Introduction

Subheader

Number 4

Summary
First of all there is the matter of the human predicament of being caught in time. The person is what continues from the past into the future. Fixed inside, the person loses his grip and fixed on the outside, he is beset with fear because of the dynamics of time that change everything and undermine all material certainties until one's death. Thus we realize the need of the idealist perspective of a stable person inside who is still in touch and effective in the outside world. This person, we are not just like that, we then call the Ideal Person, or the Supreme Person we cannot do without. Thus the need to meditate on this Original Person is realized as also the need to find and respect that ideal of stability and completenenss in the outside world. For that pupose one needs to be devoted, that thus becomes a necessity. We must be complete with Him, comprehensive.

Welcome to this book about the person. This book consists of two books. One is written by Krishna Dvaipâyana Vyâsadeva, the greatest of all Indian philosophers and possibly of all philosophers who ever lived, and the other book is written by me, Swami Anand Aadhar a former clinical psychologist with sincere devotion for the philosophy of Badarâyana, another name of Vyâsa. The book of Vyâsa, who also wrote the Bhagavad Gîtâ spiritual instruction and the Mahâbhârata epic of the great Indian war, is a frame story about the fall of a Vedic emperor about 5000 years ago, who because of being cursed by a brahmin sage, sits down at the Ganges to fast until death. The seven days remaining for his life he then spends talking to S'ukadeva Gosvâmi, a young man of 16 years old, a saint and sage, who is the son of Vyâsa. In the company of many sages of the time, S'uka tells him everything about the Vedic culture of holy and less divine kings that once ruled the entire earth but has collapsed since the disappearance of S'rî Krishna, a prince of that culture, who is a divine personality. The book of Vyâsadeva, the Bhâgavata Purâna, also called the S'rîmad Bhâgavatam, translated with 'The Story of the Fortunate One', consists of 12 parts, called Cantos, and the greatest part of this collection of stories centers around the person of Krishna. Vyâsa presents Krishna as the Supreme Personality, the Lord, we actually all should remember for enlightenment and liberation, peace and prosperity. This book contains the chapters of the first Canto wherein this story is introduced by a sage called Sûta Gosvâmi before an audience of sages gathered for a lengthy sacrifice in a forest. My book consists of an equal number of inspirations following each of the chapters of the first Canto. In these inspirations I, after due meditation, expound on my realizations concerning the philosophy about the person of Vyâsadeva.

To introduce you to this account, I would like to begin with a question. The question is: 'What question comes to your mind concerning the subject of self-realization in relation to the established culture of spiritual knowledge that you know?' Of course you as a reader cannot directly answer now. So, in the inspirations in this book I will try to answer this question myself repeatedly, in a way typical for my person. It is not a neat scholarly vedântic commentary as is already presented by several commentators of the Bhâgavatam. There is a rich tradition, called Vaishnavism, of respecting this book this way and in other ways. My way is also one such other way I finally arrived at after about 28 years ago in Amsterdam in the Netherlands having been introduced to the culture of bhakti, or devotion, around this book. Essential to this other way is my personal way of meditating on S'rî Krishna. My approach has two essential parts. The impersonal and personal part. The impersonal of Krishna is time. For that purpose I use a meditation clock set to the sun, a so-called tempometer - as also a calendar marked with a regular distribution of days in relation to the sun and the moon. Timing thus one is in line with the natural command of time. This facilitates one's meditation and natural physical and psychic integrity. For the personal part I engage in alone meditating on the so-called Mahâmantra as also in singing together that mantra including traditional bhajans, devotional songs that one sings by taking turns.

