19840913 || ŚB 5.7.13 - You Can't Cheat Your Way to Bhāva

The following is a class given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on September 13th, 1984. The class begins with a reading from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 5.7.13.

Jayapatākā Swami: (Translation by His Divine Grace, Śrīla Abhaya Carana Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda): Mahārāja Bharata appeared very beautiful. He had a wealth of curly hair on his head, which was wet from bathing three times daily. He dressed in a deerskin. He worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa, whose body was composed of golden effulgence and who resided within the sun. Mahārāja Bharata worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa by chanting the hymns given in the Ṛg Veda, and he recited the following verse as the sun rose. 

Translation (with repetition): 

Jayapatākā Swami: Mahārāja Bharata appeared very beautiful

Devotees: Mahārāja Bharata appeared very beautiful 

Jayapatākā Swami: He had a wealth

Devotees: He had a wealth

Jayapatākā Swami: of curly hair on his head

Devotees: of curly hair on his head

Jayapatākā Swami: which was wet from bathing

Devotees: which was wet from bathing

Jayapatākā Swami: three times daily

Devotees: three times daily

Jayapatākā Swami: He dressed in a deerskin

Devotees: He dressed in a deerskin

Jayapatākā Swami: He worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa

Devotees: He worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa

Jayapatākā Swami: whose body was composed

Devotees: whose body was composed

Jayapatākā Swami: of golden effulgence

Devotees: of golden effulgence

Jayapatākā Swami: and who resided within the sun

Devotees: and who resided within the sun

Jayapatākā Swami: Mahārāja Bharata

Devotees: Mahārāja Bharata

Jayapatākā Swami: worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa

Devotees: worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa

Jayapatākā Swami: by chanting the hymns

Devotees: by chanting the hymns

Jayapatākā Swami: given in the Ṛg Veda

Devotees: given in the Ṛg Veda

Jayapatākā Swami: and he recited the following verse

Devotees: and he recited the following verse

Jayapatākā Swami: as the sun rose.

Devotees: as the sun rose.

Jayapatākā Swami: (Purport: The predominating Deity within the sun is Hiraṇmaya, Lord Nārāyaṇa. He is worshiped by the Gāyatrī mantra. He is also worshiped by other hymns mentioned in the Ṛg Veda, for instance: dhyeyaḥ sadā savitṛ-maṇḍala-madhya-vartī. Within the sun, Lord Nārāyaṇa is situated, and He has a golden hue.)

paro-rajaḥ savitur jāta-vedo
devasya bhargo manasedaṁ jajāna
suretasādaḥ punar āviśya caṣṭe
haṁsaṁ gṛdhrāṇaṁ nṛṣad-riṅgirām imaḥ

Translation: “The Supreme Personality of Godhead is situated in pure goodness. He illuminates the entire universe and bestows all benedictions upon His devotees. The Lord has created this universe from His own spiritual potency. According to His desire, the Lord entered this universe as the Supersoul, and by virtue of His different potencies He is maintaining all living entities desiring material enjoyment. Let me offer my respectful obeisances unto the Lord, who is the giver of intelligence.”

itthaṁ dhṛta-bhagavad-vrata aiṇeyājina- vāsasānusavanābhiṣekārdra-kapiśa-kuṭila-jaṭā-kalāpena ca virocamānaḥ sūryarcā bhagavantaṁ hiraṇmayaṁ puruṣam ujjihāne sūrya-maṇḍale ’bhyupatiṣṭhann etad u hovāca.

Translation (by His Divine Grace, Śrīla Abhaya Caraṇa Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda): Mahārāja Bharata appeared very beautiful. He had a wealth of curly hair on his head, which was wet from bathing three times daily. He dressed in a deerskin. He worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa, whose body was composed of golden effulgence and who resided within the sun. Mahārāja Bharata worshiped Lord Nārāyaṇa by chanting the hymns given in the Ṛg Veda, and he recited the following verse as the sun rose.

This is the purport and translation of Text 13, Chapter 7, Canto 5, The Activities of King Bharata. Translation and purport by His Divine Grace, Śrīla Abhaya Caraṇa Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda.

