Harimedia Forum

Posted: **Tue Jul 01, 2008 10:09 pm**

Someone wrote on health.yahoo.com "What I care about is sustainable happiness, which comes from having purpose and meaning in life" and Sara wrote recently on Chakra.org, "Krishna gave us life for a reason and He will give help if we try to find our purpose and find a way to live in happiness, using our God given gifts in service to others."

I was thinking and meditating for quite some time about the meaning of this words and find there is a lot of wisdom inside. A life of love and service to others, including the Supreme, can be in my opinion indeed in many ways rewarding to oneself. I think when there is a meaningful way to describe and translate the sanskrit word bhakti, here one could find a hint towards a good understanding of it. The definition as "devotional service" used by some is in my opinion a misnomer which is not realy directing one towards an integrating, all-embracing understanding of it. Certainly bhakti connotes devotion, or love, which implies service, an act of assistance or benefit, or that activity which is intended to please the beloved, but should or can regarding this the beloved be just the Supreme?
Dear Hari what is your understanding about it?

What I would like to say is, (I am editing my text again...) if the reason for your life can be understood also in a divine sense, the way you act can also serve a divine purpose. It can be an act of devotion to the Supreme that motivates your service to others.

A certain amount of self-care is also required, being aware that your first duties are to keep your own physical well-being and to keep yourself healthy so that you can be of service. And from that self-care, one can build oneself to the point where one is serving others and especially those whom you are close to, whom you are already obligated to; those whom you have accepted or into whom you have found yourself related to in such a way as to be part of your lives.

Posted: **Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:58 pm**

Your question contains within it your answer.

I have discussed this topic in depth in two lectures:

Bhakti and Divine Harmony -- 28 January 2006

Devotion -- 11 February 2006

There is one more element to service that supersedes all others and I may of may not have spoken of this in these lectures. We may be eager to serve, to render service, to be of service, or however one phrases the desire to do something good for others, but unless the object of our service truly desires the service we render it is done more to make us feel as if we are doing something meaningful than it is significant to others. I do not refer to service rendered in a business relationship, I mean service offered freely by one person to another in the spirit of being of assistance. When one examines people's motivations it is often apparent that they do not really want to be served, helped, or assisted. What they really want is strength, self-confidence, approval, appreciation, empathy, and empowerment. Sometimes they become resentful of things we do for them; even worse, they become dependent. Therefore, I feel the only real service one can offer to anyone is to empower them with the tools they need to be what they want in their lives. And it seems this is the desire of God.

The aspects to devotion usually defined in bhakti (hearing, chanting, remembering and so on) do not fit within my idea of being of service but seem to be disciplines or exercises performed to increase one's spiritual awareness and capacity. Ultimately, being a friend to the supreme is not a service for it is an exchange of love. You can call an exchange of love a service, but it is not the best usage of the word and creates more confusion as to what service actually is. Friends certainly do things for each other in the mood of being of service, but simply being a friend is not a service in and of itself unless you are with someone who desperately needs a friend for some reason.

I see many older devotees who are confused as to what is "their service" or how they deal with engagement in a spiritual manner. This becomes worse when they have to engage in money-making activities.

You have opened a vast topic and one that touches upon the essence of life. What am I in relation to the world around me? What am I in relation to the Supreme? What am I? All the lectures I have given are attempts to deal with these critical questions.

Posted: **Sun Jul 06, 2008 11:18 pm**

Harimedia radio just started playing the song "Bolo Ram". It is such a beautiful song and while reading your reply to my questions to you, my heart became filled with joy while meditating on the deep wisdom of your words.

Hari wrote: When one examines people's motivations it is often apparent that they do not really want to be served, helped, or assisted. What they really want is strength, self-confidence, approval, appreciation, empathy, and empowerment. Sometimes they become resentful of things we do for them; even worse, they become dependent. Therefore, I feel the only real service one can offer to anyone is to empower them with the tools they need to be what they want in their lives. And it seems this is the desire of God.

