{"id":69429,"date":"2020-03-03T03:37:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T02:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dandavats.tumblr.com\/post\/181014823936"},"modified":"2020-03-03T03:37:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T02:37:00","slug":"spiritual-amnesiadhirasanta-das-goswami-imagine-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=69429","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Amnesia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-69428\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads72\/tumblr_pjknlcDGoX1sbj0vuo1_500.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_pjknlcDGoX1sbj0vuo1_500.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_pjknlcDGoX1sbj0vuo1_500-280x187.jpg 280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Spiritual Amnesia<br \/>\nImagine a millionaire\u2019s son traveling in a car on a hill.<br \/>\nSuddenly his car skids and falls hundreds of feet down. Somehow he jumps out of the car before it explodes. Fortunately, he falls on a sand dune in the valley. He survives but gets amnesia due to a blow on the head.<br \/>\nThe tribals residing in the valley rescue him and give him a name and a role in their community. Though a prince he now slaves as a woodcutter.<br \/>\nHis millionaire father comes searching for him, but he fails to even identify his own father, what to speak of returning back. His father has to employ a doctor who gives shock treatment to him. Though initially upset by the shocking, he eventually recovers from the amnesia. And then he returns back with his father to live happily ever after.<br \/>\nIn the same way, we are all the beloved children of God, who is the king of all kings, the supremely wealthy person. Unfortunately, we have fallen from our original home, the spiritual world, down to this material world and are afflicted by spiritual amnesia.<br \/>\nFrom our birth, society gives us an identity and a function \u2013 you are so-and-so and your goal is to become a so-and-so professional. And so we operate like programmed robots, struggling for paltry sensual pleasures.<br \/>\nKrishna comes to this world or sends His sons, prophets or devotees to invite us back to our eternal joyful life with Him. But we fail to even recognize our own eternal father, let alone consider returning back to Him.<br \/>\nKrishna, being our unconditionally benevolent father, loves us too much to take offense at our neglecting or rejecting Him. However, our non-cooperation compels Him to employ material nature to give us shock treatment.<br \/>\nThe shocks comprise of the threefold material miseries \u2013 adhyatmika klesha (mental stress, bodily disorders etc), adhidaivika klesha (natural disasters, climatic inconveniences etc) and adhibhautika klesha (quarrels, divorces etc) and the fourfold material problems \u2013 old age, disease, death and rebirth.<br \/>\nKrishna doesn\u2019t want us to suffer, but if suffering is what is necessary to cure us, like any responsible father, He allows temporary material suffering for our eternal spiritual redemption.<br \/>\nSrila Prabhupada, my spiritual teacher said, \u201cThe miseries of material existence indirectly serve to remind us of our incompatibility with matter in this world.\u201d<br \/>\nHow? These miseries, though disturbing, impel intelligent people to go to the representatives of God \u2013 the sacred scriptures like the Bhagavad-gita and saintly teachers.<br \/>\nThe enlightenment they offer commences the cure for our spiritual amnesia and paves the way for our ultimate spiritual reinstatement as divine princes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/2d7120f29df1d3f77740af170d25ae3d\/tumblr_pjknlcDGoX1sbj0vuo1_500.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Spiritual Amnesia<br \/>\n Imagine a millionaire&rsquo;s son traveling in a car on a hill.<br \/>\nSuddenly his car skids and falls hundreds of feet down. Somehow he jumps out of the car before it explodes. Fortunately, he falls on a sand dune in the valley. He survives but gets amnesia due to a blow on the head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[152],"class_list":["post-69429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-media","tag-nectar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}