Krishna Consciousness – The Yoga for the Modern Age

Nowadays, we find yoga being taught in numerous courses and touted in mass-market books as a means to achieve health, lose weight, develop mental powers over others, achieve success in making money, or increase sexual potency. But real yoga is something entirely different.

All glories to the sankirtana movement. Param vijayate sri-krsna-sankirtanam. Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, when He was only a sixteen-year-old boy, introduced this sankirtana movement five hundred years ago in Navadvipa, India. It was not that He manufactured some religious system, just as nowadays so many religious systems are being manufactured. Actually, religion cannot be manufactured. Dharmam tu saksad bhagavat-pranitam. Religion means the codes of God, the laws of God, that’s all. Certainly we cannot live without obeying the state laws, and similarly we cannot live without obeying the laws of God. And in the Bhagavad-gita (4.7) the Lord says that whenever there are discrepancies in the prosecution of religious activities (yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata) and there is a predominance of irreligious activities (abhyutthanam adharmasya), at that time I (Krsna) appear (tadatmanam srjamy aham). And in the material world we can see the same principle demonstrated, for whenever there is disobedience of state laws, there is the advent of some particular state officer or policeman to “set things right.”

Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu is worshiped by the Gosvamis. There were six Gosvamis: Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, Raghunatha Bhatta Gosvami, Jiva Gosvami, Gopala Bhatta Gosvami, and Sri Raghunatha dasa Gosvami. There are three meanings of go. Go means “land,” go means “cow,”and go means “senses.” And svami means “master.” So gosvami means that they were masters of the senses. When one becomes master of the senses, or gosvami, he can make progress in spiritual life. That is the real meaning of svami. Svami means that one is not servant of the senses, but master of them.

One of these six Gosvamis, Rupa Gosvami, was the head, and he compiled a nice verse in honor of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. He says:

anarpita-carim cirat karunayavatirnah kalau
samarpayitum unnatojjvala-rasam sva-bhakti-sriyam
harih purata-sundara-dyuti-kadamba-sandipitah
sada hrdaya-kandare sphuratu vah saci-nandanah

(Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi 1.4)

Kalau means this age, this age of Kali, the Iron Age, which is very much contaminated, an age of quarrel and disagreement. Rupa Gosvami says that in this age of Kali, when everything is disagreement and quarrel, “You have descended to offer the highest love of God.” Samarpayitum unnatojjvala-rasam: and not only the topmost, but a very brilliant rasa, or transcendental humor. Purata-sundara-dyuti: Your complexion is just like gold, like the luster of gold. “You are so kind that I bless everyone [the Gosvamis can bless because they are masters of the senses] that this form of the Lord, Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, may always remain dancing in everyone’s heart.”