I understand now also that in many situations in life one does not really whant only to be tought to or be assisted but rather also be understood, feel some empathy and participation regarding ones feelings or emotional situation one is going through. This can in many ways empower one also more to go through life. There is so much wisdom in your statement "Therefore, I feel the only real service one can offer to anyone is to empower them with the tools they need to be what they want in their lives" I can also fully agree with.

Hari wrote: The aspects to devotion usually defined in bhakti (hearing, chanting, remembering and so on) do not fit within my idea of being of service but seem to be disciplines or exercises performed to increase one's spiritual awareness and capacity.

I know from the past I was so often hearing and reading and also engaging with full confidence in this so called "process of hearing and chanting" and that of "devotional service," always with the expectation of gaining one day the expacted described results... Nowadays I feel so much more happy and fulfilled in my life by just following my inner impulse, (some say intuition, although I dont know if the same is meant) when I feel of doing something for or meditating about the Supreme. Somehow I feel that I am already somewhere and does not really have to prepare and engage myself to reach some eternal destination sometimes in the future. That makes life so much more easier to go through and brings you so much more in harmony with the world around you. And that although I feel pleasure sometimes in reading or hearing about the pastimes related to Radha and Krishna and many other aspects of the Supreme.

But I would not call this service, or a process for making spiritual advancement rather as you wrote so suitable: "Ultimately, being a friend to the supreme is not a service for it is an exchange of love. You can call an exchange of love a service, but it is not the best usage of the word and creates more confusion as to what service actually is."

As if spirituality and spiritual engagement could really be understood in this what I would call a mechanistic approach toward something described in such terms as self realization and spiritual advancement or purification. Its somehow like saying to just press the button of this machine and if you do everything else right you will reach your destination or what you expact to gain out of it without a doubt. It seems that such an approach should give someone the impression that one would follow a kind of scientific method (The Science of Self-realization).

Its interesting also what I found regarding this written on the internet: "There can be no scientific answer to the question why but there can be many scientific answers to the question how. Richard Feynman in The Character of Physical Law relates that when Newton was asked about his theory--"But it doesn't mean anything--it doesn't tell us anything," Newton responded: "it tells you how it moves. That should be enough. I have told you how it moves, not why." It was just this type of cold mechanistic approach that the early Enlightenment skeptics were afraid of. Science had to destroy teleology--the philosophy of purposefulness. In order to do its business, science had to assume that existence has no purpose. Existence just "Is." The proper question for a scientist to ask is not why (a value laden question) but how (a valueless question). " More...

Hari wrote: I see many older devotees who are confused as to what is "their service" or how they deal with engagement in a spiritual manner. This becomes worse when they have to engage in money-making activities.

I can very well understand this, I went a few years ago through the same situation and confusion. Somehow there comes a time in your life where you are growing out of the stereotyped understanding you were following before and just want to live 'your life' in the society of people in general. Although I would say I like the association of like-minded people.

The question may still be what can help one to increase one's spiritual awareness in life? Although I find you answered this question already by writing:

Hari wrote: All the lectures I have given are attempts to deal with these critical questions.

Posted: **Tue Jul 08, 2008 10:28 pm**

I have to admit that I was not fully aware or have forgotten somehow that you have spoken already in depth about this topic so I was listening again to your very interesting lectures and I will try to transcribe them for others to read.

Hari wrote: I have discussed this topic in depth in two lectures:
Bhakti and Divine Harmony -- 28 January 2006
Devotion -- 11 February 2006

"Today I want to discuss about Bhakti. Its part of what I was speaking of before, or part of my clarification, or definition as it were, of what I am, or what I do. I left ISKCON and all those transformations took place. I tried to make for myself and for others spiritual life very relevant to every individual. Now spiritual life is always been relevant to every individual, spiritual life has always been relevant to me, but there were this other situations which was creating a formidable obstacle to maintaining a rather fluid and open heart to heart connection between people. And as you know we talked about it over the years quite a lot, there has been a lot of shall we say a development, personal development, development of how things are seen, development of how philosophy relate with experience.

