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Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #50 – Where There is no Circumference, the Center is Everywhere

December 9th, 2024

Recently, I was gifted a beautiful deity of Śrīla Prabhupāda. In fact, I think most of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disciples were gifted one by the brilliant devotees in Russia who developed this project.

 

What is the eight-centimeter deity made of?

 

Coins were collected from every country that Śrīla Prabhupāda visited and then they were melted together for the mold! The deity is even quaintly boxed so that when you open the box it reveals an altar where the open doors become two picture panels on each side. On the left side is Śrīla Prabhupāda in Tompkins Square Park in New York, and on the right is Śrīla Prabhupāda in Radha-Damodar in Vrindavan, which is especially inspiring for me.

 

Those places, New York and Vrindavan, are my prabhu-datta deśa, the place where the Lord or His devotee grants one residence to serve. In this case, they are the two places gifted to me for residence for my service to Śrīla Prabhupāda.

 

I carefully started to worship the deity in a simple way—massaging it with oil, bathing it in warm water and then offering flowers. I am not by my psychology mystical in orientation. That is, my ordinary life does not seem to be overly governed by spontaneous instincts. Rather, I usually more move forward in life after careful thought and a healthy skepticism.

 

But in my worship of this Śrīla Prabhupāda deity, I felt spontaneously a very strong presence of Śrīla Prabhupāda, bringing out my sambandha, my relationship with him, the energy of love we may all feel in relationship to another. I immediately thought of the quotation in the title above, by Blaise Pascal, the French Catholic writer, philosopher, and scientist.[1] It seemed somehow to connect with my strong realization that Śrīla Prabhupāda was there in his form.

 

I don’t know what exactly what Pascal meant by the quote, but I take it to mean that when one’s sense of reality goes beyond a conventional understanding or measure, then a conventional understanding based on that reality breaks down. In this case, the concept that all objects must have a center breaks down in context that there is no limit or circumference to space. Similarly, the conventional view that God has a specific location in the universe falters in the context of God being infinite or having no circumference. Rather because of this context we can only commune with or locate the Divine in this material world by the vehicle of faith, which is our conviction of the worthiness of a personal God, or His eternal associates with Him in His transcendental abode, and our response to them in devotion. Isn’t that our philosophy, that faith attracts the transcendental Lord or His eternal associates to appear in our hearts, or the deity, or anywhere within the material sphere, inspired by their devotee’s love?

 

When the great demon Hiraṇyakaśipu is furious with his son Prahlāda’s deep faith in God, he challenges him. Prahlāda had asserted that God is all-pervading and everywhere. In response, his father strikes a pillar in anger with his sword, demanding to know if God is there. The Lord in the form of Nṛsiṁha immediately appears there to protect His devotee.

 

The Brahma-saṁhitā also describes this phenomenon of God having no location in this world in a very vivid way, denying the accessibility of God by material means, even if one travels at the speed mind for millions of years.

 

So that is the theistic experience. One’s distance from God is determined by one’s faith, or lack thereof, and not by a physical distance. That was strongly my experience while focusing my faith and worship on the beautiful form of Śrīla Prabhupāda. I strongly felt Śrīla Prabhupāda’s presence there and why not? His presence is everywhere that his followers focus their faith, whether through his teachings, our service, or worship of His deity form. Because where there is no circumference, the center is everywhere.

 

[1] I do not recall where I first heard this quotation, but it was in a Vaiṣṇava lecture or book. When I researched the source I found various references.

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