Union

The genuine spiritual realization, which is to be found on a much higher level than that of religiousness, is the experience of a fulfilled soul, of a sage, of an enlightened person who, precisely for being wise, sees the creation, the creatures and the Creator simultaneously and as an integrated unity. For this reason the service he offers to the Creator works automatically also for the well-being of the creatures and of the creation as a whole.

The philosophical concept of ahimsa, non-violence, obviously is not to be limited to human beings, as the respect for life includes all living entities and the creation itself.

The research for spiritual realization, for the highest self, focal point of the personality, corresponds to the discovery of God and to a loving relationship with Him.

When we are placed out of our centre, not only we vanish as an identity, but even God disappears, and it is only when we find again God that we find again ourselves, inconceivably two and One at the same time.

Matsyavatara das

What is devotional service?

Devotional service, as it is referred to in the Bhaktivedanta tradition, is made up by all those free and voluntary activities which the bhakta, or person who dedicates his entire life to a spiritual quest, carries out by offering them in a devotional attitude to God and to whom he has chosen as his own spiritual guide, that means his Guru.

Such activities are carried out, after an accurate aforethought choice, in the terms and ways which he feels most suitable for himself, in order to foster his ethical and spiritual development and to support society with a contribution to the common well-being in a spirit of selflessness and solidarity.

In fact, devotional service is the most important tool which can guarantee a permanent connection of the individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness: when consciousness is connected to God, it goes beyond the dualism of good and evil, of excitement and depression or of elation and dejection. In this way even the mind gets firmly connected to God, and so the willpower is strengthened and becomes determined.

Bhagavad-Gita II.50:

“A man engaged in devotional service rids himself of both good and bad actions even in this life. Therefore strive for yoga, which is the art of all work”.

Matsyavatara das

School of Life: How to Learn from Good and from Evil.

The Sacred Texts tell us that without receiving mercy from the Spiritual Master and from the Supreme God it's impossible to overcome for good the egoistic attachment toward mundane things. In order to succeed, not only we need to have received divine benevolence, we must have kept it too.

In which way we can receive mercy? Firstly by seeking it ardently, and behaving consequently, by dedicating ourselves with diligence and faith to spiritual practices and so awaken Love and Awareness.

And in which way we can keep it? By offering it to others. Then and only then, through constant and coherent efforts toward achieving Bhakti in our lifespan, we will be increasingly able to discriminate reality from illusion, the essence from appearance, the eternal from ephemeral.

Mice see the cheese but not the trap. In the same way conditioned souls see the promises of pleasure in this world's things, but hardly can understand that this pleasure hides a trap. A mortal trap.

How to be detached from the world and its overwhelming beauties? How can we resist when we see something appealing, pleasing, good smelling and shining? We should think about it in connection to God. It is difficult to deny this world; the more we deny it the more we are attracted to it, risking to become hypocrites who refuse the world's attractions outwardly while inwardly craving them (Bhagavad-gita III.6). Therefore we should not refuse this material world's beautiful things, but to use them to serve God with Love, correlating them to our spiritual origin, and living them in the vision of eternity. Accordingly, in any circumstance of our life we can connect to the Lord and to our deepest spirituality. Even bitter experiences, the biting words we received, the mistakes we made, at the end can turn into gifts, only if we can learn from the lessons they offer us. Gratitude and appreciation can permeate everybody and everything appear in this world, because we make use of every experience to get closer to God.

This gratitude can be felt and can be expressed both when we receive "good things", and when we get "bad things", being conscious that the light of the day cannot be appreciated without the night's darkness.

As you would expect, it is necessary that we learn how to discriminate between vice and virtue, between good and evil, so we can choose once far all righteousness and be firm in sattva-guna, but also we must be aware that Reality is beyond. It is that pure spiritual dimension in which mundane good and evil are transcended, and they merge in the "sommum bonum": the supreme goodness beyond duality. And supreme goodness is unconditioned pure Love that change and purify everything. Such dimension can be reached when any desire we have becomes an offering to the Lord and all our perceptions are dedicated to His service.

By living in this perspective we will find treasures around each corner, hidden in any occurrence of our life. And we will walk toward death full of gratitude because we understood that by practicing Bhakti even death leads us to life.

Pilgrimage: a Journey of Search and Discovery.

