Swami Tripurari: To Always Feel the Presence of the Guru

Student: Prabhupada made the statement that he always felt the presence of his guru and that his guru was always with him. So I was wondering if you could explain what that means.

Swami Tripurari: Prabhupada once told me that on one occasion. It was in 1977. Prabhupada had fallen ill and he was in Mayapur where the festival was. And the festival was two weeks in Mayapur and two weeks in Vrindavan. Prabhupada couldn't come down and give the lectures and so at a certain point it became clear that he was not going to proceed on to Vrindvan for the rest of the festival.

So I went to see him and I told him that I wasn't planning on going to Vrindvan for half of the festival. And he looked at me with rather large eyes and said, "Why not?" And I said, "Well, because you are not going to the festival and you are Vrindvan. You are the festival as far as I am concerned." And Prabhupada had told me personally there, in Mayapur, several years earlier during the first Mayapur/Vrindavan festival that, "You should travel all year long and preach and then spend one month with me in Mayapur and Vrindvan", I reminded him of that.

So he appreciated the sentiment, to be sure, but then he said, "No, you are a preacher and you should go and preach to the devotees there." And he said, "Practically I never feel the absence of my spiritual master." And then he said, "Just like in Bhagavad-gita. Krsna spoke in Bhagavad-gita many thousands of years ago. He's not here but if you read the Bhagavad-gita then we feel his presence there." He was emphasizing the point that presence is not necessarily dependent on physical proximity.

One day Sridhara Maharj was sitting on his veranda. After the discussion, and devotees got up to leave, one fellow from another institution who was there visiting made an effort to touch the feet of Sridhara Maharaj. There was a bit of commotion, a kind of falling over people and other stuff like that. And Sridhara Maharaj was like, "What was going on?" He was about ninety-percent blind at the time. And then it became apparent to him what was happening. And he said, "Oh, so that is what you think it means to touch the lotus feet of the guru." And then he elaborated that it was not necessarily a physical thing but that proximity is determined on the basis of consciousness.

Prabhupada used to give an example of an insect like a fly that might happen to land on his lap and how it was in much greater physical proximity to himself than those of us who were sitting at a distance but that we were closer to him by consciousness, hopefully. And lifetimes closer...

The dham, it is said, has this covering, prodamaya. So people stand on the covering. They really don't enter the dham. Therefore you go to the dham and you say, 'Who are all of these people? They are supposed to be in love with Krsna.' Some of their character might be questionable. I remember once going to Radha Kunda parikrama with a group of devotees and one fellow from Radha Kund came up to us and said, "I am vrijabasi." It is said in the scriptures that the vrijabasis are worshipable and so forth. His idea of, 'I am a vrijabasi. I am born in the vraj. Give me money. Otherwise you can't go around Radha Kund, it is quoted in the scriptures.' It was very unbecoming and off-putting and so forth. He was very loud about. 

So I said, 'Let me cite another something from the scriptures for you. Trinad api sunichena, trinad api sahishnuna...', Mahprabhu's third verse of the Siksastakam about humility, tolerance, not expecting honor for oneself, and so forth. But he had no ear for it whatsoever, he just kept going on and on. And so finally I called to one of my Indian disciples, he wasn't a vrijabasi but I pretended he was. I said, "So and so, come here, vrijabasi.", and I gave him a donation and then we went on. 

So, there's an example of someone who is standing on the surface but not entering in. It's a plane of consciousness, Vrindavan, it's not a physical location. There is a facsimile of a physical location. The earthly Vrindavan. But if we study about that we see that it is not a physical location, not just limited to a geographical area, it's a consciousness. Rupa Goswami says it's one of five very powerful limbs of bhakti; sadhu-sanga, nam kirtan, hearing the Bhagavatam, then to worship the deity, to live in Vrindavan. So of them, one of them is to live in Vrindavan. About it, in his commentary he says that if you cannot live there in a geographical sense live there in the mind...He means a meditative mind. 

