Essays and Publications

Ravindra Svarupa das

http://www.rsdtm.com/PUBLICATIONS/publications.htm

Scenes From Navadvipa Parikrama, 1993 Devotees from around the world worship and explore the sacred land of Lord Caitanya's pastimes. Originally appeared in Back to Godhead magazine. Nice photos.

On Conceiving the Inconceivable The first article on the trying to understand the fall of the jiva to the material realm . The Inconceivable . . . One More Time Due to popular demand, a thorough follow-up to the topic of the fall. Twice as long, with more scriptural references.

Cleaning House and Cleaning Hearts - Reform and Renewal in ISKCON The comprehensive paper relating the history and implications of the guru-reform movement of ISKCON. A cathartic and confessional account.

Modern Historical Consciousness: It’s Cause and Cure Elaborated and tuned from the Communication Seminar. He shows how historical consciousness came from the breakdown of the world view that dominated Europe from the 2nd century AD until the 18th century, which had striking Vedic resemblance. How Krishna consciousness is bringing back the essence, not something new.

The Nature of the Self: A Gaudiya Vaisnava Understanding A brief yet in-depth paper delivered at an interfaith conference in Wales with heads of Christian Churches.

Religion and Science, Faith and Knowledge: Mending the Great Divide - NOTES TOWARD A NOVUM ORGANUM FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM Delivered at the Conference on the Syntheses of Science and Religion in Hungary, November, 1996.

ISKCON’s Dharma Cakra A true story. Originally in three parts in Back To Godhead magazine. How ISKCON became properly aligned.

Pointing Where’s the “self”? David Hume, the great Western empiricist looked but could fine nothing. Even a child comes to the conclusion “who’s looking?” Appeared in BTG.

Contribution of Bhagavata-dharma toward a Scientific Religion and a Religious Science for the Modern Age Originally delivered at the World Congress for the Synthesis of Science and Religion in 1986.

The Devotee and the Deity: Living a Personalistic Theology Appeared in Gods of Flesh, Gods of Stone. A Philosophical treatise on worship of the arca-vigraha (deity form of God) with emphasis on personalism.

Endless Love, Collected Essays 1978-1983 (a reprint of Encounter with the Lord of the Universe) Celibacy - Exquisite Torture or a yes to God / How I was Saved from Being Saved / Encounter with the Lord of the Universe / Yoga Mush and the Jerk Divine / Spiritual Strategies for the Age of Iron / Manifesto for a Politics of Transcendence / Immortal Longings / Abortion and the Language of Unconsciousness / Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? / An Endless Love. $3 ppd.

RAVINDRA SVARUPA DASA INDIVIDUAL ESSAYS AND PUBLICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . $1

Scenes from Navadvipa Parikrama

Two Auspicious Baths

After pulling ourselves from the Ganges's grip, we clamber up the sand bluffs. The river glows like molten lead. The noon wind dries us. Languorous from water, wind, and sun, we make our way slowly up the long cart-track toward Belpukur, the family village of Lord Caitanya's mother, Sacidevi. As the train of devotees stretches itself along the rising trail, cows come streaming down it, lots of them, nudged along by village boys carrying switches. Their hoofs raise a cloud of fine powder, as silky as talcum, that coats our bodies from head to foot. Thus we receive our second "auspicious bath" of the day.

The United Nations of the Spiritual World

For seven days we wander among the fields, villages, and cowsheds deep in the West Bengal countryside, on parikrama. Parikrama means "walking about." We are walking about Sri Navadvipa Dhama, a place of pilgrimage, a tirtha or "ford" for crossing from the material to the spiritual world. This crossing was opened by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who made his advent here 506 years ago. Both before and after the central event, the spiritual realm is manifest here within the material. Parikrama is the process by which the contiguous spiritual geography of Navadvipa is disclosed.

In mundane geography, Navadvipa Dhama encompasses an area thirty-two miles in circumference centered on Mayapura, a three-miles tract resting on the eastern bank of the Bhagirathi River, a branch of the lower Ganges, directly north of the spot where the Jalangi empties into it. This is about seventy [?] miles north of Calcutta as the crow flies.

On the first day out, our parikrama party holds 800 devotees from forty-six different countries. India is represented by 230; Russia, seventy-five; Germany, sixty; United States, fifty; Poland, forty-five; Australia, thirty-five. The United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, and Belgium each sends twenty-five; Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Italy, fifteen each. Those delegating between six and ten are: New Zealand, Latvia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, South Africa, Peru, Denmark, Brazil, Spain, Singapore, Argentina, Austria, France, Lithuania, and Japan. Those with five or less: Equator, Mauritius, The Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, The Philippines, Malaysia, Canada, Hong Kong, Croatia, Bahrain, Santo Domingo, Fiji, Norway, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Slovania.

Each day our numbers increase. By the seventh and final day our ranks have swollen by 300 more. However, there is no documentation to say where they come from.

Thud-Thud-Thud

My first night on parikrama I bed down in an alcove within the sprawling tent-complex set up for us. Florescent tubes glow its length and breadth. I try to fall asleep, but fairly close by an indefatigable little engine puts out a staccato thudding, an endless plosive stutter. For a long time I listen that sound. The sudden silence, when it stops, awakens me. All lights are out, the engine driving the generator mute at last.

In the morning dark, I bath under a portable water tower erected in a nearby field; I am hammered by the same stuttering beat Crouched in the trampled grass a little engine suck my bath water up from the lake.

I come to hear that sound everywhere. It is the sound of a two-stroke, three-horsepower diesel engine. Every night a clutch of them chug away about our camps bringing light. water, and amplification. "It is the engine of India," Prithu says.

As we pass through kingdoms of rice fields, the engines hang long strands of sound-beads in the rural silence. The machines hide within straw huts that punctuate the fields, banging tirelessly away. From each hut's side a wide pipe pours tube-well water into the fields.

We clamber aboard fifty-foot-long wide-beamed wooden boats to ply up the Ganges. The boatmen crank the engines. Belches of black diesel smoke herald the beginning of the familiar thudding that will escort our flotilla for two hours on the wide waters.

The Cows Look Up

In all the villages we file through it is clear that kine are kin--venerable family members who intimately share the courtyards with their human relations. These cherished cows don't eat off the ground like beasts. A kindly consideration provides them with pottery bowls, maybe four feet around, set in earthen pillars three feet high. As our party moves through the villages chanting, the humans line the paths to greet us, while behind them in the cow-crowded courtyards the cows look up from their bowls to acknowledge us with slow bovine stares before attending to their meals again.

Of Soul and Soles

On parikrama the ground underfoot assumes immense importance, because you're supposed to go shoeless. A Western tenderfoot, I start out in my shoes, but take them off the second day after we receive an admonishing lecture by Lokanatha Swami, who promises "blisters become bliss." Others repeat the body builder's slogan, "No pain, no gain." Nevertheless, I keep my shoes handy in my shoulder bag, just in case.

