Crises on the Path of Devotional Service. Lecture 1
Bhakti Vijnana Goswami · 2020
Chapters
Opening prayers
Om ajñāna-timirāndhasya jñānāñjana-śalākayā cakṣun-unmīlitam yena tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ śrī-caitanya-mano-‘bhīṣṭaṁ sthāpitaṁ yena bhū-tale svayaṁ rūpaḥ kadā mahyaṁ dadāti sva-padāntikam nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāmin iti nāmine नमस्ते सरस्वते देवे गौरवाणीप्रचारिणे निर्विशेषशून्यवादपाश्चात्यदेशतारिणे हे कृष्ण करुणासिन्धु दीनबन्धु जगत्पते गोपेश गोपिकाकान्त राधाकान्त नमोऽस्तु ते तप्तकाञ्चनगौराङ्गी राधे वृन्दावनेश्वरी वृषभानुसुते देवी प्रणिमाम हरिप्रिये जय श्री कृष्ण चैतन्य प्रभु नित्यानंद श्री अद्वैत गदाधर श्रीवासादि गौर भक्तवृंद Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare namo mahā-vadānyāya kṛṣṇa-prema-pradāya te kṛṣṇāya kṛṣṇa-caitanya-nāmne gaura-tviṣe namaḥ pañcatvātmakaṁ kṛṣṇaṁ bhakta-rūpa-svarūpakam bhaktāvatāraṁ bhaktākhyaṁ namāmi bhakta-śaktikam vadāntaṁ samavācāṁ prasupta-sañjīvayātekhila-śakti- dharaḥ svād-dhāmāñjanatvaṁ prānandamo bhagvati pūṣan dudam. Hare Krishna.
Welcome to this seminar, which is entitled I changed slightly the title because somebody told me that the title, which is there in the schedule, is not so clear.
So now the title sounds Crisis is on the path of devotional service, the psychology of spiritual development.
What I want to share with you is results of my research into the books of Srila Prabhupada and books of Aur Acharyas, and the practical life combined with some knowledge of development of psychology applied to the spiritual growth or spiritual development.
It's a big material. In this short one-hour time, I will be able to share with you some bits and pieces of it.
I'm supposed to give this seminar a couple more times, so I may continue or go a little deeper uh in other slots or go into more details but uh now I will try to give you some overview of this material. Yes. No.
No, it's a different. Well, uh uh they're related. They're related in a sense. But it's not continuation of this morning. It's scheduled two more times on the nineteenths and twentieth.
I it is related, but it's not exactly the continuation. It's a different topic altogether.
Need for systematic education
I need your blessings, Maharajas, Prabhus.
Okay, so for those of uh this material which I or research which I undertaken was mostly driven by my understanding that the education in this con should be based on certain principles, and one of those principles is systematic approach.
This morning I elaborately described these five principles of education, which will ensure the transformation of the heart as opposed to just transmission of the knowledge which not necessarily touches the heart of the student.
And the third principle, which is specifically, which I'm dealing with specifically in this seminar is a systematic approach which basically gives the education according to the stage of spiritual development or according to the adhikāra, the qualification of the student.
In my opinion, this is a very problematic area because oftentimes we don't follow this principle, we give education so to speak, freely, in a sense that we speak about variety of different topics, and some of those topics are high above the qualification of the listeners, and that creates a problem because it creates a hotchpoch in the heads of the listeners and so many other problems.
And it creates a false understanding of false uh yeah false understanding that I already know everything whereas uh the person may not realize much.
So uh again what I'm planning to speak is the attempt to deeply understand uh the dynamic of the spiritual growth, what's happening on each and every stage of spiritual development, and uh what is necessary on each and every stage of spiritual development.
Which knowledge, which skills, and so on and so forth, according to the needs of the sādhaka or student. So I will just not go here.
And of course we know that there are ladder of devotion which is delineated by Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī and Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, starting with śraddhā, sādhu-saṅga, bhajana-क्रिया, anartha-nivṛtti, niṣṭhā, ruci, āsakti, bhāva and finally premā. Bhava and finally Prama.