Part II

It is not by chance that Masters of Bhakti speak of an inseparable unity which is necessary for our evolution: Bhagavata sacred work and Bhagavata person, both of them are able to transfer the knowledge and the consciousness of  the Divine, Bhagavan.

If our visit to a sacred place is made with these predispositions, it may become an experience of great meaning that allows us to get in touch with timeless memories that bring us in other elevated dimensions of consciousness, and allow us to hear and accept the messages conveyed to mankind from another dimensions.

At times life faces us with very difficult situations so that we have to be ready and able to make our pilgrimage even in a hospital's room after the announcement of a terrible medical report, in front of the lifeless body of a dear person, suffering a devastating moral pain because of the betrayal of the person we most loved; or in a prison's cell where we had been locked in spite of our innocence, destroyed  by defamation. In these circumstances we need to start our journey even sooner, loading ourselves with inspiration and starting our inner journey to find a safe place, a shelter, an oasis in which to connect with our spiritual eternal self, which is unchangeable, together with God who is the giver of Knowledge, Love and Mercy. More than ever in these situations, in order to withstand sufferance, we have to fight against time in order to reach the space in the centre of our heart, where, the Upanishads say, time and space ultimately do not exist. That dimension is pure Transcendence. It is the place where all our desires are fulfilled. But the human being, deviated by the unreal world of vanishing impressions,  has lost the route to find it, because that dimension is invisible to the senses and to the physical eyes, the voice of that place speaks to the soul and the ears are not meant to hear it. For this reason Krishna says to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-gita: “In order to see me the way I am, I give you spiritual senses”. Why does Krishna offer to Arjuna such a great opportunity? Because Arjuna asked Him with a humble manner, because he desired it with intensity, because he wanted to get in touch with Krishna in his original and intimate divine nature.

Only with a burning desire to perceive a spiritual dimension and connect with God, a person may receive the divine strength to achieve it, to make the journey that from the realm of death will take us to immortality, from darkness to light, from sufferance to beatitude. A pilgrimage is that journey, it is rejoining.

How long does that journey last? Patanjali in the Yoga-sutras explains that the distance depends mainly on two factors: continuity and intensity of desire, and the required effort. In order to reach our target soon, we need to keep our course steady, with constant determination, and to increase the speed of motion by rising the intensity of the desire. Dante in the Divine Comedy accomplishes that journey too. At one point he describes his emotion as “feeling a pull from the sky while being still alive”. Once we loosen our conditionings and get rid of  bad habits, ascending is fast.

A pilgrimage  is that  ascension, it is an upward shift, it means heading toward holiness, and the spirit we hold while facing the journey is crucial. If we have the right attitude, that feeling of serenity we  have been looking for, the one that we thought we would experiment only once we reached our destination - instead it arrives step by step during our pilgrimage: then we find it in the predetermined place we have chosen and elected as our home, the heart.

Life will become then, day after day, a wonderful journey of research and discovery.

Why are we lonely?

The search of love usually starts with a feeling of  loneliness, it is not just a problem of physical company, rather of awareness and inner power. Loneliness originates from a fragmented psychological image which as a consequence produces a kind of separation of a person from other people, from all the creatures, from the world and its Creator.

The solution of the problem of loneliness  is not to be found in a partner, so as to compensate the fear of being alone, nor it can be found  through the greedy possession of luxury items, nor through holidays as an “escape from reality”, nor by diving into a crowd of people, nor by burning out through a job that does not bring any satisfaction, nor by following religious principles in a conservative and passive sort of way. It will work instead, by starting to love people around us sincerely, without any selfish interest, with an attitude to expand even more the circle of love – never secluded to a single exclusive species –  and in doing so gradually heal our feelings of loneliness, uncertainty and frustration.

The charming prince or the fairy with turquoise hair of the fairy tales, that will love and trust us, will unlikely appear unless we start to appreciate and love everybody else. After all  love is not something that lands on us accidentally: we experience and grow it with the attitude and the behavior of our daily life. By learning to relate with the persons around us with love, and making this mind-set a life practice - since to feel affection is a potential capability of all living beings - by practising love this quality develops and becomes an effective ability to love.

