How God protects – Lessons from Prahlada-Narasimha pastime

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, today I’ll speak on the occasion of Narasimha Yatradarshi, on the theme of how God protects. And I’ll have a PowerPoint, so I’ll be sharing my screen.
We’ll start with one of the prayers from Prahlad Maharaj. And then we’ll move forward. So this is 7-9-16.
So Prahlad Maharaj is praying. So, So, So, Prahlad Maharaj’s prayers are offered at the climax of the story. In the whole story, Prahlad has been persecuted for so long, and now is his moment of victory and glory.
And yet, what is he saying over here? He is saying, my dear Lord, trastos me. Trastos me. I am afflicted.
I am fearful. Aham Krupana Vatsala. It’s a beautiful describer of the Lord.
He says, normally we think of the Lord as Bhakta Vatsala. He’s the lover of his devotees. He is, of course, the lover of his devotees.
But his love is not restricted to his devotees alone. He’s also Krupana Vatsala. Krupana Vatsala means he’s the lover of even the Krupanas.
Krupanas are those who are miserly. The Shastras explain that our human life is like a wealth. If we invest our wealth well, we can multiply it.
So, if this human life we invest in the service of the Lord, we can multiply it unlimitedly and gain eternal life. But those who don’t invest their life like that, they are Krupanas. He says, you are Krupana Vatsala.
So, he’s referring to himself. I am a miser. I belong to a family of misers.
So, Dussa Ogra, Samsara Chakra. Dussa Ogra, that the Saha is to may, Saha is to tolerate. Dussa, that is very difficult to pronounce.
Ogra. It’s fierce. What is that fierce thing? Samsara Chakra.
The cycle of birth and death. The wheel of birth and death. Kadanat Grasitam Pranitah.
And what is so terrible about it? It’s so terrible that he’s saying the brutality of material nature is seen especially in nature. Sometimes when we live in cities, we may think, Oh, if I can go to a natural place, it’s so peaceful. Well, yes, it’s peaceful at one level, but then we also say that there’s a law of the jungle.
Might is right. So, a tiger can pounce on a deer and rip apart its body and devour it. This is in this material world, one living being devours another living being.
Now, most of us, we probably born up and brought up in relatively a peaceful period in human history. After this, from this first world war, second, there was a depression. 1910 was the first, 1915 was the first world war.
1929 was the big depression. 1939 onwards was the second world war. So that first half of the 20th century was very disastrous.
But after that, there was relative peace. And now suddenly out of nowhere in the last 2-3 months, this big crisis has come upon us. And it’s like one tiny virus, if we consider, that is now threatening to devour humanity.
All the virus particles across the world, even if they afflict one-tenth of humanity, all those virus particles will amount to just one gramme. And that one gramme of virus, all the billions of virus together will be one gramme. But they are threatening to devour humanity.
So this is So he’s saying this virtual world is a very dangerous place. And why am I trapped over here? By my own karma I am bound here. My dear lord, you are transcendental lord, when will you call me to your lotus feet? I simply long for the time when you who are the shelter from you are the shelter of, that means the shelter of liberation.
So when oh lord will you deliver me from this deadly material existence? This is his prayer. So I am fearful of this material existence oh lord and you are merciful to me. So although I am trapped by my own karma, please deliver me from this material existence.
Normally we call out to the lord when we are in trouble. And now is the moment of victory and glory for Prahalad. If we consider what Prahalad has achieved, it is extraordinary.
Even the great devatas were bowing down and subordinating themselves and they described that Hiranyakashipu just raised his eyebrows devatas will start trembling and Hiranyakashipu such prowess Prahalad withstood that, Prahalad tolerated that. He remained firm in his devotion and not once in the Bhagavatam does Prahalad exhibit any fear at all. Even when he is thrown among in a pit of snakes, he is thrown from the cliff of a mountain, he is taken into a burning fire, he has spears and swords being hurled towards him to rip apart his body, he has remained fearless.
But now he is saying my dear lord I am fearful. I am fearful. What is the relief from the fear? My dear lord, please let me come to you.
Let me come to you. When will you call me to your lotus feet? Prahalad is at one level apprehensive over here and this will be revealed in the next chapter. What is his apprehension? He thinks that now that my father is dead, I will be made into the king.
