Harimedia Forum

...could be considered like question about the Present.
Dear Hari, your way is very similar to the way of some close and open anciens mistics societies. I don't know do you have some kinds of example in your head, but it's very similar. The main difference is internal organisation of your movement and my question is following. One day, when you leave this planet, who will continuer your mission? If you don't think about it, this movement will be your self expression only. Please think about your releave.
Thank you for the nice music on radio. One of your compositions was in the spirit of Van der Graaf Generator, that I like very much too.
You have always very important place in my heart.
With love.

Hmmm. I am not sure if the analogy you make is as similar as you think.

Certainly there are similarities between what I do, what I am, and mystics or mystical groups of the past as I am a spiritual mystic engaging in similar practices, but expressing them in ways that make them more accessible and less elitist. I do not think that because I do things similar to what groups did before this implies that I have a movement that needs to be organized! I also do not find it relevant to worry about how this will go on when I am no longer here. I shall explain.

If you look at the contributions of those spiritualists who most influenced the world, it was their writings, teachings, examples and life that were the influencing factors and not their immediate followers or their movements or churches. All of the major religions of the world were initiated by persons and only long after their death was someone inspired to take their teachings and create some structure. We are not aware of nor are we influenced by some organization that directly carried their teachings forward. This is a simple fact. All we know is how people today have accepted some organization that was created sometime in the past with some kind of twist on the original teachings to accommodate the society within which the structure needed to be built. The relation between the subsequently created structure and the originator of the spiritual teachings is tenuous and in some cases even somewhat illusory. Much has been written on this.

No one can represent me but me. And part of what I am is that all I am concerned with is that you have the facility to develop to your maximal potential. I am concerned that you shall stand confidently as an individual with the power and conviction of your being manifested in the world of your own creation. If you want to go out and create some structure, be my guest! But please do not label it later on, "The Structure of Hari As the Keeper of His Faith," as this would be 100% contradictory to what I have shared.

I see structure and facility, along with missions and movements, to be the primary means to destroy the essence of what is mystical spiritualism. This is my personal experience and my conviction. I would love to be proven wrong.

Wherever there are buildings or physical facilities, money, and people involved there will be politics, conflicts, intrigue, cheating, violence against someone somewhere, all within the context of stress, amongst other things. I would rather see individuals understand how to experience mystical energy and grow in their own way. I would be happy if these individuals created their own structures or expressions that were not captured by the previous defects of societies past, but I am not convinced yet this is possible.

I am not sure how simply hosting a web site and giving lectures creates a movement, as you have described it. Even in this forum, which I host, there are hundreds of different opinions and expressions. This particular forum is mainly me and those who ask me something - hence the name, Discussions with Hari - but the other forums are mainly everyone else. As there is no established theology in the usual sense of the term, no fixed philosophy that cannot or will not be changed, no specific reference points that we can point to as our authority since we reserve the right to do what we think is best, we cannot say this is a movement in any traditional sense of the word. Since I have nothing to gain other than to assist you all to become empowered and enlivened to stand on your own and do wonderful things in this world and have fun at the same time, I do not have a mission as such. Or at least I do not have a mission that someone can take over. Surely, you all can inspire others, but that is what we all do all the time, or at least we should! Nothing missioney about that!

I welcome feedback and comments about this, not only from you, Devendra, but anyone else. I thought these points were clear from my lectures and so on, so I am kind of surprised at this question! Am I in illusion?

Having said all this, well, if I were to be honest there would be benefits for me to create a movement with members as opposed to me being what I am now, a spiritual head of a smaller group of people who like how I assist them. I would love to have as a member someone who was super rich who would allow me to get a great facility in Moscow to offer some really super spirituality, culture, art, music, literature, speakers, teachers, feasts, fun and mystical experiences. I yearn for a potent and powerful healing center. I want to create communities as villages that are self-sufficient, energy producing havens that are not dependent on the outside world. I want to work with people for their sake.
Yet, I would feel very untrue to myself if I allowed myself to create a movement just so I could have fun creating all these nifty things. I would be exploiting others. So I do not do this.

