The Everything
© 1997, 2000, 2015, 2019 Daniel Cooper Clark
Some Rights Reserved
A Pandevotional Creed
- The human body is wonderful.
It enables the soul to achieve self-realization. - Human nature at its deepest joins with
Earth nature and God nature. - When we join the Earth in her worship of God,
God heals us and the Earth. - I am always part of Nature.
Nature is always part of God.
Nature is Service.
Human Nature
The source of a deep natural ecology
can be found deep inside human nature.
Every species has its own unique nature,
and a nature that is common to all.
Every being has its own unique self,
and a self that is common to all.
Beings exist to act on their natures,
and when they do they fit into the world.
Human beings who act on their human nature
do not disturb the nature of the world.
The unique nature of the human body
is the spiritual capacity for self awareness.
The human nervous system allows humans
to be conscious of the self as consciousness.
This experience is deeply fulfilling
and defines the being of humanity.
When humans are satisfied deep inside,
they don’t have to use up the world.
Those who experience their self realization
are also conscious of the self in every being.
They are able to perceive as others perceive
and to comprehend a nature common to all.
The nature that’s common to every self
is the urge to serve another self.
The self that is common to every self
is the creator of all the creatures.
Everything in creation serves the creator,
so every creature is worthy of respect.
Human beings who develop self awareness
serve the creator and the whole creation.
Deep inside human nature lies the source
of a deep natural ecology for our world.
An Ecology of the Body of God
God is a dancer.
God’s body is Love.
God’s body is the environment of environments.
Relations among life forms
take place within the love-body of God.
We are decorations on the body of God.
We exist to share love with God.
Love is the environment of all life forms –
the biological, the geological, the astronomical.
Let us join the rest of Nature
in giving pleasure to God.
Dancing with God is a deep ecology.
Don’t Change Reality
Everything is all right as it is. The spiritual world is here and now. All we have to do is be what we are and see things as they are. Let’s stop trying to change the world. Let’s accept Nature’s worship of Goddess and God. Changing things won’t solve the problem. Wanting to change things is the problem.
Alchemy is vanity. The Olympian gods were right to punish Prometheus. When we mortals started to play with fire, our problems multiplied. Fire is the spark of science and industry. Fire transmutes. Fire works for us as a tool expressing our desire to transmute ourselves into God. Fire pollutes. In our attempt to change Earth into Heaven, we’re making it into Hell. If I say that I am God, and differences don’t exist, and All is One, I really mean that All is Zero.
A One without form or variety or personhood is a zero. The Hindu thinkers are the culprits. They invented the zero as the foundation of their mathematics. That made science possible. Then everybody wanted to improve things by adding zeros. Our technological advancement is just a lot of zeros – nothing at all – an illusion. The zeros have obscured our view of reality. Reality includes one, two, three, and every number, except zero, which is not a number at all. It’s nothing. Try to change reality and you end up with nothing.
Love It All
I assume there is one source of the many. One thing that’s the origin, the essence, of everything. It’s beyond my ability to conceive of it. Because I’m just a part of the whole.
To start, I draw from the language of physics. The word I settle on is energy. Reality is energy. I don’t mean something blank and featureless. It’s not nothing. It’s not a void. Energy has many features. The word “energy” means “work.” It signifies action and motion. Reality is motion.
What is motion? Something that is always other than what it is. That’s why some people think it’s nothingness. You can never put your finger on it. As soon as you say here it is, it’s gone.
I’m talking about pure motion. Not motion as a property of an object in relation to other objects. Motion itself. Movement moving. A state that’s always becoming. What else can we say about the reality of moving energy? If it’s always moving, then it’s alive. Reality is life.
Motion has a direction, thus a purpose, thus consciousness. A living, purposeful consciousness is a person. Reality is a person. If it’s a person, then it has form. An inconceivable form! The purpose of that essential form is to move into otherness. It’s dedicated to the other.
Reality is a person always giving itself up into the other. The urge toward the other is love, devotion, service.
Reality is Love.
I accept, I accept, I accept Love. I allow, I allow, I allow Love. I accept, I accept, I accept It All. I allow, I allow, I allow It All.
It All is within Love. Everything is within the Essence. God is within Goddess.
Goddess manifests God out of her urge to love the other. Goddess gives up her majesty into God to worship God. God is supreme – so much so that Goddess allows herself to appear to be his emanation.
Their love is the essential story of life. The love of Goddess and God is the realized urge of the essence. Everything, ourselves included, is within Goddess. Everything, ourselves included, worships God. God is the supreme controller, possessor, and enjoyer. God is the only masculine emanation from Goddess. Everyone else shares her feminine nature. We assist her in her glorification of God.
Mother Savior, Mother Savior. Father Allure, Father Allure. Mother Savior, Mother Savior. Father Pleasure, Father Pleasure.
We all take part in their dance of love. That’s all there is.
Love It All, Love It All, Love It All, Love It All.
We Are the Glory of God
Why do we love God? Because he is glorious. What is the glory of God? The Goddess is his glory. She is the power of God. What is her power? Her love for God. We love God because we are part of her. We are the glory of God, too. Why do we love God? Because we are love-for-God. We are the glory of God, and God’s glory glorifies God.
Ma Jaya Said
My pujas and prayers go out this day to Mother Radha. I am asking the beloved of Krishna to teach my children about replacing desire for worldly things with desire for God and Guru. The idea that one can rise above one’s desires is not true at all. Worldly desires must be replaced by higher desires. Mother Radha bring about this transformation in my chelas. Teach them my Mother of your love for Krishna and let them bask in your love. Show them Divine love is the greatest love of all. (June 18, 1999)
The Good Bishop Said
Strictly speaking, nothing but persons exist.
