If our speaking about Krishna doesn’t transform others does that mean we lack the purity that empowers senior devotees’ words to be transformational?

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors. So, when we speak something to new people, we see that they are not affected by it. But when we ourselves heard it from senior devotees, say, us spiritual masters, rather senior Vaishnavas, it had at the same point had an enormous impact on us. So, is it that they had purity and we don’t have purity and that’s why our words are not having an impact? Is it like we are shooting with an empty gun even when we are speaking the same message? Answer, yes, that is always a major significant possibility to be considered that purity has its force which cannot be replicated. At the same time, we have to see what is the best way we can serve. Srila Prabhupada told us that preaching or sharing Krishna Bhakti is also a part of our sadhana. He never said that he would, that he wanted us to become purified, do a sadhana, do some sadhana for a certain number of years and after that we start preaching. He wanted even new devotees to distribute books, new devotees start giving classes. In fact, we would say as compared to Srila Prabhupada’s generation, now at least we have much more better facility to get understanding. There are so many places where we can ask, so many senior devotees whom we can meet, ask questions, get answers. With the knowledge explosion, the explosion in access to knowledge through the internet, we actually can learn much much more than what say Prabhupada’s disciples could learn initially. Even Prabhupada’s, all of his books were not published, what to speak of other sources of knowledge. So, and yet Prabhupada’s disciples also had sometimes phenomenal impact on people. So, broadly speaking in my understanding, there are, there could be three distinct factors. One is our purity, second is our say, our ability or our effectiveness in what we are doing. If purity alone were the force, then why is it that Srila Prabhupada despite 40 years of preaching did not have any effect in India? And Prabhupada never said anything that it was because of his 40 years of preaching in India that he became pure enough and after that he was successful in America. In fact, if you consider his 40 years, he was working very hard, but it is not that Prabhupada was doing intense sadhana at that time. Prabhupada was working to establish his business, to take care of his family and to do, to assist Bhakti Sansthita according to his mission as much as possible. Of course, Prabhupada withdrew for some time to Vrindavan and to, but again that was not so much to do sadhana per se. He lived in the association of the Goswamis in the Radhamundra temple, but then he was writing his books. So, Prabhupada did not say any time that it was because he stayed in Vrindavan and he did sadhana over there. That was the reason why when he went to America he was successful. He simply carried on the instruction of his spiritual master and eventually Krishna arranged that the right time came, he met the right kind of people and he was successful. So, if we see Shri Bhaktivinoda Thakur also, Bhaktivinoda Thakur was actually a, was a member of the Bhadraloka, he was a part of the British bureaucracy, bureaucratic administration of India and he was a Shakta earlier. In a sense, his sadhana was his searching for what is the ultimate goal of life, what is the life’s ultimate meaning and then he came to Krishna Bhakti and some of his books he wrote even before he was initiated and those books also contain significant levels of Gaudiya Vaishnava truths and of course he wrote a lot of very important books after he was initiated also. So, all this is not at all to undermine the importance of purity. When we are pure then we stop being obstacles on the path of Krishna to manifest through us. So, we could say that our impurities are like the resistance for Krishna’s mercy to flow through us but even if we were pure that doesn’t necessarily mean that anything and everything that we that everyone we touched would be transformed. So, there is one thing is we could say Krishna’s mercy flowing through us, the other is our own training and our own ability and our own learning how to present effectively both the content and the presentation and a third is the receptivity of the audience. So, the basically when we say purity, purity is the channel by which, purity creates the channel by which Krishna’s mercy will flow through us. So, we all would like to be more pure and we all can try to do our sadhana and whatever we can to become purified but we shouldn’t think that purity is some esoteric state that we will attain in future after which we will do the service of sharing Krishna Bhakti. We can see what we can do more effectively right now to try to share Krishna Bhakti with others. So, if there are some things, now Prabhupada was asked how did he, Prabhupada would never give very long lectures, it was short lectures and effective. So, once he was asked you know how do you give such very good lectures? I think Brahmanandra was asking. Prabhupada said I practiced. I practiced Prabhupada and there are times when Prabhupada would come back and here is classes and once again another day would ask Prabhupada what should we feel after we give a class, how should we feel? Prabhupada said you should feel as if oh you know I didn’t speak this example, I didn’t speak but I could have improved the service at this point. So, Prabhupada did not in that sense neglect or undermine the aspects of our own organizing our content and organizing our presentation properly and as I said that many of Srila Prabhupada’s early disciples, they may not have had very high levels of purity but still they were phenomenally successful in distributing books and attracting many many people to Krishna. So, purity is one factor but our own training, our own understanding, our own effectiveness is another factor and even with the best of both still the receptivity of the people is also a third factor. So, sometimes some people may just not be receptive. Now, when we talk about say we heard the words of our spiritual master, our senior Vaishnavas and they had a deep impact on us. Now, if we consider a senior Vaishnavas like Srila Prabhupada our spiritual master, they must have given hundreds and they must have given thousands of talks till now and is it that everybody in those talks became transformed? Maybe everybody of them was affected in some way and certainly their spiritual life began in a very significant way by their coming to hear from our exalted Vaishnava but still for all of them also no matter how much of the purity of the speaker it is not that everybody is equally affected. So, in general we should function in a way where we get the inspiration to continue our service. So, whatever events happen, using our intelligence in service of Krishna means to interpret the situation in a way that encourages us to increase that service. So, if I am doing some preaching and somehow I am not getting any results then the interpretation of I don’t have any purity, so that’s why I am not getting results. If that inspires me to increase my sadhana, that is good. If that makes me think that, oh I don’t have purity for the next 10 years, I should just do my sadhana and after that I will start speaking, then that is generally not the way Srila Prabhupada or our Acharyas have talked about. So, if we find that we are not getting results and we meet with some other devotees and they tell us you could do this, this, this, this and we try then that helps. Then that means there was something about the content and the presentation that we needed to improve and that would attract people. So, there is the spiritual side of purity, there is material side also of the content we are presenting, the appropriateness of the content, the effectiveness of our presentation and sometimes our speakers have some charisma which comes by their past karma. So, again we would go to the zone of offense, if we see that there are two Srila Vaishnavas, both of them have served Srila Prabhupada for 50 years, but one of them, there are thousands of disciples, others have barely a handful of disciples. One of them, there are classes, thousands of people come, another, maybe just a few dozen people come or a handful of people come. Is it necessarily that the person for whom thousands of people are coming to here, they are necessarily more spiritually advanced? Yes, they may be, but it could also be that Krishna empowers different people in different ways and for some people, as a part of the empowerment of Krishna, He gives them popularity and following in this world also and for some people, He doesn’t give that. So, Gaurakrishna Babaji practically had no disciples. Bhakti Sanskrit Akhada had hundreds and thousands of disciples. It doesn’t mean that Bhakti Sanskrit Akhada was a greater Vaishnava than Gaurakrishna Babaji. It just means Krishna had different plans for different people. So, in general, we should see whatever situation comes in our life, we should see in the light of devotional intelligence to see how we can interpret the situation in a way that it helps us come closer to Krishna, to go deeper in our service to Krishna, to improve our service to Krishna. So, whether it is purity, whether it is material techniques or whether it is simply looking for a more receptive audience. So, Prabhupada, it is not that he dramatically changed his technique when he went from India to America. It is not that suddenly overnight he became purer. It was just that he found the right audience in America. So, without letting ourselves be discouraged, we do our service enthusiastically and try to see using our God-given intelligence what we can do to improve that service. There is no network connection or the file.