Logical fallacies are tricks that are typically used to fool people. One might commit logical fallacies to also fool oneself. Generally, people are not trained to notice fallacies, and therefore are liable to fall victim to predatory organizations including marketing agencies, political parties, and pertinent to this website, […]
The process of learning necessarily involves emotion. The stronger the emotion, the deeper the memory, and the better the learning. If we have learned some concepts, and these concepts have been reinforced by emotions associated with them over a long period of time, then it becomes very hard […]
Śrī Jīva Goswami provides two examples in which the Bhāgavata purāṇa is seen to override other scriptures. The first is from the story of the Syamantaka gem. The sun god had given Satrājit this marvelous jewel, which produced eight bhāras of gold every day and in the proximity […]
The ātman, stripped off the mind, body and senses is a formless conscious being consisting of potentialities of thought, desire and action. All ātmans are identical, with the only difference being their existence as individual ātmans. We have seen that the ātmans have been wedded to individual minds […]
Many people are surprised to learn that Kṛṣṇa is Svayaṁ Bhagavān, the original form of Bhagavān and the source of all avataras including Rāma and Visṇu himself. Sri Jiva Goswami in the Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha does an exhaustive analysis to establish Kṛṣṇa as Svayaṁ Bhagavān. Śrī Babaji has recently translated this book (available at the above link) with insightful commentary.
We now examine the remaining qualifiers of bhāva. As we saw before, bhāva is qualified by rucibhiś citta-māsṛṇya-kṛd and prema-sūryāṁśu-sāmya-bhāk. Sri Jiva Goswami explains the meaning of these words, which is reproduced below. The word ruci = prāpti-abhilāṣa, sva-kartṛka ānukulya-abhilāṣa and sauhārda-abhilāṣa. That is, ruci implies three things: […]
Renowned British physicist Roger Penrose and the University of Arizona’s Stuart Hameroff have a theory for consciousness. According to them, consciousness is information stored at the quantum level in microtubules. Microtubules are biopolymers in cells that have varied functions. They are enriched in neurons and are critical for […]
There is the notion in some bhakti sects that the material world is a perverted reflection of the spiritual world.
We examine Sri Rupa Goswami’s definition of bhava further.
Given the topic this blog deals with, and the emotional responses that it appears to elicit among the faithful who find the content not palatable, I am formulating some rules for posting comments.
Maharajji answers questions in Śrī Guru Darśanam, p 87 Question: Is ajñāta-sukṛti a real or only a psychological term? Answer: There is no such thing as ajñāta-sukṛti. Bhakti comes by the mercy of Bhagavān and His devotee. And it is not that you make somebody do something by controlling him […]
Some modern Caitanya bhakti sects emphasize preaching as the most important duty of a devotee. Preaching in this context carries the meaning of proselytizing, that is, attempting to convert people to become followers of the bhakti path. This is typically accomplished by selling books to others, by offering […]
