A great number of Srila Prabhupada disciples (mostly ladies) remember that at the beginning of Iskcon, all devotees used to call each other “Prabhu”, regardless of gender. The men were “Prabhus” and the ladies were also “Prabhus”. According to them, that was the way Srila Prabhupada established, and the system was changed to the Prabhu/Mataji style of address only later.
On the other hand, a great number of Srila Prabhupada disciples (mostly men) say that to call ladies “Prabhu” doesn’t make sense, and as far as they remember, ladies were always “Mataji’s”.
Krsna says in the Bhagavad-Gita that “O son of Kuntī, declare it boldly that My devotee never perishes.” However, we see that devotees go through all kinds of difficulties. Even pure devotees, like the Pandavas and Srila Prabhupada, went through great difficulties. How is that?
To understand how the protection from Krsna works and why devotees sometimes face difficulties, the first point is to better understand the context of this verse. Krsna says: “I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all. But whoever renders service unto Me in devotion is a friend, is in Me, and I am also a friend to him. Even if one commits the most abominable action, if he is engaged in devotional service he is to be considered saintly because he is properly situated in his determination. He quickly becomes righteous and attains lasting peace. O son of Kuntī, declare it boldly that My devotee never perishes.”
Here we have an apparent contradiction. Krsna first says He is partial to anyone and equal to all, but then He says that He is partial to His devotees. Srila Prabhupada explains that such special affection to devotees is not a sign of partiality, but just natural. Just like a pious king may be impartial and equal to everyone, he will always give special attention to his children. Such behavior is unavoidable due to their intimate relationship. Similarly, Krsna is impartial to everyone, but He can’t help giving special attention to His devotees.
Krsna is God, the eternal and unborn. However, He is born as the son of Vasudeva and Devaki. How can the Supreme Unborn be born? As mentioned by Queen Kunti in her prayers, that’s certainly bewildering.
In our case, it’s easy to understand why we are born. Although we are eternal souls, we accept temporary material bodies, and such bodies have a beginning and an end. We are born as small babies and eventually grow up as adults, later dwindling as old persons until we face death. After death, we go to a new body and the cycle repeats. Krsna also appears to take birth and later “die” when hit by the arrow of the hunter, and such appearance and disappearance repeat as He goes from one universe to the other. However, there is something fundamentally different in Krsna’s “birth”.
Krsna never accepts a material body. Although He appears to be born, He always comes in His original spiritual body. We change our body because our body is different from our real identity as soul, the body is just some kind of covering or vehicle that deteriorates over time, but in the case of Krsna, there is no difference between his body and soul. He always appears in His original form.
But still, Krsna is born. How is that? The reason is that he wants to enjoy the affection of his father and mother. We are born of necessity because we are forced by material nature to accept a material body, but Krsna appears in his original spiritual body out of His own free will, “born” as the son of Vasudeva and Devaki. He is then transferred to Gokula, where he enjoys his childhood pastimes.
Although the appearance of Krsna is supremely auspicious, He is born in conditions that appear to be inauspicious: in the prison of Kamsa.
Nowadays many of us are getting sucked under the influence of these weapons of mass distraction we call social medias, where we are not just stimulated to see the content created by others but also enticed to create our own content in the form of photos, reels, articles, videos and so on. In this way, we are conditioned by our overlords to contribute to their efforts to increase the audience of their services, and when we do we are rewarded with likes, shares, or even a few comments.
The ones who are successful in this game can amass a huge number of followers and become celebrities. Followers are nowadays a symbol of status, just like personal beauty or money, and many work really hard to increase the magical number, even at the expense of other areas of their lives.
Just like in other trends of modern life, devotees are not immune to this. Just like regular people tend to worship the so-called influencers, a devotee who has a lot of followers on Instagram, or subscribes on Youtube is often more respected. Just like there are people who judge us based on physical beauty, money, or mundane education, there are also devotees who judge us based on our number of followers. To some people, we have indeed more or less value as individuals according to the number of followers we have.
