So I will present different aspects of Vaiṣṇavism and I thought to start with the 2-3 minutes that I wrote down to explain exactly what this seminar will be about so that you can follow the line of it, the journey within, so to speak. So let me read it.
Today we will speak about Vaiṣṇavism through three main themes: its history, the path of Bhakti Yoga, and its vision of the cosmos. My own academic field is the history of religions. This means that I approach Vaiṣṇavism as a historical tradition shaped by texts, teachers, practices, institutions, places, and communities over time.
At the same time, we will try to understand some of the tradition's own key concepts from within.
A question that connects all three parts is the question of consciousness.
In Vaiṣṇavism, the human being is not understood only as a body or a mind. The mind thinks, remembers, desires, and reacts, but behind these changing movements there is the ātman, the conscious self, the one who experiences, experiences.
We may think of the mind as a mirror. It reflects many things: emotions, thoughts, memories, fears, and identities, but the reflection is not the one who sees, it's the mirror. Bhakti Yoga is, in one sense, a way of cleaning that mirror, ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam, the first verse by Caitanya Mahāprabhu that he mentioned, ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam was cleaning the mirror, making it clean.
So, cleaning the mirror so that the self can understand its deeper relation to God or Bhagavān.
The seminar has three parts. First, we look at the historical development of Vaiṣṇavism from early texts and the Bhagavad Gītā to Caitanya and the modern Gauḍīya tradition.
Second, we turn to Bhakti Yoga as a lived practice: hearing, chanting, remembrance, service, humility, and surrender.
And the third, we look at Vaiṣṇava cosmology and the Vedic, we call it the Vedic planetarium, the structure of the cosmos. A vision of the universe in which divine presence is not far away, but present within the world and within the heart.
So we move from history to practice to cosmos. But throughout the seminar, the central thread is the same: how Vaiṣṇavism understands consciousness, the self, and its relation to the divine. So that you understand.
And sometimes, I will show more like a map. So I will not be able to present everything because there is a lot of information, but after, if you like, I can send you the PowerPoint presentation so you can connect again for your self-practice afterwards, if it's okay for you.
So, a question about Hinduism, we take the broad umbrella because Vaiṣṇavism is within a large tradition in India. And have you been to India, both of you? Many here? You too have been to India, never? You've never been to India? No.
India has now a population of about 1.4 billion, and they say about 80% are Hindus, 80%. That means almost 1 billion are Hindus.
And there is always a question: what kind of religion is Hinduism? Is it one God or many gods? They call it polytheism.
So, I would say that here, when we speak about Vaiṣṇavism, we have to, let's see if this works, can you see that? No. That doesn't work on that, ah okay, yeah.
Monotheism is within Vaiṣṇavism is very strong. Vaiṣṇavism can be about, if you ask scholars how large Vaiṣṇavism is, doesn't mean that all the Hindus are only Vaiṣṇavas, because in my perspective, my understanding, Hinduism consists of a family with Śiva, with Pārvatī, with Rāma, with Sītā. So, it's more like a family. So, I would say monotheism, that there is one God, yes, but also God has many, many different forms.
So, that's very special compared to the Abrahamic religions, that means Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. They focus on one God with one person, with one quality. But here, we speak about the whole cosmos. So, that's a little different perspective. It's not just about our Earth planet, it's not only about our solar system, it's not even our universe with billions and trillions of galaxies. There are billions of universes. You understand what I mean? So, there is a huge variety in our universes, and that's where the different forms of God, such as Rāma, such as Nārāyaṇa, such as Kṛṣṇa, comes into the picture.
So, we start with Vaiṣṇavism. So, the roots of Vaiṣṇavism, we tend to think, historically speaking now, academically, historically speaking, we think about Vaiṣṇavism as coming later.
But if you study the roots, which are the four Vedas: Ṛgveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, and Sāmaveda, four parts of the Veda, the oldest Vedas, we're talking about thousands of years back, there is also statement about Viṣṇu, the sun. So, in Ṛgveda, there is a sentence that Viṣṇu is across the three worlds with his three steps, tri-vikrama.