So Mahārāja Bharata by performing his devotional service his love for Kṛṣṇa increased more and more melting his heart. Mahārāja Bharata was practicing regulative principles of bhakti-yoga very strictly – bathing three times a day, chanting Gayatri mantra when the sun rose, chanting the others prayers according to the time and schedule. Thus he was completely engaged. So from that regulated practice of devotional service he gradually rose to the platform of bhāva or ecstatic devotional service, where he experienced parama-hlāda or the highest transcendental spiritual bliss; gambhīra which was very deep; hṛdaya-sthira situated in his heart; so much so that he was experiencing the aṣṭa sāttvika bhāva the eight ecstatic symptoms like standing of hair on the end romaharṣaṇa, crying, choking, and so on, choking up in the throat. So many tears were coming he couldn’t see through his eyes. So in that ecstasy sometimes he would forget the regulative practices or services to the Lord. He might forget to take a bath or may have forgotten to do something because of chanting and being so absorbed in ecstasy that he forgot the time, just being completely overwhelmed by the meditation upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

So this of course illustrates the different stages of devotional service. We practice devotional service according to the regulative principles. We follow the regulative services – there’s the regulative service and there’s spontaneous service, you see. Of course the principles are there in both. But one in the regulative service a person may not even have a great deal of taste. If someone in the beginning of devotional service, sometimes they say that “I am chanting, I am rising, and I am doing everything but I am still not feeling a great deal of taste.” Or sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down due to subtle attachments, due to bad association, due to offenses to Vaiṣṇavas and the Deity. One may be doing all right starting to feel very blissful but then due to some mistakes or irregularity then again they become distraught.

When one becomes so absorbed in devotional service through practicing regulated service or through the blessings of the spiritual master that one becomes completely filled with the ecstatic symptoms of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, becomes completely absorbed in spontaneous devotional service where even if for a moment if that… he is unengaged or she is unengaged in devotional service they’d feel very restless, you see.

In regulated service someone may feel restless for enjoying sense gratification and by regulated service somehow they are keeping their mind pacified but the spontaneous devotional service is the opposite. One is feeling restless for serving Kṛṣṇa and if that devotional service to Kṛṣṇa is in any way distracted then that devotee will feel very impatient, find it quite intolerable.

So you can see that Bharata Mahārāja he was practicing very regularly the uh, system of regulated service cleansing his heart from all material desires very systematically and then he rose up to the level of spontaneous devotional service bhāva. So he is also chanting every day different mantras and prayers offered to the Lord. So there are some people who may worship the sun. That is not the same as worshipping Nārāyaṇa who is the origin and presiding deity of the sun. Indirectly by worshipping the sun they are worshipping Nārāyaṇa. But here it very clearly states that Bharata Mahārāja was directly worshipping Nārāyaṇa who was residing in the sun. It shouldn’t be confused with sun worship which some tribal people are performing but they don’t have clear understanding about the position of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Indirectly those who see the sun as the origin and worship the sun as the origin and if they see that this as the presiding deity their service may also be indirectly accepted by Lord Kṛṣṇa but here directly as the Supreme Personality of Godhead Bharata Mahārāja was worshiping Kṛṣṇa who is situated in the sun, who is maintaining and supporting the entire universe and spread everywhere as the Supersoul in everyone’s heart.

So this verse gives us some insight because Bharata Mahārāja he was able to make a very quick advancement, he was materially well situated, he was emperor, he had a big family, had ministers, had wealth, had fame, power, had everything materially that a person could desire. But at a certain stage he realized that this was inadequate, it wasn’t the goal of life, that sooner or later he would have to give everything up. Better sooner voluntarily abdicate for his other qualified descendant and let him completely become Kṛṣṇa conscious.

