Using Extraordinary Abilities in Devotional Service
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Way too much more than I expected for coming here. So, today morning we are discussing about mystic powers. So here, it is being told that mystic powers are something which is an impediment on the path of bhakti and therefore devotees do not desire this.
So, I'll speak this in three main points. First, I'll speak about how mystic powers are extraordinary in degree, not in category. They're extraordinary in degree, not in category.
Second point, I'll talk about how to utilize anything in bhakti, we need to de-glamorize it first. De-glamorize it. And third point, I'll talk about how our desire for the resources to serve Krishna should never become greater than the desire to serve Krishna.
So, let's begin with the first point that mystic perfections are extraordinary in degree, not in category. Mystic perfections or yogic siddhis, as they're called in Sanskrit, they are what intrigue many people. And I just, when I was in America, I was at a prominent university.
In Princeton, they had a whole center for paranormal studies. Paranormal studies means, there's telepathy. Some people can read each other, they can communicate at the level of the mind.
There's psychokinesis. Psychokinesis means that somebody just looks at a glass and say, a person desire that the lid start moving and the lid starts moving without even touching it. So, psychokinesis, kinesis is motion, psycho is with the mind.
So, now, these are at one level dismissed in the mainstream scientific world view as impossible. And the specific mystic siddhis, which the Vedic scriptures talk about, they are, we won't go into specifics, but the principle is, the mystic siddhis, they are similar that where what is physically not possible, is possible for some people. And while there has been huge amount of skepticism about the possibility of any such paranormal things happening, but there is a significant amount of evidence for what these are called as PSI.
So, one well documented experiment is called as a staring experiment. Staring experiment means that, say, if we are sitting somewhere, and we get a sensation, somebody is staring at me, and we look back, and then we may see that person is looking at us, and that person becomes a little embarrassed and looks away. So, anybody who is a little attractive may have this experience of people staring.
Now, in general, everybody has some kind of sense by which, oh, somebody's staring at me, you look back. So, scientists did an experiment that normally, if somebody's sitting behind you, and you have to guess, staring at you or not staring at you. So, the possibility of you coming right is 50%, the two possibilities.
Now, in general, everyone gets around 60% right. Some people even get 95% right. There's one person who has got 100% right.
Now, there is just no way, we don't have any eyes in the back of our head. So, how do we come to know? People say, maybe when we look at someone, from the eyes, certain magnetic fields are radiated and that are sensed by the brain. If we try to reduce it down to some physical mechanism, it is very difficult.
But studies like these, where we seem to have a capacity to sense sense something more than what we can sense with our normal senses. So, that is called as paranormal. And how does this paranormal work? At the level of physicalism, physicalism is that modern science which says that physical reality is the only reality.
There is just no explanation for this. Most of the times, what people do is, skeptics, they just dismiss this as bad data. This is bad data, this is not proper observation.
But as one researcher has said, now the bad data, if it accumulates together, it has become like a Himalayan mountain now. So, he says to dismiss so much data as bad data, actually you have to become blind. So, there is a significant amount of evidence.
Now, not everybody has this, but there are a good number of people who have these kind of things. In fact, during the Cold War, between the Soviet bloc and the Western bloc, USA and USSR, psychic warfare was used quite frequently. Devamrita Maharaj in Searching for Vedic India, that book gives quite a bit of evidence of psychic warfare being used by both Western and the Eastern intelligence agencies.
Anyway, so the point I was making here is that, what the scriptures talk about, something similar has been documented, although it is not explained by modern science. However, if you look at this, while our scriptures talk a lot about it, they do not glamorize it, like here it is said it is an impediment. So, what is it? How does this happen? Actually, we all have some sensory capacity.
Say for example, we all have some central vision, say I am looking at you, I can look at you, there is a focus. But while looking at you, I am also aware, there is a picture over here, there is a picture of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Jagannath Puri or whatever. So, we also have peripheral vision.
Now, some people's peripheral vision is very less. Some people's peripheral vision is very high. So, as much as they can see front, they can see peripherally also.
So, now this is just a matter of degree. Somebody has a high peripheral vision, that is just a matter of degree. It is not something special.