In Mahānārāyaṇa Upaniṣad, Viṣṇu is identified with the sacrifice itself, yajña, and so on and so forth. So, you find verses in these four original Vedas, but the four Vedas are not really philosophical texts, are hymns for performing a yajña, a sacrifice. So, it's very difficult to find there clear definitions of what is Viṣṇu, what is Śiva, what is Rudra, and so on.
So, historically, you see also the history of India, we have the Maurya crisis for Hinduism, because Buddhism comes into the picture, Buddhism. And Buddha, he denies, he doesn't want even to speak about what's beyond the atoms and matter. He didn't want to discuss that, Buddha. He presents this nirvāṇa, nirvāṇa is a stage beyond thinking, body, atoms, beyond that. He calls it nirvāṇa, Buddha.
But they ask him questions, is there a soul? Is there anything beyond that you can try to describe or define? And Buddha used to say: No, I cannot define it. He didn't want to do it. So, that's Buddha. And that was a little challenge for the Hindu traditions, Upaniṣads, because they put the focus on ātman, brahman.
So, they call it a crisis period. But you have at the same time a development of Upaniṣads period in the Bihar, which is the region close to West Bengal, Bihar, where Buddha experienced his nirvāṇa, and they call it śramaṇa, the śramaṇa period, historically, where the Upaniṣads came into the picture. Unfortunately, very few focuses on the Vaiṣṇava sides of the main Upaniṣads. There are about, historically, 108 Upaniṣads which are considered to be the core of the Upaniṣads period. And there are a number of them, at least 20-25 texts, which are Vaiṣṇava texts. But they put them aside, and they focus instead on the brahman aspect.
So, this is, there is a historical reason why it became like that. But if you look at what was there, 108 Upaniṣads, there are definitely portions which are Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads, very interesting.
And then we have the year 300 after Christ, we have the Gupta Golden Age, the Gupta Dynasty. They were Vaiṣṇavas, and they supported Śiva, Śaivism, supported even Buddhism, but very strongly Vaiṣṇavas. And they introduced the varṇāśrama-dharma to the Gupta Dynasty. And that's the last period that we can say where Hinduism and Vaiṣṇavism, particularly, was a very dominant part of India, the Gupta Emperor Empire was a very large empire in North India.
After that, this is academically they say, the Purāṇa literature started with the Gupta Dynasty. Guptas, they were emperors, kings, they had their castles and palaces, and they supported the Brahmins. So, they mean that a lot of the Purāṇa literature, Purāṇa means the old histories, started with the Gupta Dynasty, but from another perspective, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa give the date 5,000 years ago, so 3,000 years before Christ. So, that's, there are different perspectives there. But academically we have to see how old these texts are. The manuscripts today may be 500 years old, maybe 700 years old, max. We cannot really go back 2,000 years with the manuscripts and the history. So, that's still a lot of discussion and ideas.
So, regarding the Hindu scriptures, we have two sections: the śruti and the smṛti. The śruti is the text that which was heard, heard means that the hymns that they used for the yajña were not created by them, it was a revelation from the devas, from the gods beyond. So, it was not a written text, but it was a revelation, so to speak. It's called śruti, śravaṇam.
And smṛti is that which is remembered. Oh, about the yajña, very strong is karmakāṇḍa, the section of doing rituals, very strong rituals with fires, for praising the demigods, such as Bhūmi, our Earth planet, the fire, Agni, for example, and give them strength, and get back from them their blessings, to protect our lives here on our planet. So, karmakāṇḍa very strong. And jñānakāṇḍa also through the Upaniṣad and Āraṇyaka, jñānakāṇḍa, that means focus on the ātman, that we are not this body. What is brahman, what is ātman? This is the focus of jñāna yoga.
