Should we hear only from advanced pure devotees or from whichever devotees inspire us?

Some devotees say we should read only Prabhupada’s books and hear only from sannyasis and such advanced devotees. Are they correct? On what basis should we decide from which devotees to hear?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Question. Should we hear only from advanced pure devotees? On what basis should we decide from whom to whom to hear? Some devotees say that the potency of hearing comes from the purity of the speaker. And therefore, we should hear only from pure devotees.
That means we should read only Prabhupada books and not read other books. And we should hear Prabhupada’s classes and not other devotees’ classes. So, or we should hear only classes from sanyasis and not from others.
How should we decide from whom we hear? Answer. Answer. First and foremost thing to understand in spiritual life is we accept that which is favorable and reject that which is unfavorable.
So, whatever inspires us, strengthens us in bhakti, we should do that. And whatever doesn’t, and this will be different for different people. So, we can’t impose one standard on everyone.
This means that it may be that certain devotees may be inspired by hearing from certain great souls. And if they feel inspired that way, that’s wonderful. Srila Prabhupada is our founder acharya and all of us should read his books.
And he will be always our most our preeminent shiksha guru. More than we learn from anyone else, we will learn from Srila Prabhupada. So, whoever is teaching us, they have also learned primarily from Srila Prabhupada.
And that’s how they are teaching us. So, it’s not that anybody is, when we hear from someone else, we are, that person who is speaking is not competing with Srila Prabhupada nor are we being unfaithful to Srila Prabhupada. Ultimately, we are trying to deepen our understanding and our application of the message of Krishna that Srila Prabhupada has given us.
And Krishna may inspire us through different devotees. So, should the purity of the speaker be the criteria for deciding whom we hear from? This raises the question, obvious question, how do we determine who is how pure? That can make us, take us into a zone where we start comparing and we may end up offending devotees. This is more pure, this is less pure.
We don’t have to go into this speculative zone of trying to analyze who is more pure. We may say, okay, this devotee has been for 30 years in Krishna Consciousness, this devotee is just 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, therefore, this devotee must be more advanced. It may be, it may not be so.
It depends on the sincerity of one’s practice of spiritual life. So, therefore, what we should focus on is how can we be most inspired in our devotional life. Normally, we should hear from Srila Prabhupada and if we are taking initiation, naturally, then we should hear from our initiating spiritual master.
There should be some time where we do these things, both hearing from Srila Prabhupada, hearing means also reading from Prabhupada’s books and also hearing from our initiating spiritual master. Apart from that, we have to decide where do I get the most inspiration. So, if I am getting inspiration from some other people, then there is nothing wrong in that.
In fact, that may be what is most inspiring for us in our spiritual life. That is perfectly acceptable because the important point is, it is not that this person or that person is inspiring us, it is Krishna who is inspiring us and Krishna can inspire us from various directions. So, we see in our Gaudiya tradition that Narottam Das Thakur was initiated by Lokanath Goswami.
I was a brilliant student and what did Narottam Das Thakur do? What did Lokanath Goswami do? He entrusted Narottam Das Thakur under the care of Jeeva Goswami. So, both these three great preachers, Shyamana Pandit, Narottam Das Thakur and Srinivasa Acharya, they were initiated by different spiritual masters but they were all entrusted to the care of Jeeva Goswami. In terms of giving practical instructions, in terms of hearing regularly, we see that often they heard much more from Jeeva Goswami than from their initiating spiritual master.
Jeeva Goswami is considered a Siddhanta Acharya of our Sampradaya and he was a peerless intellectual and the capacity that he had to provide Siddhantic education that their specific spiritual masters may not have had. And they themselves entrusted their disciples to this particular Jeeva Goswami and they flourished under Jeeva Goswami’s training. So, similarly, it may happen that certain devotees may be more intellectually inclined and then the spiritual master may give instructions which may not be so intellectual.
The spiritual master’s classes may not be so deep in terms of intellectual content. They will be potent in terms of spiritual potency, no doubt. The spiritual master is advanced and pure.
