LESSONS FROM THE HIMALAYAS-PART 2

I saw sewage flowing into the Ganga and remembered the eleventh canto of Srimad Bhagavatam which describes the realizations of a saintly person who learnt wisdom lessons from many gurus, namely the mountain, river, sky, moon and all other aspects of nature. The Ganga is like our consciousness. The sewage is not the Ganga; it’s just mixed in the Ganga.The Ganga is completely pure like any river from its source. But all the pollution in it is external, from another source. The scriptures explain "nitya-siddha kåñëa-prema ‘sädhya’ kabhu naya çravaëädi-çuddha-citte karaye udaya".“Pure love for Krishna is eternally established in the hearts of the living entities. It is not something to be gained from another source. When the heart is purified by hearing and chanting, this love naturally awakens.” (Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya Lila, 22.107).It’s our nature; our essence to love God. Each and every soul is pure and divine; the bodily dress being an external covering on the soul. The Bhagavad Gita describes the soul as pure and eternal. “For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.” (Bhagavad Gita 2.20).The Bhagavad Gita also teaches that the body is like a chariot and the soul is the passenger, and the mind is the reins of this chariot of the body while the intelligence is the driver. The horses represent the senses. With higher intelligence, when we direct our body and mind towards God, we revive our original satcitananda nature, the nature of eternity, knowledge and bliss. It’s this nature which is presently covered over due to our superficial coverings. “The living entities in this conditioned world are My eternal fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they are struggling very hard with the six senses, which include the mind.”(Bhagavad Gita 15.7).God is like the sun, the complete whole and we are pure, divine parts of God and contain the godliness within, in a dormant, unmanifest state. The process of chanting of God’s Holy Names filters our pure consciousness from the artificial pollutions like lust, envy, greed, anger, pride and illusion and brings it back to the original pure state of loving God. www.radhanathswami.com,

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