And this development, this transformation has addressed issues of organization, of hierarchical organization, of charismatically lead organization, of ways in which people were less important than a group. So a lot of energy in this past years, a lot of the discussions that we have had, a lot of the development we have done has been towards reestablishing the central point of our life which is ourselves. And from that platform of being secure and comfortable with our spiritual essence to reach out in a loving connection to that which is around us. We reached out towards other persons, we reached out towards our family, we have reached out towards our environment, nature of the living entities, and we have reached out towards the higher forces, or the more powerful forces in the universe, towards the realm of the demigods as it were, the realm of the beings who have great power and potency to regulate and administrate within this universe.

We have reached even further beyond towards the supreme source of all power, the supreme source of all energy, the supreme source of all love, the omnipotent, omnipresent Supreme. And I continued to maintain the idea of us being individuals who are individually in our own endeavor, in our own life's, making that effort to connect to the Supreme. Now that's fine and that's good, I don't regret any bid of it, however I feel that it doesn't really represent me totally. And over the last week, various circumstances which quite surprisingly appeared from extremely external sources, have forced me to define myself in a very clear way that anybody can understand. Legal authorities, friends, acquaintances, people who are close to me.

This led me to even create a name for what I think we are doing. To give us a name, something that can be related to by a name, that name being "Divine Harmony". Divine Harmony - I have no idea how you would translate that into Russian. Divine as in divinity and Harmony. So the name, I know that a name is simple a way in which you can relate to something, but as soon as something has a name that implies it exists. So how does it exist? Well we have already defined how we exist - we are in an association. We are in an association of like-minded persons who are interested enough in what we do to do it together, at least every Saturday and amongst you and your own private sessions you do it more often.

So one of the most interesting things about what we do is that we are an organization without organization and I was struggling to try to find out a way to describe that. Now obviously we are organized, what we are doing right now is practically unique in the world, even in this modern extremely advanced Internet age we are doing real time interactive translation that is broadcast throughout the world to anybody who wishes to be part of it, without using 800 dollars a month conferencing service. And what is extremely interesting about this, is that we have the capacity in our meditations, in our communications as in questions or in comments, to connect with each other in a very real way. We feel the connection, we feel our presence together on our Saturday congregations. So in essence we are a congregation that is organized around this particular broadcasting technology and our capacity to connect to each other in this way.

We are a worldwide congregation of people. And our organization is not an organization of a physical facility, in the sense that there is a centralized organization of that facility, we are not an organization that has a hierarchy, we are an organism. As an organism we are a group of people who formed a body of this organism with Lord Caitanya, Radha and Krishna as the head of this organism. Now the most interesting thing is, that I had a very hard time clarifying this in words, as silly it sounds. There were many reasons why, until I started doing research on the Internet about, what is it called - unincorporated churches. And I ran into the Baptists. This is a group of Christians in America, generally in the southern part but they can be anywhere, who believe amongst, I suppose they have a vide variety of opinions, that it is the individual and not the church which is important. That Christ is the head and that the members are the body, and then I realized its exactly what we are doing that Lord Caitanya and Radha and Krishna, God as it were is the head, and we are the body of this organism.

You see sometimes we think that we are doing something very unique. Well, what we are doing in the broadcasting is very unique, but in reality what we are doing as people, as an organism, is not unique. And it was really refreshing to see somebody else already define it. The refreshing thing was to take help of this other persons, who are already gone through this same kind of struggle, and to adapt it to what I am doing, what we are doing, was a great relief for me. I don't know if you can appreciate how much of a relief it was, it was an enormous relief to finely have a definition that actually fits what we are. I really appreciated the struggle they have gone through in their own history as a religion.

