What do we do when we go through a no nectar zone in our devotional service?

From Shivang P

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Shivam Prabhu. Yeah, my question is that initially or Shastras always say that the nature of the soul is to always remain happy so my soul is basically looking for happiness so before getting educated in Krishna Consciousness I was looking that happiness in material life but eventually when I came to Krishna Consciousness Krishna Consciousness promises me that you have eternal happiness but when my bhakti gets saturated in Krishna Consciousness then I again try to slide down into material life again and try to seek happiness over there.
So you know after that saturation point in Krishna Consciousness which I define as that no nectar zone, when I am into that no nectar zone where I cannot improve my sadhana bhakti and I am tending to go down again into material life and feeling, I am succumbing to all the material temptations so how to get out of this particular thing? I go over that up to a point, I reach and I again tend to slide down into material life. Actually often we talk of the lower taste and the higher taste but these are not like digital logic 0 and 1. They are more like analog on a scale and when you talk about material taste that primarily refers to things that are entirely disconnected with Krishna and the only thing entirely disconnected with Krishna actually are those which are overtly sinful the poor ed and the poor ed principles and other things, they disconnect us from Krishna but there is a lot in the material world that is connectable with Krishna and that’s why it doesn’t necessarily have to be material so in between this you could say the black and the white the white is the pure devotional taste, for example in chanting in kirtans, in remembrance of Krishna through directly devotional activities there is a higher happiness over there and there is a pleasure and sinful activity which is entirely anti- devotional. In between there is a large spectrum that is dovetailable or connectable with Krishna and we cannot go from the lower taste to the higher taste overnight or even a few weeks or a few months or even a few years it’s a lifetime journey and in between as we are going along this journey we need to find what we can refer to as an intermediate higher taste or you could call it a civilized higher taste that is what varnashram offers me.
In varnashram the essence is not dividing people according to castes or according to their professions, that is important no doubt and that has to have social cooperation and division of labor but the idea is when an intellectual works at intellectual things and a brahmana works in brahmanical ways that gives the person some satisfaction and we could say it is material satisfaction because ultimately the intellect is knows to intellectually perform at a material level that may be so but even that material satisfaction if it is within the presence of dharma, that helps the person stay on the right track and gradually move forward in devotional service so Krishna although he talks about sarva dharma pratyaja mam ekam sharanam vraja at the end of the Bhagavad Gita but then mam ekam sharanam vraja after that what is Arjuna expected to do is Krishna tells him that actually you fight as a warrior he doesn’t tell him that when he has to give up all varieties of religion that doesn’t mean he has to give up his kshatriya dharma but he has to spiritualize his kshatriya dharma and by spiritualizing the kshatriya dharma he will be surrounded by Krishna so same way all of us we have to find out some material activity that we like to do and which we can connect with Krishna consciousness and which will become our stable service and that will give us a steady satisfaction that will enable us to keep going onwards in life and within that the higher taste of bhakti will come occasionally when we do sadhana bhakti in 12.8 in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna talks about the pleasure of pure devotional you will be forever situated in me just offer your mind and ears to me if you can’t do this the next verse is practice sadhana bhakti and if you can’t practice sadhana bhakti also then Krishna says in 12.10 that you work for me so work for me means which is even by this you will attain perfection so I have written an article in many studies about locating ourselves on the ladder of love so generally speaking we will have to situate ourselves most of our time on this level that we work for Krishna working for Krishna can be doing direct service to him or it can be doing our profession and offering the fruits of that work and Krishna says below that if you can’t offer the fruits to me then we can just offer the fruits to a noble cause but the idea is this perfection of bhakti when we constantly think of him is a very lofty stage it will require a lifetime of kirtan to come to that sadhana bhakti at our level can be a part of life it can’t be our whole life we can chant and do and studying and all that studying the scripture that few hours ago how do we engage ourselves in the main thing so we need to engage ourselves in a way that is the work of Krishna that means it is a work according to our nature which we feel happy doing but we do it for Krishna so that means for a devotee the services that we do directly and indirectly they give us a very strong sense of connection with Krishna as well as satisfaction and that satisfaction enables us to resist the pull of the lower desires so the as you said the low nectar zone is when we are given up the lower taste but we are not got the higher taste on a steady basis higher taste comes to us occasionally sometimes we take darshan or sometimes in japa we feel ecstatic but this steady commitment to a service that we like to do that will give us a satisfaction that can sustain us over a long period of time and it may take some time and some juggling to discover that initially when we come whatever services we are told to do we will do so by service it doesn’t necessarily mean a specific activity it could be a set of activities that comprise service and in that we meet various other devotees and we find some devotees we like to do and then we get along in that and that also those relationships when they become deepened by working together for Krishna also give us satisfaction so the whole idea is higher taste for us is not just in secluded remembrance of Krishna it is actually in a committed service to Krishna and to the extent we can find and stabilize ourselves in a steady and compatible service which is satisfying for us to that extent these lower pulls will become less and less so then the no nectar zone will become not