Krsna has three main energies: The spiritual energy (or internal potency), the material energy (or external potency), and the marginal energy (the individual souls, who can choose between staying under the internal energy, or the external energy).
The internal potency composes all the spiritual planets and everything else that exists there. There everything is eternal, composed of eternity, knowledge, and bliss. It equals 75% or more of the creation, and 90% or more of all souls live there. All souls come originally from this spiritual potency and thus are eternally connected with Krsna with a bound of love. This love for Krsna, or Prema, is already inside the soul. More specifically, it is part of the soul, and can’t be separated or lost. As Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu explains:
“Pure love for Kṛṣṇa is eternally established in the hearts of the living entities. It is not something to be gained from another source. When the heart is purified by hearing and chanting, this love naturally awakens.” (CC Madhya 22.108)
One facet of our movement that bothers some is the frequent comments that women are Maya. This is the source of much exasperation since it leads to all kinds of negative interactions.
It’s easy to understand that this is prevalent amongst neophytes and that as devotees advance they gradually learn to have a more balanced approach to human relationships. However, why do we have to wait? Is there not a way to fix things from the start, so devotees from all devotional levels can just relate between themselves as normal human beings, without having to go through these different phases?
While this is possible, it can be difficult. The problem is that as long as a person is affected by passion and ignorance, his vision will always be clouded by duality, which will manifest as attachment and aversion. Nowadays, 99% of the world’s population is in this situation, and almost all new devotees come from it. As a result, practically all of us start from this platform of passion and ignorance, and we have to work hard from there to gradually progress into goodness.
Krsna appears in the material world in numerous incarnations. These incarnations are compared to many rivers flowing from an unlimited source of water. Ultimately, all great powerful beings, including the ṛṣis, Manus, demigods, descendants of Manu, and so on are plenary portions or portions of the plenary portions or are empowered by the Lord. All these different incarnations manifest from Lord Kisirodakasayi Vishnu.
However, Krsna is different. Although Suta Goswami initially includes them in the list of 22 incarnations given in the third chapter of the first canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, in verse 28 he reveals that Krsna is in a different category:
“All of the above-mentioned incarnations are either plenary portions or portions of the plenary portions of the Lord, but Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the original Personality of Godhead. All of them appear on planets whenever there is a disturbance created by the atheists. The Lord incarnates to protect the theists.”
This is a very important verse. Srila Jiva Goswami identified it as the paribhasa-sutra of Srimad Bhagavatam. According to him, each book in Vedic literature has one or a few verses that bring the conclusion of the book. That’s the paribhasa-sutra. All the other verses must be studied in the context of the paribhasa-sutra if one wants to properly understand the text.
A small detail about the life of Srila Prabhupada that many may not know is that in the early days of our movement after he wrote the Bhagavad-Gita as it is and Teachings of Lord Caitanya, Srila Prabhupada started writing a commentary on the Vedanta Sutra based on the Govinda Bhashya of Srila Baladeva Vidyabhushana, that he called the “Bhaktivedanta Bhasya”.
To justify the need for such a book, he wrote: “In India especially the system is that anyone who is the head of a religious institution must be well conversed with the Vedanta-sutras, and is expected to write comments on the Vedanta-sutra, without which one is not accepted as an acarya. Acarya means one who knows the purpose of Vedic knowledge. He personally practices them as well as teaches to his disciples the system of Vedic knowledge.”
Being the founder acarya of our society, Srila Prabhupada apparently considered that presenting his own commentary on the Vedanta Sutra, following the conclusions of the previous Vaishnava acaryas would help to solidify the reputation of our society as a bonafide philosophical school.
Srila Prabhupada went as far as writing a lengthy introduction to this book, which was later found and published by Kusakratha Prabhu as a preface to his own translation of the Govinda Bhashya.
Most of us know well the story of Ajamila. In his youth, he was a pure Brahmana who worshiped Lord Vishnu, but he fell into a degraded life after seeing a prostitute embracing a drunk man on the side of the road.
How did Ajamila fall so easily? A woman and a man embracing is a scene that most of us see regularly, for us it doesn’t seem anything special. How is it that it had such a profound effect on Ajamila, to the point of making him abandon his young wife and elderly parents and give up all religious principles to live with a prostitute? Does it mean that living a guarded life can actually prove a disadvantage in the long run?
