The Inward Journey

Even though I am regularly traveling all over the world, I do not see that this material world is all that interesting. Wherever I go I see the thing old things happening to everyone: birth, death, old age, and disease. Whether someone is born, gets sick, gets old, and dies in Europe, America, or on a South Pacific island, the experience known as material existence is more or less the same. It's miserable.

But what I do find extremely interesting is the process of traveling within to the realm of spiritual awakening. The inward journey is unlimitedly interesting because it is there that one can discover one's true self far, far beyond the temporary covering known as the material body and its concomitant miseries. Krishna describes the wonderful perks available to those who travel within in the Bhagavad-gita, Chapter 5, text 24 as follows:

yo 'ntaḥ-sukho 'ntar-ārāmas
tathāntar-jyotir eva yaḥ
sa yogī brahma-nirvāṇaḿ
brahma-bhūto 'dhigacchati

"One whose happiness is within, who is active and rejoices within, and whose aim is inward is actually the perfect mystic. He is liberated in the Supreme, and ultimately he attains the Supreme."
---Bhagavad-gita 5.24

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

Answers According to the Vedic Version:

Question: Disciples Remain with Guru?

I had a dream that I remember very well. I was sitting near you and you said to me: "Do not disappoint my preaching team. We are traveling life after life and preaching for the benefit of the world." (I remember that we talked more, but I remember just this.) Maybe it's just my mind's imagination.

So my question: Does the spiritual master travel life after life with his disciples and preach about Krishna consciousness, or does the spiritual master continues his preaching alone while his disciples go back to spiritual world?

Your eternal servant,
Vygintas

Answer: Disciples Live Eternally with Spiritual Master

Whether the spiritual master travels lifetime after lifetime to deliver the fallen, conditioned souls of this material world or whether he immediately returns back to Godhead is up to Lord Krishna. And we do know from the teachings of Srila Prabhupada that the disciples eternally live with their spiritual master. The advanced disciple is not much concerned about whether he goes back to Godhead or not. He simply always wants to remain in the company of his spiritual master assisting him in his mission of delivering the fallen, conditioned souls. Of course, such a completely surrendered disciple is immediately qualified to go back to home, back to Godhead and lives as a liberated, deathless soul even while he is situated within his material body.

A very amazing point in this connection revealed to us by Srila Prabhupada is that a devotee of the Lord can live simultaneously in the spiritual world and in the material world. So with this information from Srila Prabhupada we can understand that it is possible for the spiritual master and his disciples to simultaneously be in the pastimes of the Lord in the spiritual world while simultaneously traveling and preaching throughout the material universes.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

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