by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami
The praises of the Holy Land of Bharatvarsa are sung by the Scriptures but are liable to be grossly misunderstood by empiric commentators. It has often been supposed by such persons that the Holy Land means the Land which has got sacred associations for the reason that certain ritualistic practices of religion had been performed in the country by the former generations. This interpretation keeps the Land separate from the functions and regards the function itself as having been performed on the material soil of the country. If the Scriptures are studied with an open mind it will be found that they never intend to convey any such materialistic ideas. They plainly mean that the Land itself is as sacred as the function and that both possess the same transcendental spiritual nature.
It is our purpose to study the implications of these clear statements of the Scriptures. Gaya, Benares, Prayag ( Allahabad ) and Mathura are most important landmarks in the religious Geography of the country. But before we proceed further it is necessary to make it clear to the reader that the transcendental has nothing to do with the material.
The mundane tract of land bearing the name of India is not the spiritual realm in which Krishna’s Pastimes are eternally displayed. So it is not a national predilection that should be suspected in the attempt to arrive at the scientific explanation of the Scriptural statements bearing on the Holy Land of India. The utmost concession that can be allowed to the Indian national sentiment is that the Land of India has been favoured by the manifestation of the Pastimes of Krishna and that the record of those Events also has come down to us intact. In this respect India may be considered as a specially privileged Land in the whole World. But because the Sun happens to be shining on India at this moment India need not, therefore, be regarded as possessing the monopoly of the light which it is privileged to receive from the only common Source of all illumination of this earth. The sages of India were, indeed, privileged to disseminate the light which they received from the transcendental Source and in this sense the Land, as having been blessed by the feet-dust of the servants of the Lord, may be rightly regarded as Holy Land.
But there is also really such a thing as the transcendental realm and this realm has also got its specific divisions constituting its various constituent spheres. These are part and parcel of the transcendental events and descend to the plane of this world when the Divine Events manifest their visible appearance.
The sacred streams of the Ganges and the Yamuna correspond to the two correlated paths of reverential regulated service and confidential, spontaneous, free service of Divinity respectively. Prayag stands on the confluence of the two streams and marks the parting of the ways. Mathura, situated on the Yamuna, is the centre of the realm of the non-conventional, intimate service of Krishna. Benares which is located on the Ganges farther down than Prayag, is the head-quarters of non-distinctive empiric idealism.
The empiricists ( jnanins ) of Benares seek to control the activities of the peoples located on the lower course of the Ganges who are given to fruitive work (worldly activity). Gaya is the centre of fruitive activity. The stream of Karmanasa (destroyer of fruitive activity) flows between Benares and Gaya. After fruitive work is given up, on the realisation of its worthlessness from the point of view of empiricism, or knowledge born of experience, a person still continues in an undecided mood to move for a time along the accustomed path of regulated service. But a decision* is sought to be forced upon him at Prayag. He is there offered the definite choice of pursuing the regulated course or embracing the freedom of non-conventional spontaneous service. If one persists in his former course he will lose himself in the barren heights of the Himalayas to be absorbed in the Absolute.
The regulated service can have a real meaning only when it is a preparation for the spontaneous service of Godhead. No rational scheme ever provides a perpetual condition of tutelage as the normal state. When empiricism fails to realise its own essentially probationary nature, after it has been given a fair chance, it quickly degenerates into a rooted aversion for the service of Godhead. Above Prayag it is not necessary, nay it is positively harmful,’to pursue the very course that is enjoined by the Scriptures when a person is voyaging up the Ganges for reaching Prayag.
Persistence in the regulated course ends logically into a slackening followed by the final loss of all individual fruitive activity. The point of stagnation is reached at Benares. Thereafter the seeker is in urgent and immediate need of finding a new standing ground. This need is real and is capable of proper satisfaction. But he will not get any help in this direction from his empiric or canonical advisers.
He should now seek the guidance of the pure devotee of Krishna. His passage of the Ganges to Benares should have enabled him to impress this need on his mind. If he has performed the voyage in a mechanical way he will be the confirmed slave of the disposition of inertia produced by his past thoughtless activities.
Nevertheless Sree Rupa awaits at Prayaga to impress the imperative neccessity of accepting the change of course by being initiated in the free service of Krishna, represented by the Yamuna. If one does not avail of the help of Sree Rupa he is finally left without any standing ground of his own. It may be the deliberate choice of infatuated empiricists who choose to follow the Scriptures by the dictates or their own limited understanding, but is nothing short of utter self-destruction.
The proper transcendental Geography begins when the soul, freed from the fetters of the Deluding Energy, has also passed through the undifferentiated stage of spiritual enlightenment. Arriving in the concrete spiritual atmosphere of Paravyom, the pilgrim to the Feet of Shree Krishna begins to see things for himself. For some time he is unable to shake off the sense of awe and of gratitude for his most amazing deliverence from the clutches of the Deluding Energy. But on closer acquaintance with the denizens of the Realm of the Absolute he gathers confidence, hope and joy, till he is thoroughly acclimatised to the New World.
