How can we love Krishna when he is not like a normal person and doesn’t reciprocate immediately?

From Dilip Singh

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Dilip Singh Prabhu, I am finding it difficult to develop a loving attitude towards God, maybe because he’s not like a normal human being who reciprocates immediately. So, please tell me how to develop that loving taste.
Answer, actually, we develop our love for God through education and experience. Education means that we learn from scripture how much God loves us and how wonderful it is to love him by studying the philosophy as well as the past tense. And when we think of love in this world, most people think of the male-female love that is romanticized in movies and novels.
And that love is often thought of as spontaneous, as something that just happens. You know, a boy sees a girl and then they feel something, some vibrations and maybe they touch each other, if electric current between them, the chemistry matches, and then they fall in love. So, people think that falling in love is just something that happens.
However, that is quite often infatuation. That’s why electricity, chemistry, the words that they use, they are very reductionistic, they are very material. They’re not really very deep, indicative necessarily of deep emotions.
So, with respect to love for Krishna, it is a conscious choice and constant cultivation. That is where, that is why we need education. The education enables us to make the choice consciously.
And after we choose to love Krishna also, then still the mind will go here, mind will go there. But when there is constant cultivation, it again will bring the mind to Krishna. So, actually, although it may seem a little difficult to love Krishna because he’s not around us and he may not seem to be reciprocating immediately, he is there in our heart and he has been there for us even when we were not reciprocating.
There is no question of his not reciprocating, but we are not able to perceive his reciprocation right now. So, while we are not able to perceive his reciprocation, what we can focus on is the purification that happens in our heart and the fulfillment, the satisfaction that comes when we cultivate the remembrance of Krishna. These are the forms of reciprocation that will reassure us that there is some higher, richer reality there in the chanting of the holy names, in the remembrance of Krishna, in rendering the various devotional services to Krishna.
So, actually, our situation is like the situation of a prince, the son of a great king who has forgotten his true identity because of amnesia. So, the process of devotional service centered on remembrance of Krishna is like reviving the memory and curing the amnesia. So, it is not that we have to develop love for Krishna.
The love is there, but it is dormant. It just has to be awakened, just as the father has the memory, the prince has the memory of his father, the king, and has love for the king, but just that has to be revived. So, by fixing the mind on Krishna, by rendering service to Krishna, initially we do it at the level of duty.
That is sadhana bhakti. Sadhana bhakti means we use our… that’s why we need education. We need our education to understand that this is where my eternal life will emerge from.
This is where I will get the happiness and love that I am looking for, life after life. So, with this understanding, we start focusing on loving Krishna. And then when we focus on loving Krishna in this way, by loving Krishna, I don’t mean feeling the emotions of love, but doing the activities that are conducive to the development of love.
That means chanting, taking darshans, associating with devotees. By doing this, gradually our memory will be revived. And as the memory will be revived, the feelings of love will automatically come in our heart.
And initially, purification, the experience of purification, that means the last anger, greed, envy, pride, illusion, negativity, selfishness, depression, addiction, these sort of feelings will start going, these sort of emotions will start going away. We’ll be cleansed and we’ll feel satisfied in life, more and more satisfied. And that’s how this purification and satisfaction, the peace of mind, satisfaction, there’s a pacification, not so much agitation over everything that goes wrong in life.
That will indicate to us that there is a stabler reality and as we advance more and more, then we will start perceiving Krishna’s personal reciprocation. So at our stage, we understand that we are going on a long time journey and the scriptures give us a map and when they give us the map, then we study the map and understand that’s the education part. And then as we move along the map, then there are experiences and the experiences reassure us that actually we are going in the right path and what we are experiencing is the purification, the pacification, the satisfaction, they are all landmarks on that path.
So with the uninformed vision, the landmark may not indicate the city. Now a person who can’t read and write, that person may say, okay, I wanted to go to Mumbai and Mumbai was earlier 120 kilometers, now it is 75 kilometers. But if the person doesn’t know how to read and understand the landmark, first may think I went so long, but there’s no Mumbai coming along.
So like that, you may say, I’ve been chanting for so many months or so long, but no reciprocation from Krishna. But the reciprocation which you will experience is, there are nine stages of bhakti, shraddha, sadhu, sangha, bhajana kriya, anartha, nivrtti, nishtha, ruchi, asati, bhava and prema. Initially with faith we start, then we come in the association of devotees, then there we do bhajana kriya, render devotional service, that is start curing our spiritual amnesia.
So then anartha nivrtti, then the impurities start going away and then nishtha, strong faith reflects itself as stability. And then after that comes ruchi, asati, bhava and prema. Ruchi is what you’re talking about taste and asati is attachment to Krishna.
The taste in devotional service, then the more taste we get, the more we become attached to Krishna and to his service. And then bhava, then we start experiencing spiritual emotions and religions with Krishna. And the full blossom of the spiritual emotions is love for Krishna.
So at our stage, we can start experiencing anartha nivrtti by practice of devotional service. And that is the form of reciprocation of Krishna that we should focus on at our stage. And more personal, more intimate, more direct forms of reciprocation will come when we become more advanced.
Thank you.