This article appeared in the May/June 2015 issue of the international BTG magazine.
Every conditioned soul wants to be special. Most souls in this world realize sooner or later that they are just one amongst millions and with no special attributes. They want to be heroes but are in fact quite ordinary. They rejoice in others’ heroic deeds secretly hoping to be in the heroes’ shoes someday. If the hero happens to be an acquaintance, their mind squirms in unexpressed envy. Even if a soul is relatively well-placed materially, he is painfully aware of others who are better placed. And those few who are indeed specially placed are acutely aware that their glory will be short lived. Craving for specialty is the cause of suffering.
The conditioned soul’s
desire to be special and envy for those who are special is explained by Krishna
(BG 7.27) thus:
icchä-dveña-samutthena
dvandva-mohena bhärata
sarva-bhütäni
sammohaà sarge yänti parantapa
O
scion of Bharata, O conqueror of the foe, all living entities are born into
delusion, bewildered by dualities arisen from desire and hate.
The soul’s home is the
spiritual world where he blissfully serves Lord Krishna. But when the soul chooses
to experience an independent existence, Krishna places him in the material
world. This choice comprises the soul’s misuse of his Krishna-given minute free
will. In such an independent existence the soul forgets his constitutional
position of being a loving servant of Krishna. Furthermore, in the material
world, the illusory energy of the Lord, Maya, rules. Maya causes the soul to
experience the duality of desire and envy.
Srila Prabhupada explains
in the purport: “The real constitutional position of the living entity is that
of subordination to the Supreme Lord, who is pure knowledge. When one is
deluded into separation from this pure knowledge, he becomes controlled by the
illusory energy and cannot understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The
illusory energy is manifested in the duality of desire and hate. Due to desire
and hate, the ignorant person wants to become one with the Supreme Lord and
envies Kåñëa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead.”
The soul’s only
fountainhead of happiness and satisfaction is service to Krishna. In the
material world Krishna is lost to him and so the soul turns his attention
toward himself. Earlier he was immersed in the ecstasy of loving Krishna,
oblivious of himself; now, instead of Krishna, he himself becomes the center of
his existence. Being special becomes his source of happiness and satisfaction.
He desires to be special and envies those who are. This desire and envy
culminate in the soul’s desire to become one with Lord and in envy for Him.
From Special to Sensual
A conditioned soul is sad
when he thinks he is not special enough in terms of material distinction or
influence. And when he starts thinking he is special due to his position in
society, he soon realizes that many others are better placed. A thoughtful man
realizes that to live a life of such perennial dissatisfaction is foolish. He
seeks a way out in sense gratification. If I cannot have the egotistic
satisfaction of being able to control people and things (siddhi), let me have
the sensual satisfaction of enjoying life to the full (bhukti). He works hard,
piously or otherwise, to earn means of sense gratification. Such fruitive work
awards him only free passes to roam all over the universe. He keeps wandering
all over the universe, sometimes in higher forms of life sometimes in lower,
enjoying and suffering different grades of sense gratification and material
tribulations based on the law of karma. A life of indulgence does not quench
the wandering soul’s thirst for eternal happiness and satisfaction. Bhagavad
Gita 13.22 says:
puruñaù
prakåti-stho hi bhuìkte prakåti-jän guëän
käraëaà
guëa-saìgo 'sya sad-asad-yoni-janmasu
The
living entity in material nature thus follows the ways of life, enjoying the
three modes of nature. This is due to his association with that material
nature. Thus he meets with good and evil among various species.
Srila Prabhupada explains
in the purport: “… Due to his [the conditioned soul’s] desire to lord it over
material nature [i.e. seek sense gratification], he is put into such
undesirable circumstances. Under the influence of material desire, the entity
is born sometimes as a demigod, sometimes as a man, sometimes as a beast, as a
bird, as a worm, as an aquatic, as a saintly man, as a bug. This is going on.
And in all cases the living entity thinks himself to be the master of his
circumstances, yet he is under the influence of material nature.”