Paradoxically enough, if nowadays couple relationships do not last it is because love is not considered as a priority any more, but other aims are being focused on: useful and comfortable means like gratification of senses,  social and economical status. But love requires respect of the beloved as a spiritual essence, as a unique person; only in this way we may be able to help the others to realize their potential values, and find deep satisfaction by rediscovering and expressing the best version of themselves. For this reason love means knowing the other deeply.

Love and thus the solution of the problem of loneliness, is the ripe fruit of a conscious, active and dynamic effort towards reaching our deep self until we experience a real feeling of communion and reunion within diversity, by appreciating the peculiarities of each person, without falling in affectionate dependency or strong attachments. We can share something with the others only when we really possess it. 

Love relationship, when thoroughly experienced, reaches its height in the realization of our relationship with God, the unique source of the variety of human beings and all that exists, being the source of love itself.

Love is a universal and indispensable quid, an intrinsic  modality of the being, that must be neither denied nor repressed, rather oriented and gradually elevated towards constructive evolutionary levels. Within love, the female and male features try to unite in order to find again the fulfilment and deep satisfaction in order to integrate themselves. By reaching maturity such integration may be conceived on the individual level as well.

How Can I Become a Peacemaker?

Part I 

Peace is the result of coordinated efforts and persevering attitude, but first of all it is the result of deep awareness of the concept of peace, in all its countless nuances and implications. The acquisition of this kind of awareness implies a broad-minded vision of all the dynamics implied that is in fact an indispensable way to start, in order to find in every circumstance the correct way of action, the one able to provide for a concrete development of peace at all levels (individual, familiar, social, political, economical).
Science and religious traditions of all times, agree by stating that there are universal laws which govern the universe (in Greek the word is cosmos, its meaning is either ‘order’ or ‘universe’). Such laws rule and support the whole creation and every manifestation of life, from mankind to the microscopic insect, and are the expression of an order that the modern quantum physics defines as “implicit order”, which is beyond mere appearance; a veiled, subtle reality from which derives “the explicit order” visible through natural phenomena.
In the Vedic Vaishnava tradition, this order is found by the reunion of life and the world and is known with the word dharma, from the Sanskrit root dhr which means ‘hold, support’, or else with the noun rtam, defined as "fixed or settled order, rule, divine law or truth” which derives from the Sanskrit root  ṛ- "to move, rise, tend upwards" that, in this case means  “regular flowing of things”.
By being really interested to build a world of peace we intend to be interested with knowledge and harmonization of these universal laws, which the religious tradition of all times consider the expression of a superior Intelligence, the cosmic Consciousness, God. Peace means to synchronize one’s own inner dynamics with the cosmos’ dynamics; by learning to move in harmony with that universal order which already exists (there is no need to make it up),  and whose infraction is the cause of unsteadiness, wounds, conflicts, within us and outside. Peace is not a need for a  moral order, it is an indispensable factor for man whose life, in order to live in harmony, is tightly connected to the whole universe and all the creatures in it. Without such awareness, the value of peace becomes a meaningless concept designed to remain ambiguous and prompt to be jeopardized by those who persevere in other purposes. In the name of such kind of peace, all the crimes committed in the present and the past, testify it as true.

Scientific exploration for the Existence of God. By Matsyavatara dasa (Marco Ferrini)

It is time for science and religion to reconcile and complement each other; this is possible only by realizing the difference in fields of application and results of each discipline.

Prof. V.V. Raman defined science as the collective endeavour to understand the universe in a consistent and coherent way, based on reason, rationality and empirical evidence. By exploring the concept of multiverse, prof. Mann indicated thelogy and science as having different approches to address the question of what is reality; theology’s approach is teleology, a goal-oriented search for the scope of the universe, which the theologies of all traditions share; while science’s approach is ecbatology, that is the search for a necssity and/or chance for the universe as it is to emerge. The exploration of biophilic selection effects, that is life-friendly conditions, reveals that the universe seems fine-tuned for life; two possible explanations for this arise: the existence of a super-intelligent Agent, that is God, or the succession of similar attempts which sooner or later will lead to conditions conducive for live, that is a multiverse.

