Secrets of the Soul 15

dehino ’smin yathā dehe
kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir
dhīras tatra na muhyati

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.” [Bhagavad-gita 2.13]

The Esoteric Teaching is a living mystery school meant to preach all over the world that kṛṣṇas tu bhagavān svayam: “Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead” [Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.3.28]. You are searching after God; that is why you are reading this. You are taxing your brain so much, trying this kind of yoga and that kind of meditation, going to this teacher and that seminar, and reading many different books. But in spite of making so much effort, you are still unsure what is the truth. Your mind is full of doubt and uncertainty.

So, sometimes you think that “There is no God,” or “God is dead,” or “Everyone is God,” and so on. And then later on you change your mind and think something different. But our value proposition is: “Why you are taxing your brain? Why are you trying so hard, studying so many different contradictory teachings? Here is God, Kṛṣṇa.” The proof is that He is accepted as the Supreme Personality of Godhead by great spiritual authorities, by the Vedic scriptures, and by His unparalleled activities when He appeared on this planet 5,000 years ago. If we read the life of Kṛṣṇa as described in Srimad-Bhagavatam, Visnu Purana and other authentic Vedic scriptures, we can see that Kṛṣṇa displays all the symptoms of God, from His very His birth.

God is not manufactured by some mystic power or speculated by some tricky word jugglery. No one can become God by any kind of meditation. God is always God, and the jivas (spirit souls) are always jivas. A jiva cannot become God; similarly, God cannot become a jiva, just like the sunshine can never become the sun. That is ontologically impossible.

Kṛṣṇa was God from the very beginning of His earthly pastimes. As soon as Kṛṣṇa took birth, He appeared in His four-handed Visnu form. But when His mother prayed to Him to become an ordinary child, He assumed a human-like infant form with two hands. That is God; He displays all the power and other symptoms of God from the very beginning. It is not possible that one can become God by discovering some secret knowledge or attaining some arcane mystic power.

You certainly have some powers that are similar to God’s because every one of us is a part and parcel of God. Therefore we do have some godly qualities, but in minuscule quantity. You can never become equal to God; that is absolutely impossible. The ontological positions and relationships of all the incarnations, demigods and living entities have been analyzed by great Vedic scholars, and they have found that only Kṛṣṇa displays all of the qualities of God to an unlimited extent.

ete cāṁśa-kalāḥ puṁsaḥ
kṛṣṇas tu bhagavān svayam

“All of the above-mentioned incarnations [listed in Srimad-Bhagavatam] are either plenary portions or portions of the plenary portions of the Lord, but Bhagavan Sri Kṛṣṇa is the original Personality of Godhead.” [Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.3.28]

There are many gods who are worshipable by ordinary human beings. Most of them are demigods, but demigods are not the one Supreme God, or Supreme Personality of Godhead, bhagavan svayam. Demigods are ordinary living entities who have been empowered to perform specific duties of universal administration. Many other incarnations and aspects of God (such as Narayana, Paramatma and Visnu) are either expansions, or expansions of expansions of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but only Kṛṣṇa is the original Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself.

īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ
sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ
anādir ādir govindaḥ
sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam

“Kṛṣṇa, who is known as Govinda, is the Supreme Godhead. He has an eternal blissful spiritual body. He is the origin of all. He has no other origin, and He is the prime cause of all causes.” [Brahma-samhita 5.1]

We are speaking of the isvarah paramah, or Paramesvara. Isvara means controller, but paramesvara means the Supreme Controller; similarly atma means soul, but paramatma means the Supreme Soul or Supersoul. The prefix param means the supreme, and indicates God. We jivas are brahman or spirit; but the Supreme Lord is Parabrahman, the Supreme Brahman. So all these names of the Supreme—Parabrahman, Paramatma, Paramesvara—are applicable to Kṛṣṇa alone. After hearing Bhagavad-gita, Arjuna declared:

arjuna uvāca
paraṁ brahma paraṁ dhāma
pavitraṁ paramaṁ bhavān
puruṣaṁ śāśvataṁ divyam
ādi-devam ajaṁ vibhum