So, this is the first part of it. And the other part, that which is remembered, includes the itiḥāsas, the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata, I don't know if you heard of these epics, Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa. There are 18 Purāṇas: 6 for Śiva, 6 for Brahmā, and 6 for Viṣṇu, the Vaiṣṇavas. And you find a lot of Vaiṣṇava literature, philosophy, Vedānta, here on this second section, the smṛti section, that which is remembered. That means it was the developing of thinking from different, maybe Vyāsadeva, incarnation, avatāra, also, to have been stated some of the sections there.
So, we find Bhakti Yoga start to develop very, very strongly with smṛti. If you have to try to define it, where do you find it very strongly, it is in smṛti.
You heard the word avatāra, avatāra, they use it a lot for our digital games, avatar. The word avatāra means to come down, and it's a very important understanding of the personality, the form, the supreme personality of Godhead. And you can see there are different images here. You see Kṛṣṇa, here, you can see even Jesus Christ, you can see even the prophet here, prophet. So, they see all different.
The understanding in Vaiṣṇavism is there is not many different gods or religions, so to speak. There is only, basically, one religion, but it appears in many different forms depending on the culture, the society, the tradition within.
And in terms of avatāra, you have complete descents, pūrṇāvatāra, full manifestation, such as Kṛṣṇa and Rāma. You have partial descents, aṁśāvatāra, aṁśa means partial, empowered figures who carry a portion of divine power. Within Hinduism, they see, for example, Jesus Christ and the prophet as aṁśāvatāra. They had the instruction from God to perform certain duties. And the third one, indwelling forms, mūrti, that we have here, for example, mūrti, deities present in consecrated images, objects of temple worship. So, they see all these as three different forms of avatāra, from the complete descents that we find in the Bhagavad Gītā, where Kṛṣṇa is there and speak to Arjuna, up to mūrti, the deities we can see here.
So, the Bhagavad Gītā, that even now they say some Hindus call it the Gospel of Hinduism, is a very strong book in India. You heard about Mahatma Gandhi? Mahatma Gandhi? He loved the Bhagavad Gītā. Now, it's translated into about, we'll say, more than 100 languages. And in English, they translated more than 500 translations, basically by scholars, but also from Hindu yoga teachers, of the Bhagavad Gītā, of the book. So, it's a, you can say, a very powerful text for India.
So, the setting, the dialogue takes place on the battlefield of Kurukṣetra between the warrior Arjuna and the charioteer Kṛṣṇa, who reveals himself as the Supreme, composed in 700 Sanskrit verses across 18 chapters. What is special with the Bhagavad Gītā that you can see here is that Kṛṣṇa plays the role of a charioteer.
So, you can just imagine, you think about God, the supreme personality of Godhead, who is above everything, right? That's a normal understanding. But here, you see that Kṛṣṇa takes the role of a charioteer of Arjuna, who is his friend and servant. What does it mean? What kind of relationship we can see in the Bhagavad Gītā? Is that between supreme God that we have to pray and surrender to, or the loving supreme person who tries to give us knowledge out of love and humility? So, that's, that's kind of image that we can read through the Bhagavad Gītā. Not by everyone, like Mahatma Gandhi, he didn't take Kṛṣṇa as a real form, he took it as a symbol of the mind, that we have to control, through the charioteer, the four of the senses, and this is the mind, that we have to control, and behind is the ātman, who is, and this is the mirror of the ātman, who is looking outside, taking all the movements of the horses as reality, but actually, it's not whole of the picture.
So, there are three yogas in the Bhagavad Gītā: Karma Yoga, Jñāna Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga. You remember from the Upaniṣad, we start from the Vedas, very the four Vedas, very strong about yajña, about fire, performing karma, to get a good results. And jñāna about understanding that there is something beyond the body, there is something beyond matter and the atoms, that's brahman, that's ātman. That's jñāna yoga. And but there is also Bhakti Yoga, which become very strong through the Bhagavad Gītā.