And he says the king is a very entangling position. I do not want it oh lord. So instead of giving me this royal position, please call me to your lotus feet.
Please let me come to your abode with you. So this is his extraordinary prayer. And even in the moment of victory he is not basking in his glory.
The normal material situation is say if somebody wins the world cup or say leave alone cricket world cup is like a team sport. But imagine somebody wins a tennis championship or a boxing championship or a chess championship where it’s solo performance. And then when their final interview comes, they may offer some credit to other people.
They will say I worked so hard and then now I have achieved my dream. This is what I lived for. This is what I have practised and struggled and laboured for so many years and decades.
So they at one level delight in their success. Prahalad is so sober here that rather than delighting in his success of course he is delighting in the presence of the lord. But he is thinking this is not the glory I want in the world with everyone else being shown as lower than me.
Actually Prahalad is shown to be lower than the devatas not just because he remained faithful to the lord when the devatas were bowing down to Hiranyakashipu but also now when the devatas offered prayers none of those prayers had any effect. The acharya explained that why did lord Narasimha not become pacified by the devatas prayers? Because because he felt that when my devotee was being persecuted you neither protected nor protested. So my devotee was persecuted you never neither protected nor protested and now you are offering your prayers to me I don’t, I won’t take your prayers seriously.
So he doesn’t he is not satisfied with those prayers but when Prahalad comes and offers prayers the lord becomes immediately pleased. This is the moment of glory but he is exhibiting humility. Humility can come in various ways but one way humility comes is through awareness of our vulnerability.
Humility comes by awareness of our vulnerability that we are vulnerable at a material level our wealth, our security that can be taken away at a spiritual level we might consider ourselves spiritually advanced but we might be dragged down by temptations. So Prahalad is aware of his vulnerable position in the material world and thus he is humble. So how does Prahalad see the protection of the lord? That’s what I will discuss now in the remaining session.
So we will discuss on this topic of how god protects. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita Kaunteya Pratijanihi Name Bhakta Pranashyati My devotees will always be protected but what does that protection actually mean? So now basically this is a universal problem in material existence that the problem of human. If there is a good god why do bad things happen in this world and especially why do bad things happen to good people? The whole Bhagavatam in one sense dodges that question.
It hardly ever goes into the philosophy of karma where it says that it is because of your karma you are suffering. There is not a single incident in the Bhagavatam when somebody is suffering and it is told you because of your karma. Bhagavatam changes the driving question.
Ask not why bad things happen to good people ask what good people do when bad things happen to them ask what good people do when bad things happen to them and this is the theme throughout in the Bhagavatam. We see and in fact this is heightened more and more throughout the Bhagavatam. Say Parikshit Maharaj committed a mistake at one level it was a serious mistake to offend a sage but it was not a catastrophic mistake.
It was not worth getting a death sentence. So small, it was a significant mistake but a completely disproportionate punishment for that. Good person, even good people just mess up in life.
Now we all at some time or the other in our life we face failure. We face reversals and now when we face this how do we respond? So that is the story of the Bhagavatam itself. How Parikshit Maharaj responds? By taking shelter of the Lord.
At one level your life is tragic. Tragic means not in the sense of a tragedy movie where everybody cries at the end of the movie but tragic means that in life bad things happen and there can be a tragic sense of heroism where amid tragedy somebody behaves in a heroic way. So Parikshit Maharaj what happens? He gets cursed but he heroically takes shelter of the Lord.
If you take the same thing forward, in the fifth canto we have Bharat Maharaj, small mistake it was actually he was trying to do a good thing. He was compassionate to a dear but that compassion became excessive and he got deviated. In the fifth canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam.
If you consider the sixth canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam there is a story of Uttarasur. Uttarasur, Akshitraketu laughs at Shiva and it is not even out of derision. It is out of astonishment that he laughs at Shiva when Shiva is sitting with Parvati on his lap addressing the assembly of renunciates and for that he is cursed.