I noticed the difference right away: barefoot I am definitely more here, in solid contact with the sacred soil. Grounded, or as they say in India, "earthed". However, my vision now perpetually scans the terrain immediately before my delicate feet, and much scenery flows by unseen. The cow paths and cart tracks deep in the country are wonderful: cool, soft powdery earth. Even the brick roads through some larger villages are not bad. But I grow to hate the "government roads" whose dead surfaces abrade the soles and are sown like minefields with sharp tiny stones. I sometimes go shod against the unforgiving asphalt. Is this, too, the holy ground? The question receives some discussion.

As we pick our way barefoot over a rough section, Jayapataka Maharaja tells me, "Kavichandra Swami said he read if you wear your shoes you loose twenty-five percent of the benefit. Hey, only twenty-five percent! That's not so much! Makes you reconsider about the shoes!"

In spite of my caution, my feet at the end have taken their punishment: Blistered, pierced, cut, and bruised not just from walking ten vulnerable kilometers a day, but also by incautious dancing and leaping about on unyielding cement or tile. However: the bliss of the soul overcomes the pain of the soles.

The Owls at Mamgachi

Awash in the strong scent of tulasi plants, I am siting under an ancient bakul tree in a temple courtyard in Mamgachi. I can see the graceful the Deity Madan Gopal, once worshipped by Lord Caitanya's associate Vasudeva Datta. The priest who has taken care of Madan Gopal for fifty-four years, man and boy, stands white-haired and stooped on the temple plinth and addresses us. His name is Jagat Bandhu dasa Brahmachari. The bakul tree is very old and sacred, he tells us; its enormous trunk is hollow; as a child he used to climb down inside it. In the branches of the tree dwell two white owls, emissaries of Laksmi-devi, the goddess of fortune and consort of Visnu. Formerly, the two owls used to appear every evening at the time of arati, when the priest would ring the bell and circle the five-flamed ghee lamp before Madan Gopal, and dusk would gather in the branches of the bakul tree. And there the owls would be, watching--large, pale, auspicious. But nowadays, the priest says, you don't see them. They appear only very, very rarely.

The Trolley

In the middle of the procession rolls the loudspeaker trolley. A "trolley" in Bengali denotes a certain ubiquitous carrier for goods-- a man-powered, three-wheeled cycle with a flat wooden bed, about five feet long and three wide, set between the rear wheels. The driver of the trolley in our procession never rides; he just pushes. A bamboo mast, about five feet high, is lashed to the seat support; mounted fore and aft are two powerful loudspeakers. Tied above them is the receiver for the cordless microphone, its silver antenna jutting out like a gaff. Two hefty truck batteries and an amplifier ride the flat-bed. Also: assorted shoulder bags and back-packs, canteens and bottles of Bisleri water, and the occasional footsore child, who runs the risk, however, of inner-ear damage.

India has embraced sound amplification with unbridled enthusiasm. To Western ears, the whole country seems to have its volume set too high. Mobile and stationary loudspeakers seek you out everywhere. Prithu expounds to me on the theory that in India, Loudness is Truth. The Holy Name is sweet, but we do keep our distance from the sound trolley.

The other part of the system, the cordless mike, is an unmitigated boon. In procession, the lead Hare Krsna chanter can move at will up and down the line, the percussion section sticking to him like bodyguards around a head-of-state. When we stop at various holy places, the trolley can sit even at distance when walls, steps, or slopes block passage, and everyone can hear the preachers and story-tellers, who are able conveniently to pass the mike around among themselves.

Best of all, at our stops the cordless mike gives unprecedented freedom to the kirtana leader. With the broadcasting trolley docked alongside the kirtana hall or temple yard, the unteathered lead singer is free to plunge into the action on the floor, to spin around, to race back and forth, even to roll on the ground, and thus unbound by cordage to draw energy from the dancing troupe, while the invisible etheric umbilicus carries his mounting enthusiasm to the trolley, which delivers it to the happy crowd.

The Prabhupada-Dhara

At the head of our procession, just behind the banner stretched between two poles, comes Srila Prabhupada in deity form. He's carried each day by Param Gati Swami, a tall and graceful Brazilian who leads our temple in Paris. Param Gati Swami has gotten in shape for this service, walking for days before in bare feet to toughen up his soles. As Prabhupada's bearer, he can't break stride or hop around like the rest of us to avoid rough terrain.

Robed in saffron, garlanded with marigolds, Srila Prabhupada rides between gold cushions upon a golden throne. Parma Gati Swami grasps the heavy vyasasana by its sides and bottom, bearing it straight out in front of his solar plexus. To insure a smooth ride, Prabhupada has to be held slightly away from the carrier's body. Every evening Param Gati Swami has to have his arms and shoulders massaged for a few hours to work the cramps out.

State of the Art

Pennants flying, our pilgrim-laden boat beats up the Ganges and disturbs a huge flock of ducks. A dense cloud of birds bursts into the sky, each tiny dark laboring form precisely etched on pulsing blue. Awestruck, we watch the flock wheel about, drop over the water, rise up, wheel about again, and again, and again in a spectacular display of precision aerial acrobatics. As it slides past shifting vistas of earth and water and air, the racing bird-cloud continually alters shape while all the sharp-edged bird-forms in unison switch aspect from front to side to back. The display reminds me strongly of something. What? Ah! High-powered computer graphics!

We are walking a high dike-road; rice paddies stretch in both directions as far as the eye can see. Ponds for breeding small fish boarder the road twenty feet below. Suddenly, a large bird, stiletto-beaked, darts athwart us and hovers at eye-level just beyond the embankment. I stop and gawk at this kingfisher--the size of him!--hanging like a hummingbird. Parked in sheer space, the bird peers down intently at the water below. Suddenly it become a falling needle-nosed dart that slips beneath the surface as smooth as grease; a moment later it regains the air in an blue-and-white flurry of feather and froth, a sliver of silver disappearing into its beak. I have looked with awe on stealth fighters and jump-jets, but that was before the demostration of this hunter's aeronautics.

Excess at Narasimha Palli

It is my first day on parikrama, and when we arrive at Narasimha Palli--our final destination--I have a headache. I want to be some place quiet, and dark. I want to be by myself. But I am quite surrounded; the whole village has turned out to sell or watch. The kirtana hall--a roofed, open-sided terrazzo stage in front of a small domed temple--is crammed with a melee of devotees, who are spilling from the flanks and plunging in again. The sound trolley, drawn up along side, demonstrates its potency to the wondering villagers. I crawl into a shady spot in a twin hall (for eating) adjacent the kirtana hall. There the uproar is getting wilder and wilder. I see arms flailing about, and the maelstrom in the middle of the press move up and down the hall. Amazingly, I see feet in the air. A roar goes up. I see a well-known sannyasi, of considerable heft, borne up over the devotees' heads. I disapprove. Each crash of drum and cymbal fires a squib of pain in my head. I am wondering where I can escape to, when a muscular, sweat-soaked figure emerges from the mob and lopes half-crouched toward me. It is Ayodhyapati dasa, a former football player from Memphis, Tennessee, just the sort of fellow who made my life miserable in high school. He seizes my arm in a hard, meaty grip and pulls. I shake my head no, and he pulls harder. I am on my feet and a second later in the middle of the hubbub, buffeted violently on all sides. Ayodhyapati puts his face two inches before mine and screams like a Marine Corps drill instructor at the top of his lungs. He is screaming: "Hare Krsna! Hare Krsna! Krsna Krsna! Hare Hare!"