Bishop Berkeley, Philosophical Commentaries
Personalism
Edgar Sheffield Brightman, “Personality As a Metaphysical Principle,” in Personalism in Theology, Boston, Boston University Press, 1943.
p. 41
A personalist is one who holds that everything real is a self at some level of its existence; what seems to be not a self is a part or aspect or experience of a self or selves. Nothing exists except in, of, and for a self. For personalism, personality or selfhood is a first principle.
p. 42
Personalism is the view that personality or self is the first principle which unites and explains all other “first principles.” As Bowne and Knudsen have often said, “personality is the key to reality.”
Expanding and Running
Prabhupad said, “Krishna is always expanding.” So we don’t have to get worked up about our spiritual “attainment.” We can never attain You because You’re always one step ahead of us. Still, You attract us, so we love to run after You.
Universal Mind
Brain researchers tend to see things one way – the mind is part of the body – or another way – the mind is separate from the body. I propose a third way: the body is part of the mind. Well, what is the mind? I define the mind as the universe in its totality, the aggregate of all the matter and consciousness that makes up the universe. The mind is not localized. It’s not “my” mind. It’s universal. It seems to be mine only because I identify myself as this physical body, and I assume this body’s fragment of mind to be mine, or me. But really all of us here share the same mind. And we’ll be liberated from it when we realize we’re part of God.
Cosmic Confirmation
Yesterday someone donated Raymond Moody’s 1975 book Life After Life to the library. That’s the book where the term “near death experience” was first seen in print. I’d read it years ago, but wanted to go over it again. It had made a strong impression on me. I brought it home and showed it to my love, saying, “This is the book that started it all.” She nodded appreciatively while turning on the TV. The program that came up, without any channel-changing, was about near death experiences. A man picked up a book and showed it to the camera, saying, more or less, “This is the book that started it all.” She gasped, “It’s the same book!” Life After Life after Life After Life. I call these events Cosmic Confirmations. To me they’re intended to validate the significance of the subject for me. They’re not meaningless coincidences, but pointers from You.
Deeper
Some say the core experience of spirituality is the awareness of the unity of all being. I won’t discount the profundity of that realization. Nevertheless to me the heart of spirituality is love. By that I mean the desire to give pleasure to another. Love puts oneness into action, into service. Knowledge may be deep, but love runs deeper. God is present in all acts of love, and most present in acts of loving God. Devotion to God is the origin of spirituality.
Pleasure Vs. Pleasure
I’ve come to believe that the essential difference between material life and spiritual life is this. In material life, the pleasure I feel belongs to me. In spiritual life, the pleasure I feel belongs to God. In both cases, I feel pleasure. There’s no need to give up pleasure to be spiritual. But materially, my pleasure is at my disposal. I decide when, how, where, I’m going to feel it. Spiritually, my pleasure is at God’s disposal. God decides the particulars of my delights. Ultimately, spiritual pleasure is felt directly by the spiritual self. The soul itself is stimulated. That pleasure is inconceivably more intense than the vicarious enjoyment felt by the soul while identifying with the false material “self” made of atoms. I would then define Faith as the conviction that God wants me to feel pleasure, and indeed will give me pleasure – more pleasure than I can have when I try to possess my pleasure. The only renunciation required is the giving up of a harmful attitude. I would go so far as to say that the desire to possess my pleasure is at the core of all the world’s evils. Are many people going to want to change that desire? Not likely. But some have.
Balance
Please help me keep my balance as I accept the contingencies and honor the absolutes.
Help Us
Dear Lady Goddess and Lord God, Lady and Lord of Love, please help us feel kindness, compassion, and devotion toward one another. Help us serve each other. Help us understand that your ways of Love are the only answer to the problems that beset us. That we have no self interest or national interest or global interest other than your interest – Love. Help us make your ways our ways. Our life, our happiness, our success resides in Love. And You are Love.
We Choose Love
We come to this world to enjoy ourselves. To explore our possibilities. After doing so, and after suffering great pain as a result, we return to God with stronger love. Before, love was given to us. Now, we choose love.
World Without Fear
We are made of desire. Made to enjoy, to be happy, to feel pleasure. We are particles of God, who is the Reservoir of Pleasure. We are love, only love. “Teach only love, for that is what you are,” says A Course in Miracles. We are made to worship, to adore. In the world of the soul’s awakening, everyone gives pleasure to God, who gives pleasure to everyone. There, in that world without fear, no one hides. Love is everywhere. Here, in this world of fear, where the body is not the self, we live a double life. But, the soul’s consciousness radiates through the atoms of the temporary form. May the-love-that-I-am permeate it, so its pleasure plays the music of devotion to God’s ecstasy!
Ask the Right Question
Throw away the answers. Stay with the questions. We want something solid, dead. But the essence is alive, changing. We hide inside certainties. To be real is to cast oneself into the current. God is a question. God is to be accepted, not figured out. When we ask the right question we have discovered God. When we face the truth we face a mystery. It exists, it is real. But it’s not an object to be scrutinized. It’s a world of action. God is not a concept, something to be taught. God is an adventure. God is a person. God is love. God is “What can I do for you?” The response is not an answer, but the same question, “What can I do for You?” Then the words stop and the doing starts. Yes, even the questioning stops. No more theology. What’s left is love, and loving the endless mystery. Nothing remains for me except to run after those flashing feet!