Now at least in all these three cases the characters made some mistake may be medium mistake, minor mistake or very small mistake but some mistake but if you consider Prahalad in the seventh canto, no mistake at all it is when we do something bad and even when we do something very bad and we get a proportionate result, still we feel why did this happen to me if you do something minor and we get a major bad effect for that this is unfair but probably the most difficult to bear is when we do something good and because of that good we get bad for Prahalad actually we could say his devotion itself was the cause of his danger if he had just stopped worshipping Vishnu then there would have been no danger for him this is extremely difficult to bear when our what we are doing is good and the very good thing that we are doing that very thing becomes the cause of our suffering and we have seen this throughout human history that there have been those who have been devoted and they have been persecuted our devotees in Russia especially now also to some extent but before that in the USSR many of them were persecuted severely even in America devotees were accused of that you are brainwashed and they are subjected to deprogramming and all that so sometimes when we do good and bad things happen it is extremely difficult to bear but the Bhagavatam tells us a story through character after character after character that when bad things happen to good people what do good people do so what does Prahalad do that is the question now the question may come up if God loves us why does God let bad things happen to us so now here there are two levels of love there is the love that protects from danger and there is the love that prepares for danger the love that protects from danger means that say for example a child is very small and the parents may tell the child don’t go on the street the mother may always be on a watch and don’t go near the vehicle anywhere play in the courtyard play in the home now later on that same mother or the same father will give the child a cycle and the child has to ride the cycle when the child starts riding the cycle the child may fall and now falling is painful falling can be dangerous injurious but it is only through falling that the child learns and the child grows so basically love sometimes lets us be exposed to danger so that we grow and similarly Krishna while we are in the material world lets us sometimes be exposed to danger so that we grow in our lives so the normal conception is that I pray to God and then God protects me from danger but sometimes when I pray to God and still the danger may go on it is not that at that time Krishna doesn’t love us the love is preparing us for danger it’s a different kind of love the love that is helping us to grow Krishna loves us as we are but he loves us too much to let us stay as we are just like parents love their children as they are but the parents want the children to grow up to become more responsible to become more mature, to study well to have a bright career so the parents love their children too much to let them stay as they are similarly Krishna loves us as we are but he loves us too much to let us stay as we are so we see this contrast between Indra and Prahalad Indra is simply praying to the Lord, Dear Lord we had lost our heavens because of Hiranyakashipu and because we were not having the heavenly proper, heavenly resources we could not perform yajnas for you so now that you have killed Hiranyakashipu now we will get the heavenly comforts, heavenly resources and we will worship you now so he is thinking in terms of my dear Lord thank you for protecting me from danger but Prahalad he is not saying that way my dear Lord please protect me from danger you have given me comfort back now he is at a different level in his consciousness so this is, I will talk about these two diagrams to illustrate the point that I am making over here so on the y-axis is devotion on the x-axis is danger so we could be in various situations in our life so for example if there is no devotion and there is no danger then what happens, we are complacent we are comfortable oh, I am fine here about more than two decades ago when I started practising bhakti and sharing the message of bhakti one of my uncles he told me I believe in God he is happy there and I am happy here so why do I need to change anything so what happens is that there is no danger, there is no devotion one becomes complacent then the other possibility is there is no devotion but there is danger and then what happens, people become indignant, indignant means they feel life is unfair how can life be like this how should the world be like this this is terrible there is an atheist in England who filed a court case to declare belief in a good God as an immoral and violent belief that belief in God is immoral and violent, why because he said that there is so much suffering in this world when we see the suffering of this world how can any good God allow suffering, therefore this belief in God itself he said God is an illusion but we should declare belief in God to be immoral and horrible belief so that we can reject, we can get rid of the whole idea of God so what happens if we have no devotion and we face danger we feel trouble, we become indignant why is this happening to me now when there is we will go to the third part dependent, see when there is danger and if there is devotion then what happens we take shelter of the Lord we become dependent on him my dear Lord I can’t do anything at this time please depend on me, please protect me that was what Prahlad was doing, now all these demons were coming trying to attack him Prahlad was just a 5 year old boy couldn’t do anything, so what did he do he folded his hands and remembered the Lord smaranam smaranam he just depended on the Lord whatever oh Lord you want