I scream right back. He grins and shoves the microphone in my hand. The drums and cymbals crash. Jolts of energy surge into me from the press of buffeting bodies. The world starts spinning.

Fifteen minutes later, soaking wet, banged up about the ribs, I worm out of the line of scrimmage and fall panting on the sidelines, wondering what came over me. As I try to recover by breath, I feel that meaty grip biting on my arm again. I offer no resistance. He pulls me to a tiny side-door of the temple. "Special mercy," he points out. A devotee is stretched flat into the temple sanctum, his hands grasping the feet of the ancient black image of Narasimha-deva. The devotee gets up, and I stretch into the cool, sweet-scented darkness and hold the feet of the ferocious half-man, half-lion incarnation of Krsna, who once stopped at this place a very long time ago.

Satisfied, the sankirtana drill instructor, coach, instigator, and rabble-rouser hauls me back into the kirtana, where I am good for the course. Later, as we prepare to bathe in the lake, I thank Ayodhyapati. He is limping from a pulled tendon; his forearms bear gashes from the edges of the wide brass cymbals called "whompers." A few scrapes decorate his forehead. "A little rough," I comment. But my headache is quite gone.

As we sit the following morning in a shady grove for breakfast, Sivarama Swami delivers an announcement. He says that the kirtana at Narasimha Palli was somewhat excessive. Of course, you can do anything in ecstasy, but still, he says, we don't see that Lord Caitanya's associates ever picked devotees up and carried them around while others grabbed their feet. (Some of us are looking down abashed.) Sivarama continues: We should keep the Holy Name in the center. We should take care not to concoct anything and not to get rowdy.

He is right, of course, and after that, our kirtanas are never so outre. Even so, I crave them. Narasimha Palli has made me an addict. And Ayodhyapati of course, still goads us on--somewhat subversively, I think.

Digestion

We sail pas a sandbar in the Ganges occupied by a party of large, satiated vultures standing at their ease about the remains of some washed-up carrion. Having dined, they are peaceful satisfied, dignified--reminding me of nothing so much as a convocation of pious, prosperous burghers after a memorial banquet.

The Bats of Lord Siva

We gather first in the village square before the empty temple, a small, pretty structure with a fresh pale-yellow wash on it plastered walls and a newly thatched roof. (I learn later that the renovations were paid for by the Bhaktivedanta Swami Charitable Trust, established by Srila Prabhupada to restore pilgrimage sites.) Sitting before the temple, we hear about the unusual Deity who takes up residence here only twelve days in the year; the rest of the time he reposes under the waters of a nearby lake. He is called Hamsa-vahana Mahadeva, Lord Siva Who-Rides-A-Swan.

Here is the story: Once Suta Goswami, the famous reciter of Srimad Bhagavatam at Naimisaranya forest five millennia ago, came to this island in Navadvipa and, endowed with foresight, narrated the furture pastimes of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Eager to hear Suta's discourse, Lord Siva mounted his vahana or carrier, the bull Nandi, and left his abode. Nandi was slow, and Lord Siva became increasingly impatient. Stopping at the abode of Lord Brahma, Siva swapped his bull for Brahma's much swifter swan-carrier, and on that he swooped down onto Navadvipa in time to eagerly drink the nectar of Lord Caitanya's pastimes with his ears.

The Hamsa-vahana Deity memorializes Lord Siva's unusual appearance on Brahma's swan, impelled by his ecstatic attraction to Lord Caitanya. The worshipers of Hamsa-vahana say that the Deity is always extremely hot, so they must keep him continuously covered with water, like the core of a nuclear reactor. That's why he stays submerged in a lake. On the twelve days in April that Hamsa-vahana comes out to be viewed in the temple, water is poured over him non-stop, around the clock. Otherwise he heats up and starts smoking. All day and all night long queues of people waiting to bathe Hamsa-vahana stretch through the village streets.

Popular opinion holds that Hamsa-vahana is hot from anger (as Siva exemplifies destructive rage), but the truth is that the heat arises from Lord Siva's intense love for Lord Caitanya.

After hearing about Hamsa-vahana, we make our way out of the shady village, chanting loudly. A dirt cart-track takes us through dazzling rice fields toward a bosky tree-line, ballooned out by the form of a massive banyan. These trees drink the waters of the lake in which Hamsa-vahana lies submerged.

As we close in on the great banyan the sky over us erupts with the screeching fluttering forms of montrous bats, five feet from wing-tip to wing-tip. These are the fruit bats of the Old World tropics known aptly as "flying foxes". There are scores of them. Jinking and gyrating madly, they careen about the banyan, and their shrill cries of alarm usher us into the shade of the banyan's soaring vault

The mammoth trunk is a thick braid of interwoven risers, fused into a U. It perches on the high edge of a slope that, cross-hatched with knobby roots, drops away to the lake shore. The entire amphitheater is covered by a vast umbrella of leaf, the ribbings of heavy branches arching far out over the waters. From the overhead vaulting hang multiple ropy descenders, arboreal tails, their tips finely tasseled with roots-to-be, eager for earth.

After working through an obstacle course of living wood, I gain the trunk and sit on a fat root at the mouth of the U, which faces the lake. I peer in. The interior is about two feet across at the opening and reaches back about ten feet, widening out by another foot. Twelve feet up the sides converge to make a roof. The interior wall is a weave of semi-fused tube-shaped slick-skinned risers; it looks uncannily like extraterrestrial organic structures as depicted in Hollywood science fiction films.

The enclosure has been floored with mud, finished with a smooth, dun-colored plaster of cow-dung. There is even a step. It is an exquisite sitting place for meditation, the bhajana-kutir of a sage with matted locks, a lookout providing a beautiful view of the shaded slope and shore and the hyacinth-covered waters of the lake itself. Most of all, the banyan-cave is a place of darsana, of viewing the Deity, for in a direct line of sight from the entrance, about fifteen feet out into the plant-choked lake, stands a patch of clear water, in the middle of which rise out the struts of a sunken bamboo frame. Just here, on the lake bottom, coolly reposes Hamsa-Vahana Mahadeva.

