The Glories of Śrī Nityānanda Prabhu, Śrī Māyāpura 2008
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Lecture Excerpts
The souls are eternal parts and parcels of Kṛṣṇa and they happen to be in illusory condition. So, if the illusory condition is illusory, that means it is illusory. I can't make it into substance when it politically pleases me. If Māyā is Māyā, it is Māyā. And if someone is in it, it is Māyā. But being there, it has no substance. You can't say 'He is in Māyā,' and then give substance to Māyā. 'Oh, they have done this, that is abominable, they can never be forgiven.' But that means, then you are saying, Māyā has substance over the Holy Name.
Just on that, since we have touched on that, very nice part of the purport in the next, two verses later, 14 [Caitanya Caritāmṛta, Ādi 5.14 Purport]:
"The disease of the modern civilized man is his disbelief of everything in the revealed scriptures. Faithless nonbelievers cannot make progress in spiritual realization, for they cannot understand the spiritual potency. The small fruit of a banyan contains hundreds of seeds, and in each seed is the potency to produce another banyan tree with thepotency to produce millions more of such fruits. This law of nature is visible before us, although how it works is beyond our understanding. This is but an insignificant example of the potency of Godhead; there are many similar phenomena... (..) The perfect knowledge propounded in the revealed scriptures is confirmed by the great ācāryas, who have left ample commentations upon them; none of these ācāryas has disbelieved in the śāstras. One who disbelieves in the śāstras is an atheist, and we should not consult an atheist, however great he may be. A staunch believer in the śāstras, with all their diversities, is the right person from whom to gather real knowledge."
So, in other words, Nityānanda Prabhu is seeing beyond all these important social considerations. Because, yes, socially, Jagāi and Mādhāi have a problem. And it is not that He is saying, 'Yeah, yeah, they are cool, be liberal, let them hang out with your daughter and bring them into your house and do all that kind-of stuff,' they are not saying that. He is saying that spiritually they should be able to be engaged. They should be able to chant, be fully absorbed in spiritual, devotional activities that completely engage them. And He is not making the mistake also that spiritual activities are a prestige. Means, if you want to say that, then who can say they have the right to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa? What was your qualification, wallowing in the gutter, that Prabhupāda picked you up from that, made you qualified to take up devotional service?
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So we see is that this concept of mercy, we are so used to it, we swim in the ocean of mercy that we take it for granted. As we mentioned before, we are reading here comfortably from Caitanya Caritāmṛta. Bhaktiviṇoda Ṭhākura, the eternal associate of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, took 7 years to find the Caitanya Caritāmṛta. We got it coming out our ears. So the amount of mercy that we have is so great, and so that mercy then is by the grace of Nityānanda Prabhu.
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