And Śrīla Prabhupāda explains or elaborates a little bit on this in the purport of Bhagavad-gītā. In the beginning, there must be one must have a preliminary desire for self-realization.
This will bring one to the stage of trying to associate with those who are spiritually elevated. The next stage one becomes initiated by a spiritual master by execution of devotional service, one becomes free from attachments, attains steadiness in self-realization, and acquires a taste for hearing Krishna Katha.
This taste leads one further to attachment to Krishna consciousness which is matured in bhāva, preliminary stage of love of God. Real love for God is called premā, the highest perfectional stage of life.
So sounds familiar, we all know the stages, but what I'm I hope that what I'm going to describe is somewhat will give you some new insights to the whole dynamic.
We all know, or most of you probably know, that in the little book by Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, Madhurya Kadamini, he goes in depth.
Srila Rupa Goswami himself gives only these two verses, Srila Jiva Goswami, while commenting on them, hardly puts two, three sentences. It's a very short commentary.
But Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura as well in Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu. But he wrote a several a separate book about this subject matter.
But if we read carefully this book, we will see that the approach of this book is somewhat different than the reality which we are dealing with. We are dealing with people who are impure, with a
lot of unwanted samskaras, not very steeped in the culture of varṇa and śāstra, not disciplined, do not know the ABC of spiritual life which varṇa is providing, according to Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura.
We're also dealing with sadhus who are very busy flying all over the place, flying sadhus or flying monks. So and they're not very easily accessible even by email. There is much less personal interaction with them.
And you know, in some cases they're maybe not as elevated
as the ideal sadhus which are described by Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and his Jaiva Dharma, or which is implied by Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, when he explains the ladder of spiritual development.
And we also deal with the problem of impersonal means of communication. And very important question arises: does uh bhakti transmits via computer?
We know that it transmits from heart to heart, but is it possible to transmit it through listening to the webinar on YouTube. Is YouTube a proper means of transmission bhakti? And so many other questions may arise.
So that's why I thought it would be beneficial for the, you know, for my own sake and perhaps for somebody else, to understand more deeply what's happening in each stage of spiritual development, what we're supposed to do, what we're not supposed to do.
Ego transformation in spiritual growth
So this is just a few problems which uh kind of pushed me into this uh in this direction. So the first statement, very important statement for the whole uh concept uh which is being developed
is uh the premise that the spiritual development means gradual development of true ego and parallel diminishment of the false ego, ahaṁkāra and mamatā. I believe that this understanding which I will uh confirm by quoting Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura from his Madhuri-kādambinī is extremely important, and if we understand this deeply, what's really happening, that uh the spiritual growth means two parallel process, not just one process, but two parallel process, the formation of new ego and the diminishment of the uh false ego, which is already there, then many things will fall into place.
So this is the quote, confirming quote, very important quote: Ego has two functions, the sense of I, Ahanta, and the sense of mind, Mamatha. When both are dissolved by knowledge, there is liberation.
And when the two are directed towards body, home, and so on, there is bondage. In other words, if we take the path of jñāna, the path of jñāna implies the destruction of ego.
The path of karma implies the proliferation or expansion of ego. And the path of jñāna brings us to liberation, the path of karma brings us to bondage. But there is a third path.
But when they are directed towards the personal forms and other features of the Supreme Lord and with his associates, with the idea I belong to the Lord as his servant, and he, the personality of Godhead, the vast ocean of beauty, excellence and sweetness, is the master I must serve along with his associates, then there is pure love. This pure love is distinct from both bondage and liberation.
So, Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura is very clear here that bhakti is the formation of a specific type of ego which is not there. The material ego, false ego, brings about bondage.
The path of jñāna implies the destruction, total destruction of ego, but uh the path of bhakti is the formation of specific type of ego. This is called the supreme aim of life.
So this is from Madhurya-kādambinī chapter 8. And Śrīla Prabhupāda, of course, says the same thing, for example, in the purport to the second Canto he says the different positions of living entities in the material world under multifarious manifestation of bodies are due to the misconception of mind and I, and there are so many other supporting quotes of this.
Quantitative stages of ego spiritualization
So uh Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura in Madhurya-kādambinī gives a very interesting analysis how these two processes of the formation of new ego and diminishment of the false ego take place and for that he implies uh employs the certain uh Nomenclature.
