How can we trust Krishna when he is so unpredictable?

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So some people can’t trust Krishna because they feel he is unpredictable, they feel he is erratic.
So how can they develop trust in Krishna? There is, we could say cultural faith. There is cultural faith, there is philosophical faith, and then there is experiential faith. I’m just using this term.
I’ll explain the concepts. Cultural faith means we’re being brought up in a family that is biased. Or in a culture, there is a religious.
You should go to a temple, go to a church, go to a mosque, whatever, and worship God. This faith is actually, this faith is largely based on a materialistic conception. That means if you worship God, good things will happen in your life.
If you worship God, like in our entire temples in India, April is the month of exams. And before that, hundreds of students come to the temple. Why? Oh God, please help me pass in this exam.
So what has happened? It’s good, at least they’re coming at that time to the temple. But their conception is, God is meant to provide good things for me in this world. And with this vision, it’s good to have some faith in God.
But you know, in this world, ultimately, material things are not going to last. Even if one thing, two things, three things, four things are provided, how long are the things going to be there? How long are things going to come? This world is a place of, place of limited things. Once there was a devotee’s child who stopped chanting.
And then that devotee took that child to the spiritual master and said, Maharaj Ji has stopped chanting. He says, why did you stop chanting? He says, you know, there was an India-Pakistan cricket match. And I prayed to Krishna that India should win.
But India lost. Therefore, I stopped chanting. So then that Maharaj told him, actually, you know, there was a boy like you in Pakistan, who was praying to Krishna in Pakistan.
And he prayed more than you. That’s why Pakistan won. The point is that actually at a material level, all our desires can never be fulfilled.
Many of our desires cannot be fulfilled. So when there is this cultural faith, which is non-philosophical, then sooner or later it will be thwarted. Because in the real conduct of life, if we expect God to fulfill our desire, the desires will not be fulfilled.
That is, some desires sooner or later will not be fulfilled. And we think, what am I doing? And at that time, there are two options. One is, we may go down, become atheistic.
Or we may study scripture, become philosophical. And become philosophical, what does it mean? That means that Krishna tells in the Bhagavad Gita that this world is dukkha. That this world is a place of misery.
So if a devotee studies scripture, and devotee comes to one of Shilpa’s senior disciples, Ravindra Swarup Prabhu. He writes in one of his articles. He said, I have been to many spiritual organizations.
And I came to ISKCON. And I heard this on Sunday in his class. This world is a place of misery.
He said, at last, someone is speaking the truth. Everybody is saying, oh, you will enjoy, you will enjoy. What do you know? Yes, there is some enjoyment.
There is a lot of misery also. Nobody actually… Everybody sugarcoats the misery. So if there is misery, if we experience misery in the world, and scripture tells that this world is a miserable place.
Now we say, what scripture is saying is true. And scripture doesn’t leave us with this, this world is a place of misery. It tells us that actually, by taking shelter of Krishna, we can transcend the misery.
Krishna says in 18.58, if you become conscious of me, you pass over all obstacles by my grace. So now, a devotee thinks, yes, I have experienced one half of scripture’s teaching, that this world is a place of misery. Now let me try to experience the other half.
That by becoming absorbed in Krishna, by taking shelter of Krishna, I will transcend this. Let me see if this works. And in this way, a devotee takes greater shelter of Krishna.
And when the devotee takes greater shelter of Krishna, then the faith rises to realized faith. Realized faith means that, not that the problem goes away just by taking shelter of Krishna. Rather, even amidst the problem, you know, we experience relief, we experience shelter.
Say it’s extremely cold outside, you’re trembling. And then we come in a room which is warm and cozy. The cold is there still outside.
But when we come inside the room, we feel relief. Like that, our life will be filled with problems. But if we just shift our thoughts towards Krishna, we focus on Krishna.
madhāśrayāḥ kathāṁ rūṣṭhāṁ śruṇvanti kathair nityaṁ tapanti vividhāsthāpā naitāṁ mat-katha-cetasā Krishna says that those devotees who absorb, the Lord Kapiladeva says in the Bhāgavatam, that those devotees who absorb their consciousness in me through hearing and chanting, tapanti vividhāsthāpā the various miseries of life do come upon us. But, naitāṁ mat-katha-cetasā because their consciousness is absorbed in me, so, the devotee doesn’t suffer. So, if we are expecting Krishna to be a provider and protector of all the material things that we want, then we will feel that Krishna is unpredictable, Krishna is erratic, Krishna doesn’t care, or Krishna doesn’t even exist.
But if you study the philosophy, and you take shelter of Krishna, then our faith will rise to the philosophical level, and then we will realize at the experiential level, where we will say that, yes, this world is a place of misery, but Krishna is a God of mercy. And even amidst this misery, He keeps me sheltered. And, that’s the whole message of the Bhāgavatam.
See, the Bhāgavatam is actually, as I said, a very extraordinary book. It doesn’t end. Normally, in the Ramayana, Mahabharata, there’s a battle between good and evil, and the good wins.
And God helps the good win. But there’s nothing like that in the main storyline of the Bhāgavatam. The character is sentenced to die, and he dies.
So now, what is God doing? The Bhāgavatam’s thrust is, that death is inevitable in this world. But, by, through spiritual sound, through absorption in the supreme spiritual reality, brought about by spiritual sound, we can rise above the misery of death. That’s the whole message of the Bhāgavatam, in a sense.
So that’s why, if somebody is simply staying at the cultural level in faith, then they will have these questions. But if they associate with devotees, and understand the philosophy, then, the adversities of this world will actually increase their faith in Krishna. Not that Krishna will remove, not because Krishna will remove the obstacles.
Krishna can do that. But, more importantly, Krishna will give us strength even between the obstacles. So, the same obstacle, if, if we had faced it when we were not practicing bhakti, it would have crushed us.
The same obstacle, when we face when we are practicing bhakti, we realize that we have developed, by Krishna’s mercy, an inner toughness, by which we can face it, by which we can grow through it. So devotees’ attitude is, that, they don’t tell God, how big your problems are. Tell your problems, how big God is.
Shift the focus. You will find that Krishna is there to help us all this.