Welcome To Perfection At Home

Maha means great.

  and

Man=mind

Tra=releasing

Maha=great

Krs=greatest

Na=pleasure

Rama=the great enjoyer

Hare=addressing divine energy

The Maha-mantra is mind-releasing from the influences of material experience, like the mainstream propaganda and disinformation, educational indoctrination, and geo-politics posing as truth.  The Maha-Mantra releases anxiety from such things and establishes peace of mind.

The level of anxiety of the people in the world is at an all-time high, now magnified by continual escalations towards nuclear war and even normalization of perversion, including that of children.  But anyone can experience genuine relief from such stresses by learning about and by chanting this Maha-mantra in the safety of one's own home.

A relief from past karma is the immediate result from this repetition of the Maha-mantra, which alleviates all heavy karmic burdens accumulated since time immemorial.  As this burden lifts, a higher taste develops, and it becomes pleasurable to repeat this Maha-mantra.  The taste increases over time.  There is no requirement, other than listening very carefully to the sound vibration of the mantra.  In this way the mind becomes interlocked while fixed on the vibration, which reveals a higher dimension of one's self.

This process is easily practiced in the comforts of one's own home.  That's why it is called perfection at home.  It is simultaneously the final goal in the practice of yoga, called bhakti.  Bhakti transcends all the stages of yoga.  It can be experienced along with friends and relatives, leading to a growing peace of mind, happiness, and freedom from the anxiety now increasingly 'normal' in society.  

And what is that process?  It is very simple: the practice of reciting or chanting the Maha-mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, at home, alone, or with family and friends.  This higher taste of self-realization can also increase when sung or chanted with others.

Try experimenting with this maha-mantra along with friends and relatives in the comfort of your own home.  Maha means great, man means mind, and tra means releasing.  Krs means greatest and na means pleasure.  So Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare is the great mind-releasing sound-vibration.  Anxiety, fear, apprehension and doubt will disappear.  Simultaneously a new and uplifting pleasure arises in the heart.  Rama means the great enjoyer.  Hare is addressing transcendental energy.  

This is the great spiritual experiment, performed and designated for a Golden Age, by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu in India 500 years ago.  Anyone can try it for themselves and experience it.  Even 15 minutes a day will prove to be very beneficial.  Science requires an hypothesis, or proposal, an experiment, or demonstration, and repetition for proof.  Our proposal, or hypothesis, is that one can be successful in only 15 minutes of the regular practice of repeating this maha-mantra, and higher conciousness will be revealed.  Many have already successfully performed this experiment satisfactorily.  They have thus experienced a higher happiness than imagined or expected.  The more they chant, the more the pleasure and happiness increases.

This is exactly what Caitanya Mahaprabhu taught while travelling alone for two years in South India, how to perform bhakti-yoga at home.  He told Kurma Brahmin not to leave but to remain at home and chant the Maha-mantra with his friends and relatives.  

Srila Prabhupada explains in his Madhya-lila 7.130: "One only has to follow the instructions of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, chant the Hare Krishna, maha-mantra and instruct relatives and friends in the teachings of Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam." 

Srila Prabhupada also explains in these following excerpts from Madhya-lila 7.128:

"Many people inquire whether they have to give up family life..., but that is not our mission.  One can remain comfortably in his residence.  We simply request everyone to chant this maha-mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare."

"Instead of living engrossed in material activities, people throughout the world should take advantage ... and chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra at home with their families."

"The Krishna Consciousness ... is trying to elevate human society to the perfection of life by pursuing the method described by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu ...  That is, one should stay at home, chant the Hare Krishna mantra and [teach] the instructions of Krishna as they are given in Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam." (as described in the article below)

Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu traveled all over Southern India to spread this practice of perfection at home.  He is the original distributor of this practice, which will bring about a cultural change for the better, because its effect is to relieve the increasing antagonisms and anxieties, and foster peace of mind in these chaotic times, which "try men's souls" (Robert Burns).

In the video above you see that Srila Prabhupada is chanting on beads.  Engaging the sense of touch along with hearing and chanting facilitates better concentration of the mind upon the mantra.  The method of using beads is to chant on full maha-mantra on each bead.  Chanting once on each of the 108 beads is called chanting one round.  Below you can see that Srila Prabhupada has his right hand in the bead bag while he is chanting on the beads.  This facilitates chanting more rounds and keeping track of them.  Some people wear the beads around their neck to chant on them.