When Hamsa-vahana comes out of the lake, Subhaga Maharaja says, he is placed in the tree-cave and worshipped before being carried to the thatched temple in the village. We set the deity of Srila Prabhupada, seated on his golden vyasasana, within the tree-kutir. First I bend inside to brush out a few dead leaves and curls of dried snakeskin. I get a closer look into the interior. Against the wall hang arrases of well-knit spider webs, the X of a large black spider in the center of each one. The bellies of the spiders are marked horizontally with three parallel white lines--the forehead ornament of Lord Siva.

I am asked to addressed the assembly. Overhead the leather-winged foxbats still squeak and gibber as they pivot about the tree top. Looking down at the bamboo slats jutting out of the water, I appeal to Hamsa-vahana Mahadeva to help us distribute Lord Caitanya's mercy in this Kali-yuga, when so many people are ruled by the dangerous and destructive forces of the mode of darkness that Lord Siva himself controls. As the foremost devotee of Krsna, Lord Siva should bestow his mercy to those people plagued by intoxication, insanity, rage, and despair--so they can receive Lord Caitanya's gift of love of God..

Finally we leave the shelter of the banyan tree and again traverse the open fields. Five minutes later we halt in a high pasture, grass grazed to the nub, next to a mango grove. This is the place Suta Goswami recited the pastimes of Caitanya; this field is identical with Naimisaranya, in northwest India, where Suta spoke Srimad Bhagavatam. Naimisaranya is regarded as the hub of the universe, so any sacrifice performed here redounds to the benefit of all people. Mindful of this, to save all souls, we sit and chant a round of the Hare Krsna mantra on our beads, and then stand and chant Hare Krsna congregationally. The kirtana is mellow and sweet. In the distance I see the flock of bats streaming away from the banyan tree. I watch them wandering over the brightly lit fields, their formation scattered and splayed. Idly, I wonder if they are disoriented by all the light, for it is now well into morning. I return my attention to the kirtana. Suddenly they are massed directly over our heads, fairly low, wheeling about in a tight spirals, their squeaks audible through our chanting. And then the sky is empty.

The Elders

I hear that a number of young devotees profess astonishment to see us old folk--all around the half-century mark-- frolicking in kirtana like kids, forgetful of our dignity and decorum. We do let ourselves go. Afterwards, we sit around complaining to one another about our backs, our hip joints, our ankles, our arches. We vow we won't go overboard like this again; we remind ourselves that we don't have those elastic, quick-mending bodies of youth; but the next day we throw caution and common sense to the wind and whoop it up carelessly, in defiance of gravity.

In his evening years the poet W. B. Yeats wrote, some thought excessively, on carnal themes. "You think it horrible," he addressed these critics, " that lust and rage/ Should dance attention on my old age." He answered them with a rhetorical question: "What else have I to spur me into song?"

Well, here is something else. Here is our singing and dancing school, where aging men clap and sing, disdaining their bones and their dignity, no lust nor rage spuring them into song.

The Real Dirt

"Whoever rolls in the dirt of Surabhi Kunj, chanting the names of Lord Caitanya and Nityananda, receives the special mercy of Nityananda," our guide announces, consulting his guidebook. I file into the entrance way of Surabhi Kunj with the first group to look for a good place to roll in the dirt. It's not easy. Right now, Surabhi Kunj is a construction site, full of stacks of bricks, cement mix, and iron rebarbs. Finally, someone discovers a patch of nice sand, and we throw ourselves down into it, rolling and chanting.

Shortly, Jayapataka Maharaja arrives. "Hey!" He exclaims. "This is construction sand! It was brought in from outside! Over here! Look! Here is the real dirt!" I dash over. Sure enough, there is a wide swatch of dark, crumbly earth. It looks good. We fling ourselves down and start rolling.

Subala Vesa

In a field outside a village the cows have been frighten by the crowd of passing pilgrims. Herders chase two mothers and their calves through the rice stubble, trying to get them to cross the road. At the edge they balk and bellow, eyes rolling and bulging, and bolt back through their herders. Our group stand well clear until the two cows finally trot swiftly up the road. A cowherd boy picks up the littlest calf, hugging it tightly to his chest, and walks off after its mother.

"Subala vesa," Bhurijana says to me. "You know that story?"

"No."

This is the story he told me; it is about Radha and Krsna.

Srimati Radharani is the embodiment of the internal pleasure potecy of Sri Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He is the supreme male; she, the supreme female, and the play of their ever-growing love affair is the most secret mystery enacted at the fountainhead of reality. Radha eternally belongs to Krsna, and Krsna to Her, but for the sake of increasing love, the couple forget themselves in dramatic arrangements, by which Srimati Radharani's relation with Krsna is illicit, and scandalous. Defiers of convention, flaunters of morality, the lovers are kept apart by committees of vigilant elders. In anguish, they long for each other and, with their confidantes, obsessively conspire to meet secretly in the Vrindavana forests.

Their success breeds tightened security, and Radha is virtually a prisoner in her own house. Yearning for Krsna, all day long she goes about her duties under the sharp eye of Jatila, her mother-in-law. Others track Krsna's movements. One the day in question, however, a close friend of Krsna named Subala went toward the house of Radha's in-laws, with whom she lived. He had a calf with him. At the right spot, Subala gave a twist to the calf's tail; it raced off, and as planned charged straight into the courtyard of Radha's family, Subala coming in hot pursuit. Jatila was instantly alert. Warning bells went off.

"What are you doing here?" Jatila demanded of the panting Subala after stopping him just past the gate. "You're great buddies with that juvenile delinquent Krsna. The two of you are up to something! I know it! Get out of here!"

"No, no, no," Subala protested. "Mother, you've got it all wrong. I'm just trying to get my calf back, that's all." He smiled charmingly. "And Mother, I have to agree with you about Krsna. I'm finished with him. We had a fight this morning, and I've seen the light. You won't see me hanging out with him anymore, getting into trouble. Now, I'm just trying to do my duty. Please, let me get my calf."

Jatila was persuaded, and she let Subala go find his calf.

He finds Radharani, and swiftly he gives her his clothes to put on. Subala and Radha could be twins, so alike are their features, so when she is dressed in Subala's cow-herding clothes, she is a dead ringer. Then she wraps her arms about the calf and raises it up. Her breasts are completely hidden.

Giddy with the thought of meeting Krsna, Radharani walks away from her house, directly under the piercing gaze of Jatila, who only see Subala carrying his calf out. He looks back at Jatila, and with a smile nods in farewell.

That's how Radha came to be dressed in subala-vesa, Subala's clothes. This pastimes is still celebrated in Vrindavana temples. If you go on the right day, you'll see the Deity of Srimati Radharani dressed up in the outfit of a cowherd boy and holding a calf to her chest. Because she's dressed in a man's dhoti, it's one of the few times you can see her feet, usually hidden by her skirt or sari.

