Why does Krishna test devotees?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Why does Krishna arrest his devotees without going into specifics of any particular story? It’s an important principle. In this world, quite often when we want to choose the right thing also, often the wrong things seem to allure us.
Sometimes, once I was in Melbourne last year and one person asked a question, God wants us to do the right thing, why does he provide us so many wrong options? So I explained, that is the way always it is in any multiple choice exam. In a multiple choice exam, there are four wrong options and one right option. The purpose of giving the wrong options is not to fail the student, the purpose is to test the student.
If the student chooses the right, the student gets the marks. Similarly for us, when we face difficulties in our life, at that time, we have option, we can take that difficulty and say that why are so many difficulties coming in my life? I am trying to be a good person. I am trying to live in a devoted way.
Why is this happening? So we can go inwards or rather we can go within self-absorption or self-obsession and we can just blame God or reject God. It’s one option. The other option could be that we can become more open.
I don’t know why this is happening to me. But oh God, please give me the strength to serve you. Please give me the strength to move on in my life.
If we adopt this attitude, then we will see that in due course that through that difficult situation that we went through, we will become better. We will become stronger. We will actually emerge as more evolved human beings.
So whatever difficulties come in our life, they are meant for our spiritual evolution. They are meant to help us grow in wisdom and grow in devotion. And if we take it with that attitude, then we will grow through it.
The purpose of the test is to help us raise our consciousness. And when we raise our consciousness, we will find that the test will come, the test will take us out of time, the test will go, but internally we will grow stronger. So just like if you are going on a road, at that time suddenly lights go off.
What do I do now? It’s all dark around me. Either I can curse the darkness or I can just turn on my flashlight. My flashlight does not replace the street lights, but my flashlight can show me one step ahead, one step ahead, one step ahead.
So similarly sometimes we may have a plan for our life and suddenly some upheaval comes, a catastrophe happens. It’s like the lights in our life’s path go off. What am I to do now? Arjuna faced a situation like that.
So we may be perplexed, but we don’t have to be discouraged. Perplexed means to not know what to do. Discouraged means to not feel like doing anything.
There may be situations when you don’t know what to do. At that time, what do we do? Just turn on our torchlight. Torchlight is our prayerful service attitude.
Oh God, how can I serve you? Okay, you can take one step forward. One step forward. Okay, I can do this, I can do this.
Faith often means that just taking one step forward even when the full path is not clear. When we in this way try to connect with God in a mood of devotion, we will feel we will find that we have layers of strength within us that we did not know we had. These layers of strength develop for us through our connection with Krishna, through our devotion to Krishna.
And the obstacles, the difficulties, the tests, they will stay for some time, they will go. But through the tests, if we become spiritually stronger, that is a deal that will last lifelong. Not just lifelong actually, it will stay with us for eternity.
So rather than seeking a problem free life or thinking that by going to God my life will become problem free, we seek a purposeful life. Not a problem free life but a purposeful life. My purpose is to connect with Krishna, to connect with him in devotion and in a mood of devotion to make my contribution in the world.
Whatever my responsibility, whatever my role. So when we have this purposeful life as our driving focus, even when problems come, we will see those problems not as external obstacles that are stopping us, we will see them as internal pushers to go within and strengthen ourselves. And we can remember that there is a higher plan for spiritual evolution.
So it is said that when we are down to nothing, Krishna is up to something. So we just have to be patient and what he is up to