Pleasing Krishna

I had been wondering about how to make progress on the spiritual path, and came up with a question to pose to Swamiji. The question was, "What is the most important thing that I should keep in mind when trying to make spiritual advancement?" And Swamiji's answer was, to focus on pleasing the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna. And as I have learned from the Vedic scriptures, in order to perform devotional service to Krishna, one actually performs service to Guru because Guru is Krishna's representative.

On the spiritual path, when one endeavors to please Krishna, one should focus on remembering Him at all times, as is recommended in the Bhagavad Gita. But sometimes we need to do things that are required for our maintenance in this world, such as study in school or work in a job. If these tasks require deep thought, how can we remember Krishna? The Bhagavad Gita answers this question where it says for one who sees Krishna in everything, He is never lost to that person nor is that person ever lost to Him. But this stage is not achieved until we become self-realized. Nevertheless, as Swamiji has told me, before we reach self-realization, since we are not always able to remember Krishna, if we concentrate on a task at hand that is necessary for our maintenance so that we are able to serve Krishna better, such action becomes spiritualized, and thus is not unwanted in spiritual life. Before the stage of self-realization, we may not be remembering Krishna at all times, but at least all of our activity can be spiritualized. And in due course, if all our activities are spiritualized then we will become self-realized.

Nevertheless, we should still endeavor to remember Krishna at all times that we possibly can. For example, I remember that a few days ago I was thinking a lot about this materialistic world and all the faults of materialistic people. I was basically thinking how very few people in this world care about the true Vedic lifestyle, and thus I was spending a lot of time seeing faults in worldly people for not understanding the true value of following the Vedic scriptures. But then I realized that this attitude is not always ideal in spiritual life. Because a true spiritualist should focus primarily on correcting their own faults rather than wasting time thinking about the faults of others. I had noticed by thinking so much about all the faults of others, I had forgotten to focus on remembering Krishna. So I reminded myself that I should endeavor more to remember Krishna and to please Him. And today I have been doing better in this regard than I was then, because I have put in that extra effort to focus on pleasing Krishna and remembering Him.

It's not easy to always remember Krishna. I myself can tell that I have quite a ways to go until I become self-realized, because even though at times I try to remember Krishna, there are many times where my mind gets sidetracked from where it should be and forgets about Krishna. This is not uncommon for people who are trying to be devotees and it is a problem that is not easy to overcome.

One thing is for sure, the more we endeavor to please Krishna, and the more of our life we dedicate to devotional service, the more we will be able to think about Krishna and the closer we will come to the spiritual world. So an intelligent person should dedicate as much of their life to serving Krishna and remembering Krishna as they can. We may forget about Krishna at times, but we just have to keep remembering to bring our minds back to Him. We may deviate from the spiritual path and engage in materialistic activity because of our past karma, but we should struggle to focus on spiritual life rather than material life as much as we can.

One who wants to advance on the spiritual path should first and foremost develop a connection with a scripturally authorized Guru, like His Divine Grace Mahamandaleshwar Mahant Krishna Balaram Swamiji. Because without a connection to such a scripturally authorized Guru, all our efforts to advance on the spiritual path will be futile. One has to have a connection to a living, authentic Spiritual Master in order to inquire about spiritual life from and to serve so that one's devotional service gets recognized by Krishna.

An authentic Spiritual Master will test his potential disciples and disciples in many ways. Sometimes the Spiritual Master may say something that seems disagreeable to test the disciple's or potential disciple's tolerance and humility. Even if the Guru acts in a seemingly disagreeable way, or criticizes a follower for something they think they have not done wrong, still the disciple or potential disciple should not speak disagreeably and humbly try to follow the Spiritual Master's advice and continue to try to please him in every way. One should never argue with one's scripturally authentic Guru because it can result in an offense and one should seek to please one's authentic Guru in every way because an authentic Guru is a representative of Lord Krishna.

So we all should do the best we can in order to dedicate our lives to serving Lord Krishna. And in order to do this, we must accept a living scripturally authentic Spiritual Master and follow his commands. This is the only way for a conditioned soul to perform devotional service. While we are in this material world we must accept an authentic Spiritual Master so our services are recognized. If Guru is not authorized by the ancient scriptures, our devotional service will not be recognized by Krishna. Swamiji is the only scripturally authentic Spiritual Master whose organization exists in the Western world, just as Srila Prabhupada was the only one in his times. This should be no surprise because the Vedic scriptures state that an authentic Guru is very rarely found. So let's try our best to serve Lord Krishna by making a connection with Swamiji and serving him to the best of our ability so our services are recognized by Lord Krishna.

- James Walker