Sreedham Mayapur Exhibition

Sreedham Mayapur Exhibition

The Harmonist (Sree Sajjanatoshani)
September 1930

PREPARATIONS are being rapidly pushed forward for the All-India theistic Exhibition that the Viswa Vaishnava Raj Sabha proposes to hold at Sreedham Mayapur, the holy Birth-place of Lord Sri Chaitanya.

The detailed prospectus of the Exhibition which has already appeared in a previous issue of the Journal is well worth our most careful perusal. It is a unique document that appears to possess a permanent interest for all thoughtful persons in every part of the world and for all time. It is, however, almost an irony of fate for humanity that the greatest spiritual events always happen to pass almost unnoticed by contemporaries. This is not due to any want of advertising energy on the part of those who are properly informed regarding the exceptional nature of the event happening in their time. But people at large as a rule show a singular inaptitude for being impressed by those appeals.

It is possible to interest the leading minds about great worldly movements even at their initial stages. But even this modest measure of advertising success cannot be secured for any of the events manifesting themselves on the spiritual plane. There is another feature of spiritual events which also deserves our most serious consideration. The true character of spiritual events is never recognised at any time by the generality of the people. The historical accounts of spiritual occurrences from the pens of the devotees are systematically replaced by the matter of-fact narratives of writers who can catch the ears of worldly people by adjusting the original account to popular tastes and standards of value. The lay historians of spiritual movements can, therefore, afford with impunity to steer clear of any spiritual admissions that may be chargeable with the unpardonable crime of being a concession to the opinions of self-realised souls.

It must have puzzled all unprejudiced readers of the New Testament that the propaganda carried on by the immediate followers of Christ should systematically cry down the pretentious Greek scholarship which at that period represented the highest land-mark of empiric knowledge. It is no less a puzzle how the Reformation movement in Europe which stood for the teaching of Christ in its pure or historically earliest form could go back full fourteen centuries in order to court the alliance of the very learning that had been denounced in no uncertain terms by the first apostles of the religion.

The profoundest scholars and the most practical persons run an equal risk with fools and dreamers to completely misunderstand the nature of a spiritual occurrence. The same must also be true of Sreedham Mayapur Exhibition if it happens to be a really spiritual event. If it be allowed to pass wholly unnoticed by all the journals of the world its spiritual nature will not be disproved thereby. But those who will be enabled to recognize its significance will only deserve to be congratulated on their rare good fortune.

The official organ of the movement, the Harmonist, is placed in a very delicate position in regard to the task of advertising the cause in as much as such performance lends itself to be easily misrepresented by dishonest critics as shamelessness and self-praise. Religion is tacitly assumed by even respectable persons as a matter that requires no special advertisement. For the same reason it is supposed to be a mark of good taste to abstain from taking any active part in religious controversy.

The number of those who believe with the historian Hallam that religious differences have a tendency of multiplying to conferences to produce agreement is very considerable. It is supposed to be the inalienable and invaluable birth-right of everyone to have his own particular views on religion against which no one should have any objection. In these circumstances it is almost hopeless to expect an unprejudiced hearing for Truth Who cannot be different in the case of different persons.

Nevertheless we venture to invite all persons irrespective of caste, creed or colour to visit Sreedham Mayapur Exhibition which is being organised by sincere souls for propagating the religion of unalloyed devotion to God.

It is the object of the organisers to arrange demonstrations to illustrate the principle as well as the practice of the religion of amorous devotion. It is the highest form of service of God to which every other form is intended by the Scriptures to lead. All religions and scriptures should be able to find in it the natural consummation of their highest aspirations.

The view that there are diverse paths to the goal of religion is far from being an axiomatic truth. God can be best served by the only method of super-sensuous amorous devotion. Every other method is acceptable to God in the measure that it happens to be a striving for the attainment of the only method.

Godhead is a person with spiritual senses. His will is its own fulfilment. He is full of activity. His activity if properly realised appears as an expression of the most exquisite form of perfectly pure natural amorous love of the ideal Lover towards the best beloved mistress. This view of the activity of God is realisable by every pure soul whose natural function it is to serve the Lord with the most intense transcendental amorous love as of a mistress towards her Lover.

Any service of the Lord that falls short of amorous love is necessarily incomplete and, if at all genuine, should tend to expand into the latter. Any service that is lacking in this expansive quality is unacceptable to God and becomes a thing of this world.

It is not possible for a person who is subject to the lusts of the flesh to realise the nature of spiritual amour. The least desire for sensuous pleasure is wholly incompatible with spiritual living. But spiritual living is not, therefore, devoid of pleasure. On the contrary it is the un-spiritual state that is wholly miserable. The spiritual life is truly and fully happy. The happiness attainable in this world is transitory and is only a degree and variety of unhappiness masked in the deceptive form of happiness for enhancing our miseries. Spiritual happiness is real and free from all unwholesome. On the realisation of spiritual existence the worldly life necessarily loses all its charm.