If you want to call the mental world the subjective world, filled with approximations of what the objective world is like all jumbled together and so forth, beyond that is the super-subjective plane, which is the world of God. I would liken it to the daydream of God. This world is kind of the night dream of God. This is where Vrindavan exists. To go there is more than purchasing a plane ticket. Therefore, it is said also about visiting the dham, what constitutes  visiting the dham? The Bhavagatam tell us...that going there and not taking advantage of sadhu-sanga is to not go there at all. It is like to have the mentality of a cow or an ass. So to go there is to have sadhu sanga, in a sense. Of course the two are differentiated as well, sadhu sanga and to live in a holy place, but the two are co-related in this way. So, what the sadhus are speaking about, the environment that they create by their consciousness, this is what we want to enter into. That is what Prabhupada meant when he said that, 'I never felt the absence of my guru. I am following his instructions.' 

So he was telling me, 'You go there, you are a preacher. You should preach Bhagavad-gita. And what to speak of always feeling my presence, you will always feel Krsna's presence. And so there is no question of not being with me if you are involved in this type of enterprise.' He said, 'Your name is Tripurari so you have to defeat all the demons.' Tripurari is a name for Lord Siva. The Bhagavatam is powered by Krsna to deal with the very difficult situation created by...three flying cities that were defeating the gods. And when there was no hope, Siva was called. And by the power of Krsna he became the enemy of the three cities and prevailed. 'So,' he said, 'Just like that. You should defeat all of the demons by preaching Bhagavad-gita. And preach to the devotees. The devotees are going there, you should go. I will be with you.'

So, this is the idea. And that, really in one sense, is how Sridhara Maharaj schooled us on Srila Prabhupada's disappearance from the world. We were left there homeless, so to speak, parent-less in a way. And, fortunately by Prabhupada's grace, he had opened the door to the association of Sridhara Maharaj and we went through the opening. But he schooled us this way with regard to the disappearance of Prabhupada. On how it creates an opportunity to connect with the guru on another level. There is a necessity now that has arisen in that circumstance and what we have learned and gathered, now it has come to be tested. And so it is all part of the instruction coming from Krsna who arranges the guru, brings the manifestation of the guru and takes him away."

An excerpt from Swami Tripurari's lecture titled: Q&A: To Always Feel the Presence of the Guru

Swami Tripurari: Love, Reason and the Question Why

Swami Tripurari: Love, Reason and the Question Why

An Excerpt from a lecture titled: "Intoxicated by the Bhagavatam"

The end of knowing is loving. Love, it's said, knows no reason. There's good reason to believe that idea. We see it practically in everyday life. People fall in love and  they cast reason to the side. That's not usually a good idea.

But should we do away with love then altogether in the name of reason? Reason is such a stifling type of guide under which to proceed. If we proceed, that's to say, under the guidance  of reason then we proceed with caution. Do you follow? Just like now you listen to me with some caution. (laughter) Will I find it successful? That I will be able to arrest your reasoning power. That futile exercise, really, for arriving at comprehensive knowing. The knowing that will satisfy you.

What is use of knowledge only as much as it makes us happy? Knowledge informs action, an action by which we can become perfectly happy, that's what we are interested in. Again, loving is knowing. But we listen without reason. If I can arrest your reason then I can go into your heart. A saintly person has to speak two languages. They have to speak the language of love and they have to be able to translate it into reason for our sake because as humans it is said  we speak the language of reason.

We are supposed to be rational animals. It's often thought that that is what distinguishes us from the less complex forms of life. Of course, from the school of the bhagavat and vedanta, gaudiya vedanta, this kind of love vedanta, bhakti vedanta, we think that human life is distinguished not from the less complex forms of life merely by the fact it has intellect and can reason but rather that it can love and it can reason... And it can engage in a methodology that transcends reason. A transrational method, if you will. It will afford a kind of knowing that reasoning never will. Just like if you want to analyze an apple and all that it is constituted of is your intellect. What will you know about an apple without knowing what it tastes like?

So love doesn't answer to reason. That's a problem in the world in one sense. But does that mean that we should forgo love and live a reasoned-ruled life alone? Should we erect an altar and place reason there? Certainly not...Rather we think that as there is love that is not well-reasoned so there is love that is well-reasoned. So, as I said, this book [Srimad Bhagavatam] in particular is a book about love, about intoxication. Love is intoxicating. But it has a foundation. a philosophical foundation, that if we look at it carefully we see that it is speaking about what we call wise love.