From Sensual to
Non-Dual
The frustration arising
from not being able to find satisfaction in the pursuit of material distinction
and sense gratification makes the inquisitive soul look for spiritual
alternatives. Krishna has designed the material world with exactly this outcome
in mind. The material world is a playground for souls to enjoy the fulfilment
of their material desires. At the same time, it presents enough tribulations
for them to desire a way out (mukti). The frustrated soul reads that he is
indeed an eternal spiritual soul and not the temporary material body he
presently occupies. He reads that since matter and soul are mutually
incompatible, seeking happiness in material sense enjoyment is the very source
of his misery. Bhagavad Gita 5.22:
ye
hi saàsparça-jä bhogä duùkha-yonaya eva te
ädy-antavantaù
kaunteya na teñu ramate budhaù
An
intelligent person does not take part in the sources of misery, which are due
to contact with the material senses. O son of Kunté, such pleasures have a
beginning and an end, and so the wise man does not delight in them.
Starting with this
spiritual fundamental, the soul then starts training his mind in the doctrine
of equanimity. He gives up all desire for sense gratification and tries to find
satisfaction in the self alone (BG 2.55). In order to realize the soul, he
trains himself to be equally disposed to all material varieties and dualities
(BG 2.56). He acts with his senses only as much as needed to execute his
obligatory duties, and not for sense gratification (BG 2.58). He sees all
matter with an equal vision, and then sees all other souls with an equal vision
too. (BG 14.24-25).
Such equanimity is the
result of transcending the duality of material existence by realizing one’s
identity as a spiritual spark having nothing to do with matter. An equipoised
soul carries out his material duties without worrying about the results of his
activities. He understands that his high and low position in the material world
is merely a result of his past karma and that as such he is not the true cause
of his high or low material position. His desire to be materially special
disappears; he finds peace. Bhagavad Gita 2.71:
vihäya
kämän yaù sarvän pumäàç carati niùspåhaù
nirmamo
nirahaìkäraù sa çäntim adhigacchati
A
person who has given up all desires for sense gratification, who lives free
from desires, who has given up all sense of proprietorship and is devoid of
false ego—he alone can attain real peace.
From Non-Dual to Special
The cessation of material
desires in the state of equanimity is not end of the spiritual journey; in fact
it’s the beginning. Srila Prabhupada explains in the purport of the above
Bhagavad Gita verse: “To become desireless means not to desire anything for
sense gratification. In other words, desire for becoming Kåñëa conscious is
actually desirelessness. To understand one's actual position as the eternal
servitor of Kåñëa, without falsely claiming this material body to be oneself
and without falsely claiming proprietorship over anything in the world, is the
perfect stage of Kåñëa consciousness. One who is situated in this perfect stage
knows that because Kåñëa is the proprietor of everything, everything must be
used for the satisfaction of Kåñëa.”
While equanimity solves
the problem of material duality, it might not solve the problem of false ego. The
equipoised soul doesn’t care for material distinction. But if he’s not yet
purified of the desire to be independent of Krishna, such a soul seeks to
become one with Him. Thus he continues to envy the Lord by adamantly refusing
to serve Him as a subordinate servant. He continues to want to be spiritually
special and thinks he is already perfect. Not having taken shelter of the lotus
feet of the Lord, he continues his wanderings in the material world. Srimad
Bhagavatam 10.2.32:
ye
'nye 'ravindäkña vimukta-mäninas
tvayy
asta-bhäväd aviçuddha-buddhayaù
äruhya
kåcchreëa paraà padaà tataù
patanty
adho 'nädåta-yuñmad-aìghrayaù
[Someone
may say that aside from devotees, who always seek shelter at the Lord's lotus
feet, there are those who are not devotees but who have accepted different
processes for attaining salvation. What happens to them? In answer to this
question, Lord Brahmä and the other demigods said:] O lotus-eyed Lord, although
nondevotees who accept severe austerities and penances to achieve the highest
position may think themselves liberated, their intelligence is impure. They
fall down from their position of imagined superiority because they have no
regard for Your lotus feet.
The soul wants to be
special because that is his natural state. Every soul has a unique, and thus
special, relationship with the Supreme Lord. In the spiritual world he serves
the Lord in his own unique way, like no one else does, and feels ecstatically
special all the while. Even in the conditioned state, every soul’s disposition
to serve is unique, and thus special.
