Does our soul have a specific purpose for this life apart from the universal purpose for all souls to love Krishna?

It’s the example is given, say if there is a mountain and there’s an ocean. Now there’s a trickle of water, some water which is meant going to flow towards the ocean. So that ocean is Krishna.

Now the material world is in the mountain and that drop of water is me, the soul. Now each soul has to find its path towards the ocean. Each soul is like a river moving towards the ocean.

But the important thing is that while the river moves towards the ocean, along the way the river also does a lot of good to all the life forms that are on the side, on its backs. So like that, for us, based on our particular nature, our particular talents, our particular interests, our particular stages of growth that we have come to and not yet come to, we all have some karmic debts from our previous lives which we need to pay or neutralize. So we will have to find our individual path to Krishna and in that individual path towards Krishna, we will have to heal from particular wounds, we will have to grow in particular ways so that individuality is also very much a part of us.

If we consider the Pandavas, they’re all great devotees but each of them was an individual. You look at the Mahabharata, actually you cannot think of a pair of siblings more different than Yudhishthira and Bhima. Yudhishthira was like a Brahmin, they were all Kshatriyas, they were all going to be warriors and protectors but Yudhishthira was more like a Brahmin.

He tried to resolve everything with peace even if it is a great personal cost. Yudhishthira was a Brahmin Kshatriya, Bhima was a Kshatriya Kshatriya, he was Kshatriya squared. He was just looking for an opportunity to use his prowess.

Both of them were united in their devotional aspirations. So there is abundant room for individuality in the path of Bhakti also.