Dear Maharaj,
Please Accept My Humble Obesiances, All Glories To Srila Prabhupada.
I am writing to follow up on our discussion in Richmond regarding Bhakti Shastri / Bhakti Vaibhava in the North East (New Jersey Area).
Currently I am trying to present Bhakti Shastri to around 15 students - they are asking tough questions that I can't always answer. A couple of these are:
Can Sadhana Bhakti be considered Uttama Bhakti?
With reference to BRS 1.1.23 -
•aprärabdha-phalaàpäpaà, küöaàbéjaàphalonmukham
krameëaivapraléyeta, viñëu-bhakti-ratätmanäm
krameëaivapraléyeta, viñëu-bhakti-ratätmanäm
In which sequence does Bhakti vanquish sinful reactions - starting from oldest first (aprarabdha or from prarabdha).
We would also like to request that you please put some time on your calendar for visiting us here.
Hare Krishna
Nilamani Das
HpS - AGTSP. Paoho. Was so nice to hear from you. Soooo nice. Yes, we were very happy to meet you in Richmond and25we were hoping that you would be merciful and persistent and write to this humble Blog. Honestly it is the only way that we can handle our correspondences. As I write this to you there will be about 25-more devotees reading it and some of them will have the same questions as you. Then we don't have to answer the same questions like five times.
First, these are hard questions. We don't have any Sastric reference, but what we have heard from senior devotees, who do base their substance on sastra, uttama adhikari starts at the level of Bhava. Adau sraddha, sadhu sanga.... this famous verse gives all the level of bhakti, no? BG 4.10 purport has the verse nicely put and of course Prabhupada paraphrases it in NOI 7 and everywhere. Madhyama adhikari starts with Bhajana kriya.
Is O.K?
Second, we have never read whether the seeds start being removed from old to new. We have a suspicion that they get removed in terms of how they come up in our service. If we have to stop smoking to go on the altar then the motivation to go on the altar pushes us to eliminate that anartha, so that will be destroyed at that point, no matter when we acquired it.
Third, we had nice talk with Braja-bihari Das this weekend as part of our annual NIOS symposium. Do you know him??? Hari-lila Das is here with us and he knows your good self. BBD is graduating some Bhakti-sastri students and will start Bhakti-vaibhava in like January. Are you formally connected to the ISKCON Board of Examiners to give approved BhSastri/BhVai diplomas?
If not lets get it taken care of. We can co-ordinate with BBD.
Please send us your ideas.
Our cellular in the USA is 209 5053219
HpSwami - ASA!!