Tamala Krsna Goswami Suffers A Defeat

After a four hour march, we are gathered at our final stopping place, in a great hall before the Deities at the yoga-pitha, the birthsite of Lord Caitanya. Devotees have been coming to the microphone on the stage and sharing with the crowd their "parikrama realizations." The devotees are both instructed and entertained by these presentations, and they have gone on far past the scheduled time We are supposed to take breakfast here and arrive back at the our temple in time for the noon arati. We won't make it. As people speak, Tamala Krsna Goswami, sotto voce, gathers support among the leaders on stage for a proposal to forego breakfast in order to return in time for the noon arati: if we are late, the Deities will not be on view, and our final kirtana will suffer.

Satisfied that he has support, Tamala Krsna Goswami puts it to the crowd. He slants the presentation, making his preference clear. We should skip breakfast and be back in time for a grand finale kirtana. What is eating compared to ecstatic chanting?

"How many want to skip breakfast and leave right away to we can have a huge kirtana?" Strangely, only a few hands go up.

"How many want to honor breakfast prasadam now, and take our chances on getting back?" The hall explodes with cheers and waving arms.

Moral: the sankirtana army, like all armies, moves on its stomach.

Receptions

Villagers line the roadside to see us passing by. Sometimes we see them come running across the fields. They press their palms together in respect, and lifting their arms, shout, "Gaura haribol! Gaura haribol!" Sometimes a man will prostrate himself in the road and try to touch the passing pilgrims' feet. Often villagers will spill buckets of water in our pathway as a sign of respect, and then smear their bodies with the water after everyone has passed through. Many times we are received by women with a chorus of shrill ululations, sounding something like the rising and falling trill of cicadas. It is an auspicious sound, like that of a conch shell, and goes by the name of ulu-dhvani.

On the last stretch of our journey, on the road between the yoga-pitha and our own temple, a woman stands, unexpectedly, in the exact center of the highway, facing our advancing column. She waits for us motionlessly, her eyes downcast as we advance toward her. A steel bucket, brimming with water, sits by her feet. A few yards in front of her, we comes to a halt; she stands directly before Srila Prabhupada in Param Gati Swami's hands. She is a strikingly lovely young woman. She has freshly bathed and is dressed with care in clean, new garments. The white Vaisnava tilaka mark and the large red bindi dot on her forehead, the bright vermilion anointing the part in her shinning hair have all been applied with precision. She keeps her eyes shyly downcast. As the half-mile-long column comes gradually to a stop behind us, we stand there as if mesermized by her intensity of purpose, her shyness, her perfection of dress.

She tips the bucket forward, and the clear water washes toward us, flowing around Param-Gati Swami's feet. She raises a white conch shell to her lips, and three husky, drawn-out notes vibrate the air. She lowers the conch. Then her mouth opens to an O, the tip of her pink tongue oscillates rapidly from side to side, and three long, trilling ululations, rising and falling, fill the air. When the shrill sound fades, she slowly offers obeisances, her forehead on the wet tarmac, and then she steps aside.

The column moves forward.

Mantras of Sacrifice

We turn from the road and approach the great gate to our burgeoning Mayapura City. A reception party has come out. Two elephants stand swaying side to side. Greeters move among the returning devotees heaping garlands of marigolds on them and plastering their forehead with sandalwood paste. Priests come forward bearing a golden "auspicious pot" of sacrifice on a tray covered with banana leaves; they are surrounded by gurukula boys, who chant the beautiful purusa-suka mantras from the Rg Veda.

Lead by the elephants, we proceed slowly toward the temple. In front of me ring out the mantras of the ancient Vedic yajna or sacrifice, the primary dispensation for a time now long past. From behind sounds the driving chorus of Hare Krsna, the mantra of the sankirtana-yajna, the dispensation for the present age. The eternal sounds of the two sacrifices, old and new, mingle and swirl about one another like the waters of the Yamuna and Ganges in confluence. The mantras of sacrifice sweep us into the temple, where Sri Sri Radha-Madhava are receiving arati.

Saffron Feet

The sound trolley has been drawn up inside the temple, and the microphone moves in the eye of the storm all around the vast hall. The best chanters of the parikrama--Kripamaya, Mahamantra, Indradyumna Swami--are pushing the outer limits of enthusiasm, and the dancing hosts sway and sashay up and down the hall, join to race in snapping, human chains, link arms shoulder-to-shoulder and describe counter-rotating circles within circles, form up in tight opposing ranks that close in on each other and recoil like shock troops in close combat. The floor has become heaped with the litter of marigolds from our garlands, and the constant pounding of dancing feet has stirred and pounded them into a mash. The marble turns slick, the hall redolent with the tang of the crushed flowers.

The feet of all the dancers have been dyed saffron up to the ankles by the marigold juice. After two hours I drop to the wayside, hors de combat, to recover in the lee of a pillar. The chanting roars on without me. I look at my feet. The stain is well worked in; the scrape of an experimental fingernail across the skin has no effect.

It will take three days for the saffron to disappear.

On Conceiving The Inconceivable Some Principles in Understanding the Origin of the Jiva

We conditioned souls are originally Krsna conscious living entities, but owing to a desire to be independent of God and to be the Supreme ourselves, we have fallen from our original position and become covered by maya, who provides us with false identities of gross and subtle matter. By the grace of Krsna and His pure devotees we fallen souls can regain our original Krsna consciousness and in so doing go back to Godhead.

This simple dramatic narrative tells the story of who we are, where we came from, how we fell, and how we can be restored. Srila Prabhupada tells us this story, and so do the previous acaryas and the scriptures. This story is the profoundest truth about ourselves, and there is no fault in it.

Yet the story becomes complicated when we discover (from the identical infallible sources) that the souls in the spiritual world are nitya-siddha, eternally or perpetually liberated souls, and that no one falls from the spiritual world. Further, the souls in the material world are nitya-baddha, eternally or perpetually conditioned, and we learn that their conditioned state is anadi, or without any beginning. These statements, also, are true without a doubt.

How can these facts be reconciled with the story of fall and redemption?

It is necessary to recognize that the seemingly straightforward linear narrative is more complicated than it appears because the narrative's scope of action spans two "worlds," one eternal and the other temporal.

We can get some sense of the relation between these two worlds if we recollect the temporal structure of the material universe as presented in Srimad-Bhagavatam. As one ascends from Martya-loka (our level or plane), through Svarga-loka (the plane of the enjoying and administrating devas), and further through Mahar-loka and so on (the planes of the austere rsis and sages) to Satya-loka (the plane of Brahma), time progressively dilates. Thus, as 360 years go by here in Martya-loka, only a year passes for the devas in Svarga-loka. And 300 billion years have to come and go down here for a single year to transpire in Satya-loka for Lord Brahma.

Srimad-Bhagavatam mentions that when Brahma kidnapped the cowherd boys and calves from Krsna, the victims were gone a complete year by human experience, but for Brahma, operating on Satya-loka time, only a moment (a truti) had passed. A truti lasts exactly 8/13,500 of a second.

