Why do I feel satisfaction on feeding a beggar but not on feeding the Deities?

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Transcript

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any other questions? the question is that say if we offer food to a beggar you know we feel I have done something good and we feel some pleasure in that but if we offer food to the deities we may not feel that connection with Krishna so is it that we should associate with devotees more by that we will feel that connection, that pleasure yes association with devotees is important at the same time if we rely too much on Pratyaksha Pramana Pratyaksha Pramana means if we rely too much on the perception that comes from our senses then we will never have much motivation to practice Bhakti because Bhakti essentially is trans-sensory it is our own consciousness we ourselves are ourselves trans-sensory we are beyond the senses so certainly sometimes the potency of Bhakti is manifested at the level of the senses also we may see that devotees are chanting and dancing in ecstasy we may see that oh there are so many devotees all over the world I am also feeling happiness at our present level of consciousness also but if we want to practice Bhakti steadily we cannot rely too much on Pratyaksha Pramana on sensory perception if we rely then that is actually uninformed vision just like a person may have a terrible disease inside and Prabhupada gives the example of how in his neighborhood in Calcutta there was a there was a young boy who had typhoid and the doctor had told don’t feed him any fried items but he had begged please give me some fried items and when his mother had gone away his sister had given him lot of fried pakodas and he had fallen terribly sick he had to be rushed to the hospital his mother was so angry why did you feed pakoda so now she was simply seeing at the physical level he is hungry and he wants pakoda but at the sensory level she saw the pakodas she thought that is not good but actually deep within she had disease because of which she shouldn’t be taking pakodas the point I am making here is that even in ordinary life we know that the sensory vision is not always the reliable vision the person may be looking healthy but internally they may have terrible disease so we may just feed them anything and think I am doing good for them but internally we may be harming them so that’s why we need to guide our actions according to our knowledge according to our education so certainly if somebody is hungry and we have the capacity to feed them we can offer them food so our devotees if they offer food to the deities and if they give the deities food to they can give the deities food to others we can even give them to beggars the point is we don’t see service to humanity and service to Krishna as two interchangeable things it is not that if I serve Krishna then there is no need to serve the deities when I serve human beings there is no need to serve Krishna or when I serve Krishna there is no need to serve the human beings we see it as an integral thing so Prabhupada when he saw in Mayapur there was an arching starving and going into the dustbin to try to find some food Prabhupada was compassionate and Prabhupada said we should feed people that’s how the food relief program started but what Prabhupada said we should feed them prasad so yes we cannot perceive the spiritual directly with our senses that’s why we need Gyanachakshu we need philosophical knowledge to understand that the spiritual is working at a deeper level but at the same time we don’t isolate the spiritual from the material if the spiritual can be connected with the material that is wonderful so if you feel inspired to offer food in charity to beggars that’s fine but you can offer the food to the deities and then offer it to people in general if you want to offer and as far as reciprocating with sensing a connection with the deities is concerned and reciprocating with the deities is concerned association is extremely important not just with devotees in general but association with those who are attached to their deities if you want to develop attraction to a particular manifestation of Krishna we need to associate specifically with those devotees who are attracted to that manifestation and by that association we will ourselves start experiencing spiritual emotion in relationship with the deities thank you any other questions yes