Can lack of intellectual nourishment stop or slow our bhakti?
So thank you very much so can lack of intellectual nourishment stop decelerate or stop our practice of bhakti yes it's possible all of us have different needs and unless those needs are addressed we will become disenthused in bhakti so it's not a ultimately bhakti bhakti is dependent on our desire to serve Krishna but that desire it needs something for nourishment and some things can weaken that desire also so for many people nourishment comes from from devotee association so for example on my website someone asks this question I answer all these questions so is it that is hearing classes hearing lectures on the internet is it equivalent to going to temple and hearing classes so I told them there are different kinds of nourishments there is emotional nourishment there is cultural nourishment there is intellectual nourishment emotional nourishment means some devotees they just sit with some senior devotee some devotees are just angry maharaj should just smile at me if maharaj embraces me I can go on for 6 months 1 year something like that for them relational or emotional component is the most important and if some senior devotee doesn't look at them and they feel like shattered by some small neglect or some small disrespect or chastisement or whatever there are people who are nourished emotionally there are people who are nourished culturally they need to go to a temple they need to see the deities they feel the atmosphere of the temple is important and there are people who are nourished culturally they want to analyze, understand and now to some extent everybody should do all these things but which will nourish you which person most that has to be seen so for those who are intellectually whose nourishment is primarily intellectual for them hearing answers on internet or for them it may be equivalent but for them the cultural emotional part is more important so same way with respect to your case you may need a particular kind of nourishment and if you don't get it you feel weak so it is important if it has been causing as much questioning and if it is a part of your nature you have been trying to go deep right from the beginning so you should go ahead eventually what you need is some serious intellectually challenging subject to study so subject, association and forum lifelong devotee career as an intellectual so some subject which you can devote yourself to for studying lifelong, second is some association where you can discuss what you are studying I am part of some devotee scholar forums online and I would say the maximum nourishment I get is through online through my discussions in general many devotee say face to face talks are better you can't talk on phone I don't agree with that for me even discussions are the best because I can express myself much better in writing than in speaking when I write something and while talking when I speak something off the cuff also writing we write edit so most of my fulfilling devotee association comes with people whom I have met only once or twice in my life and I have distributed hundreds of emails to them and I haven't got nourishment so we need some association, some subject, some association and in the long run we need some forum where we can share what we are studying so that we benefit others for me the online has become the forum where I am not reaching necessarily the intellectual type of people whom I would like to reach but some intellectuals are coming I am satisfied with whoever is coming and benefiting from it so in the long run you need these three things the subject, the forum the association and the forum for sharing I have mentioned a little back on IG that when I have answered actually these days I was reflecting that which all places I really stuck up really struck my progress so then I asked what all questions I used to get so generally what used to happen when I have written some questions like did Zee work well or not remember I used to ask a lot of questions to you then does Krishna know his future or not so these questions now I wrote also that there are differences of opinion and higher level regarding to this.