He says that there are five stages by which you can qualitatively, quantitatively sorry, quantitatively described the diminished and the rise of new ego. He says you know one very little appearing of the
new ego, he calls it gandha, which literally means smell. There is a little smell of new ego, of new personality. Approximately, this is approximation.
Of course, he doesn't give these figures, but because we are used to all these percentages. So let's say around 5% from 1 to 5% of new formation. Then he says ekadeśa-vartinī, which means.
The new formation is partially there, uh, let's say from 5 to 30 percent. Again, this is very approximate.
Then bahudeśa-vartinī, from 30 to 80 percent, prāyeṇa almost completely, uh, up to ninety-five percent, pūrṇa completely, ninety-five to let's say ninety-nine percent, and then ātyantikī totally,
It's just these percentages, don't take them seriously, it's just for our understanding. So I preliminarily, I preempt you with this so that we will be able to understand what he says in this quote.
So please listen very carefully because it's a very interesting quote.
When the materialistic aspect of aṅhāra and mamatā is extremely deep, which is the case of most of us, starting with myself, one remains fixed in the cycle of birth and death.
When a particle of faith, śraddhā, by good fortune, is born, one and one thinks of becoming a vaiṣṇava and serving the Lord, the materialistic aspect becomes slightly spiritualized. Gandha. -> gandha.
There is a smell of spirituality on the stage of śraddhā phase and the jīva becomes qualified for devotional service. So there is not much happening. We have completely formed material ego, but little smell
of spiritualization is there, and this is called śraddhā. So the next stage: this is his analysis of what is happening on each stage. At the stage of sadhu sangha, the spiritualization becomes more condensed,
and his material attachment is, uh, still ātyantikī. So please uh notice this: material attachment on the stage of sadhu sangha is ātyantikī 100%.
But still, a little more ekadeśa-vartinī, a little spiritualization is there.
So it's very interesting to analyze this dynamic and to understand that there are two parallel processes: the false ego is still completely intact, 100%, but still the new real ego starts to appear already.
It's not the completely parallel process. It's a parallel process. It's not one process. It's two parallel processes which is going on according to Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura.
At this stage of aniśrita-bhajana-kriyā, the spiritualization of our mind, of ahaṅkāra, which consists of these two aspects, ahaṁtā and mamatā, is specific, localized in one place.
So it's ekadeśa-vartinī according to this qualification. Whereas the material aspect is still in full force. Pūrṇa. It's still 90-95%.
But you know quite noticeable growth of spiritual ego is there, spiritual personality, so to speak. At the stage of niṣṭhā, spiritualization becomes detectable in many places, bahudeśa-vartinī.
It basically means it's very noticeable in the niṣṭhā stage. Around let's say 50%, not more than fifty, not less than 50%. Bahudeśa-vartinī. But still, the materialistic influence is still very prominent.
Prāya. Pray means almost complete. So we still have almost complete false ego of an individual, but a quite pronounced spiritual ego or spiritual personality developed on a stage of niṣṭhā.
And niṣṭhā stage is more or less the balance of these two egos when they are more or less on par or still with somewhat more prominence of material personality or material attachments.
At the stage of ruci spiritualization of our mind becomes dominant, nearing completion, prāya. It's almost complete, it's 80% spiritualization.
And material uh materialistic concept of fi uh our mind becomes localized in certain issues, ekadeśa-vartinī, it's localized, it's not so pronounced.
That's the first stage where the spiritual ruci is the first stage where the spiritual becomes more prominent. Before ruci we are still materialists.
It's a good news for us because we are not alone and you know it's supposed to be like this. So it's a long process.
And the stage of āsakti, the spiritual aspect of our mind becomes complete pūrṇa, and the material aspect becomes trace, gandha. Only in the stage of āsakti we diminish the material attachment to the level of smell.
At the stage of bhāva the spiritual aspect becomes sarva ātyantiki and the material aspect becomes like an empty shadow. And he actually introduces another category in this quantitative description.
At the stage of Prema, the spiritual aspect becomes extremely intense, parama atyantiki, and the material aspect is completely absent.
