When Pralhad Maharaj, the celebrated devotee of the Personality of Godhead Vishnu and the son of Hiranyakashipu the well-known atheist—was a mere boy of five years old, was seen one day by his fellow playmates, chanting the transcendental name of Hari (The Lord). The boys, who were all born of atheist family and thereby known as the children of the Ashuras, asked Prolhad Moharaj a question which is now-a-days a common enquiry by all busy men.
The question was quite plain and simple and it was an enquiry by the children of the Ashuras as to why Prolhad was wasting his valuable time by chanting the name of Hari. They asked him to come out of his place and make an enjoyment of life by fulfilling the utilitarian theory of eat, drink, be merry and enjoy. This was quite a natural thing for the children of the Ashuras because the Ashuras are none but those who know nothing of transcendence but are always busy with the business of material enjoyment.
The symbol of material enjoyment is a combination of gold and cushion and Hiranya-Kashipu was made the King of Ashuras because his very name suggested that he was concerned with only gold and cushion. Gold is the medium of exchange for all material comforts and cushion or soft-padded bedding is the resting place for enjoying women and wine. Hiranya means gold and Kashipu means soft bedding. Hiranya-Kashipu was therefore the King of such materialists who simply cared for gold and cushion and as such he did care little for the Lord or his Name.
But fortunately or unfortunately in order to show to the people of the world that material enjoyment is not the ultimate end of life but the aim of this human form of life is a mission for going back to God and back to home, Prolhad Moharaj who was an empowered incarnation of the Personality of Godhead, as is stated in the Geeta, took his birth in the midst of the most stubborn materialists, as the son of Hiranyakashipu who was atheist and materialist to the bottom of his heart.
The laws of appearance and disappearance of the Almighty Lord or that of His bonafide servants are different from the laws of Nature and both of them are free to make their choice as to where and how they should appear and where and how they should not. Therefore it is not at all astonishing why Prolhad Moharaj should have appeared himself in the family of atheists; thus a struggle between the theist and the atheist began. The clash between the theist and the atheist exists always since the time immemorial and for the reason of this the relation between a theist and an atheist remains always a strained circumstances even if the relation is so intimate as that of between a son and a father: The atheist father Hiranyakashipu tried to kill his only beloved child Prolhad more than once for the only fault of his son’s faith in God. In such a struggle between the theist and the atheist, the theist of course always comes out victorious, that is the verdict of history.
Now to come to our original point, we may say that Prolhad Moharaj, thus being asked by his fellow brethren as to why he was wasting his valuable time in the chanting of the name of Hari generally known as Kirtan,—he replied to his friends in the following words:—
“Brother, we have got this valuable human form of life after crores and crores of evolutionary processes. Thus this life, although temporary and liable to death, is a very valuable asset and in this body of our life only we can attain to the Supreme goal. We should not therefore waste our time even for a moment and must immediately engage ourselves for the attainment of the Prime necessity of life, the object of our material enjoyment being the same in all other forms of life.”
The contention of the friends of Prolhad Moharaj was that the chanting of the name of Hari, may be set aside as a business of old-age recreation. For a body of five years old who is faced with a very bright future of life in the material world, such unusual chanting of the name of Hari is sheer waste of time (?). As a matter of fact if chanting of the Name of Hari is a matter of business for old age recreation, that sort of recreation may not be indulged in even in the old age. But if it is a question of absolute necessity, every man is a born old man and the name of Hari must be taken shelter of as soon as he is able to pronounce the elementary vocabulary. Old age means nearer approach to death and for human life and that especially in the present age of quarrel, there is no certainty as to when a man will die.
Despite all precautions of the state and society, the mortality of man both young and old is taking place at every moment and yet the living ones think that they are immortals (?). That is a fun of the Maya and Prolhad Moharaj wanted to dissipate the illusion of his friends who were all the children of the Ashuras. He said—
“My dear friends, do not be foolish. Material enjoyment you had had enough many a time in your past lives and as such material enjoyment you will have according to your rank and position. But you must try for the supreme goal which was not possible to be performed during your past many lives.” The four principles of material enjoyment are known as eating, sleeping, fearing and sense gratification. The cats, dogs, tigers, ants, serpents, birds and beasts like the man, have all got to enjoy these principles of material enjoyment according to their respective positions. The dog eats something and after eating goes to sleep for sometime. He also fears from the attack of another dog like a man fears from the attack of his enemy. The dog also begets children in the womb of his bitch wife, exactly like the man, and the dog’s family is maintained with equal care as that of a man. But the difference between the dog and the man is that the dog cannot know anything besides those four principles of animal life called material enjoyment, but the man, by dint of his superior consciousness can know, if he tries to know at all, as to what he is, what is this manifested creation, who is the Almighty and what are their inter-relation with one another. The dog cannot make any distinction between a dog and the God because apparently both are composed of the same ingredients namely G. D. & O. But a man in his pure state of consciousness can know that a dog is dog and God is God by the law of identity. God cannot be dog and the dog cannot be God.