They will have potency in terms of spiritual purity but still they may not always be having a lot of intellectual depth because the spiritual master may be addressing general community of devotees and even within the community of devotees not all devotees are very philosophically or intellectually inclined. So, there may be some other spiritual teachers, there may be some other devotees, they may not be very advanced in terms of their personal realization or in terms of the number of years that they have been spending in Krishna consciousness and we can’t know how much purity they have. But if by hearing from them we get a clear philosophical understanding then that is uncool to bhakti.
So, in some cases it may happen also that if we want to very regularly hear from a spiritual, from a particular spiritual teacher and we want to serve that spiritual teacher, that means that senior devotee then we can even take blessings from our spiritual master and then say that I feel very inspired by this devotee and I would like to take shiksha from this devotee. The spiritual master will bless us. Of course, that may not be required in most situations because we can hear from different devotees and as long as those devotees are within ISKCON, then we are still being connected with Srila Prabhupada only and in general it is encouraged for devotees that their connection with Srila Prabhupada should not be only through their spiritual master because otherwise if it’s only through their spiritual master then it can often become a personality cult.
So, they can have that connection with Prabhupada through different devotees. So, if we want specific instructions, like say earlier we had Gopi Parandhan Prabhu and devotees would take the blessing of the spiritual master and then go and study and in his… he had started with Govardhan and he would study over there, learn Sanskrit and learn Shastra deeply. So, if one is taking a radical step like that, then one may have to consult one spiritual master but as far as one’s regular hearing is concerned, we should choose based on what inspires us the most.
So, some devotees, often when they hear classes, just being in the… just hearing the sound of the spiritual master just help… hearing him speak the message of Krishna and just being in his presence that itself inspires them, that itself encourages them. The content is not as important as the person who is giving the content. But for others who are more intellectually inclined, the content is as important if not more important than the person.
So, they want to have a deeper understanding of philosophy. They have questions which they feel they have to get addressed so that they can advance confidently and confidently in spiritual life. They can become free from doubts.
So, for such situations, in such situations, hearing from specialized devotees is definitely recommended. And Shila Prabhupada himself did not claim specialization in all subjects. When the Vedic planetarium was to be constructed, when the devotees started asking technical questions about how the planetarium should be, Prabhupada told the devotees to go to South India and to search for some traditional scholar who understood the Bhagavatam planetarium, Bhagavatam model of cosmology and build the planetarium based on that.
So, the point which I am making through this is that, even Prabhupada did not claim complete knowledge of the entire gamut of Vedic scriptures, certain specialized branches. He asked devotees to consult, not just devotees within our tradition, that is other Gaudiya people, but he asked them to go in South India and look within the broad Vedic tradition also for understanding. So, therefore, if we want to get understanding of specific subjects, then naturally we may have to go to devotees who are specialized in those subjects, if you want to do scientific preaching.
And our spiritual master is not involved in scientific preaching. Then we may have to read the books of devotees, devotee scientists, and we may have to correspond with those devotee scientists also and learn from them. And in general, if you want a more deeper intellectual understanding, then we will have to go to those devotees who can offer us the deeper intellectual understanding.
So, we shouldn’t restrict our hearing based on someone else’s conceptions of what is purity, of who is what is purity and who is pure hearted. As far as hearing only from Shri Prabhupada is concerned, Prabhupada himself did not want that. If he had wanted that, he could have had every day in all the temples, his own Bhagavatam classes going on.
But Prabhupada did not do that. Prabhupada had young devotees give classes. Young devotees who were a few months, who were just a few years old in Krishna consciousness, he asked them to give classes.
And there are times when Prabhupada will also go and hear those classes. So, Shri Prabhupada wanted a living tradition, not a frozen tradition. He did not come to terminate the parampara.
He came to perpetuate the parampara. So, coming to perpetuate the parampara means that he wanted successive generations of devotees to have deep, have spiritual understanding, spiritual realization and share those spiritual realizations with others. So, we may be young and say if we are young and then if there are some devotee teachers who are from our generation, whose thinking is similar to our thinking, then they may be, their presentation of Krishna consciousness will click to us much better than say devotees from an older generation, even if they are more spiritually advanced, even if they are more pure hearted, even if their speech is more spiritually potent.
Still, their presentation of Krishna consciousness may not click to us. So, ultimately with respect to our hearing, we should have basic hearing from Shri Prabhupada and from our spiritual master. But along with that, wherever we get in understanding, wherever we get inspiration, we can hear from that source.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.