So even in the stage of bhava, there is a shadow of material concepts, which is important because we know that one may fall down from the stage of bhava, whereas from the stage of prema, fall down is not possible.
Of course, from the stage of bhava, it's basically to teach us. And Śrīla Prabhupāda confirms this. He says that all fall down is due to false ego.
What is important for us to understand in this description is that the false ego is very prominent till practically till the stage of ruci, and Śrīla Prabhupāda warns us: not only must one come to the stage of pure Krishna consciousness, but one must also be very careful.
Any inattentiveness or carelessness may cause fall down. This fall down is due to false ego. From the status of pure consciousness, the false ego is born because of misuse of independence.
We cannot argue about why false ego arises from pure consciousness. Factually, there is always the chance that this will happen, and therefore one has to be very careful. So this false ego is a very tricky thing.
The false ego, it's like, you know, we know that liver has a very potent ability to regenerate. You may basically cut 90% of liver and then the liver will grow up to the full 100%.
But in case of false ego, you may cut 99.99% of false ego and leave little bit of false ego and it will grow up to the false stage in no time, if you're a little careless.
So, this is one of the you know interesting conclusions or understandings which come from this description.
And yeah, Śrīla Prabhupāda also confirms this in the purport of the Third Canto. He says, false ego is the basic principle of all material activities which are executed in the modes of material nature.
As soon as one deviates from pure Krishna consciousness, he increases his entanglement in material reaction.
And the entanglement of materialism is the material mind and from this material mind the senses and material organs become manifest. So what is happening in the process of sadhana?
In the process of sadhana, our ego is gradually becoming spiritualized.
This is what Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura says in this quote: that the essence of sadhana is the spiritualization of mind, body, and words. This is called sādhana-bhakti. And that brings about completely new character.
You know, I probably will skip this particular quote. It's an interesting quote where Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda describes the character which is being formed in the process of devotional service.
Actually, let's read it. Actual devotee do not become, devotees do not become disturbed in any situation, whether he is happy, it is happy or full of distress, convenient or inconvenient.
Rather, they always engage in Lord's service with body, mind, and speech. Devotees are firmly established in this principle of serving the Lord. So why taking this quote is that what is being formed, what is spiritual
ego, spiritual ego is a very strong and staunch ego of a servant, as opposed to the ego of enjoyer which is there in a stage of materialism or in a lower stage.
Importance of devotee association
So then again, I'm skipping important points, but what I want to stress here that we can only develop ego of a servant in the association with devotees.
Śrīla Prabhupāda said in one purport to the fourth canto that if somebody thinks that he can become Krishna conscious alone. This is a hallucination, he says. He uses this very strong word. It's a hallucination.
So the society of devotees is extremely important and the association with the devotees is extremely important. Otherwise it will be just dreams. Nothing really real will happen with our ego.
We will remain the same old person. Okay, let's keep this.
This was the and, as I said, the niṣṭhā is a central stage where something very interesting happens when the spiritual ego and material ego become more or less equal, and therefore it's niṣṭhā.
It's still an unstable stage because there is no prevalence of the of the real identity. So up to the stage of Nishta it's a struggle.
What I want to say because I will deal with the crises after that and I will only deal with the crises up to the stage of Nishta. I believe there are crises in the higher stages as well.
Just for a joke, I can give you an example from Russia, and Russia was some very powerful charismatic leader. And he he had many many followers.
And at one point, you know, as often happens with the charismatic leaders, he developed some difficulties, he started breaking regulative principles, you know, taking some alcohol and things like this.
And it was quite known because he was very prominent and people knew it. So his followers told me, I asked them, you know, why you're so blindly following him? He doesn't follow the, you know, regulative principles.
They said to me, he just experienced the crisis of transformation from bhāva to premā and therefore he has to take alcohol. So this is a joke. But I guess there are some crises on the higher stages as well.
But we will deal with more relevant crises to us on uh on our stages of development. And what I want to share with you my uh kind of research in this topic.
And again as I said I probably will not be able to go in detail but something I will uh show yeah
that's a quote from uh Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda where he warns us from premature going to the higher stages of spiritual development unless we overcome all our anarthas, unless we achieve the stage of Niṣṭhā.