Huang Po
“The void is not really the void. It is the real domain of Dharma.” – Huang Po, Chu Ch’an
Man-Mana
Martin Buber wrote, in the Third Part of Ich und Du, that all Your names are hallowed because they’ve been used not only to speak of You but also to speak to You. I’ve been considering what You say twice in the Bhagavad–gita (9.34 and 18.65), “man-mana.” It’s been translated as “think of me,” “think about me,” “bear me in mind.” I like expanding the meaning to include “think to me,” as Buber has suggested. Both times when You pronounced man-mana You prefaced it by saying it’s the “most secret” knowledge (9.1) and instruction (18.64). The two man-mana verses go on with “become my devotee, offer to me, bow down to me, and you shall come to me.” So the thinking of You, or to You, isn’t an ordinary affair. You are God. Then I take it seriously when You say it twice – the secret doctrine of the Gita is simply that one should apply one’s thought to You. My thinking has always been a kind of talking to an ill-defined “myself.” Thus a big part of my spiritual life is to be aware of Your presence next to me, and to address my thoughts to You.
Thinking to You
Dear God, I’ve often wondered, who am I talking to when I talk to myself? That is, who am I thinking to when I think to myself? It’s as if I’m conversing with other people, or casting my thoughts out into an invisible void, or sometimes bouncing them back to a construction of myself. After examining the psychology of this process, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I’m not thinking to You, I’m only thinking to illusions of my own imagining. What’s more, I’m not even doing that. The thoughts are not mine. They come and go on their own. They’re lines in the pre-written script of the world. A script with a part for me to play, but the writer’s words, not mine. I feel they’re mine only because I identify with them. But they’re not mine. The thoughts that are mine are the ones I address to You. Then, everything comes alive. You aren’t a fantasy. You’re reality. And I’m real too, when I’m thinking to You.
Relationality
Reality is relational. “For Thou art with me.”
Detachment
In the Gita You say, “Undoubtedly…the mind is restless and difficult to curb. But it can be curbed, through constant practice and detachment.” When I’m detached, I recognize the world as an artifice, a creation. I understand that I’m really with You in a spiritual world. Then I offer all my thoughts to You in conversation. So it is that the mind can be curbed through the constant practice of detachment.
Explication du Texte
In the 700 verses of the Bhagavad-gita, You refer to yourself in the first person singular 354 times. Because of this and many other reasons, the Gita must be considered mostly a “personalist” (and not an “impersonalist” or advaita) presentation. You speak of yourself in the nominative 144 times, and in the objective 210 times. It’s interesting to note that 2/3 of these references occur in the middle third of the Gita, the portion whose main topic is God. (The first third’s topic is Self, the last’s is Nature.) If such a numerical analysis counts for anything, the inference is that You’re saying You are God. By reading whole sentences instead of tallying up pronouns and verb forms, it becomes undeniable that You’re saying You are God. Therefore I suggest that the essence of the Gita is the speaker of the Gita, You, Krishna. Twice You say that the secret (guhya) of the Gita is man–mana, usually translated as “thinking of me.” So the book is not only descriptive, but also prescriptive. Given the flexibility of Sanskrit formation, the preposition “of” may be replaced with another one. Man-mana is an elision of mat-mana. Mat is a form of “me” that can be translated as “of me,” “about me,” “in me,” “for me,” “on me,” or “to me.” So a possible rendering of man-mana is “thinking to me.” I take this as the constant, everyday substratum of my spiritual life: Thinking to God, Thinking toward You, addressing my thoughts to You.
Three Levels of Meditation
I was doing mantra meditation. My fingers were progressing along my string of mala beads. I concentrated on my vocal chords’ sound of the mantra. Simultaneously I concentrated on the image of the Deity on the altar. But I noticed yet another stream of thought running underneath. It often was filled with “chatter.” Not always, though. Sometimes it felt deeper even than the mantra-sound. It was the current of desire. If I wasn’t desirous of sincerity in my meditation, this level of mind would fill up with verbal business. If I desired to be sincere in my mediation, then this current would propel me toward the mantra and the imago dei. It was a current of motion itself – in the sense that Plato meant when he called motion the essence of life. I perceived three levels. At the bottom, Motion. In the middle, Sound. On top, Image. The bottom is desire, urge, feeling, emotion. The middle is name, language, music. The top is form, shape, line, color. The bottom is soul, the middle is mind, the top body. In the specifics of my meditation practice, the bottom is Mala, the middle is Mantra, the top Murti.
Worship Everything
I can approach anything in existence by one of three paths: lust, neutrality, or worship. My life plan is to worship everything.
Recreating Religion
For my religion to stay alive, I must allow it to continually recreate itself. Someone said that “an unchanging tradition is a dying one.” Prabhupad said, “Krishna is always expanding.”
Mother Haraa
I want to repeat “Mother Haraa” continuously day and night, waking and sleeping, working and playing, happy and sad, for better or worse, till death plays its part. The words come from a 1966 talk from my guru explaining the Hare Krishna mantra. He said:
“The word Haraa is a form of addressing the energy of the Lord … Haraa is the supreme pleasure potency of the Lord … the spiritual potency … the internal energy … Mother Haraa.”
He never called her The Goddess. For him she was primarily Radha, Radhika, Radharani, Shrimati Radharani.
His religion was built like a citadel, surrounded by a high wall displaying the majesty of God. But within the wall She was the deity, and love was all in all.
The Form of The Whole
What is the form of The Whole? Since you have to be outside a form to be able to see it, we cannot know what the form of The Whole is. We are inside it. It’s like scientists speculating on the shape of our universe. We may have our theories, but it’s really a mystery. The form of The Whole is eternally a mystery.
The Rooms
I thought the place where I lived was the only place. But then I bumped against a wall. Oh, I thought, this place isn’t the whole world. It’s a room.