Love is so close to us. Our heart beats for that, we could say. And if our heart doesn't beat then what is our life? We move really in pursuit of love. We cannot rest until we find love. And when we find love, then, you can only rest for a moment. And love has a movement of its own. An orbit of its own, so to speak. That is also disconcerting, one that we don't want to get out of at the same time. It has its ups and downs like a roller coaster but you don't want to get off. It has a movement, as they say, of its own. And that movement serves to retire the necessity to think and to know with the head and to reason and so forth. And so we sense, as human beings, that if we look deeply at it I believe, that a reason-ruled life may be better than a life that's not ruled by reason at all. But the full exercise of reason leads us to believe that a reason-ruled life is also incomplete. Imperfect. It's a very stuffy kind of a life in which we would proceed with reason as our guide with caution.

I'll give you an example. Let's say you go to the store and you want to buy something to eat. Then sometimes you look at the label, right? Because you want to know what's in it. So before tasting it you are proceeding with caution and want to see what's there. Before letting your tongue go to taste it you want to know about it. Now when you are with friends, and people you love, and they offer you something to eat you don't question what's in it because you are at home and you are not proceeding with caution. The homeland of the heart is one in which we can proceed without caution. This is what is talked about in the Bhagavatam. This is what the book centers on. A land that is not ruled by reason, neither by senses.

We may differentiate ourselves from less complex forms of life because we find in addition an increment that is greater and noticeable of intellect then what we find in less complex forms of life, like among the birds and animals and so forth. They tend to be ruled, we see, by their senses. They don't have the problems we have. The philosophical problems we have. They don't have the question, "why".

Why is a terrible question. Why? Because it cannot be answered by the very thing that is troubled by it, by our reason. The "why" of ourselves is that unit  aspect of our being that gives value. Consciousness gives value and meaning to things that otherwise would have no meaning. Do you follow me? Matter wouldn't matter if it didn't matter to you. If matter mattered dependent of consciousness who would know about it? Who would care about it?

So "why" is a huge and troublesome question for humans. As troublesome as we try to answer it with reason alone. Reason is good but reason alone, itself, would be problematic. Why is that so? Well, in less complex forms of life this question "why" doesn't arise. The "how" question arises. How to eat, how to sleep, how to protect oneself, how to mate. These are questions in less complex forms of life, among the beasts. And we find that nature has an answer to those questions that is tailored-made for every species. Every species, for example, has a built-in system of protection. If you are a skunk you raise your tail. If you are a tiger you growl and pounce. Take the best defense is a good offense approach . So you know all the species of nature, other than the human species,  find built-in systems for protection. In other words, nature is answering a question that nature can answer. It's a natural question. How shall I protect  my  body and my biological sense of life? The question arises and it pertains to nature and biology and nature answers it. The other questions like, "what shall I eat?" "how should I maintain my body and be healthy?", these are other natural questions of the natural world. So nature answers that question. How about mating? That's also, as glorious as we think it is, a question of the natural world. So nature answers the question. We see in all species of life there's an answer when to mate, who to mate with and what are the consequences. And you got to deal with them...

We, on the other hand, as humans are very bewildered about these things but we call ourselves the more complex forms of life. (laughter) How to eat? How to sleep? How to mate? How to defend ourselves? These are huge questions for human society. But I would venture to say that the reason that they are such troublesome questions that are so easily and readily answered by less complex forms of life, they are more difficult and troubling for us despite our advanced intelligence in comparison, because our intelligence is meant to ponder another question that doesn't arise in the animal kingdom. That is the question of "why".

Our intelligence is meant to ponder why to a point and then short out, so to speak. Why means, "Why am I?". That is a different quality of question. "Why am I? What is the purpose? What is the meaning? Why am I here?" Why is a question nature cannot answer because nature is not asking the question. Who is asking the question? That is what comes to the surface, to the fore, in human life that really makes us different from the other species of life.

The fact that we are really a unit of consciousness rather than in a particular dress, if you will, of matter, whether it be an animal dress, or a bird dress, or a plant dress, or a human dress, according to the Bhagavatam, the book I am speaking on, it is said that matter steers consciousness but it doesn't give rise to it.  It is ontologically different. It steers consciousness means like if you are in a Volkswagan and you are in a BMW, then your car is different. The driver is the same, let us say. Has the same capacity to step on the gas, step on the brake, but the car limits how fast you will go. Or how well you will brake. So, in this analogy I am saying the self is a unit of consciousness and matter that surrounds it for certain reasons, I don't know if we will get to that but we call it karma, steers consciousness to some extent. So according to the vehicle that consciousness finds itself in it can go faster or it has to lag behind and go slower. To go faster here means it can understand itself. The driver can know itself.