On the other hand the concept of transcendence in Vedic literature, is beyond space and time, as it is not a physical reality and is knowable only beyond the domain of facts and logic, specifically the domain of science. It seems therefore important to remember that scientific knowledge is basically what the human brain can make of the universe; as prof. Raman wrote, scientific objectivity is but collective subjectivity, while the universe is structured on different levels of information, ranging from a first order composed of physical and biological laws, to a superior order producing experience and reflection. The concept of consciousness, as explored by Dr. Sushant Sharma, comes to play a very important role in our understainding of reality. Alternative models of reality, as in Penrose’s quantum gravity model or in Vedanta and Yoga psychology, state that consciousness is not a result of any mechanistic process, rather it is a symptom of the conscious living force that dwells in the body. Even the brain is treated as non-intelligent, rather it is but a computing instrument, a device that the consciousness uses to express itself.

The concepts presented by the speakers in this session, seem to address the question of what is life, and I would like to propose the exploration of such concepts also with the aid of basic views present in Vedic literature, such as the structure of reality on multiple levels (adhibautika, adhidaivika, adhiatmika) and consciousness as a fundamental attribute of the atman, the conscious, immortal living being and as the very foundation of any representation of reality.

Being or becoming conscious of God. By Matsyavatara dasa (Marco Ferrini)

24th march 2011

Morning class at Bhaktivedanta ashrama,

Perignano (PI)

In the conditioned state it is a difficult undertaking to be Krishna conscious, due to the heavy and uninterrupted conditionings we are subject to. A thought which has helped me many times and which I offer you, hoping it will help you too, is the one which leads you to concentrate your attention non only on being, but on becoming Krishna conscious. The idea as well as the wish of “becoming” it, has an enormous power, extraordinarily greater and stronger than the one of “being”. Indeed, “becoming” points out a dynamic movement, it implies that you have to apply yourself to a task with devotion and clear orientation. While the idea of “being” is static, the one of “becoming” includes the awareness of the need of one’s application and engagement to reach what we know is the result of a daily achievement. To become Krishna conscious means thus uninterrupted devotion and engagement, considering that at the moment our consciousness is conditioned. We live neither inside a bell-glass which protects us from every contamination, nor in a state of definitely and irrevocably obtained bliss. In the most blissful moments we can taste states of happiness which follow one another, but each of these is the result of an uninterrupted work on ourselves to renew in every moment our connection to God. Unfortunately we are not Krishna conscious, but thanks to His unconditioned mercy, we are trying to become it. I think that the following image could be of some inspiration: let’s think about ourselves as on the way, marching towards perfection, towards spiritual realization, liberation and, beyond that, towards bhakti. As we live states of consciousness which are still subject to conditioning, we should always keep a good watch on ourselves, pointing straight towards the goal. We haven’t yet reached our destination, so anything but resting or taking our attention off: it can take just a moment to be heavily off road. For us it’s essential to have a constant sadhana, an uninterrupted discipline, abhyasa. The mood we have when we know we have to conquer something is much more stimulating and productive than the thought that we already achieved a goal and just have to maintain it. To tell the truth, to maintain an achievement is very difficult, because the idea of having already achieved the goal leads you to a condition of mental steadiness and makes the task even harder. As it is difficult to keep the balance on a stationary bike, similarly it is difficult to maintain personal balance or the achieved spiritual goal if our interior life is not dynamic. Only if you pedal you can win the trend of losing the balance, and even more: you can restore the balance by pedalling. This uninterrupted movement and acting in view of the goal is essential and exactly in this lies the sadhana carried on unceasingly, abhyasa. For the mentioned reasons, maintaining oneself Krishna conscious is much more difficult than becoming it. Becoming conscious of God doesn’t imply in this case greed for contaminating material objects. Having the wish of becoming God conscious means acting to escape from the snare of the gunas and it is the most beautiful and the biggest discovery we can make: it’s the discovery of our divine nature. In the ordinary state of embodied life our consciousness is dominated by two basic impulses: sexuality and aggressiveness, which are functional to the survival of the species. The reconquest of a divine consciousness, which exceeds the limits of the ordinary, conditioned one, is the result of an uninterrupted effort, undertaken deliberately thanks to an aware and strong will which, blessed by Divine Grace, can lead us where we always long to be and stay. I wished to offer you this reflection in an attitude of spiritual friendship; as during time, always with a renewed consciousness, it has been helpful to me, I hope it will be for you, too. All that is true, that concerns spiritual reality, blossoms again and again as in spring, bringing renewed vision, faith and enthusiasm and stimulating an always greater effort in order to reach the goal”.