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.

Apart from personal frustrations, another problem in associating with the wrong type of people is that it can lead to rejecting the association of devotees and trying to just advance by practicing on our own. While this is possible for advanced devotees, it doesn’t work very well if we are on a lower platform.

As Srila Prabhupada mentions in his purport to SB 4.22.23:

“One cannot live outside the society of devotees; one must live in the association of devotees, where there is constant chanting and hearing of the glories of the Lord. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is started for this purpose, so that hundreds of ISKCON centers may give people a chance to hear and chant, to accept the spiritual master and to disassociate themselves from persons who are materially interested, for in this way one can make solid advancement in going back home, back to Godhead.”

Pure devotees are fine in practice on their own because they are fixed on thinking about Krsna, and they continue thinking about Krsna no matter in which environment they find themselves. We are not in such platform, therefore we tend to forget Him unless we are constantly remembered. That’s the purpose of being part of a spirtual society. One may practice inside Iskcon or any other Vaishnava society, according to his preference, but association with like-minded devotees is essential.

Another point about association is that when we associate with advanced devotees we reflect their bhava, and as a result, we can temporarily practice at a much higher level than we are in reality. This in turn allows us to make fast advancement. Without such association, we frequently get caught in the cycle of not advancing much for not chanting attentively and not chanting attentively because of not advancing much.

How to find advanced devotees if we are not advanced devotees ourselves? A suggestion I can give is to not look at how many followers a person has, but how he or she deals with others, especially with the ones who are junior, as well as servants and others. One can easily fake the way he deals with superiors, being aware of the consequences, but the way one deals with juniors is harder to fake. That’s usually where we can see who a person really is.