So it's basically to stress that this initial stages of spiritual development are very important and we cannot really even talk about higher methods until we reach the stage of Niṣṭhā.
And therefore, the careful study of these preliminary stages, even though we sometimes we may try to go further or higher. Still it's very important. And we shouldn't worry about the more higher stages.
As Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda says here. These things naturally manifest in non-duplicited service-inclined heart.
Metaphor of child development
So the main emphasis is how to develop this ego of a servant or service attitude.
So, for our description or for our understanding, the metaphor of spiritual development which is given in many places in our scriptures is very important.
This metaphor is comparing the spiritual growth of a person with the growth of a child.
As much as the, like for example, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura in his Bhakti Tattva-viveka he says when the Śraddhā appears, Śraddhā is like a small baby girl.
And we also know that the spiritual initiation diksha is like the second birth, and we become little spiritual babies.
So I elaborate and develop on this metaphor the spiritual growth, uh, comparing the growth of our spiritual development with the growth of the child. And in this metaphor, we will have uh
four or five five important stages till Niṣṭhā. So Śraddhā in this metaphor will be compared to Śiśutva.
Shishutva when one is a small baby until the appearance of milk teeth. When one is supposed only to take the milk of the mother. It's very important. All the little elements of this metaphor are important.
Because on the stage of Shraddha, we're supposed only to take milk. If a little baby takes uh some powder milk, uh that's not good for his growth.
So we have to be very careful how we feed people uh with little appearance of spiritual ego on the level of Shraddha.
The next stage, Sadhu Sangha, it's something like Komara stage, which is according to Vedic scriptures and up to the five years. Komara is the childhood. So babyhood, childhood, sadhu sanga.
Then Bhajan-kriya is like Pauganda. Yeah, it's uh how call how you call it in English. It's Pauganda from five to ten. And Anartha Nivriti is Kaishora, the teenage teenage our teenage period in spiritual development.
And then Nishta is Yauvana youth. So uh if we take this uh
again I'm uh really beg forgiveness from you because uh it definitely needs some elaboration but uh you know what I will share with you is just my understanding so you know I I can explain it in more details.
I cannot go into more details here. But uh as much as uh yeah, and that's uh yeah, okay. So Śrīla Prabhupāda explains, I will give quotes after that. So what is the essence of Shraddha phase?
The essence of Shraddha is when we learn to appreciate the devotees. And we learn to trust them. As much as the little baby, what is the essence of this little baby life? He has to have complete trust to his parents.
And if this trust is betrayed by some mistake or by some misunderstanding or whatever, it's a trauma.
So Shraddha is a very delicate period in people's life, in devotional life, where this trustful relationship with the spiritual master or sadhus or devotees in general have to be formed.
So this is the essence of this Shraddha period from the learning point of view. What we are learning on the very first stage, we learn how to appreciate devotees.
What we should take seriously, how we should take devotees seriously, what we should not consider actually. What we should overlook, who is the real devotee, what is devotion.
This is the skill, so to speak, or some natural quality which must appear for proper development of shradha. If there is no development of trust and appreciation of devotees or false wrong appreciation of devotees.
When we appreciate devotees not for what we are supposed to appreciate but for something else, I will give examples of this. Then uh it will be uh difficult. So, stage of sadhu sangha: it's very interesting.
The little child, when he grows a little bit, the first thing which he starts doing, he learns to speak, right?
And we know when the new devotee comes, first thing which he uh, you know, learns is the language of the devotees. We learn how to speak. You know this body. You know this is the first formula which we learn.
You we learn all this you know sattva-guṇa, tamo-guṇa, rajo-guṇa.
And sometimes I'm sure you heard some lectures of this baby spiritual baby devotees when they just use all kinds of language without any realization of this language.
They already know how to speak, they use all this bombastic terms, you know, premā, kijai, we all reach the stage of prema, very good. But it's okay. When the little baby is bubbling something, it's fine.
It's it's it's nice.