So that means he was dhṛta-bhāgavata-vrata. He accepted the vow to serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead very diligently, dhṛta-vrata. We should all become dhṛta-vrata, we should all become and be very diligently dedicated to serving the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This should be our, you see vow when we accept the bona fide spiritual master as our Gurudeva, as our spiritual master, when we take initiation or even before when we accept his, him in our heart, you see. That deep acceptance is a dhṛta-vrata, it’s a vow, it’s a commitment, it’s a very… it’s an eternal obligation. And accepting that vow then… we guide rather our lives according to the instructions of the spiritual master, and the previous spiritual master or masters. In this way very diligently neglect everything which is opposed to devotional service and we accept whatever is favorable.

Here we can also see aiṇeya-ajina-vāsasa, that he was wearing a deerskin. Of course today in modern times it is not necessary to wear deerskin but this also shows us that it is necessary to accept some form of austerity that we should be ready to accept some inconvenience for the sake of achieving God realization. We can see in material life which is normally predominated by the raja-guna that so many people are sacrificed for the sake of achieving some kind of material goal. When they build these hundred-storey buildings its not at all unusual if two four people fall off and die. That means that just to build the building they are sacrificing life. The nature of raja-guna, the mode of passion, tremendous suffering to achieve their goal. But people are willing to accept this suffering for the promise of sense gratification.

Comparatively the suffering in devotional service is, actually… in the beginning when you are in regulated service level it may appear as an inconvenience or as a austerity. But when one actually rises to even the spontaneous regulated service or to the fully spontaneous service it becomes itself a source of transcendental joy. One has to be ready to accept a little inconvenience to practice devotional service. That should be voluntarily accepted, you see.

Now for preaching we may also have to accept even silk cloth sometimes, or we may have to accept different types of situation. Sometimes in India you find the sādhūs they say you can’t ride a car, we have to walk everywhere. We wish that more would take up this type of mode of transportation because then as we are travelling by cars and jets, we could have a little advantage over them to preach more rapidly than those Māyāvādīs. But also to show that even though nowadays due to the instructions of Rūpa and Sanātana Gosvāmī that we should use everything which can be utilized in Kṛṣṇa's service for His pleasure. So therefore we can travel all over the world using whatever transportation means are available and we can utilize all modern inventions and so on. At the same time it’s not that we are not capable of also accepting austerities for the sake of preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

So as Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu had walked throughout India so now ISKCON has organized padayātrā, retracing the root of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. And this is especially attractive for the Indians because sometimes they think well in the Western countries London, New York they are practicing devotional service in a very lavish style, you see. But they could never practice it in a very humble way in India. When they hear that devotees are coming from all over the world and they are walking in padayātrā with Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu immediately they become overwhelmed that this is something very exceptional and something very wonderful. And so we just on September 2d inaugurated the padayātrā about 150 devotees came from all over the world and all the residents of Dvārakā came about 40,000. They all came out to greet Caitanya Mahāprabhu and to send him off. We have a few slides from that function if the temple likes and can organize possibly we could show those slides before I leave, if anyone likes to see those.

Devotees: Jaya!

So in fact Indradyumna Mahārāja told me yesterday that several devotees are coming, going from the UK yatra to help take Lord Caitanya throughout India. I don’t know who the lucky ones are. So we take, we practically so, but they don’t realize… of course some of them in India, they are actually the devotees are maybe the greater austerity is preaching on the streets or in the airports or different places in the West where people are often very unfavorable. But actually that may be a great austerity when you are walking through the villages and thousands of people come out and greet you and throw water on your feet, roll in the water afterwards to express their, you see. All the… it’s not actually such a great austerity although it might seem that this is austerity they had to avoid getting their feet washed but, the devotees when they arrived in the first village there was actually no running water of course. There was no hot and cold switch, or anything. In fact there wasn’t any water at all. (laughter) They happened to pick a dry spot, you see. We had a little meeting and then it was revealed that Prabhupāda had said that always establish your camp near the water. (laughs) So it is easy to bathe and drink and so on near the water hole. But the local villagers they themselves carried water by buckets about half a kilometer, half a mile or so to the camp where the devotees were, just spontaneously hundreds of villagers started to carry water and fill up big containers for the devotees. So that type of service attitude was very inspirational for all the devotees.