On another occasion Maharaja Kakudmi, seeking a husband for his daughter Revati, took her to Satya-loka to ask Lord Brahma to arrange the match. Brahma kept them waiting until he had finished hearing a recital by Gandharva musicians. When Kakudmi finally presented his request, Brahma burst out laughing. Everyone Kakudmi would have wanted for his daughter was long gone, for twenty-seven yuga cycles had passed (about 160 million years) while the supplicant and his daughter cooled their heels in the anteroom.

A live television broadcast on Satya-loka of events on Martya-loka would disclose everything moving with dizzying speed, a blur of mountains rising up and dissolving away, oceans swelling and shrinking, peoples and civilizations rushing on and off the earth. By the same token, a live broadcast on Martya-loka of current events on Satya-loka would transmit motion so slow as to be undetectable by normal human vision. Only time-lapse photography, snapping the shutter every thousand years or so, would disclose activity.

Keeping all this in mind, imagine the temporal structure of the universe depicted in the form of an equilateral triangle, with the base representing Martya-loka. Its width at the base stands for the duration of the universe in our years—that is, 311 trillion 40 billion years. As we go up, the triangle narrows, so that at the level of Brahma the duration of the universe (still depicted as the width of the triangle) is 100 of his years.

Now continue up the universe, past Satya-loka. The unit-measure of duration continues to dilate, time slows more and more, and finally, at the point where the material realm borders the spiritual, time has its stop. Here, at the apex of the triangle, we reach the point of translation between material and spiritual worlds, between time and eternity.

This is the "now moment of eternity," an everlasting instant without past or future. We have seen how, when we go up the universe, a unit-measure of time includes more and more of our years. What then happens when we take that process to the limit, as we do when we reach the apex? That single climactic moment embodies time without beginning and end. From this point of view, the lifetimes of a trillion, trillion Brahmas are over as soon as they begin. Who can even express such inconceivable things?

It remains to be mentioned, for the sake of thoroughness, that the apex of our triangle marks the limit of the ascent to the Absolute by mystical speculation. According to mystic speculators, the everlasting moment of eternity is necessarily spent in stasis, immobility. Vaisnavas, however, know of transcendental variegatedness and activities. Although eternity is described as having no past or future, there is still sequence (for there are lilas, pastimes); and knowledge, bliss, and beauty eternally increase.

If we were to continue with our figure of a triangle, we would have to envision the two lines of its sides extending through the apex to form a second, inverted triangle. Let this triangle, with its base up and its apex down, signify the spiritual realm of transcendental variegatedness as it expands beyond the zero point of nirvana. The figure of the two triangles, apex to apex, is simply another representation of what the Bhagavad-gita signifies by the metaphor of an inverted tree, a reflection of the original tree standing on the water's bank.

Our minds boggle even at the "now moment of eternity" of the impersonal speculators. Even further from our conceptions is a realm in which transcendental time, which has neither past nor future, allows for activities—"pastimes"—and ever-increasing qualities of beauty, joy, and knowledge.

Now to consider the issue before us, we must not only contemplate that inconceivable eternal realm, but we must think about it in relationship with our world of past, passing, and to come. Let us proceed to do so.

As we have seen, the transcendental realm is eternally present, an everlasting instant. Every soul in that realm must accordingly be characterized as "nitya-mukta." This includes the souls that come from the material world. For if a soul enters that realm from the material world, can we ask "when did that soul arrive?" The question does not apply. "Once" the soul gets there, that soul can only be "nitya-mukta." He has, necessarily, "always" been there. This is the logic of eternity.

Now let us go to a matter equally inconceivable. Let us say, for the purposes of discussion, that a soul "falls" from eternity and sojourns in the material world. When did he enter the material world? We can only say that the fall is a non-temporal act that renders the conditioned soul bound from all time. The history of his incarceration in time has no beginning. The conditioned soul has always been conditioned. Strictly speaking, the question of "when" does not apply. Although bondage is not the soul's original condition, the state of bondage is necessarily described as anadi, or beginningless, and the conditioned soul himself is characterized as "nitya-baddha," eternally bound or conditioned. There was no time when he was not bound.

Yet such souls can attain release and enter the spiritual realm. Let us say that the soul who has fallen from that realm into beginningless bondage now returns. The duration of that bondage spans time without limit, as we have seen. Yet now, if we inquire, from the perspective of eternity, "How long has that fallen and restored soul been absent?", the answer is "He never left." Or, alternatively, "the question does not apply." For the logic of eternity dictates that no one falls from eternity—even if he does so.

The logic of eternity also dictates that no conditioned soul can "begin" his eternal life—even though he does so. In considering both falling from and returning to transcendence, we must accept the logic of eternity to be true to what is real.

Thus we see that while it is true that no one falls from the spiritual world, we in fact have done so, and yet there is no contradiction.

The dramatic narration of a life with God, a fall from that life, a sojourn in the alien world of illusion, and a final restoration to God is not a fiction. It is a profound truth. It need not be rejected on the mistaken notion that it conflicts with other, equally true, statements of authorities.

For our better understanding, however, we need to be aware of one simplification that takes place—quite naturally—in the telling of the narrative of fall and redemption. This is the representation of all the events in the story as though they take place on a single temporal continuum. For example, we habitually characterize our entry into time as though it were itself a temporal occasion, a dateable event. However, as we have seen, "once" we become conditioned, we have always been conditioned.

Similarly, we think of our rebellion against God as a distant, aboriginal event, one that took place long ago and far away, in that world. In truth, that single act of rebellion is perpetual; that very same aboriginal event is taking place right now. We have only to look into our hearts to confirm this.

Furthermore, when we "return" to the spiritual world, it will only be to discover that indeed we never left, and there has always been right here. We are right now with Krsna, for Krsna consciousness is our svarupa, our eternal identity. We need only wake up and see where we are.

All this is known to Srila Prabhupada and to the acaryas. They know how one can fall from a place no one falls from, enter into an ignorance that has always been, and return to a place one never actually left. Because such matters are inconceivable to mundane minds, when teachers speak of such things their words may seem contradictory. But in one way or another they all tell the whole truth. PUBLICATIONS

The Inconceivable - One More Time

A number of Back to Godhead readers have written--several at formidable length--to express doubts or objections concerning the essay “On Conceiving the Inconceivable” which was published in this column last summer. I hope it will be helpful for me to respond to the more significant points raised.

You may recall that the essay addressed the conceptually vexing question: How did the conditioned soul--the Jiva--get that way? Upon this topic--”the jiva issue”--a small but prolix band of people in and about ISKCON have piled up a great number of words. I was loath to add to them. For to expend time and energy on this issue goes counter to the instructions of Srila Prabhupada. “What is the use of such discussion?” he wrote about efforts to comprehend the causal history of the Jiva’s falldown. “Don’t waste your time with this.”

