When one actually becomes situated on the transcendental platform, he becomes steady. Unless one is so situated, his position is not steady and he may fall down. When one is actually situated transcendentally, there is no fear of falling down. This stage is technically called sthāyi-bhāva. There are further developments within this stage, known as vibhāva, anubhāva, sāttvika and vyabhicārī. When these four ingredients are added to the steadfast position of pure transcendental life, there is actually an exchange of rasa, or transcendental mellows, with the Supreme Lord. This exchange in loving reciprocation between the lover and the beloved is generally called kṛṣṇa-bhakti-rasa, the transcendental taste of exchanging loving sentiments between the devotee and the Supreme Personality of Godhead. It should be noted, however, that the transcendental loving exchanges stand on the steadfast position of sthāyi-bhāva, as explained above. The basic principle of vibhāva is sthāyi-bhāva, and all other activities are auxiliary for the development of transcendental love.
Ingredient (Other Books)
Other Books by Srila Prabhupada
Teachings of Lord Caitanya
The Supreme Absolute Truth has His inconceivable potency, out of which this cosmos has been manifested. In other words, the Supreme Absolute Truth is the ingredient, and the living entity and cosmic manifestation are the by-products. In the Taittirīya Upaniṣad it is clearly stated, yato vā imāni bhūtāni jāyante: "The Absolute Truth is the original reservoir of all ingredients, and this material world and its living entities are produced from those ingredients."
The true variegatedness which exists in the Absolute Truth is a product of His inconceivable energy. Indeed, it can be safely concluded that this cosmic manifestation is but a by-product of His inconceivable energies. Once we accept the inconceivable energies of the Supreme Lord, we will find that there is no duality at all. The expansion of the energy of the Supreme Lord is as true as the Supreme Lord. As far as the manifestation of the supreme energy is concerned, there is no question of transformation. The same example can be cited: in spite of producing unlimited quantities of gold, the touchstone remains the same. We therefore hear some sages say that the Supreme is the ingredient or cause of this cosmic manifestation.
The Lord existed before the material creation; therefore the material ingredients, nature and the living entities all emanated from Him, and after dissolution they rest in Him. When the creation is manifest, it is maintained by Him; indeed, whatever manifestation we see is but a transformation of His external energy. When the Supreme Lord withdraws His external energy, everything enters into Him. In the first of the four verses, the word aham is given three times in order to stress that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is full with all opulences. Aham is stated three times just to chastise one who cannot understand or believe in the transcendental nature and form of the Supreme Lord.
Nectar of Devotion
In the Tenth Canto, Fourteenth Chapter, verse 11, of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Lord Brahmā says, "My dear Lord, false ego, intelligence, mind, sky, air, fire, water and earth are the material ingredients of this universe, which can be compared to a gigantic pot. In that gigantic pot my body is of insignificant measurement, and even though one of the many universes is created by me, innumerable universes are coming and going from the pores of Your body, just as atomic particles are seen flickering in the sunlight. I think I am very, very insignificant before You, and I am therefore begging Your pardon. Please be merciful toward me."
In the Tenth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Sixtieth Chapter, verse 45, Rukmiṇī-devī said, "My dear husband, a woman who has no taste for the transcendental pleasure available from Your personal contact must be inclined to accept as her husband somebody who is externally a combination of mustache, beard, body hairs, fingernails and some head hair. And within him there are muscles, bones, blood, intestinal worms, stools, mucus, bile and similar things. Actually, such a husband is only a dead body, but due to not being attracted to Your transcendental form, a woman will have to accept this combination of stools and urine for her husband." This statement, which lists the ingredients of a material body, is not a perverted mellow in transcendental realization, because it shows correct discrimination between matter and spirit.
Nectar of Instruction
All the parts of the instrument, including the electronic functions, are made from different combinations and interactions of the five basic types of material energy—namely, bhūmi, jala, agni, vāyu and ākāśa. The inventor used his brain to make this complicated machine, and his brain, as well as the ingredients, were supplied by Kṛṣṇa. According to the statement of Kṛṣṇa, mat-sthāni sarva-bhūtāni: (BG 9.4) "Everything is depending on My energy." Thus the devotee can understand that since nothing is independent of Kṛṣṇa's energy, everything should be dovetailed in His service.