Actually Śrīla Prabhupāda he used to do it he would put some neophyte devotees and said you give the lecture and he would give the lecture and it's just, you know, it's it's it's maybe not very comprehensive, but still uh the parent likes when the little child is uh you know with the broken language says something.
So, in the same way the, spiritual master enjoys when the little neophyte devotees start speaking something with the proper language. And actually, you cannot really expect much from these people.
Like little child, you cannot expect from them that they will take responsibility. If they speak, that's good enough.
In the same way, when the devotees are in initial stages where when they are in the stage of sadhu sangha developing some relationship with sadhu it will be very detrimental if we try to expect from them some responsibility.
If we try to crush them down with some you know concrete responsibility in devotional service. You know, it's enough for them just to know some basics and to speak something little.
So, but then when the little baby grows further, he learns how to act. And this stage of spiritual development is called bhajana-kriya or practical devotional service, where we learn how to act as if we are devotees.
On the stage of bhajana-kriya, we are not devotees. I mean with, all due respect to all of us. But it's just we're little babies still. And we are encouraged to do some practical devotional service.
It's good for our development, like a little child is doing this. But definitely it's not bhajana. Therefore, it's called bhajana kriya. It's not a stage of bhajana.
Bhajana is the stage of complete immersion into the spiritual matters. But it's bhajana kriya, it's the practice. We are learning how to act as a devotee.
And the stage of śraddhā, we learn to appreciate devotees, and the stage of sādhu-saṅga, we learn how to speak as a devotee.
And the stage of bhajana-kriyā we learn how to act as a devotee, as if we are devotee. And the stage of anartha-nivṛtti we learn how to think as a devotee, which is a very important stage of spiritual development.
As much as the little baby he already acts, but he cannot think independently. The thinking process only in reality starts developing in teenage period.
When one is a teenager, one starts thinking, one gets an idea, one develops certain uh independence uh in his thinking process.
So in the same way, anartha-nivṛtti is this stage where we're learning uh to understand our motives.
The introspection is the main characteristic of anartha-nivṛtti stage. And this is the stage where we really learn how to think as a devotee. Speak, act, think.
And then the next stage, and I will not go further because it's way above my understanding. The next stage is niṣṭhā and the main skill which we should learn on this stage of spiritual development is how to feel.
The feeling starts coming to us. As much as the young person, after coming through the stage of teenage years he gets some feelings. He develops some feelings, he develops some intimate relationship with some persons.
So the niṣṭhā is when the feelings, when we mature enough to feel, you know, when teenagers do something, they're not mature enough to have mature feelings, mature emotions.
So niṣṭhā is the first stage where the emotions or spiritual emotions can come to us or some shadows of spiritual emotions. So again what I'm trying to say is that this metaphor is useful.
It's a metaphor, it has definitely deficiencies and lacks, but still it's quite useful metaphor if we analyze deeply or try to analyze deeply the process of spiritual development.
And then as far as the impediments on each stage, because we're dealing with the crises, so we have to uh point out the impediments on each stage of spiritual development. So in the uh level of śraddhā, I'm really s yeah. Um in the level of Shraddha when we try to appreciate devotees.
People still fear to depend. The spirit of independence is very strong. And the next stage, there is a fear of taking concrete responsibility for a service.
As much as the child is really not in a hurry to take responsibility, he still wants to play. And then in Bhajanakriya stage there is a mechanical following of fear of introspection.
And an anartha-nivritti stage, the fear of humility. So that's more or less the description of the next stage through this impediment. But anyway, I can elaborate about this when I go deeply into each stage. And yeah.
And again, just a few sutras. Shraddhaya's development of trust. Sadhu Sangha development of responsibility, Bhajanakriya, development
of mindfulness and introspection, and anartha-nivritti development of humility, tolerance and respect in the association.
Understanding spiritual identity crises
I can support all these statements by the appropriate quotes, but you know we can do it if we want. Now the main topic of this seminar is crisis. I'm rushing through this because I want to uh at least a little
bit share with you uh what's happening as far as the krises are concerned. The English word krisis comes from Greek uh whatever it is. Which means decision or turning point.
Crisis is um is actually a very natural stage of development. It's a turning point. Sometimes we use this word in a very negative sense. I have a big crisis, crisis of faith. Actually, I want to tell a little joke.