With all our science, modern inventions, political and scientific philosophies and spiritual strategies we, in this time and age, are in dire need of a most important basic ingredient to be happy and healthy with in our modern lives. This ingredient is respect for the person. It is a subject that constitutes a serious problem, for it proposes ourself as the object and subject of study. Self reference is not an ideal scientific perspective. It is a very shaky ground to work on, a scientific taboo even, facing the scientific duty of validation, the duty by the law of relativity to refer to something or someone outside of us in order to make sense. Thus we, from our modern scientific belief, instinctively tend to turn away from this problem concerning the integrity, cohesion, respect, control and identity of the person, we, after all, do not want to end up in invalid subjectivist egocentrism and irrational emotionalism. Still we are all persons in need of respect and self-respect like plants that need water and have an emotional term for it: love. Love makes the world go round they say and when we discuss the problem of this difficult subject of the quality of our respect for the person we also have to deal with the problem of the contrary: the systematic denial of the person called impersonality. The counterpart of the problem of personalism or subjectivism is the problem of impersonalism, a term that, peculiar enough, is not even found in the Oxford dictionary. In fact this primary duality constitutes a most fundamental problem. There is the awkward situation of by a system, out fear of subjectivism, being reduced to a number, a statistic, a pawn, a functional agent, without a further identity like a soldier in an army of uniformed people, and there is the ego problem of looking at ourselves and each other while being identified as agents of control that cannot and do not want to be controlled by any other agent than our free will, whatever the latter might be.
So we, first of all, have questions. Assuming that we cannot live without respect for the person because we are a person ourself, which person or persons are we talking about then? Is it a religious or political matter or should we rather keep it philosophical or psychological? Concerns it me, my history, my expertise, my physique, what I possess or what I stand for, concerns it the personal characteristics and interests of someone else, or should we be working for the sake of a common ground in this? Or must we, instead of this me/you/us affair, be more spiritual and consider a more abstract notion of the person of a culture of the past we want to remember as a perfect example and lead in this problematic matter? Or would it else have to be someone of a culture in the future we expect to become like such an example, like an idealized person, a great leader or personal beacon of moral and spiritual, individual and social integrity we can believe in and become ourself a part of? And also, what kind of respect or love are we talking about? As persons we are of both a formal and informal nature, of both a public and a private sphere, of both a general and specific interest, of both an individual and collective identity, of both a spiritual and a material presence. What is wisdom in this?
Of course we as normal people are very hard trying to live in respect and love, and engage in relationships for that purpose. We want to love someone and be loved by someone, individually and collectively. We abhor to sink away in impersonal faceless strategies. We write postcards, personal emails to people we know, make phone calls, use the social media, invite people, get married, live together in one household (or more), have family meetings and meetings with friends, join clubs, associate with colleagues, meet regularly with co-believers and join in submitting to a common culture that provides us an identity. We commit ourselves to causes and purposes and do our best to be good natured with our relations, friends, kin, neighbors and everyone else we know and live with. We want to do good, be good and feel good in enlightened self-interest.
But still our lives are full of strife, conflict, disasters, threats, quarrel, distrust, disrespect, partiality, envy, anger and enmity. We have problems with each other about it. The respect we all want - not even for ourselves - is not that easily achieved and maintained at all. Relationships tend to be temporary and superficial. Practices and policies tend to corrupt. We tend to use each other, offend each other and betray each other, we have ulterior motives and fail in reciprocation. Unrequited love, forgotten love, unacknowledged love. We neglect and fail to respect and suffer disrespect and neglect from others. We get disappointed in life, get sick, suffer diseases mentally and physically and ask ourselves who can be trusted and who would deserve our love and respect, not to mention our money. Missing this respect for others and from others we suffer a lack of self-esteem, we cannot find stability in our lives, have an identity crisis and are getting confused about the purpose of our lives naturally and culturally. Our wish to be happy is easily replaced by a wish for possessions, sense gratification, status, wealth and other substitutes. We develop false pride, false ego and false hopes. Gradually we out of despair may fall into unrighteous actions and become bad people that do not deserve the respect we indeed cannot find or give. We start to confirm ourselves in negativity dividing the world in friends and foes. What should we do? We cannot keep complaining about our individual and collective failures, nor can we accuse others all the time of the same or blame it on the genes or the weather; disoriented in life everything becomes a blur and our lives become stressful without even understanding the causes and the symptoms of sleeplessness, drowsiness, neurosis and psychosis. We become opinionated, unhappy and quarrelsome. We engage in personal and collective wars. What went wrong? What is the evil we should fight? Where should we start to tackle these existential problems?
Is love the way? Just live in love and all problems are solved? But as said, it is difficult to confide, even in oneself. What does that love mean we crave so badly for? Love can be demanding! Love is so intricate and vulnerable. Who should answer our questions when we as adults are on a mission of self-realization? What is wisdom in these matters? How can we find lasting happiness? Clearly we are looking for the person we are ourselves in the first place and secondly for the person that deserves our love and can answer with his or her love to our satisfaction. To be deserving though means that there are conditions that need to be met and questions about wisdom that must be answered and cannot be tackled without content, without meaning, without reference. We have to discuss the problems we have with ourselves, with others and with the greater context of nature and culture we are engaged in.