Even if one is not
extraordinary, loving friends and relatives make one feel special. What then to
speak of a soul knotted with the Lord in an eternal bond of ever increasing
love? To reciprocate with a devotee’s love, Krishna makes that devotee feel most
special. For example, when Krsna has food in the midst of his cowherd friends
who sit all around him in circles, every cowherd boy thinks Krishna is looking
only at him. Although each soul is constitutionally exactly same (a part and
parcel of Krishna), and in that sense not unique or extraordinary, his
existence is super-excellently special when united with the Lord.
The Bhagavad Gita takes
the soul from equanimity to ecstasy in verse 18.54:
brahma-bhütaù
prasannätmä na çocati na käìkñati
samaù
sarveñu bhüteñu mad-bhaktià labhate paräm
One
who is thus transcendentally situated at once realizes the Supreme Brahman and
becomes fully joyful. He never laments or desires to have anything. He is
equally disposed toward every living entity. In that state he attains pure
devotional service unto Me.
When one is situated in
material equanimity, it’s time to start rendering pure devotional service to
Krishna understanding that the soul is fragmental part and parcel of the
Supreme Lord and therefore eternally a servant.
The stage of equanimity
(brahma bhuta) takes one beyond material duality but only the path of pure
devotional service cures the notion of the false ego that one can become as
good as the Lord by becoming one with Him. Srila Prabhupada explains in the
purport: “To the impersonalist, achieving the brahma-bhüta stage, becoming one
with the Absolute, is the last word. But for the personalist, or pure devotee,
one has to go still further, to become engaged in pure devotional service. This
means that one who is engaged in pure devotional service to the Supreme Lord is
already in a state of liberation, called brahma-bhüta [SB 4.30.20], oneness
with the Absolute. Without being one with the Supreme, the Absolute, one cannot
render service unto Him. In the absolute conception, there is no difference
between the served and the servitor; yet the distinction is there, in a higher
spiritual sense. … In that stage of existence [pure devotional service], the
idea of becoming one with the Supreme Brahman and annihilating one's
individuality becomes hellish, the idea of attaining the heavenly kingdom
becomes phantasmagoria, and the senses are like serpents' teeth that are
broken.”
The false ego is the rope
which binds the conditioned soul to the material world. It makes the soul think
himself as the center of his existence. Pure devotional service eradicates the
false ego and thus truly stops the soul’s material existence. A pure devotee
saturated with love for Krishna is so focused on service to Krishna that he
becomes oblivious of himself; in other words, his false ego truly disappears.
For him the problems arising from trying to be special, either materially or
spiritually, don’t exist because he doesn’t want to be special; he is already brimming
with spiritual joy. What’s more, he everlastingly experiences the most special existence
of unadulterated love for Krishna - Krishna prem.
Yes, You are Special!
The conditioned soul’s
quest for being special is a result of his original super-special position in
the spiritual word. In the material world he seeks to be special at the
egoistic level by trying to be materially distinct and influential - siddhi.
Siddhi is difficult to obtain and so he immerses himself in sensual indulgence
instead - bhukti. When even bhukti eludes him, he seems spiritual salvation –
mukti. Mukti does not necessarily rectify the egoistic misconception of
thinking oneself as being as good as the Lord. Thus he still continues his
material wanderings.
Lord Sri Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu instructs Srila Rupa Goswami thus (CC Madhya 19.149):
kåñëa-bhakta—niñkäma,
ataeva ‘çänta’
bhukti-mukti-siddhi-kämé—sakali
‘açänta’
“Because
a devotee of Lord Kåñëa is desireless, he is peaceful. Fruitive workers desire
material enjoyment, jïänés desire liberation, and yogés desire material
opulence; therefore they are all lusty and cannot be peaceful.
Srila Prabhupada explains
in the purport: “The devotee of Lord Kåñëa has no desire other than serving
Kåñëa. Even so-called liberated people are full of desires. Fruitive actors
desire better living accommodations, and jïänés want to be one with the
Supreme. Yogés desire material opulence, yogic perfections and magic. All of
these nondevotees are lusty (kämé). Because they desire something, they cannot
have peace.”
Pure devotional alone
reestablishes the soul in his true identity of being an eternal intensely
loving servant of Krishna. That special existence is beyond words to describe;
suffice it to say that the Supreme Lord personally goes out of His way to make
the soul feel special – every moment. Need we say more?
Yes, you are special.
***