Yes, I see the contradiction here, but I would not be happy being a hypocrite. I know that unless I either figure out how to earn all this wealth myself, and I somehow doubt this is going to happen since my economic modus operandi is whatever comes in goes out each year, or I convince someone else to support me, that nothing is going to come of my (actually really nice) ideas. (By the way, I am also very learned and experienced too, O God, I am advertising myself, someone pull the microphone plug off this soap box, fast!)

Without structure, management and organization, nothing tangible occurs that can impact larger groups. With structure, management and organization, there will be other problems. Sigh…

Thoughts?

I perfectly know that you explain this point many times from the beggining, but if it comes back to you time to time, from differents sources, may be it can give you some new ideas. From my side, I wouldn't be someone who give you suggestions how you should drive your car, but if you ask about my "thoughts", here they are.

If you build your house and by some reasons you couldn't finish to construct it, any other person, looking upon your creation, could think that it is actually finished work. If there is not leading after you, it means that any other person will start from the same place that you started. It will be not that one will continue another, but one will move it in parallel. May be some one achive the same level that you, or but may be not. So, could appear hundred houses after your departure, but they probably will not communicate between them.

Of course, if you have pleasure to speak with your friends only, you will not need any structure, but if you want to develop some projects you will need it. Here is important question, who will be in the head of your differents departments, because it will be not easy to make all of them by you, and here is the question about quality of personalities. That to be sure about quality of personality for developing some external project of your movement, or club or I don't know who to name it, it will be necessary to create internal structure first. You have lot of experience in this area, so you can put forward the priority which will be more important for you, spiritual or professional.

Any structure that you will chose permit to develop better your projects, at least you can say I plant a tree.

I think we are speaking about two totally different concepts here. There is what I do personally, including what I share or facilitate, and then there is anything that required a capital investment like a building or a center.

When I share myself personally by speaking, I desire to facilitate an individual to become the best he or she can be in connection with the divine. If I can do this, then this will live on in the individual who will develop more and more and share with others. I have no particular point that needs to remain and if there is something that deserves to remain it will do so in the books that I will manage to write. When I am gone, someone else will do something better and life will continue to evolve. I will be happy to know that I have played some part in this evolutionary process.

But when it comes to a structure, for example the center where the deities reside in St Petersburg, this is something quite different. There is the organization VODR which controls the center and I pray and hope that any and everyone that associates with the center and the VODR society will make it their number one priority to insure that the deities are taken care of, are safe, and that there is always the facility for others to connect to them. More than this I cannot do. Even if I create a marvelous structure and organization, when I am gone it will go its own way anyway. I have done what I can. More than this will be ineffective regardless.

I suppose it boils down to my requiring to assist others to develop their awareness so they feel that devotion to the deities...

I see that we speak about differents subjects. I try to explain you what I mean, but before I would like to put forward one small introduction. You created wonderful spiritual-virtual system of international communication, but, as it seems to me, you have much bigger potential for your Club that you didn't explored yet. So, I decided to write you some observation of mine for only reason that I appreciate a lot your spiritual investigations and also I appreciate you as personality. The problem is that I haven't enough diplomatic qualities that to express my point view gently and generally it takes opposite effect. Looking back through the years I think that my role in differents situations in past could be compared with the mission of "grater". If you need to make one salade from carrot you take a carrot and chop it by the "grater". It happened many times with me, without any of my intention to take part in this, and I sincerely hope that it is not my original spiritual pastime. Anyway, I will try to explain my point of view by more delicate manner as possible and I ask you excuse me in advance in the case of my deep deviation.

