31/12/2023
DISAPPEARANCE DAY OF SRILA BHAKTISIDDHĀNTA SARASVATI THĀKURA:
Today on the auspicious occasion of the disappearance festival of His Divine Grace Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī. So, Śrīla Prabhupāda Bhaktivedanta Swami, he would tell us that there is no reason for lamenting on the disappearance day. Disappearance, appearance, they are all the same for the Vaiṣṇava. Coming from the spiritual, coming into the world to distribute the glory of the Lord or leaving from the world to return back to the shelter of the Lord, everything is glorious. Still, disappearance brings with it the separation that, now we are no longer having the association of that great Vaiṣṇava. Except by his remembrance and by his glorification, but in a physical sense we are not able to perceive his presence, therefore that is something which leaves us empty. That is technically known as viraha.
So, actually Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, he was a great revolutionary in the spiritual science. He was, of course, from his very birth, he was especially a nitya-siddha devotee that was sent. An actual ray of Viṣṇu sent by Kṛṣṇa to answer the prayer of Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, and his pure Vaiṣṇavī wife. They had prayed that Viṣṇu would send a ray, or a pure empowered nitya-siddha devotee into their family to carry out the message of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu in its pure form. So, especially in those days, and the people were rather learned, at the same time, after Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura had more or less re-establish Vaiṣṇava philosophy and way of life into a status of respectability and still within the Vaiṣṇava community, there were many anomalies.
One of the principle anomalies was that people were outwardly putting on different type of shows of being very renounced, or of being very Kṛṣṇa conscious, yet at the same time, because of subtle mistakes in the attitude, they were actually completely missing the point, and they were becoming mislead by sahajiyā or Māyāvādī philosophy, as the case may be.
They were becoming overwhelmed by different types of weeds or agacchas that Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu revealed in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Sanātana uh rather Rūpa Gosvāmī śikṣā. So, one of the very beautiful poems that Śrīla Prabhupāda often referred to, which was written by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura is that “duṣṭa mana! tumi kiśera Vaiṣṇava?” That “Materialistic mind, what type of devotee are you?”
>>> Ref. His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on 15 Dec 1981 in Mumbai, India