I walked along the wall. Before long I came to a window. So, I thought, there’s an outside to this inside. But the view was foggy. I couldn’t see much out there. Still, I thought, there must be a way of getting there.
Before long I came to a door. It was locked. So I had to find the key. It took me a long time to find it. When I opened the door, I hoped I’d reached the outside. I couldn’t tell at first. The place was so big compared to the room I’d left. (I kept the door open just in case I wanted to go back.)
Eventually I discovered it was another room, with another window and door. The view out the window was clearer, but not clear enough to make out much detail. Again, after a long time finding the key, I left that room behind.
Even the next place, though larger still, was a room. I left that one just a few days ago. The place where I am now does look like the place I saw out that window. Am I really outside, or is this just another room?
All those doors behind me are still open. Sometimes I return, out of affection. But I know my true direction is forward. In every case, the trick has been finding the key. Do I need to find another key? Or are the ones I have in my hand now the only ones I’ll ever need?
An Explanation?
Love is Everything. Love is the Whole. There’s nothing else other than Her.
But because She is Love, She must have someone to love.
To accomplish that, She renounces a part of herself and places it beside her. She manifests Him as a separate person, God. She is now Goddess.
Goddess and God are the lover and the beloved, the worshiper and the worshiped. Love’s essential femininity remains in Goddess. But She has lost that aspect of herself that is now God, the masculine. Her loss is basic to her nature as Love.
God, the Other, is the only masculine entity. We souls are part of the Goddess, the feminine. As such, we are lovers and worshipers. In order to love, we also must give up part of ourselves, our independence, to another. Just as Goddess renounces her unity, so too must we offer part of ourselves to God.
So we feel a loss, a grief, that some of me is gone. Yet we thrive on the bliss of joining with another. This mixture of sadness and joy is the essential emotion of the soul, as it is the essential emotion of Goddess, and of all religion.
Those who speak of the tragedy of life are correct. Those who speak of the ecstasy of life are correct. Those who speak of the simultaneous tragedy and ecstasy of life are the most correct of all. But what good is any explanation? Life and love are mysteries.
Potentialism
Neither one, potentiality or actuality, is more real than the other. Reality is made up of both of them together.
In relation to each other, it might be said that potentiality is Yin and actuality is Yang. In the potential world, the feminine rules. In the actual world, the masculine rules. This is what is meant by saying, “she is the power behind the throne.”
Thinking that, in the actual world, things die, that people die, that I die, is a mistake. Nothing here disappears. Everything here exists eternally. Each atom is as eternal as God. Things here are always alive. There is no non-existence. The other world, the potential world, is pre-existence. I don’t die. Or, my moment of “death” is already on the ledger. So, now that I know I’m already dead, I can really start to live.
A clear continuum stretches unbroken from illusion to truth, from despair to divinity, from garbage to God. The entire range consists of one substance: actuality. No dividing wall separates “matter” from “spirit” as if they were two countries. It’s not that garbage is “matter” and God is “spirit,” and one must change one’s identity to get across the border. While traveling from ignorance to knowledge, we journey across a continuous landscape, a single country, made of actuality. Perhaps it could be caled “matter” because it’s filled with forms. Or “spirit” because it’s eternal. In any case, it’s all one substance. Duality enters the picture with the difference between The Potential and The Actual. But then, you see, The Potential doesn’t exist – yet. So, is it really a duality?
Disruption
Love is the original “disruptive technology.” We try to organize things. But new things are always coming in from the Potentiality and mixing us up, pulling the rug out from under us, upsetting the applecart, blowing our minds, forcing us to reconsider, giving us life.
Continuous Creation
In the Infinite Potentiality there live an infinite number of souls. They yearn towards God. They know only God. In their potentiality, they have no awareness of themselves. As they gradually pass into the Actuality, they first stay with God. But as their self-awareness grows, they become jealous of God. So they descend to lower levels of Actuality – into the darkness, so to speak. This is painful, but through their suffering they gain complete self-realization, which finally matures into a freely chosen love of God. That’s the drama of the soul. It keeps going on and on, with more souls from the limitless well of the Potentiality continually passing into the Actuality. My guru said, “Krishna is always expanding.” The Actuality is always expanding. In that sense, even the Actuality has no limit. Creation is continuous. It may appear that a universe will die, just as it may appear that you will die. But that’s a mistaken impression.
The Urge
What is the basis of spirituality? Is it faith – in something you can’t see yet? Or is it an urge – toward something you feel now? I say it’s an urge. Faith comes from what other people tell you. The urge comes from your own experience. Faith takes you to church. The urge takes you to God.
Your Signature
Dear Krishna, I see your signature in everything here in Materiality. You have written the script. It’s all your movie. We think we’re doing things, but it’s all your doing. All these objects, these images, these sounds, they’re all your creations. Just as an author’s personality can be perceived in the author’s stories, so you have stamped your personality on all your creations. Even the ugly and horrifying things are made by you, in your style, so to speak. We can recognize a painter’s work by the style of the painting. “Oh, that’s a Matisse, look at those playful lines.” We may not know it, but everything here is painted in your unique Krishna style. You’re the choreographer of all our activities. We’re dancing to your tune. “I recognize that song – that’s a Krishna song!” Everything here points to you. That’s the way Prabhupad saw it.
