Shouldn’t bhakti be a natural evolution in our love not an imposition based on being told whom to love?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so shouldn’t bhakti be like a evolutionary process where we evolve towards attraction to Krishna rather than it being impositionary where we are told in a book that he is God and we are meant to love him he is the supreme God my God will be supreme for me someone else’s God will be supreme for him so bhakti is definitely an evolutionary process and the evolution is both in understanding the object of devotion as well as in enhancing our own attraction to that object so both there is evolution in that now God is not just not just not just an object of devotion God is also a reality in fact the supreme reality who has his self existence independent of us so if the sun is the brightest celestial object in the day it is the brightest celestial object whether I like it or I don’t like it so like that when we consider God often we think of a particular image and we think this is God that is true at one level but then before we can understand God as a depiction it is good to understand God as a definition so definition means that God is the source the cause of all causes the source of everything and that means that whatever exists comes from sarva karana karana and that cause of everything cannot be many it has to be one because if there are many then we have to say where did they come from and what is the cause of all of them now how do I know about God so first the definition of God we understand it has to be one one supreme now where do I know about that God from shastra yonitva we have to know from scripture because just as physics knowledge we get from physics textbooks just as mathematics knowledge we get from mathematics textbooks so like that so like that we learn from each of these so there is a reality independent of our conception and that reality is understood through scripture so now scripture also gives us reasoning about why Krishna is God and the bhagavad gita gives us actually how do you talk about evolution exactly that concept 7.23 those four verses in the gita Krishna if you consider the Krishna doesn’t say that he hates the other gods or he looks down upon the other gods he says it’s a progression that if you can’t worship me you worship the other gods by that also you will get elevated and he gives the other devatas the powers to give blessings and if somebody wants to worship some other devata Krishna says yo yo yam yam dhanu bhakta chalam shraddham tamayo viddham Krishna says I give you the faith by which they come to me that means Krishna is here there is some devata over here, there is a worshipper over here Krishna gives power to devata to give the blessing, Krishna gives the worshipper the faith to worship the devata so in that sense Krishna is not only acknowledging the existence of other gods but he is also facilitating their worship so if we have a specific attraction to a specific devata then we can worship that form and along with that we can pray please help me to understand what is the highest truth but why do I need to know what is the highest truth if it is yeah I don’t need any yeah I just want to offer namaskaram to you ok thank you Thank you so see love for us our lord it’s wonderful at the same time the love there are different results of loving different things, suppose say in a marital relationship if a woman falls in love with a man who is abusive her life can become hellish and a woman falls in love with a man who is good, her life is much happier so the object of love also matters devatas are also exalted people at the same time the gita is clear in describing that the devatas are not eternal it is Krishna who is eternal so therefore what happens by that is that if we don’t love the eternal we can’t attain the eternal if we practice dharma and we love the temporary something higher, something dharmic also we will attain the temporary, we won’t attain the eternal so we have been given the intelligence by which we can recognize that which is eternal and direct our love towards it so in bhakti in bhakti yoga there is a balance between um between attraction and cultivation attraction means that feeling is already there cultivation means what I try to consciously develop so with our intelligence we understand the philosophy, we understand who is Krishna and the more we come to know about him the more we love him so normally we think about people say I fell in love it is as if love is something that happens to us it can happen like that but what happens after that after that the relationship has to be cultivated somebody says I fall in love but if that is to be continued lifelong it has to be cultivated steadily so even in a loving relationship there has to be cultivation, the same way in our process of sadhana bhakti the focus is primarily on cultivation and through the cultivation so over a period of time that attraction will become more and more deep rooted so you don’t have to see that cultivation as an imposition, cultivation is also a choice so you use your intelligence to understand how and why the Bhagavad Gita says Krishna is God and after you understand that then you cultivate the process of bhakti and the evolution will be both in your understanding and in your devotion and if you are feeling it is an imposition then what you could do is you can try to try to introspect to find what aspect is appearing like an imposition is it that like you said you don’t like you feel that something is too standardized you have to do like this you have to do like that so that is the case in bhakti there is some amount of standardization but there is also a lot of room for individuality so for example when we sing kirtans so we sing the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra but there are so many different tunes in which you can sing so many different ways different devotees can sing so in that sense there is room for individuality so if you are feeling hesitation towards a particular kind of standardization you can keep that in a state of suspended judgment right now and focus on where you can do individualization and cultivate your relationship with Krishna over a period of time see if you by your actions show Krishna that you want to come closer to him then he will help you to find your way around the obstacles whatever obstacles are there so don’t think that that is going to block you but rather you try to find a way ahead it’s like a river always keeps trying to move towards the ocean if there is some stone in between it goes under it goes above it goes right it goes left you try to find some way to keep moving towards Krishna and eventually he will guide you I’ll give you the intelligence that you can come to it ok Thank you Adaji Hare Krishna