20230515 Question and Answer Session

The following is a Q&A session answered by His Holiness.

Sarvajaya Mādhava dāsa: We talk about gopīs’ unconditional love for Kṛṣṇa, they don’t even think of Kṛṣṇa as God, so they love Him so much because of His beauty and everything. My question is what is important - rituals, rules regulations or loving Kṛṣṇa 24 hours, loving Kṛṣṇa, serving Kṛṣṇa, thinking about Kṛṣṇa?

Jayapatākā Swami: I mentioned there are five kinds of relationships. Two and a half are very formal and respectful and two and a half are very intimate and loving. You cannot think of yourself as the father or mother of the Supreme Lord. Just like a rich person, he would like to be loved as a person, not for his richness. I mean it must be very difficult for someone like Elon Musk, who are just behaving with him because he is rich. But in the spiritual world Kṛṣṇa uses yoga-māyā to make devotees forget that He is the Supreme Lord. Like He went to Mathurā and He liberated the demon Kaṁsa and then Devakī and Vasudeva His parents, they were awestruck, because he was such a powerful demon and he was neutralized by Kṛṣṇa. And when the Lord kills someone, they automatically get liberation. Vasudeva and Devakī were offering their praṇāmas and very respectful. But Kṛṣṇa did not want that. He wanted them to act like His parents. But to do that, they just saw Him kill the demon who had been suppressing them for so long! So obviously, He is very powerful, and they remembered how He appeared as the Supreme Lord. Then he sprinkled some līlā-dust over them! And then, “Oh, my dear son!” That is what He wanted. The Supreme Lord can do things like that. But He can make people forget who He is, just love Him as a son or as a friend. Like that. In Vṛndāvana, people love Kṛṣṇa, they don’t think of Him as God. Even like Nanda Mahārāja, he was arrested by, in English we call it Neptune, by the servant of Varuṇa, and then they saw that Varuṇa the angel of God of the water, he was respecting Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma. They said, just see, how Varuṇa, how Neptune, how he appreciates my son. Oh, He is such a nice son. He never thinks that why is this angel in-charge of the oceans, why is he bowing down and offering respect to Kṛṣṇa. He just sees this in his relationship as father. So, Kṛṣṇa likes some places where people just love Him not because of His position not for some material reason. They love Him for what He is, His qualities. To develop to this stage, it is nice to know that there is such a stage. But naturally to reach that stage is no joke! I mean, it is a very big thing! And first we bow down, we pray, we do different things, we chant the holy names. We have to get purified. Unless we serve the Lord, very faithfully, at some point He can bless us, He can accept us and we can realize our original position, be friends with Kṛṣṇa or parent or lover. Those things are revealed in due course. Not just chuk! We jump up to that position. For some people it may take many, many births. Born, die, normally people, they try to have happiness just in the material world. They think that oh, if I was rich, I would be happy. Next birth they may be rich, then they think oh! I would be happy if I was a great football player, next birth they are great at football. Some people, I heard Śrīla Prabhupāda say that Ravi Shankar, he was a musician for sevens births. In his seventh birth he became world famous, guru of the Beatles and all that. Generally, we take birth after birth after birth, depending on our material desires. But if we actually, develop our desire to serve Kṛṣṇa, to serve the Lord, then we go back to the Kingdom of God, we are released from this prison house of material life. But to do that, first we go through vidhi-mārga, then as we develop our love of Godhead it turns into spontaneous love. First the rules and regulation, do that and then it becomes like second nature. Then we actually develop our spontaneous love for the Lord in different levels. Eight levels. We go to love and then there are eight levels of love. So it is a science. And we also – have faith, we listen, then we have some association with then enlightened souls, called sādhu-saṅga. Then we start to practice ourselves called bhajana-kriyā, then we start to get rid of the unwanted habits and things, called anartha-nivṛtti, we become very fixed in spiritual practices, that is called niṣṭhā, then we develop a taste for serving the Lord, called rucī, then we become attached to that spiritual tastes called āsakti, then we develop ecstatic love for Kṛṣṇa, called bhāva, then we have pure love for Kṛṣṇa, that is called prema. But prema has eight levels. What are we talking about here is the mahā-bhāva, the highest level. Practically Lord Caitanya is mad after Lord Kṛṣṇa. We have a long way to go! So it is nice to hear that such a level exists.

Sarvajaya Mādhava dāsa: Guru Mahārāja, could you sprinkle some līlā-dust?

Jayapatākā Swami: I wish I had, I don’t have, I am not Kṛṣṇa, I am just a servant, servant of the servant!

One of the Supreme Lord’s name is Kānāi. Dukānāi. In one way, your name also means the Supreme Lord. Another way is Duḥkha-nāi, duḥkha means distress. nāi mean no. Duḥkanāi means no distress. (The lady said her name is Durhanai).

He spoke from the Koran. He knew it by heart. He instructed that Allah was a person, and Allah was also impersonal. I asked him could be show which of the verses of the Koran state what Lord Caitanya was stating. He did that. He also, he said apparently there is a book called the Hadish, which is kind of the pastimes of Prophet Mohammad, Peace Be Upon Him, and one day He was late for the namaz prayers in the morning, He said, I am sorry I am late. I fell asleep in my morning prayers. I woke up, I saw Allah’s hand on My shoulder! He was saying actually like Allah is a person, but most mullahs don’t comment like that. Anyway, interesting. Other questions?

Question: You mentioned five relations, in order to go back to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, do we have to achieve all five or if we are in the first level of dāsya or sakhyam we can go back to Godhead?