me to happen let it happen so of course in times of extreme danger and actually how we take shelter our devotion is tested not just when we are in danger we become dependent on the Lord whatever you want, let it happen but our devotion is tested even when danger goes away and comfort comes that is the time do we continue to take shelter of the Lord, that is when we are diligent, diligent means we are determined, we are faithful, we are serious so in the third canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam there is the description of how the child in the mother’s womb desperately prays to the Lord while suffering in the womb I just don’t want to come out of this womb, at least here there is suffering but I am suffering I am remembering you and I am calling out to you and that means I am well situated, so then the child in the womb prays to the Lord, so the child in the womb is in that quadrant of danger and devotion and he says let me stay in this situation only O Lord but then if I come out of the mother’s womb then I will get caught in illusion but then what happens, the child comes out of the mother’s womb and then the child becomes goes into illusion so does the Lord not answer the prayer if the child doesn’t want to come out of the mother’s womb, why does the Lord let the child come out that is because the devotion which is performed when we have no alternative now that is circumstantial devotion that is not intentional devotion that is not pure devotion circumstantial devotion means it like suppose imagine if a boy proposes to a girl will you marry me and the girl says why and the boy says because no other girl is ready to marry me what no no girl will want to marry a boy like that unless of course she is also desperate for some reason but the idea is that just because there are no alternatives available when we choose something that is more out of despair than out of love so if when we are in such danger that we cannot do anything about it and then we take shelter of the Lord that is good but the devotion that is exhibited when we have no alternatives that is circumstantial devotion but the devotion that is manifested when we have alternatives that is intentional devotion that is what I want because I can’t go anywhere so I go to the Lord but intentional devotion means I can go other places but still I will go to the Lord that is intentional devotion that is pure devotion so this is where Prahlad is now now Prahlad was in that dependent quadrant earlier where he was he was helpless but now when he has come to this quadrant where there is no danger now now he is thinking if there is no danger this material world is such a place of illusion that I might slip into the first quadrant this world is filled with temptations and if I slip into that first quadrant then I will lose my devotion he later on says that how the he says all the senses are dragging me in different directions and I will get caught in illusion O Lord so please let me be devoted to you so this is where he is praying to the Lord let me come to you and he says how will I stay devoted to you that is by glorifying you by when I glorify you I become absorbed in your glorification and thus I transcend all distress so I transcend the temptations of the world and I transcend the tribulations of the world now this is from our perspective when we will stay devoted to the Lord when we will not devoted to the Lord now let’s look at it from the Lord’s perspective now why might the Lord not want us to be free from danger and be fully devoted to him why might he not want that he can just remove all problems in our life and let us be wholeheartedly devoted to him because sometimes it might appear that we want to practise bhakti but we may have sickness, we may have financial we may have financial problems, we may have some social problems because of which we can’t practise bhakti so why might that happen so now let’s see this from the Lord’s perspective one of the basic teachings of the scriptures is that the world is a place of distress when we say the world is a place of distress we can compare that to a hospital in a hospital distress is a feature distress is not the purpose of the hospital and the doctor there is not causing the distress the doctor is there to help cure the distress so the world is a place which is like a hospital and we are all diseased what is the disease although we are eternal beings we are all craving for temporary material things and because of that temporary material things will go away sooner or later we will suffer and we will eventually experience the trauma of death and rebirth again so the cure is that we redirect our desires from the temporary to the eternal and how will that happen for that Krishna has a programme so now imagine somebody is sick and they are in pain now when they are sick and they are in pain that is the time when they feel the desperate need for a doctor and when they go to a doctor the doctor gives two medicines one is the pain medication and the other is the curative medication so you can call it the analgesic and the antiseptic analgesic is the pain medication what deals with the pain, antiseptic is what deals with the infection the core cause of the disease so now imagine if there is somebody who so in our life somebody who has no painkiller and no medicine then what will happen there will be complete misery so similarly in this material world material security is like material security is like a painkiller why a painkiller because the painkiller simply covers the pain it doesn’t cure the pain so when we have material security failure things are fine but actually our misdirected desires are still there and those misdirected desires will bring severe consequences upon us so if somebody somebody who is sick and is having no medication, no curative, no pain medication then they will