The One Absolute – Part II

by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda

If we were to cast aside all of that One Integer’s awe-inspiring and majestic attributes apart from His absolute blissfulness and His absolute ecstatic beauty, we would be known to have advanced quite far in our theistic aspirations for that Fullest Form. So when we approach Śrī Kṛṣṇa we find that all sorts of aspects are fully in Him and we can offer all sorts of confidential services to Him with our transcendental and eternal body. We can offer ourselves to Him in all ways with the closest intimacy.

We must not think that restricting ourselves to a particular aspect shall result in a quarrel with some one involved in another school of thought or philosophy or that it shall result in some other religious controversy. There shall be little scope for that since our attention should, at all times, be one hundred percent devoted to Him and His Counter Whole. This is the general outline of the teachings of the Supreme Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya.

Lord Kṛṣṇa Caitanya is the combined personality of the predominating and predominated moieties of the Absolute. We, the individual souls, are endowed with a mixed aptitude. Our consciousness possesses a two-fold potentiality. It becomes cognizant of material categories, but it is open to the influence of the spiritual as distinguished from the mundane. Lord Caitanya is our only support and the source of our animation. He is the only object of our worship. As a matter of fact, every activity of ours owes its possibility and existence to His initiative and works as a natural result of His own activities.

Lord Caitanya displays the pastime of seeking Himself. All through His manifestation He is found most anxiously devoted to the exclusive quest of the Absolute Godhead, His predominating Moiety, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. We, His eternal protegés, are conditioned to follow His lead in this matter. And if we do follow Him, we shall be doing the right thing. By following Him we will obtain knowledge of the realm of the Absolute. We will no longer have to remain trapped within the narrow scope of the material dimensions.

Yet, we are handicapped by our mixed aptitude. We have the option of becoming involved with the spiritual but we also have the option of meddling with the material. As soon as we indulge this mixed aptitude by mistaking it to be our real function, our progress toward the Absolute is obstructed and we find ourselves subjected, for the most part, to insurmountable disqualifications. These disqualifications have been analyzed and classified under four groups. They are the tendency to commit mistakes (bhrama), inadvertence (pramāda), deception (vipralipsā) and limited, imperfect senses (karaṇāpāṭava). These are very serious defects. They make it impossible for us to obtain even a glimpse of transcendence. Hence there arises the compelling necessity of seeking the help of those who are free from those defects.

The functioning of our present senses does not give us any knowledge of the Whole Truth. On the contrary, it always keeps us away from the Full, Eternal, Blissful Being. We are prevented from full access to uninterrupted existence, uninterrupted knowledge and uninterrupted bliss. Although these constitute the reality to be gained by the exercise of our present facilities, we obtain instead the so-called knowledge of the things of this world. We perceive matter alone and we can imagine a state of material negation, yet neither of these is Reality proper.

We cannot avoid the existence of distinctions, but any thesis we may encounter regarding distinctive entities, we shall entertain under the operation of the four-fold defects mentioned above. It is, however, incumbent on us to try to be perfectly free from those defects. Methods based on sense-experience are useless for this end, for they can never free us from those defects.

Those who rely upon the resources of mind express themselves through language. The words exchanged between such people are more or less defective and mutually contradictory. The experience of a particular moment is different from true experience. We are trying to gain admission into the realm of true experience and we hanker to make progress in such experience. It is our purpose thereby to fall in love with the Real Entity. This is the supreme goal.