Re: Is impersonal merging temporary or permanent

Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krishna! Jaya Guru parampara! Please accept my respectful obeisances!

  This is the continuation of the article from where I left off earlier.

PART 2

      In the same way in the Vedanta Sutra some opponent argues with Srila Baladeva Vidyabhushana's statement that the Lord's activities are eternal. The opponent argues that the spiritual world must be static or tries to deny the personality of Godhead. ".....Because the Supreme Lord is by nature eternal, it may be said that His activities performed with His associates in His childhood and other ages are also eternal. In this way His many different activities, from beginning to end, may all be considered to be eternal. However, it is illogical to say that there can be an eternal previous action that is followed by another action. If the previous action is followed by a subsequent action, then the eternality of the previous action is destroyed. If one action is eternal then any subsequent action must be performed by a different person. To say that the subsequent action is performed by the same person contradicts both scripture and direct experience. Every action has a beginning and an end. Without beginning and end no action can be brought to completion, and without such beginnings and ends there can be no experience of the nectar of transcendental mellows (rasa). For these reasons, how can it be possible that the Lord's activities are eternal? If the Lord's activities were eternal they would be still and unchanging, like a painted picture. If it is said that the same actions are repeated again and again and in that way they are eternal, then I say that there are bound to be times when the beginning of the action is different, and thus the subsequent actions will become changed, and the action would then not be repeated in the same way as before. Therefore, how can it be that the activities of the Lord are eternal? Therefore it should not be accepted that the activities of the Lord are eternal.......". (From Vedanta Sutra Chapter 2 Pada 3, Sutra 10, Adhikarana 1 and beyond......)

     To this Baladeva gives various statements from the scriptures to refute such mundane logical analysis. The Lord's activities are all right here, right now. He doesn't have anything like past and future pastimes as Hadai prabhu revelaed in his realisation of Lord Nityananda acting as a child. This can be understood only by the grace of the Lord and not by logic. I write this to caution the reader against speculating logically like this and spoiling his knowledge and spiritual advancement by the danger of mental speculation.

       So coming back to Mukunda's case. The whole thing was a pastime to demonstrate these facts to us. By Hadai prabhu's very brief explanation many things came elaborately to me and I have tried to describe them as far as possible. The statments glorifying the impersonal liberation merging into Brahman are actually hurting the Lord because they deny the supremacy of His personality and devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead Gauranga Krishna.

      An interesting question would be then : Why do the Vedas (Veda is generic for scriptures) glorify oneness with Brahman and the impersonal feature so much in so many statements? The answer is that the impersonalist takes a wrong approach to realise the Lord. Actually the truth is that realisation of the personality of Godhead includes impersonal brahman realisation!!!! .....That's right. Brahman realisation is included within realisation of Gauranga Krishna. But realising the impersonal brahman by realizing the personality of Godhead is actually the correct way to approach the Lord. This statement has been quoted in different ways but it is now clear to me. We are so much against Mayavada that when someone says something about impersonal brahman realisation we get angry. But we must not forget that brahman realisation is included in bhagavan realisation.

        Coming to Paramatma realisation by the way, there are also many process mentioned in the Vedas like astanga yoga for realisation of the Paramatma or the Supersoul. Just as the Vedas glorify impersonal brahman, they also glorify the localised Parmatma or the Supersoul feature of the Lord and there are many statements in favour of Paramatma realisation. Paramatma realisation is superior to Brahman realisation because we realise that the Lord has Form and personality. But it is inferior to Bhagavan realisation as we do not realise the Personality of Godhead beyond the point of merely knowing he is personal. Pure Bhakti is not found in Paramatma realisation. There is no room for loving devotional relationships with the Lord and prema, or Love of Godhead is not present there. That is present only in Bhagavan realisation. In another light, the mystic yogis who practice astanga yoga and realise the Supersoul are in a way worse than the impersonal brahmavadis. The reason is that if they come to the stage of Paramatma realisation and do not cultivate bhakti, then they end up committing spiritual suicide by merging into the form of the Lord or Isvara Sayuja leading to loss of individual consciousness. Therefore only Paramatma realisation alone is also impersonalist in the ultimate sense as its ultimate result takes the soul away from bhakti and away from the personality of Godhead. The realisation of the yogis is therefore covered impersonalism because at the heart of it they too desire to become the Lord.

        In this way both Brahma Sayujya (oneness with the impersonal effulgence) and Paramatma/Isvara Sayujya (oneness with the personal form of the Lord) are both impersonal realisations. In Brahma Sayujya some devotee make happen to show some mercy and pull the soul out of that condition. But in Isvara sayujya of the mystic yogi, no devotee can come to save us.

