2007Atlanta
Conversation about the act of offering and engaging every part of the body in Krsna's service
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The most powerful secret cleansing agent is God because Krsna is infinite purity. When we come in direct touch that is the ultimate cleansing agent we become pure. So the whole trick in bhakti yoga is to bring every part of you - body, mind, soul, intellect, emotion - in direct touch with that infinite purity e.g. through dancing, singing, eating, using our intellect.
There is a very important statement in Ch. 4 of the Gita where Krsna says brahmarpanam brahma havir …. arpanam means offering. People used to make fire sacrifices, because fire was understood to represent or embody God. So when the fire consumed the offering it was being accepted by God. Ghee was the typical offering in India. Fire stands for the recipient. Krsna says here, when there is an offering to the Absolute, the ghee (the offering itself) becomes absolute, the recipient, the fire is absolute and the person who invokes the Divine and makes the offering is transformed into an absolute being. The person who offers will go to that same absolute realm by the samadhi of spiritual work. That is the revolutionary message in the Gita. It means you are not simply sitting down passively, you can dynamically work in the world and your actions can bring you to samadhi.
The secret is to engage your whole body. Whatever faculties and abilities you have, engage everything, find a way to connect every part of your body in yoga by offering that part of you in some kind of devotional and then your entire beings becomes an offering and spiritual.
While we are acting in the world we are accumulating reactions, karma.
Every religion talks about the name of the Lord as an incarnation of the Lord. In the Old Testament there is an instance where a temple is build. It is said to be a “temple to the Name of the Lord and as God lives in His realm the name of the Lord will live in the temple”.
Plato is very concerned with the purification of the soul, he is halfway between us and Krsna, and very much influenced by Pythagoras who is very close to the Gita.