Loving surrender to a personal Lord, presented in chapter 12, as the most direct and most perfect path, the highest yoga. And that's yoga, that's the theme of some parts of the Bhagavad Gītā, what kinds of yoga is there, what is the most auspicious yoga. So, we find three paths: Karma Yoga, Jñāna Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga. And Karma Yoga, basically, means that one should not enjoy the result of one's activities, that's Karma Yoga. Yoga means connecting, yoga, yukta, yoga, connecting. So, not for oneself performing activities, the results should not be for myself, it should be for the benefit of the people, or for pleasing God, outside of me, that's Karma Yoga.
So, one example from the Bhagavad Gītā, chapter 2, verse 22: "As a person casts off worn-out garments and puts on new ones, so the soul casts off worn-out bodies and enters into other new ones." You can say, even for Hinduism as a religion, this is a foundational verse, this statement that we are changing our bodies. The bodies, all bodies we get, they are young, they grow up, they mature, they get older, and they die. All the bodies do the same thing, no matter if it's a human body, or animal body, or tree, they follow exactly the same process.
So, the soul within, the ātman, the ātman, by the way, is very small in size. In the one Upaniṣad verse, is described that if you take one hair, divide it hundred times, and then take 100 times of it, and divide it hundred times more, this is the size of the ātman. The ātman, which is in the part of the heart regions. That's described in Vedānta Sūtra, about sleeping, many complexity, complexity understanding of the ātman that we have. But one first thing is that the ātman is very, very small, but we cannot burn it, we cannot kill it, we cannot destroy the ātman. It's a different dimension that we have inside our body.
So, regarding philosophy, Vaiṣṇava saṁpradāyas, saṁpradāya means there is a tradition, a chain of scholars, and Vedānta, Veda means knowledge, Veda, anta means the conclusion of knowledge, Veda-anta, and there is a text called Vedānta Sūtra. A sūtra is a verse which is very compressed, very famous, the only way to really understand it is to have the commentaries, because the texts are so, sūtras are basically meant to be learned by heart, all the, all the texts, and then with the commentary to explain them.
So, there are schools. A school will have a Vedānta theology also. So, in Vaiṣṇavism, we have these four, for example, very important: Rāmānuja, around 1,000 years after Christ, Madhva, 1,200 to 1317. About oneness, non-dualism is called advaita, dvaita means two, advaita means one. So, a lot of philosophical discussion in India are: what is the highest understanding of God that we can get? Is it as advaita, brahman, without form, without personalities? Or is dvaita? That means we are separate, I'm a person with my ātman, is a personal form. God is a personal form, and we never merge, never. But Advaita Vedānta says the opposite. When you leave your body, physical body, you merge in brahman, you become, there is only brahman at the end.
So, Vaiṣṇavism start to develop very strongly around 1,000 year after Christ. Śaṅkara, the advaita philosopher, was from about 700 years after Christ, he was a very powerful philosopher, Śaṅkara. So, after about 300 years, the Vaiṣṇavas in India started also to produce the books that Śaṅkara produced: a commentary about the Bhagavad Gītā, a comment about the Vedānta Sūtra, and a comment about the Upaniṣads, so the three parts, small parts of the entire Hindu literature which are based on philosophy.
So, four schools you have, and one which was like a breakthrough, in a sense, is Caitanya Mahāprabhu, which you can see here, in the middle, Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and Jīva Gosvāmī, who was one of his servants. So, Jīva Gosvāmī in Vrindāvan, he wrote six philosophical books, and one was about Brahman, another one was about Paramātma, another one was about Bhagavān. And this is there in the Bhagavad Gītā, if you read the Bhagavad Gītā text, it present the Paramātma, it present Brahman, it present Bhagavān, but not structured, because the reason of the Bhagavad Gītā is not to structure a message philosophically, is to have a conversation with Arjuna.
So, with Caitanya and with his servant, Jīva Gosvāmī, we have a very systematic presentation of the philosophies from the Bhagavad Gītā and the Vedānta Sūtra, around starting in the 16th century, 1,500 more or less, started to become stronger. And and the Caitanya Mahāprabhu went to Vrindāvan, the place where Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, their pastimes is identifying with the place. So, he, after many years where he was kind of covered, there was nothing going on there, Caitanya Mahāprabhu went there and he established Vrindāvan as the birthplace of, not birthplace, but the of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, of course, but the place of pastimes of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa.
