Loving Exchanges with Devotees

There is nothing like the loving exchanges shared between devotees. Such loving exchanges are not of this material world. The more we give our love to the devotees and accept the love that they give us, the more we revive our dormant love for the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Therefore the Lord's devotees are always most eager to get the association of other devotees. Krishna says that anyone who is His devotee is not His devotee, that only those who are the devotees of His devotees are His actual devotees. So if we want to revive our dormant Krishna consciousness, we should always be most eager to associate with the Lord's devotees in multi-varieties of loving exchanges.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

Ecstatic Farewell from Kaunas, Lithuania
19 April 2010Sankarshan Das Ecstatic Farewell from Kaunas, Lithuania

Ecstatic Farewell from Kaunas, Lithuania

Ecstatic Farewell from Kaunas, Lithuania

Devotees Give Last Farewell Running After the Van
As It Is Leaving KaunasDevotees Give Last Farewell Running After the Van

Answers According to the Vedic Version:

Question: Gradual Krishna Consciousness

Dear Gurudeva,
Please accept my humble obeisances.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

How can I be sure that I'm not making the process of advancement in Krishna consciousness more gradual than it should be? And also how to make sure that I'm not making it less gradual than it must be? Is keeping this balance important?

Your servant,

Ikshvaku das

Answer: Make Krishna Consciousness Immediate

If we have not fully surrendered to Krishna yet, we can be sure that we are making the process of our advancing in Krishna consciousness more gradual than it has to be. So there is no question of making it less gradual than it has to be. There is no reason why we should not fully surrender right now and become pure devotees Krishna immediately. It is only due to our foolish material attachments that we drag out what can be done in one minute into an entire lifetime or even many lifetimes.

It is something like pulling off a band-aid. A band-aid can be pulled off immediately in one sweeping motion or it can be painfully pulled off one hair at a time. Because our mind thinks it would be too painful to pull it off immediately in one sweeping motion, we gradually and excruciatingly pull if off one hair at a time. But this is foolishness because there is practically no pain in pulling it off with one sweeping motion. It is simply our mind that tricks us into thinking that we have to pull it off gradually.

This small principle also applies to Krishna consciousness. We could easily immediately fully surrender to Krishna, but because of the tricks of the mind we think that this is impossible and we drag it out into a long, long process foolishly depriving ourselves of the unlimited oceans of spiritual bliss that we could be relishing at every moment.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

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