One of the points Vedic literature emphasizes is that we should surrender to superior authorities, culminating with Krsna Himself. As one learns to be respectful to seniors, parents, rulers, spiritual teachers, etc., and get valuable instructions from them, he gradually learns to curb his false ego and his rebellious nature and thus learns how to surrender to Krsna. In other words, the Vedic idea is that we start by surrendering to Krsna’s representatives and gradually learn how to surrender to Krsna Himself.

The problem is that if the superiors don’t give a good example, or worse, if they exploit their subordinates, a great scar is created: someone sincerely surrenders to an authority, but the authority betrays him, and now he has difficulties in surrendering to other authorities, which creates a problem for his spiritual advancement since without surrendering to proper authorities it becomes much harder to surrender to Krsna.

Once, Srila Prabhupada was giving a lecture to a small group of disciples in India, when a cat unexpectedly appeared and laid on his lap. Srila Prabhupada didn’t seem disturbed by the cat and allowed it to stay there for some time. Later he used this situation to illustrate the point that betraying someone who takes shelter of us in good faith is an extremely serious sin. He said: “If I take shelter of you, if I put my head on your lap, and you cut my throat, that’s the worst sin.”

We can see that this is behind many problems we have nowadays. For a certain time, we taught people that they should completely surrender and go to live in the temples. Many people would take this advice in good faith and trust the local authorities, to the point of sometimes trusting them to choose their spouses! The problem is that in many circumstances the authorities would not be able to properly take care of devotees, and thus many would leave, feeling betrayed.

This kind of situation creates two problems: not only does it make it much harder for someone to again trust a spiritual authority, which in turn becomes a stumbling block on his path, but it also creates problems for the authority himself, which will surely face problems in his spiritual development, or even fall down as a result of it. This is the kind of situation that can erode our movement from the inside, creating scars that are very difficult to heal later.

It’s good to teach people to surrender to Krsna, but if we want to play the part of Krsna’s representatives, accepting such surrender ourselves, then we have to be sure that we are qualified to play this role, being not only free from any kind of exploitative nature but having the heart, skills and spiritual realization necessary to not only take care of people’s needs but also to help them to advance spiritually. We need to sincerely ask ourselves if our purpose is to help people to get close to Krsna, or if we just want to get followers.

If we realize that we are not up to the mark, it’s much better to just play the role of friends, sharing whatever realizations we have and helping people to find and surrender to proper authorities, who can indeed help them. Maintaining a mood of giving instead of taking can check whatever exploitative tendencies we may still have on this level and allow us to help people without committing serious mistakes.

There are several levels of spiritual teachers: some just help people to get into the proper path, others help them to grow into this path and others are capable of bringing them to the ultimate goal. We should be able to, realistically, understand at which level we belong, and not become spiritual cheaters by pretending to be something we are not.

Devotees who genuinely attain a level of becoming capable of accepting the surrender of others are devotees who are very deeply connected with their own spiritual masters (in the real, spiritual sense, and not just physically) and thus see themselves as just a link in the chain, connecting their disciples to their own spiritual master, who in turn connects them with their own spiritual master, all the way up to Krsna. Only by accepting such a humble attitude, as a servant of one’s own spiritual master, can one become free from all kinds of exploitative attitudes. A devotee who sees himself as an object of worship is still just a conditioned soul.

In the picture: Prahlada Maharaja teaches his school friends about Krsna Consciousness when the teachers are away.