Jayadvaita Maharaja told me this joke. I really love this joke. I want to share this brilliant typical Jayadvaita Maharaj's joke with you. It's about crises.
Jayadvaita Maharaj told me, when my spiritual master told me that we never went to the moon, I didn't have any crisis of faith. I just took it.
When my spiritual master told me that women are less intelligent, I didn't have crisis of faith, I just took it.
When my spiritual master told me that all the scientists are idiots and asses, you know, I didn't have a crisis of faith, I just took it very nicely.
But when my spiritual master told me I but at one point I had a real crisis of faith when my spiritual master told me that the most intelligent people would join Krishna consciousness movement, then
I had real crisis to face. Anyway, this is a joke. But uh what I want to say is that crisis is a turning point. It's the point of spiritual development when we make a decision which way to go.
It's the point where we see clearly either the way back and we're still doubtful, we don't know whether we want to go further or we want to come back.
So we are in this crossroads and the crossroads, and that's called crisis. And all the crises of spiritual growth or spiritual development are identity crises.
Because as I said, the spiritual growth or spiritual development is the development of identity, of ego. Ego is the identity. And as we know, there are identity crises or age crisis in normal life, so to speak.
When the body changes and we have to really adjust to these changes of the bodies, and Arjuna is a brilliant example. Krishna takes Arjuna as an example because he has the identity crisis.
In this battlefield of Kurukṣetra, what happens to Arjuna? Arjuna sees that when he kills all his relatives, his false ego will be killed together with the relatives.
Because his false ego consists of all this relationship, false relationship with the relatives. And when the relatives are not there, he's not there.
His ego of the son will not be there, his ego of the brother will not be there if the brothers are not there, and so on and so forth.
So all the crises which devotees have on the path of spiritual development are identity crises. When the ego changes. And when the crisis takes place in our life, there are three possible outcomes.
When we are at this cross-road in our spiritual development, we can successfully overcome the crisis and go further, go to the next stage, develop the next more mature spiritual ego, diminish our false identity.
We can fail to do this, and that will basically mean that we will either remain on the same stage of spiritual development or even degrade further, go away, or there may be compromise.
I will do in little more details, explain in more details what it means. What it means overcoming the crisis. Overcoming the crisis which we all have, the crisis of the growth or development means strengthening one's internal integrity.
You know when our ego, uh spiritual ego is very weak, it's not really integrated, so to speak. There's not much integrity in this ego.
So overcoming this, we're getting stronger, more integral, more how to say, more strong identity, spiritual identity.
And at the same time, it always goes hand in hand the closer interaction or integration into the society of devotees.
When our spiritual identity is not really formed, it's very difficult for us to be integrated in the society of devotees.
When we are more integrated, have more integrity inside us, it's easier for us to feel integrated into the society of devotees. And then the new skill or quality is formed.
As I explained before, that each stage of spiritual development is basically characteristic of a certain skill or quality, like trust or ability to appreciate devotees or ability to to depend upon the devotees or ability to act together with the devotees within the society of devotees to act productively in the society of devotees.
So the overcoming means the development of new skill. And the failure if we fail to overcome the crisis, then at best it means that we remain on the same stage. We are not really we are not really going further.
But in the worst case scenario, our internal integrity weakens and we feel estrangement from the society of devotees. It's again parallel processes.
We become weaker as our spiritual integrity becomes more loose and we are alienated from the society of devotees as well.
And we can see when people have some difficulties, problems, usually they go away from the society of devotees or they isolate themselves.
They get some close association of those people who have similar problems and they don't really get more integrated in the wider society of devotees.
And failure also means that we couldn't we were not able to develop the new skill. And Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, it's coming from Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura's description of these different stages.
He said that in each and every stage you have a different set of rules which you should follow.
Different set of regulations, vidhi, and inability to do this, when you don't develop the skill, the new skill, you cannot really function on a new stage.
So this is when we come to compromise, the compromise basically means the situation when one externally goes to the further stage. Externally he kind of makes the next step, but internally he is not really capable of functioning on this stage of spiritual development. I can give not to sound too abstract, I will give a very good example, very simple example, which you I'm sure can relate to.