be miserable and their misery will increase more and more on the other hand somebody takes only the painkiller and they don’t take any medication at all then what will happen they will have relief from pain but that’s deceptive that’s dangerous why because inside the disease is worsening so similarly in this world if we have material comfort we have a material security but we don’t have spiritual security so material security is like the painkiller, spiritual security is like the curative medicine spiritual security means devotion, absorption in Krishna at least the intention for devotion and the intention for absorption in Krishna material security is needs and comforts so now that will be like a if we have material security but no spiritual security that is like having a painkiller but not the curative medicine and we will be comfortable but temporarily and deceptively on the other hand if somebody has only the curative medicine and not the painkiller then they are in misery because the pain is there what do I do but thankfully at that time the pain will decrease although right now they are in pain but because they are taking the medication the pain will decrease at a material level or from an external perspective the person in say quadrant 1 and quadrant 4 that means one who has spiritual security and one who does not have spiritual security but if both of them are in misery lack material security then both of them will be in misery but the difference is that for one person the misery is increasing because there is no diagnosis and no treatment for the other person the misery is decreasing so Hiranyakashipu was comfortable not just comfortable he was in royal comfort he was ruling all the three worlds but for how long for how long Hiranyakashipu was in that temporarily comfortable quadrant and that quadrant soon got over Prahlad says that I saw the one who was the ruler of the world in one moment everything was lost for him therefore I don’t ever want to go into that illusion thinking that material security will ever give me happiness so then for us to be steadily situated it is good to be in the quadrant where we have both the painkiller and the medication and the curative medicine Vidyamcha Vidyamcha Yastadvedo Bhayamsaha Avidyayamrtyum Tirtha Vidyayamrta Mashnate so it is said that Vidyamcha Vidyamcha we have the resources for dealing with the material world we have material knowledge and we have the resources for attaining the spiritual world then we can pass through the world’s journey comfortably so now when we are going through difficulties especially when we are in the quadrant where material comforts are not available so the key to steady devotion is focus not on expectation focus on contribution focus on expectation means don’t ask what is Krishna doing for me ask what am I doing for Krishna or what can I do for Krishna that means that we focus on ok in this situation there is trouble there is distress but what can I do maybe I can do this small service maybe I can worship my deity maybe I can chant the holy names maybe I can remember Krishna so what can I do in this situation so when we focus on contribution you see things are in our control now the very least contribution that we can do is we can think of Krishna in our hearts the least contribution that we can do is we can maintain a cheerful attitude now Prabhupada would often say chant Hare Krishna and be happy now some people think that these are two instructions this is one instruction rather chant Hare Krishna and you will become happy but actually they can be seen not as causal not as serial but parallel that we chant Hare Krishna we practise bhakti and we strive to be happy in the Bhagavad Gita in the 17th chapter Krishna talks about the austerity of the body of the speech and of the mind and in the austerity of the speech austerity of the mind the first austerity that Krishna says is very striking manah prasada saumyatham maunam atma vinigraha bhavasam shuddhiratye tat tapo manasam uchyate so he says tapo manasam uchyate austerity of the mind what is it manah prasada that it is cheerfulness of the mind it is being cheerful so Krishna is saying be cheerful as an austerity even if things are going wrong going wrong all around don’t keep a glum face, don’t have a long face and don’t have droop shoulders and don’t invite the world’s pity you know be cheerful be firm and move forward so what happens by this now this is at a material level people may tell us to be optimistic look at the positive side of things and that’s fine but here there is spiritual optimism based on understanding that yes there is a disease and this is a painful phase in the disease and this painful phase is something which is there but it will end tam sitikshasva bharata how will it end, when will it end, I do not know at this stage but it will end so let me be patient let me move forward so if we think what can I do for Krishna so when we talk about doing for Krishna it doesn’t mean that we chant the names of Krishna, we read about Krishna but we are also cheerful when we are dealing with our family members when we are dealing with our colleagues when we are dealing with other people we all have problems in the world so of course some of us may have more problems than others but try to be cheerful, try to be a source of light and cheer instead of dark and gloom and then the last point when we may say this is a phase, when will this phase end, well we don’t know that, we don’t know what the future holds but we can know who holds the future, in fact we do know, we know it is Krishna who holds the future and when Prahlad was going through the trauma when Prahlad was going through he was not traumatised he was not feeling himself victimised but at least he was threatened when Prahlad was being threatened and attacked and one after another assassination attempts