Easy Journey to Other Planets
The living spiritual being handles matter appropriately by his free will and thus constructs his house. Similarly, matter is the ingredient only, but the spirit is the creator. Only a man with a poor fund of knowledge avoids this conclusion. The creator may remain unseen in the background, but that does not mean that there is no creator. One should not be illusioned simply by the gigantic form of the material universe. Rather, one should learn to discern the existence of supreme intelligence behind all these material manifestations. The Supreme Being, who is the supreme intelligence, is the ultimate creator, the all-attractive Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Although one may not be aware of this, there is definite information of the creator given in Vedic literatures such as the Bhagavad-gītā and especially the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
Krsna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead
By Your activities only, the living entities become covered by forgetfulness or discover their real identity. This is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā (Fifteenth Chapter): the Lord is sitting as the Supersoul in everyone's heart, and due to His presence the living entity either forgets himself or revives his original identity. We can partially understand that You are within our hearts as the witness of all our activities, but it is very difficult to appreciate Your presence, although every one of us can do so to some extent. You are the supreme controller of both the material and spiritual energies; therefore You are the supreme leader, although You are different from this cosmic manifestation. You are the witness and creator and the very ingredient of this cosmic manifestation. We therefore offer our respectful obeisances unto You.
Taking him by the hand, Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma brought him to Their sitting room, where They offered him a very nice sitting place and water for washing his feet. They also worshiped him with a suitable presentation of honey mixed with other ingredients. When Akrūra was thus comfortably seated, Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma offered Him a cow in charity and then brought very palatable dishes, and Akrūra accepted them. When Akrūra finished eating, Balarāma gave him betel nut and spices, as well as pulp of sandalwood, just to make him more pleased and comfortable. The Vedic system of receiving a guest was completely observed by Lord Kṛṣṇa Himself to teach all others how to receive a guest at home. It is a Vedic injunction that even if a guest is an enemy he should be received so well that he does not apprehend any danger from the host. If the host is a poor man, he should at least offer a straw mat as a sitting place and a glass of water to drink. Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma welcomed Akrūra in a way just befitting his exalted position.
Your energies, whether in the shape of demigods, human beings or lower animals, enter into You, and all immediate and remote causes of the cosmic manifestation rest in You without distinctive features of existence. Ultimately, there is no possibility of distinction between You and any other thing on an equal level with You or subordinate to You. You are simultaneously the cause of this cosmic manifestation and its ingredients as well. You are the Supreme Whole, one without a second. In the phenomenal manifestation there are three stages: the stage of consciousness, the stage of semiconsciousness in dreaming, and the stage of unconsciousness. But Your Lordship is transcendental to all these different material stages of existence. You exist, therefore, in a fourth dimension, and Your appearance and disappearance do not depend on anything beyond Yourself.
Take, for example, an earthen pot. It is nothing but a combination of earth, water, air, fire and sky. It is always of the same physical composition, whether in its beginning, during its existence or after its annihilation. When it is created, the earthen pot is made of earth, water, fire, air and sky, while it remains it is the same in composition, and when it is broken and annihilated its different ingredients are conserved in different parts of the material energy. Similarly, at the creation of this cosmic manifestation, during its maintenance and after its dissolution, everything is but a different manifestation of My energy. And because the energy is not separate from Me, it is to be concluded that I am existing in everything.
With firm faith in his sons, he addressed Them thus: “My dear Kṛṣṇa, You are the sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha (Bs. 5.1) Supreme Personality of Godhead. And my dear Balarāma, You are Saṅkarṣaṇa, the master of all mystic powers; therefore I have now understood that You are eternal. Both of You are transcendental to this material manifestation and to its cause, the Supreme Person, Mahā-Viṣṇu. You are the original controller of all. You are the resting place of this cosmic manifestation. You are its creator, and You are also its creative ingredients. You are the master of this cosmic manifestation, and actually this manifestation is created for Your pastimes only.
A mountain is a gigantic form of the combination of these five elements, and a small earthen pot is made of the same elements, but in a smaller quantity. Therefore all material items, although in different shapes or different quantities, are of the same ingredients. Similarly, the living entities—beginning from Lord Kṛṣṇa and including millions of Viṣṇu forms, and also the living entities in different forms, from Lord Brahmā down to the small ant—are all of the same spiritual quality. Some are great in quantity, and some are small, but qualitatively they are of the same nature. It is therefore confirmed in the Upaniṣads that Kṛṣṇa, or the Supreme Lord, is the chief among all living entities and that He maintains them and supplies them with all necessities of life.
The Māyāvādī philosophers conclude that because the material nature has no existence in the beginning and is nonexistent after dissolution, it is false. But by the example of the earthen pots and dishes the Vedic version is presented: although the existence of the particular by-products of the Absolute Truth is temporary, the energy of the Supreme Lord is permanent. The earthen pot or water jug may be broken or transformed into another shape, such as that of a dish or bowl, but the ingredient, or the material basis, namely the earth, continues to be the same. The basic principle of the cosmic manifestation is always the same: Brahman, or the Absolute Truth; therefore, the Māyāvādī philosophers' theory that it is false is certainly only a mental concoction.