So anyway we have to accept some type of austerity actually for the pure, in the previous, karma-kāṇḍa system of devotional service, karma-miśrita-bhakti was more prominent. So many of those systems were used. But in the modern times since Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, He established a more simple system. He was refusing to so such things as wear deerskins and He’d wear saffron cloth, often that cloth would be offered first to the Lord and He would wear the prasādam. There is still a custom in South India that the ācārya all his cloth would be offered at the feet of the deity and after touching the deity then that new cloth would be given to the ācārya, to the sannyāsi and then they would wear Kṛṣṇa prasādam cloth or the previous Guru’s prasādam cloth and every cloth would be offered.

When we visited the temple in Madurai, the Perumal temple, it’s the second largest Viṣṇu temple in India, in terms of its height right next to the Meenakshi temple where Lord Caitanya visited both the Perumal temple as well as the Meenakshi temple. Meenakshi is the younger sister of Visnu was married to Sundaresvara. So when we went there they had arranged a full greeting. They had elephants and the brāhmaṇas with the pūrṇa-kumbha, the Rāmanuja Śrī sampradāya system. They came forward chanting Vedic mantras, we had to touch the kumbhas and that they would bring in, that they offered and worshiped to… There’s two ways, one is they give a bhoga kumbha where you touch and they take that and offer it to Kṛṣṇa. Or another is they bring a prasādam kumbha install and you touch and take the first prasāda.

So after that an elephant came and gave a garland to me. It was a little naughty when it gave a garland it picked my śikhā and pulled it. (laughter) There’s really not much you can say about it. (laughter) He was bigger than I am. (laughter) But then when we went inside to the Deity after circumambulating the temple then they had wrapped a cloth around the deity. They took that off and wrapped it around our head in a kind of make shift turban as the prasāda and that was their special greeting to the give the prasādam cloth to the Deity… of the Deity to the devotees.

So we prefer to cover ourself with all prasādam. Prasādam cloth, prasādam garlands, prasādam everything. And therefore we avoid deerskins. The uh… Although deerskin is also considered one of the four pure. It is said that cotton has to be cleansed by water. Deerskin is clean by just putting that in the sun. And wool is cleaned by being in the wind, you just shake wool, its clean. And silk is also clean, but I forget, I think silk is just always clean. Silk is always clean no matter what. This is one of the pure substances. The pūjārīs often they wear silk. In case something touches it it’s still clean and wool although it’s pure we don’t know normally wear it in the pūjārīs room because one of the little hairs may fall off in the offering and then we shouldn’t offer any prasādam or bhoga with any hair in it even if it is a sheep hair.

So those are all the different regulative principles but Bharat Mahārāja he became so much absorbed in his devotional service that sometimes, he was just completely absorbed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We can see that actually that Bharat Mahārāja he rose to a very elevated level of devotional service. This is important to note, later how of course we know he became attached to a deer and everything and gradually that whole pastime will be explained, kind of a unknown… (inaudible) Now going through this particular part of the Bhāgavatam we can see verse by verse how the whole situation developed. And how advanced Bharat Mahārāja was as he had reached the stage of bhāva. By our own sādhana-bhakti we can’t come up to the level of bhāva, you see. Of course the mercy of Guru is always there but it comes almost automatically. It’s something that happens step by step. It could happen much faster if you get special mercy but you can say that by normal mercy it happens quite easily in due course. But the level of prema is very very high. That is something, you can’t achieve that. You could be in the level of bhāva even for a birth but unless Kṛṣṇa personally wants. He may desire that His devotee should wait, maybe relishing the intense desire of the devotee to become Kṛṣṇa conscious, you see. When Kṛṣṇa finally reveals Himself as He did to Nārada Muni who was also crying for Kṛṣṇa then the prema is established when we realize the self and the Supersoul and we realize Kṛṣṇa in His fullness, then one becomes completely… one’s reference point, rather than rising from the material platform towards Kṛṣṇa, if you have already been completely linked with Kṛṣṇa then your connection with the material world is cut completely.

Here in the level of bhāva it 99% slackened 99% cut just this slightest connection might still be there reference come up from the material level to this pure devotional level of bhāva. So that 1% crust, that we also have to be very careful not to ever do anything whimsically. If we do something whimsical which isn’t authorized by the spiritual master, like become very affectionate to a deer or something then we could get in trouble even if we come up to the level of bhāva.

