If someone is in great pain and can’t understand philosophy, how can we help them?

Transcript

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so if somebody is in such a great pain they come to the temple for the first time and they are just not able to take any kind of krishna conscious practice so how can we best help them at that time yeah sometimes the best way to preach is to not preach yeah there is there was when prabhupada was staying in the devotees, early days of our movement the devotees were staying in a building and it was like a two side, two part apartment two part complex, other side there was an old lady staying and this old lady was always complaining, hey these people these cult people, they make so much noise and this and that, so she was complaining to the local municipality authorities and all, and the devotees were having a lot of trouble because of her, and for devotees it’s very convenient that anybody who opposes them, anybody who troubles them, they are demons so they said prabhupada she is a demon, she is troubling us so much she is not allowing us to do kirtan, she is complaining about it so then prabhupada had gone for a morning walk and prabhupada came back instead of going back to the temple side center side, he went to the other side and he went and talked with that lady and just typical old people talk how are you, where are your children, how is your health and I was sitting there for 15-20 minutes, prabhupada was talking with her and the devotees were thinking no, prabhupada will talk about Krishna, chant Hare Krishna and prabhupada did not speak even one word and when he finished the interaction, he came back and there was a big question mark on all the devotees faces and prabhupada just looked at them gently and said, sometimes old people get lonely and that makes them younger so and prabhupada left after that and then this old lady came back you are swami, he is such a nice person so he stopped and dropped her opposition afterwards so actually prabhupada brought her closer to Krishna without speaking even one word about Krishna so sometimes we empathize with people where they are as I said earlier if we have the time, if we have the inclination then we just give them an understanding part understanding here and that may be the time when just the relationship is developed that may not be the time when their devotion starts in the external sense or they start a bhakti practice but that is the time when their relationship with the devotee starts usually bhakti begins with ajnana sukruti ajnana sukruti means unknowing good deeder its unknowing appreciation so if somebody meets a devotee and they feel I met a nice person I met a nice person then they may later come and then they may start practicing bhakti so its like say, if we are travelling by flight the doctor is travelling by flight and the doctor meets some other person and the doctor talks nicely with that other person and that person may not feel the need for the doctor right now but you know, I met a good doctor and later they feel the need, they will come to that doctor so just establishing a relationship at that time can be the beginning of their devotion now having said that that we need to be understanding and we need to hear we also have to, at some particular point of time recognize that everybody who is distressed may not be receptive for Krishna so sometimes some people they become very emotionally clingy just keep clinging on whenever they meet a devotee all that they want to do is just download all the negativity that is there within them they want to download the negativity which is inside them but they don’t want to take any positivity from us they will come and tell all the problems that they have but if we tell them, come for a program no, I don’t have time if that’s what they are doing then we cannot entertain that ultimately we want to help them and the way we can help them is by connecting them with Krishna by helping them to raise their consciousness so they have to show some interest in raising consciousness so we, in the first interaction we might just, as I said, be empathic be there for them, try to understand them and develop a relationship and later on they may become more receptive when they can hear about Krishna but if they are not if the only time they come to us is when they are in distress and they are not ready to follow the process of bhakti then we have to understand that they are not yet ready for bhakti then we might just give them some prasad and just give them some more adhyan sukhrti but we need not spend time with them at that time not all distress will be an impetus for the practice of bhakti it depends on a lot of factors it depends on that person’s receptivity it depends on that person’s situation it depends on the potency of the person who is sharing with them primarily it depends on that person’s level level in their spiritual evolution so if distress alone were the impetus for bhakti all the people in hospitals would be chanting Hare Krishna at the least all the doctors would be practicing bhakti doctors see distress all the time but no, it doesn’t happen so distress can be a starting point for people to explore spirituality but for them to persevere they need to have some kind of spiritual inclination so if they don’t have then we just create the foundation for that by giving them some adhyan sukhrti