then, Srila Prabhupada is very merciful—all Vaishnavas are by definition—so they encourage us, cajole us, chastise, correct us so that we will hold onto the rope and to actually follow the process. And if we do, we will be elevated step by step. But whatever we do wrong—this I must say—we can always rectify ourselves. There were a few incidents. One of Srila Prabhupada’s early disciples has come to India and he was Calcutta. Somehow he had gotten into smoking ganja, hashish, or marijuana. So, the temple president phoned Srila Prabhupada in Bombay and asked him what to do. Srila Prabhupada said, “Tell him that if he doesn’t stop this, I will reject him.” After the phone call, Tamal Krishna Goswami asked Srila Prabhupada, “Is it true that if he doesn’t stop, you will reject him?” And Srila Prabhupada said, “No, I cannot reject anyone.”

Then a few years later there was another incident with a devotee, he became a pseudo yogi. He was Prabhupada’s disciple but he became a pseudo yogi and he was doing something, making some sort of tricks and living on Juhu Beach and having followers come. Srila Prabhupada would not reject him. Tamal Krishna Goswami was pushing that Prabhupada should—maybe not pushing—he said, “Srila Prabhupada, don’t you have to draw the line somewhere? Isn’t there a limit?” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “There is no limit to Lord Nityananda’s mercy.”

So that is Prabhupada’s magnanimous mood, Nityananda Prabhu’s magnanimous mood. Of course it doesn’t mean that we welcome them in our intimate association if they are not up to the standard, but even if they are not in the intimate association of the devotees, we still want to encourage them to come back.

So we just have to continue and do our best to follow Srila Prabhupada’s instructions, the process of devotional service with full faith in the potency of the instructions and in the mercy of the paramparā. If we do, we will be placed fully under the guidance of the divine energy and Srila Prabhupada and his associates will be there. 

Some of you may know I hope that the history of the Juhu Land, the Hare Krishna Land which is told in Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta, the owner of the land was Mr. Nair who in the Līlāmṛta is called Mr. N. Srila Prabhupada had a disciple named Tusta Krishna dasa and Tusta Krishna was actually the first ISKCON devotee to meet Mr. Nair. But Tusta Krishna dasa had come from a group of devotees who were followers of another devotee named Sai. Sai was an interesting person because he got Prabhupada’s books and began to follow Prabhupada’s teaching and he began his own movement, his own Hare Krishna movement in Hawaii without having ever met Srila Prabhupada. He was quite a mellow fellow, sort of relaxed, and he had a farm community in Hawaii and he encouraged people just to come and farm and chant—not too strict or too heavy. Eventually he took initiation from Srila Prabhupada.

So Tusta Krishna Prabhu had the idea that Siddha-svarupa which was Sai’s name, that Siddha-svarupa was a pure devotee and he should be followed, but that they shouldn’t have to follow anyone else in ISKCON. Srila Prabhupada replied that this was the wrong mentality. He said, “Siddha-svarupa is a good soul. You say he is a pure devotee, but anyone who is sincerely following the instructions of the spiritual master is a pure devotee. And if you say Siddha-svarupa is as pure devotee, he should be followed and not others, that will create factions.” The same point, that anyone who is sincerely following the instructions of the spiritual master is a pure devotee and he is our Prabhu and he should be followed. And then Srila Prabhupada wrote that, “Siddha-svarupa will go to the spiritual sky and you will go and Shyamasundara will go.” Shyamasundara was the GBC and they had some problems with the GBC. So Prabhupada specifically said, “Shyamasundara will go.” Then Srila Prabhupada said, “Only Mr. Nair, he cannot go. He will have to stay behind.” [laughter] And then Prabhupada wrote, “We will have another ISKCON in the spiritual sky.”

What does that mean that we will have another ISKCON in the spiritual sky? Does that mean that there is going to be GBC meetings and resolutions and minutes and supervision? My understanding is that the same relationships we have here will be translated into terms as we read about in caitanya-līlā and kṛṣṇa-līlā. We will be the same people as individuals, as spirit souls, and there’ll be organization, there will be hierarchy, but it will be without any inebriety, but it will be that type of hierarchy where you have Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Svarupa Damodara Gosvami, Raya Ramananda, Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, Raghunatha dasa Gosvami, that type of hierarchy. And even in kṛṣṇa-līlā there will be a hierarchy and we will be the servant of the servant of the servant of the servant. That is our constitutional position and it continues even in the spiritual world. Gopī-bhartuḥ pada-kamalayor dāsa-dāsānudāsaḥ.

Once I asked Srila Prabhupada’s Sanksrit editor, Pradyumna dasa, about pride in the spiritual world, because I had heard that everything that exists in the material world also exists in the spiritual world in its original pure form. So I asked, “What about pride?” And Pradyumna Prabhu at that time—maybe even now—he was very absorbed in reading the books of our previous acharyas and so whenever I’d ask a question, he’d immediately refer to some book or commentary, and I believe what I am about to say he attributed to Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, but I can’t say for sure. But he said, “The original form of pride which exists in the spiritual world is feeling, ‘I am the servant of the servant of the servant of the servant. I am the last.’” Because what does it mean to be the servant of the servant? It means you have so many masters, so if you are the last in the line—you are the servant of the servant of the servant—that means you have more masters than anyone else. So that is the pride of the pure devotee that he is the last in the line of servants, he has the most masters to serve and please. 

So that is our aspiration on this most sacred of occasions to be the servant of the servant of the servant of the servant of Krishna, the maintainer of the gopīs, and that begins right here and now, and that will continue even in our liberated condition in, if we are lucky enough one day, in gaura-līlā and kṛṣṇa-līlā. This means that not only is our relationship with our spiritual master and the paramparā going back to Krishna eternal, but in principle our relationship with each other is eternal. So we should be very careful in our dealings with each other. It is not like, “Oh well, he doesn’t really matter. She doesn’t matter. We are only here for a few years and who knows, maybe the person will bloop sooner. We won’t even have to tolerate the person for so long. In fact due to that person’s offenses against me, he probably will bloop.” [laughter] We shouldn’t think like that because anyone who is following the process will reach the same destination and we’ll all be there together, serving under our superiors in some sort of hierarchy under the supreme guidance of Srimati Radharani. So we would be very careful in how we deal with each other as well, and if we do that—follow the process and live in the association of devotees and don’t offend devotees—we will get the result, and we’ll have another ISKCON in the spiritual sky like the ISKCON depicted on the pictures on the wall—that ISKCON. But this ISKCON also in principle is not different because as long as we are following Srila Prabhupada’s instructions and relishing Krishna consciousness and spreading Krishna consciousness, in essence there is no difference. A devotee—[apita?] darśanaḥ—he sees any situation the same equally, because as long as he can serve the servant of the servant of the servant of the servant, he is happy.

So I am happy to be here. I do feel I am in the spiritual world and I pray to Srimati Radharani and our paramparā that I will never lose this type of association, and that I will be able to serve their servants eternally. Hare Krishna.

Sri Sri Radha-Shyamasundara ki jaya!
Sri Sri Radha-Damodara ki jaya!