Human life affords us that opportunity. Indeed, it's undeniable. We are talking about it. We are here gathered to discuss something along these lines. "Why am I? What is the meaning?" We think there is meaning and purpose to life. Indeed all human beings conduct themselves in this way. Even those who argue that there is no meaning to life, only atoms are bumping up against one another, strive to assert that this is the meaning of life. That life has no meaning. They are pressed to write books about it.

We are actually, according to the Bhagavatam, units of meaning and value. In other words we posit value on matter, otherwise it wouldn't matter. And value is a quality question it's not a quantity question. So, why? Is there an overarching purpose? These questions arise universally in human society. Freud, who was stunned by it, called it the "oceanic experience". 'My patients come and speak to me about the oceanic experience.', he called it. That they feel that there's more to life. He said, 'I can't quite get that.' I'm thinking he must have gotten a little bit.

We would say the more human we are the more this question about more, there must be more than what meets the eye in the mind, we feel that way. That's why in human life we try to do more. Fish don't try to fly in the sky too hard or too high. They do jump a little bit. And birds don't try to go to the bottom of the ocean. We try to fly high in the sky. We try to go to the bottom of the ocean. We try to do everything that every species of life can do. Because why? Because we feel we should be able to do all of those things.

The Bhagavatam says why you feel like that. Because those are things that consciousness can do and are limited to according to the steering mechanism they find themselves in. In other words, birds can only fly in the sky. They can do other things, but they can only fly in the sky because they are steered by their particular embodiment. And fish to the bottom of the ocean. But in human life, the fact that the consciousness that is the driver really is not the vehicle is coming to the fore and it feels itself. It feels like 'I can do anything'. There are no limitations. We feel that there are no limitations. It's not biologically correct to think that. That's erroneous. There's nothing in Darwinian evolutionary theory that says that human beings have unlimited exploratory power to understand everything. ...Biologically it is the opposite. We have limits. That's why we are humans. If there were no limits what would we be? There are certain limits that are packed into it that says, "That will be a human." It's going to have certain limits and a certain scope of possibilities and so forth.

So, biologically we are limited. We think that with the advent of modern science that we are now equipped with unlimited exploratory power but the history of modern science shows us quite the opposite. We are at a loss, really, to explain the natural world in the detail we thought we could.... For example in the scientific revolution there was mechanistic, objective, concrete thinking... The idea that motion requires contact. I touch something, it goes. Newton found out that large things attract small things, and people thought, "What are you reintroducing the occult?". There's no contact. It's called gravity. Large masses attract smaller masses. 'Well, okay, but why?' Why? That's not explained. He thought, "It will be, someday, later." But it never has been.

If you go through the history of science you find that on certain levels we just deny things and the machine of nature becomes more and more abstract and less and less concrete. And what we are left with really, in one sense, is what we really know, is that we are conscious. That we know. What else we know about the world, it's all a kind of intellectual exercise, but actual knowing that's another thing.

So, biologically we have limitations but we feel as though we have no limitations. That feeling is coming from the fact that we are not biological. Consciousness is not biological in its makeup. Do you follow me? One of the questions that modern science has been unable to answer by its own admission is-What is the biological makeup of consciousness?

From the Bhagavat we would answer that, first of all, there seems to be a bias to your question. Who says that it has to be biological in makeup? Somebody told me the other day, "The problem with you spiritual people is that you can't think freely." I said, "Why not?". He said, "Because first of all you start with a premise that there is God, or a soul, number one. Whereas in science, in naturalism, we don't start with any premise like that. And two, you cannot challenge authority. You have your guru, you have your texts, you have to follow it. So, you can't think freely."

I replied, among other things, that thinking has its limitations. There is no free thinking in its entirety, as I've explained. The capacity of the human, biologically speaking, is limited. Like every other species of life. Don't think that rats, or cockroaches, at some point are going to understand you. Something that is just a simple problem to humans, to them it is a mystery that they could not conceive because they are not biologically constituted in such a way that they can even consider the questions.

