True Freedom

“A sober person who can tolerate the urge to speak, the mind's demands, the flashes of anger and the urges of the tongue, belly and genitals is really qualified to educate the disciples all over the world”

“The Nectar of Instruction” (Upadeshamrita) Verse 1

The Vedic Rishis (the wise’ seers’ of the Vedas) were not only mystic poets, they were experts of the deep knowledge of the mind; these sages widely observed and experimented all the psychic functions of the human being. The rishis could clearly see that the so-called spontaneousness of the human being with the ordinary level of consciousness is just a satisfaction of the conditionings, imposed by one's mind; therefore, in an ultimate analysis, it is the exact opposite of a free, healthy and spontaneous attitude. In order to make free decisions without being affected by conditionings and attachments, a person has to conquer the six urges mentioned above.

Only then a progressive realization of the Self will take place, so that the individual will be able to reach the pure feeling of Love for God. In order to overcome obstacles and to achieve high levels of awareness, one should proceed with a harmonious transformation of personality, along with well pondered choices. Such choices are the result of wisely coordinated and constant efforts, so as to allow the passage from human understanding of things to the spiritual awareness and protection, until a complete development of the most elevated qualities of the Soul.

If we learn to re-direct passionate egoistic feelings and emotions towards spiritual goals, they will enhance a propensity to inner evolution and will lead to a supreme bliss of Bhakti and Love in freedom.

How to build good relationships

PART II

The loss of awareness of our original essence results in a deep dissatisfaction and inner deterioration. People do not behave in a bad manner because they just wish so, rather because they are dissatisfied within.

How can we help people to feel satisfied?

Sensitiveness is not enough to empathize with the others so knowledge and discipline are required.

What about those people who do not even show sensitiveness?

We may learn to acquire, develop, find sensitiveness, which in Latin is called pietas. Sensitiveness can be found in atman, our spiritual matrix. We cannot trust the mind because when external circumstances change, our mental frame modifies consequently. For this reason we have to help people to start an inner search, to rediscover their real self. In this way, by developing such awareness, we can face the situations that otherwise could have become our limits, according to the changeable circumstances of life.

Our relations should not depend on external circumstances, we ought to learn to overcome them.

A great daily effort within needs to be done if we want to achieve this target. By conquering the inner enemies one after another, we lead ourselves to steadiness, tolerance, peacefulness. By practicing such attitude we learn not to react automatically to events, provocations, offences, abuses.

A person needs to modify one’s point of view. One may wear a heavy shield to protect oneself, but it will not be strong enough because it is only by switching and elevating our point of view that we reach a steady and broad inner confidence.

We miss a great deal of life which cannot be reproduced in the present span of time, if we carry on to identify as real what real is not. By modifying our point of view, our efforts, our dedication towards such an elevated mission will unveil to us the meaning of living.

It is not easy to succeed because we were born with a superficial mental attitude, with prejudices and tendencies acquired through behaviors we have brought back from previous lives. Performance of actions are pressing from our subconscious and lead us to repeat the same old mistakes. Therefore we need great care and attention to avoid circumstances that may put us at risk.

A person does not learn by punishment, rather by improving through education on an ethical and spiritual level, so that one may distinguish and filter between experience and its interpretation and between experience and reaction to events.

The most blessed event of my life. By Matsyavatara das (Marco Ferrini)

2011, August 30th

Today, thirty five years back, I had Your Divine Grace darshana for the first time.

I thank You again and again and in occasion of this holy day, please accept my humble offering as a praise at Your glorious life.

In all of these past years I have repeatedly gone over the scenario of our first encounter and, after deep meditation, I always come back to the same conclusion: even though I approached You that first time with insufficient purity and spiritual feelings, You took my sincerity very seriously and, as if in a dream or a play, You instilled in my heart faith in God, in His devotional service and in His pure devotees. As if under a spell, the chains of material nature that had me solidly bound loosened their hold, my attachment to illusory pleasures almost vanished and I desired to serve the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna, experiencing feelings of intense transcendental happiness and sharp compassion for those still spiritually unaware.