I think that if absolute truth existed on the Earth in its entire form, few thousands years ago, so today this knowledge is disperced in differents nations and religions like beads of the same necklace and may be some of them didn't find yet. So anyway, there is not lack of spiritual knowledge on the Earth, the question is, who will be this "gardener" who bring them together? Which will be the criterions to find out them? I think that the answer on this question could be find in proper internal organisation of spiritual organisation for the sake of progressive purification. There is not lack of the knowledge how to organize the process of spiritual elevation inside of one particular group. More of this, most of spiritual traditions use very similar scheme to organize their internal structure. It starts from the level of debutant and progress gradually from level to level and every of such level should have their proper priority. It is not always reasonable to give the same task for differents levels in the same time. I give you example of gardener. Someone can have good seeds and fertile earth. He throw them around, they give good shoots and little bit after they became a nice vegetables. It remained a little, pick them up and use them accordingly. If he doesn't do it, in this case usually, somebody else comes and take them or they will rot on the bed. What he is doing after? He takes once again the seeds and throw them again around.

During your lectures you speak about basic things of spiritual life, thinking probably about persones who joined you recently, but there are many others persones who follow you for the years. From another hand, any person who stay on the level of debutant for the years, has not really interested in spiritual life and in his personal developpement. Me personally, I am interested by subject that you develop in yours lectures, but after 5 minutes I clearly understand what you want to say. You explain very detailed every point without possibility to apply my intellegence on and it continue during 1 or 2 hours. I remember one lecture of you, few years ago or may be more, which you did in the tradition of Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali and it was remarkable. Unfortunately I can not give you any precision about the year when it was. It doesn't means that you should give your lectures only for me or for any another person, but in differents classes. So may be it will be more practical for you to have a few or three or may be more baskets to sort your followers accordingly. It seems to me that such communication with differents levels, could be very interesting for you too. But of course all this have the sens if you have intention to create some kinds of spiritual school, because if you want only to share your personal experience you don't really need it. Me, I didn't find answer on this question, because I know that one of your project is a creation of some kinds of community, it means-organisation. I agree with you that it is nice possibility of developpement of your spiritual club. More of this, I believe that this community could start working even today, on virtual level, because any real spiritual organisation it's also the ... Brotherhood.

I had many hesitations to write you about this subject, but I very hope that all of these critics didn't make a harm for you personally.

As Hari wrote:"I welcome feedback and comments about this, not only from you, Devendra, but anyone else", I will try to add my comments.
Dear Devendra, if to speak about levels of information which Hari gives in his lectures, I would say that Hari does not give some concrete information,rather his lectures are simultaneous with his listeners experience, which should be perceived not only by intellegence. However, if you will give a task yourself to understand about what Hari speaks and will listen to his lectures for many-many years, you will find absolutely clear lines and topics which connect lectures of different yeas, and also will find distinct steps which group of Hari's listeners did together with him.( recently I did such work and I had many detections) And if you did this steps also and got same experience you will very interest ulterior motion, but if you didn't some step you will not interest it, because there is not some information in usual sense of this word. And speciality of his lectures is in what although they are very simple they are multidimensional, and great part of "information" in them influences on subconscious level. My friends and me found many times that we heard several different lectures when listened to one and same lecture , because everybody heard it on own "level".
And what you offer is very good in ISKCON . If you are in ISCKON more long time than somebody another you automatically become " old devotee", get the badge "very-very high level devotee" and all begin to worship you, you have assotiation of special level,special prasad and so on. You can worry about nothing, you should only quote words of great acharya in due time.
I'm sorry, Hari, for my comment

Thank you Nanda, for revealing the multi-dimensionality of what I do. You are correct. I speak to the listeners and for them.

I have a question to Devendra:

"If I assist someone to develop to a higher level of consciousness and they later choose to associate with, serve together with, or work for some other person or group, have I lost in some way?"

I think what Devendra would like to understand, and I must say that I somehow think the same is: What is the goal of all this? What is the goal of all this knowledge you may reveal in your lectures.

Ok Nanda-grama may write: "My friends and me found many times that we heard several different lectures when listened to one and same lecture, because everybody heard it on own "level". That may be so but nevrthless a teacher or a lecturer has a certain message or goal he may want to express or reveal in his lecture.