One point to take into consideration is that Ajamila was able to remain pure part of his life, something that not many of us can clain. Most of us never really reach this stage of purity at any stage. We are bombarded by sexual stimulation since we are children and later get involved with different bad habits, which we have difficulty abandoning later. We may be able to restrict ourselves from grossly breaking the principles, but mentally we are often meditating on these things.
A second point is that the fall of Ajamila is actually quite similar to something that is very common nowadays: divorce and remarriage. It’s mentioned in the verses that Ajamila married the prostitute with whom he became involved. Putting it in modern terms, therefore, he divorced his first wife and married another. Something that is common nowadays.
Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura connects verses 16 to 21 from the second chapter of the first canto of Srimad Bhagavatam with 14 stages of spiritual development, showing how these few verses of the Srimad Bhagavatam teach us, in a nutshell, how to achieve ultimate perfection. Naturally, just understanding this description will not make us pure devotees, but it can help us to become aware of the path ahead of us.
According to his explanation, verses 16 and 17 describe the first five stages:
“O twice-born sages, by serving those devotees who are completely freed from all vice, great service is done. By such service, one gains affinity for hearing the messages of Vāsudeva. Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead, who is the Paramātmā [Supersoul] in everyone’s heart and the benefactor of the truthful devotee, cleanses desire for material enjoyment from the heart of the devotee who has developed the urge to hear His messages, which are in themselves virtuous when properly heard and chanted.”
1- Satam krpa: the mercy of devotees. By the causeless mercy of devotees, we get the opportunity to engage in the second stage. Causeless means there is no cause, devotees are compassionate to all and are willing to bestow their mercy on anyone who crosses their path.
2- Mahat-seva: service to devotees. By serving devotees the process of cleansing the heart starts.
3- Sraddha: faith. By serving devotees and associating with them we acquire some preliminary faith in the process of bhakti, and this allows us to develop our practice.
In the first chapter of the Srimad Bhagavatam, the sages ask six questions to Suta Goswami. These questions are not only asked for the sage’s own sake. They are concerned about the situation of people who will be living in the age of Kali, and they want to get from Suta Gaswami some knowledge that can help them find their way out of all the darkness and illusion of this age.
These six questions are asked in chapter one, and the answers are given in chapters two and three. These chapters are thus intimately connected.
The first question is asked in verse 1.1.9: What is the ultimate good for people?
One point that is very well discussed in Prabhupada’s books (and Vaishnava literature in general) are three categories of devotees. We all know the three categories and are very quick to use them to bash each other.
The first-class devotee is the one who develops love for Krsna. Because in this stage one loses interest in material activities, one becomes peaceful and thus can fully concentrate on chanting and developing his personal relationship with Krsna. However, many devotees on this platform decide to preach and help others, and these are actually the best of all.
The second-class devotees are devotees who become free from material association and learn to properly behave towards the Lord, other devotees, the innocent, and the envious. On this platform, one becomes gradually knowledgeable in the scriptures, and as a result, he can help others to advance in Krsna Consciousness. By doing that one increases his own realization and progress further.
These two classes of devotees are more or less fine on their own. They don’t need much help to progress further in spiritual life. Rather, they are the ones who help others.
For most of us, however, the most relevant is the third category, because that’s where most of us are.
The third-class devotees are still attached to material association and struggling with material desires. That’s us. For us, apart from the basic process of hearing and chanting, deity worship in the temple according to the rules and regulations is strongly recommended. If a devotee can go regularly to the temple and be involved in the services there he or she can gradually advance.
That’s quite simple to understand, but often extremely difficult to implement in practice.
The problem is that most temples are situated in big cities. That’s wonderful from the point of view of attracting new people, but it creates serious hardships for devotees trying to keep themselves engaged in the temple since living in big cities is very expensive. We have thus many devotees who live close to the temple but can’t attend most of the programs because they are too busy working to maintain themselves, devotees who live very far, and thus also come regularly, as well as families where the husband works very hard and rarely come, and only the wife has some free time to be engaged in the temple (or vice-versa). There is of course also the option of being a brahmacary or brahmacarini and just living in the temple, but this is not easy for most.
A second option is far away communities, where devotees try to follow the idea of simple living high-thinking. There are still a few of them around. The difficulty is that not everyone nowadays is capable of adjusting to a simple life, and remote places often lack good internet connectivity, which severely limits what one can do online. This combination of factors is also not suitable for many.
