MEANING OF  SAMPRADAYA

Sampradaya means "to hand down" or "to pass down" knowledge. It is also known as Parampara or Guru Parampara or Guru Shishya Parampara or disciplic succession.

Just like water flows from high to low, so does knowledge. We are the seekers, hence we are the ones at the lower level. The highest reservoir of knowledge is God, who is All Knowledgeable. Hence the Sampradaya is a connection between us and God formed by a chain of Guru and Shishya (disciples). Let us say, we have a battery cell and a bulb.  Quite naturally, the bulb will not light up by itself, even if it is in close vicinity of the battery. If we connect a wire to the bulb even then it won't work. Until and unless the bulb is connected to a wire and that wire is connected to the electric source (battery cell), the bulb won't glow.

The Bulb glows only when it is in contact with a Wire which is connected to a Battery.

Similarly for us to gain knowledge about God, we have the following two factors 

1. We must be connected to a Sampradaya (chain of  guru and disciples) which acts as a wire

2. The wire or sampradaya must be connected back to God  

WHAT DOES CONNECTING BACK TO GOD MEAN - QUALITY CHECK OF SAMPRADAYA?

Disciplic Succession is more like Chinese whispers or Telephone game

Connecting back to God means, getting in connection with the knowledge originating from God Himself. We must be careful to understand, Speaking about God and Originating from God are two different statements. Disciplic Succession is more like Chinese whispers or Telephone game. If the message is not properly received, understood and passed on to the next person, then the entire message becomes distorted.  It is even more dangerous if someone in between decides to speculate and distort the original message.  Hence to retain the original message (quality), it is highly essential to pass message As-It-Is.    

WHY SAMPRADAYA IS SO IMPORTANT?

Authentic Sampradaya starts to branch out from God. God imparts Absolute Knowledge to His representatives. Then His representative transfers the exact same message without addition or subtraction to his next disciple and his disciple passes the exact same message to his disciple. And this cycle continues just like the Chinese whispers game. This is a chain that exists for 1000s of years. In an authentic parampara, we can tap any point and we would find the exact same message.

Today's world, especially India, has become a wholesale Guru Manufacturing Factory. We can find so many people claiming their guru is an incarnation of God, with no scriptural evidence. Every now and then we hear someone did meditation or goes into trance and gets spiritual realization. These self-proclaimed spiritual guides are creating a vacuum in society. These misguided people build up large institutions and misguide, cheat and fool innocent people seeking God. These cheating sects are like the wire which isn't connected to the battery. Hence connecting our bulb to them will be of no use.

SO BEFORE LISTENING TO ANY PERSON'S SPIRITUAL LECTURE DIRECTLY OR ON YOUTUBE OR READING HIS OR HER BOOKS OR BLOGS, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE CHECKED IF HE OR SHE IS HAVING A GENUINE SAMPRADAYA.

One such infamous person said "'I reject the Vedas!' is the last word of the Vedanta philosophy. Personally, I take as much of the Vedas as agree with reason." He judges Veda based on his logic. Though it might sound practical to many, we must understand that the fact is, what might sound illogical or unreasonable to our tiny little brain, might actually be true. Simple examples are:

» we have 4 limbs but insects have multiple

» we have 2 eyes but insects have compound eyes

» we breathe oxygen but organisms surviving in volcanic gases don't need oxygen

» we can not live without sunlight but underwater creatures never know what is sunlight

» some decades back people would have thought it was illogical to think of a gadget which can be carried in a pocket and can help us speak with anyone in another country

Actually logic is a statement that is justified by our intelligence and it keeps changing as we advance or we become more and more intelligent.

Just like a first-grade student, who is taught number systems, knows 0, 1, 2, 3 ... to be the entire set of numbers in the world. If we ask him which number lies between 1 and 3, he would immediately say 2. But if we ask what number comes between 1 and 2, he would find the question illogical, because he would be confident that there is no such number. The more he advances, he learns about negative numbers, decimal numbers. Then his logic changes.

Think of a condition if a first-grade topper, puffed up by his achievement, attempts to study Engineering Mathematics. He will find everything illogical. That is why in an education system we have grades. Students from the nursery are slowly trained to be able to digest deeper knowledge, like Engineering Mathematics, one day.

But when it comes to spirituality, we tend to study any part of the vast subject matter without even having a proper fundamental base. Today's digitally advanced world make it even more difficult, innumerable websites, blogs, lectures on YouTube so many channels of knowledge and so many speakers. Most of them are speaking their own interpretation and not sharing actual knowledge.

If we are serious about seeking God, then we must seek ONLY those Sampradayas which connect back to God, without using our immature intelligence to judge the inconceivable statements ourselves. To understand the inconceivable statements, we need a Guru. Also, we need to progressively advance from basics and not jump directly into higher subject matters.

WHY CHECK FOR GENUINE SAMPRADAYA?

We have a dog at our home, named Leo. Sometimes when he falls sick, the doctor prescribes him some medicine. But due to the taste, he refuses to eat it. So what my mother does is, she puts the medicine in between the pieces of bread and feeds him. This way he eats the medicine along with the bread and hence gets cured. 

But if he foolishly rejects the medicine thinking that just by eating the bread he got cured, then he is not intelligent. Today's modern spiritual gurus are taking a similar approach.

They take the message of scriptures like Bhagavad Gita and preach but they tend to keep Krishna or God out of the picture. They will say everything but not what is actually being said in the scriptures. They distort the original message to suit their thinking. In Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says I am the Supreme God and there is no Truth superior to Me, they will say "You must worship the Self in Krishna, not Krishna as Krishna". Sir, Krishna says He is the supreme. How did you come up with the idea that He is possessed by someone? Is it mentioned anywhere in any Scripture? Of course, if he was alive, he would have replied personally, "I take as much of the Vedas as agreeing with reason."

Another pitfall is we tend to think a person expert in Sanskrit is capable of understanding Vedic Scriptures. It is as stupid as expecting an English Teacher to understand Quantum Physics because the book is written in English!!! Scriptures can never be understood just by material qualification. 

Sampradaya might be considered to be analogous to an institution/university in the modern education system.

Let us say, if we want to become a doctor, we must study at an authorized medical university. If we try to practice surgery without the approval of an authorized institution or on our own, chances are that we will create havoc.

Similarly, if we do not gain God Consciousness from an authentic source, we will be a cause of chaos in our lives and other's life. Society today is burdened by hatred and intolerance mainly because it is lacking the true knowledge of God.

One extreme is violence on the body. Terrorism. True spirituality preaches mercy towards even insects, how can it advocate violence to a human?

Another extreme is violence on consciousness. Some preach 

"I am God, You are God, Everyone is God"

"Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe" 

"why go to the temple and worship when you yourself are God" 

"God is the imagination of man, a buffalo thinks God is bigger buffalo so man thinks God is bigger Man"

"I have not read the Vedas or the Upanishads. I must confess I have not read the Gita. The only thing that I know is this piece of life, absolutely. If you know this piece of life, absolutely, you know almost everything that is worth knowing. Just by looking inward, nothing else."

Sir, if you haven't studied Veda or Scriptures which are the manual of life, how can you know about life? How do you validate your understanding? These kinds of loose and non-bonafide statements make them achieve goal of attracting many followers. They are like a terrorist in God Consciousness. They create havoc by misleading innocent people. Their followers slowly turn away from Scriptural Injunctions and worshiping God. Their followers are more miserable than an atheist. Because an atheist knows he is an atheist but these poor souls, they think they are following the spiritual path, but are actually an intellectual atheist. 

It is clearly stated in the Vedic Scriptures that