Is seeing Krishna’s hand in everything just a psychological adjustment?

From: Narottam

As a devotee we have to see as  Krishna’s Hand in every situation, is just a pshycological adjustment or Really Krishna reciprocate with us, can you clear this concept with analogy?

Transcript

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question by Narottama as a devotee we have to see Krishna’s hand in every situation is this just psychological adjustment or is Krishna really reciprocating with us can you clear this concept with an analogy answer it can be psychological adjustment or it can be Krishna actually reciprocating with us the important thing is not how we see but how we do the end of the Bhagavad Gita is that Krishna is inspiring Arjuna to fight and Arjuna is saying I will do what you say so it is a fact that the whole world and everything happening in it is being orchestrated by Krishna for our ultimate good and in that sense everything that is happening is an opportunity for us to make spiritual advancement to grow spiritually and come closer to Krishna at the same time it may not always be possible for us at our level of spiritual advancement to understand how a particular situation is an arrangement of Krishna and at that time we may go into an excessive mental mode thinking is Krishna reciprocating in this way, is Krishna reciprocating in that way and at that time some of our inferences may be quite speculative or imaginative or as you are saying psychological adjustments but the important thing is not what we think about in the sense of imagining or conceiving Krishna’s hand but it is more in the sense of what do we practically do whatever happens in a devotee’s life, a devotee should try to see how can I serve Krishna in this situation what does Krishna want me to do in this situation and for this we can consult senior devotees take their guidance and based on that we can infer ok this is what I should do in this situation let me serve Krishna in this particular way and the important thing is not just conceiving Krishna’s hand but it is acting practically in the service of Krishna so Krishna does say that in 10.10 in the Bhagavad Gita he says to the devotee who tries to serve me I give him the intelligence by which he can come back to me so if we are taking some treatment and suddenly the doctor starts doing something starts happening to us which starts increasing our pain, we may see a needle going into our body or we may feel some knife going into our body and we being cut now we can ask the doctor what is happening and the doctor will explain to us but there are certain situations which will be so critical that the doctor may not be able to have the time or some situation will be so complex that we may not have the capability to understand what exactly is being done by the doctor so at that time as long as we see that the doctor is in charge and it is the doctor who is doing something we know the doctor is benevolent then the important thing for us to do is not to speculate why the doctor is doing what he is doing but to focus on what I should do so if emergency surgery has to be done if we start resisting and protesting and heaving vigorously and opposing what is being done then we make our own recovery more difficult because the surgery becomes more difficult for the doctor to perform so as much as possible we try to understand what the doctor is doing, where we can’t understand we try to understand at least what we should do, that is cooperate to similarly in our life sometimes situations come when things may turn out in a way that we just can’t understand why it is happening but we do know what we should do in general Srila Prabhupada was asked that when we don’t know how to serve Krishna what should we do Prabhupada said chant Hare Krishna because chanting Hare Krishna is a prayer to Krishna, please engage me in your service and when we ask Krishna to engage us in his service, included in that is the prayer please guide me how I should serve you so one definition of intelligence is to know what to do when you don’t know what to do to know what to do when we don’t know what to do and in that sense a devotee can always have that intelligence because we know when we don’t know what to do we know in principle that we are servants of Krishna and we should serve Krishna in practice we may not be clear about how to serve Krishna so we can chant, remember Krishna and pray to Krishna asking him for guidance and then based on our understanding we can continue our service to Krishna our basic sadhana, our relationship our association with devotees, our basic Krishna consciousness, we try to continue and through these actions we show Krishna that I want to serve you so there are certain activities in our life which are clear, ok this is what Krishna would want me to do in these situations this is how he would want me to serve me want me to serve him and there are other situations where it may not be clear to us how Krishna wants us to serve him and in those situations we need to actually seek guidance and we do whatever is the best according to our