So, if somebody has rear vision, by which they can see if somebody from behind is staring at them, that is just a further extension of this degree. So, category means it is something just, how can anyone do like this? So, degree means that ordinary people may have, say vision, if you say 20 percent. If it is arbitrary percent you take, extraordinary people may have 60 percent.
So, some people may have 100 percent. So, with respect to speaking also, there are some people who can just speak so mesmerizingly, just captivate people. So, some people might be able to speak stammeringly, some people speak mesmerizingly, some people speak not just mesmerizingly, hypnotize their audience.
There are cases where some people can speak in such a way, that person whom they are speaking to just take out the wallet and give it to him. And people can rob like that. There are people who are sweet talkers.
So, now we understand this is extraordinary, but it is extraordinary in degree. It is not extraordinary in category. Category means it belongs to some other category itself.
So, why is it important to understand that it is just a difference in degree, not category? That it is a matter of degree means that just as all of us have done different karma in the past, by which we have different resources right now. So, similarly, just as some people have very fluent speaking capacity, some people have just a little bit of mediocre speaking capacity. That we understand is because of past karma.
So, similarly, by past karma, some people may have certain abilities to an extraordinary degree. So, even with respect to hypnosis, when somebody tries to hypnotize someone else, I was with a devotee in America and in UK and he told me that he learned hypnotic regression and whenever he gives a class on you are not the body or the soul, he actually does mass hypnosis for all the audience and takes them, hypnotically regresses them back to his previous life and he actually gives them demonstration. Now, he said that on a one-to-one level, if I do hypnosis, my success is almost 90-95 percent.
When I do mass hypnosis, the success is around 60-65 percent because you have to catch the attention of the audience and you have to make people's mind go backwards. And one senior devotee, he is a prominent leader in our movement, the guru and sannyasi, he said that he has learned this past life hypnotic regression therapy just to preach to people. And now, he has said he has almost made 50 devotees by just taking people to hypnotic regression.
Through hypnotic regression, you give them demonstration, you remind them of their previous lives. Now, here, what is happening? See, just as if somebody is very receptive, when we are talking with someone, normally we don't open the doors of our hearts to people. But if somebody is very receptive, very appreciative, very open, we may start sharing our heart, we may start telling, oh, you know, when I was a child, this happened to me, when I was a youth, this happened to me.
And as we tell the events of our past, even certain memories which might have been buried, they come up. Whenever somebody tries to write an autobiography or a biography. Recently, one devotee, a senior leader, he asked me whether I could write his biography.
So, I was discussing with him. And then, we found that actually, to write a biography, there is a specialist professional who actually asks questions to people. And you can get specialist training for that.
So, you dredge the memory. So, okay, when you are 5, when you are 3, when you are 10, when you are 15, there is so much stored in our memory, which we are not aware of. So, it's like our memory, if we consider a laptop, the laptop screen is like our conscious memory.
But all the data that is stored in the laptop, in the drive, that is like the unconscious memory or the subconscious memory. So, just as if you do some search appropriately, then we might find a file which we may not use for 15 years also. So, now this capacity to recollect things from the past, or the capacity to get others to recollect something from the past, this is just an ability.
Even with Google searching, some people are very expert at searching. Now, if we search for something, we might not find some information and somebody else searches, the same Google search, but they know how to put the parameters, what to search, and they come up with a lot of data. So, now, if we are not able to find something, when we search, and somebody else finds.
Now, that's extraordinary, but it's extraordinary in degree, not in category, using the same Google search engine. So, like that, this is the ability to remember the past. This is also some people have extraordinary ability, but it's extraordinary in degree, not in category.
So, all these mystics siddhis, they are extraordinary, no doubt, but they are extraordinary just in degree. Just all of us have this ability to some extent, but some people have it much, much more than others. And this was the first point.
Now, we may often get this question, the second point is that before we can use something in bhakti, we need to de-glamorize it. What does that mean? See, if you hear about mystic siddhis, nowadays, we may feel that we, to attract people to Krishna and Krishna's message is so difficult. If somebody had some special powers, you could use that to attract people to Krishna.
So, there's a Prabhupada disciple, who's a professional magician. So, he's the president of a temple in America, and he says he does magic shows. And I was talking with him, he said that he tried doing magic shows as a way to get people to Krishna.
