If someone is suffering but is not open to spirituality, how to help them?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so if somebody is going through a lot of suffering because of their destiny but they are not open to spirituality not open to Krishna Bhakti, how do we help them? in general our purpose is not just to get people to join a particular organisation our purpose is to raise people’s consciousness so there was a British tennis player, Peter Burwash so he became connected with Prabhupada and since he talked with Prabhupada, Prabhupada just told him that you focus on getting people to become vegetarian so he is a well known tennis coach and he doesn’t talk directly about the holy name but from where they are, people are getting elevated upwards so we would say that when people are not open to Krishna we have to find out what is it that they are not open to maybe it is institutionalised religion maybe it is deity worship maybe it is just the kind of people they have had experience with so in general, it is not that people are averse to spirituality per se, that may be the way they come off but they all have had some experiences which have made them averse and those experiences are related with some specific aspect of spirituality so maybe they had experience of some preacher who was hell and damnation, hell and brimstone kind of preacher that’s why they are put off by that or whatever so even within their present state of consciousness this is the circle of spirituality and this is the circle of consciousness you may feel that they are not at all open to spirituality, there is no intersection but there may be some intersection somewhere so there are many devotees now who are writing books in which they don’t give any hint that they are actually belonging to an organisation so in fact in the past the catholic church, now it has something called imprimatur it gives, that means this book does not contain any teaching that is opposite to christian theology, catholic theology and that was considered by the congregation by the christian congregation that means ok we can read this book but now many catholic authors refuse to have that imprimatur on their books, even when they are writing because they feel, outside people think this means this is just institutional ideology being propagated this is a mouthpiece for the institution so if you find out in their present level what is it that can overlap so many people when they say they are against spirituality it’s more that they are against institutionalised religion ok yeah so then I would say that means it’s just bad experience with insensitive people so if I would say that generally if somebody is in distress I almost never go into the idea of karma see karma is a intellectually intellectually persuasive explanation but it’s not exactly emotionally comforting explanation so when a person is in distress at that time more often than not they need emotional support and I have not seen in scripture anywhere a person in distress is told that you are suffering your karma that person may say I don’t know what bad karma I have done because of which I am suffering this but nobody tells Draupadi when she is being dishonoured you must have done some bad karma because of which you have been dishonoured nobody tells Sita when she is abducted that you must have done some bad karma because of which you are abducted nobody tells her you must have been a demon in a previous life you must have abducted some woman that’s why you are abducted now not like that so we don’t see anything like that so generally what I focus on is that God is not the cause of our suffering God is the cure for our suffering so that God is not the cause is of course a part of our philosophy our karma is the cause but the point is that it is not that God is up there judging us and punishing us God is the cure for our suffering so the why question is especially when distress is coming the why question is is it dangerously disempowering because it just gets our mind caught in an endless loop why why why why and we just don’t get any answer for it so I basically try to shift that question from why to how not why this but how now how can I best move forward now and if you focus on that then spirituality whether it is just by practicing some meditation whether it is just by hearing some spiritual music whether it is just by doing some deep breathing to interrupt the mind to slow down the mind’s wild flow of thoughts all these can be used to decrease the mind’s grief or mind’s spell of grief that is going on so basically grief or lamentation more specifically in the mode of ignorance now from the mode of ignorance even if a person gets out to the mode of passion it might be better when people are just too much say they lose someone and then they just stay alone, do nothing feel sorry for themselves just come on get out of your head, come out and do something so they start doing something, they start meeting people, talking with people the mind’s grip on them starts decreasing and then they feel better and again if they come to goodness generally if somehow that person can be made to be a part of something bigger than themselves just go out and feed some poor people just go to old age home and comfort some people when we are in distress it’s not just the problem but often if we have been very personally invested in some issue and we have got a reversal in that then we start feeling I am worthless I am worthless, I am good for nothing and that feeling is far more distressing than the distress itself so when we are able to do something which helps us feel I can also do something good just bring a small smile on somebody’s face somebody may say this is just mundane well fine, even if it is mundane even if somebody is just distributing prasadam just come and distribute prasadam go to some food for life or something like that just do something even if it is still in the mode of goodness the mode of goodness is better than the mode of ignorance much much better the mode of goodness is much better than the mode of ignorance where they are alone and feeling sorry for themselves and they are out and doing something for someone exactly that goes down substantially so sometimes the self can become like a black hole into which we just sink more and more and more and that sense of if anything which they can do which helps them overcome that sense of worthlessness that’s very enlivening so we could even think that something in the mode of goodness which we could do with them and that itself makes them come out of the depression come out of the negativity and then eventually we might bring them to give them something spiritual so our goal when we are interacting with people should be to help them to raise their consciousness not to make them devotees if our goal is to make them devotees then what happens we become very calculative this person should take a book they should come to the temple they should chant these mantras it’s more self centered than service centered I want to get the sense of achievement that I did this but service centered means I want to help this person and sometimes for some people if they have negative experiences of anything religious or spiritual then they may just not want to come then we help them where they are so if we keep this we just want to help people raise their consciousness then many things will come up of what we could do it may not be that their spirituality is close to goodness and even if we give them something in goodness to do that also helps them