Emerging from Darkness

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Srila Gurudev's Vyasa Puja Adhivas, Nrisingha Palli
13 December 2019, part 2

I was reading the other day about Bharath Maharaj, about Rama and Laksman. Bharath Maharaj had to leave his royal throne, and in the end because he thought of a deer, in his next life he was born as a deer. Then, we must think: what will become of us? We do not chant the Holy Name incessantly, we are not thinking about the service of the Lord incessantly, then what will become of us?

At the beginning of Kali-yuga, sixty thousand rishis (sages) gathered in a place called Naimisaranya (we went there several years ago on a parikrama) and performed a fire sacrifice for one thousand years. Sixty thousand sages(!) did a sacrifice for one thousand years(!), but even then they did not feel happy at heart. In the end, Sri Suta Goswami came there and explained that happiness was possible only through chanting the Holy Name. You must always keep this as the object of your eternal meditation.

You worry about your wife, son, daughter, grandchildren. We always live engrossed in family life, in material life. We have got a higher intelligence in this human birth. Dogs, cats, etc. all have a family, children, etc., but they cannot chant the Holy Name—neither can they hear it, neither can they understand it. Do you know what the purpose of this human life is? The Lord has mercifully sent Gurudev to us, and through Gurudev's association, through Gurudev's words, we have been able to come to this path. This is his mercy.

When we recite Gurudev's pranam-mantra, we say,

ওঁ অজ্ঞানতিমিরান্ধস্য জ্ঞানাঞ্জনশলাকয়া ।
চক্ষুরুন্মিলিতং যেন তস্মৈ শ্রীগুরবে নমঃ ॥

om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya
chaksur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah

'I offer my obeisance unto Sri Gurudev, who has opened my eyes, which were blinded by the darkness of ignorance, applying the kajal of divine knowledge on my eyes.'

Gurudev opens our blind eyes, he removes our illusory ignorance. When we take initiation, when we take shelter of a Guru—if this is a real initiation—then we become absolved from whatever sins, from whatever offences we made in all the previous births. That is why it is necessary to take shelter. When you go to a doctor, you can remove your disease; in the same way, when we come to Gurudev, our internal heart disease is removed.

When you come and genuinely take shelter at the lotus feet of Gurudev, then whatever offences due to ignorance you have in your heart, all bad things are removed from you—all darkness is removed. But how many people like that are there?... Real disciples are those who place Gurudev's order on their heads and follow it without fail.

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