If having given so little I received so much I can guess what could happen if one day, following Your sacred teachings, I will be able to abandon myself completely to the mercy of the Supreme Will, to Lord Sri Krishna.

Dear Srila Prabhupada, since it is not in my power to perform this change of hearth and consciousness and since You are an authentic patita pavana, who just came for this job, I humbly beg Your Divine Grace to have compassion for me and to infuse me with the spiritual strength necessary to situate myself constantly at Your glorious lotus feet: an indispensable position for obtaining divine loving service unto the lotus feet of Lord Sri Krishna.

Your ever grateful disciple,

Matsyavatara Dasa

How to transform a rebellious mind into a Wonderful Mind (2/2). By Matsyavatara das (Marco Ferrini)

The act of offering the Supreme all that we possess is defined by Shri Caitanya as the highest form of renunciation: yukta vairagya. The bad weed of ego is uprooted by the constant and humble practice of sadhana bhakti in a spirit of loving service. Authentic humbleness comes from the awareness of our nature, which means to be God’s servants; it’s the humbleness of the part which stands in relationship with the whole, with the Creator, with the creatures and with the creation. Humbleness grows by learning to respect and to value the good qualities of every being, no matter which body it temporarily wears. Having such an attitude, thanks to divine mercy, the mistakes and the offences which hinder spiritual realization cease, and our journey towards the supreme Destination, param gatih, goes on rapidly. Freedom, justice, serenity, wisdom, happiness and love. The more we care about spiritual teachings, the more we stick to them and bring them inside our everyday life, the more our inner voice awakens and grows stronger. This inner voice is our inborn wisdom concerning discernment, and in the Krishna-bhakti tradition, in the Gaudiya-Vaishnavism, it is called tattva-viveka, discerning awareness. If we start to distinguish the inexistent, tempting as well as deceitful voices of the false self - which indeed has no ontological existence - from the truthful voice of the real self - immortal reality, and if we deliberately and irrevocably choose to let us guide by the latter, the real self will clear us the way to freedom, to salvation, to joy and Love. Only then the bright memory of our authentic nature - the spiritual one, which is undivided from the Whole - starts to reveal itself in all its splendour and divine truth. At this point the ravings of the false ego don’t thwart anymore the right vision and even the last doubts, together with the whims of the once rebellious mind, cease. As a rebellious mind is the real obstacle to spiritual realization, once it is subdued and turned into a docile instrument controlled by the soul, we can promptly experience an ineffable ecstatic bliss. The psychological experience of hell precedes the ascent to Heaven, almost unavoidably going through the intermediate stage of the purgatory. The first, concrete step on this path is to surrender to God, formally carried out through the initiation rite (Hari-nama diksha). Besides, life blessed by initiation is a divine gift that allows us to turn our mind into a pure diamond - requires clearness, honesty, courage and steadiness. Indeed, when we have sufficiently practised and strengthened in our personality these basic qualities, Divine Mercy descends upon us and everything becomes enlightened; the once overshadowed mind assumes golden dazzling colours, the soul is released from the slavery of matter and hovers in Heaven… Only then spiritual evolution proceeds rapidly and turns into a concrete reality, even in the tridimensional world.

