What The Upanisads Teach.pdf - Suhotra Maharaja Archives

"If you always feel Krsna conscious, then you are fire. " In the purport to Srimad-Bhagavatam 4. 3. 23, Srila Prabhupada explains, "For example, when iron is put intoa fire, it becomes warm, and when red-hot, although it is iron, it acts like fire.Similarly, when copper is surcharged with electricity, its action as copper stops; itacts as electricity. Bhagavad-gita (14. 26) also confirms that anyone who engages inunadulterated devotional service to the Lord is at once elevated to the position ofpure Brahman. "Thus great liberated devotees like Sanatana Gosvami had immediate personalexchange with the Deity, even to the point of conversing with Him. This was becauseSanatana Gosvami's only desire was to serve the Lord: "Whatever I get I offer you.You kindly accept. " Thus Yajnavalkya Muni says, "When they are all banished, thosedesires lurking in one's heart, then a mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahmanin this world. "Parinama-vada necessitates our acceptance of the Lord's complete power oftransformation over His sakti. His sakti is one energy, like electricity, but under theorder of the Lord it may act as spirit, or as spirit's opposite, matter, just as electricitymay cook food in a stove or oppositely freeze food in a freezer. We saw in an earlierinstallment a quotation from Srila Prabhupada Isopanisad purport that for Krsnathere is no difference between spirit and matter. Thus His arca form as the Deity isno less Himself than His cinmaya-ananda-svarupa in Divya-Vrndaban. If a devoteehere in the material world "always feels Krsna conscious" in service to the Deity,then he is in the same fire of brahma-svarupa as the eternal servants of the Lord inDivya-Vrndaban. By the grace of the Lord that devotee's spiritual senses areawakened to fully engage in loving pastimes even within the so-called materialworld. If we accept, as we must if we subscribe to parinama-vada, that the Lord cantransform spirit into matter and thus create this material world, then we must acceptthe converse: that he can transform matter into spirit.UtkrantiIn Chandogya Upanisad VI. 15. 2, Uddhalaka Aruni tells Svetaketu that when aperson leaves the body, vak manasi sampadyate--his speech merges into the mind;his mind merges into prana, the life force; the prana merges into tejas, the fieryenergy of creation; and tejas merges into the transcendental Godhead (parasyamdevatayam). The point of departure from the body for a liberated soul is thesusumna- or brahma-nadi, a subtle channel that passes out through the top of thehead.Utkranti is the topic of Vedanta-sutra Chapter 4, pada 2. Srila BaladevaVidyabhusana comments that according to Brhadaranyaya Upanisad, speech, mindand prana enter the individual spirit soul. But this does not contradict the version ofChandogya:In this way the sruti-sastra explains that the life-breath and the senses enters theindividual spirit soul. This statement does not contradict the other statement of thesruti-sastra that the life-breath enters the element fire, for it may be said that afterthe life-breath enters the soul the two of them proceed to enter the element fire.This is like saying that the Yamuna, joining with the Ganges, proceeds to enter theocean.49