Did Srila Prabhupada chant his rounds properly?, What about the apparently missing sounds Options

[Dhyana]

I remember going to our first ever sunday lecture in Korsnäs. Jnanesvara explained how chanting has virtually no effect whatsoever until one is properly initiated by a professionally proper spiritually mastered spiritualist and given the HK-mantra via his lips and fingers to them beads. My brother got very angry hearing that and thought it was nonsense. So little respect had he. No wonder he fell away so soon from the devotional pathway to heaven.

That one made me angry too, angry and desperate and hopeless, but at one point I decided for myself this couldn't be true.

I got recommended for initiation after one year in the movement, by Surapala, a traveling sankirtan devotee who was kind of in charge of the city where we women had our asram. The problem was, two months earlier I "developed a problem" with one of the rules (guess which). I wrote a letter to Haripuja, Kirtiraja's wife (K was the GBC for Poland, they were soon to be visiting), asking her what to do considering my coming initiation. Only this time Kirtiraja came without his wife. He read the letter and summoned me to the Warsaw temple by telegram. He was heavy but supportive. That's how I remember him in general. He told me to go to Germany, where the initiation was to take place, and ask my spiritual master to postpone my initiation and give me some advice on my problem. He also said he would not tell anyone of the reason. I did as he said.

He must have kept his word, because when I returned still as a bhaktin, the regional authorities were surprised and suspicious. From what I heard, their reaction was that I was whimsical and unserious and should be kept in the waiting room. Maybe they were offended that I took their mercy so lightly.

And wait I did, for much longer than expected. They wouldn't recommend me. Besides, after that I moved into a temple where my unsurrendered nature could no longer be concealed. Or whatever. I even pulled off a mini-revolution in the Wroclaw temple and moved out back into Poznan to live a Nama Hatta life. I finally got recommended for initiation by Indradyumna Swami, who had just come to Poland and embarked on a project of yanking the yatra out of the tight grip of the old style HKS disciple temple president gang. It was my good luck I got myself out of the temple, for he had no jurisdiction over temple devotees, only the Nama Hatta.

(I must still feel strongly about that part of my history, judging by how verbose I got.)

By the time I got initiated, I had been in the movement for 4-5 years. Godbrothers and Godsisters got initiated. Younger devotees, who I took care of when they joined, and who looked up to me, got their first and second initiations, and I was still a bhaktin, standing behind them in the queue to bathe the Deities on festive days, not allowed to serve my food to brahmanas, not feeling trusted and "authorized" in representing ISKCON to the public. I could deal with the social aspects of it. But to hear that initiation is the beginning, when one receives the seed of devotional service and forges a connection with one's spiritual master and through him, with Krsna, that felt just so spiritually unjust.

[Dhyana]

The emphasis of saying every syllable correctly and out loud was something that I really had a hard time adjusting to after years of silent meditation on a mantra before becoming a devotee. I would usually chant very softly when in the temple room, and on my own, usually silently, listening to the mantra in my mind. I always found silent chanting so much more easier and more pleasant to do, it felt more deeper and connected to something that lay in the inner recesses of being, instead of always pushing something to the outer regions of awareness, like speaking to my skin or sending verbal messages to the ceiling above my head. Their was also the peer pressure to conform and chant out loud, joining into the euphonious sound vibrations that a full temple room could create. I could easily groove on the combined sound everyone made in the temple room, the cadence of incomprehensible syllables, much like the sound of cicada’s at full bloom in late summer trees, yet having some type of overall effect that was more attractive than having to think about saying the words correctly out loud and paying attention to the meaning.

My prior years of silent meditation made thoughts very conspicuous and easy to hear and see, so I always had a tough time dealing with the teachings that one must be so outer with all manners of devotion, as if silent thoughts were prohibited and contraband, treating silence like mushrooms, onions and chocolates.

It's amazing and impressive, Kali, that you could meditate properly after something looked so much down at as TM, while we with our superior process, even after many years of honest effort had such difficulty with it.

I tried silent chanting on some occasions when my vocal chord problem was getting worse. It was one of the toughest exercises ever. Mercilessly hard. The resistance, the inertia to overcome with each syllable was like the nightmare experience of trying to run for one's life when your feet sink in the ground at every step.

Perhaps no-silence or stillness should have been the 5th regulation, encouraging basic outwardness of action, behavior and dress, while making the sublime inner mysterious experience of spirituality, being present in the moment a no-no or something garnered as cheap, ineffective, unwanted and a sign of doing it all wrong.