A man of developed consciousness can understand that God is great and all other things are His subordinate servitors. He can know that forgetfulness of God is the quality of the dog and therefore a man tries to distinguish himself from the position of a dog simply by trying to know what is God. This process of knowing God the Almighty, varies in different ways by different people according to different country and climate and the standard method by which one tries to approach God or the relation between Him and the man, is generally known as religion. A man who has no such religion may be classed with the dog as he is no better than the latter. It is stated in the scriptures. “Dharmena heena pasuvi samana.”
i.e., a man devoid of religion is just like an animal. As a matter of fact therefore, Prolhad Moharaj was not wasting his time by chanting the name of Hari as seemed to the atheist friends but he was rightly utilising the valuable time of human existence with a view to self-realisation.
When the chanting of the Name of the Lord is done individually or incompletely it is called ‘kirtan’. But all the same Kirtan or Samkirtan is always meant for chanting of the Name of the Lord and never means a debating society of mundane words. Samkirtan is however the greatest common formula of universal religion acceptable in the present age of quarrel, called the ‘Kali yooga’.
In the Puranas it is stated that the process of knowing God, in the Satya yooga or Golden Age, is by concentration and meditation. Men would live during that age for one lac of years and it is said that Mohamuni Valmiki attained siddhi or perfection after 60,000 sixty thousand years of meditation before he was able to compose Ramayana. (So Ramayana is not a mundane poets’ speculation.) The process of knowing God in the Treta-yooga or silver-age, was the performances of big sacrifices such as Aswamedha yajna, that in the Dwapara yooga or Bronze-age, was by worshipment with all paraphernalia and that in the Kali yooga, i.e., in the present age of quarrel (iron-age) the process is by performances of congregational chanting of the names of the Lord. The injunction in the scripture is as follows:—
Kritejat dhyayate Vishnu tretayam yayata makhoin
Dwapare paricharyayam Kaloutat Hari samkirtanat
In the present age of quarrel therefore, when all conclusions are arrived at by an assembly of fighting men, the chance of realisation of the Absolute conclusion is very little by other processes such as, works, knowledge, re-union or meditation except by the process of congregational chanting of the Name of Hari.
About 450 years ago, Lord Chaitanya, the father of Samkirtan movement, appeared Himself in Bengal in the district of Nadia and inaugurated first the system of congregational chanting of the name of the Lord. He made a vigorous transcendental propaganda work for this purpose. As a result of that movement, the whole of Bengal, Orissa and Southern India, was over-flooded with His transcendental propaganda work and many eminent personalities like Rupa and Sanatan the then ministers of the Nawab of Bengal and Ramananda Roy the then governor of Madras and scholars like Vasudeva Sarbabhouma or Sanyasis like Prakashananda Saraswati all became His disciples amongst many other thousands of disciples at that time.
At Benares he converted Prakashananda Saraswati along with his 60,000 (sixty thousand) Mayavadi Sannyasin followers to His cult of Samkirtan. At Allahabad He favoured Ballavacharya at Arail on the other side of Allahabad and at Puri He did so by reclaiming the great scholar of the time namely Vasudeva Sarbabhouma an accredited logician and empiric philosopher of his time. All these combination made Lord Chaitanya’s movement a great success and as a result of that movement the present city of Brindaban in U.P. was excavated by the two Goswamins namely Rupa and Sanatan who were empowered by Lord Chaitanya. Since that time in various parts of India the cult of Samkirtan has spread up like fire and has been accepted as the only process of transcendental realisation by many many saints such as Tukaram in Maharastra and others.
It is said that Saint Tukaram got inspiration of the holy name Hare Krishna by Krishna Chaitanya (Avanga 3875) and since then he flooded the whole of Maharastra and Western India by the Samkirtan movement. In the ‘Chaitanya Bhagwat’ also we can see a foretelling of Lord Chaitanya—that the cult of the Lord will spread in every village and all towns that are on the surface of the Earth. From this foretelling we can hope that the cult of Samkirtan will take very shortly an universal form of religious movement and this universal religion, wherein there is no harm in chanting the Name of the Lord nor there is any question of quarrel,—will continue to years, as we can know from the pages of authoritative scriptures.