The Necessity of Evil
The newborn baby knows only the mother’s body and doesn’t perceive itself as a separate entity. Similarly, the innocent soul in its potential state has no self-awareness and perceives only God. Later on, the youth rebels against the parents. Likewise, the soul falls down and rebels against God. It’s the wrong choice, but at least it is a choice. Finally, the mature adult chooses to love the parents. The mature soul, liberated into spirituality, chooses to love God. The purpose of doing the wrong thing, of entering into materialism, is to develop self-realization. Then one’s love of God strengthens and can never be broken, because it’s a freely determined choice. Evil, doing the wrong thing, is a stage in the growth of the soul. Evil is necessary. We will never banish evil from the world. Evil is the world’s purpose, the means by which we achieve supreme goodness. But we must fence it in. Regulate it. “Give the Devil his due.” And no more.
The Initiator
Traditional Vaishnava doctrine recognizes two kinds of gurus, Initiators and Instructors. It’s assumed that aspirants have one Initiator. Without being initiated, people have no hope of attaining the goal. The act of surrendering to an Initiator opens the door to God. Then, that same guru usually becomes in effect the first Instructor. As students progress, they may be helped along by many other Instructors.
My Initiator (diksha) guru is Shrila Prabhupad. He signed his letters A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. His complete formal title is Om Vishnupad Paramhansa Parivrajakacharya 108 Shri Shrimad Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. The shorter formal name is customarily given as His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
Before and after being initiated as his disciple in April of 1967, I’ve received much assistance in spiritual affairs from many other people. I think of them as Instructor (siksha) gurus. Some of them have been traditional Vaishnavas. Most have not. In fact, Prabhupad might call most of them “nonsense rascals.”
It’s easy to love Prabhupad. His generosity, his brilliance, his kindness, his courage, his irresistable charm, were immediately evident to all of us who spent time with him. And of course the magnificence of the philosophy and religion he taught us endeared us to him forever.
Prabhupad himself as a pure devotee of God has everything to do with my relationship with God. It is his deep and undeviating devotion to Krishna that inspires me.
The Untutored Epiphanies of an Ultimate Significance Junkie
These experiences came to me without my having been coached about them beforehand. They arrived suddenly, without any precedent. They were images or sounds or words – not always pleasant ones – that possessed me and altered me, opening up a glimpse of The Everything. None of the experiences “proved the existence of God.” It was simply the depth of the feeling that convinced me.
1946: The Gum Rubber Eraser Dream. A dream that recurred afterwards over many years. I was naked, immobile, floating upright in an amber space, not five years old but a grown man. Also in that endless space were floating countless other men who looked like me. My gaze was fixed on a golden bullet, about two feet in front of me, pointed at my heart. It was almost imperceptibly moving toward me. I could do nothing to stop it. Its speed was slowed down because the amber space (I described it as “panucci” after a fudge my mother made) was being squeezed from outside. It was like being inside a gum rubber eraser being squeezed by somebody. And I knew that I was the one squeezing it, holding back my death. This made my body feel incredibly heavy. It was extremely unpleasant. I woke up. My mother was in the bathroom. I walked in and said to her, “There were thousands of them but there was only one.”
1954: The Doo-Wop Chemical Change of My Blood. Over the radio, from WINS in New York City, Allen Freed brought me “Sincerely” by the Moonglows. And so many others. I could feel my blood changing into something strange and wonderful.
1955: Feeling the Blood Run Through My Veins. That’s what I told my mother when she asked me what I was doing, sitting in a chair without moving for a long time.
1956: “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” by Lewis Padgett. The story was in a paperback anthology, A Treasury of Science Fiction, published some years earlier by Berkley Books. Two children learned the technique of arranging simple objects in such a way that the children were propelled into another world. I took this as a metaphor for the purpose of Art.
1958: The Rowe Camp Cosmology Experience. A guest lecturer, a scientist of some sort, showed slides of galaxies and nebulae on a big screen in the barn. I was transported to the ultimate.
1960: New Wave Cinema. I found myself on the screen in the films of Bergman, Truffaut, Godard, Resnais, Antonioni, and others. My path in life was clear.
1961: Lawrence/Wolfe/Kazantzakis/Brakhage. Ecstasy! I could hardly contain myself. D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Wolfe, Nikos Kazantzakis, and Stan Brakhage burst my soul out of its crust of fear.
1962: Bartok’s Second String Quartet. In our fraternity house room with black-painted walls, night after night we played it. As I stared out the window, the window pane dividers disappeared to give me a view of wholeness.
1963: Psychotherapy East and West by Alan Watts. My atheism ended when I read this book.
1964: The Tortoise and His Journeys by La Monte Young. In the tiny Pocket Theater on lower Third Avenue, I experienced a powerful aesthetic-spiritual event. Young, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, and John Cale sat two on each side of a large gong with a black disc painted in the center of it. With vocalizations, a viola and a single-string violin they droned one note for hours. The enormous amplifier-speaker system provided a high-volume cosmic symphony of overtones. Even now that overwhelming sound determines me.
1965: The Chinese Sliding Doors. After eating hashish I saw, about 18 inches away from me, the front of an intricately colored box. Or it may have been a panel on a wall. Two sliding doors, closed, met in the middle. I reached toward them and pulled them apart. Beyond the doors was an infinite white space in which floated innumerable black spheres. The image has haunted me since then as a depiction of the yin/yang duality, either the white or the black thought of as either yin or yang. The colored designs on the doors are a product of the interaction of the two. Objects floating in a luminous infinite space – an image similar to The Gum Rubber Eraser Dream, but this time very pleasant.
1966: The Hare Krishna Silver Ramp. My first exposure to the Hare Krishna Mantra took place in Tompkins Square Park in mid-October. As I chanted along with the Swami, his disciples, and the crowd of onlookers, I saw a silver ramp ascending up into the sky. It looked something like a children’s playground slide, except that it kept going up and up. (Or, in the words of the Unitarian Sunday School credo, “onward and upward forever.”) I knew that if I kept chanting, I would ride that “stairway to heaven,” that mystical escalator, all the way to the Spiritual Sky. I got on it, and I’m still on it.