“Arjuna said: You are the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the ultimate abode, the purest, the Absolute Truth. You are the eternal, transcendental, original person, the unborn, the greatest.” [Bhagavad-gita 10.12]

That is the position of Kṛṣṇa. Similarly, Lord Brahma states:

govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

“Govinda, Kṛṣṇa, is the original person and the Supreme Enjoyer. He alone is worshipable.” [Brahma-samhita 5.29]

Lord Brahma is the first Master Teacher in our line of the Esoteric Teaching. Therefore we who are initiated into the Brahma sampradaya follow his conclusion. Kṛṣṇa also says in Bhagavad-gita,

na me viduḥ sura-gaṇāḥ
prabhavaṁ na maharṣayaḥ
aham ādir hi devānāṁ
maharṣīṇāṁ ca sarvaśaḥ

“Neither the hosts of demigods nor the great sages know My origin or opulences, for, in every respect, I am the source of the demigods and sages.” [Bhagavad-gita 10.2]

Devanam refers to demigods like Brahma, Siva or Mahesvara, and lesser demigods like Indra, Candra, Varuna and many more. So Kṛṣṇa says, aham adir hi devanam, “I am the origin of all the demigods.” Kṛṣṇa is not only the source of the demigods; He’s the origin of everything.

ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo
mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate

“I am the source of all worlds. Everything emanates from Me.” [Bhagavad-gita 10.8]

In Vedanta-sutra [1.1.2] Brahman, the Absolute Truth is defined as janmady asya yatah, “[The Absolute Truth is] He from whom everything emanates.” Thus Vedanta-sutra also confirms Kṛṣṇa’s description of Himself in Bhagavad-gita.

So this is Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. From all angles of vision—by Vedic scriptural evidence, by spiritual authorities and Master Teachers, by His opulence, by His unmatched power, unprecedented beauty and uncommon pastimes—Bhagavan Sri Kṛṣṇa is confirmed as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, because Bhagavan or God means that He is complete in six opulences. What is Bhagavan?

aisvaryasya samagrasya
viryasya yasasah sriyah

“He must be the richest. He must be the strongest. He must be the most famous. He must know everything. He must be the most beautiful. He must be the greatest renunciate.” [Visnu Purana 6.5.47]

This is the Vedic definition of God, Bhagavan. That Lord Sri Kṛṣṇa fits this definition perfectly definition is confirmed by Lord Brahma: isvarah paramah Kṛṣṇah [Brahma-samhita 5.1]. Isvara means controller. Unless one is powerful, how he can control? Every one of us jivas is a tiny controller. We control in the office, in family life. Somebody controls a few factories. So the jivas are limited controllers. But nobody can say, “I am the supreme controller.” The only supreme controller is Kṛṣṇa.

This Esoteric Teaching means that we are linking up in yoga, making a personal connection and enjoying a service relationship with the Supreme Controller, Kṛṣṇa. We do not wish to become the controller; we want to be controlled—but only by the supreme controller Kṛṣṇa, not by others. That is our value proposition. We are tiny controllers, so we must be controlled by some bigger controller. But we do not want to accept any control except directly from the Supreme Controller. That is the meaning and the practice of the Esoteric Teaching.

Just like if one has no money and must work a job, if he is intelligent, he tries to get an appointment to the government service. Because it is natural to feel that “If I have to serve somebody, why work for some petty merchant? Let me take a position in the government service.”

So that is our proposition, that we have to serve. We cannot do anything but serve, because that is our constitutional ontological status. Every one of us is serving someone or something at every moment. Our proposition is that since you must be a servant of someone in any case, why not become a servant of the Supreme Personality of Godhead? That is our value proposition, and that is also the perfection of yoga and the conclusion of the Esoteric Teaching.

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