How does fear enhance our relationship with Krishna?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so if we experience fear in our relationships in this world, so is this fear also real if our relationships are real then is the fear real and how is this fear present how does it relate with our vertical relationship with Krishna see fear can come from various causes and fear itself is not necessarily bad we fear something when we care for something if I have a car and somebody hits a dent just a small dent somebody just bumps against the bumper I get so angry or I get fearful but suppose I have sold that car and somebody else is riding that car and somebody makes a dent against it, it doesn’t matter much to me because that is not my car, I am not emotionally invested in that, so fear indicates the presence of our emotional investment in something and that emotional investment is the essence of bhakti, so when Dronavarth took Krishna away at that time the blind world wind came and Yashodamayi couldn’t see Krishna anywhere Yashodamayi is devastated Yashodamayi saw Krishna in the coins of Kaliya she fainted but then she immediately came back, she just couldn’t tolerate the thought so that anxiety increases and this is her remembrance of Krishna and that fear is also one of the is associated with the secondary rasas there are five primary rasas and then there are seven secondary rasas so there is horror, mibhatsa, bayanaka so these are rasas which intensify, flavor the relationship so it is so fear itself is not bad but there has to be the fear which is in the context of our devotional relationship with Krishna so if our fear, if our anxiety becomes so much that it causes us to forget Krishna then at that time we need to distance ourselves and try to cultivate a little bit sattva guna, so fear itself can come from various sources there can be fear which is tamasic it is a mode of ignorance that means say that one time when Devotee asked me this question, sometimes we say that in order to become serious in bhakti we should think that I may die today today might be my last day in my life so we say that if I think that today I am going to die then why should I go to office why should I just sit and chant Hare Krishna all day and I cannot do that throughout my life so what does it mean, see our fear there, fear itself can come from ignorance it can come from the mode of passion it can come from the mode of goodness and it can come from transcendence so fear from the mode of ignorance simply makes us paranoid paranoid means sometimes say people are riding in a car and people get panic attacks panic attacks means they start imagining, oh if I am going along a car, I am driving my car suddenly the brake fails and my car just fails off the whole mind goes into a dystopia utopia is a positive fantasy, dystopia is a negative fantasy so this is a serious problem in today’s world there are people who get tremendous anxiety with the source practically being nothing and that is tamasic there is danger in this world and you need to be aware of danger but to imagine danger and to be constantly fearful that is not that is actually tamasic so to be constantly fearful of everything going wrong in life that is tamasic, that is coming from the mode of ignorance then in rajoguna at that time also fear comes when what we are attached to we feel I may lose that so this is, as we decrease the attachment then our fear also decreases say somebody is very attached to cricket and then the person’s biggest fear is what if India loses the cricket match or what if Australia loses the cricket match or whatever now that fear as the attachment will decrease the fear will also decrease so here the difference between tamoguna and rajoguna is in tamoguna we are just imagining things which may not even happen whereas in rajoguna we imagine some things which we have, which we because of our attachment consider very important, the loss of them that shakes our world in sattvaguna we have what is called as healthy fear now healthy fear is important if somebody is actually riding in a car driving a car and the car is good that person imagines oh my brake will fail that is a tamasic fear but a person the brake of the car is spoiled and still the person thinks nothing will happen and rides that car also that is recklessness so healthy fear is basically caution and that is important so we as devotees if there are realistic dangers and we need to take care of those dangers one time some devotees they were going for good distribution and they were going from one place to another they were going in a van very fast and in the van there was an accident because of going very very fast recklessly driving and when that happened then the devotees they told prabhupada, prabhupada we were serving krishna so was this accident krishna’s arrangement so prabhupada enquired about the situation and they found out they had been driving way above the speed limit and everything, so prabhupada said this was not krishna’s arrangement it was your mismanagement so there has to be healthy caution and that comes in the mode of goodness and transcendental fear is in relationship with krishna so when we care for krishna at that time so for example once a devotee had gone for good distribution and he distributed some books collected some lakshmi and he lost the lakshmi all the lakshmi he lost and then he came to the temple and he told the temple president i lost all the lakshmi what? the temple president said lost all the lakshmi? he said no no no when the bhagavad gita says you should be equipoised in gain and loss now this is the misapplication of the philosophy here you know that same person may say that i am following bhagavad gita and being equipoised in gain and loss but would that same person be like that if his or her own money had been lost like that no so there that is not detachment detachment that may be irresponsibility so defining difference between detachment and irresponsibility but the defining difference is irresponsibility means we don’t do the activity well detachment means we don’t depend on the fruit for doing the activity so detachment is after the activity is done irresponsibility is before the activity is done so actually to some extent anxiety is good if it makes us more intense in our devotion so as devotees if we find ourselves becoming too overwhelmed by fear then we can try to take shelter of Krishna and calm ourselves down and then evaluate what is the nature of this anxiety and then if it is tamasic or rajasic then we have to purify ourselves more and with philosophical education we can distance ourselves but if it is sattvic it is good and if it is transcendental it is actually very desirable does that address your question