Christmas class

By Madhavipriya Dasi

We depart for Villa Vrindavana for the lecture given every year on Christmas day by Shriman Matsyavatara Prabhu.

On the path of Villa Vrindavana a huge holm-oak has fallen down and obstructs the road. We see its gigantic roots torn-off from the dirt. In this world, even what looks so impressive and seems almost unassailable, falls down. The search for another dimension, in which to live, is such a priority that it is the only thing really important to do.

We enter the Temple and we immerse ourselves in a sweet song dedicated to Shri Krishna-Gopala. The devotees are dancing and offering prayers. The Deities are dressed in pink and blue shine of a light that is not of this world. The lecture begins.

“Today we celebrate the glories of a great devotee of the Lord, Jesus Christ, a pure son of God, a shakti-avesha avatara, as He was defined by Shrila Prabhupada. With Christ we celebrate the glories of all the pure devotees of all the authentic spiritual traditions of all languages and skin color. The common denominator of these great personalities is that they all brought a message from another world, another dimension, where there is not only peace and justice but also freedom and love. Their message is of freedom.” What does freedom mean? The Shrimad Bhagavatam explains that moksha consists of freedom from any identification with the dimension time-space sarvo upadhir vinir muktam. Our predisposition to freedom will be more or less in accordance with our way of life, sattvic or rajo-tamasic. In Bhagavad-Gita (II.25) it is explained that the spiritual soul is not contaminated, nor transformed, then what hamper our predisposition to reach heaven while we are alive? What detours us? What interrupts our march toward freedom? The conditioners of the psyche. More precisely, the ancient samskara that produce memories that generate a renewal of egotistical attachments. If the good discerning tattva viveka is not constant, where it is lacking, the good predisposition to reach heaven is interrupted and obstacle elements enter the conscience. We reach freedom only if we learn how to handle our emotions and our thoughts without depending on them any longer.

The free souls are free from resentment, rancor and other negative emotions that contaminate and paralyze the conscience, such as revenge and hate, which hamper the evolution with their presence. The capability to dominate the mind opens the door to freedom and to the best way to dominate and harmonize the mind is focalizing it on Krishna. If the psychic emotions do not attach themselves to a center, they are like planets without an orbit. This center, in religious terminology, is God, the Handsome Supreme Who has the capability to attract all the energies, and in psychological terminology the Inner-Self. The devotee puts any thought, emotion and desire at the service of the Lord. He offers to Him any action and it is in this manner that he disconnects from the dependence and influence of the psychic fields and from the consequences of his actions. This is why in Bhagavad-Gita (IX.34) He says to Arjuna:”If you meditate constantly on Me, if you act as My devotee and you offer to Me all your actions with spirit of sacrifice, if you respect Me and offer Me your prayers, and you bow in front of Me, you will obtain freedom and will come to Me.”

As Bhagavad-Gita explains in VII.14, you can overcome the influence of the gunas only if we give ourselves to God, by offering everything to Him, by founding our life on the modality of sacrifice. Sacrifice ourselves means become sacred. It is the modality of offering to God in the Bhakti spirit that allows for the consecration of the waters of the mind and makes our rapid evolution possible.

Special souls descend from the everlasting reality to give us the message of freedom, to inspire us with a divine life and immortal love. Without their teachings and their mercy we cannot relight our spiritual desire to make it Divine love. Only if we can understand their mercy, we can purify our desires, thoughts and emotions and divert them toward the research for God.”

Shriman Matsyavatara Prabhu reads and comments wonderful excerpts from Bhagavad-Gita that describe the characteristics of the freed dimension.

Moksha means freedom from death but also from birth, from suffering but also from the so called pleasure which in reality is the source of pain. In the Hindu-Vedic literature we often see the image of the wheel of samsara which produces death and rebirths. This wheel is composed of six rays: virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, attachment and repulsion.

When we act egotistically, whether in sattva guna or tamo guna, we start the wheel with the six rays where living as deva in the celestial planets or as asura in the dark planets, will always entail death and rebirth. It is why the pure devotees always speak to us of a world which is beyond the sky and the infernos, beyond the worldly goodness, beyond the cycle of deaths and rebirths.

The great stories of freedom that we find in the holy books are metaphors of that dimension that is the true purpose of those that descend from there to bring us news from that transcendent world. Transcendence is the dimension of immortal Love (Bhagavad-Gita XVIII.54).”

The attending devotees asked various questions. Freedom and transcendence are the center of our attention.

“What does living in transcendence mean and is it possible to do it while we are still in this world? Yes, at the same rate as our developed heart purity! Even a small and short experience of the transcendent reality can change our life because it allows us to experience that dimension which is pervaded by sentiments, tastes, or rasa, so fascinating that nothing else, in comparison, has value as explained by Jiva Gosvami when he commented the second verse of Bhaktirasasmrita sindhu.”

There are more questions in reference to Buddhi-yoga, analogies between Bhagavad-Gita and the Gospel, the meaning of shloka XVIII.66 of Bhagavad-Gita. We understand ever more that the teachings and life models of the pure devotees are like lighthouses in the dark night of incarnation. We can hope to proceed without incidents, by freeing ourselves from conditioners and reaching that transcendent dimension of immortal Love only in accordance to the path lightened by their teachings and life examples.