Sometimes people prematurely take initiation from spiritual master.
Because of the push or the pressure from the devotees, you know, you're for so long you're practicing. Still, he didn't develop really dependence on the spiritual master. He takes initiation.
Externally, he goes to the next level of spiritual development when he is supposed to do bhajanakriya. But he still didn't overcome the crisis in the stage of sādhu sangha.
He really did not become internally dependent on his spiritual master. He does it externally. So he goes to the next stage externally, but he cannot really function on this next stage.
And it actually only prepares the ground for more severe crisis. This problem which he kind of buried under the ground or suppressed, will sooner or later surface. And I've seen it.
Sometimes people prematurely take the initiation and then, you know, then they become you know that this crisis anyway catches them, and sooner or later they will have either to overcome this crisis or go away.
So that's that's the three possible outcomes of the crisis. And now we come to the real material. Yeah, it's we still have three minutes.
Specific crises across stages
So unfortunately, again, I can only name this. The Shraddha, the first level of spiritual development, the crisis which we have on this is the crisis of trust. And I will explain little uh in more detail what it means.
Uh just uh you know I probably will not go too much further, but at least here I want to make clear what I mean.
In the beginning, when we develop some Shraddha in some sadhu, somebody preaches to us and we develop some faith into him. And we develop faith means appreciation, Śrīla Prabhupāda says.
Basically, faith means the appreciation, even little appreciation. He says śraddhā means little, little, little appreciation of some sādhu speaking. But what happens actually, we don't have complete trust to this sadhu.
And we uh there is a pendulum going on in our mind. Sometimes we accept him, sometimes we reject him. And externally it comes like idealization of a sadhu.
Usually, I've seen it in new devotees, they develop some attachment to some sādhu and they start saying some exaggerated things about this sadhu. Oh my guru, he, oh my guru, he' suchs a miracle making.
You know, he did this miracle, he said this and oh Hare Krishna. You know, everything changed immediately. So uh d but this idealization uh which is natural
because one doesn't have genuine appreciation of the sādhu, genuine trust to the sādhu, it uh usually goes into the another extreme of devaluation or deprecation.
I can give you very beautiful examples, but unfortunately there is no time when some you know in the in the beginning and we see this dynamic.
The new fay devotees, they idealize somebody and then they say no no everyone is just uh you know bogus and go to the Ritwick camp, which is a very convenient.
But basically uh Ritwickism is nothing but uh you know the failure to overcome the crisis, the crisis of trust. They really didn't overcome this, this whole Ritwick thing is just this problem.
They didn't go to the further stage of sādhu sangha, they didn't, they were not able to develop proper appreciation of devotees, and therefore this whole philosophy was developed.
So I just only name because I have to finish right now. I just only name the other crises and maybe uh some other time uh we will be able to speak a little more. Sādhu Saṅgha, the Crisis of Fear of Dependence.
Very beautiful examples are there. Syama Sundar Prabhu gives a very beautiful example in his relationship with Śrīla Prabhupāda and yeah Mukunda gives very beautiful example.
No, Satsvarūpa Mahārāja, Satsvarūpa Mahārāja, how he how he was had a fear of dependence, and how he ever came this fear of dependence of Śrīla Prabhupāda.
Then Bhajana Kriya, the crisis is of lack of spiritual test, taste or substitution of goal of the goal. It requires explanation.
And Anartha-nivṛtti the Crisis of Spiritual Failure when one understands that my long career of a devotee was actually a failure, and then he develops the real understanding and comes to the next stage of niṣṭhā.
It's a severe crisis of acute understanding that I did so many things wrong. But it's a very healthy crisis. If we ever come it, we can come to a very substantial stage of spiritual development which is called niṣṭhā.
So it's a very brief description of this. Again, I'm really sorry for not being able to elaborate on this, but you know, I guess we have to finish because our time is over. Thank you very much.
So if you're interested, next time when I have the al uh allocated time I can uh go further if if you're interested. Rather than repeating the same material. If you are?
Okay, so I will make a short overview next time and then go further into this stages. Thank you very much.