So, a very important, you can say, revolutionary period, also because Caitanya Mahāprabhu did not make any difference between the Brahmins and the Śūdras, or anyone could become a devotee, so to say, and engage in devotional service.
Acintya-bhedābheda-tattva, inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference. This is the, the challenge, because Brahman, the understanding of Brahman is the spiritual oneness, is gigantic in India. At the same time, the idea that Kṛṣṇa is a person, and we are, our ātman, we are also persons, separate from each other, but at the same time part of the oneness, how can you define that? How can you present it? That's a huge problem. So, this acintya-bhedābheda-tattva means it's inconceivable there is oneness and difference. There are and there are some examples given in the tradition, for example, if you take a tree, a tree, and you produce let's say, a table. So, this is one, is made of the tree, but the form of it, the function of it, is entirely different, now it's a table, or a chair. So, you understand what I mean. So, oneness and different. These two are there at the same time. So, that's a way to present this philosophy, to the Caitanya tradition.
And so Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu reoriented Vaiṣṇavism from mokṣa, mokṣa means liberation from our existence, with our bodies and mind, that means, to līlā, that means the beautiful līlā, that means pastimes of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, from liberation to participation in Kṛṣṇa's play. Theology turns from metaphysical ascent to relational fulfillment, rāsa, with love in separation, viraha, as its highest mood.
So Caitanya Mahāprabhu's focus was love. And in terms of consciousness, going back to the beginning, what is the symptom of consciousness? And we have this International Society of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, is there in the name of the, of the society. So, what does it mean: consciousness? What qualities are different: consciousness from the mind and from the body, for example? So, one is naturally free will. It is explained in Bhagavad Gītā by Kṛṣṇa, who speaks to Arjuna and told, and told him: I explain to you everything you need to know in 18 chapters of the Bhagavad Gītā, to Arjuna. Now, it's your decision. I don't force you, Kṛṣṇa tells to Arjuna at the end of the Bhagavad Gītā, whatever you want to do, now it's up to you. This is the free will, which is the important, crucial element in our consciousness.
And the other one is love. And love can be many different things. You can love your body, you can love other persons, in different, in different ways, so to speak, you can love nature, you can love many things, but here, consciousness, the consciousness developed and presented by Caitanya Mahāprabhu is love with the relationship with God, a loving relationship, love, very intense. And the most intense is called viraha, that means Caitanya Mahāprabhu had a very much strong separation from Jagannāth, the deity in Purī, in Orissa, which is about maybe 200 kilometers south from Bengal, 150-200, 200 kilometers south, there is a, a city called Jagannāth Purī, Purī, which is on the, on the strand, on the, on the beach, so to speak, of the Bengal river, not river, the ocean.
So, he, this is a image of Kṛṣṇa who feels deep love for Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, that's why he has these huge eyes, Jagannāth. His love in separation from Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. So, that was a very important part of the philosophy of love that Caitanya Mahāprabhu presented.
So, this is about, let me see what time it is. Yes, 11:09. Yeah, we we are, I think, we are doing well, we have about, yeah, I present some part of Bhakti Yoga and then we can take a little break, if you have any questions, and then we have a break of 10 minutes, and then we take the second part after that, if it's okay for you.
So, Bhakti Yoga, the path of devotion and its layers. Layers, why layers? Because I'll try to present it: even analyzing our body has many, many layers, right? Our bodies have, start with the atoms, we have atoms in our bodies, and then we have cells, biological cells, and I will explain it soon, but there are many different layers that we need to understand to relate to the body properly, and that's an understanding which is developed in Bhakti Yoga.
So, the word bhakti, that means devotion, love, and union, bhakti denotes intimate participation in the divine, a sustained, affective orientation of the whole person toward Bhagavān. The terms Bhagavān, Bhagavad Gītā, Bhagavān Gītā, is the name of Kṛṣṇa, so Bhagavān means the highest supreme form of God, that's the name of Bhagavān.