And than I started realizing that you can be a group that have a name, that has an identity, it has a forum, it has a function without falling into the same difficulty of an organization, by being an organism. A living spiritual organism rather than a dead, in the sense of structured organization. So now I have created this, shall we say name Divine Harmony. I was thinking of Temple of Divine Harmony, or Church of Divine Harmony but again we are taking divine harmony and trying to place it within something. So I thought "Divine Harmony," that's fine. And I have registered the domain divineharmony.eu and soon I will put up there texts which are of a different nature than what is of Harimedia.net

On Harimedia what we are doing basically is answering questions, working it out our difficulties, our internal, our personal difficulties. Trying to understand more about our life's and giving a place for downloading this lectures, meditations, music and so on. And I never really felt it appropriate on that site, I'm not sure why, to just simply state my innermost heartfelt feelings as, or even define myself, or therefore define basically what we do here on Saturday. I felt it was just a place to share and to communicate some tools. But on this new series of websites divineharmony.eu, we are going to, I am going to at least, and I'm asking for your help and assistance in doing this, I'm going to state very clearly, not in such details that there is no room to move, but to state really clearly the fundamental principles which I accept and which I assume most of us who are continually congregating on Saturday would accept too.

And the reason I ask for your help is that its pretty presumptuous of me to be representing this organization Divine Harmony, this organism, Divine Harmony, so therefore I would like you to if you could, if you would, if you want to give feedback, give suggestions, give ways to change it and so on, before we make it kind of public. So I'm going to be posting this texts on those new domains and we can discuss this in the forums of Harimedia.net. I think its important, I think its really relevant to be clear about what one is doing. Now you know I talked about it for years now, what we are not doing. We are not doing a charismatic organization, hierarchically based upon some central figure, whom everything must relate to and be set to and pledged allegiance to. We are directly trying to connect to the Supreme.

We put the interests of you, the individual, as topmost. There is really no group interest, we are not trying to build anything. We are not trying to pay for anything, we are not trying to do any big project to the group, we don't have any particular thing we have to protect or create. Ok, so we know what were not. But specifically what are we as a group, because we are a congregation, because we do congregate? We congregate regularly and associate in this way so what are we? So I would define myself first because its very important for you to know and if you don't like it, to object. I define myself as a person who is sharing his experience through many years of engagement in spiritual life in various ways, who is sharing his learning in many different disciplines and many different countries, cultures and lands. And who is sharing his realizations according to a very honest and individualistic manner without leaning on, depending on, or quoting somebody else, simply presenting things as I see it.

The point is that I'm trying to do my best not in a way to influence you to do anything else than to simply be the best person you can be, with the greatest connection you can get to the Supreme. In other words my whole motivation, my whole goal here, besides having something to do every week which I love to do, is to be of service to you. I like to do this, because it makes me feel good, makes me feel good about me, makes me feel good about you. So my role is to be your - is to serve you, to be of service to you, by offering to you everything I know. Yet that which I offer to you fits within I think, the category of things that you find helpful.

In other words you like to be respected as individuals, you appreciate to be respected as individuals, you like being given tools which empower you as individuals. A lot of what I do is based on your inspiration. Its based on what you are telling me through your communication you want to know about. And yet there is another factor here which I really feel needs to be very clearly declared and openly defined. That factor is the factor of bhakti. Now bhakti is a connective process by which your love, by which your actions, interact on a very spiritual platform in a divine way. And yet, when we say divine that word can be misinterpreted. So lets be even more clear, I specifically mean connection to Radha and Krishna, or Lord Caitanya, who is the combination of Radha and Krishna. This is how I live my life. Every morning before I come to this program, I sit before Radha and Krishna, going into deep meditation, I ask Them to inspire me, I ask Them to tell me, what do they wish me to speak about. I live my personal life totally in relationship with my Deities.

Now I don't say that all the time, I don't push that all the time, I don't feel that its required to do so. I don't feel like waving the flag of Radha and Krishna, I don't feel like waving the flag of Lord Caitanya. I'll explain that. I don't like elitism, I don't like the idea of being in an elitist group which thinks they have the answer and no one else does. I don't belief in such kinds of absolutism, absolutistic ideas that there is an answer and anything that's not that answer is false. I like it if anybody has some connection to the higher energies, especially if they have higher connections to God. But if somebody would insist that God is this male dominating figure, I would have to object because I would rather speak in terms of the mail female connected God. I don't care if you call that male female connection Radha and Krishna. The name doesn't matter to me. What we are speaking here - of course it matters to me personally - but in as far as the group goes, we are speaking here about the Supreme who is complete in this way.

