Re: Advice for the Youth and Students

Dear Vaishnavas,

      Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna! My most respectful pranams to all of you.

      I have hesitated to write this for a very long time owing to my disqualifications and my insincerity. But now I realize that it is the right time to share this final realization I had on illicit sex, masturbation and the like.

      To do this, I must directly quote from a confidential part of Srimad Bhagavatam :

      SB 10.33.30: One who is not a great controller should never imitate the behavior of ruling personalities, even mentally. If out of foolishness an ordinary person does imitate such behavior, he will simply destroy himself, just as a person who is not Rudra would destroy himself if he tried to drink an ocean of poison.

       A severe warning is given to those who think they can also imitate the intimate conjugal pastimes of the Lord like the sahajiyas, etc.  One must never imitate the Lord, even in mind, or else the consequences are far too grave.  You may wonder why I quote this verse and jump into high confidential pastimes. But there is a reason. Nowhere is this verse more appropriate than the problem of illicit sex and masturbation.

      Sex -- lust, is a highly perverted and distorted, impersonalistic mutant of the pure love that exists in the spiritual world. The Lord relishes pure sweet prema with his devotees. In the material world, which is an IMITATION of the spiritual world, this is distorted and manifested as LUST. Hence devotees, please think about it, "What are we doing while masturbating?" Do you get the hint and put two and two together?

       When we are overwhelmed by lusty desires, we are thinking that we are enjoying with some woman in our mind aren't we? By doing this are we not IMITATING the Lord in a most vulgar, perverted and horrible way? We are doing exactly what is highly forbidden by the scriptures. We are vulgarly imitating the Lord and trying to be God ourselves, but in the process we commit a very great sin.

       Impersonalistic Mayavadism says that the soul is God bewildered by maya. Impersonalists think themselves to be the Lord in delusion. Therefore this whole idea of we trying to imitate the Lord is also Mayavadism. So masturbation and illicit sex is mayavada too! Actually this is why this impersonalism is the ultimate disease of the soul -- because it deludes us to think we are Krishna.

       We declare ourselves to be the enjoyers and though we may not be aware of it, we are also sahajiyas, doing what they do. Our mind wants to do some so called 'lila' and get some mundane 'pleasure' thinking that I am God, I enjoy others. But when we are the servant of the Lord, we are not the enjoyers, rather we are the servitors, assisting the devotees in letting the Lord enjoy. When he enjoys, it is pure and totally faultless, no lust. But when we try to take his postion, are we not committing a grave offence to Him?

        Not only to we imitate the Lord, we are also knowingly or unknowingly mocking and offending his pure confidential pastimes! Yes, we insult his pastimes, making mimicry of them in a petty, degraded way, by imitating. We insult his pure pastimes. Oh my Lord Nitaai, that is SO sinful! That is such a big aparadha -- to insult the pastimes of the Lord. By our character, we bring a bad name to the Lord's pastimes and we allow ourselves, and OTHERS, to think badly of the Lord's pastimes. It's because of our fault that people misunderstand the Lord's conjugal pastimes as lusty affairs. We mastubators and sahajiyas have created this name and we have offered the biggest insult at those pastimes which are the life and soul of the Lord and all His devotees.

        We not only insult the Lord, we are also insulting the Lord's devotees. What could be more painful for a Vaishnava than to see his Lord's lila be disturbed and mocked in this way? Not only that, our mind deep within, especially in masturbation is trying to think that, "I am Krishna and some woman is gopi" NONSENSE. We are committing a great offense by considering ordinary women to be like the most respectful gopis of Vrindavana. We are equating material bodies made of stool, bones, blood and pus with the residents of the spiritual world and that way we are trying show our sinful desires to commit offenses towards the Vrajavasis by thinking so badly of them.

        We know that we'll be totally devastated if we do that, so we are trying to cover it up by considering ordinary women to be equal to the Vrajavasis.  Vice versa, we are also indirectly insulting Radharani and all the gopis by trying to bring them down to the level of ordinary women. We should treat that highest plane with total respect and hold it high. We are totally unqualified to even think of it and here we are openly attempting to degrade it to the material level so that we can offend the Lord's devotees, our gurus, and our parampara by thinking of enjoying with women!!

   Do you see? Masturabation is gopi aparadha too! Insulting Radha-Krishna and their servants.....? What sort of a beast am I????**********

         Now the third part, we not only insult the Lord's pastimes, we also insult virtually all the supporting staff, namely all the other devotees of the Lord. By insulting the Lord we blaspheme all those who serve the Lord as well. The whole purpose of existence is to make arrangements for the Lord's pastimes, and if we insult those who serve those pastimes like, "Who are you? I am the Lord, I am the enjoyer, serve me!" we consider them as our servants. Those whom we should serve are made our servants.

         We must consider for a minute how much the Lord is pained when he sees his devotees being insulted in such a vulgar manner. Especially his most dear devotees. Think of His heart. He is extending His hand to us through his most merciful Holy names of Nityananda Gauranga and he comes all the way to us just for a little drop of love. Does He really need us. No. He has better people to serve Him, better than what we'll ever be. But still he wants our love and feels separation from us, and for this he comes all the way down and gives us the topmost treasure as freely as throwing away garbage!

       But if we give Him so much pain, aren't we being the most ungrateful wretches in the universe? We are hurting the Lord's butter soft heart. He is willing to forget everything we did before as if there was no yesterday and he is ready to open all His love and he is willing to get completely personal in his loving relationship with each one of us. He has an infinite  set of pastimes, qualities, etc... tailor made for each one of us and He is so eager to come and dance with each one of us so much that we all think, "I alone am His most loved one!" He is willing to get that personal with us and if we hurt His heart deeply in return for His loving requests, what level of ingratitude must we be having. We are just monsters!

       In my previous articles I tried my best to prove that masturbation, and thereby all illicit sex is ultimately Vaishnava aparadha because all souls are actually devotees (sleeping for now) and we are therefore harming devotees right in front of the Lord who watches everything. What a realization!  And now we go even further and realize that it is nothing but impersonalism acting at its lowest level and a direct aparadha to the Lord, his pastimes and his dearest devotees and their servants. This is why sex, lust is the root cause of material entanglement and always takes us further away from the Lord.

        This is why our acharyas said, "NO ILLICIT SEX". Your whole life may have been turned upside down by now, but please this is not meant to hurt you or find fault, etc. It is the TRUTH. Truth must never be kept concealed from genuine spiritual sadhakas. Please read my epilogue where I have summed it all up.

Daaso'smi,
Srinath

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