were made against him he didn’t know when it was going to end he didn’t know when Narasimhadeva was going to emerge but he remained faithful because he knew that the lord is in charge and the lord will take care of things, the real miracle in the story of Prahlad Maharaj is not that the lord intervened and say when Prahlad was thrown into fire he was not burnt that when Prahlad was thrown in a pit of snakes the snake didn’t bite him or the weapons that were were thrown hurled towards him, they didn’t pierce his body yes those are miracles but those miracles were result of another bigger miracle and that bigger miracle was Prahlad stayed fixed in the remembrance of the lord now those outer miracles may sometimes happen, they may not happen but the real big miracle see for example when the spears were hurled at Prahlad those spears didn’t pierce him he was protected but we see later in the same Srimad Bhagavatam when the snake bird was hurled at Parikshit Maharaj that snake bird bit him and Parikshit Maharaj died so the Bhagavatam doesn’t say that just as the miracle that happened to Prahlad Maharaj that he was protected from all danger at the material level that is what will happen to all devotees at all times for Parikshit Maharaj the snake bird bit him but what is what is really special and what is common to both Prahlad and Parikshit is that both of them were absorbed in the remembrance of the lord they knew whatever the future brings if I stay connected with Krishna now Krishna will take me closer to him in the future ultimately Krishna will take me to him so by knowing the one who holds the future we can hold on to our patience we can hold on to our faith we can hold on to our positivity and whatever is the darkness right now through the darkness Krishna will take us to the supreme light just as he took Prahlad and just as Prahlad said that now I am in comfort how will I transcend the temptation because of the comfort he said before I was absorbed in the remembrance of the lord and when I got the opportunity I glorified the lord so now also I will be absorbed in the remembrance of the lord when I get the opportunity I will glorify the lord and in that way I will transcend the world’s distress he said I am not afraid of this material existence because when I glorify you I get such taste that everything else seems insignificant everything else matters in fact he feels sometimes when we see other people who may be wealthier than us who may be more healthier than us or anyway better than us they are enjoying life I am suffering but no actually if they are deprived of Krishna we are not missing something they are missing something so it says we are all deluded they are all deluded but if I can give them Krishna then they will also be elevated this is the power of devotion that even amidst material deprivation even amidst material scarcity bhakti can give us spiritual abundance and through that spiritual abundance we all can become enriched in this world and beyond forever so I will summarise I spoke today on the topic of how Krishna protects and the way I spoke it was broadly by I spoke first about how this is when Prahlad offered this prayer I am afraid of material existence where there is so much danger in this world what is the danger at one level there is brutality one living being eats another but even when there is comfort still there is a world of temptation and illusion so although this is the moment of victory for Prahlad he is not basking in his glory he is maintaining his humility by remembering his vulnerability and then what is he asking for he is asking my dear lord when will I come to your lotus feet I don’t want to go to this kingdom rather I want to come to your lotus feet so then I talked about how there is the problem of evil everybody suffers even good people suffer Bhagavatam’s question is not ask not why bad things happen to good people ask what good people do when bad things happen to them then we discussed why do bad things happen is this god not care talk about different levels of love there is the love that protects from danger and there is a love that prepares for danger it’s like a mother or a father who lets the child play a cycle and sometimes the child falls but through that the child learns and then we talked about how the two quadrant diagrams we discussed that when there is no danger and no devotion we are complacent when there is danger and no devotion we become indignant why is this happening to me when there is danger and devotion we become dependent Krishna you only can help me and it’s good at that time we turn towards Krishna but when there is no danger and yet there is devotion that is the indication of serious devotion that if we have no options and we choose devotion that is circumstantial if we have options and yet we choose Krishna then that is pure devotion that is intentional devotion and then I talked about second quadrant this is from our perspective whether there is danger or no danger we try to stay devoted and why does Krishna allow danger to come in what is the purpose itself so this world is like a hospital material comforts, material security like the painkiller, spiritual security like the curative medicine so if there is no material security and no spiritual security that is just simply misery that is like a patient who is miserable and his misery is going to increase if there is material security but no spiritual security like a patient who is taking painkiller but no curative medicine its comfortable but its deceptively comfortable temporarily and deceptively comfortable and then if somebody has the curative medicine but no painkiller that means they have the devotion and the absorption but they don’t have the material security then they may be miserable but its only temporarily miserable it is superficially miserable so Hiranyakashyapu was deceptively