As devotees, we like to see ourselves as transcendental to Karma. In fact, it’s said that one who chants the holy names purely even once gets free from an unlimited quantity of sins, therefore one who chants 16 rounds of the Maha Mantra daily should be completely free of karma, right? Well, the truth is that most of us are not, and we can see it practically. Bad things still happen to us and can’t honestly say that we don’t feel disturbed by it. Such karmic reactions can even have adverse effects on our spiritual path if we can’t digest them properly. Surely, if one chants purely there is no question of Karma, but are we chanting purely?

To get free of karma is actually an important step in our spiritual process, as Krsna explains in the Bhagavad Gita (7.28): “Persons who have acted piously in previous lives and in this life and whose sinful actions are completely eradicated are freed from the dualities of delusion, and they engage themselves in My service with determination”.

One who is still under the effects of karma and of the three modes of nature will have great difficulty in keeping oneself stable in devotional service since the effects of Karma, both good and bad will continue distracting him in his efforts.

Most of the world’s population consumes caffeine daily. Some statistics speak about 90%. Even in the poorest areas of India, people spare 5 rupees daily to get their tea or coffee. The reason people like caffeine is because they perceive it as something that can give them an extra drive, some extra energy, or alertness that can help them to go through the day. Nowadays this trend is also followed by a number of devotees, especially amongst the ones who have challenging lives trying to maintain their families. Even here in Mayapur many shops sell coffee and tea because many devotees consume it. However, Prabhupada was not very in favor of it, especially when consumed in the form of coffee or tea.

If caffeine can give one extra energy and increase one alertness, why is it not considered a good thing for devotees? Why can’t we just apply the principle of accepting what is favorable and rejecting what is unfavorable, accepting caffeine as something that can be favorable for our spiritual practice? The point is that it isn’t.

Of course, as with any other substance, caffeine may fix certain things on certain people, but generally speaking, the effects of caffeine are not positive, especially for devotees. Let’s try to examine this from a non-fanatic and non-judgmental standpoint.

The first point is to understand how it acts on the brain.

Srila Prabhupada once said that spiritual life is 90% common sense. Most things just follow a natural line of thought. Once one understands the line of thought he can understand the reason and meaning of most rituals, habits, and standards that follow it. Most of the time is not about finding the verse or book where it’s mentioned but simply about understanding the underlying logic.

For example, in the Gita Krsna says to offer him fruits, leaves, flowers, and water. Nothing is mentioned about kachoris or rasagulas. So why do we offer rasagulas to Krsna if that’s not what He asked? The answer is pretty simple: we understand the principle of offering whatever we have of best to Krsna. If one has only leaves he can offer it to Krsna, but if one has rasagulas he should offer that. That’s actually what Srila Prabhupada explains in the purport.

One could argue that since the idea is to offer all the best to Krsna, and not only fruits, leaves, and flowers, why shouldn’t we offer expensive products like foie gras or caviar, for example? Where is the verse where it says it shouldn’t? Indeed, there is no verse where the words “foie gras” or “caviar” are directly mentioned, but in the Bhagavad-Gita Krsna explains the difference between foods in the modes of goodness, passion, and ignorance. Both are classified amongst the foods in ignorance and therefore shouldn’t be offered to Krsna, just like things like onions and garlic.

As we can see, properly understanding it requires to understand and balancing different passages and instructions. The same applies to most other philosophical principles in spiritual life.

We can see that often one may not understand the principle and arrogantly start to challenge and ask for “sastric references”. In most cases, this means simply being arrogant.

We understand that one of the fundamental differences between a human and a computer is that a computer doesn’t have free will, being limited to running software that is installed, while a human can use his intelligence to decide what to do. What may surprise us is that much of what we do is also automatically decided by patterns we have imprinted in our minds. Just like software, these patterns are applied at an unconscious level, making us act before having the opportunity to think about it. When our consciousness catches up, it’s already done. Most of us can probably relate to some situation we did or said something without thinking about and to different patterns of behavior we feel we can’t easily change.

