If Krishna frees the surrendered of sinful reactions , why do pure devotees suffer?

Transcript

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Hare Krishna.
Question from Kiran Soni Prabhu. If Krishna takes away the sufferings of those who surrender to him, then why do pure devotees like Shri Prabhupada suffer? I’ve seen that even many scones, sannyasis, gurus, maharajas, they also suffer, they get diseases like cancer and go through a lot of pain. Answer, when Krishna says that he takes away the sufferings of his pure devotees, of those who surrender to him, that is a absolute truth.
But this world is the material world. And in this world, multiple factors come into play, especially with respect to pure devotees. Prabhupada explains based on scripture that Krishna has other factors involved also.
Prabhupada gave the example that sometimes when a mother-in-law, when a daughter-in-law has come to the house and the mother-in-law wants to instruct her, serve this way, don’t serve that way. Now, because she’s new, she may be like a touch-me-not. She may become very disturbed or scared if she’s corrected.
So, the mother tells the daughter, no, don’t serve like this, serve like this, put chapatis here, put dal here, put this here. So, now the daughter already knows it. And the daughter also understands why this is happening.
That is to instruct the daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law says, okay, this is how I should be doing. Okay, I do it like that.
So, like that, instructing the daughter-in-law through instructing or correcting the daughter. So, the daughter is like so. Krishna is like that mother.
The pure devotee is like the daughter. And the newly come, daughter-in-law has come in. That is like the new sadhaka.
So, Krishna lets the devotees suffer so that they can demonstrate to the world how a devotee should go through suffering. And our sadhakas should face suffering. And actually, for the pure devotees, their suffering acts, contributes to their glorification.
Whereas for most of us sadhakas, our sacred suffering is for our purification. So, the fact that Srila Prabhupada went alone and suffered through so many heart attacks and so much difficulty and loneliness and even persecution and uncooperation, persecution from some of the drunkards over there, uncooperation from other people who could have helped him in India, his God brothers and other people, all that contributes to His glory. So, that’s from one perspective to understand that.
The devotee’s glorification, devotee’s suffering is for their glorification and for our instruction. Whereas our suffering is for our purification. And additionally also, we understand that the more a person advances in spiritual life, it is not that when Krishna assures that, I will free you of all suffering.
That doesn’t mean that the nature of the material world is going to change. It’s not that old age, disease and death are going to go away for a devotee because of that. But what will happen is, the nature of our consciousness will change significantly.
And for advanced devotees, it’s not suffering, it’s inconvenience. If I’m driving a car for a program, if I get a fracture, that’s suffering. But if the car tire gets a rupture, it gets a puncture, so then it’s not exactly suffering, it’s inconvenience.
So, for an advanced devotee, the body is like a car. So, even when something goes wrong to the body, for that devotee, it’s like a car that has become punctured. And just as we will repair the car so that we can go ahead, similarly, the devotee will repair the body as much as possible.
So, that’s why they take treatment whenever it’s possible. But then, they know that I’m different from the body and they stay transcendental and that is what we will see. If we look at Srila Prabhupada’s last days, how transcendental he was despite having immense suffering.
And now, Raghiraj Maharaj has written a book also called Many Many Moons in which he talks about how so many devotees have departed in glorious consciousness despite having a lot of bodily suffering. So, Sridhar Maharaj, another devotee who suffered a lot because of liver problems and then he departed gloriously, he said that pain may be compulsory but suffering is optional. Pain means what comes at the body level, it is unavoidable many times.
But then, suffering is optional for us. That means, if we are remembering Krishna and if we are remembering that I’m different from the body, the suffering will get much, much lesser because the attachment is not there so much. So, that way, a devotee’s suffering becomes minimized because the devotee does not identify with the body.
What appears to us to be suffering is actually inconvenience and that inconvenience is there because it’s just a part of material nature. A disease, old age and death will come. But when we say Krishna protects a devotee, Krishna can protect at the material level also in many ways.
Sometimes devotees go through accidents but then the accident could have turned out to be disastrous but only a minor wound comes up and that has also happened many times. Krishna can make certain things happen at the material level also in a miraculously wonderful way, positive way. But that’s not the primary focus.
Krishna wants to elevate his spiritual consciousness and those who have surrendered, they are definitely elevated to the spiritual consciousness. So, in that way, for the instruction of sadhakas, for the glorification of the devotees themselves, Krishna allows suffering in the life of his advanced devotees and those devotees for themselves, it’s not a suffering, it’s just an inconvenience because they have transcended the bodily platform and are absorbed in the remembrance of Krishna. Actually, this is a big subject and I have given a full lecture on this topic.
How devotees’ suffering is different from that of non-devotees. It’s there on the