Love of the Soul

Dear Friends,
   The great Sage of the Upanishads, Yajnavalkya said to his wife, Maitreyi, "In truth, it is not for the love of a husband that a husband is dear, but for the love of the soul in the husband that a husband is dear."

One could write volumes on this single statement, it is that deep. Divine Love, otherwise known as Prem in Sanskrit, is infinite and unconditional love. Reasonless love. The Heart never shuts down. It is embraces the Soul that underlies all of creation. This is the only possible way to experience Divine Love. If there is any trace of difference in the mind, then the Heart is not absolutely open to everything. If everything is realized to be the One Soul, then Love is all around and there is nothing but That. With Prem, there is no you and I, not this and that. There is only One Being. One Heart. This Love is incomprehensible to the mind. It is only when the mind is gone that this Love dawns. The mind is the lens through which consciousness is blinded, so that the recognition of One Soul is lost. Therefore, it is a very good thing when you have lost your mind. Divine madness dawns and the Beloved appears everywhere. A person may be in tears all the time because his Beloved is felt in every experience. Imagining a time when you fell romantically in love with someone, and life felt so exciting and vibrant. Why couldn't you sustain that? Wouldn't it be overwhelming to experience this feeling all the time? My Beloved is immanent in all things, and I am lost in the power of this love. I am drowned in the Ocean of Nectar.

The road to Prem means giving up all conceptions of life, all desires, and all the fundamental beliefs we have of Reality. Only then may we enter the realm of the Heart, and the lover and Beloved become One.

At Your Service,
Brian

Devotion gives you wings

Dear Friends,

   Devotion is the combined power of love and dedication. When you love something so much, you will  spend every second of the day thinking about it and serving its cause. My devotion is to Swami Purna, the essence of Truth. That is why I chose to take this journey.

    Truth is important to me. It is the Source of who we are. It is why we exist. Out of Truth comes the qualities of love, peace, and joy. We are all seeking these qualities. We all want permanent happiness. Normal daily thoughts have never given us permanent happiness. And every moment of our existence on this planet has been dominated by thought! We live in a world of thought. This is the Maya, the illusion, the imagination of the mind. The mind can never experience Truth. It is only a filter. The purpose of satsang is to cancel out all thoughts so that we can experience Reality as it is, not as the mind experiences it. We come to satsang to empty our mind, not get more information. As the dualities of our mind dissolve, we disappear and only the Mystery is left.

     Let us devote ourselves to the Mystery. It is the cessation of suffering and the dawn of true Peace. Wouldn't it be nice to no longer be bound by the limits of the mind? Wouldn't it be nice to go to the Great Beyond where no person has gone before? This quest is worth living and dying for. I cling to the feet of His Grace Svami Purna who represents this Presence. By connecting to the mighty Ocean, the drop becomes the Ocean. Let us return to where we came from. Let us go Home. The Beloved is waiting.

With love,

Brian

A Baby likes the Holy Name!

Dear Friends,
   I am staying with Christopher and Kimberly in Opelika, Alabama for 2 weeks. Their child's name is Asha. Asha is 7 months old. Many nights, Asha's crying wakes my body up, and I can feel the grumpiness. "I'm tired, it's loud," says the mind. But she drifts off to sleep quite quickly after someone soothes her. One night at around 2am, she cried for a long time in spite of all the soothing. Perhaps she was sick, perhaps her teeth were hurting. Then Kimberly got desperate. She said, "Will you play the harmonium and chant mantra for her?" I agreed. So she placed Asha on the floor in front of the harmonium and I started to play. Soon she was not crying anymore and her mouth agape, listening to the singing. She appeared to be  stunned. Every time I quieted down, she started to complain again. So I chanted and chanted with Kim for 40 minutes or so. "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare" - the great Mahamantra. And as I chanted, the holy mantra took over the mind and my mood became happier and happier until soon, I was absorbed in the energy. It seemed to be a rather transcendental state. And then Asha was asleep, and she went back to bed, content with the sound of Krishna.
    This was the case with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, an incarnation of Krishna who cried as a baby until everyone started chanting Hari. Then he stopped and smiled happily. His purpose was to teach people to sing the name of Hari all the time, for it would purify the sins of the heart, mind, and soul. Asha was teaching this lesson too. It is beautiful how the mind can move from a grumpy state to a deep meditation within minutes even in the middle of the night. Now I wake up to the crying and pray for Asha's healing, and the mind does not dwell in negativity.
    May the Lord Hari bless our meditations and bring happiness in our lives.

With love,
Brian