Although it is rooted in the Vedic and Upaniṣadic strata, its great flow, flowering belongs to the Bhagavad Gītā, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and the medieval Bhakti movements. I don't know if you heard, probably you know about the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, you heard about the Bhāgavata, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam? I heard the word but I don't know what it is. Right. So, the Purāṇa is the old history, and Bhāgavata from Bhagavān, so is the, like the divine history of the cosmos. This is the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the title of it, and we have about, we have about 12 volumes, and every volume is divided in many different chapters, and it's like a journey that starts from, from about 5,000 years back, and then goes to a journey through different phases of history and about the cosmos, and the book number five is about the cosmos, and then continues till the volume number 10, and the volume number 10's topic is Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, and the Kurukṣetra war and, there is a 90 chapters of the volume number 10. And after that, 11 to 12, the chapter 12 is about Kali Yuga, the period in which we are now. So, it's, it's a very complex, you can say, book about history, tradition, the cosmos, and our body, our situation right now, and yoga. So, it's 18,000 verses in Sanskrit. So, so that you know at least what, where it come from.
So, when you think about bhakti, that means devotion, love, and union, you can call it emotional immediacy, and affective religio- and affective religiosity centered on love, longing, and union.
Seva, humble physical service to the deity and the community, open to all social positions. So, you can, you can analyze bhakti in terms of seva, which means service.
Śaraṇāgati, an attitude of surrender, dependence, and prayer for divine grace, that means, the idea here is that God loves us, and we have to learn to to show appreciation and love back to God. So, that's Śaraṇāgati.
And in a more scientific way, about the mind, cognitive grounding: joined to Sāṅkhya philosophy and Vedānta analysis, bhakti is not anti-intellectual. This is a very important in the history of bhakti in, in India. They consider bhakti to be non-intellectual, just devotion, but we can see here, there is a lot of philosophy behind it. And and that needs also to be understood because we live in a very complex reality, right?
So, there is a lot of cognitive grounding also in bhakti.
I mentioned bhakti now, Bhakti Yoga, because in, in modern yoga, the tendency is to see as a, as a bodily yoga, basically, and the mind through meditation, for example. But not so much about the within, this, if you know the eight aṣṭāṅga yoga system, you have yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dharana, dhyāna, and samādhi, at the end. So, samādhi was the level of understanding the ātman, and Īśvara. So, a tendency has been with bhakti, with yoga, sorry, today to focus on, not even so much in yama and niyama, but āsana and prāṇāyāma, very much, which is very nice and perfect in many ways, but then Bhakti Yoga has been put aside, so to speak, during the colonial period, during the modern development of yoga, and in Bengal, there was a lot of interest in modern yoga, in Bengal, and then spread out in the United States and around the world, but not focusing so much about bhakti. But what what I try to present here is that there is Karma Yoga, there is Jñāna Yoga, and there is Bhakti Yoga. And yoga is a very complex, there are varieties of yoga: Rāja Yoga, Aṣṭāṅga Yoga, there are many kinds of yoga. At least, we could consider that Bhakti Yoga is also part of it, historically, from India, that's my point.
And the question about advaita and and advaita, is, I present some example, what I try to present initially, you find most of it in the Bhagavad Gītā. For example, verse 12.1, Arjuna asks, "Some devotees ever united with you in love, worship you constantly. Others worship the imperishable and the unmanifest Brahman. Which of them are most accomplished in yoga?" It's a question from Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gītā. And the replies from Kṛṣṇa is, "Those who fix their minds upon me and who worship me, even united in love, possessed of profound faith, these I consider most perfect in yoga."
So, we can see, it's basically Bhakti Yoga introduced from Kṛṣṇa in this way.
