If we have fear or mistrust towards God how does the process of bhakti work for us?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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so if we have mistrust or fear for God how does the process of bhakti diminish that or how does it work in this situation Bhaktivinoda Thakur in his Chaitanya Shikshamrith talks that there are four levels at which people may approach God fear desire duty and love and the bible also said that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom it’s not the end it is the beginning so fear in itself is not a bad thing there is healthy fear and there is unhealthy fear so if you understand that God is far far greater than us he is the ultimate controller and therefore we need to it’s not fear in the sense of terror that God will do something terrible rather fear in the sense that ultimately for a devotee the fear is I don’t want to displease Krishna that is the fear in the process of bhakti I don’t want to make Krishna unhappy I don’t want to make Krishna angry it’s like if you consider a child if say that if the parents are good and the parents want the child to go on a light track and if somehow the child because of mischievousness tends to do something wrong and the fear my parents will be angry that will protect the child from doing wrong so if fear of God curbs us from doing wrong things then that fear is good so in general especially depending on the modes we are in so there is more of ignorance more of passion more of goodness and transcendence so you could roughly correlate these four levels with these four levels of consciousness in ignorance there is fear so when we don’t know much about God we are afraid God is some unknown powerful fearful being and I had better obey him otherwise he will make my life miserable so that is also good because at least there is some obedience to God but as we move forward from the mode of passion to the mode of goodness mode of ignorance to the mode of passion then we see God is a little more positive passion is characterized by desires I want to get this I want to get that and I am not able to get it God is more powerful than you if I pray to him he will give it to me so here we see God more positively not as the source of punishment but as a source of fulfillment fulfillment at the material level fulfillment of our desires then beyond that we see God and we come to the mode of goodness at the level of beauty that I have I’m so much has been provided by God already right now I’m living I’m breathing how am I going to breathe when I eat food I may work hard to get the food to earn the money to get the food but who digests the food I don’t do it it’s a whole complex mechanism which is happening so actually God has already provided me so much so even when I get the food I don’t produce the food in nature that is provided by God I simply procure it so this understanding that God has already provided me so much therefore I have a duty to serve him this is at the level of knowledge knowledge not full spiritual knowledge but at least knowledge in the mode of goodness and then when we come towards transcendence then we learn to love God not because of what he has what he will provide us or what he has provided us which are the motives in passion and in goodness but simply we love God because he’s so lovable so we love God not for what he gives us but for who he is so at our stage in our life because of certain if we have fear just as we keep practicing bhakti we start developing spiritual knowledge we start raising our consciousness rises through the walls and the fear will diminish and now as far as mistrust is concerned you know we have to at least at some broad level understand what is the source of this mistrust now it may be because we may just be afraid of relationships itself you may have had bad experiences in various relationships and then you think relation relating with God is also another relationship what if it goes wrong what if I’m disappointed it could be that or it could be just some misunderstanding of God’s greatness because of which you know we counted on God to help us in a particular situation and if not help us then we may feel that what is the use of relating with God this is where philosophy is very important now the the process of bhakti we often expect God to help us by giving us release from problems Krishna I have this problem please release me from it and if he releases this to us then we say yes Krishna is good. Krishna can release us from problems also many times he does that however the nature of the material world is problems will come again and again some problem will come so the deeper blessing that Krishna offers us is not a release from problems but relief amidst problems and the problem remains but by remembering Krishna by praying Krishna by absorbing ourselves in Krishna we find that actually we are not that troubled you know we may be in pain and say materialistic people may be there we may just cry just scream and cry a devotee cries out for Krishna and in crying out to Krishna a devotee experiences an elevation of consciousness experiences relief Krishna says if you become conscious of me you will pass over all obstacles by my grace he’s not saying obstacles will go away you’ll pass over them so if our mistrust has originated because we pray to Krishna for help and the help didn’t come then we have to give proper philosophical understanding and what what do we mean by Krishna’s help if we reduce Krishna’s help to a particular form then we may be frustrated but if we stay open the problem will still be there but the remembrance of Krishna the absorption in Krishna will give us relief and lastly the mistrust in Krishna may come because of mistrust in those who represent him in our lives sometimes you know the historically the biggest cause of atheism is actually theists people who claim to represent God but they misrepresented God they used their supposed connection with God to exploit others so if that is what has happened you know if those whom we trusted were connectors with God somehow let us down then we have to understand that actually that our relation our relationship with Krishna is not meant to be reduced to any one channel alone if you see the famous verse in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that go to spiritual master and learn from him now if you look at the original Sanskrit the Sanskrit is gyaninas it’s not gyani it’s not singular it’s plural so Krishna is saying go to the enlightened souls and learn from them not just one soul we have one niksha guru but there are many shiksha gurus and Krishna can teach us from many sources so if it has happened that somebody is representing Krishna has misrepresented him and because of our mistrust in them we have mistrusted Krishna then we have to look for other representatives of Krishna we may repose our faith gradually but we have to understand that we’re not just trusting this person we’re actually trusting Krishna. Krishna tells us to follow this process of trusting his representatives so therefore even when we’re trusting the representative of Krishna we are essentially trusting Krishna and if somehow it happens that somebody who was representing Krishna somehow they disappoint us then we’ll continue trust Krishna and find some other representative Krishna whom we trust and as we can move on in our life so basically we have to find out the source of the mistrust and address that and in general if you start if you keep practicing bhakti consistently what will happen by that is that itself will strengthen our trust and remove the mistrust Krishna says if just somebody keeps practicing bhakti diligently as diligently as is possible in the situation then the doubts and the divinities will go away and then the wholehearted faithful devotion will emerge so with whatever little trust we have right now we start practicing bhakti and gradually the trust will increase and the mistrust and the fear will get silent