Will we ever come to a spiritual level when we understand Krishna’s plan perfectly?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so normally when the problem comes we don’t understand Krishna’s plan, later we understand it so is it possible that in future we will come to a level where we will understand at that point itself what Krishna’s plan is the soul never becomes omniscient even if the soul is completely purified the soul doesn’t become omniscient even in Prabhupada’s song Arkhine Bhagavad Dharma he says my dear lord, you must have some purpose for having got me here otherwise why would you have brought me to this terrible place I’ll give you the word, I guess anumane, this is my anumane my guess, my inference so even for a pure devotee it may not be that they know exactly what is happening and what they are supposed to do, how they are supposed to act no, Prabhupada was pragmatic, Prabhupada would try whatever worked and he tried this, it didn’t work he just stopped it and he tried something else, he started back to Godhead he found people were not taking magazines seriously and he started books, then he saw he had the books but people were just offering nominal respect in India, so he came to America and in America, first he went to Mishra Yoga Studio there he found that people are interested in yoga but he is not allowed to speak his message so Prabhupada was trying different things and then he saw whatever worked Mishra Prabhupada writes in a parpour, in a bhagavatam that is a devotee may be perplexed but a devotee is never discouraged so perplexed means we don’t know what to do discouraged means we don’t feel like doing anything so it’s possible that even very advanced devotees may temporarily be perplexed so what they never lose is their desire to serve Krishna if we just maintain that desire to serve Krishna then through that desire it will be revealed how we can move closer to him so suppose, say we are walking in this room and there is light now, I can see there is a door over there, there is another door over there there are people sitting over here, I can see all this but suddenly the power goes off and it becomes completely dark over here then I can curse the darkness, what should I do I don’t know what to do in this darkness, I can’t move around or maybe I can find my flashlight most phones also have flashlight now the flashlight is not a substitute for the electrical light but the flashlight can show me the space around me I can take one step forward and like that I may reach a long distance and by that time the power comes back so similarly there are some times in our life when things seem to be fairly clear let’s say the room is well lit, now I got this service I progress in this service and life seems to go on in an orderly pattern maybe for a few months or a few years but then suddenly the lights go off maybe something goes wrong our services get changed, our circumstances get changed the world changes tremendously, we just don’t know what to do at that time so at that time we can just, I don’t know what to do we can just curse the darkness or we can turn on our flashlight that flashlight is the service attitude service attitude means Krishna how can I serve you now when Prabhupada was once asked what is the best prayer that we can offer to Krishna Prabhupada said please Krishna please give me the strength to serve you so if we just ask this question Krishna how can I serve you there are two questions when we face life’s problems why is this happening and how can I respond so we may say the two questions are interrelated they are, but the first question is often difficult to answer the why question just leads to endless perplexity but the how question is actually empowering how can I best respond now how can I serve now at least one step I can take forward I take that one step forward, then it’s like I have a torchlight it shows me one more step forward, I take one more step forward and like that we navigate through the phases of darkness and perplexity in our life so when we don’t know what is happening, we don’t know why what is happening in our life then at that time we just say Krishna how can I serve you in this situation and sometimes you know I go in this direction I think the door is here and I find I hit a wall over there the door is not here then I shift the course so like that we have to explore it so when these things happen, if we just maintain the service attitude then we will be taking steps forward and some things may work out, some things may not work out but every time we maintain the service attitude and I try to take steps forward in this world we may not seem to be going anywhere but in our journey towards Krishna we are taking steps forward towards Krishna so some services may not bear results in this world now we may preach at a particular place and people may never become devotees of that then we may decide this place is not very good, I will go somewhere else that’s fine, at a material level the service did not produce any result but at a spiritual level the effort to serve has purified us has taken us closer to Krishna so Srila Prabhupada also for him 40 years almost in India very little results were produced and Prabhupada was trying various things I said that Prabhupada says in one conversation I think when he was on the streets of Delhi and a cow hit him Prabhupada said I just had this question why is this happening? a cow is sort of a sacred animal for us and a cow coming and hitting is the least thing that we may expect and a cow hitting a pure devotee of Krishna, why is this happening? but Prabhupada did not obsess over that why question rather focused on how and his mood was that verse, that song is very beautiful so make me dance Krishna make me dance means what? we just don’t know how Krishna wants us to dance so we just do what we can in that situation intelligence has many definitions one definition of intelligence is to know what to do when you don’t know what to do rather than thinking that I don’t know and getting paralyzed I think of what is the one step I can take right now take one step forward sometimes life is so dark and so dreary that the best we can do at that time is just take one step forward sometimes life is clear and we can move forward smoothly confidently, swiftly but if you just look at the darkness and curse the darkness you will be paralyzed but if you have that service attitude that question itself how can I serve you will become like a torch and that will show us one step back you can do this and again how can I serve you again it will show one step ahead gradually things will become clear Krishna says if you become conscious of me you will pass over all obstacles by my grace so he doesn’t say that there will be no obstacles there will be obstacles but if you become conscious of me you will pass over them so our focus should be on trying to become conscious of Krishna and trying to serve Krishna according to our understanding and gradually he will reveal to us how best we can serve does that answer your question? Thank you