But normally that’s a very elevated platform from there Kṛṣṇa’s mercy and especially Lord Caitanya’s and ācāryas mercy is not long in coming. If they want at any moment they can give their mercy and they can give complete devotional protection of the level of prema to the devotee. One can’t demand it. It’s not something that anybody deserves. It’s something beyond deserving, it’s a mercy and we have to simply hanker for that, desire and then Kṛṣṇa’s sweet will is there and He gives it. But if we become impatient and try to make a short cut, that’s called sahajīya. You can’t short circuit, you will just blow a fuse.

If you try to circumvent, if you try to jump up too fast then it becomes cheapened. Actually a person goes very fast as it is, if he just follows the regulative principles, become spontaneous, then automatically one comes to the level of bhāva, one practices devotional service in that way very carefully following the instructions of the spiritual master and then in due course Kṛṣṇa has His maximum mercy upon the devotee. But if at some level if the devotee thinks that let me immediately, I am already at the prema level, “I am already on the most advanced level.” and tries to imitate as if he is someone who is already involved in the eternal pastimes of the Lord.

Sometimes the eternal devotee of the Lord may be engaged in preaching. Therefore that devotee may not at that time even remember his eternal relationship with the Lord because that would be a distraction. Once you remember that then it is very hard to preach in some cases, you see. One could be absorbed in that particular relationship. So unless they voluntarily come down to the preaching level.

This is basically what a devotee should remember that we should follow the authorized system, mahā-jano… mahā-jano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ follow in the footsteps of the great ācāryas, the great spiritual masters. In India you have these people who jump over. They just immediately claim to be in the highest level. Neither do they follow the regulative principles, neither are they spontaneously preaching. But they are just claiming. Some people go… some are very subtle where they are actually kaniṣṭha adhikārīs but they claim to be uttama-adhikārīs and some are completely in māyā but they claim to be eternal pārṣadas, eternal associates of the Lord by imitating… just… I don’t want to mention… but they do all types of, all kinds of acrobatics sometimes for attracting the minds of innocent people

So Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, Śrīla Prabhupāda, by their examples they would always be ecstatic but they would conceal or try to internalize their ecstasy. Śrīla Prabhupāda would sometimes give a lecture, one time in Gorakhpur when he was describing how Rūpa… excuse me, how Sanātana Gosvāmi and Lord Caitanya met, I believe it is in Varanasi. At that time they embraced, Lord Caitanya embraced Sanātana Gosvāmi and then Prabhupāda was explaining how their meeting was exactly like the gopīs when they met Kṛṣṇa after a long separation. And as he spoke, he just completely chocked up. He just completely manifested the symptoms, stunned, and just he was frozen, just couldn’t even move, tears were pouring down his eyes and he couldn’t say anything or he just couldn’t move. It was like that from eye-witnesses, it was about thirty seconds or couple of minutes it was complete silence. Finally when he could speak something because suddenly he was just completely immersed in that pastime, completely absorbed in it, then he said, “Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.” and had to end the class there.

One time Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura was lecturing and suddenly he became also overwhelmed by transcendental symptoms, and he ran out from the class, ran up to his room and didn’t want to show because especially previously, it was such a thing that there were actually people that they would simply constantly cry in front of the devotees and that would be the thing that would convince them this type of external ecstasies and manifestations, that this was actually… this was the proof of their, rather than the anubhāvas which Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura has told us that we should observe and the regulated service or the spontaneous service principles that we should follow.