The principle of perfection at home is that the power is in the people. Not the power to hold elections and elect or displace politicians, but the power of self-realization. There have been many efforts to define that power, which have been most often confined to defining skills, talent, proclivities, expectations, interpersonal relations, achievements, potentiality, preferences, fulfillment, etc., accompanied by all manner of protocols, exercises, practices, speculations and incentives.

Although one may identify with such recognized ways and expand them to include friends and family, actual self-realization implies, and invokes a deeper, essential understanding of oneself. This insight extends to any particular set of time and circumstance, and while always ready and able to learn, one remains the observer, knower or seer.

Simultaneously, the intelligence acts like a superior, a supervisor, much like a parent serving as a guide for the subordinate child. The intelligence is like that, a common experience. When the individual dovetails with the guiding intelligence, beyond pleasing of the senses, the individual consciousness becomes focused on itself, distinct from the body.

If more people become aware or conscious of the practical difference between themselves and their bodies--the first step of self-realization in their own lives--there will be more of a basis for spiritual brotherhood on the grass-roots level, to offset the growing corruptions in society today, which are beyond our personal control.

Herein lies the special contribution of the Maha-mantra, the vibration which fosters peace of mind and steadiness.

The continuous accepting and rejecting process of the mind becomes interlocked when one simultaneously chants and listens carefully to the Maha-mantra. The question arises, wherefrom comes this Maha-mantra? According to the most authoritative scholars, it first appeared in written form in Sanskrit, the earliest recorded written language. For example, it is found in the ancient Vedic Kali Santana Upanisad, dated about 3,000 BC, and also described in numerous other ancient Sanskrit texts.

Spoken Sanskrit was written down by the revered sages of the time, who also predicted the onset of this present age, which they called Kali, to be known for hypocrisy or cheating, quarrel and strife, as well as diminished memory. They expected to compensate for this by recording all the educational and applied knowledge known at the time, both material and spiritual, which had been accumulated since time immemorial.

The foremost applied spiritual knowledge of this ancient wisdom remained isolated in India, although many translations, including over 600 Bhagavad-gitas, have been known in the modern world. The Gita is written in 700 Sanskrit verses, or sutras--which means codes. These codes could not be properly deciphered and interpreted by many later Indian philosophers, what to speak of modern attempts with ordinary Western linguistics or scholarly interpretations.  These have all remained theoretical, because they could not penetrate to the deeper purports, or meanings of the Sanskrit language. Consequently, such attempts have made no meaningful contributions to the present quality of life or any upliftment of human values.

However, we now have the self-realized translations of Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, widely known as Srila Prabhupada, which present the method of practical application for these modern times, which have made a major impact upon the wayfarers on these shores of Earth, who are seeking higher knowledge and their own self-realization.

They learn that hearing and repeating the Maha-mantra with attention is not imposing something artificial upon the mind. Rather, it is retrieving, reawakening, the primordial original energy common to mankind, which is the innate power of self-realization. This progressive process of expanding human consciousness was forgotten in the course of history, as more and more efforts focused on the technological exploitation of the resources of material nature.

This preoccupation with conquering over the laws of nature and becoming the master of whatever man surveys in the course of many centuries expanded into more and more technological developments, especially the conception of labor-saving devices.  The result has been that the original power of the people for self-realization gradually became obscured.

This historical phenomenon was especially predominant in the Western world, while in the East, especially India, there remained an acceptance of the distinction between the laws of material nature and the laws of spiritual nature. That Eastern tradition is epitomized in the Vedic (Veda means knowledge) history of India, whereby the exploration of the laws of both spiritual and material nature are emphasized beyond just their utilization for human necessities.

Especially in India, the focus has been upon differentiating between matter and spirit, and consciousness was identified as spiritual energy, distinct from ordinary matter or material energy. This was profoundly clarified in the revered Bhagavad-gita of India, which has been so thoroughly studied in the West, but with much extensive interpolation, which obscures the deeper spiritual meaning.

Now, however, the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, once read past the first chapter, which sets the scene, indicates the embodiment of the universal teaching beyond the subcontinent of India. This is applicable and useful anywhere in the world. It is unique in its clear explanation of the simultaneous oneness and difference between ordinary individual consciousness and God-consciousness, meaning not to have God’s consciousness, as popularized in the West, but consciousness of God. Both are defined therein as being of the same spiritual nature.

Sometimes, people say the Bhagavad-gita appeared in India only, and do not recognize its universality, but that is like saying the sun, which first rose in the East is an Indian sun and not for the rest of the world.

