Sharanagati

“For a person established in self-realization everything is the same – be it a stone or gold.”[1] Do you have that power? There are two ways to achieve it. One is when you will see gold like stone. The other is when you see stone like gold. The first one is for the yogis – they should be renounced like anything and see gold as stone, insignificant. The second one, when you see even the stone as gold, is for the lovers. By love your vision will be distorted. Fortunately. What does it mean? That if you have this divine vision, divine inspiration, even the most common, insignificant thing will become very precious, because it will remind you of the original. If you have one piece of gold, it is very precious for you. But if everything is golden around you, it loses the value. Then you might see something wooden or made of stone and then this becomes very precious, because this is unique.

But we should be very careful. You know, to make the deity, the form of God from precious metal – this is very proper. When they installed the Pancha Tattva deities in Mayapur, they collected some huge tons of precious metals. And usually the taps we have are either plastic or of base metals. This is normal. But when you start to have your taps made of gold and your deities made of plastic, that’s a mistake. I see that you don’t believe me, but it did happen. So, better we keep the gold not in the bathroom, but on the altar. Because most probably you are not on the platform to see gold and stone as the same.

Do you have any questions? Yes, please.

Question of Sarvabhauma: If I am not mistaken, in the next verse it is said that if you can see friends and enemies with equal mind, then you are even more advanced. So, the question is why relationships with other people are so difficult, that a person is considered more advanced if he is able to relate properly?

Tirtha Maharaj: Ah, it’s very easy – stones don’t speak back. Therefore it is very easy to be good friend with stones. But with the wife…? She speaks! Sometimes she is satisfied, other times… more satisfied. So, human beings reflect, therefore it is more difficult to harmonize the situation. If we make a mistake with a stone – no feedback. Maximum you hit your head, right? But if we make a mistake with a human being, or any other living entity, there is a feedback. Not only that he or she will revolt, but you will have some emotional tension. The greatest happiness is derived from human company and the greatest troubles are caused by human company.

But as with the previous verse we agreed that there is a solution by two ways how to see the equality between stones and gold – one is that you see everything as stone and the other is that you see everything as gold – in the same way in human relationships, how to see the equality between friends and enemies there are two ways. One way is that you see everybody as an enemy. It’s a very sad world! The other is to see everybody as a friend. And according to my small limited understanding, this latter one is the devotional way, the spiritual way.

So, this is one way to eliminate dualities – see only the good, take only the good. Because the world, the environment depends on your capacity to take. If Krishna would consider all the mistakes of human beings, I think He has all the rights and all the reasons to consider everybody as an enemy, or fallen, sinful. But what was the vision of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu? A little different. He was not checking your list of pros and cons. He said: “Everybody would come and join under the banners of the holy name!” So, a yogi, or a real mystic, has this power – to have equal vision. And we should not be such misers to see only the bad in others, even if it is there. It’s not our business. Our business is to see the good, the prospect, the future. Such positive expectations can help the other to improve. So don’t be so miser to have this equal vision on the low adjustment. Be very generous to have the equal vision on the highest adjustment. Then you are a real yogi, then you are a real mystic.

Krishna says somewhere else that ‘an accomplished person will see everybody as a friend, he will love everybody and everybody will love him’[2]. Which is, I say, very difficult to accomplish.  The first quality, to love everybody, even if someone has this quality, the other part – that everybody should have very positive feelings towards him – not always happens.

Anyway, to summarize: our attitude and our relationship to people depend on our spiritual elevation. The higher level you have reached the better contacts you will have. So this is one signal, one measurement. I know some people, whom everybody likes.

(to be continued)

[1] Bhagavad Gita, 6.8

[2] Bhagavad Gita 5.7