The way I see it is that Hari would like to let us know or conscientize us for the way how the Supreme (One of Us) operates or governs this cosmic manifestation leading us towards his or hers desired goal. He often speaks of the Spiritual Matrix although I must admit that I not allways understand what he means by this. At least this term is a somehow modern one not used in some scriptures or books of the past.

As I see it the traditional understanding of religion which Iskcon is also a part of tries to put the indiidual somehow in the position of the Supreme and of someone you may call servant of god who may do gods work here on earth as if the Supreme (the spiritual matrix) would be somehow amputated of his limps or energies to not be able to do it on his own. Of course I could be mistaken in this regard.
___

If God Was One of Us Lyrics
Joan Osbourne

If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his face
If you were faced with him in all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question.

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like heaven and in jesus and the saints and all the prophets

What if god was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the pope maybe in Rome.

Dear Harsi, I think the interdimensional network brought down to us these days by Hari's regular broadcast shows up some suppressed anartas in order to be ridded of by His admirers (at least the NonRussions). For examples, Devendra, as an advanced spititualist, offers himself to explain the meaning of Hari's teachings to beginners (otherwise Hari would have to continue spending His time doing so?!) as if the meaning of something must be different from the thing itself?!; you are asking Hari to strictly define His goals simultaniousely ilustrating poeticaly the idea that any concretisation of The One of Us couldn't look decently enough even for any of us particularly?!; as for myself I must confess too, I feel internaly proud as if being ,,between His chosen ones,, while fearfuly acting towards ,,the others,, as if ashamed to be so (my coleague Sati could find a proper diagnose about all of this, it has to do with complexity of the parental relationships in this world). So let's simply enjoy whatever happennings the uncertanty aranges for (as well as between) us!

First of all I would to answer to Hari:

"If I assist someone to develop to a higher level of consciousness and they later choose to associate with, serve together with, or work for some other person or group, have I lost in some way?"

I think that it depense are you doing this consciously or by chance. In first case you have some spiritual group which cooperate with you, where you can make a visit time to time to observe which kinds of wonderful plates were prepared from the vegetables that you grew in your garden. It will be nice possibility also to check that your fruits were not smashed against the wall. For this purpose, you can say during your lectures that if somebody wish to know more about certain subject, he can visit this or that group. If it will be different in another case, because every event has 3 stages of its existance: start, developpement and the end, and you will operate always with one of them. Actually, you will never know whats going on in your camp, because you will never have real feedback.

Here we mix two kinds of terms: "level" and "inquiry". I agree that during the lection different people could understand it differetly, because only, that they have differents inquiries which could be on the same level. Its question of priority of personal reserch of everybody and they could be completely differents. I think that "level" it something more complex. Its like an alloy between quality of inquiries, sincerity and sincerity about yourself, and personal purification. Moreover, the personal purification its also a freedom from some common illusions...!

I if could only know, where from all of these comming from ...

Dear Aradhya you are using a lot of flowery language in your post to me. For example "interdimensional network" which Hari would have "brought down" to us in his broadcast. Than you are meantioning the term "suppressed anartas". In regard to Devendra you are using the term "advanced spititualist" and what to say to this "as if the meaning of something must be different from the thing itself?!" or "I feel internaly proud as if being ,,between His chosen ones,, while fearfuly acting towards ,,the others,, as if ashamed to be so."

In the dictionary one can find the terms: infinite-dimensional or finite-dimensional or even multidimensional but what is a "interdimensional network"?

I don't know what to do with all of that. I somehow dont really want to get rid of something ("suppressed anartas" or whatever) in my life. Why should I? Please explain!