So in this way our previous ācāryas they were very careful not to minimize or cheapen the great experience of love for Kṛṣṇa. And actually it is said that therefore a real devotee is like seeing the tip of the iceberg. If you see any even just a small any kind of ecstatic symptoms in a prema devotee, it’s just like a tip of an iceberg. Even a tip of an iceberg because an iceberg is 7/8 under water and 1/8 above. But this is just one you know part of a percent above and you see vast majority of the ocean below you can’t actually… It’s so deep where a devotee may be experiencing even a nāmābhāsa by intense association with his spiritual master, with Lord Caitanya one may get a preliminary feeling, it won’t be full bhāva but it’s just before the sun rises sometimes there is also the sunlight, like that one may be experiencing a nāmābhāsa or like a twilight experiencing a bhāva just momentarily but that is not so deep. It’s quite deep but not so deep and more of just a sudden… and as they advance and it becomes more and more deep the experience of devotional ecstasy and appreciation.

So of course we are not concerned so much with experiencing ecstasy just like the servant of Kṛṣṇa when he was fanning Kṛṣṇa then he became ecstatic and his vision clouded up, he couldn’t see, he was trying to fan and it was interfering with his fanning because he couldn’t see Kṛṣṇa any more. Tears were coming out, his body was shaking, it was becoming very hard to fan. And so he started to curse that ecstasy because they were interfering in his devotional service to Kṛṣṇa.

A devotee is more concerned with rendering devotional service than the ecstasies of something which is not the prime impetus. Of course in our neophyte stage we are very interested we like to see because it counteracts and fills our heart with love for Kṛṣṇa so that the material attractions they have no room anymore. When the heart is completely filled up, when the cup is filled then there is no more room. So for a neophyte of course in the beginning stage they are very interested in achieving ecstasy very quickly so we pray to Lord Nityānanda to make us always happy. But then this very advanced stage of prema even the ecstasy it’s for them it’s not as important as the service. The service is all important, pleasing Kṛṣṇa. And ecstasy comes but if it interferes with his service even that they are feeling uninterested. That shows how selfless the pure devotees are. They are not motivated even by the desire for ecstasy, they are motivated by the desire for pleasing Kṛṣṇa. We can’t imitate their level but that comes spontaneously.

kṛṣṇa — sūrya-sama; māyā haya andhakāra
yāhāṅ kṛṣṇa, tāhāṅ nāhi māyāra adhikāra

Kṛṣṇa is just like the sun and māyā is just like the darkness. So when sun rises the darkness of māyā cannot save it. Nescience has to go. So in the same way when we can bring Kṛṣṇa in our hearts then all the māyā, all the ignorance you see, that’s all dissipated, all the doubts. So Kṛṣṇa consciousness is a positive alternative.

Yesterday at the Vyāsa-pūjā celebration of Śrīla Gurudeva, the what’s the… (inaudible) Viśvambhara… Viśvambhara Mahārāja when he was making his offering then he was saying that how Gurudeva by his lectures on the Bhāgavatam dissipated all the doubts of the devotees. And he made a similar comparison that how we have to purify the mind by hearing the instructions from the spiritual master because they are Kṛṣṇa’s manifest.

So bringing Kṛṣṇa in the mind this is a positive alternative. We are bringing Kṛṣṇa in, by our activities, by our devotional service, we bring Kṛṣṇa there, then automatically the darkness goes out. Most of the yoga processes are for systematically eliminating the darkness. This is a very difficult process, very tedious, but it happens automatically when you bring in the sun of Kṛṣṇa. So rather than we just, the grossest type of māyā is like the four regulative principles. Those of course we have to neglect right from the beginning. But all the subtle māyā’s that are there if we are very consistent in bringing Kṛṣṇa into our heart, then those will automatically go away. So in that sense it is a very positive process. Devotional service means that we very consciously use our intelligence to establish Kṛṣṇa at every moment in our heart.

So Bharata Mahārāja was able to bring Kṛṣṇa meditation to a great deal into his heart so that he was able to actually immerse there. But we have to never stop immersing ourselves in Kṛṣṇa. At any point if we think that “Now I am quite advanced and I am old devotee, now I know everything, now I, you know, I have done enough, something like that, now I can. I can watch television Prabhu I won’t be put in māyā by that.” Or I can do this, sometimes we find that devotees, just like Bharata Mahārāja I can have a pet deer and he didn’t plan it that way. What to speak of someone if they plan it that they have some kind of material, unless it is directly connected with devotional service. Maybe a specific show is there where we can learn something about how to present Kṛṣṇa consciousness those devotees who have that particular service.