exactly no nectar but it will be we will have a nectar that is partly material, partly spiritual it’s material in the sense that we are doing what we normally like to do in our material life, what we like to do we are good at doing and we get results in it so we get satisfaction in the material level also but along with that we are doing it for Krishna and because of that there is so much satisfaction about it and over a period of time, say if I am a writer, I like to write so if I get to write for Krishna, if I just have to chant and I have to do various other services, I wash pots and distribute books, I will be happy doing that sometime but I will want something which absorbs me, which really makes me feel that I am doing something worthwhile in my life, so now initially when I want to stabilize myself, I will be interested primarily in writing, if I am going to other services, I am not so enthusiastic but when I start writing for Krishna over a period of time I will start observing that writing for Krishna gives me a higher satisfaction than writing about mundane topics and then I will start realizing actually the happiness is not coming only from writing it is coming from Krishna primarily because all kinds of writing also have given same satisfaction, it doesn’t happen and in that way our appreciation for the devotional dimension of things increases, not just intellectually but experientially and then we move higher and higher towards remembrance of Krishna so that’s why this is a very important stabilizing stage in our spiritual life to find a service that is compatible as well as fulfilling for us and to become situated in that service unless we find that particular motivating service we are always, we will always try to strike down them in that case because for example I will say a normal student who has just come into Krishna consciousness, may be 6-8 months, he has suppose started with chanting, obviously like Ramacharya Shri Haridas Thakur had said to Chaitanya Maharaj that give me the taste of Holy Name, so what to talk about small devotees like us so when he takes up with chanting, his mind is always going to oppose that particular thing so his mind will hanker after something material, suppose he goes to a movie that night, ultimately chanting has, he is up to that level, suppose he knows that watching movie is not good for my sadhana bhakti or anything like that anything, watching any movie or may be TV is not good for my sadhana bhakti I should not waste my time and energy in that particular thing so eventually he is going to drop down over there because he is not getting the taste over there so this continuous vibration or you can say oscillation oscillation between you know going over here, going over there, that is what actually frustrates a lot so some basic… in general we have to make self chosen limits for the oscillation Krishna and he is talking about how lust is to be tackled the first thing he says is this is regulated senses 3.41 and then he says about the senses of the mind, the intelligence and the soul and then he says situate yourself on a special platform in 43, that means even in material life if somebody is not a devotee at that time every person sets his own limits how far I can go and that will depend on individual morals and individual culture individual situations but as devotees the focus should not be so much on what I should not do what I should not do the important thing is that often we try to use pleasure as a means to forget or neglect problems if we are seeking pleasure as a source of pleasure when we are doing something for the sake of enjoyment then actually many material activities become tame when we start practicing Krishna Consciousness because once we start tasting the joy of Krishna Consciousness watching sports or movies doesn’t really give much pleasure although I may do them out of habit or I may do them because of trouble of the mind but often when we do it it’s not because the enjoyment is so pleasurable but because resisting the desire seems so intolerable that’s why we go into it and that is because we are using that activity not so much as a source of pleasure but as a means to deal with our problems and then that indicates that pleasure, the desire for that pleasure is something like addiction so when an addict is trying to withdraw from the addictive substance the physical symptoms don’t last for long person is taking drugs or alcohol physically the body is attuned to getting that regularly and when the person doesn’t get that there are withdrawal symptoms but the physical withdrawal symptoms they last only for a few days but often this sort of addiction is used by people to cope with life when too many problems come I need a escape what is the escape? smoking or drinking of course that escape becomes a nightmare over a period of time but one has to learn to find an alternative way to escape within devotional service so or if the person is not a devotee then the person has to find some other way to escape that is critical in all the addiction programs that means I have to in a sense relearn the art of living where I will find better ways of dealing with problems so that would involve learning to take shelter of Krishna in some way that is accessible to us so a service will take a long time but still even within yourself at whatever level we are there are certain activities that give us more sense of connection more satisfaction, more solace than others some people may like kirtans a lot just dancing in kirtans or hearing kirtans will calm the mind so there is a psychological reaction sequence that happens when trouble comes, I feel lost I feel lonely, I feel burdened at that time I go towards the pleasure but if I can analyze, this is still a bad at that time I am going this way but if I go this way, go towards Krishna then actually I will be much stronger from that situation then we will be able to deal with it in a more mature way and once we start doing that then not only will that craving go away but the problems that come and take us towards Krishna are going away from Krishna so this will require some good observation of our own self understanding our own reaction sequence when some misunderstanding happens and I feel I just can’t do it I just can’t develop a relationship what should I do? I just can’t do it let me forget everything should I just chip my teeth at that point I may not be able to develop a relationship but there is one person who never misunderstands me, that’s Krishna he is always there in my heart let me try to remember him, let me try to connect with him let me pray to him and when I connect myself with him in that way then I will find that I will use that reaction sequence