comfortable he was ruling the world and Prahlad was being persecuted but Prahlad was internally absorbed so Prahlad was only decreasingly miserable his misery was there but it was going to end and then we seek a steady situation where we have a basic level of material security and spiritual security also like in a hospital where there is painkiller and curative medicine both then the treatment goes steadily so that is where Krishna will take us but sometimes if we are not in that quadrant material security is taken away we needn’t panic and over react and think that our devotion is not working or we need something else so then I talked about how we how can we move on when our material security is taken away then focus on contribution not on expectation why is Krishna not doing this to me or not giving this to me why is Krishna not answering my prayers instead ask how can I serve Krishna in this situation what can we contribute let me say I am in so much trouble well the very basic thing we can contribute is a cheerful consciousness that by having faith in Krishna we stay cheerful that is the austerity of the mind so chant Hare Krishna and be happy it can be seen as two instructions practise bhakti and be of good cheer and if you do that then just as the sickness will end if the curative medicine is being taken similarly the darkness that we are going through will end we don’t know what the future holds but we do know who holds the future and if we hold on to Krishna he will take us through whatever darkness and distress we might be in to a place of light and love as he did for Prahalad thank you very much Hare Krishna are there any questions or comments yeah thank you very much Prabhu such a wonderful question I have a basic question I like that chart what you have danger and devotion so how is that related in terms of we also have this utsat, nishchayat, dayyat dayyat is the patience so where does that patience can we consider that Prahalad Maharaj was too very patient in those scenarios and where does that fit in this utsat, nishchayat, dayyat is enthusiasm faith and patience confidence and patience we could say if we consider in terms of the treatment hospital hospital metaphor so the patient has to have enthusiasm for taking the treatment now sometimes you think of treatment as you just lie down on the bed and take some meditation but sometimes it might be that the patient has to do some exercises may be do some workouts or whatever exercise it is patient has to be enthusiastic about taking the medication and doing the exercises that the patient also has to have faith, have confidence this doctor is competent enough the doctor can cure me and while having that enthusiasm and confidence you also need patience, it’s not that yesterday I started the medication, yesterday I did so much exercise, I took the medication, why am I not feeling better today, sometimes treatment takes time so if the disease is chronic, the cure also may take some time so we need to be patient through that period we need to persevere through that period so that’s how patience comes in in terms of not having the expectation of immediate results we see even in the life of Srila Prabhupada, it took decades for him, he was simply doing everything for Krishna’s sake trying to share Krishna’s message but it took decades before he got some significant results so that’s where patience comes in does that answer your question yes Prabhu thank you any other questions thank you so much for wonderful class Prabhu I have a practical question so when we hear such kind of enlightening lectures we really get inspired that inspiration does not go for long that inspiration will have a break point so are there any practical tips where we can follow to keep that inspiration whatever we get from hearing these wonderful lectures consistently I like the second point of the last slide I think you said you should know who holds the future something like that that has given me a good hope and good faith but how can we keep that inspiration consistently how can we keep our inspiration consistent basically first is association we need to associate with those who are who are inspired that means we either hear classes read books or associate with devotees it can be physical, it can be digital it can be whatever way that’s very important because see our faith especially not so much our faith but especially our enthusiasm it’s like it’s not like a fixed deposit in a bank it’s very much like a investment in a volatile stock market so sometimes the price booms up and sometimes the price goes down so why does that happen because the world is filled with ups and downs so now anticipating that our enthusiasm will go down we need to consciously make a plan to associate now we may also find that actually association itself sometimes inspire sometimes doesn’t inspire that is true so what we can do is that we need to at one level have some sort of association some sort of by association I am referring to here primarily hearing but hearing or reading or whatever some which is as a discipline say we may regularly read some Srila Prabhupada’s books, hear from the spiritual master or something like that and then some of it maybe say some of it we consciously seek inspiration maybe we may make a plan I am going to read Bhagavatam everyday maybe even if I don’t get much time 15 minutes everyday that is going to be discipline reading but apart from that if some other devotee tells me this class was so inspiring let me hear it out so we can be responsible for seeking inspiration we don’t want simply to be inspiration hunters we don’t want to be nectar shopping so a part of our sadhana time we can have committed to reading or hearing one particular subject on a regular basis or from one particular speaker but others we can also have variegated hearing where we are seeking