It is at this stage that he is privileged to begin the service of Sree Krishna Who manifests His Eternal Birth for such a devotee in the prison-cell of Mathura, [the then capital of Kansa, King of aggressive atheistical empiricism]. Thence-forward the devotee serves Krishna till he attains the highest limit of intimacy by being admitted to the confidences of the milk-maids of Braja.
In Parabyom or Vaikuntha the devotee worships Sree Sree Lakshmi. Narayana by the method of distant reverence. Sree Sree Lakshmi-Narayan are eternally unborn Divine Pair reign, ing over Vaikuntha in all the Majesty of Power. Yet located above the Sphere of Sree Sree Lakshmi-Narayana is the Sphere of the Realm of Sree Sree RamaSeeta where the Unborn manifests His Birth. Next above the realm of Sree Sree Rama-Seeta is that of Mathura.
Sree Sree Rama-Seeta are also served by the method of reverential obedience, but less distant than that by which Sree Sree Lakshmi-Narayana are worshiped, in Their sphere of the absolute realm. Then from Mathura onwards, reverence is subordinated to confident affection.
Nothing less than the service of Sree Krishna in Mathura can satisfy the natural hankerings of the pure soul. There is, indeed, the reverential service of Krishna in Dwaraka which resembles that rendered to Sree Sree Rama-Seeta but with this important difference, that the former is not hampered by the monogamous ethical limitation being imposed upon the Absolute in pursuance of the moral idea of this perverted existence. Existence to which the conditioned soul finds himself strictly confined. The atmosphere of Dwaraka is freer than that of Ayodhya ; but in Dwaraka Sree Krishna is also served as King.
In Mathura Sree Krishna is accessible to all persons who want to serve Him at all. In other words, it is only in Mathura that one may have the full sight of the Absolute Person as He is.
The point how India comes to be so closely associated with the transcendental Geography is elucidated if we only bear in mind the fact that Godhead manifests His Appearance on the mundane plane with all His Paraphernalia which includes also His Eternal Realm. Of all the countries of this World India alone possesses the recorded tradition of the Appearances of the Divinity.
Mathura, Dwaraka, Brindaban are not mundane localities in reference to the Pastimes of Sree Krishna. It is no doubt inconceivable to the limited understanding of the conditioned soul how those places can be supposed to possess any distinctive spiritual significance of their own. The very names of these places are declared by the Scriptures to possess the full spiritual value, but the conditioned soul cannot realise the spiritual nature of the localities. The empiricists are, therefore, insistent that the statements of the Scriptures are to be understood in an allegorical sense.
The conclusive reply to all such objections is based on the principle of transcendental epistemology. The Absolute cannot be approached by means of the mundane either as medium or instrument. If it should be possible to serve Krishna He should be also approachable by conditions of the mundane plane in some inconceivable way. The Scriptures declare that Sree Krishna was pleased to make His Appearance on this mundane plane in a visible Form. We are informed by the same authority that Sree Krishna subsequently manifested His Disappearance from this world. The Disappearance of Sree Krishna means the simultaneous disappearance of all His Paraphernalia, including the transcendental realm. So long as Sree Krishna was placed to remain visible in this world the lands of Mathura, Dwaraka and Brindaban or any other part of India, to the extent that they were the scene of His visible Activities, should be regarded as having been identical with the corresponding regions of the Absolute Realm. But after the Disappearance of Sree Krishpa these lands also necessarily ceased to retain the spiritual nature which they had exhibited during His Appearance.
But the Descents of the Divinity, according to the Scriptures are eternal, implying their substantive continuance even after They have ceased to be visible to all persons. The invisible existence of the transcendental regions of Mathura, Dwaraka and Brindaban of Sree Krishna to this day and for eternity on this mundane plane would imply the distinctive spiritual quality of the correspondingly visible mundane localities. The two, of course, need not be identified. But neither need the close correspondence be wholly overlooked. Those who choose to regard the mundane as identical with the spiritual localities, commit thereby only one of the various forms of offences against Godhead by supposing Him and His to be identifiable with limited, unwholesome, corresponding mundane entities. But it is possible to steer clear of this difficulty without ignoring the substantive existence of the corresponding invisible spiritual localities whose view is available methods of endeavour rendered possible by the existence of the visible localities.
The visible localities may be admitted to possess this symbolical and auxilliary value, not in the allegorical or sentimental, but in rhw substantive sense. The other places connected with the Activities of Sree Krishna may also be allowed to possess corresponding spiritual efficacies in the above mentioned symbolical substantive sense.
This need not disagreeably surprise any persons who may be disposed to believe in the equal or superior spiritual quality of his own particular native land. Such persons will find all the consolation they require when they are reminded that Sree Krishna with all His Divine Paraphernalia eternally indwells every atom of this mundane world. But this immanent aspect of the Absolute alone is to be experienced in the concrete and abstract entities of the world.
The transcendental aspect also, however, makes its periodical appearance in a visible form on the mundane plane. The records of such appearances have been actually preserved in India. This tradition enables us to use the geography of the country for the purpose of the symbolical substantive worship of the Supreme Lord. It also helps to dissipate the contentions of those idealists who hold that Godhead is inaccessible by any visible form of activity, thereby attempting unwarrantably to assign to the mental activity an equality of level with the spiritual function.