Although we understand philosophically that material fame and status are ephemeral, we may be tempted to enter into the game and try to also increase our number of followers and subscribers. That’s when we have to take a very long and deep breath.
We can see that often people with schizophrenia, clinical depression, and other problems are treated with psychotropic drugs and show improvement in their symptoms. Sometimes they become almost completely cured by these drugs.
However, this can be quite difficult to explain from a philosophical perspective, since the mind is supposed to be a subtle entity, intrinsically different from the body.
Different from the brain, which is an organ, The mind is a subtle entity that can’t be affected by chemical substances. Drugs can surely affect the workings of the brain, but how can they influence the workings of the subtle mind? This question applies both to pharmaceutical drugs and recreational drugs since both classes have similar effects on one’s consciousness. So, how does it work?
The point is that although the brain and the mind are different entities, they are deeply connected. The brain is a kind of interface between the subtle mind and the gross body. The mind receives the signals from the brain, and based on these signals creates our understanding of reality.
If the brain sends a message of constant pain to the mind, for example, the mind will be affected by it, and because we (the soul) are identifying with the mind, we will feel unhappy.
Are pure devotees omniscient? Is a pure devotee capable of committing small mistakes, like misspelling words or quoting some partially incorrect information on some material topic or using some supporting evidence from a material source that later may be proven incorrect, or are pure devotees supposed to be always completely perfect in all levels in all they do?
The scriptures mention that pure devotees are not normal human beings. Being connected with the spiritual platform they can describe the spiritual science just like someone describes a photograph he may be seeing. Most of us speak about philosophy as something we studied and memorized, but pure devotees are capable of directly seeing the spiritual reality while describing it.
Some believe that pure devotees must be omniscient and completely aware of everything that is happening around them. They believe that a pure devotee can never commit any kind of mistake. According to this opinion, if it’s proved that someone committed a mistake it means he or she is not a pure devotee.
If this point of view is accepted, the next conclusion is that Srila Prabhupada was omniscient and infallible since he was not only a pure devotee of Krsna but also an empowered acarya that came to realize the prophecy of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu that the holy names would be chanted in all villages and towns. Before Srila Prabhupada, no one had any idea of how Krsna Consciousness could take hold in the West. Most Vaishnavas of his time accepted this prophecy as just some poetic license. Even amongst other great acaryas, Srila Prabhupada holds an exalted position.
The problem is that if we accept that Srila Prabhupada was omniscient and could not have committed any kind of mistake at any level, we may have difficulty reconciling the idea of Prabhupada being infallible with the perspective that some things he said in certain contexts may not be fully verifiable. If one depends on the acarya being infallible and omniscient to be able to accept his instructions, one may have a crisis of faith if he sees any small detail that may not be fully correct.
In the Srimad Bhagavatam, it is mentioned that meat eaters are received in hell by the animals they killed during their lives. The animals receive appropriate bodies they can use to attack their killer and thus take revenge on him. This can raise a few doubts. Why are these poor animals who already suffered by being killed forced to accept bodies in hell and wait there for a long time in order to punish the man who killed them? This may sound like re-victimizing the victim for many.
This happens in connection with the statement of Dharma in the Srimad Bhagavatam (1.17.22): “You know the truth of religion, and you are speaking according to the principle that the destination intended for the perpetrator of irreligious acts is also intended for one who identifies the perpetrator.”
In a sense, revenge and the desire for justice is a natural reaction when someone causes us suffering, but it’s very important to understand the price we have to pay for it. If one wants to see how a criminal is suffering in prison, he will have also to stay there to be able to see. Similarly, to punish someone who wronged us, we will have to also be in the same place he is, in order to meet him face to face and deliver the desired punishment.
Often we become disturbed by seeing famous preachers falling down or not giving good examples, like being too demanding or spending more than necessary. We tend to think that just because one is successful as a preacher he must be a pure devotee, but it is actually not like that.
By definition, preachers are not pure devotees, but Madhyama Adhikaris, or intermediate devotees. In other words, they are devotees who have one leg in the material world and one leg in the spiritual world and thus can make a bridge between the two. They understand what is happening in the world, they hear the news, etc. but at the same time they understand the philosophy of Krsna Consciousness and they can thus explain it in ways that people can relate to.