The English translated version of the Bhagavad-gita by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, known as Srila Prabhupada, was first published in a condensed version by the renowned Macmillan Company in 1968, and later expanded by them, unabridged, in 1972 to meet public demand.   Srila Prabhupada entitled it the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, because previous versions had focused on the Sanskrit grammar and punctuation without penetrating to the deeper transcendental meaning of the 700 verses, or sutras. Sutra means code in Sanskrit. Translation requires these codes to be properly deciphered or decoded to reach the essential meanings, beyond simply the grammar.

Because the previous translations were insufficient, there was a lack of understanding of the unique subject matter, and the commentaries remained dependent upon the speculations of the various commentators.   However, Srila Prabhupada came in a line of authorized translators and practitioners traced back to 3,000 BC, when written Sanskirt first appeared. Before then, the knowledge contained therein was called sruti or transmission by hearing, or sound vibration. 

Srila Prabhupada explained the verses with his purports. He often spent an hour just to find the best English word to express a particular meaning, which also expressed his knowledge, realized from his personal practice since boyhood, for over sixty years. He once remarked about the growing popularity of his translation, Bhagavad-gita As It Is, “My purports are liked by people because it is presented as practical experience.”

Srila Prabhupada’s books are the basis of an existential method for anyone to understand the purpose and meaning of life for themselves, without compromising with the anxieties of daily life, and without capitulating to the “powers-that-be,” in a world increasingly demonstrating man’s inhumanity to man--- engineered coups, deliberate environmental contamination, conflicting morals and degradation, misleading propaganda, political corruption, expanding wars, spiraling costs of living, misspent taxes and government 'bail-outs,' etc., etc.

Coping with the world is becoming an art, as an age of anxiety and cheating surrounds us. Theories notwithstanding, a practical approach is needed. The question arises, how the Maha-mantra can help? What did Srila Prabhupada mean when he said that one can do their work, it doesn’t matter what you are doing, and that if the Maha-mantra is regularly chanted, there will be no anxiety, and everything will be clearly understood about spiritual life?  

“Understood" means knowledge and he gives a practical beginning of knowledge.  The point is that there is no hard and fast rule for taking advantage of the Maha-mantra, and one’s occupation is no impediment. The gradual reduction of anxieties means that the purifying effects of the sound vibration of the Maha-mantra facilitate peaceful comprehension of higher knowledge. 

The Maha-mantra stimulates the intelligence to focus upon the unique analysis of the Gita, which distinguishes between two familiar existential energies, which are experienced by everyone as inferior energy (material), and superior energy (spiritual).  On the highest level, both energies are spiritual because the original source is the same, but their manifest qualities are different.

Srila Prabhupada gives a practical explanation in his Introduction to the Gita, by differentiating, as does the Gita itself, between inferior spiritual energy and superior spiritual energy, as the difference between matter and spirit. Further, the inferior spiritual energy, or matter, is divided into gross and subtle, as in the physical body and the invisible mind, intelligence and ego, respectively.

The superior spiritual energy is consciousness, which is much finer and qualitatively different than the subtle, unseen, material mind, intelligence and ego. The mind, almost like another person within, can act as friend or enemy, depending on how it is directed. The mind is always accepting or rejecting according to one’s desires. The ego means identity, what “I” am. Firstly, I am conscious or consciousness. This consciousness is my energy or the energy of an individual self (or soul).  Honest contemplation is required for this understanding.

False ego means to identify 'myself' with something that 'I' am not, like the body.  I am not the body. No one says 'I body'; everyone says 'my body'. The contemplation that I am not this body is all that is required for the initial step in self-realization.  I am the seer, the knower, the observer of my own body and what is outside my body.  Meanwhile, 'I' am still very little aware of what is going on inside 'my' body, which is made of inferior energy, or matter.

According to the ancient Indian sage, Kapiladeva:  'Intelligence is higher than the mind and instantly ascertains whatever comes into view. It has the discriminating power to understand objects, and helps the mind and senses to make choices.  Doubt, misapprehension, correct apprehension, memory and sleep, determined by their different functions, are said to be the distinct characteristics of intelligence. A sign of intelligence is doubt. Blind acceptance is not evidence of intelligence. However, doubtfulness is not very favorable when applied to a bona fide source of information.'  

In other words, intelligence can be used to recognize the ring of truth.

Kapiladeva’s teachings were reiterated by another most prominent sage, Suta Goswami, during the great conference at Naimisaranya Forest, by the Gomati River, or Adi Ganga, in what is now the Sitapur District of the Province Uttar Pradesh, India. This took place approximately 3,000 BC during the advent of written language, and was recorded at that time, appearing as the graduate study of the Bhagavad-gita, and known by the name of Srimad Bhagavatam or Sri Bhagwat.

