If Prabhupada knew that certain projects weren’t going to succeed why did he encourage devotees to do those projects?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, Prabhupada encouraged devotees to try to form a political party and run for elections.
They formed a party called In God We Trust in America. So, would Prabhupada not know that in future that particular endeavor would not be successful? And if it is not going to be successful, then why did he engage them in that? And what was the spiritual advancement in that, if it is not going to be successful? Prabhupada was always very clear that, see, I’m not God. I’m the servant of God.
And Prabhupada, in the way he functioned, never claimed omniscience. Prabhupada did not claim that I know what is happening in every part of the movement. Prabhupada would ask the devotees to send reports.
And based on the report that were sent, Prabhupada would respond accordingly. And sometimes if devotees gave an incomplete or incorrect report, and Prabhupada gave a particular response, and other devotees told, this is like this. And Prabhupada would amend his orders.
So, for example, when devotees were told that, Prabhupada came to know that the devotees, and then for distributing books, they are returning back, they are wearing western clothes, and they are returning back to their hippie ways. And Prabhupada said that, no, there’s no need to wear western clothes. Just wear dhoti kurta and go out and distribute books.
And then, then some devotees who were distributing books, they became very concerned. They said, now if you are wearing dhoti kurta, it may alienate people. So they said that, Prabhupada, no, it’s not that devotees are becoming hippies.
When they are going out to distribute books, they are wearing respectable clothes, not like the hippie kind of wear, and they are wearing respectable, formal clothes. So he said that, that is okay. I thought that this wearing clothes like hippies is the way of, you will return back to hippie, and I don’t want to do that.
So my point is, Prabhupada never claimed omniscience. It is either in terms of geography, nor in terms of chronology. Chronology, geography means he did not claim that he knows whatever is happening all over the world in this moment.
Nor in terms of chronology, that he knew what will happen in future. So Prabhupada’s surrender to Krishna was that he knew, he had confidence that Krishna’s desire, Lord Chaitanya’s desire, that the holiness spread all over the world, that will happen. But specifically how it will happen, that Prabhupada himself did not know.
He never claimed. That’s why when we see in his famous song, when he comes on Jal Doota, the ship which brought him to America, he says, my dear Lord, I don’t know why you have brought me here. He says that, He says, my dear Lord, you are very merciful to me, to this fallen soul that you have brought him here.
But I guess you must have some purpose. Otherwise, why would you bring me to this terrible place? The most Indians who come to America won’t think America is a terrible place. They think India is a terrible place.
Now I have come to America, wonderful place. But Prabhupada sees from the spiritual perspective, America is a terrible place. There is so much rajoguna, so much tamoguna, so much materialism.
Prabhupada says, I guess, anumane, I guess that you must have some purpose. So Prabhupada said, Krishna, just make me dance, make me dance. That means, whichever, wherever an opportunity opened up, Prabhupada would go there.
Prabhupada would use his intelligence and use his spiritual vision and decide whether to take an opportunity or not take an opportunity. And even in Prabhupada’s own life, sometimes some things worked out, sometimes some things didn’t work out. Prabhupada wanted to complete the 12th Canto translation Bhagavatam.
That Krishna had some other plan. And Prabhupada departed from the world after completing 10 cantos, around 14 chapters. So it is just because a desire is expressed by a pure devotee or a plan is sanctioned by a pure devotee, does not necessarily mean that it will be materially successful or that it will be materially successful immediately.
Now we could say that, was Prabhupada’s plan to translate Bhagavatam not successful? Well, that’s an incomplete vision. The more complete vision is, Prabhupada’s plan succeeded through his disciples. He translated the Bhagavatam and he empowered his disciples to translate the remaining Bhagavatam.
So his desire was fulfilled, but not necessarily in the same form, in the exact form where he did it himself. So like that, the desires of a pure devotee may or may not manifest immediately. And they may or may not manifest in the exact same form in which the pure devotee wanted that.
So our understanding is that if we are endeavouring to serve Krishna, that endeavour itself purifies. So Krishna, the world sees results, Krishna sees the efforts. If we are making sincere efforts to serve Krishna, we will become purified.
So even if a particular instruction of Shri Prabhupada does not work out to be successful, when the devotees who endeavour to fulfil that instruction, they will be spiritual advancement by that. Now what to speak of Prabhupada’s desire being successful? Even Krishna’s desire may not be successful. When Krishna went as Shanti Doodh, Krishna went to canvas for peace to the Pand, to the Kauravas, to Duryodhana, he offered a peace proposal and Duryodhana rejected that.
So in this world, some souls by misusing their free will, can thwart God’s plan, can they? They can thwart God’s plan by God’s plan. That means God allows them that much power, okay, this is what you want to do, you can do it. If Krishna had not given Duryodhana that power, that plan would have, he would not have been able to thwart.
But he did thwart at that time. So that means Krishna has some higher plan. And at the material level, not everything that is desired, even by a devotee, will necessarily manifest immediately in the exact same form that was desired.
But as long as we are endeavouring to serve, we will get purified irrespective of whether the external results manifest or not. So of course, we also need to use our intelligence so that we serve in a productive, in a particular form of service, results are not manifest. In a particular place, books are not getting distributed.
Just our effort to go there and distribute books, that is purifying. But we are going for purification not just for our purification, we are also going to benefit others. Bhakti Sanyasi Thakur said, if nobody comes for programs, you preach to the walls.
But still, that does not mean we just sit at our home and speak to the walls. You know, we go to places where people are expected for programs, but if for a program people do not come, we do not get disheartened, we preach. So there is the element of surrender that even if the results do not come, I will continue my service to Krishna.
But there is also the element of intelligent endeavour, where we try to endeavour in such a way that the results can manifest. So Prabhupada started the movement in America, but eventually he saw that his followers were able to carry on the movement in America. So he came back to India and he focused much of his energy in India.
His spiritual master had told him to preach in the West and he did that. But he felt that if the spiritual culture is to spread all over the world, there has to be some place where it can manifest in a powerful way, in a vivid, transformational, powerful way. And he felt India still had some reservoir of, some remnant of that spiritual culture.
And so he concentrated his energies largely on India. So that means the devotees, as devotees, we serve the spiritual master’s instruction. At the same time, we understand the purpose of a particular service and we use our intelligence to see how that purpose can be best fulfilled.
Sometimes that purpose may not be fulfilled by doing service in a particular way. Sometimes it may be fulfilled by doing that service in some other way. So our purpose is to serve Krishna.
And we, that purpose will never be thwarted even if the results of that service don’t manifest in this world. Does this answer your question?