What is siddha-pranali? part 1
What is siddha-pranali? Should I be concerned about it? Do I need siddha-pranali to have a personal relationship with Krsna?
What is siddha-pranali? Should I be concerned about it? Do I need siddha-pranali to have a personal relationship with Krsna?
That's a question many devotees ask themselves. It is also mentioned in the works of Srila Bhaktivinodha Thakura, but it doesn't seem we practice it in our movement. Are we missing something? Not really. Let's try to understand this issue.
In his books, as well as in his classes Srila Prabhupada speaks some quite heavy words against sahajiyas and babajis.
Naturally, not all babajis are sahajiyas, and not all sahajiyas are babajis, but these two words are frequently mentioned together. This may confuse many since we see many babajis when we go to Vrindavana and many of them seem to be quite sincere in their spiritual sadhana. We may also have difficulty understanding what a sahajiya is, be further confused in hearing that a number of our acaryas were babajis, and notice Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura referring to siddha-pranali and other practices frequently connected with sahajiya babajis in his books. How to understand all of this?
All these heavy statements from Srila Prabhupada regarding the Vrindavana babajis may look unreasonable to many. However, one can understand the practical results by studying how this affected our movement in the past, both in the individual lives of several devotees and collectively in several yatras that passed through problems created or aggravated by it.
The pattern tends to be similar in most cases: a few devotees go to Vrindavana, they become attracted to certain ideas or practices, they start to share their new-found “realizations” with their friends and it starts to spread in an ad-hoc manner, sometimes surprisingly quickly. Devotees in the group start to feel and act as if better than others, and many develop a quite critical mentality. They decide to start separate programs and continue to grow by attracting more devotees from other local groups. Eventually, the group starts to wither, reducing in size, or disappearing, but the devotees involved rarely come back. The combination of philosophical misconceptions and offenses to others takes its toll on their spiritual life.
This started quite early in our history. In 1976 there was the "Gopi Bhava Club", the first of such waves, and it affected temples in North America. At the time, the question was quickly solved due to the personal intervention of Srila Prabhupada.
By seeing the results, it’s not difficult to understand why Srila Prabhupada was so alarmed by the episode of the Gopi-bhava club. Having spent many years living in Vrindavana, he understood the problem and the risk it represented for his movement. It may start as something subtle, and thus difficult to spot, but it also deals with particular aspects of our psychology and certain philosophical points that can be difficult to address.
We come then to the idea of siddha-pranali, which is a central idea in this controversy. First of all, what is siddha-pranali?
By the time of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, most of the remaining Vaishnavas in the line of Mahaprabhu were babajis, following a process of raganuga bhakti based on solitary meditation. When a disciple would be qualified enough, the guru would reveal to him the eleven characteristics of his eternal spiritual form in Krsna lila (ekadasa bhava), including one’s name, parents, dress, service, and so on. In other words, the guru would reveal the disciple’s eternal identity (siddha-deha). By meditating in this way (smarana dasa) the qualified disciple would be able to serve Radha-Krsna using his spiritual body. By the end of his life, he would take birth in Vraja, in the universe Krsna is currently executing His pastimes and from there continue his service eternally. For it to work, it’s not only necessary that the guru is realized enough to know such details, but also that the disciple is advanced enough to peacefully sit and chant two lakhs, 128 rounds daily, faithfully meditating and following the process given by the spiritual master.
In other words, not only is this a process for bhajananandis, who need to be fully dedicated to their sadhana but it can be performed only by someone who is already in a very advanced stage. This is a process for uttama adhikaris, that can only be truly practiced by very advanced Vaishnavas (CC Madhya, 22.149), it's definitely not for neophytes.
Only someone who is already in a high stage of bhakti, free from material desires, has a chance of successfully practicing it. Anyone at a lower level than that will not be able to control his agitated mind and will fall down back into sinful practices.
This particular path was practiced at a certain time, place, and circumstance, by a few advanced personalities. Nowadays, it is not only difficult to find in its true form, but also not very practical for us, modern people, with our agitated minds. This explains why, despite describing the process of ekadasa bhava in a few of his works (like the Jaiva Dharma and Harinama Cintamani), Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura emphasized the chanting of the holy names and the practice of regulated devotional service in his writings and preaching, especially in his nama-hatta program. The practice that can be seen nowadays in certain places, in which a babaji gives “siddha-pranali” to neophyte Vaishnavas for a donation is just a mockery of the original practice. Such imitators superficially imitate some of the external practices, without reaping the fruits.
The main difference between the bonafide practice and the concocted imitation is that in the true practice, the guru would be a truly liberated paramahamsa and the disciple would be an advanced Vaishnava, ready to strictly follow a very difficult sadhana. The disciple would be already a liberated soul when the guru would reveal his spiritual identity, and from there he would perform his service in the lila using a spiritual body, not his material mind.
In the Jaiva Dharma, we see that Paramahansa babaji reveals the eternal identity of Vaishnava Dasa, a Sannyasi who attains a very high level of devotional service after meeting vaishnavas, following a life of austerity and study of the scriptures.
The concocted practice, on the other hand, is based on imagination and superficial imitation. Neither is the so-called “guru” liberated nor is the disciple up to the standard. The “guru” thus gives the disciple some imaginary identity, and the disciple thinks that he is liberated just by imagining that he is participating in Krsna lila. Everything is just a mental concoction, without any spiritual substance. Srila Gaura Kisora dasa Babaji compared such imitation to a woman who goes to a hospital, lays in a bed, and moans as if she's about to give birth, although she is not even pregnant.
As Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura writes in his Kalyana-kalpataru (Upadesa 18):
"Ecstatic love for Krsna which is completely freed from the propensity to cheat is just like spotlessly pure gold, and the fruits of such pure love are rarely found in this world. However, my dear mind, your cheating process of imitation so-called love is simply a fraud. To get the real pure love, you have to first make yourself a fit candidate, and then true transcendental love will become very easily obtainable for you."
The false siddha-pranali given to people incapable of controlling their senses doesn't help anyone to come closer to Krsna. Quite the opposite, it can bring danger. Not being able to control their senses, such practitioners frequently fall down into sinful activities or become envious of other Vaishnavas.
Different from the authentic practice, mentioned by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, these artificial imitations are not in our culture, they are just fabrications. In fact, when asked about siddha-pranali, Srila Prabhupada bluntly answered that “Siddha-pranali is nonsense. They have manufactured a siddha-pranali.” (Morning Walk, 7 June 1976), illustrating how the process had been corrupted by the sahajiyas. As he explains in the Nectar of Devotion (chapter 16):
“A devotee who is actually advanced in Krsna consciousness, who is constantly engaged in devotional service, should not manifest himself, even though he has attained perfection. The idea is that he should always continue to act as a neophyte devotee as long as his material body is there. Activities in devotional service under regulative principles must be followed even by the pure devotee. But when he realizes his actual position in relationship with the Lord, he can, along with the discharging of regulative service, think within himself of the Lord, under the guidance of a particular associate of the Lord, and develop his transcendental sentiments in following that associate.
In this connection, we should be careful about the so-called siddha-pranali. The siddha-pranali process is followed by a class of men who are not very authorized and who have manufactured their own way of devotional service. They imagine that they have become associates of the Lord simply by thinking of themselves like that. This external behavior is not at all according to the regulative principles. The so-called siddha-pranali process is followed by the prakrta-sahajiya, a pseudosect of so-called Vaisnavas. In the opinion of Rupa Gosvami, such activities are simply disturbances to the standard way of devotional service.”