About Real Happiness, Maya and Illusion

A pic @12 Apostles. Great Ocean Road.

Hi all...How are you? After being sick with flu for few days, I am back to see what is happening in the blogging world. 

Please, find below excerpts from Srila Prabhupad's lecture which talks about Happiness and pleasure that we all are striving for. And, there are different types and levels of pleasure are described. What does it mean by spiritual happiness, what makes someone to give up their regular, comfortable life style and go after something called a spiritual pleasure, Brahmananda. In history, we see so many for example, Mirabai who was a princess and gave up everything for the sake of Lord Krishna. Please read on..

"So this ananda potency...We are seeking after ananda. Every one of us, we are seeking after pleasure.This is struggle for existence. Everyone wants to be happy, peace and pleasure.But wherefrom this idea comes? The Vedānta-sūtra says janmādy asya yataḥ: [SB 1.1.1] it also comes from Parabrahman. So if Parabrahman has no such tendency how to enjoy, where from this so-called love in this material world between young boy and young girl comes? There cannot be any existing. It is only perverted reflection of that pleasure potency of Rādhā and Krishna. It is only perverted reflection. It is not false. It is temporary,perverted. Just like the example is sometimes given to mistake a rope as snake.The Māyāvādī philosophers, they give. They say it is māyā. But it is not māyā.When you mistake a snake as..., mistake a rope as a snake, that is not māyā.That is illusion. You can call it māyā. But the snake is there. You cannot say, because it is rope, therefore there is no snake. No. Snake is there. Otherwise, how it comes to the idea of snake? The snake is a fact, but you are mistaking the rope as snake. That is your mistake. But snake is not illusion; snake is a fact. Similarly, another example is given. Just like in the desert, the mirage... In the desert sometimes, the animals find that water, there is a vast mass of water, and when they're thirsty, they jump over and go farther, farther, farther. But because there is no water, he dies. But no sane man goes after that water. But water is not false. That water is being sought in a false place. Similarly, the pleasure, the pleasure between two sexes, man and woman, that is not false. But we are seeking that pleasure in a false place in this material world. Therefore you have (indistinct). It is a great science.

So there is the pleasure, this sex attraction. But that sex attraction is not material, Krishna, rādhā Krishna-praṇaya-vikṛtirhlādinī śaktir asmāt, ekātmānāv api deha bhedaṁgatau. Try to understand. For Brahman perception, Brahman pleasure, a great saintly person, he gives up everything material. He takes sannyāsa, he goes,undergoes severe penances, just to realize brahmānanda. So when Brahman... A person, ordinary person, to realize brahmānanda, he gives up everything material, do you think Krishna, the Parabrahman, is enjoying something material?Just try to understand. Krishna does not enjoy anything. He's Parabrahman. For under standing Brahman pleasure, a person is recommended to give up everything material. And when the Parabrahman wants to enjoy, does it means that He's enjoying something material? This is our nescience. This is our misunderstanding. When Parabrahman enjoys, He... But the difficulty is that this Māyāvādī philosopher, they cannot understand that in the spiritual world there is also pleasure. Their foolish brain cannot accommodate. Because here in this material world they have got very bad experience of this material... They want to make the spiritual world as zero or impersonal due to less intelligence. But actually, real life, real pleasure, eternal pleasure is therein the spiritual world, not in this material world.

So from Bhagavad-gītā, if you study scrutinisingly each word and each śloka-not by man interpretation, but actually as it is-then we can understand what our eternal life is, what is our eternal pleasure, how we can return and sport there. Everything is explained there. Everyone can go. Everyone can transfer himself in that spiritual world-simply by understanding Krishna. That's all. And the Krishna understanding is there. Krishna is explaining Himself in the Bhagavad-gītā. He,if you do not introduce your so-called foolish scholarship, then you get actually back to home, back to Godhead, by simply studying Bhagavad-gītā. But if you add your foolish rascal scholarship, that "Krishna means this and that means this, this means that," then you are lost. Study Bhagavad-gītāas it is. You get all information how to realize Brahman, ahaṁ brahmāsmi. So 'ham. Don't misinterpret. Don't...There is no... Just like Krishna... This verse is very plain. This verse says natv evāhaṁ jātu nāsam. Where is the difficulty? "My dear Arjuna, both I, you... It is not that I did not exist, you did not exist. Neither this soldier." Where is the difficulty to understand? Why should we misinterpret?"

(Excerpted from Srila Prabhupad's Lecture at Jakarta on February 26, 1973.)