1976: The Kratka Ridge Experience. 7500 feet up in the San Gabriel Mountains, with my daughter Rose enjoying our walk through deep snow, I stopped to look across to another ridge. In the peace and quiet I heard a faint sound like somebody chopping wood far away. In a rush, another kind of sound, more subtle and in a different dimension, came to me. It seemed like language, but I couldn’t understand its meaning. After about a half a minute it went away. Then I knew I’d been not only hearing, but also Thinking the Earth’s Thoughts. I had become part of the Earth. That convinced me we had to leave our urban life in Los Angeles and move to the woods. Maybe there I could comprehend the message I’d heard. Five years later we moved to the mountains of North Carolina.
1983: The Huckleberry Mountain Experiences.
I
As I stood on our land on the south side of the mountain, the Earth Goddess sang to me, “Don’t you hear me calling to you, Daniel, don’t you hear me calling, calling, calling.”
II
As I sat in my car in the Associated Spring parking lot eating my lunch, I looked at our mountain from the north side. It sang to me, “I am the Glory of God, I am the Glory of God.” Something in the way she sang it made me feel I should sing it too, and I did.
III
As I stood in the snow at night up the slope from our trailer, in the middle of a circle of tall oaks, the Earth sang, “And the Glory of God glorifies God. And the Glory of God glorifies God.” At last I understood the language of Mother Nature. I began to write about Pandevotionalism.
Personness
Like a good theoretical physicist, I want to reduce everything down to a singleness. For me, that singleness is Personness. The essential quality of every entity is its Personness, which derives from the nature of the Infinite Omnipresent Lover.
Relationship
Nothing exists in itself or by itself, but always in relationship. The overall pattern or network – ever shifting in its form – is the independent variable. We are all dependent, or interdependent variables, flickering facets of that mysterious gem.
The Fur of the Monkey
Quite apart from opinions or beliefs, I would call my statements “feelings.” I have no quarrel with anyone who considers the masculine Godhead to be the source of the feminine. In the end, when we’re at that level of discourse, it becomes divine play, not heated debate. The true purpose of discussing such theological niceties is the constant glorification of Goddess and God by saying their names as often as possible.
Countless beams of light from the ultimate cast countless images of that reality outward in countless directions. Each beam has its unique image. Each of us peers along a single beam and views the truth in our own way. God is one but has many names.
I prefer poetry to metaphysics.
In 1995 Ma Jaya said, “When you let go of all things, then you will know the fur of the monkey.” That is, Ram’s servant Hanuman.
When the senses have nothing to grasp, we can withdraw them “as a tortoise withdraws its limbs” (Gita 2.58) and experience the presence of Hanumanji.
Laulya and Lolupa
Two Sanskrit words – laulya and lolupa – have been favorites of mine. First, I love the way they sound. Second, they both mean “ardent longing,” which means so much to bhaktas. Interestingly, laulya also means “inconstant,” and lolupa has the additional meaning of “destructive.” Well, the bhaktas don’t dwell on those aspects. But it might be true that in a material context, ardent longing can be inconstant and/or destructive.
In the context of spiritual devotion, though, ardent longing is the core of it all. For instance, here’s verse 14 from Rupa Goswami’s Padyavali:
krsna-bhakti-rasa-bhavita matih
kriyatam yadi kuto ‘pi labhyate
tatra laulyam api mulyam ekalam
janma-koti-sukrtair na labhyate
My wording:
“Deep immersion in the mood of love of Krishna – if you’re smart, you’ll buy it wherever it’s available. And what is the price? Ardent longing, and nothing else. It can’t be bought by thousands of lifetimes of good works.”
This corresponds to the conservative Christian doctrine of justification by faith and not by good works. The “pearl of great price” can be bought only by faith, not by helping your fellow humans or all sentient beings. Kind-heartedness is found in those who truly love God, but practicing kindness alone is not sufficient for achieving love of God.
The conservatism or exclusivism of this path can be a problem for the liberal-minded. But my contact with my guru’s behavior showed me that it’s possible to have both in the same person.
In the Schoolhouse
There are different opinions about the original status of the soul “before” entering into illusion. Some say the soul is never in illusion, and indeed is God – that would mean the illusion itself is illusory. Some say it’s an illusion to think that there is a soul. Some say the soul is originally merged into a formless spiritual radiance, descends into illusion for some reason (various reasons are given), then merges back into the radiance. Some say the soul is eternally in a loving relation with God, and the entry into illusion, which seems so long to us, is in reality less than a mere instant.
Prabhupad was inclined to present the last of those explanations. Thus, our job is to go “back to Godhead,” to return to a state we’ve never really left at all. I agree with him. But I also must agree with Krishna, who says in the Gita that once having returned to him, we never again enter into the material world. So there must be some difference between being with Krishna “before” and “after” being in illusion. My resolution of this quandary is to posit an initial state of the soul whereby it is in relation with God in love, but without self-realization. The soul has not chosen to love God, but is in love with God by dint of having been created that way by God. But for love to be complete, it must be chosen. So the entry into illusion has a purpose – to develop self-knowledge. Having done so, the soul “returns” to God and never again enters into illusion.
The cycles of time in the material world do not affect the spiritual world. The creation, maintenance, and destruction of the universes is managed by God (or, by Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) for the benefit of the souls in illusion, that they may finally develop self-knowledge, leave the temporary schoolhouse, and graduate into the spiritual world.
