Till what level of bhakti can devotees fall away?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Thank you. So if devotees go away, at what stage do they go away? Usually it is at some level of anarthaniyuti that they go away, but ultimately we always have free will. So the misuse of the free will is possible at any stage.
Even at the stage of ruchi, asakti, bhava, it is said that Jai Bharat was at a very advanced stage. But Bharat Maharaj was at a very advanced stage. He was like a nil series of bhava.
But even from there, he got distracted. Why? Because we always have the free will. But then we see his distraction was not like falling to a rajasic or tamasic temptation.
He did not fall for some gross sense object. He fell for a sattvic distraction. That was of compassion.
His compassion for that drowning deer was good. But his notion that now I have to be the maintainer thereafter and to take responsibility for that and to let that distract him from bhakti, that was a mistake. But even at that stage, the temptation he fell for was also a big thing, not a very cheap thing.
But in general, most people who go away, they go away at some level of anarthani bhakti. Especially when somebody goes away, sometimes their going away creates insecurity within us. Am I doing the right thing by practicing? Rather we should understand that if we have experienced the potency of Krishna bhakti, we keep practicing.
If they have gone away, that is between them and Krishna. We don’t have to be too judgmental about that. Sometimes what happens is when some devotee goes away, all the other devotees come together and they have a combined fault-finding session.
He was not doing this properly. He was not doing this properly. That’s why he left.
We are all good people. He was a bad guy. It shouldn’t be like that.
We don’t know what one is going through. We just understand that it’s between them and Krishna. We should just be friendly with them.
Unless they are blaspheming and criticizing, then we keep a distance. Otherwise, we keep the door open for them. And whenever they want, they’ll come back to Krishna.
If there is something to learn, we can learn it in a non-judgmental way. Otherwise, we should understand that we all go through different phases in our life. Sometimes some people may go through a phase where practicing bhakti will be very difficult for them.
So, Krishna is still in their hearts and Krishna will bring them back either in this life or in the future life. We can pray for them. We can try to help them come back if we can.
Does that answer your question?