Much of it starts in childhood. We absorb a lot from observing the way our parents and other guardians behave and deal with situations. Whatever they do is implanted in our minds on a subconscious level and becomes hard to change later. If a boy sees his father hitting his mother when they have discussions, for example, this pattern of behavior will be imprinted in his mind and he will tend to repeat it. A girl who sees the mother verbally abusing the father will also tend to do the same and so on. As mentioned, these patterns are implanted at a subconscious level and are very hard to change.

Even a great deal of spiritual advancement may not be sufficient to erase them, and this explains how even very senior devotees can be often caught behaving in questionable ways, even though they may be trying to avoid it. This programming coming from our early life can be a treacherous thing. Understanding that, how can we change?

Usually, these patterns of behavior can be changed only when they are brought up to the conscious mind. We need to first notice a certain pattern, then try to understand from where it comes (like remembering how the father used to beat up the mother), then use our intelligence to reflect on it, concluding that it is not correct and deciding what to do instead. When everything is settled, we can put it back into the subconscious mind and hope the operation will be successful in setting a new pattern of behavior. The process is quite similar to modifying software on a computer, where we need to stop the software, open the source code, recompile it, and run it again, and that’s because it indeed works similarly. A computer is basically just an artificial mind.

The processes one uses to deal with it may differ. In my case, for example, writing these articles is very much part of the process. For you, it may be different. In any case, this process of bringing things from the subconscious mind, unpacking them, reflecting on them, and putting them back demands another thing we have been discussing recently, which is introspection and contemplation. Without a conscious process of observing our actions, noticing such patterns of behavior, and having time to reflect on them, we are more or less hopeless.

Much of our progress in spiritual life depends on changing different aspects of our behavior. Sincere chanting is the foundation of this process because chanting is what gives us the sincerity and strength to try to change. However, this process doesn’t happen automatically just by chanting: we have to make a conscious effort, spending time observing these different patterns and reflecting on them. For this, we need introspection, observing good and bad examples from others, as well as from stories from the scriptures and gradually implementing them in our own lives.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krsna speaks about jnana and vijnana. Jnana means book knowledge, that we gain by studying the scriptures, while vijnana means realized knowledge that we can practically apply. Sometimes, exalted Vaishnavas are able to acquire very deep spiritual realization without even studying books (like in the case of Gaurakishora Das Babaji), while in other cases devotees may study their whole lives and be able to quote all kinds of obscure books, but still don’t have a grasp on what they mean. Most of us stay somewhere between the two extremes, showing a combination of study and realization.

However, there is a very important factor in converting the knowledge we are getting from books into deep spiritual realization, and it is something modern life is progressively depriving us of. That’s contemplation.

According to the dictionary, contemplation is “the action of looking thoughtfully at something for a long time.” When we speak about spiritual knowledge, most points are quite intricate, including the nature of the soul, the workings of the material energy, the relationship between the soul and matter, the relationship of the soul with Krsna, the process of creation and dissolution of the universe, the nature of material time and transcendental time, the nature of karma and of the three modes and how to gradually become free of it, and so on. These are all topics described in the Bhagavad-Gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam, but grasping them demands a deep study of the text most of us don’t have the time and concentration to do nowadays.

A problem we often have in our movement is what some call “the guru syndrome”.

We understand that spiritual masters have the duty of training their disciples on how to properly respect and serve Krsna. One of the ways they do that is by training their disciples to offer them the same respect they would offer to Krsna. We usually can’t see Krsna until we are in a very advanced platform of devotional service, what to say about directly serving Him, but by serving a self-realized spiritual master we can get the same benefit.

We can see that Srila Prabhupada was training his disciples like that. Once, when they came on a Rolls-Royce to take him from the airport, he accepted it, but later said that actually, a Rolls-Royce was not sufficient, since Krsna travels in a golden chariot. This makes the point we should try to serve the spiritual master with all the best, just like we should offer all the best to Krsna. Of course, a bonafide spiritual master does this out of the desire to help his disciples improve, not out of false prestige. There are of course also cases of false gurus, but this post is not about them.