And if you can see what like, in a, in a book, normally at the end, the last verses of a book, try to summarize most part of it. So, you find in Bhagavad Gītā, chapter 18, verse 66: "Abandon all varieties of religions and take refuge in me alone. I shall release you from all sinful reactions, do not fear." And is is on the basic of the free will, it says is a, is a recommendation to Arjuna. It's not a command. It's a recommendation. "Abandon all varieties of religious" that means do it by taking refuge in me alone, so don't worry about which religion you are following, the name of religion, the social structure of religion. So, he's inviting Arjuna: just do it for me. So, a little tips in the Bhagavad Gītā.
So, you can say there are three levels, now we are discussing Bhakti Yoga: sambandha, abhidheya, and prayojana.
So, the first aspect of bhakti is is called sambandha, relational understanding: right understanding of reality as it is, the real relation between the jīva and Bhagavān, the conscious self is not the body. The conscious self is not the body, which is very difficult to do because we are so used to use our bodies, every day we go to sleep, we have to, we have to eat, every day, to maintain breathing, if we don't breathe for five minutes, we die. So, there are many important section of the body which we must follow, we cannot, even working and maintaining ourselves is necessary to survive. So, and and but see that, not as everything which is there, but with the understanding that there is something different, there is something deeper, which is consciousness, is not very easy, in general, you could say.
So, the first step is sambandha, understanding that there is a jīva, there is an ātman, the spiritual part of myself, and there is Bhagavān, there is the complexity of Bhagavān is huge, but Kṛṣṇa presented to Arjuna also in the, in the chapter 11, I think it's the 11th of the Bhagavad Gītā about viśvarūpa, the universal form of God, because Arjuna was also questioning: You are my friend, Kṛṣṇa, are you God? Can you show me your cosmic form? And Kṛṣṇa present his cosmic form to Arjuna, told him: Nobody can see that, but since you ask me that question, now I can show it to you, for some time. And he showed the entire cosmos. So, that's, that's Bhagavān, so to speak, what we mentioned in Bhakti Yoga. So, it start with sambandha.
Go to abhidheya, the path of practice: hearing, chanting, remembering, serving, worshiping, daily discipline that refines body, senses, mind, and consciousness. In other words, you have the mind, we have very active senses, we have eyes, we have nose, breath, odor, we have the tongue about the taste, and we have the, the skin. So, very active, very powerful senses, but we have to discipline them. And the mind, we have a very strong mind which is generally not very much understood, I would say, because I work at the universities, so I'm quite familiar what they focus on, and the focus about the mind is extremely very small for academics, or in in our global system, I I would say, from my point of view, because there is basically one field called psychology, that study the mind. I was in Vienna last week, and Freud, you heard, Sigmund Freud, he developed the psychoanalysis, and he was considered to be genius about the mind, and we all have a powerful, incredibly powerful mind, we all have it.
So, yeah. Yeah, in this case, when we speak of bhakti, the the role of the mind is very important, and Kṛṣṇa explained it in Bhagavad Gītā that you have to control the mind. If you don't control the mind, your desire will increase that you cannot stop it. We can see, in modern society, super consumption, for example, the major problem that we have around the world, about the climate, about nature, is because of super consumption. Why does people have super consumption? Because they don't control their minds. They want to have more and more and more, without end. You understand what I try to say? It's not only in Hinduism, even in Buddhism, they make it very clear, Dalai Lama, and philosophers, Buddhist philosophers, speak in a very similar way, that we have to limit our desire, because that's destructive.
So anyway, a little bit about abhidheya: the path of practice is very important.
And then at the end, prayojana, the ultimate goal: divine love, prema, not psychological or romantic, but metaphysical, the self reaches completeness in relation to Kṛṣṇa. This is divine love. That means, when one has gone through this process, step by step, one start to understand, this is the philosophy of Vaiṣṇavism, one start to understand what it means, what is the jīva within, and what is Kṛṣṇa, and what kind of relationship I can have with Bhagavān, with God. So, that's the ultimate goal.
And this is a little bit to give a little map of of what I presented, we don't have to discuss it more, but, that would mean that looking at Brahman, Brahman would be like, if you look at the sun, for example, without looking at the sun planet, you see there is light everywhere, right? Atomic energies are everywhere. So, that's what it mean here with Brahman. It's non-material, it's not physical material energy, is a different level, so to speak. They call it Brahman. And then Paramātma, the witness present in the heart, and then the personal divine at the end.
