Real Progress | Harmonist

By Śrīla B.R. Śrīdhara Dev-Goswāmī Mahārāja, originally published in Encounters with Divinity.

Real progress towards the Infinite gives the idea that, “I am nothing, I am in great danger.” Progress towards the Infinite is like that. Thinking, “I have it, I am above,”—this is a foolish feeling, a foolish statement. The very nature of advancement is that, “I am low, I am undone, I am the most helpless.” The closer we are, the further away we will feel, whereas the further away we actually are from divinity, we may complacently feel we are close. As much as we come into the relativity of the Infinite, we cannot but conceive ourselves to be the lowest of the low. That is the criteria.

The very sign of real progress will show I am nothing, I am the most needy, the most wretched and the most helpless. The negative aspect must be improved to attract the positive. If one point of the negative will say, “I am positive” then immediately it will be rejected, you are under the false control of māyā. Rather to think, “I am the meanest of the mean,” that will attract the attention of the high. This is the science of devotion proper.

Maahāprabhu was in samādhi, falling in the sea, experiencing kūrma-rūpa in Jagannātha Purī, and coming back to His senses. Then He related a description of His experience in samādhi, all pertaining to this mādhurya-rasa. In Caitanya-caritāmṛta He relates, when He is coming out of His swoon, “I went there, I saw all these things, but you have taken Me from there.” Pūjala rāga-patha. We should be mindful of every step and automatically that will take us there. Don’t try to go too quickly. Try to keep back and it will forcibly take you there. Your acceptance will come from the higher quarter, not by your endeavor.

In His deep trance, He had experience of that vraja-līlā, He expressed that. And these Sahajiyās are trying to imitate these things. They are imitating—by their imagination, by their mundane mind and with their imagination they think they are going to get a touch of that līlā.

Even some ordinary mundane scholar said that this kṛṣṇa-līlā is aprākṛta. We can trace it from the descriptions of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Kavirāja Goswāmī has described the līlā of Kṛṣṇa, even jala-keli (pastimes in the water) in such a way that we cannot take our lusty mind there. He has kept the purity of the līlā with his description, and Kṛṣṇa with the sakhīs are going on with their play in the tank in the Yamunā. The transcendental characteristics have been maintained there. That nitya-līlā, which Mahāprabhu experienced in His deep trance, has been given by Kavirāja Goswāmī. It is not any mundane thing—we should be prepared for that experience. So much higher we have to reach for a slight experience of those higher pastimes. We must be ready to pay for that, and for that only our Guru Mahārāja came.