In2-MeC

IBSA (ISKCON Bhaktivedanta Sadhana Asrama), Govardhana, India
19 December 2003

Human consciousness is capable of being "present" in more than one place at the same time. Someone sits in a chair in his house in modern-day New York as he reads a book about ancient Rome. In terms of the perceptual frame of mind, he is in that chair; in terms of the conceptual frame, he is in Rome of 2100 years ago.

According to Vedic information, a fully-developed human mind can simultaneously work within eight conceptual frames. It is recounted that Vasistha Muni would speak on eight subjects at once in his gurukula. He would begin by teaching a short lesson on the first subject. Then he'd move to the next subject, speak briefly about it, and move to the next and the next until he had spoken on the eighth subject; then he'd return again to the first subject, resuming his talk exactly where he had left off. Once more he would proceed from the first to the eighth subject, then return back to the first, again and again, never losing his place. Such a feat requires a fund of smrti (memory) that we do not have in Kali-yuga.

But still, anyone who has the intelligence to be able to read these words knows very well that we can pass through a subtle door from "this world" of perception into "another world" of conception. . . and from there, we may pass through yet another door into yet another world. Someone in London remembers last year's visit to India, then thinks of a trip he took to Africa the year before. After a while he casts his mind back to his childhood in the Yorkshire Dales. Then he contemplates the future. . .

Not long after I became a devotee, Dr. Richard Alpert, an associate of LSD "guru" Timothy Leary, published a book called Be Here Now under his spiritual name of Baba Ram Dass. (Alpert had taken initiation from a Mayavadi in India. ) This book was a big hit in its time; but what did it teach, really? Animals know very well how to be here now. In human terms, alpha-thinking strives to be here now. A person dedicated to alpha-thinking accepts the momentary data of the senses as all-in-all.

Mayavadis are less intelligent. Less intelligent persons do not know what to do with the creatively powerful human mind. It disturbs them no end. So they try to dull it, to cripple it and make it stupid, by forcing it to be here now--perhaps by some meditative process or by some ultra-materialistic doctrine that the world of sense perception is the only reality. More likely they do it with the aid of a depressent drug like alcohol.

At the other end of the spectrum are the ultras of imagination--the Romantics, Dadaists, Surrealists, fantasists of all description, indulgers in hallucinogenic drugs. Their program is to let the mind roam where it will, to uncork the subconscious and let it flow like wine. These people flirt with insanity.

Why did Krsna give human beings a bi-locatable (or tri-locatable, quatro-locatable, etc. ) mind? Is such a mind "just maya, Prabhu"?

bahya, antara,--ihara dui ta' sadhana
bahye sadhaka-dehe kare sravana-kirtana
mane nija-siddha-deha kariya bhavana
ratri-dine kare vraje krsnera sevana

There are two processes by which one may execute this raganuga bhakti--external and internal. When self-realized, the advanced devotee externally remains like a neophyte and executes all the sastric injunctions, especially hearing and chanting. However, within his mind, in his original purified self-realized position, he serves Krsna in Vrndavana in his particular way. He serves Krsna twenty-four hours, all day and night. [Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu 1. 2. 292]

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