I do make a distinction between being with God before matriculating into the schoolhouse, and being with God after graduation. The spiritual world is where we go after graduation. The preschoolers are in a place I call the Potentiality, which is infinite and eternal. Everything is there, God is there, we are there, but in what might be called a dissociated state. It is not formless. It contains all forms, and even though it’s infinite, it paradoxically has a form of its own. It contains all forms and all possibilities. Our work is to make the possible into the actual. The spiritual world is an actual place. We go there when we decide that we actually love God. The potential and the actual are different. We achieve success when we progress from the potential to the actual and actually live in the spiritual world with God.
Both the material world and the spiritual world are in Actuality, not Potentiality. As such, they are not infinite. They are finite. But they are always increasing. Prabhupad said, “Krishna is always expanding.” The astrophysicists tell us the universe is expanding. Actuality is always getting bigger, in both its material and spiritual aspects.
The Inexhaustible Topic
How is it that God is both specific and all-pervasive? The absolute encompasses all particulars – that’s understandable. But how can the absolute also be one particular entity? Of course, if God is all-powerful, then God can do or be whatever God wants to do or be. That’s one angle on the situation – looking at it from the position of the almighty.
Another view, more interesting to me, starts from the position of the famous cowherd boy in Vrindaban. That specific person, with all his specific characteristics and activities, is the ultimate truth.
The similarity between Krishna’s being and what the existentialists call contingency, or between Krishna’s being and what Buddhists call suchness, encourages me to see the underlying divinity of all conditional states. Krishna enters into the conditional universe and blesses it, sanctifies it, by his presence. Moreover, as Arjuna says in chapter 11 of the Gita, Krishna enters into every atom and into all the space between the atoms.
In the final estimation, the universe is Krishna, and all the particles and combinations of particles are Krishna. Krishna is everything and everything is Krishna. Still, as Prabhupad once said when asked if we are all God, “Yes, we are little Gods and Krishna is the big God.” We are particles and Krishna is the whole substance – playing the part of a particle. The last step is to realize that even in the absolute state, Krishna is a specific, particular person, which of course is, as Prabhupad says, “very difficult for the ordinary person to understand.”
No harm in taking Prabhupad literally. He literally means that Krishna exists as that familiar form we all know and as Love, the source of all the other God-forms. It’s not a lot of forms coming out of a bright light. That would imply the bright light is spiritual and the forms are material. Nope. For Prabhupad and the Vaishnavas, the bright light is the atmosphere of the spiritual world – emanating from Krishna’s body.
That person, that form, is the first hypostasis. No other reality precedes that person.
So the avatar forms in the material world are not material forms. They are descents (avatara) of the spiritual forms. When Krishna himself descends, he brings his spiritual abode & associates with him too. Thus the town of Vrindaban in India has its secret spiritual identity, visible only to the purest devotees.
I know it’s difficult to make the switch. Instead of the formless giving birth to form, we have form manifesting the formless. Perhaps it depends on a shift in our understanding of love. For the Voidist, love is an impersonal state without a specific object. For the Vaishnava, love is a personal state with a specific object.
When I first started attending events at 26 Second Avenue, and listening to Prabhupad’s talks, I was a dedicated Voidist. Voidism appealed to me for many reasons. I considered Prabhupad’s personalist devotion to be OK for simple-minded village folk, but not for a highly educated snoot like me! Still, I liked the kirtans, so I stuck around. So, what I felt comfortable with, as an expression of my body-mind, included Voidism (i.e., Zen, Taoism, advaita, etc.) as its spiritual-philosophical element.
But things changed. The kirtans had an effect on me. Prabhupad had an effect on me. His personality did, and his words did. I was experiencing something deeper inside me than I’d felt before. It drove down deeper than the body-mind, straight to the soul. It was like drinking a cup of nectar that had been waiting there almost forever for me. It opened up a world I’d never known about, no matter how much I’d read, or ever could read. It was much more substantial than any psychedelic drug experience. It was a real place, my actual place of habitation, which I could see better and better as the fog of illusion was gradually blown away by the winds of sadhana.
As time has gone by, I’ve learned that I must take account of my body-mind – I must engage that “karmic package” in devotional service, not just attempt to toss it away. That was part of Prabhupad’s teaching too. So here I have a body-mind that tends toward a rather abstract impersonalism, and a soul that exults in a juicy personalism! What’s going on now is the soul using a (slightly) retooled body-mind as a vehicle to travel to Krishna’s lotus feet.
She and He
It seems contradictory to say that both She and He can be the source, the foundation, the supporter, infinite, without beginning or end. But Prabhupad often said that there’s no difference between Radha and Krishna. The Vaishnava texts on the subject almost always assert that Krishna is the source of Radha – though in language that introduces ambiguity. For instance, if Radha is the “internal potency” of Krishna, his “pleasure potency,” and if Krishna is ruled by her love and indeed is ruled by the love of all pure devotees, and if Radha is the “emblem of devotion,” then who’s controlling who? I have concluded that Love is the first hypostasis, and Love is She, manifesting as Radha, as Durga, as Kali, as Mother Earth. Just as the soul, which is “inside” me, is the real me, so the Pleasure Potency, which is “inside” Krishna, is the real Ultimate, and her name is Radha. Jai Radhe! Ah, but then what does She want us to do? She wants us to join her in her worship of Krishna, join her in her devotion to God. She wants us to do that, and She’s the boss.
Vaishnava Gold
For me, the literature of Vaishnavism is like a gold mine.
From it we can extract the most precious substance.
The nuggets in Sanskrit and Bengali have great value.