And he's done it in quite creative ways. But he told me that I have found that the people who come for magic shows and the people who come for Krishna consciousness, they're almost like two non-intersecting categories. So, you can do magic shows and people are attracted, you can get a lot of people.
But after some time, they're interested in magic shows only. They don't become interested in Krishna. And he said that once he had a show with three threads and he entangled them and disentangled them and made them disappear.
He tried to explain three modes of material nature through that. And he said that actually, what happened is, for entertainment to be entertaining, it has to be fast. And when you try to explain it philosophically, people get lost.
So, in general, although mystics, any extraordinary powers may be very useful for attracting people, but often the people who are attracted are not the people who are really going to be attracted to Krishna. So, now it is possible that there might be a small intersection. But how much is that intersection that can vary from person to person? And say, some people might be very humorous in their classes.
And now everybody, almost there's nobody who will say, I don't like humor. People love humor. And thousands of people will be attracted through humor.
Now, from those thousands, if you see how many will get attracted to Krishna, that will vary from person to person. And so, some people may have, if somebody has the capacity for humor, wonderful. Somebody has the capacity for magic, wonderful.
Somebody has the capacity for something like that. And if they can use it, it's wonderful. But whoever is attracted towards that, is not necessarily attracted towards Krishna or very rarely attracted towards Krishna.
It's interesting. I was talking with a professor in Princeton, where they had these paranormal studies. And he said, the way we were able to fund, get this department funded and sanctioned was by completely disconnecting it from any religion of any kind.
So, they said that when they did this, they had to say specifically that we're not going to talk about God. There's nothing, this is only a scientific study. So basically, although people are interested in paranormal, we may see how somebody develops some faith in the paranormal.
So, all these mystics, if these are real, they might become more open minded. And then they might be open to a higher spiritual reality. It's possible.
There's physical reality, there's mental reality and there's spiritual reality. So, now, people who live simply at the physical level, if they understand that there is something more, that basically science is a very powerful tool to manipulate a small portion of reality. It's like, we can go in a train super fast, but the train is inside a tunnel.
So, science takes us faster and faster, but it takes us faster and faster inside a tunnel that never ends. So, what happens? The tunnel vision is that physical reality is the only reality. So, we may progress, but we stay within that paradigm.
So, some people, it might be, oh, there is something more than physical, there is mental. Oh, okay, that's good. Then maybe there's spiritual also.
So, now, mystic siddhis, whether it is of the Vedic kind or what is described by science, and there is a lot of similarity between the two, they are basically mental phenomena, they are not spiritual phenomena. What do I mean by mental phenomena? The soul is here, the mind is here, the body is here. So, normally the soul's consciousness comes through the mind, through the body to the outer world.
So, right now, I'm looking at you. So, I as the soul, I'm looking through the mind to you, and you are looking at me. So, normally, the soul's consciousness comes through the mind, requires to come through the physical senses to perceive the outer world.
But in some cases, those people, their consciousness, when it comes from the soul through the mind, it doesn't have to come through the physical senses. So, actually the brain is not the producer of consciousness, the brain is the limiter of consciousness. It's like, say, if there was a small, if somebody was in a ship, or we are in a plane, plane might be more common for most of us, we are in a plane, and the plane has a small window.
Now, all that we can see outside is through that window. Now, if the whole plane were transparent, then we could see the whole vast sky. But the windows is what we can, the only thing through which we can see the outer world.
So, similarly, for the soul, the senses are like windows. Now, if we sit in the economy class, or if we sit in the business class, sometimes in the business class, there are bigger windows, or somebody says there are elite flights. There is, some people might make a flight which is, make a plane, which has a lot of glass around it.
So, you can get a 360 degree vision of the sky while you are flying. So, what is, they are in the same plane, but their field of vision is expanded. So, similarly, for some people, the soul, the mind, and the senses.
So, for them, when the consciousness comes out through the mind, it is not limited to the senses, the field of vision is expanded. So, the mind can connect with the physical reality without the channel of the senses. Or the mind has a greater capacity to connect with the physical reality without being restricted only to the senses.
And that is the essential way by which all mystic powers work. That, normally, the connection is between the soul, the mind, the senses, and then the body, then the physical reality. But in some cases, some people can connect with the physical reality without the medium of the senses.