Jayapatākā Swami: In the fourth chap of the Bhagavad-gītā, if we understand the Lord’s appearance and His activities are transcendental, you can go back to Godhead. You have one of those five which is your relationship - the trees, the cows, other things they are śānta. Hanumān, and other active servitors of Kṛṣṇa, or Nārāyaṇa, they are in the dāsya. Like Yudhiṣṭhira, he was respectful to Kṛṣṇa but he was like a friend. That is like friendly with respect. Śrīdāma, Subala, Sudāma, they were all cowherd boyfriends, they were intimate friends of Kṛṣṇa. So what your relationship, you may be a man now but you have a relation as a mother or wife. You may be a woman but you are a servant or friend of Kṛṣṇa. Actually, the ātmā, the spirit soul, the living force is who we really are. If you think of your wife when you die you become a woman in your next life, if the wife thinks of her husband, she becomes a man. What you think at the time of death that will lead to the next birth. What body you have now does not indicate what your spiritual relationship is with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So you don’t have to go through the five. Just if you develop your service to Kṛṣṇa, your understanding of the Supreme Person, then you go to the spiritual world. If you just appreciate the Lord in an impersonal way, you may land up in an impersonal realization. As I said, most people they don’t think of God so much, if they do, they pray that He may them what they want materially. Out of millions of those ordinary people, one, he wants to know his actual spiritual, who he is. One of the millions is a jñānī, who is trying to actually understand. Out of millions of those one is a mukta. He or she is actually liberated. And then out of millions of muktas, one may be a devotee. Where they are awakening their relationship with Kṛṣṇa. That all of you are present, is a very special thing. Lord Caitanya, He is giving out this love of Godhead very freely, without considering who is qualified, who is unqualified. So He is considered the most merciful incarnation of the Lord. Otherwise, it would be very difficult. But He made it very easy at this time!

Dukanai: We have a lot of similarities, when it comes to both our religions. Especially the garment, the orange, like we wear the white which symbolizes purity, and we are all one considered under God, and doesn’t matter what culture, what color skin you have that is not considered, materialist and all that. We are simple. I noticed that this is almost the same as well. I thought that it was eye opening for me. The reason I am here because I love to understand everybody else’s way of life, their purpose of existence, because in the end we are all like the same. It is all love and we are all humans you know. This is what I want to bring, I want to bring, bring love between everybody. So being here, gaining this experience is everything to me, it was a very eye opening humbling feeling. I do actually have a question that just popped in my mind - do you guys believe in hell or from what I understand, you were saying there is a spiritual world that you guys were?

Jayapatākā Swami: You see, here it is said there are 14 planetary levels and so we are on the 7th. Above us there are six other levels. We are in the Bhu, then there is Bhuva and Svaha. Svaha is heaven, so you can go and have lots of happiness, material. But material happiness is more or less the same. But all happiness, little suffering. Beyond that there are another 4 levels. Beyond that is the spiritual world. Where there is no birth, no death, no old age, no disease, and everybody is in their love of God. In the material world those who are very pious, religious, but they want their material happiness, they go up to svarga, heaven. When their good karma runs out, they come back down. And then there are seven lower planets, and they are less God conscious. Below that there are all hells. That if you are sinful, then you may be in some hell for sometime, burn off your sins and take birth again. We are trying to get the people out of this material world. And the way is if you do sacrifice. The sacrifice for this day and age is chanting the holy names. We believe there is one God you call him Allah, Jehovah or Kṛṣṇa, but there is one person He has unlimited names. In Malaysia, the Christians translated the Bible in Malaysian language. There instead of saying God, they said Allah, but the Moslems they objected and said Allah is only for Moslems! That is the word they use for God. Then in the parliament they said we should be like the Hindus, they say God has thousands and millions of names, unlimited. So we don’t ask anyone to give up who are Moslems or Jews or Christians, whatever, that is like high school, basic school, this is like PhD. We are just focused, transfer people to the spiritual world and awaken their love for Godhead. But it is there in the fifth canto there is a whole chapter on the hells, in the structure of the universe. So if you have extramarital sex then a particular hell for that. If people just kill animals, or enjoy killing them, there is a hell for that. If someone cheats someone else, just like there are 26 different hells. But sometimes some people are so sinful that they have architects to design special hells for them. What a job! Any way! So, there is an interesting pastime that person who judges, he is especially empowered by the Supreme Lord, and his name is Yamarāja. Today is a special day Ekādaśī. All the grains have sinful reactions. We do not eat grain today. So we do this twice a month. Some people fast, but at least we don’t take grains, cereals or pulses. In a sense like Ramadhan you observe fasting for one month, you only eat at night, you don’t eat during the day. But we observe 26 days a year as Ekādaśī fast. As you said, there are many similarities. So, everything is described very detailed in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. How the greatest happiness is actually to develop our love of God. I hope you come by regularly. This is his house (Sarvajaya Mādhava dāsa), I am staying here for a therapy, on the week days. On weekends I sometimes go to Dallas temple for class, or sometimes I go to other places. Last weekend I was in Houston and New Orleans. Next weekend I will be in Detroit.

Durhanai: I will pray for you.

Jayapatākā Swami: When you come here we can teach you some prayer. When I was in Malaysia, they were doing special sacrifices we don’t wear any shirts, we just wear just like a cādara. One of the princes saw me and he was in Haj in Mecca and they said that if we do Haj we don’t wear any shirts. The men at least, like they wear this white cloth. He was appreciating that you have the same kind of clothes. Our devotee Viśvambara Vyāsa dāsa, he wears like that. He was say that and appreciating that.

Alright, thank you very much!