Or maybe the religiously co-opted, institutionalized spirituality fears silence, sensing in it a ground where any kind of living things might grow, not just the standardized bhakti plant. The noise of chanting as a way to drown out our inner voices.

[ras]

But to hear that initiation is the beginning, when one receives the seed of devotional service and forges a connection with one's spiritual master and through him, with Krsna, that felt just so spiritually unjust.

This reminds me of my first two weeks as a bhakta. On the first day I was introduced to japa and immediately felt things I later found described in Vaisnava poetry “extinguishing the blazing fire of material existence”, “more cooling that millions of moons” etc and so on. I would sit and look at the pictures of Syamasundara painted by Jadurani while chanting and it was like “this is it, I’ve found my ista-deva , that’s all, everything’s fine”.

After about 2 weeks of this someone asks me, “so by now, do you know who is Prabhupada?” I hadn’t paid any attention to his picture or recognized him as an author of books at all. So it wasn’t until 2 weeks of living with devotees that I was finally clear on who he was (and this is when he was still alive).

So my gut reaction was like, “why do I have to focus on this old man for? I’ve already found the omnipresent creator and everything’s fine”.

I should have stuck with my gut. The reason is only because the “beginning of your connection” that supposedly starts at initiation is really the beginning of no connection at all.. Taking part in a worldwide mission usually means giving up the personal guidance of a guru (if you ever had any to begin with), and most often prematurely. Once more, it is even taught that the guru isn’t omnipresent and he isn’t omniscient either (unless you subscribe to Narayana Maharaja).

The point is that unless you can find a connection with guru that isn’t produced in fairyland one should never feel that he/she needs to have one. It’s Kali Yuga after all, so just chant (something else) and be happy.

[Kalisurfer]

It's amazing and impressive, Kali, that you could meditate properly after something looked so much down at as TM, while we with our superior process, even after many years of honest effort had such difficulty with it.

I did find silent TM meditation a relief from the steady drumbeat of high octane urban life I was living in at the time, in many ways that practice may have saved my life, for it allowed me to find a quiet mental place to observe thoughts come and go, making me realize how thoughts manifest and how useless and conditioned so many of them can be. Things like worry or judgment in particular were interesting to observe and let fade away. It was a nice simple way of dealing with unwanted thought structures that I was usually unaware of in my normal everyday active mode.

Eventually the TM movement kept adding things for the meditation experience, like listening to Sama Veda singing tapes, reading the Rig Veda, Hatha Yoga and breathing exercises, Patanjali's yoga sutra's with that strange hopping method that was called levitation. Instead of meditating twice a day for 15-20 minutes, one found themselves doing it 1 1/2 hours—twice a day. Their methods would draw you slowly into the Maharishi's system, which would include eventually becoming a teacher and other more advanced titles and degrees that would cost you thousands of dollars annually, year after year if one took the bait. There is a web site called TM-Free, which much like GR has former followers looking back and wondering why and how they got on that train and just how much of their productive formative years of life were lost in the quest of enlightenment. Looking back, I took two trains on the quest, one TM bound or 11 years, then GV for 20 more, geez, what a spiritual train ride that was, one big three decade circle that basically took me back to the boarding station...wiser from the experience, but so much blood and tears spilled and swum in, all in the quest for something that seems no more closer than the day I boarded and jumped on!

A small story concerning the superiority of the ISKCON process, back in the early 80's when I was bouncing between TM and KC, my girlfriend and I were invited to a personal darshan with Bhavananda in the Detroit temple to deal with many of our questions concerning the difference between the two processes. We spent about an hour in his room, interrupted by many phone calls and his secretary coming in and out, where we heard the common GV position comments concerning the danger of mayavadi impersonalism and the teachings of Sankarcharaya, which TM was considered a watered down version of. He went on to tell us about the many meditators who were now his disciples, letting us know that he would give us a room in the temple to practice TM and the siddhi's, if we also went to the full morning program and chanted 16 rounds. He said that in about 1 week, we would give up the TM practice and become devotees. My girlfriend said no way, I said yes, I did stop meditating in about 2 weeks, but it was mainly due to the pressure of devotees and Bhav's constantly telling me about the superiority of GV, and how dangerous the silence was because I was playing around with the Brhamayoti, and if I was not careful, I would merge with it and not take human birth for eons. My girlfriend went on to stay a meditator and our relationship soon ended, though it came back a little later when I followed her to the Washington DC area, missing the relationship mainly with the excuse of giving TM another chance, this time being around the Maharishi who lived there at the time. That lasted about 1 year and I was soon back to KC with all surrender in terms of taking initiation with SDG, someone I could easily relate to, and was probably the only type of guru personality that I could surrender to.