The self-realized version of the Gita, referenced herein, written by Srila A. C, Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, is entitled Bhagavad-gita As It Is, because it is translated 'as it is' without any change in original meaning.  Likewise, all of the Srimad Bhagavatam, the graduate study, is also translated, and purported, 'as it is' by Srila Prabhupada, without any change of the original meaning of the 18,000 sutras, or texts.

The practical scientific sequence of self-realization, and God realization, is related in the 2nd Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam, 2nd Chapter, text 35. This text explains that everyone can perceive and hypothesize a higher intelligence than their own within themselves, through their acts of seeing and taking help of that greater intelligence, which allows them to perceive what comes into view in proper perspective.

Srila Prabhupada has described there in his Purport to the text a procedure anyone can follow: "One can perceive one’s self-identification and feel positively that he exists.  He may not feel it abrubtly, but by using a little intelligence, he can feel that he is not the body. He can feel the hand, the leg, the head, the hair, and the limbs are all his bodily parts and parcels, but as such the hand, the leg, the head, etc., cannot be identified with his self."

Further he explains that by patiently applying a little intelligence, one can actually observe the feeling of not being the body. So, just by the use of a little intelligence, one can distinguish and separate the self from other things seen or observed, beginning with one’s own body. Even a child never says I hand, but my hand.

Although this perception is a fact of life from the beginning, it becomes ignored by an expanding infatuation for the potential of the domination and enjoyment of endless sense objects, as presented by nature, for accepting or rejecting according to one's desires.

All of this requires thoughtful consideration on the path of self-realization, and leads naturally to the conclusion that the living being, man or beast, is the seer, who sees besides himself, all other things. Therefore, there is a qualitative difference between the seer, the knower or the observer and that which is seen.

Srila Prabhupada further explains: "Now, by a little use of intelligence, one can also readily agree that the living being, who sees the things beyond himself, by ordinary vision, has no power to see,  or to move independently. All of our ordinary actions and perceptions depend on various forms of energy, supplied to us by nature in various combinations."

These energies are acting upon us, via an unlimited variety of combinations, just as the eye requiring various light to see or the ear requiring many vibrations to hear.

In fact, all of: "Our senses of perception and of action, that is to say, our five perceptive senses of 1) hearing, 2) touch, 3)sight, 4) taste, and 5) smell, as well as our five senses of action, namely 1) hands, 2) legs, 3) speech, 4) evacuation organs and 5) reproductive organs, and also our three subtle senses, namely 1) mind, 2) intelligence and 3) ego, thirteen senses in all, are supplied to us by various arrangements of either gross or subtle forms of natural energy." (SB.2.2.35 Purport by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada)

"It is equally evident that the objects of perception are nothing but the products of the inexhaustible permutations and combinations of the forms taken by natural energy." (same Purport)  --- and interactions of the forms surrounding us, as taken on or shaped by natural, material energy. This conclusively demonstrates that the ordinary living being has no independent power or control of perceptions, or even motion, because these are limited, provided, or controlled by whatever natural energy surrounds us, whether on land, or sea, or in the air.

We are always conditioned by nature’s energy, in one way or another, whether we like it or not. In other words, it is always found, under the present circumstances, that our superior energy of consciousness is limited, constrained, or conditioned by the inferior energy of nature, subtle or gross, mental or physical. Therefore, it is clear there are two energies involved, that of the observer or seer and that of the observed. The former is naturally dissatisfied with his freedom being subservient or limited to the latter--- a materially conditioned existence!  That dissatisfaction is the difference between spiritual conscious and the material mind.

According to the Bhagavad-gita, as we undoubtedly feel our existence being thus conditioned by material nature, we conclude that the one who sees, or the self, is spiritual, and the senses as well as the objects of perception are material. Again, the spiritual quality of the seer, the self, is manifested in our dissatisfaction with the limited state of materially conditioned existence. This illustrates the difference between spirit and matter, or the superior and inferior energies.

Interestingly, Socrates was quoted by Srila Prabhupada as being the last great philosopher in the Western world, because he clearly distinguished between the self and material energy. He did not identify himself with his body, or as being composed of matter. He was forced to take the Hemlock poison, and was asked by his captors what ceremony he would prefer for his burial? As recounted by his disciple, Plato, he answered, as paraphrased by Srila Prabhupada, “First you catch me, then you bury me!” In other words, you may bury my body, but not me!