So, spiritual masters often train their disciples in such a way to gradually teach them how to serve Krsna and this is proper. However, after going through this training for some time, some disciples also start to preach, and that’s when the “guru syndrome” can appear. They may then start demanding similar standards they were trained to offer to the guru: good food, comfortable rooms, plane tickets, etc. In other words, they start wanting to “train” others to the same standard, but now putting themselves on the role of guru.

A detail that may be surprising to many is that Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu accepted sannyasa from Keśava Bhāratī, who is in turn part of the Bhāratī Mayavada school. In other words, Mahaprabhu is, formally speaking, a member of the Mayavada school. How can it be?

The point is that great acaryas usually uphold the principle that we should accept a spiritual master. Therefore, when they come they accept initiation from whatever school has some connection to the authentic parampara (even if their practices may have degraded over time) and from there propagate the proper philosophy of Krsna Consciousness.

Therefore, when Mahaprabhu decided to take Sannyasa, he thought it proper to take it from the school that was still practicing it, which was coincidentally the Mayavada school. These were also the sannyasis who were respected in society, which probably also weighed on the decision. Naturally, Keśava Bhāratī is actually Sandipani Muni, the Lord’s eternal guru, but still, the significance is there. Previously, Sandipani Muni offered the sacred thread to Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma and came to join the Mayavada school specifically to give initiation to the Lord.

One frequent misunderstanding about spiritual life is to think that to walk through the spiritual path means to completely deny one’s senses and emotions: to stop eating palatable foods, to not travel anywhere, to suppress one’s feelings, and so on. We can see this idea permeating Buddhism and Christianity for example.

However, not only this is a very difficult process, but also one could question the practical result. To not eat, not feel, and not move seems more like the existence of a lifeless stone than of a Krsna’s associate.

If we study the Bhagavad-Gita, this process of mechanical sense control is described in the sixth chapter as part of the teachings about Ashtanga-yoga. We can see that Arjuna flatly rejects this process, arguing that it would be easier to stop the wind. Krsna then describes the bhakti process, which is not based on artificially denying one’s mind and senses but on engaging them in Krsna Conscious activities.

That’s exactly the main difference between the process of Bhakti Yoga and different processes of impersonal self-realization. Currently, we have two problems: the first is that we have a material body, that includes both the gross body and the subtle mind and intelligence. Because we identify with it, we are forced to continuously transmigrate between different material bodies, life after life. The second problem is that we currently have forgotten about our eternal relationship with Krsna. Prabhupada comments that we have a spiritual body even now, but due to our current situation, this spiritual body is undeveloped and covered by the material body.

Srila Prabhupada mentioned on several occasions that the degradation of the social system in Kali-Yuga began with the degradation of the Brahmanas. Since the Brahmanas are the head of society, they have the responsibility of guiding the other classes, and thus keeping people properly engaged. When they stopped performing this function, the other classes also degraded, leading to the wholesale degradation of society. By the time Lord Buddha appeared, 2500 years ago, there was not much of the original Vedic culture left in India.

How exactly does this process happen? On SB 1.18.34, Srila Prabhupada gives us some insight that can help us not just to understand the historical perspective, but also give us insight into how the same tendency is present inside of our spiritual society and ultimately inside each one of us.

In this passage, Maharaja Pariksit, being afflicted by thirst, goes to the asrama of Saumika Rishi and begs for a little water. Being in Samadhi, the sage doesn’t hear his pleas, and Pariksit Maharaja eventually leaves, feeling that the sage ignored him. He didn’t do so, however, before putting a dead snake around the neck of the sage in retribution. This was certainly inappropriate, but on the other hand, didn’t cause any serious harm. When the sage came back to his external consciousness, he just threw the snake away without thinking much about it.

The problem was that Srngi, the immature son of the sage, became excessively angry and cursed Maharaja Pariksit to die because of this small offense. This was not just a disproportionate punishment for the King, but also an indirect punishment for the whole planet, since people were deprived of a saintly King who was protecting them against the advancement of Kali-Yuga. However, in his anger, Srngi couldn’t understand this.