     However even Isvara sayujya is not the end of the road. It is not eternal for the Lord and he can show His mercy, making it temporary by taking the souls of the merged condition and giving them another chance for performing bhakti. This is very rarely done, but eventually every jiva ending up in such a fate is given another chance just like the impersonal brahmavadis. There is always another chance, second, third, millionth, etc...It is endless. Sisupala and Dantavakra attained Isvara Sayujya with Krishna, but they remained there only for a short time and were brought back out to their normal position in Vaikunta as the Gatekeepers. Similarly for Kamsa. In a different manner Bhaktivinode writes that he was only able to get sayujya mukti, but later on he was given another chance for devotional service and he obtained pure Love of Godhead (prema) in Navadvipa by worshipping Lord Gauranga and so obtained a spiritual body fit for associating with the Lord. That fact is only hinted in the Srimad Bhagavatam which says that Kamsa attained a spiritual body just like that of the Lord. But actually that was how he got it.

     In The Introduction to the Bhagavad Gita, Srila Prabhupada writes that Brahman realisation is realisation of sat (eternity), paramatma realisation is realisation of sat and cit (eternity andknowledge), and Bhagavan realisation is realisation of sat-cit-ananda (Eternity, Knowledge and Bliss) in full Vigraha or form (Form here means the personality of Godhead). This itself indicates that both realisation Brahman and Paramatma are included in realisation of Bhagavan. Being in the introduction to the Gita, it is understood that this is among the very first things a student of spiritual science has to know -- that everything is included in the realisation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Therefore the devotee is the most perfect transcendentalist. Impersonal brahmajyothi is the effulgence of the Lord and Paramatma (The Supersoul) is his partial expansion. By realisation of the Lord we also realise his effulgence and all his parts and parcels as the Whole includes its parts.

     However, the reverse is not true. By realising Brahman and Paramatma, it does not mean we realise the Personality of Godhead. Therefore Brahman realisation or Paramatma realisation alone by themselves are incomplete. Incomplete realisation of the Lord is strongly discouraged as it leads to the impersonalists committing all types of offenses against the Personality of Godhead and his devotees. For this reason Brahma-Sayujya is described as the ultimate cheating process. Isvara Sayujya by merging into Paramatma is declared as far worse then even Brahma Sayujya because the impersonalist is ignorant of the Lord's form and personality. But In Paramatma realisation we understand that the Lord has Form and Personality yet we do not realise the Personality of Godhead and end up merging into him. That is even worse. The whole point is that realising Brahman and Paramatma separately without realisation of Bhagavan is incomplete and it's the wrong way to go about it. That is very painful for the Lord. We just don't want exclusive brahman realisation or brahma-sayuja. Rather Brahman and Paramatma must be realised by realisation of Bhagavan.

     It is for this reason that Baladeva Vidyabhushana says that the state attained by a devoteee is indeed Sayujya (meeting the Lord) and not something different. There are two types of Brahma Sayujya and Isvara Sayujya as Swamiji pointed out to me in another post. One is experienced by the devotees and that is the actual sayujya as it is included in pure bhakti. The other Sayujya leads to spritual suicide and is completely abhorred with repulsion by all devotees of the Lord. Kaivalyam narakayate....

     Real sayujya in its true meaning indicates devotional service. And in that big ocean of Sayujya, the smaller puddles of Brahma-Sayujya and Paramatma Sayujya are automatically included in their proper form where it pleases the Lord and also does not take the jiva away from bhakti by putting him into a merged unconscious condition. The oceanic expansion of devotional service automatically includes the smaller pools of all other realisation of Brahman and Paramatma, but realisation of the small puddle in the street does not mean that one realises the vast ocean that is the origin of the puddle. The frog in the well cannot understand the ocean and thinks the well is the greatest, but those who can understand the ocean can understand the small well in its proper perspective as being subordinate to the ocean.

       Summing up this is the the real picture of Brahman realisation and Paramatma realisation. So the impersonalistic statements in the Vedas are a warning, not to fall into the trap of only realising impersonal brahman or only localised Paramatma and hurt and beat the Lord. Instead they must be realised as included in realisation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead in pure loving devotional service. Therefore the net conclusion of this whole realisation is that :

  1)The Lord is beyond time and space and he can make turn permanent into temporary. Therefore impersonal merging into Brahman or Paramatma is not permanent and there is always another chance for bhakti, although it is obtained only rarely with great difficulty.
  2)Bhakti is the Supreme process of realisation and the very nature of the jiva soul itself. It is never destroyed even in the merged condition and can be revealed under all circumstances.
  3)And Realisation of Bhagavan is the highest realisation and includes all other realisations including Brahman and Paramatma realisation.

  I apologise for all my limitations in presenting such a high topic. Invariably there will certainly be mistakes as I am only a beginner who isn't fit to be called a devotee at all. But by the mercy of the spiritual masters and their order that I write this article, I have written it. I am sorry that this reply has been delayed so long, because my attention was concentrated on facing my ongoing college examinations. I am very grateful to Hadai prabhu for having made a fool like me realise this little bit of truth. He could have written the reply Himself, but he gave me this chance to serve all of you out of his own magnanimity, although I am completely unworthy of it. Once again I thank the reader for having taking so much time and effort to go through a voluminous post like this and I humbly request you to forgive me for all the inconveniences I may have caused you.

Concluded.

Daaso'smi,

Srinath

Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krishna!

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