Without the Help of the Gopīs One Cannot Enter into these Pastimes

Chapter Seventeen

The Sādhu Is from the Fourth Dimension

This section deals with the apparent illness of Çré Çrémad Gour Govinda Swami in Mäyäpura, late 1978, prior to the annual Gaura-pürëimä festival of 1979, Tuesday 13 March. This was the second Mäyäpura Festival after the disappearance of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Çréla Prabhupäda, the Founder-Äcärya of the International Society for Kåñëa Consciousness, from this mortal realm on 14 November 1977. A total of fifteen months had passed.

Some may not know how to deal with this section. In fact, it may well bewilder some. Our humble submission is that you understand that there is more to reality than what can be experienced by the naked eye, blunt material senses and modern high technological gadgetry. This industrialised, technological, hi-tech, stealth, nuclear, Internet-age we live in has no real answers to reality. They can only, and at best explain a small percentage of any type of reality, and that percentage

A lwAys E mbr A c E d by K åñë A

pertains to a temporary reality, not an eternal reality. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.*

A Disastrous By-Product of Science and Technology

To Raymond Beneson, January 31, 1946. Einstein Archives 56-505:

In one 1946 letter, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) wrote, “I believe that the abominable deterioration of ethical standards stems primarily from the mechanisation and depersonalisation of our lives, a disastrous by-product of science and technology.”

One Should Never Attempt to Understand Inconceivable Subject Matters Through Mundane Logic

Life is not a square box, or an oblong or a circle or a tangential line; it does not exist in the nutshell of our mundane intelligence. Real life or consciousness is like a lotus flower opening up more and more and more, and if one is fortunate enough it may extend all the way to the transcendental realm, the fourth dimension. This is a realm we have little or no

* Author’s note: As the human race develops more and more technological gadgetry, the more impersonal our dealings with other people become. In short, the more we immerse ourselves in material life, the more bewildering our karmic reactions become, and our relationships with other jévas becomes less and less personal, which are separated by an array of technological gadgets. It is not rocket science; technology goes up, humanity goes down, unless you are using it all in Kåñëa’s service. “Nevertheless, one cannot preach to an ATM”.

C hapter 17 t he S ädhu from the f ourth d imen S ion

experience of; a realm that is not three dimensional and thus not made up of length, width and breadth.

There is also the maxim: science without religion is blind and religion without science is lame. So, are we blind or are we lame? According to Cäëakya Paëòita, there are four types of blind men:

na paçyati ca janmandhah kamandho naiva paçyati mada unmatta na paçyati hy arthi doñam na paçyati (Néti Çästra, civic laws)

The four types of blind men are; 1. blind from birth. 2. blind from lust. 3. blind from pride. 4. blind from one’s wealth.

In the words of Çréla Bhaktisiddhänta Sarasvaté Öhäkura Prabhupäda:

adhokñaja-vastu çravaëaika vaida

“…hearing is the only method by which one can know an entity that is adhokñaja, or beyond material sensory perception…”

The whole Gauòéya-vaiñëava-siddhänta is beyond our limited material sensory perception or adhokñaja, and must be heard from a Bhagavad-bhakta-vaiñëava.