Why did I go against such clear instruction? How did I become so foolish as to rush in where angels fear to tread? It happened like this.

Last year the Governing Body Commission, on which I serve, had to deal with an uproar caused by a three-hundred-page-long book on the “Jiva issue” that a couple of devotees had just written and published.

The controversy arose over the way in which the authors attempted to resolve the Jiva issue. The reader may recall that the issue centers upon the apparent incompatibility of two authoritative accounts of the origin of conditioned souls. One account--which receives by far the most stress in Srila Prabhupada’s teachings--tells that the conditioned souls were originally Krsna conscious, but that they willfully repudiated service to Krsna and in so doing fell from the spiritual into the material world. The second account holds that conditioned souls have been so perpetually, while the eternally liberated souls in the spiritual world never fall.

How are these two accounts to be reconciled? The controversial book before the GBC reconciled the two simply by throwing out the first of them. Yet how is it possible to dispose of that account? After all, it is a prominent leitmotiv of Srila Prabhupada’s teaching. It is presumed by the name Srila Prabhupada gave this very magazine. The story of the jiva’s fall, theorized the book’s authors, is Srila Prabhupada’s benevolent fiction. It is a myth, a white lie, invented by Prabhupada because we Westerners are mentally incapable of accepting the concept of a soul that has simply always been conditioned.

Asked to pass judgment on this theory, the GBC resolved that this way of solving the jiva issue was not acceptable. The GBC ruling went no further, but naturally in discussion the question came up of what sort of resolution would be acceptable. To further the GBC’s discussion, I produced the little paper that was later published in these pages. I labored to keep the paper short--a minimalist work--because I wanted to be considerate of the GBC as well as faithful to Srila Prabhupada’s instruction not to waste time--mine or the readers’--on this issue.

The editor of Back to Godhead read the little essay, liked it, and published it here. He saw the brevity of the article as a virtue.

Some readers, however, have seen it as a vice. Several in particular have deplored the paucity of “quotes”--they mean explicit citations and quotations from authorities. One reader claims that such references are a requirement, especially when presenting “a new elucidation,” while another asserts their absence sufficient in itself to prove the article “mental speculation” and nothing more.

It is not the case that a Krsna conscious article requires explicit citations and quotations. As a brand-new devotee, I received much knowledge and inspiration from a little piece by Srila Prabhupada called “On Chanting Hare Krsna.” A paradigm of brevity and elegance, it is innocent of any quotations or references. Yet one who knows the philosophy of Krsna consciousness recognizes that every word is faithful to authority.

When I wrote the Jiva article, I had supposed that devotees would similarly have little trouble recognizing the source of the ideas in it: Srila Prabhupada. It is not true that my article presents, as one reader supposes, “a new elucidation.” Rather, the article sets forth my spiritual master’s own resolution of the “Jiva issue.” In the rest of this essay, I will provide the quotations to show that.

Some of the demand for proof-texting focused on a premise of the article: that the account of the fall of the Jiva is an authoritative narration. Is there indeed scriptural and traditional authority for it?

Yes.

In the Fourth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, Narada Muni narrates the allegorical story of King Puranjana. In the part that concerns us, Puranjana has just died and his widow Vaidarbhi is lamenting piteously. An elderly Brahmana approaches the queen and introduces himself as her “eternal friend.” The Brahmana, who symbolizes the Supersoul, says to the grieving queen:

My dear friend, even though you cannot immediately recognize Me, can’t you remember that in the past you had a very intimate friend? Unfortunately, you gave up My company and accepted a position as enjoyer of this material world. My dear gentle friend, both you and I are exactly like two swans. We live together in the same heart, which is just like the Manasa lake. Although we have been living together for many thousands of years, we are still far away from our original home.

Commenting on these verses, Srila Prabhupada explains that the passage “gave up My company and accepted a position as enjoyer of this material world,” refers to the soul’s fall from the spiritual into the material world. To explain “how the living entity falls down into this material world,” Srila Prabhupada quotes Bhagavad-gita 7.27: “All living entities are born into delusion, overcome by the dualities of desire and hate.” “In the spiritual world there is no duality, nor is there hate,” Srila Prabhupada says. However, “when the living entities desire to enjoy themselves, they develop a consciousness of duality and come to hate the service of the Lord. In this way the living entities fall into the material world.” He elaborates further: “The natural position of the living entity is to serve the Lord in a transcendental loving attitude. When the living entity wants to become Krsna Himself or imitate Krsna, he falls down into the material world.”

In Narada’s allegory, the elderly Brahmana speaks of himself and the queen as two swans--symbolically the Supersoul and the soul--who have wandered together far away from their “original home.” What place is that? Srila Prabhupada explains:

The original home of the living entity and the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the spiritual world. In the spiritual world both the Lord and the living entities live together very peacefully. Since the living entity remains engaged in the service of the Lord, they both share a blissful life in the spiritual world. However, when the living entity wants to enjoy himself, he falls down into the material world.

It is clear that Narada Muni teaches here in Srimad Bhagavatam that the conditioned souls dwelt originally in the spiritual world, their homeland, where they enjoyed a relation of active service with Krsna. However, these souls willfully gave up Krsna’s company in order to become enjoyers. Srila Prabhupada explains that they wanted to imitate Krsna rather than to serve Him. As Prabhupada stated it elsewhere in his Bhagavatam commentary: “The first sinful will of the living entity is to become the Lord, and the consequent will of the Lord is that the living entity forget his factual life and thus dream of the land of utopia where he may become one like the Lord.”

In addition, Srimad Bhagavatam repeatedly speaks of liberation in Krsna consciousness as a restoration, a return, a reawakening, a recovery, a remembering. Narada Muni uses such language himself a little further on in his allegory of the soul and Supersoul:

In this way both swans live together in the heart. When the one swan is instructed by the other, he is situated in his constitutional position. This means he regains his original Krsna consciousness, which was lost because of his material attraction.

In this verse “regains his original Krsna consciousness” is a translation of nastam apa punah smrtim. Krsna consciousness is literally a lost (nastam) memory (smrtim) which is gained (apa) once again (punah) In Srimad Bhagavatam this terminology of forgetting and once again remembering is invoked over and over. Remembering, regaining, returning, recovering--all these terms presuppose a past state that had once been ours, had then become lost, and will be ours once more. Srimad Bhagavatam teaches it and so, of course, does Srila Prabhupada.

What I have given is sufficient to establish the authority of the account of the Jiva’s fall, and I will leave it at that. I may disappoint readers who will want proof-texting from authorities who stand between Narada Muni and Srila Prabhupada in the disciplic succession. However, I am confident that Srila Prabhupada is a bona-fide spiritual master. As such, he is a “transparent medium” who represents (literally, presents over again) the entire tradition coming from Krsna. To those readers who claim not to have found in those authorities confirmation of the teaching spelled out here, I can only suggest that you go back and look again. Srila Prabhupada undoubtedly understands those authorities better than you or I. Go back, and this time use Srila Prabhupada as your guide.