So, Bhakti Yoga as an embodied practice, embodied because we are in this body, so we have parts where we can use the body, the physical body, we can use it for Bhakti Yoga, how?
Well, the first one is hearing and chanting, we have śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ, the ear as sacred instrument, the ear, kṛṣṇa-kathā and kīrtana, speech discipline through the divine name, collective sound as yogic practice. The idea is that the thing we cannot see is the sound. I'm speaking to you using my own instrument, but you cannot see the sound, the sound is extremely subtle. So, the sound is the most subtle part of communication that we have as humans. And when you concentrate on sound, the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra, mantra sound, it goes right down in the heart region where the jīva is there and you start to awakening jīva. That's why mantra is so important for Hinduism, in India.
So, hearing and chanting, using the body.
Remembrance and service, smaraṇaṁ sevanaṁ, memory becomes sacred recollection, movement becomes service, the body bows, dances, cooks, and walks in devotion. So, using the body in many different ways, with a certain discipline.
Food and conduct, prasāda and niyama, eating ritualized, and diet regulated, body consecrated through offering, daily schedule, dress, and celibacy discipline in devotional life. That means food and conduct, things that we have, there are niyama and in in yoga, yama and niyama, different rules, to start developing a certain kind of discipline, to try to create a structure of purity, of cleanliness, in our life, because that helps to control the mind.
So, you can see the effect of it also in different aspects in this discipline of Bhakti Yoga.
Very shortly, rāsatattva, the five moods of love: śānta, which is, means awe, contemplation on the supreme, the sages' neutral devotion, no activities, but simply contemplation.
Then there is dāsya, the love of a servant for a cherished master, reverent, devoted service, dāsya service.
sakhya, the equal trusted love of Kṛṣṇa's cowherd friends in Vrindāvan and to Arjuna. They had this sakhya relationship.
vātsalya, vātsalya, the protective tenderness of Yaśodā and Nanda for the child Kṛṣṇa, as parents.
And mādhurya, the love of the gopīs, the gopīs are the cow cowherd girls, and above all, Rādhā, the summit of rāsa, the female part of Rādhā, Rādhā is a female part of Bhagavān. So, Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, together, they are a God. So, in in the Vaiṣṇava and Indian perspective, the female and the male energies are together the ultimate essence, they are not just one, the man, or just separate, the female. Together are the essence of it.
The creeper of devotion, bhaktilātā, this is very shortly: start with śraddhā, faith. Faith means you you understand it, oh, not understanding it, but you are attracted to it, śraddhā. You don't know really where you're going, but you have certain faith, appreciation of it that you started it.
Then sādhusaṅga, devotional company or association, bhajana-kriyā, practice, anartha-nivṛtti, clearing, niṣṭhā, steadiness, ruci, taste, asakti, attachment, bhāva, the dawning of feeling, and love, and then at the end, prema. So, they say there are eight different stages that you have to go through. It's like cooking butter, for example, for creating this, the sweets, which is called barfi. Barfi, thank you.
So, you take the pot with milk, and has to be there for many, many hours till it gets concentrated into barfi. Exactly, so, in order to do that, you start from here, and at the end, when the barfi is ready, you get prema, pure love, because is very sweet, love for God.
Humility, love, and ahaṅkāra, humility in Bhakti Yoga is not mere politeness, it is the self, the soul becoming free from ego, recognizing its true relation to Bhagavān, others, and the world, and beginning to consciously live from that truth. So, humility is a very essential element of Bhakti Yoga, humility, not pride, power, not domination, not at all. It's a very important element of humility.
So, okay. We take a break now. Sorry for taking so much time. Do you have a question or comment or anything?
Very interesting.
Thank you. You can think about it, we take a, I thought to take a, say, 5 minutes break. Would that be all right? Because we have to finish on time, so, that's why.