In order to be viable, communities also need schools for the children, which is traditionally a point of great difficulty in our movement. Without a school, communities become basically inviable, since couples need to move elsewhere to provide an education to their children.
There are a few options of communities that although relatively well-connected in terms of internet connection and services are still relatively affordable to live in, like Mayapur, for example. If one has the skills to find a moderately well-paid online job, one can live comfortably there and still find time to be involved in spiritual activities. However, not everyone can adapt to moving into a different country (dealing with visas, and other difficulties), and not everyone is capable of finding a relatively decent online job. This results in many split families, where the wife lives with the children in the community, but the husband has to stay away most of the year working to provide for them. Children growing up without fathers are also hardly viable.
In this way, most devotees just struggle in life, without being able to find a stable situation where they can peacefully develop their devotional service.
So, what is the solution?
In the short term, there is no solution, we will have to struggle. The long-term solution would be to gradually build new communities, finding places on the outskirts of the cities where there is a reliable internet connection and other basic amenities, but where land is still cheap, and it’s possible to get land for building a temple and making plots for devotees interested in building their houses, and some land can be reserved to build apartments that can be later sold or rented, as well as schools and other facilities.
Such projects are not easy to start, build, or maintain, but without something like that, we will have to continue having to choose the less bad of several problematic solutions.
For more austere devotees, simple-living, high-thinking projects centered in agriculture and far away from the cities are still best, of course, but these are also not very easy to implement.
Everything that is spoken in the Srimad Bhagavatam was spoken four to five thousand years ago in the forest of Naimisharanya, in a conversation between Suta Goswami and a group of great sages led by Saunaka Rishi. This happened already after the beginning of Kali-Yuga. These sages executed a great sacrifice for 1,000 years to try to counteract the negative influences of this age. They chose the forest of Naimisharanya for that because it’s mentioned in the scriptures that by performing sacrifices in this forest the strength of demoniac people is reduced.
That’s the symptom of saintly people, they are always concerned about the well-being of others. Srila Prabhupada comments about that in his purport to 1.1.4:
“The great sages are always anxious to do good to the people in general, and as such the sages headed by Śaunaka and others assembled at this holy place of Naimiṣāraṇya with a program of performing a great and continuous chain of sacrificial ceremonies. Forgetful men do not know the right path for peace and prosperity. However, the sages know it well, and therefore for the good of all men they are always anxious to perform acts which may bring about peace in the world. They are sincere friends to all living entities, and at the risk of great personal inconvenience they are always engaged in the service of the Lord for the good of all people.”
However, the sages were not only concerned about executing sacrifices. They were also concerned about their own spiritual development, and therefore they asked Suta Goswami to speak to them about the transcendental message of the Srimad Bhagavatam, so they could also develop pure love for Krsna.
After writing the Upanisads and the Vedanta Sutra, Srila Vyasadeva was instructed by his guru, Narada Muni, to compile another book that would directly speak about the glories of devotional service and the pastimes of Krsna, making the real meaning of the Vedanta Sutra easily available.
By the time He received this instruction, Vyasadeva had already compiled the original Bhagavata Purana, as part of the 18 original Puranas, but having received this instruction he had the inspiration to rewrite the book as the Srimad Bhagavatam we have access to today. In this process, he received the help of two other great sages: His son, Sukadeva Goswami, and the son of Romaharshana, Suta Goswami, who added their realizations to the book, making it even sweeter than originally. The Srimad Bhagavatam was originally taught by Srila Vyasadeva to Sukadeva Goswami, who added His own realization while describing it to Maharaja Pariksit. This narration was later expanded by Srila Suta Goswami, resulting in the final text. This, in turn, was commented on by different Vaishnava acaryas, culminating with Srila Prabhupada, who compiled all this knowledge accumulated over thousands of years in his purports, adding his own realization in the process. This Srimad Bhagavatam we have access to is thus the fruit of the combined effort of all these powerful personalities.
The Srimad Bhagavatam is the authorized commentary on the Vedanta Sutra and is thus the ultimate conclusion of the Vedas. The philosophy of the Srimad Bhagavatam was then explained by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who made the ultimate conclusion of the text even more clear.
