Sharanagati

 

Purity depends on love and love means sacrifice. This one sentence is enough to be a guiding light for a life. 

Question of Hayagriva: What about the opposite – does love depend on purity?  

Swami Tirtha: I think not. Because even when we are in an impure stage of our consciousness, we might love Krishna. Maybe this is not a fully developed love of Godhead, but some attraction is there. Yet if I really want to achieve that, then necessarily some purification will also come. Adau sraddha – first is the faith. If there is faith, then the whole process will start and move smoothly. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur said that purity is close to perfection. So our environment reflects our mentality. If there is big disorder inside, you can’t expect too much order outside. It doesn’t mean if there is an order outside, that everything is fine on the inside. But more or less it is connected. One reflects the other. You see, visiting the holy places and having enjoying mentality reflects something. Of course it doesn’t mean that devotional life is a torture and ‘when I suffer enough, then it’s for sure that I make progress.’ But as it was said: if something good comes, take it, if something bad comes, tolerate it. It is on the lower platform. If we want to see with the eye of the soul, if we want to see the background of consciousness, we have to tolerate these ups and downs in life. Search for the hidden principle. 

Question of Mahabhava: I would like to ask you to explain how exactly purity depends on love.

Swami Tirtha: If I knew, may be I could have been purified a little bit. But let’s start from the other end of the story – that love means sacrifice. Because from that side, from that point it’s easier to understand the beginning. And I appreciate that you didn’t enquire about that, it looks like obvious for you that love is a sacrifice. It’s a loving offering, it’s a loving sacrifice – nothing is wrong, no bad feelings. 

I think we all search for purity. How it will come? How it will happen. With our insignificant capacity we can achieve some level. Even a small human being can do miracles – concerning purity also. Yet, to achieve the divine platform of purity, which is beyond any material consideration, it’s difficult. How can we achieve the higher platform – higher than moksha, higher than liberation, higher than simple perfection? Through the process of bhakti. Bhakti is the higher principle, this is the emotional approach to the Supreme. In the Shrimad Bhagavatam it is said that the followers of different, different spiritual paths might achieve a kind of liberation. But they have to return to the material sphere if they miss the point of loving service, personal service to the Supreme. Just as it was mentioned before that in the neutral stage, in the passive stage of liberation, the active service principle is missing. So, therefore we can say that the absolute purification needs a loving approach. If we are connected somehow in this affectionate way to the Supreme purifier, then we shall be purified.