But by themselves they’re museum pieces, kept in a
glass case, or in a secure box. To have a life in my
world, they must be translated, as gold nuggets are
made into gold ingots with comprehensible amounts
of value. Still, that is not enough. The ingots are still
sitting inert, apart from my life as I live it. I want the
gold to enrich my daily experience. So it must be
fashioned further, into things of beauty – jewelry, or
statuary, or perhaps gold leaf to enhance the beauty
of furniture or other objects. The raw material must be
made into works of art. The wealth of the past must be
minted as coins of our present realm. The reworking of
the gold does not change the gold itself. It is still a
substance of great worth. In fact, the reworking of the
metal makes it more valuable. It has gained both in
beauty and utility. Its external shape has been altered,
but its true internal composition remains the same.
The Vaishnavism of the present day may not bear any
immediate resemblance to the Vaishnavism of long ago.
But show it to expert assayers. They will pronounce it
one and the same in substance – Vaishnava Gold.
Nice Thoughts and Noble Ideals
Nice thoughts and noble ideals flow through my fingers to the page. But who can live a perfect life? The impurities, bless them, humble me, the arrogant spiritualist. As my life snakes around, it must follow maps that contradict the design of my private utopia. Still, my beliefs stand firm. They’re the destination, no matter how many detours I take. Somewhere, sometime, I will live that way. You can’t take that away from me.
In my present practice, this is how I mix the ideal and the real: by minimizing the harmful, maximizing the helpful, and making a lot of mistakes along the way. I do want my daily life, despite its clumsiness, to be the substance of my philosophy. I offer my idealistic words merely as supporting evidence – testimony about the meaning of my life as a whole. In the end, whatever theory or philosophy I advance has no independent worth. The value resides in my actions.
Ayesha
“All great faiths are the same, changed a little to suit the needs of passing times and peoples.” – H. Rider Haggard, Ayesha: The Return of She
The Servant’s Entrance
William Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” But the road is not the palace. It takes you to the front door. Once having arrived there, one must ponder how to gain entrance.
An overindulgence in that which is contrary to spirituality may indeed constitute an introduction to spirituality. Too much sex, too many drugs, too much money, or even too much blasphemy – they may take you to the front door of the palace. But they can’t get you in.
Still, there’s a lesson to be learned here. The final goal of spirituality cannot be attained by heroic attempts at spirituality, by storming the gates. If achieving the palace’s front doorstep may be accomplished by indulgence in spirituality’s opposite, then perhaps entrance might be accomplished in a similar (but mirror-imaged) way. Try entering as if blindly, as if by walking backwards. The knowledge we’ve gained in the material world is of no use for attaining the spiritual world. The two worlds are inverted images. So walk backwards, in blindness, to enter. Fool yourself. Become a fool, in holy ignorance.
Go in by the back door – the servant’s entrance.
Mascherata Materiale
This body of mine that you see is a costume I’m wearing. I’ll take it off when I go back home.
Part and Parcel
Excerpts from the Purports to the verses in
Bhagavad-gita As It Is by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.
I’ve “poetized” them by changing sentence beginnings
from capitals to lower case, and eliminating periods.
in the Vedanta Sutra the living entity is qualified as light
because he is part and parcel of the supreme light 2.18
the living entity is the fragmental part and parcel
of the Supreme Lord – eternally 15.7
he knows fully well that Krishna is the whole
and that he is part and parcel of Krishna 5.3
an atomic particle of the Supreme Spirit 18.78
the living entities also have
fragmental portions of His qualities 15.7
qualitatively one with the Lord,
just as the parts and parcels of gold are also gold 15.7
the living entities are parts and parcels of Him,
and therefore the senses of the living entities
are also parts and parcels of His senses 1.15
in everything there is a relation
with the Supreme Lord Krishna 7.19
a person in Krishna consciousness
certainly sees Lord Krishna everywhere,
and he sees everything in Krishna 6.30
such a person cannot think of any living being
as separate from Krishna 5.7
steady concentration of the mind upon Krishna 7.1
this is the secret of Krishna consciousness –
realization that there is no existence besides Krishna
is the platform of peace and fearlessness 5.12
one should be attracted by the beautiful vision of Krishna 18.65
His name is Krishna because He is all-attractive 18.66
one should concentrate his mind upon Krishna –
the very form with two hands carrying a flute,
the bluish boy with a beautiful face
and peacock feathers in his hair 18.65
the result of Krishna consciousness is that
one becomes increasingly enlightened,
and he enjoys life with a thrill, not only for some time,
but at every moment 18.76
The Razor’s Edge
To the very conclusion of one’s inquiry,
the paradox must be maintained.
Honey Bliss
The Self is as sweet as honey and is total bliss.
You must know that one can have this bliss in life,
and live life in total bliss of God and Goddess. – Ma Jaya
Listen well to the sounds of your life.
Hear how the frogs sing to God
and how the dogs and other animals
recognize the deep spirit of their masters.
Look closely to all that is in your life.
Things you never paid attention to before.
Start this moment and see
what has been in front of you all the time.
Open your God eyes and see
what you have ignored before.
Perhaps miracles are happening all around you.
-Ma Jaya, Cyberdarshan, 9.1.99
Isn’t yearning just as
painful as hunger?
No, actually it’s ecstasy.
Hunger for anything that will
pass away is pain.
Yearning for what is
permanent and unchanging,
that’s bliss. – Ma Jaya, The 11 Karmic Spaces, where she also writes,
“the most beautiful thing in my life is worship.”
As your heart is open more and more,
the God Love in your heart drowns out
all negativity and fills you with a
Love Of God that is so deep that this Love
just consumes all negativity. It is all
a matter of practicing meditation every day
and chanting the Name of God or Goddesses. – Ma Jaya
END
