When sensual pleasures seem stronger than spiritual joy, how can we stay steady in spiritual practice?

This is an AI-generated transcript and it might not be fully accurate:

When we are trying to practice bhakti and give up sensual activities, then the sensual activities feel more pleasurable and the sensual activities don’t feel that pleasurable, in fact they feel very little at all. So what do we do at that time? Yes, it’s like say we are here in the lower taste and we want to go to the higher taste but what happens, going to the higher taste it seems too high, so we try to go up and we end up going further down, we feel it is so high all the way and that is true and that is why while our sadhana is important, bhakti is not just about our sadhana. So what happens is within the practice of bhakti, we also get what we can call as an intermediate taste, so this we can call it as a material spiritual taste, what do I mean? A higher material taste redirects us towards spirituality, say we all have certain things which we like to do, say some of us may like music, some of us may like language, some of us may like talking with others, some of us may like managing, some of us may like cooking, so when we talk about material life, not everything in material life is simply about sensibility, in the material dimension of life we have skills, we have interests, we have talents and those can also be used in Krishna’s service.

So if we consider this particular area, so this we could say the higher taste is what we pursue through our sadhana and that is very important but then this intermediate higher taste that is what we get through our seva practice, so our service enables us to see some visible results, it’s like if I do some cooking, it is not that after I go back to Godhead, I will see the result of the cooking, isn’t it? I can see the result now and maybe many of us we didn’t even know cooking before but we come to the event centre, we learn cooking and we feel I have learnt something valuable, that has been used in Krishna’s service but it is something valuable and we feel some satisfaction over it. We may learn public speaking and we may also learn to share Krishna’s message. So now what is happening is, we are getting a taste, it may not be completely spiritual but it is not completely material also.

So we also need to find this intermediate level and the whole point of Varanashram, it was not just so much about dividing society into four castes, the point was that what is the natural material inclination of someone, the material inclination is not just towards service and gratification, nothing interests us. So whatever are there, we use those for the service of Krishna. So we need to be able to, you can say, sit over here, ask people.

We cannot get there immediately but we sit over here, what means, how do we find this? Look for three things. Look for what skills we have, look for what interests we have. We may not have skills right now but we may have some interests.

In Bhakti, there is so much to learn. You say, okay, I want to learn some musical instruments. I want to learn how to make videos.

There are so many things but there are many things my interest doesn’t match. And then there are some talents in here. Talents are a bit more raw, skills are more developed.

Somebody may have a talent and when they practice and develop it, it becomes a skill. So look for our skills, interests and talents and that’s how we will be able to situate ourselves in Bhakti. So while we are here, we do whatever services we are told to do and it’s important.

But why do those services observe us? Which service interests us naturally? Which service we are able to do well? Which service we feel, yeah, I can improve this area. Some services may be such that we try to improve also but it’s very difficult. We may not have the talent to do this.

That’s okay. Bhakti has many services. So when we start doing some service, we won’t necessarily get a completely higher taste.

For example, right now I’m speaking. Now is it that I’m speaking only for Krishna’s pleasure? Certainly Krishna’s pleasure is there. But I like to speak.

I like to speak and when I’m speaking, is it possible that I want to show others how clever I am? Maybe that is there. But over a period of time that will go away. Because speaking about Krishna gives us actually a higher taste.

But what happens if somebody is singing? Somebody does kirtans. Now are they doing kirtan only for Krishna’s pleasure? Do we want others to see how nicely they are singing? Maybe they want it. But that’s not a bad thing.

They’re not singing Bollywood songs for that purpose. They’re still singing Krishna’s songs only. So they’re within the ambit of bhakti and through that ambit of bhakti, through that perimeter of bhakti, gradually will become more and more unified.

So the idea is, to conclude this one last image that there are things we like to do. There are things of bhakti, bhakti activities and there are our likes. So now some of our likes may take us outside bhakti.

Somebody says, I like to take alcohol. So now that is something which we cannot do. But you can find out which are the likes that overlap in bhakti.

And this is, because it’s a pure higherity, so the full higher taste. So only bhakti, even if we don’t like it, if we call that a higher taste. Now only what we like without any bhakti, that is the lower taste.

So now this is where we can try to sit. It’s the combined material higher taste. So thank you very much.