But the spiritual life is one that is full of real activities. The activities on the mundane plane are unreal, unintelligible, limited in their scope, full of long intervals of purposeless idleness, and productive of misery. Worldly activity is the perverted, unwholesome shadow of spiritual activity. The soul has nothing to do with the former and everything to do with the latter.

As activities on the physical plane are by their nature unprofitable they have to be got rid of by all persons who desire to live a useful life. The conduct of a person who leads a really useful life is liable to be misunderstood and misrepresented. The Exhibition aims at imparting to all sincere enquirers a real insight into the spiritual life which alone really matters.

Truth is apt to be confounded with the concoctions of the human brain. The Scriptures maintain that the Truth is incomprehensible to the intellect of man. They declare that it is not possible to make a person free from ignorance by any system of education, because every animate being is essentially unique in his nature. Every one of us is endowed with a perfectly free will. It is only if a person is himself willing to learn a subject that it is possible to teach it to him. If the teacher imagines that a pupil’s disposition can be moulded into any shape at his sweet will he should soon be undeceived by actual results. It is only an inexperienced or foolish teacher who will ever agree to undertake to guarantee in advance the success of his pupil. The future is, and is bound to remain, always unique and, therefore, uncertain.

The spiritual state is absolutely free from ignorance. There is no necessity for ignorance. On the spiritual plane there are no barriers to communication. There the thing communicates itself. The soul possesses boundless receptive power. She is endowed with an infinity of senses free from all defects. The pure souls are eternally, incessantly engaged in serving the Real Truth in endless ways.

The fallen state is the negation of all these. The problem for the spiritual teacher is to kindle in the fallen soul an effective hankering for the attainment of the spiritual state.

This is the common end of all the great religions. All of them propose a system of novitiate through which such a soul is required to pass in order to attain to the condition of pure spiritual existence. The methods are also necessarily spiritual. By means of ignorance freedom from ignorance cannot be obtained. It is, therefore, certain that the person who has not served his proper term of novitiate under a spiritual teacher must necessarily fail utterly to understand the nature and methods of spiritual training.

But it is for the same reason impossible for ignorant persons to find the true spiritual teacher. This provides the golden opportunity for quacks and rascals to exploit the credulity of ignorant persons, that is practically of everyone at all inclined to undergo spiritual pupilage.

A bad spiritual teacher is a contradiction in terms. A bad spiritual teacher is worse than useless because of the Scriptures. The Scriptures supply the details of the only authentic system of spiritual training. A bad spiritual teacher who is necessarily perfectly ignorant of the real meaning of the nature of spiritual training is sure to misapply it and thereby aggravate the ignorance of his pupil. This is the greatest danger that can ever befall a soul.

The Exhibition at Sridham Mayapur is being organised to offer a concrete demonstration of the real method of spiritual training and the ordinary dangers that are apt to overtake the unwary novice on the path of spiritual endeavour. The subject cannot be learnt from books and reports. The spiritual teacher is essential. Living Truth can be learnt only from the living source who is no other than the spiritual teacher himself. So it is necessary for everyone to attend the Exhibition in person in order to be enabled to learn from the lips of pure devotees who are the organisers of the Exhibition the real meaning of the mysteries of existence.

Those who come with faith in the Absolute are promised by the Scriptures freedom from the thraldom of ignorance if they submit to learn the Truth with unreserved humility at the feet of the real teacher of the Truth. Personal attendance is absolutely necessary. The Truth appears in the form of the transcendental sound on the lips of the spiritual teacher who is no other than the eternal servant of the Truth. Truth is a living Person and may be properly approached only by a sincere disposition to serve Him without any reservation. Everything of this world tends to hold its victim from approaching the Truth with perfect humility. The vanities of caste, creed, country, colour, social position, sex, learning, wealth, always counsel us to keep aloof from the Truth in order to serve—them. It is necessary to beware of the devices that are adopted by the corrupt mind to dissuade our souls from attending to the call of the Truth before we reject the same with a light heart.

Many will assuredly respond to the call and attend the Exhibition. But unless one comes with a sincere mind free from all prejudices, that is to say from all bias in favour of all experience gained by means of the blundering senses, he is not likely to listen to the message of the Absolute for the purpose of receiving, and not refusing to receive, the real Truth, Who is the master to be eternally served if and when He chooses to manifest Himself to us out of His causeless mercy. Those who pride themselves on their rationality should be prepared to admit the necessity of grace for real enlightenment. The grace of god is undoubtedly present everywhere but graceless condition is also Divinely permitted. The graceless state need not be irrationally confounded with the state of grace. Grace does not mean abdication of power on the part of the Gracious Lord. Grace is always the adjunct of Divine power. The grace of God lays down the condition of redemption from the graceless condition by the method of perfectly rational, absolute submission to Divine power. Such submission is faintly conceivable by the limited mind as exclusive and loving service of the Truth by the perfect reason of the soul in the state of grace. It is actually realisable as the personal service rendered by the mind purified and enlightened by the grace of the spiritual teacher, which is identical with the mercy of God Himself. The unenlightened mind cannot conceive of the spiritual personality, that is the real nature, of the Absolute and His eternal servants.