The cult of Sree Krishna Chaitanya is as follows:
Harernama Harernama Harernamoiba Kevalam
Kalou Nasteba, nasteba, nasteba gatiranyatha.
i.e., in the age of quarrel, the transcendental Name of Hari (Lord) is only to be chanted and there is no other alternative except this, for transcendental realisation. He has thrice emphasised on the Name of Hari as well as on the word alternative, in order to give on it very strong impression as we generally do by giving stress at least three time on a thing just to give good impression. It should be noted therefore that the process for transcendental realisations recommended for the three periods namely, Satya, Treta, Dwapara will not be feasible in the present age. The people of the present age are short lived and poor in knowledge and poor in material prosperity. They are also corrupted by the association of “Kalee” or the age of quarrel. The symbolic expression of the Age of Kali is represented by the four principles of vices as was observed by Parikshit Moharaj during the first advent of the Age of Kali about 5,000 years ago. The four principles of vices are as follows.
(1) Illegitimate association with woman and unrestricted sexuality.
(2) Unrestricted slaughtering of cows and other minor animals.
(3) Encouragement of drinking and other intoxicating habits.
(4) Mass movements of gambling adventures in all spheres of human activities namely, political, social, economic and religious, etc.
We may also very carefully note that the Age of Kali has passed only 5,000 years after the battle of Kurukshetra which was fought between the Kurus and the Pandavas and just after the disappearance of Lord Krishna from this mortal world. The major portion of the Age of Kali is still unfathomed as according to Hindu Shastras (Law books) the Age of Kali has to prolong more for 4,27,000 of years. The signs of the Age of Kali as mentioned above have already begun to be very prominent even in the very beginning of the age, and we do not know what will happen when the age will be at its full youthful time. Thus we can at least know that for the coming four lacs and twenty-seven thousands of years, no one can check the progressive current of the influence of the Age of Kali represented by the above four principles of vices as no one is able to check the seasonal changes in the duration of a year. The laws of Nature cannot be changed by anyone who is himself under the laws of Nature.
The above four principles of the Age of Kali have spread from the West and as stated in the Scriptures it is spreading its influence on the Eastern horizon too. We may try our utmost by all our resources and inventive powers to check the above forces, by such imaginary actions as Hinduraj, Moslemraj, Non-violence, socialism, communalism, and so forth as the human brain can conceive of—but we are completely helpless in checking the onrush spread of the cult of the Age of Kali, by any conceivable method except by the counterblast, namely congregational chanting of the Name of Hari (The Lord). It is for this reason only that Lord Chaitanya has thrice emphasised the fact,
Kalou Nasteba, Nasteba Nasteba gatiranaath,
So from the onslaught and ravages of the age of Kali, no one will be able to concentrate his mind even for a moment. Even the preliminary processes of meditation (Yoga) will be impossible to perform by any man in the present age. Therefore the processes as was enjoined in the age of Satya, has to be replaced by the process of Harer Namoiba. In the same way no one can perform the great sacrifices which required so much wealth and so much knowledge. The men of the Treta Yooga used to live for 10,000 of years and therefore it was possible for them to accumulate the necessary funds as well as knowledge necessary for the performance of the great sacrifices such as the Aswamedha Yajna, etc. Even it is possible now to accumulate the necessary funds for such sacrifices, it is not possible to find out the required learned Brahmin who could take charge for the performance of such sacrifices, so that the desired result can be had of.
Thus in the present age, we are poor both by funds and knowledge and as such the principles of sacrifices as recommended for the Treta Yooga must be replaced by the principles of Harer Namoiba. In the same way the processes of the Dwapara Yooga has also to be replaced by the principles of Harer Namoiba as ordered by Lord Chaitanya. He has thrice emphasised on the fact as there is no other alternative for the mass emancipation in the Kali Yooga, for the reason that all other methods for bringing peace in the world will always be frustrated by the contamination of the above four principles of the age of Kali.
Lord Chaitanya conducted His transcendental movement strictly according to the injunction of the Shastras (law-books) because that is the qualification of all bonafide Acharyas or authorities, and as such he has most reasonably and scientifically ordered us to chant the Name of the Lord as follows. In the scriptures the Taraka Brahman Names of the Lord in this age are composed of 32 letters and 16 words, symbolised as follows:—
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare.
The chanting of the above sixteen words composed of 32 Sanskrit letters combined together is called the “Mahamantram”. (Moha=great, Man=mind, Tran=deliverance) that is, the great instrument for our deliverance from the clutches of the mental plane. At present we have no information of the transcendental plane or Self-realisation but are hovering over a plane created by the Mind called Manaratha. These sixteen words can alone deliver us from such mental activities.
Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.
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