If people aren’t ready to take the giant leap of faith to come to Krishna, how can we help them?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So there is a giant leap of faith required. And if people don’t have it, Vishwanath Achyut Thakur says in Madhuri Kadambini that there are two ways a person may come to Krishna.
One is they have Swabhaviki Shraddha and the second is Balenutpadita Shraddha. Swabhaviki means their natural faith. Maybe because of their upbringing, maybe because of their previous life practice of bhakti, they already have some faith.
The other is Balenutpadita. That means by the interaction with the devotees, by the devotion of the devotee, by that bala, by that strength, faith is engendered. So, we might meet some people who are already very spiritually inclined.
But they are few. So then, rather than saying that people have to take a giant leap of faith, we have to become the bridge by which they can cross over to faith. Or we may have to become the bridge or we have to build the bridge.
So, incrementally, you do this, can you do this? Can you do this? So, we don’t have to present those aspects of scripture which people are going to find difficult to accept. There is a conversation of Prabhupada with his disciples in Hawaii and some disciples say that we, when we talk with the scholars and we tell them about how many bodyguards King Ugrasen had. Bhagavatam describes some astronomical number.
So, they start laughing at us. They say that, where did all these bodyguards live? Where were their homes? Where were their toilets? How could they live in such a small city like that? Now, Prabhupada could have taken a confrontational approach. He could have said that Krishna can sustain the whole world on the tip of a needle.
But, Prabhupada took a very pragmatic approach. Prabhupada says, among the thousands of verses in the Bhagavatam, was that the only thing you found to speak to the scholars? So, we have to understand what is central and focus on that. So, if you look at the central aspects of Krishna consciousness, they require faith but they also appeal to the intelligence that there is a non-material core to our being.
Any thoughtful person will be open to the possibility that there is that there can be ways to experience happiness higher than the material. People are open to that. That there might be some reality beyond the material.
They may have some issues with the specifics of what we talk about. But, if you look at the essentials, they are reasonable. They don’t require an unreasonable leap of faith.
And gradually, as we keep practicing and experiencing, then we want to put more and more faith. So, it has to be an incremental process. And that’s why it’s very important that Krishna consciousness be presented progressively to people.
Not like everything in one go. That’s how education works. If a student who is studying maths in the first level is shown a PhD level triple integral calculus book and says this is what you have to study.
Forget it. I am not going to study maths. Normal education works that you present people present the students what they can take at that level.
And that’s how we have to do it. So, if we do that, then it’s not an unreasonable leap of faith. It’s a reasonable incremental steps forward in faith.