People have been there in the temple in Sankt-Petersburg who knew nothing about the Vedic so called, quote on quote, very bad term, but the Indian ancient cultures, and yet still who loved to be with Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda. To further clarify I feel the whole fundamental inspiration in my life since 1998 has been those deities, and continues to be those deities in Sankt-Petersburg. Of course I have my own deities, they have their and they are on equal level to me, but the fundamental inspiration, the fundamental source are those deities Gaura Nitai in Sankt-Petersburg. I think deities, especially deities you can connect to, deities that have this beautiful energy of love that comes from them, this connection from them is so important in spiritual life.

If you ask me the two most important, or any group of important things in spiritual life, I would put number one and number two, it doesn't matter which position which, the Deities and this transcendental sound vibration, and that transcendental inner vibration and love that's bhakti. This fundamental connection between my self and the Supreme is what makes my life what it is. And I see my service to others as a fundamental part of that bhakti. To take what I get to share it with others this is a fundamental interaction that defines me as a person. I have no problem as an individual to state that, declare that very clearly, that I find any meaning in my life to be my relationship with the Supreme and my sharing of that relationship, or sharing of what I know for the benefit of others.

Yet if I were to have been in Sankt-Petersburg, and during the times when we were doing this connection meditations with the deities, and I were to in an, shall we say very restricted manner present the deities, the people would not have been able to connect to them. Would not have been able, they would have felt restricted. Can you imagine, here you are a person, you're walking in literally of the street, because you have heard there is a program going on and you are put in this room where this two statues stand in the front of the room, everything is facing them and somebody says that's God and you have to believe it. And literally I feel that just that act, even if I think it, even if I feel it, I will create an energy to block the connection between those people and Gaur-Nitai.

I chose to do it in a different way. I said this are divine beings, I explained about them. I didn't care whether they accept it or not. I said just try to feel without any prejudice in your mind the love that comes from them. Just try to accept that love, just accept it that's all, what have you got to loose. You don't have to know who they are, you don't have to accept them in any particular way, just feel what they are giving you, as an offering, as a gift. Now at that time I realized, you don't have to define god in any particular way for people to connect to God on the most important fundamental level. And for those of you who were there at that time, you know perfectly well this people were feeling the love from Gaur-Nitai, they were connected in that love, they were relishing it. They were experiencing a very highly, evolved level of bhakti.

I was very satisfied. I didn't feel, I don't feel they have to accept the way I think, they don't have to accept the way I speak, they don't have to use the words I use, they don't have to accept any culture I may accept. My whole intention was simply, they should accept the love of Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda, which is all Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda want anyway. They accept the love, they reciprocate with that love and that love is unconditional. It doesn't demand they think, or act, or follow, or accept any person, or any group, in any way.

And is that not the way it was during Lord Caitanya's time? Was that not the way he went throughout India and just gave love to everybody? If I were to create some cult around Lord Caitanya which would imply structure, structure of culture, structure of social interaction, structure of behavior, it would create an obstacle between Lord Caitanya and people who just couldn't relate to that. Non of this things are important anyway. The most important thing is the bhakti, it's the connection, it's the flow of love, the reciprocation. It is not because of me this took place, its because of them and the deities it took place. Yet that statement contains misinformation, or shall we say incomplete information, and it needs to be qualified. And the qualification is: that yes I do play a part, yes each of us do play a part whenever we assist people to make that connection.

How could I have done that if I didn't learn that from somewhere. Obviously I learned it from somewhere, obviously I practiced this in my life. This is important. Before this people could connect to the deities like that, I had to spend time to explain it in such a way that they just were drown to the deities energy. And when that connection was going on I just got out of the way. Here we come I feel to an extremely important point, and one that I have to state clearly, about what I am actually doing. Now I could say I'm not trying to be a guru here. And that would be correct in one sense and would be false in another sense. And it would be true or false according to the definition I would use, or I would apply to the word guru. Now you already know all of the things I already have said a million times about the negative aspects of guru, the negative exploitive aspects than all of the things that swirl around this word which is been so misused and misunderstood.

So I would speak specifically about the way in which I would allow that definition to apply to me and to apply to anyone of you at any time. (Continued in Audio)

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