And so as I say, biologically speaking the same holds true for human beings. That's the reasonable conclusion. And so it is a folly to think that you can think freely in the full sense of the term and thereby know everything. That you have unlimited explanatory power. And secondly, ...naturalism, we call it metaphysical naturalism, it begins with the belief that there is nothing supernatural. We begin with the belief that there is something supernatural, and it's you. It's very complimentary.

You are not part of the natural world. You are supernatural. You have a role in the natural world and as a supernatural entity, consciousness, you have a role in the natural world to supervise, if you will, the natural world and tend to her in such a way that you won't be violating and pillaging her. And that she will then work with you in pursuit of your realization and experience of the theory in yoga, vedanta, of spiritual traditions worth their salt, so to speak. That you are supernatural, you are consciousness, you are not matter. It's a super idea. If there is anything in the world that most resembles God what would it be? It would be you. In terms of you being consciousness.

...We turn on material nature, we animate matter...Yes, biologically you have to die but luckily we are not biological in our makeup. To ask, "What is the biological makeup of consciousness?", is to begin with a prejudice. With a presupposition that everything is matter. The better question would be, "Is there a biological makeup to consciousness?" Let's think freely here. So there is as much free thinking in spirituality, theology in some sense but mostly mysticism. There is more free thinking or as much as there is in a non-theistic approach.

And, second complain was, "In your spiritual traditions you can't think freely because you have to answer to authority. The guru says no, you have to say no." That's not true. It's not true. What do I mean by that? You look and see, you take the sacred texts that I am speaking about, for example, vedanta, and there are many interpretations of that. Nuanced interpretations very rich in their differences. They are reading from the same authoritative texts,if you will, and drawing different meanings. There is a base agreement among the mystics.  Even within Hinduism there are so many different types of  approaches to transcendence and notions of what it constitutes that they think that's a problem. Who is right? What's our answer? They are all right. Such is the nature of the subject. If you look at it on one side like a valuable jewel, it has many facets. By different approaches, we look at it in one way and from another way and it shows itself in different ways.

They are all right if, that is, they stand on the common ground of the idea that consciousness itself is foundational and different from matter. That is the ground of being. We could stand on it, we could sit on it, quietly, shanti shanti shanti, and rest there and love to exist and know that I don't have to die. And have no fear, can you imagine having no fear? No anxiety? ...


We don't know the extent to which we exist if we don't all of that will end. So we can love to exist in the real and full sense of the term but there is also the possibility of existing to love. That means not sitting on the ground of being but dancing on the ground of being. This is what this Bhagavatam speaks about. Dancing on the ground of being...

We are talking about consciousness and the difference between consciousness and matter and the fact that human life is meant to explore the question why and human life is the question why. The answer doesn't come from nature. Where does it come from? It doesn't come from nature because it is not a question about our biological self, how to eat, how to sleep, how to mate, how to defend. It's, "Why?".

Why am I? The natural world says, "I don't have the answers but I can show you where you can get them." Material nature pushes us in the direction of our own consciousness source, if you will. And a beautiful manifestation of that is these sacred texts. They are called revelation.

...It is said about those persons who are intoxicated by this book Bhagavatam, and all that it says, it says about them that they forgot to eat, they forgot to sleep, they forgot to mate. They were preoccupied with "why". They reasoned about it and they came to certain conclusions based on their experiences. They came to the conclusion that reason has its limits. They came to the conclusion that experiential reality is diametrically opposed, or the antithesis, of non-experiential reality. Do you understand what I am saying?

Matter is a non-experiential reality. We are a unit of experiential reality. What is the difference between experience and non-experience? Can you measure it? Will experience come out of non-experience do you think? Is it logically possible that experience will come out of non-experience? Do you think that at any point while playing pool that eight ball will say "ouch"? Or say, "Could you put a little more chalk on that thing?" (laughter) We don't expect that do we?

You laugh at that. It is laughable but some people are teaching that by way of saying who you are and the feelings and experiences that you have, it's just something in the brain. We haven't found it yet but we are going to find it...You have to understand that neurons of the brain are made from the exact things that pool balls are made of. They are not made of anything different. There is no different

We are subjective, spiritual reality. Matter is objective, non-experiential reality. Don't try to objectify subjective. That's a folly  You can say, "I'm dead", but does it make any sense? Think about it. If I say I'm dead you say, "Yeah, you are ridiculous too." That's laughable. That is called in philosophy a preformative contradiction. You can't say that you are dead. That is not rational. So to say that consciousness is not foundational is the same thing because you need consciousness to say consciousness is not foundational. You cannot deny the primacy of consciousness because it requires consciousness to do that. You cannot get away from it.