However, because they are still connected with the material world, intermediate devotees can still display traces of material conditioning. Often it is exactly this conditioning that makes them become preachers in the first place. There is a certain need to assert oneself, to convince others, and to become successful that they canalize into their efforts to spread Krsna Consciousness. In this way, intermediate devotees can canalize whatever material tendencies they have into their services, and thus connect these tendencies of Krsna. This is in line with what Krsna explains in the Bhagavad-Gita: “Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer as oblation to the sacred fire, whatever you bestow as a gift, and whatever austerities you perform, O son of Kunti, do them as an offering to Me.” (9.27)
This is also illustrated in the 8th chapter of Jaiva Dharma in the story of Nityananda Dasa, who wants to understand what is his true spiritual level. There he describes:
Nowadays we frequently have the impression that 16 rounds are some kind of eternal standard and it was always this way, but actually Vaishnavas in previous centuries had different standards for Japa.
In the times of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the minimum standard for Vaishnavas (followed even by householders) was to chant one lakh or 100,000 names. This was taught by Mahaprabhu himself, as narrated in the Sri Caitanya Bhagavata:
“As the devotees invited the Lord (Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu) to take His meal in their houses, the Lord took the opportunity to teach them all this topic. When invited to take a meal, the Lord smiled and said, “First you should become a laksesvara”. “I take meals only in the house of a laksesvara.” Hearing this, the brahmanas became worried. The brahmanas offered prayers to the Lord, “O Gosaani, what to speak of a hundred thousand, none of us possess even a thousand. If You don’t accept meals from us, then let our entire household be burnt to ashes.” The Lord replied, “Do you know who is a laksesvara? He is someone who daily chants a hundred thousand holy names. I call that person a laksesvara. I take meals in only such a person’s house, not in the houses of others.” Hearing this merciful statement of the Lord, the brahmanas gave up their anxiety and became joyful. “O Lord, we will chant a hundred thousand names. Please therefore take Your meals in our houses. It is our good fortune that You are teaching us in this way.” (Caitanya Bhagavata, Antya, 9.116-125)
One lakh of names equals 58 rounds (16 names per mantra, 108 mantras per round) but generally 64 rounds are taken as one lakh. Many devotees at those times would make vows to not accept prasadam before completing their chanting. Even householders would follow this standard.
I was talking with a friend about the differences in perceptions about devotees in our society. Many devotees live with the impression that there are many pure devotees in our society, while others have the impression that it’s full of arrogant people with big false egos. How is that?
One thing I learned about this world is that our attitude has a lot to do with our perception of reality. One wearing glasses with red lenses will see everything red, while someone with blue lenses will see everything blue. Our consciousness thus affects our perception of reality. Another thing our consciousness does is that it attracts other people in a similar frequency. The frequency of our consciousness determines the planet we will be living on, and inside this planet makes us stay in a particular city or place. Similarly, our consciousness makes us surround ourselves with certain types of people, be they good or bad.
Nowadays we are trained since childhood to seek the company of people who show external beauty, power, and status, but it doesn’t work very well in Krsna Consciousness, because more often than not, devotees who are genuinely advanced in Krsna Consciousness don’t show these symptoms.
If we ourselves are ambitious, we will be attracted by famous and powerful people, but when we speak about devotional life this doesn’t work so well, because more often than not famous and powerful people have big false egos and not so deep spiritual realisation. Ambitious people tend to take high positions in all kinds of organizations, simply because they are the ones who are attached enough to fight for such places. Our spiritual movement is not completely free from that. Since we tend to judge the group based on the people who are around us, if we surround ourselves with this type of people, we will have the impression that everyone is like that.
Pure devotees are usually unassuming people, and thus we tend to misunderstand them and take them as ordinary people. Recognizing them requires us to be in a similar frequency. That can be a problem in the beginning, since if we are in the wrong frequency we may be attracted to materialistic devotees, and this will probably lead to frustration later on, as we see their shortcomings.
