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Krishna's Desires

Lecture held on 6. September 2020 at Sri Sri Radha Govinda Gaudiya Math, Traiskirchen, Austria

Śrīla Bhakti Sādhaka Muni Goswāmi Mahārāja


Disciple: Gurudeva, You were talking before about desires, desires that we are constantly trying to control or to fulfill, but if we don’t have the eyes to see Krishna how do we distinguish what is my desire and what is Krishna's will?


Śrīla BS Muni Mahārāja: How to know what is Krishna’s desire?

Disciple: Yes.

Śrīla BS Muni Mahārāja: We are used in this material world not to care about others. We want only to fulfill our personal desires. Basically, this material world is very egoistic. We all want to enjoy. So if we want to know what Krishna wants, we should contact a bonafide spiritual master and surrender to him, to the supreme master. Shastras told:


tad viddhi praṇipātena

paripraśnena sevayā

upadekṣyanti te jñānaṁ

jñāninas tattva-darśinaḥ


Bhagavad Gita says this. If you want to know the truth, you have to approach a bonafide spiritual master. You have to ask questions in a humble way and you have to serve him. He can reveal the truth, he can reveal the truth to you because he has seen it. He is in connection with the Lord. Yoga… what means Yoga? Yoga means connection. You have to be connected with the Supreme, with Bhagavan. Those who are connected they know what Krishna wants. If we are not sure then we have to ask.


This is the material world, this is a rule, therefore we have to act according to the laws of this material world. If you are not working according to the laws, you will get punished by material nature. We think we can do whatever we want, but everything has a reaction. Specially if we are coming in the temple of Vishnu, of Lord Vishnu. We should not think that we are in a kindergarten discussing all kind of mundane topics, we will not understand anything, we cannot get blessings of anyone like this. We have to consider the Lord, who is standing here. The devotee or the spiritual master called Him with a big ceremony, the Lord accepted, and the spiritual master asked Him to receive the service of His devotees. As long as we serve Him properly, He will be here. If we are not properly behaving, He will only be a stone. But He is here because He is called by a pure Devotee the same way one who is committed, one who knows the Lord, he knows what He wants, He also knows how to please Him. So if we do not know, we should not put ourselves, our desires, because our desires are 80% my desires and 20% of Krishna. The pure devotee, he is not thinking in I and mine, He thinks everything is His, everything belongs to Him. My whole existence belongs to Him. Everything that I can see in this world, everything belongs to Him. We can see Him everywhere.


So this is the difference between a devotee and a karmi. Karma means one who is involved in karma reactions and is attached to the fruit of his working, and he comes to temple to get something. We have to go to the temple to give something without asking anything in return. But this we have never learnt in the material world. We only want to get, we don’t want to give, we don’t want to please the Lord because maybe we are atheists, we don’t believe that He really exists. It is like this. We always want to be like Him, we want to enjoy like Him. It is not easy. Bhakti Yoga means, through Bhakti, through devotion to surrender to the Lord, to know what He wants. As long as there is any desire for I and mine we will not understand Him. This is the truth. Truth is hurting. We don't want to hear the truth. We want to hear something flowery and nice things… but this will not help you, this will keep you in this world going on. If we are able to accept that the Lord exists, we should not make Him our servant, we should take the position of servants. We should forget our desires… He knows perfectly what we want, what we like, what we need… so Krishna will give us all these things. We will become devotees of Him only if we have faith, śraddhā, and then everything will be fulfilled. This is Krishna Consciousness. Krishna Consciousness means conscious of Krishna, the Lord. We are very attracted to the Lord in Vrindavan, because Vrindavan is the place in which the Lord reveals His most confidential pastimes. He is acting like a normal boy and all His associates are there. He performs pastimes, but we should not talk about these topics openly, we cannot even understand that we are not the body, how can we understand the transcendental pastimes? We are still identified with this bag of flesh, blood…all dirty things. This is not me, it is not my real self. So the first question is: we have to understand who we are. If you think you am a member of this material world then the Lord will give you all the facilities so that you can do this but then you will have to deal with the reactions of your karma, action and reaction. If you do good, you will get good but still you cannot escape from birth, disease, old age and death. This will be there as long as we live in this material world. As soon as we understood who we are, that we are jivatma, a transcendental person, we will not take birth again, you will not die.


Can you believe this?


For pure devotees this is not a topic that they believe or not, this is reality. This is much more real than this world we are in.

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