So sometimes we preach to older devotees and they you know become very resentful that “Prabhu, give me the benefit of the doubt.” something like that, where they are doing something which isn’t connected with devotional service, yet just because they have been practicing for a long time they think “Well it won’t really make much difference or it’s not going to affect me.” But the principle is we shouldn’t do anything that’s not directly a devotional service. You know immediately he should have let the deer go its own way and not di… He gave up the whole world, the kingdom was going on, now the deer would also have gone on, it required his day to day attendance, it didn’t require. But he didn’t consult with the guru “What should I do in this regard?” So even inadvertently delayed his return back to Godhead by three births. So similarly we should be very careful not to become uh, lackadaisi… or not to become careless thinking that well I have already practices for a long time.

It’s like the proverbial race between the hare and the tortoise. Until we cross over the finish line, until we actually reach Kṛṣṇa prema, until we go are back right to the lotus feet of Kṛṣṇa, at any point, even just a few feet from the finish line somebody was racing and they tripped just before the finish line, so they came in last. The danger is there, you can’t stop until you go over the last hurdle. It doesn’t matter whether you have been, Bharata Mahārāja, after giving up everything, or whether you are just in the beginning we have to always be very consistently… apratihata, unbrokenly rendering our devotional service until finally we take the full shelter of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. Then our flowers and our fruits of devotional service they blossom, and they fructify and then we are actually beyond the danger of falling down because our natural whole reference point will be changed to one of consistently spontaneously always in Kṛṣṇa’s service.

Therefore Kṛṣṇa could say nāpnuvanti mahātmānaḥ saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ, that once you achieve the spiritual world then again you don’t come down into this material world as a conditioned soul. So these are some very important lessons to learn from Mahārāja Bharata pastimes.

Kṛṣṇa-prema nitya-siddha ‘sādhya’ kabhu naya So Kṛṣṇa-prema that kind of prema is already within us but it’s been covered over. It’s not something we can achieve by sādhya by doing some specific practice. It’s already there within us. But due to our own misdeeds somehow it’s become covered up. So it’s actually just a question of Kṛṣṇa again uncovering that already existing love for Him which we have somehow. In that sense of course it is our birthright, but what I was just saying rather from the point of view that whatever service we are offering, what is the value of that service, if we have to give it a value, and then if we took what is the value, again we are regaining our original love for Kṛṣṇa then proportionately anything we can do whether we are offering a flower or water or even devotees to Kṛṣṇa in his service. but hardly does that equal the benediction of getting His eternal devotional love. From that point of view it’s His causeless mercy, it’s not that we deserve it in the sense that because of what we are doing we deserve it.

But from the point of view you are bringing up that its already actually, yes its already a part of us but somehow we have forgotten that pure love for Kṛṣṇa. ‘sādhya’ kabhu naya that we get it, I forget the last śravaṇādi-śuddha-citte karaye udaya. So it’s by the mercy of the holy name that pure devotional service or that Kṛṣṇa prema again arises. From that point of view yes of course it is our birthright or it is our nature to love Kṛṣṇa but we have forgotten that nature. I was just trying to stress from the point that it’s not that we can demand Kṛṣṇa that “I have done so much service give me Kṛṣṇa prema.” You can request Him, you can appeal to Him, and certainly there is nothing else that we should want and that is the original status we were in. So we should hope to achieve that. That’s something we can’t just demand that “Alright, I’ve chanted sixteen rounds for two years now I should immediately be given Your darśana.”

If we chant purely, Kṛṣṇa, He’s more eager to come to us than we are to come to Him. He is more eager to bring us back to Him, than we are to go. So that’s not the problem. But the problem is when we may not be ready. We may so many material desires, material conceptions at the same time along with that we also have a desire for Kṛṣṇa so that isn’t good enough. Our desire for Kṛṣṇa has to be exclusive. That means that we require some more purification. We cannot, Kṛṣṇa will not, if we limit Himself to some material conception we may have of Him, our consciousness has to be pure then Kṛṣṇa will reveal Himself to us without any material conceptions or limitations. It is ultimately up to Kṛṣṇa’s sweet will, to… from that point of view. You can cry to Kṛṣṇa but if Kṛṣṇa doesn’t want to reveal there’s not anything we can do except appeal to His mercy.