The fact that consciousness is so difficult to define and explain is no reason to think that it is less tangible or meaningful. It is the very basis of all meaning. The fact that it cannot be defined is because there is nothing that it compares to. We define things by comparison. There is nothing it compares to because the whole of the natural world, if you will, is non-experiential reality. And experiential reality is entirely different than non-experiential reality. And the one experiential reality cannot come out of non-experiential reality. So they are ontologically different. This is the difference between your self and your brain. It is said in the Gita, it is said most things are done by the brain. That's what it says. But it also says, but you are not a brain.  Many things we think we do are actually done by the brain. But you are not a brain.

What the brain doesn't do is produce experiential existence which cannot be produced. Why? Because experiential reality cannot come out of experiential reality as we've concluded. And matter is constituted of non-experiential reality. We know all material things are governed by time and space. So if consciousness is ontologically different than matter, it doesn't arise out of matter which is constrained by time and space, it means consciousness is not constrained by time and space. That means it didn't begin at any point and it won't end at any point. And that's us. We better get used to one another because nobody is going anywhere. (laughter). It's a hard lesson to learn.

...So, the question why, these questions they can't be answered by nature. They are answered by consciousness. Consciousness means this form of revelation is an expression. The books are dealing with consciousness. These rishis concluded the thing worth thinking about, or pursuing, or reasoning about as far as reason goes, is "What is the nature of consciousness?" They were not very concerned about what is the nature of the natural world so they spoke about it in ways that appear to us in the modern time like they were uninformed about the natural world. No, they were not that interested in the natural world. They only saw the natural world as useful in terms of how you could interact with it or think about it such that it would help foster understanding of the subjective world. Consciousness.

We study, for example Bhagavatam, it speaks about the natural world but if you look carefully you will see it speaks about it in such a way that by thinking about it in that way it will help to understand and pursue the idea that you are not part of the natural world. You are supernatural. You could have a role, as I said, in relation to the natural world. It's a super role. As an overseer and so forth, and only as much as you understand and realize and experience you are supernatural.

Can you really be a steward of the world, which is such a popular idea today, and not exploit and be involved in the pillaging and raping of the earth, for example, which is a positive theme we don't want to be part of? Only as much as we've understood the difference between ourselves and the natural world can we be such a steward. To the extent that we are still identified with it is to the extent to which we are going to take from it. We feel we have needs and necessities that are not really intrinsic to ourselves.

So this book, the Bhagavatam, is about all these things. And it really is about thinking a lot to the point of, "Okay, I have to stop thinking." I've come in touch with a fact that thinking is not a way of knowing comprehensively. Loving is the way. That's irrational. What do I mean by that? I mean, not irrational, but it would seem that by giving you would end up with less. Am I right? If you have ten dollars and you give away one you have nine. By the math if you give what you have you end up with less. But our experience in life is that when we give we grow. We get. We cannot say, "I gave, look what I got.", but people will look at you and say you got something. "What is it? I want it." They want what they are, what they see in you that is arising from the giving.

...If you want to understand consciousness you have to be what you are. This is a great challenge. You have to extract yourself from your identification with the objective world and your tendency to objectify the subjective which is backwards thinking. That means that you have to become a giver, a lover, not a taker. As much as we are attached to a material sense of identity we are at a loss of the fullness of who we are. We want to be. We are trying, we are struggling, to be. But you are. But there is a perception when we identify with matter that we may not be if we don't take. We seem to be threatened with the prospect of non-existence so, therefore, we struggle with existence. "One living being is food for another."That's another way of saying that there's a struggle for existence.

We are struggling for existence but according to the vedanta, what we have been talking about, we already exist. Why are we struggling for existence? We struggle to know also. This thought that knowledge will set you free. But we are already a knower. And we are a lover. This is the conclusion of the Bhagavatam. The self, it's a unit of being, it's a unit of knowing and it's a unit of loving. Sat cit ananda. A unit of that. We know, from what we've discussed, that it exists without beginning.