Say, Prapti Siddhi, Prabhupada would talk about it. And somebody can just stretch their hands and suddenly, maybe, some dates from the Middle East come in their hands. Hey, how did it come? So, normally, at the physical level, we are limited.
But if the mind can connect with the physical reality without needing the senses, then it will move much faster. And it will reach much further. So, this is fascinating.
Now, one extreme could be people are skeptical and don't get attracted to it at all. They say this is not possible. But it is because there is evidence for it.
So, then some people may get attracted to it. And they may get so captivated by it that, okay, how does the mind interact with the physical reality in such ways? It's fascinating. It could be fascinating.
But somebody may get so fascinated by that, that they may never ascend to the spiritual level. So, then if we are so caught in something, if we are so captivated by something, then it cannot be used in Krishna's service. So, for something to be utilized, it has to be first de-glamorized.
De-glamorized means we can't be so captivated by it. Either the speaker or the performer or the audience. If they are so captivated by it, then that is so glamorous for them that they can't see Krishna.
They can't perceive anything more than this. So, it can be a tool, like I talked about these devotees in the West who are using hypnotic regression to get people to accept the existence of the soul. But it's interesting.
I wrote a book on reincarnation in which I did not go into hypnotic regression memories because they are not reliable, very reliable. Because when you take people into the past, how do you know whether what they are experiencing is a memory or it's an imagination? It's very difficult to know. So, serious scientists don't rely so much on hypnotic regression.
They rely on spontaneous past life memories. So, like a child suddenly says, mummy, mummy, I want to go to my other mummy. What? So, spontaneously, without any probe, any prompt, they start speaking.
So, I wrote the whole book on reincarnation. But after that, I did some further research that how many of these children who remembered the past lives actually became interested in spirituality. And it's practically no one.
They had a memory, I was there in the past, but I was there in a previous life and yes, I'll be there in a future life. But that itself did not make them spiritual at all. So, that's why this whole point of any extraordinary ability, if it can be used in Krishna's service, that is good.
But if it captivates people so much that it distracts them from Krishna, then it becomes a problem. The Srimad Bhagavatam is spoken to a person who is about to die. And at that point, everything other than Krishna is a distraction.
So, that's why, tasmad ekena manasa bhagavan sattva-tampati, srotavya kirti-tavya ca deha-pujyas ca nitya-dhara. Ekena manasa, with one-pointed intelligence, use it in Krishna's service. You fix the mind on Krishna, basically.
So, at that point, everything other than Krishna is a distraction and that is the mood with which the Bhagavatam presents us, parabhakti or kevala bhakti, pure devotion, unalloyed devotion. So, I'll come to the third point now. I said that as long as something we think it is very attractive, it is fascinating, then it will distract us from Krishna.
But can we use certain extraordinary abilities that we have in Krishna's service? Or can we seek to develop certain abilities by which we can serve Krishna better? Yes, we can, definitely. But there is a purpose and there is a means to a purpose. So, our desire for the means to the purpose should never become stronger than the desire for the purpose.
That means, let's say, if we want to become attracted towards Krishna, we want to develop love for Krishna. Now, for that, we might want certain abilities. We might want singing ability, speaking ability, managing ability, whatever, so many abilities.
And some devotees may have them in phenomenal capacities. Now, we may say, let me get this. And yes, whatever, it is our goal that we want to become as versatile and as malleable an instrument in the hands of our Guru and Krishna.
Versatile means we have many, many abilities that we can use in Krishna's service. Malleable means that whichever service we are told to do, we are ready to do that. So, we want to become as versatile and as malleable as possible.
At the same time, sometimes we may start desiring a particular resource for serving Krishna. And we may get so captivated by that, so enamored by that, so desirous of that, that that can distract us from Krishna. Prabhupada writes in the Kapila section, when Kartam Muni actually has darshan of Krishna, there he says, a devotee desires to see Krishna, but a devotee doesn't demand to see Krishna.
So, if you don't desire, then where is the devotion? Naturally, a devotee desires to have darshan of Krishna. But if we demand, then again, how are we the servants of Krishna? We desire, but we don't demand. And that is the mood which we can have when we are seeking some resource for serving Krishna.
