Is it right to feel envious of advanced devotees for their spiritual advancement? If not, how to deal with it?

From Himanshu Ramdeo

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
question from Himanshu Ramdev Prabhu is it right to feel envious of advanced devotees for their advancement in Krishna consciousness in your article when generic envy becomes specific envy it becomes doubly dangerous you mentioned that when we feel envious of others for their material things then that is unnecessary because material things don’t make us happy so does that mean we can feel envious of people or those who have spiritual things with them more than us answer we don’t have to feel envious of advanced devotees because what they have we can also have without having so their advancement is not a threat to our advancement nor is our advancement a threat to their advancement in general in material life people become envious because the resources are limited whereas the desires and the people with the desires to get those resources are far greater in a world cup there can be only one world cup champion in IIT lakhs of students appear and maybe a few thousands are going to be getting to clear IIT JEE and get in so because in material life the success can be got only by a limited number of people and often when others get it and we don’t get it we feel envious of it but in spiritual life actually others success doesn’t have to erode our chances of success why? because Krishna is infinite and he has a infinite capacity to love so therefore if a devotee becomes advanced and devotee develops love for Krishna and Krishna showers his love on that devotee and that does not mean that Krishna becomes unavailable to us Krishna is not a limited lover like sometimes in material world there are triangle loves A loves B but then B loves C then there is a conflict between A and C so it doesn’t happen like that Krishna is Krishna has an infinite capacity to love and when we understand this infinite capacity to love Krishna then we can steady ourselves and move onwards in our spiritual life recognizing that if somebody else is more advanced we can take inspiration from oh this devotee has so much absorption in Krishna this devotee has so much dedication let me also try to develop similar dedication for Krishna and in that way we can move forward closer and closer to Krishna so from advanced devotees we can take inspiration we don’t have to feel any insecurity because of their advancement and even if we consider this point of the spiritual world all of us have our Swaroopa and it is not that there is going to be a population explosion in the spiritual world because of which there are going to be some people who are not no vacancy over there so it’s not going to happen like that for our post for our position in the spiritual world the vacancy is always there and when we go there we will be able to be reinstated in our position so of course sometimes there are some material facilities in this world which somebody gets because of certain specific talents or because of some some devotional accomplishments so somebody may become a counselor, somebody may become a preacher, somebody may become a leader and others may not but we have to understand that just becoming these things doesn’t lead to spiritual advancement. The inner consciousness of wanting to serve Krishna and actually serving Krishna that is what leads to spiritual advancement so by recognizing this that we are here to serve Krishna and the greater our connection with Krishna the greater will be our inner fulfillment the greater will be our satisfaction we can avoid envy towards advanced devotees and we can cultivate appreciation and gain inspiration from them knowing that if these devotees have become advanced then I can learn from them from their actions and from their words.
I can maybe approach them ask them how they become advanced and try to learn how to become similarly advanced so in this way we can all move steadily towards Krishna by practicing by taking inspiration from advanced devotees now somehow if we start feeling envious of advanced devotees then we have to philosophically re-educate ourselves, remind ourselves that there is no reason for this envy and this envy will lead to, will only lead to lead to the thickening of the wall between me and Krishna because it is Krishna who has granted this person spiritual advancement in reciprocation with this person’s sincerity and Krishna can give me also similar spiritual advancement. All that I have to do is stay committed in my service to Krishna and eventually Krishna will grant me also similar advancement so without worrying too much about this or that we can focus on steadily practicing devotional service and that way we will as we connect more and more to Krishna even the envy for the seeming feelings of envy about other spiritual advancement will also go away especially we need to pray to Krishna for purifying us of the envy and for helping us to understand and experience the spiritual essence of bhakti the taste of bhakti and once that taste starts coming in then envy will disappear from the heart. Thank you.
Hare Krishna