Actually it appears differently, actually it is also by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy even our regulated advancement or the yogīs step by step control of the prāṇāyama and taking the ātmā to the different cakras. But Kṛṣṇa allows it, in each stage He actually gives His blessings and one advances. But He allows it to appear as if it’s going on mechanically but actually at each stage He is giving His mercy but He gives it more, it’s kind of more or less automatically, doesn’t withhold it. But at the last stage sometimes He may, there is no specific point at which one can directly know for sure that “At this time Kṛṣṇa if I do this He is going to appear to me.” Like Nārada Muni after seeing Kṛṣṇa again he did all the systems and meditations and he is trying like anything Kṛṣṇa wasn’t coming. Kṛṣṇa says that “I don’t come like that. You won’t see Me for some time.”

But its not that by some regulated mechanical thing that Kṛṣṇa appears. He appears at that level its completely personal. He appears because that’s His own desire to do so. Sometimes if He wants the devotee to experience a more intense desire then like for Nārada He just suddenly appeared then disappeared. Or like Parīkṣit Mahārāja He was suddenly there and gone. Whole life, why the name Parīkṣit? Parīkṣā means to test. Anyone he looked he was analyzing is this the same person I saw when I was in the womb? He was testing everyone Parīkṣit. But of course there was no one who was like Kṛṣṇa who he saw when he was in the womb.

Any other questions?

So we try to follow the sādhanā because that was the order of the spiritual master. If there is someone who didn’t follow any sādhanā but still they got the mercy then it’s quite obvious that its kṛpā-siddhi. Śrīla Prabhupāda one time I went to his room in Māyāpur, and he just suddenly started to admonish me, that "I am not depending upon my chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa to be Kṛṣṇa conscious, not depending upon my writing or my reading, studying of śāstras to become Kṛṣṇa conscious. I am not depending upon." He started explaining all the different aspects of devotional service that he wasn’t depending upon. Which normally we all think that we have to completely depend upon. He said, “I do all of these simply for attracting the mercy, I do this just to please my spiritual master and I am completely depending upon the mercy of my spiritual master.” He brought in a totally different viewpoint that actually we are depending upon the kṛpā-siddhi, that we don’t depend on our expertise in doing the sādhanā that “I am very expert in chanting my rounds, or I am doing everything and because of my own expertise I am doing all the practices therefore I am going to make advancement.” We try to be as expert as we can, we try to do as well as we can to please the spiritual master. Still we are always anxious at every step to get a little special mercy, to get that little, you know we are going through the motions.

Just like someone they may be going through the high school, college graduation MA, PhD, but along the way if somebody offers a PhD, they are not going to refuse it. So here, but of course normally people don’t get it. So we practice we go step by step getting our graduation papers or whatever at different levels to get the mercy but we are always anxious to get their mercy. You don’t want to jump up artificially but to get their real mercy even before hand or even in spite of our inefficiency in following everything perfectly as we’d like to. So we are always anxious for their mercy.

So that’s one of the qualities of surrender to be always hopeful and anxious to always get the mercy of Kṛṣṇa. You should always be hopeful to get the mercy of guru and Kṛṣṇa. And we take it that everything is by their mercy that actually we may be doing the sādhanā, it may appear that we have done sādhanā and therefore we have got the mercy if we take it that there may have been so many mistakes in what we have done or even if whatever we have done but ultimately by the mercy of the spiritual master.

Not only did he instruct us how to do and what to do without which we couldn’t have made any advancement at all but on top of that the ability to do that and overcome the different obstacles that come up that is also by his shelter and mercy. So we take it as a kṛpā-siddhi you can say. It is just that when externally the sādhanā is very prominent so that will be categorized as sādhana-siddhi but the devotee himself takes it that it is the mercy of the Lord and that the sādhanā is actually a medium for trying to satisfy the spiritual master.

Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Haribol! Jay !