How God is unlimited in His expansion of energies and activities can be roughly calculated by any sane and sober living entity. It is said in the Vedic literature that innumerable universes issue forth when Mahā-Viṣṇu exhales in His yoga-nidrā and that innumerable universes enter His body when He inhales. We have to imagine that these universes, which according to our limited knowledge are expanded unlimitedly, are so great that the gross and subtle ingredients—the five elements of the cosmic manifestation, namely earth, water, fire, air and sky, along with the total material energy and false ego—are not only within the universe but cover the universe in seven layers, each layer ten times bigger than the previous one. In this way, each and every universe is very securely packed, and there are numberless universes.
Nature and the living entities are sometimes designated as prakṛti and puruṣa respectively. The whole cosmic manifestation is an amalgamation of prakṛti and puruṣa. Nature is the ingredient cause, and the living entities are the effective cause. These two causes combine together, and the effect is this cosmic manifestation. When one is fortunate enough to come to the right conclusion about this cosmic manifestation and everything going on within it, he knows it to be caused directly and indirectly by the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. It is concluded in the Brahma-saṁhitā, therefore, īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ / anādir ādir govindaḥ sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam (Bs. 5.1). After much deliberation and consideration, when one has attained the perfection of knowledge, one comes to the conclusion that Kṛṣṇa, or God, is the original cause of all causes.
Renunciation Through Wisdom
In the Bhagavad-gītā (14.27) Lord Kṛṣṇa says, "And I am the basis of the impersonal Brahman, which is the constitutional position of ultimate happiness." This verse unequivocally declares that Brahman is Lord Kṛṣṇa's bodily effulgence. Since Lord Kṛṣṇa is the source of Brahman, devotional service to Lord Kṛṣṇa establishes the true meaning of sarvaṁ khalv idaṁ brahma. A sacrifice is properly performed only when all the sacrificial ingredients—the offerings, the fire, the ghee, and so on—become spiritualized, or reach the stage of Brahman, by their contact with Lord Kṛṣṇa. And since the performance of sacrifice culminates in the manifestation of real love for Lord Viṣṇu, loving devotional service to Lord Viṣṇu is the very best form of sacrifice. Such a stage can be also described as total absorption in Brahman.
The karma-yogīs, who are always meditating on the Supreme, never see these outer coverings of the soul, but rather the pure soul proper. This is true equal vision in relation to the Supreme. The karma-yogīs perceive that all elements and objects in this world are materials for the Supreme Lord's worship and that all living entities are eternal servitors of Lord Kṛṣṇa. One attains the purest stage of equal vision when one ceases to take into consideration the outer covering of the soul, the body, but rather is established in the soul's innate nature of serving the Lord. In this stage one engages all things in devotional service to the Supreme Lord by using them as ingredients for sacrifice to please Lord Viṣṇu.
Lord Kapila, the son of Devahūti, is a different person altogether from the agnostic Kapila. Lord Kapila is accepted as an empowered incarnation of the Supreme Godhead. In the Bhagavad-gītā Lord Kṛṣṇa refutes the atheist Kapila's Sāṅkhya philosophy and its contention that the unmanifested soul is nonexistent. In the Gītā (7.4) Lord Kṛṣṇa also establishes that the material ingredients are all under His control and supervision:
- bhūmir āpo 'nalo vāyuḥ
- khaṁ mano buddhir eva ca
- ahaṅkāra itīyaṁ me
- bhinnā prakṛtir aṣṭadhā
Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and false ego—all together these eight comprise My separated material energies.
Who is Lord Kṛṣṇa, and what is His original form? Unless one knows about His opulence, potencies, fame, beauty, knowledge, and renunciation, one can never enter into the realm of pure devotional service.
The above-mentioned eight ingredients make up the material nature, or the Supreme Lord's external potency. These material ingredients—earth, water, fire, air, and so on—are devoid of any free will, and so they are known as the Lord's inferior energy. By contrast, the potency that activates the inferior energy is known as the Lord's superior energy, or spiritual potency. On principle the energy cannot be the enjoyer; nor can one energy enjoy another energy. Energy is the enjoyed, and the energetic is the enjoyer.
From the foregoing one can understand that this massive cosmic creation, with its innumerable planetary systems and heavenly bodies, has come about only through the interference of some superior and powerful consciousness. It is beyond doubt that matter is inert, incapable of voluntary action, and that consciousness has activated the twenty-four material ingredients so as to exhibit variegatedness in material nature. All this goes to prove the inherent insufficiency and imperfections in material nature. Thus transcendental happiness is possible only in spiritual variegatedness.