understanding and the guidance of devotees and gradually the plan will become clear and that gradually may take years, it may be at the end of our lifetime it may even be when we are back in the spiritual world just like if a child is sitting on the mother’s lap and the mother is stitching cloth she is actually weaving a pattern on wool now the child is seeing the needle coming in and coming out from below and from below the whole pattern seems to be very haphazard and nothing seems to make sense in terms of why the needle is coming in from here and going out from there and sometimes the needle is pointed missing, a little dangerous also to the child, it’s coming up and coming down like that but from above a beautiful design is being embroidered on that woolen cloth similarly from our perspective because we are finite and fallible living beings we may not understand what Krishna is trying to do how Krishna is trying to weave a pattern in our lives, on our hearts so from Krishna’s perspective he is clear what he is doing and we need to cooperate with him now sometimes we may go into a sentimental zone in imagining Krishna’s reciprocation and especially in imagining Krishna’s vindicate Krishna’s punishing us if I don’t chant my round nicely and if I am going to office and I miss my train I miss my train or if I am going on my bike and my bike breaks down now is it Krishna’s reciprocation is it Krishna’s punishment it can be, it may not be it might just be that I have not been taking care of my bike or it might just be that I was late and that’s why I try and miss the train so we don’t have to go into an ultra, in a hyper imaginative zone and think of is Krishna doing this to punish me is Krishna doing this to reward me now Krishna does not preoccupy himself with such we shouldn’t preoccupy our minds with imagining that Krishna is punishing and rewarding me for every small thing that I do, Krishna may or Krishna may not but the important thing is how I reciprocate how I reciprocate I have to serve Krishna and let me serve Krishna so if I see let’s say I missed the train and that was Krishna’s punishment for me and if that makes me discouraged, oh Krishna is angry with me and Krishna is, I can never please Krishna and that makes me disheartened and discouraged and dejected and makes me give up trying to serve Krishna then we should understand that actually it is not Krishna’s arrangement, it is Maya’s arrangement to delude us because even when earlier I said that we should the patient needs to co-operate or we need to co-operate with Krishna so co-operation is often through surrender but surrender is not passive surrender as defined by Srila Rupa Goswami anukulyasya samkalpa pratyakulyasya varjuna the two primary factors in surrender are accepting that which is favourable and rejecting that which is unfavourable so if by thinking that Krishna is angry with me, I am becoming discouraged and disheartened and I am giving up devotional service, then that is unfavourable and therefore my thinking like that is not a result of some deep insight that Krishna has given me it is simply Maya who is making me into a fool so as to discourage me in devotional service and make me give up devotional service that’s why we don’t have to go into flights of fancy now it may be and if that same situation happens and I feel that oh because of this Krishna is punishing me and if that makes me more determined to do things at the right time and it makes me more enlivened, then that is fine so the important thing again as I am repeating is Srila Prabhupada writes in the nectar of instruction that devotional service is not sentimental speculation or imaginative ecstasy its substance is practical service so rather than trying to imagine Krishna’s hand everywhere, we should think that let me become Krishna’s hand and let me implement Krishna’s will in all situations to the best of my understanding and when we do that in a sincere way, then we will actually start seeing Krishna’s hand more and more in our lives but in all situations rather than trying to think okay, what is Krishna’s hand over here, what is Krishna exactly trying to do we should try to see what is it that I should be doing how does Krishna want me to reciprocate what does Krishna want me to do how should I serve him in this situation so to summarize from absolute level yes, Krishna is acting at every moment and his hand is there in everything that happens in our life but in our stage of spiritual growth we may not be able to perceive Krishna’s hand therefore we should focus on thinking not exactly why and what Krishna is trying to do but what should I do, how should I serve Krishna so there are certain activities in our life where how to serve Krishna is clear and if we do those activities sincerely we show Krishna that I really want to serve you in those activities where it is not clear how we should serve Krishna, Krishna will give us the intelligence at that time, how to serve Krishna and more important than trying to imagine Krishna’s hand everywhere, it is to become Krishna’s hand and serve Krishna in all situations thank you