So, many times devotees become discouraged while practicing bhakti. And discouragement can degenerate into depression. And when this happens, quite often, it is not so much because they feel that, oh, I thought I was told that when you practice bhakti, you'll become happy.
But actually, I'm not happy at all. I'm feeling disheartened, I'm feeling depressed. Does this bhakti work? Now, it could have many different reasons.
But one reason could be that while practicing bhakti, we have become very strongly obsessed with certain goals other than Krishna-Aiden bhakti. And not getting those goals is what is causing a discouragement. So, if somebody desires, okay, I'm doing this program, and I want to make 30 devotees in one month, or one year, if that is more reasonable.
And then you find that some other devotees are able to make 50 devotees in one year. And I've been preaching for three years and not even 30 devotees I've made. So, we become disheartened by that.
At one level, it is just normal human to want to do something tangible, and the inability to do something tangible may dishearten us. But at the same time, our service to Krishna is dependent primarily, or is meant primarily, to connect us with Krishna. So, we are here, Krishna is here.
And what happens is our service is meant to connect us with Krishna. Now, while doing the service, we may connect various things and various people with Krishna also. Say, somebody is building a temple.
Then, what are they doing? They are actually connecting that area, that resource, that place with Krishna by manifesting a beautiful temple over there. Now, that is important. But the most important is to connect oneself with Krishna.
When we are preaching, we want to connect others with Krishna through our preaching. But the most important thing is we want to connect ourselves with Krishna. And if we forget this primary thing that I am meant to connect myself with Krishna, and you become so caught in the secondary, you know, I have to get these people to Krishna, I have to do this project for Krishna.
It's important to do projects, it's important to connect people with Krishna. But that can't be allowed to become so important for us, that inability to do that disheartens us, and we stop trying to connect with Krishna ourselves. So often, when we become disheartened, it is because, not because we have lost the facility to connect with Krishna.
Krishna is always available with us. But certain resources we wanted to get for Krishna, those we may not be able to get for Krishna. So, in bhakti, we want to make various offerings for Krishna.
Just like in cooking, we might want to cook some delicious item for Krishna. Now, it's important that we make the best offering, whether it is giving a class, or building a temple, or helping build a community, or whatever it is. We want to make the best offering for Krishna.
But for Krishna, the best offering is not what we offer, but we ourselves. In bhakti, we don't just make the offering, we are ourselves the offering. We are ourselves the offering.
And if we get so caught in making an offering to Krishna, and the inability to make us makes us irritable, resentful, angry, disheartened, then what is happening? Neither are we offering that to Krishna, nor are we offering ourselves to Krishna. And thus, we end up getting disconnected from Krishna. So, teṣāṁ satata-yuktānāṁ bhajatāṁ prīti-pūrvakam.
That bhakti should be performed prīti-pūrvakam. That should be performed with an affectionate disposition towards Krishna. And if we strive to make sure that we have that affectionate disposition, we will find that Krishna will guide us.
dhāmi buddhi-yogam tam yena mām upayānti te. He will give us the intelligence of how much to strive for what. So yes, to do anything for Krishna, we have to strive.
So if you want to develop a particular ability, whether it is singing ability, musical ability, speaking ability, managing ability, whatever ability, it requires effort to develop that ability, no doubt. And we need to put in that effort also. But we have to have a proper sense of perspective.
And that perspective is the buddhi-yoga. dhāmi buddhi-yogam tam. How much to endeavor for what.
And how much to focus on Krishna. That intelligence Krishna will give us if we make sure that we do our bhakti prīti-pūrvakam. We do our devotion in a mood of affection towards Krishna.
Then, even if we are not able to offer many big things to Krishna, but still we will offer our hearts to Krishna. So mystic perfections can be very powerful, very captivating, very extraordinary sources by which we can do something wonderful for Krishna, we can attract people towards Krishna. And in our particular areas, we might want to develop some special abilities.
And we can seek to develop them. But if we become so captivated with them, that they distract us from Krishna, then what is said over here, they will become impediments. They will, instead of taking our consciousness towards Krishna, they will block our consciousness.
I'll conclude with one metaphor. So if we are here, and we want to go towards Krishna. Now while going towards Krishna, we may want certain resources that may enable us to go faster or that may enable us to take others with us.