In retrospect, the simple meditation of getting down to the quietness of the mind for relaxation and relieving stress was good, the other stuff they added on was pretty uneventful and contained no lasting meaning or even memory. It helped the KC experience in terms of allowing me to be able to focus and and breeze through chanting periods, as long as I did not have to shout it out loud. It also helped me know the limits of surrender that I would allow myself toward an authority figure or institution, saving me initially from following Bhavananda, Ramesvara and Kirtananda, whom I was in contact with at first, and instead led me to a Guru who was not that strict and allowed me to still create art and deal with cultural expressions that were outside the ISKCON box. Of course SDG eventually found his own humanness and frailties overshadowing his spiritual status, becoming transparent in the light of revelations that rocked his followers to the bone.

I tried silent chanting on some occasions when my vocal chord problem was getting worse. It was one of the toughest exercises ever. Mercilessly hard. The resistance, the inertia to overcome with each syllable was like the nightmare experience of trying to run for one's life when your feet sink in the ground at every step.

I think the only time chanting Hare Krsna quietly was acceptable was on your death bed, but even then, a tape player or a group of devotees would appear for kirtan and bhajans. Practicing something every day that was uncomfortable and forced would wear anyone out after a while. Especially when you are dealing with the subtleties of inner drives and the thinking process, always evaluating and judging whether one is doing it correctly while in process of actually practicing it, it just all becomes so complicated and frustrating, leading one to wonder, where’s the bliss and why am I doing this? It was only after I let go of the critical mind and the need for loudness, that the chanting seemed to flow, but that was not considered proper chanting and one would end up feeling like they were not being a good devotee.

Or maybe the religiously co-opted, institutionalized spirituality fears silence, sensing in it a ground where any kind of living things might grow, not just the standardized bhakti plant. The noise of chanting as a way to drown out our inner voices.

I like what you say about drowning out our inner voices due to institutional fear. That inner critical creative voice of questions, learning and experiencing is a basic ingredient to being a healthy human being, and a powerful tool in growing as an individual, so giving that up to a guru and institution may have meaning in the beginning, but if it shuts off that inner voice, well, we have seen the disasters and debilitations that come from doing so.

Initial surrender to the guru and the process brings a new identification with a group, loosening personal boundaries in a new cultural structural system. This seems to initially bring purpose, meaning and hope to life, making one feel more connected to a group and a goal considered topmost in the spiritual realm of things. With time though, all this feel good stuff and group consciousness becomes one dimensional, all based on shared ideology that soon evaporates once questions arrive toward inconsistencies observed, you become dissatisfied, perhaps even a dissident, leaving the fold of true belief and the support system it contained, relying once again on the inner voice that is now shouting, “Get Out, Get Out Now and run for the door, for not all is what it seems…in the land of OZ!”

[ras]

I like what you say about drowning out our inner voices due to institutional fear. That inner critical creative voice of questions, learning and experiencing is a basic ingredient to being a healthy human being, and a powerful tool in growing as an individual, so giving that up to a guru and institution may have meaning in the beginning, but if it shuts off that inner voice, well, we have seen the disasters and debilitations that come from doing so.

Initial surrender to the guru and the process brings a new identification with a group, loosening personal boundaries in a new cultural structural system. This seems to initially bring purpose, meaning and hope to life, making one feel more connected to a group and a goal considered topmost in the spiritual realm of things. With time though, all this feel good stuff and group consciousness becomes one dimensional, all based on shared ideology that soon evaporates once questions arrive toward inconsistencies observed, you become dissatisfied, perhaps even a dissident, leaving the fold of true belief and the support system it contained, relying once again on the inner voice that is now shouting, “Get Out, Get Out Now and run for the door, for not all is what it seems…in the land of OZ!”

Leaving this Krishna Consciousness Movement is for the intelligent class of men.

[zvs]

what a spiritual train ride that was, one big three decade circle that basically took me back to the boarding station...wiser from the experience, but so much blood and tears spilled and swum in, all in the quest for something that seems no more closer than the day I boarded and jumped on!

my. feelings. exactly.

[Dhyana]

The recent texts suggesting we need a new topic, The best of GR quotes, have been split and the topic has been created. Thanks Amberline for the idea!
I decided to put the new topic in the Spiritual Practices and Experiences subforum. Quotes we appreciate often convey realized wisdom. (Does one use the word "realized" in this meaning outside of ISKCON?)

http://www.gaudiya-repercussions.com/index...ic=3123&hl=