Srila Prabhupada is uniquely qualified to understand spiritual teaching. Such understanding is hardly a matter of academic scholarship. In its concluding verse, the Svetasvatara Upanisad tells who among its readers will have revealed to them the purport of what they’ve read: Only a great soul, a mahatma, who possesses pure devotion (para bhakti) to the Lord and, in equal measure, to his spiritual master. Srila Prabhupada himself exhibited extraordinary devotion to the Lord and to his guru. Only because of that devotion was he empowered to achieve unprecedented success in preaching Krsna consciousness throughout the world. I take the greatness of his success as a measure of his greatness of soul, and therefore I accept him as empowered by Krsna also with the ability to penetrate deeply into the meaning of spiritual teaching. It is therefore my policy to follow him in his understanding.

This is what I tried to do in my Back to Godhead article. It is not that Srila Prabhupada was silent on the “Jiva issue.” His disciples brought it up a number of times, and there are lectures, letters, and conversations in which he addressed it head on. Never once do we find him so much as hinting that Narada Muni’s account of the origin of bondage is a myth or fiction. Rather, he defends that account vigorously and teaches his disciples how to reconcile it with the statements that there is no fall from Vaikuntha.

The central point in Srila Prabhupada’s reconciliation is that every single soul is in fact eternally liberated (nitya-mukta) and not a single soul ever really leaves the spiritual world. The so-called “conditioned souls” (nitya-baddha) only superficially appear to be so to themselves, and their apparently bound state is an illusion of such vanishingly small duration and significance that it’s virtually of no weight at all in the true scale of things.

Thus, Srila Prabhupada said that the appellation nitya-mukta is factual, while the appellation nitya-baddha is only a manner of speaking. “You are not eternally conditioned,” Srila Prabhupada wrote one disciple.

You are eternally liberated, but since we have become conditioned on account of our desire to enjoy materialistic way of life, from time immemorial, therefore it appears that we are eternally conditioned. Because we cannot trace out the history of the date when we became conditioned, therefore it is technically called eternally conditioned. Otherwise the living entity is not actually conditioned.

“We cannot be eternally conditioned, because we are part and parcel of Krsna. Our natural position is ever liberated, eternally liberated,” he affirmed in a Srimad Bhagavatam lecture. The term “eternally conditioned,” according to Srila Prabhupada, is not accurate from the philosophical point of view, but is a figure of speech.

Constitutionally every living entity, even if he is in Vaikuntha-loka, has chance of falling down. Therefore the living entity is called marginal energy. But when the falldown has taken place for the conditioned soul is very difficult to ascertain. Therefore two classes are designated: eternally liberated and eternally conditioned. But for argument’s sake, a living entity being marginal energy, he can’t be eternally conditioned. The Time is so unlimited that the conditioned souls appear to be eternally so, but from the philosophical view he cannot be eternally conditioned.

Even as Srila Prabhupada speaks of the soul’s fall from Vaikuntha, he also upholds the statements that Vaikuntha is that place from which no one falls. The deep truth of the mater is that we are even now in Vaikuntha, but we don’t know it. Lecturing on Srimad Bhagavatam 2.9.1, Srila Prabhupada directly says that now he will reply to those who ask, “How is it possible for the soul who was with Krsna to have fallen into the material world?” Prabhupada then states that the fallen condition is merely an appearance: “It is simply the influence of the material energy, nothing more. Actually he has not fallen.” Srila Prabhupada gives this example: Just as clouds passing in front of the moon at night make the moon appear to move, similarly the soul, who is eternally with Krsna, appears to be fallen. “It appears that the moon is moving. But similarly, the living entity, because he is spiritual spark of the Supreme, he has not fallen He has not fallen, but he is thinking, ‘I am fallen. I am material.’”

The second example used by Srila Prabhupada is taken directly from the Srimad Bhagavatam verse.A dreaming person manufactures an alternate dream-self which he temporarily takes to be his real identity. Thus, the dreamer imagines himself undergoing all kinds of adventures. Say in a nightmare he dreams he is running in panic through a dense jungle at night, a huge and hungry tiger chasing him down. With a thudding heart, he hears the tiger coming inexorably closer. Then claws rake his back, and fangs crush his neck, and he wakes up screaming in terror. With relief he sees he is safe in bed. The fictional dream-self is gone. All along he had been safe in his own bed. He was never lost in any tiger-infested jungle.

So, when somebody asks you, when has one come into contact with this material nature, the answer is: He has not come into contact. By the influence of the eternal energy he is thinking he is in contact. Just as in the example: A man is dreaming; there is no contact with a tiger. Actually, he has no contact with it. Similarly, actually we are not fallen. We cannot be fallen. But we have created a situation that we have become so. Rather, we have not created that situation, Krsna has given us a situation. Because we wanted to imitate Krsna, Krsna has given an opportunity.

As the dreamer forgets that he is safe in his own bedroom, similarly we have simply forgotten where we really are: the spiritual world.

Srila Prabhupada gives a more elaborate description of the nature of the Jiva’s bondage in the paper titled “Crow and Tal-Fruit Logic.” He sent this paper to the GBC representative in Australia in June of 1972 to settle a controversy that had arisen there over this issue. “Crow and Tal-Fruit Logic” presents Srila Prabhupada’s most complete statement of the solution, and the paper was circulated throughout ISKCON. I saw it in Philadelphia that year and studied it carefully. Upon it I have based my reflections in the Back to Godhead article concerning eternity and time.

Srila Prabhupada begins his paper by asserting our eternal and permanent relation with Krsna. “We never had any occasion when we were separated from Krsna,” he says, and then uses Srimad Bhagavatam’s analogy of a dream to explain how the illusion of separation arises. He also takes care to explain how it is possible for even a liberated soul to become illusioned:

Our separation from Krsna is like that. We dream this body and so many relationships with other things. First the attachment comes to enjoy sense gratification. Even [when we are] with Krsna the desire for sense gratification is there. There is a dormant attitude for forgetting Krsna and creating an atmosphere for enjoying independently.

He then continues his exposition:

We cannot say therefore that we are not with Krsna. As soon as we try to become Lord, immediately we are covered by maya. Formerly we were with Krsna in His lila or sport. But this covering of maya may be of very, very, very, very long duration, therefore many creations are coming and going. Due to this long period of time it is sometimes said that we are ever-conditioned. But this long duration of time becomes very insignificant when one actually comes to Krsna consciousness. Just as in a dream we are thinking a very long time has passed, but as soon as we awaken we look at our watch and see it has been a moment only. Just like with Krsna’s friends, they were kept asleep for one year by Brahma, but when they woke up and Krsna returned before them, they considered that only a moment had passed.

So this dreaming condition is called non-liberated life, and this is just like a dre