In Russia there is such proverb: " Better is an enemy of good".
Hari does what he does by such only way how he already does it and it is fine as it is. If you, Devendra, feel that it is not enough for you, nobody prevents you to search some knowledge somewhere else or to practice something additionally. You write :"For this purpose, you can say during your lectures that if somebody wish to know more about certain subject, he can visit this or that group. " Why should Hari say you that you should go to there or to somewhere? For example, we have in Moscow something as a club ( which is premised on principle of friendship, not on principle of " same levels" ), where we practice differents things how and when we want it, we use any knowledge and any new ways which are interesting for us. Neveartheless Hari continues to be a leader for every of us on more deep level regardless from esoteric skills and practices by which we are fascinated in present moment. Indeed when we did the meditation for look us between lifes( by Nyuton), many of us sow that we were one group of soul and Hari was our guide. And Hari acts now in this life same as a guide should act between lifes- to give full freedom, but to support us by his love. It is rare event among spiritual leaders and in it there is most value. But you offer: Let do as all other do! Let create some structure! You, Devendra, write: "If it will be different in another case, because every event has 3 stages of its existance: start, developpement and the end, and you will operate always with one of them. Actually, you will never know whats going on in your camp, because you will never have real feedback." Every of us can come and go out when he likes it, but real bindings don't depend on it.
Indeed, this discussion already breaked the tether of discussion with Hari.

Nanda-grama is right, we went too far, so let's be as short as possible: Harsi, I've thought you (as everyone of us, unsatisfied with the bounderies of ISKCON's internationality) would feel comfortably enough with interdimensionality (Hari explains It as clearly as possible, what could I add to it), while network refers not to something we are to be unwillingly cought by (for example this Internet can't catch us until we chose to join it), but offers Itself to connect beings situated in different dimensions. As for anarthas, as soon as they are exposed to one's awareness (unsuppressed) one can chose to keep them or not, for they aren't anarthas anymore. So you (or anyone else) can't possibly want to get rid of something you (or anyone) aren't (or don't want to be) aware of. So my intention was to join this club in an optimisticly liberal way, but although aspiring for interdimensionality, sometimes we have hard time to sharply tune to our international network, that's all.

Yes Aradhya let us "die Kirche im Dorf lassen" as the German proverb goes. "To let the chirch in the village" or this global village of the internet age, which means in colloquial German to not necessarily make things intricately or complicate things unnecessarily.

Your explanation regarding the anarthas makes sense to me. This freedom one can call it also autonomy one really has in ones life or the right for self-determined actions was something I was always "fighting" for, even during the old days in the asociation of devotees. I had always problems to just accept a subordinate role to somebody (guru, some authority or whatever) or to just bow to the discipline of the temple or association. Of course I did it when I understood what it meant and when I considered it helpfull to the spiritual purpose in life as I understood it. This obedient role of a so called das- or dasi of God I considered allways a kind of unnecessary enslavement, Enslaved by the system of the particular society you were in. Is it really necessary to consider oneself such a "slave" of God.

I remember while reading during the late 1980ies or even today some offerings of the devotees to their spiritual master in the Vyasa puja books. One could have the impression that here people are competing for a championship for being seen by their spiritual master or the others as who considers himself more lower than the other. Dog or whatever of imagined subordinate roles before the so much venerated or imagined superior role of the master.


.“Radio To God” Reported Destroyed By American Scientist

A most interesting FSB report that is circulating in the Kremlin regarding an “interdimensional communication device”, which Russian scientists are (jokingly?) calling a “Radio to God”.

Yesterday Hari saied in his lecture :" I got a challenge. People offer me to create some elite group and to REVEAL most occult secrets to them . But it is what I do all time- reveal secrets!"
Look, how it is interesting!
Great mistics always created some strainers in order to defend their knowledge from unprincipled people. People should go through some tests, examinations and so on, and only few of them could got access to main secrets.
Hari gives "most occult secrets" free in his broadcasting, but look- strainers are! Some people JUST DON'T HEAR it to listen to his lectures. I think, one of this strainers is simplicity and easiness of his manner to speak. Indeed, it is most strong strainer. I will not write what people and why can't go through this strainer. And another is fearlessness to get own experience, to not be simply follower. If somebody isn't getting it, he generally can't understand about what Hari speaks.
Today it striked me very much. Indeed, in order to hide something it is better to put it in most opened, crowded place, and nobody will dawn upon to search there!