So sometimes we might take a detour. Okay, this is a route, but I take this detour, so that I can get this and I can move towards Krishna. Now Krishna is so expert that through a detour also Krishna can take us towards him.
But the mind is so subtle, or so cunning, you could say, sinister, that what is a detour slowly will become a U-turn. First it becomes a detour, and then it becomes a U-turn, U-turn, U-turn. And most people who go away from bhakti, very, very rare are the people who are reasoned out of bhakti.
That means they find certain philosophical points unreasonable. I just can't accept this. In the West I meet many devotees who were practicing bhakti and are now practicing bhakti at various degrees, not so seriously.
So when I asked them what happened, practically less than a 0.1% people are those who said the philosophy stopped making sense to me. Now it was, very few people are reasoned out of bhakti. Most people drift out of bhakti.
Drift out means you start doing one thing, instead of straight path you go take a detour, and then a little bit more of the detour, little bit more of the detour, little bit more of the detour, and then eventually it becomes a U-turn. It becomes a U-turn, that person just goes away from Krishna, and they don't even realize, what happened? How did I go away from Krishna? So this is how, if we keep, if we stay in the association of devotees, we hear Krishna Katha regularly, and we keep the sense of perspective by that. My most important purpose is to connect myself with Krishna.
And for connecting myself with Krishna, I can have certain resources, I will seek them. For connecting others with Krishna, if I need some resources, I can seek them. So I may desire them, but I will not demand them.
I will not become disheartened if I don't get them. If I get them, wonderful, I'll use them. If I don't get them, still I will serve Krishna to the best of my capacity.
When we have that mood, then we will find that Krishna is always available for us. Even if the world's recognition is not available for us, that doesn't matter that much. The appreciation we get for our service is not as important as the absorption we get in our service.
We do a service and people appreciate, what a wonderful service, that's the appreciation we get. And it's good if we get it, because it can encourage us, it can enliven us. But the more important thing is the absorption we get in our service.
So if we get that absorption, that absorption will be our steady connection, and that will take us towards Krishna. So I'll summarize. I spoke on the broadly the theme of utilizing extraordinary abilities in Krishna's service.
So first point I said is that when we are practicing bhakti, at that time, the extraordinary mystic siddhis are extraordinary in degree, not in category. Like some people can have a large peripheral vision, some people can have a real vision also. That is extraordinary, but in degree.
Some people can remember about their childhood without being prompted very vividly. Some people may remember their past lives. That is extraordinary, but again it is the same in degree, not in category.
So science also has evidence for paranormal phenomena, which are similar to what the Vedic siddhis are. But the important thing is that such things are not in themselves spiritual, they are mental. Normally the mind connects with the body or the physical reality through the senses, but for some people, the mind doesn't need the senses, the mind directly affects the physical reality.
That is the essence of how mystic powers work. And before we can use anything in Krishna's, utilize anything in Krishna's service, we need to de-glamorize it. So if people who are attracted by certain mystical, extraordinary performances, a magic show or humor or certain abilities, whether they will get attracted to Krishna or not, that is something which has to be carefully seen.
And when we glamorize some abilities, that means we get so captivated by it, that we think that itself is the most important thing in our life. And as long as something is glamorous in our eyes, then that will take our eyes away from Krishna. And if anything distracts us from Krishna, that is an impediment.
The last point I talked about, if you want to use some extraordinary ability in Krishna's service, we can strive to develop it, but we can desire it, but not demand it. Our desire for that thing should not become so much that it becomes greater than our desire for Krishna. In trying to connect with things and people, to connect them with Krishna, we shouldn't forget to connect ourselves with Krishna.
We don't just want to make wonderful offerings to Krishna, we want to make ourselves an offering to Krishna. We are the offering to Krishna. So if we can practice bhakti without getting disheartened, resentful, irritable, because of certain inabilities in certain areas, then we will, if we stay preethi purvakam, if we are devotionally disposed, then Krishna will give us the intelligence, how much to endeavor for what.
And that way, if along the path of bhakti we need to take a detour, we can take it, but if we are guided by Krishna, if we stay connected with Krishna, then the detour won't become a U-turn. The appreciation we get in our service is not as important as the absorption we get in our service. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. There's no time for questions, it's already 9.30. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.