The material body, made up of material ingredients such as earth, water, fire, and air, is mortal. Similarly, because this material universe is an amalgam of earth, water, fire, air, etc., it is also transitory. But the spirit soul (which, incidently, has never been duplicated in the laboratory despite repeated efforts) is imperishable, as is its natural, eternal home—the kingdom of God. The process that takes the eternal soul to his eternal home is called sanātana-dharma, or "the eternal religion."
The Vaikuṇṭha planets are a manifestation of the Lord's internal potency, while the material world is a manifestation of His external potency. Since the Supreme Lord is the master of all energies, it is an irrefutable fact that He is in full control of both the spiritual and material worlds. The perfect analogy is an earthen pot: What is needed to manufacture an earthen pot are clay, a potter's wheel, and a potter. The clay is the material, or ingredient cause of the pot, the wheel is the instrumental or efficient cause, and the potter is the prime cause. Similarly, while the material energy is both the ingredient and efficient cause of this cosmic creation, the Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa, is the prime cause. Like a shadow, the material energy works strictly in accordance with the Supreme Lord's dictates.
According to the Vedas and the sages, the five gross elements are earth, water, fire, air, and ether. Material nature is produced from a combination of false ego (ahaṅkāra), the ingredients of the material energy (mahat-tattva), and the cause of the mahat-tattva (prakṛti). There are five knowledge-gathering senses and five working senses. The mind is the internal sense, the sixth knowledge-gathering sense. Form, taste, smell, touch, and sound are the five sense objects.
We have already enumerated these material ingredients in our description of the Sāṅkhya philosophy of the atheist Kapila. The kṣetra, or "field," is the combination of the twenty-four ingredients mentioned above. When these twenty-four ingredients interact the result is the transformation of material nature, which gives rise to the gross material body composed of five gross elements (pañca-mahābhūta), as a result of material desires, hate, enjoyment, lamentation, and so on. The shadow of consciousness in the form of mind and will are transformations of that field.
If the countless living entities were all-pervading and possessed forms that never changed, You could not possibly be their absolute ruler, O immutable one. But since they are Your localized expansions and their forms are subject to change, You do control them. Indeed, that which supplies the ingredients for the generation of something is necessarily its controller because a product never exists apart from its ingredient cause. It is simply illusion for someone to think that he knows the Supreme Lord, who is equally present in each of His expansions, since whatever knowledge one gains by material means must be imperfect.
The mahat-tattva, the material nature, manifests itself in twenty-four ingredients: 1) the unmanifest principle, 2) false ego, 3) intelligence, 4) mind, 5) ether, 6) air, 7) fire, 8) water, 9) earth, 10) sound, 11) touch, 12) form, 13) taste, 14) smell, 15) ears, 16) skin, 17) eyes, 18) tongue, 19) nose, 20) mouth, 21) hands, 22) feet, 23) anus, 24) genitals.
Message of Godhead
Now, if we want to acquire transcendental knowledge, our first duty will be to understand that the spirit soul is eternal truth. The external ingredients, the body and the mind which develop around the spirit soul, are all relative or partial truths. In the second chapter of Bhagavad-gītā, the Personality of Godhead explains this fact elaborately:
"The spirit soul which pervades this body is eternal, and thus one should understand that no one can destroy the eternal, ever-existing spirit soul. Although this material body is subject to annihilation, the proprietor of the body is eternal. Therefore, O scion of Bharata, knowing this eternal truth, you can go on with your fighting engagement."
Light of the Bhagavata
All of us living beings are differentiated expansions of the Lord, but our affection for the Lord is submerged within us, artificially covered by the material quality of ignorance. Spiritual culture is meant to revive this natural affection of the living being for the Lord. The ingredients of fire are already present in safety matches, and only mild friction is needed to ignite a fire. Similarly, our natural affection for the Lord has to be revived by a little culture. Specifically, we have to receive the messages of the Lord with a purified heart.
According to Vedic culture, learned men consider all natural products, such as food grains, fruits, flowers, and milk, to be God-sent. No one can manufacture these things in man-made factories, however scientifically advanced people may be. People can make preparations of such God-sent foodstuffs, but they cannot manufacture the natural ingredients. Spiritually cultured men, therefore, feel obliged to the Lord when they get sufficient natural foodstuffs by the grace of the Lord.
| Page Title: | Ingredient (Other Books) |
| Compiler: | Mayapur, Serene |
| Created: | 07 of Oct, 2011 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=32, Lec=0, Con=0, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 32 |