inspiration that’s association that is the first thing second thing would be that we need to recollection recollection means that when we start feeling enthusiasm going down at that time if we can remember the times when our enthusiasm was up how we felt at that time how it was energising how it was uplifting how it was enriching maybe write it down how you felt when you are uplifted and read that or if we were doing some enthusiastic services with each other we had some special moments because of that uplifting association then have some photographs of that we need to when the present becomes discouraging then we have to draw we can’t draw immediately from the present we may have to draw from the past when the Gopis were hoping all the time when will Krishna come back when will Krishna come back when Krishna was not coming back day after day after day how were they sustaining themselves it was not from the present it was from the past we live in the present but we don’t live for the present we live for something bigger than the present we live for Krishna sometimes the past is present can be disappointing then we draw from our past whatever we have had uplifting memories so there is association then there is recollection and the third would be dedication dedication means that Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that that which tastes like poison will taste like nectar in the end that which tastes like poison so when we feel our enthusiasm going down we just need to understand I am going through a poison phase right now I just persevere when I persevere the nectar phase will come so in this way association recollection and dedication if we have then we can we can maintain our enthusiasm ok thank you so much thank you shall I stop here Krishna ok I have a question ok last question my Pranam how do we know how much devotion we have for Krishna how do we measure that and are we ever going to be delivered in this lifetime or I am going to be reborn over and over ok how do we measure our devotion and can we know whether we will be delivered at the end of this lifetime or we will be reborn generally the growth of devotion is incremental so that’s why it is difficult to very easily quantify it just like if you have a small child everyday you feed the child but if the child doesn’t want to eat and you tell the child take this milk and take this milk, take this food you will become strong, you will become well built and then he drinks a glass of milk and looks at his muscles it didn’t become bigger, what is this so it is incremental over a period of time we see it happening so broadly the devotion is seen that when we practise bhakti we get experience of Krishna and the experience of Krishna is so enriching that that other things we become detached from them we become less dependent on them so broadly speaking we can see our devotion from how eager are we for Krishna we practise sadhana bhakti by which our attraction to Krishna will increase our desire for Krishna will increase so how eager are we for Krishna that’s one parameter for devotion and the other is that other things happen in our life how much are we affected by them of course we can’t be entirely unaffected but what we will see is that over a period of time if in the past we had been immensely affected now we will be less disturbed, so if we can consider this problem that come upon me 10 years before or 15 years ago or 5 years before, before I was practising bhakti I might have been completely crumbled now I am disturbed but my disturbance is much lesser so similarly the material allurements we may still be allured but not that much so basically increase in our attraction towards the lord and decrease in our in the disturbance that material things cause in our consciousness those two things can be the broad parameters of our devotion and as far as whether we will attain Krishna or not that is something which we can be concerned about but not obsessed about we can be concerned because we do want to go to Krishna but what happens is if we become too obsessed about it that will simply create an element of speculation and uncertainty and what we want is dedication we need to know that Krishna wants us to come back to him in fact Krishna wants us to come to him more than what we even want to go to him Prabhupada would say so if we strive to choose Krishna during our life journey and by repeatedly so we have temptations, we have tribulations, we can let our thoughts get caught in other things but we try to choose Krishna our thoughts go elsewhere, we choose Krishna our thoughts go elsewhere, we choose Krishna so if we do like this by regularly choosing Krishna what will happen is we will show Krishna that we want him more than the world we may still want things of the world but if at least by the time of our death, by the time of our last moment in this world if our desire for Krishna has become more than our desire for the world and its objects then Krishna has no reason to keep us in the world Krishna will take us to him and even if we do not go to Krishna we need to know that Krishna will never abandon us if we consider before we came to bhakti we were probably living materialistic lives we might have been pious or whatever but we were definitely not devoted to Krishna and we could have gone in any part of the world, we might or might not have met devotees so even when we were doing nothing for Krishna still Krishna somehow intervened in our life and brought us to his lotus feet at least brought us to the path to him so when we were doing nothing for Krishna, if Krishna loved us enough and took enough care of us to help us bring us on the path to him now if we are trying to serve Krishna, if we are trying to offer our life to Krishna why will Krishna ever abandon us Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Chanting Thank You