How to transform a rebellious mind into a Wonderful Mind (1/2). By Matsyavatara das (Marco Ferrini)

From time immemorial it seems that inside us two “persons” have been dwelling together. There is an everlasting battle going on in order to gain supremacy over our personality between the superior self and the ordinary self. For a human being subject to the conditionings the most painful dilemmas are caused by the exhausting tension between these two poles, which produce different solutions depending on different motivations. These tensions continue until the ordinary self - which is a product of the arbitrary choices of our psyche - is harmoniously reintegrated in the energetic field of the superior self, the soul. The doubts which are sometimes alluded by the mind are connected to the ever changing and mutable world of transience, and it is normal that this phenomenon becomes more intense when we approach choices of vital importance. When we deal with such choices, the ordinary self protests, but one shouldn't be frightened. For a long time the ordinary self, the false ego, had the command over an individual, obscuring one's real self; unpunished, ego has dominated one's personality one life after another, turning it into a slave of mere illusory dreams of happiness, of delirious ambitions and of the fear of death. Trying to dethrone this tyrant, we are winning back our freedom: obviously it becomes rebellious. The ordinary self, also called “false ego”, is suspicious, presumptuous, proud, self-centred, unsatisfied and irritable. It is like a sly and ravenous beast, always looking for a prey in the form of prestige and illusory pleasures. The superior self is the real self, the hidden spiritual being, the atman, whose clear and wise voice we seldom have heard and listened to. False ego is the Destroyer, the principle of separation. It is the antagonist of Love. Ego gives us the illusion of reaching happiness, but if we are connected to it, we can experience only fleeting pleasure.

Ego gives us the illusion to possess love, but when this feeling gets in touch with the ego, it turns into an unwholesome attachment. Divine immortal love belongs to the soul; selfish and conditioned attachments belong to false ego, to the ordinary self. The first and most important work an aspiring spiritualist has to carry out is to free oneself from the false ego’s prison (ahamkara), no matter which tradition or religious path he chooses to follow. To free oneself from ahamkara doesn’t mean that one loses his own identity; on the contrary, one’s real identity can rise again only when the false identifications and the masks of our personality have been cast down (sarvo upadhir vinir muktam). Until we cling to false ego and delight ourselves in it, we won’t be able to get acquainted neither with God nor with ourselves. The path of inner transformation requires efforts and responsibility, but it is also grandiose, magnificent and fascinating. It leads us to see ourselves, the others and everything in the world with the eyes of the superior self, to perceive ourselves as God’s creatures who are acting thanks to His grace and mercy, in harmony with the Whole. Buddhism describes ego as the cause of pain and of every evil; and it opposes to it a radical renunciation to the mundane things. The Middle Eastern Traditions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, oppose to it renunciation, prayer and fasting. In the works of Vedanta and Samkhya ego is considered to be the main cause of avidya, of one’s turning away from God, of Fall and degradation, of the loss of one’s spiritual identity. It is the biggest obstacle to self-realization and to happiness; it is the power opposing the soul and God. It is the main cause of envy and of the Fall for angels and for human beings: from Lucifer to Macbeth, both in ancient and in modern events. Due to the ego Lucifer becomes Satan (“the Antagonist”, in Hebrew) and Lord Macbeth becomes a murderer, a degraded and horrible person. To him the destroying ego manifests itself as his wife, Lady Macbeth, who awakens and fosters his negative tendencies. The principle of Eva and Adam is inside each of us, and so are inside us both the angel and the demon. If we choose to foster the demon, he will win. If we foster the angel and his bright spiritual nature, the angel will win. In each of us there are Vritra and Indra, Lucifer and Michael. Our fate depends on our choices, on our decision to favour the one rather than the other. Together with pride and arrogance, false ego is the main distinctive feature of the asura. Humbleness is the opposite attitude and, partly, it is even its antidote. In a famous metaphor through which Shri Caitanya Mahaprabhu gives teachings to his main disciple, Shrila Rupa Goswami, the devotion of the aspiring spiritualist is compared to a delicate little plant, bhakti lata bija, surrounded by the ego’s infesting plants which tend to choke her. If we wish evolution and happiness, we should take care with all our forces of the delicate little bhakti plant, protecting her by practising spiritual discipline (sadhana) constantly (abhyasa) and with emotional detachment from the material phenomena (vairagya), strengthening the pure wish of serving God and offering everything to Him.