Respected Swamiji, Hadai Prabhu and all Vaisnavas,
Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna! All glories to the guru parampara and every Vaisnava!
One of my favourite songs is in Telugu which goes like , "Endaro Mahaanubhaavulu andariki vandanamulu.." where a great devotee of Lord Rama says that there are many many devotees, all worthy of the topmost worship. To all these devotees, whether I know them or not, I offer my most respectful obeisances!"
I have just been inspired to document my learning curve along my path leading to devotion to the Lord and his devotees.
From now on I am planning to maintain my own 'diary' documenting my everyday progress as a person having some aspiration to advance spiritually. I wonder why I didn't start doing that from the day I started chanting. Please allow me to express a desire to post some of those experiences and small realisations on every now and then. I feel that will be of some use to myself and others. If I can ever attain some perfection in becoming your servant and pure devotional service, it will be like a chronicle of the entire learning curve from being in a most fallen and beastly state of life to the stage where following in your footsteps, I can also get such wonderful realisations which will in turn encourage people like myself to come to the same eternal, infintely blissful and loving spiritual existence.
First of all, noting down my experiences helps me first. I have realised that my worst problem is this. My memory is so short lived that I forget what happened last week and what I learned. So I find myself again and again re-learning what I learnt. I face obstacles which keep coming again later on because of forgetfulness. At that time if I remember the lessons I learnt, I can just keep going instead of getting stuck at the same spot again and again. Our acaryas said that there is no room for stagnation -- its either up or down. If I am not going up, I am going down. So how long do I want to keep going down and not come up? Everytime I think I come up I realise that I am actually back at the same spot where I was before having fallen down earlier. I climb 1 foot and fall down 1 foot, then climb back where I started.
In simple language, I am stuck.
I say that because your realisations are the prime encouraging factor for souls like myself who are so bewildered by maya and who want to take the path leading to pure bhakti inspite of so many setbacks.
Reading your realisations makes me very well aware of the inconceivable greatness of the devotees of the Lord. Simply one line in a verse about Lord Nityananda is enough to cause that much bliss....!!! Its incredible, wonderful, beautiful and makes so much bliss in just reading about it. The words of all the languages in the world are simply incapable of describing even a drop of those feelings. They are only a pointer to the real thing. What really can I understand about this? Only a devotee of your level or higher can ever possibly relish properly what you speak. So I apologise for my lack of qualifications owing to which I do not do full justice to all your glories or your exalted position.
You must forgive me for writing a most incoherent letter drifting here and there. But when I read one realisation a number of things simply hit me like a bomb and I want to describe all of them, but I find myself just awed by simply thinking about what you may be experiencing.
I heard from Hadai Prabhu that the bliss generated is like a supernova generated within every atom of the body. Like the supernova is the mother of all explosions, it really is only by the Lord's will that the body is even staying together in one piece. It would simply explode like a bomb! Its only a figure of speech. But certainly not even the greatest material happiness anyone has experienced can even dream of coming close to something so inconceivably powerful.
These realisations do the job of beating me with a whip literally. I spend all my time in disgusting things of zero value rejecting this ocean of bliss which you and the Lord are again and again trying to offer me. All these bad habits persist only because I have not tasted a small atomic particle of that divine love. If anyone got that chance, they would never ever even think that this worldly happiness has any truth in it. I am here praying to you once that I be fortunate enough for such a thing. Sometimes I feel like kicking myself that in what kind of a mind I accept things other than chanting as happiness. No one in their right mind will do that....but that is the ultimate disease.
It is another amazing thing by itself that the mantrarajas Nityananda and Gauranga can and have achieved what normally takes so many lifetimes in just a matter of years! Seeing this proof can make anyone's eyes pop out of their head! So soon. But then I should be asking myself that what is so amazing for the mantrarajas. They can do anything! I remember I asked a question on what difference the mantrarajas make and here is my answer.
I face many obstacles like material pressures, the demands of the senses, all uncouth qualities, so many distractions, social pressures, criticism from the world, etc.etc. Sometimes its like being showered with bullets and blasts from every corner. The world makes us think and feel very acutely that we are too unfit for devotion and because we are so full of faults, what are we going to achieve by our chanting? This is the most discouraging factor. Anytime I goofs up on any job, immediately the first thing that is blasted is my chanting and nothing else. Then will come friends and company and books and all. Basically maya uses our limitations as a reason to blast our devotion, trying to break our resolve by telling us we cannot succeed.
Please tell me how I can deal with that. Right now it is only whatever little will power and inner courage I have that keeps me going. On some days I break down entirely and start beating my head against the wall and despite being an 18 year old I cry like a child when maya's attacks leave me very demoralised. It makes us feel ashamed to chant, and that's when your words very mercifully come and put me back on my feet.
The experiences of myself and others are all stepping stones and I learn a lot from them. Particularly spiritual realisations like this give me more hope every time I read them. It is the most encouraging factor. Here I struggle daily, every moment just to get some taste for chanting the names of the Lord and when I see devotees around us telling all these amazing things, I internally start having a desire to be a devotee myself and become their humble servant. It is a huge booster to one's enthusiasm and I get hope that by your grace I will not fail in the end.
The soul is a mad entity by nature. For a materialistically diseased soul as in my case I am a material madman, searching for happiness in the wrong place, ultimately being so crazy not to accept devotional service properly and continuously suffering from so many delusions. But in one's actual spiritual position the soul is ever maddened by the infinite love and bliss that one gets from pure prema bhakti. Spiritual madness.
So I am hoping that I can make some advancement at least to the level of being your servant by chanting and with renewed courage and enthusiasm, and most importantly by your grace I continue to chant, trying to make whatever progress I can towards attaining that perfection of devotional service which you speak about and which I can only imagine at this stage. Every realisation re-ignites the fire and tells me to continue despite all my limitations as Nityananda Gauranga naam itself is the only cure for all these miseries and limitations in this world.
Aspiring to stay on the path leading to pure devotion,
A most ignorant fool,
Srinath
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