Praying To The Pastime Personalities

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(purebhakti.com) – Praying To The Pastime Personalities

Sri Srimad Bhaktivedanta Narayana Gosvami Maharaja
Mathura, India: Summer of 1994

Devotee: In ISKCON I’m pretending to be an older devotee, a senior devotee, but here in your sanga I see that I’m junior to the juniors. I’m just at the very beginning of bhakti.

Srila Gurudeva: You are my very little dear, darling daughter. You have taken birth only two or three days ago.

Devotee: I feel like I am going back and forth between a pretend situation and a real situation. I’m wondering if I should keep going back and forth with the make-believe situation; or should I concentrate more on the real situation, which is that I’m not really a teacher or a guide?

Srila Gurudeva: You are a senior Vaisnava, an actual Vaisnava.

Devotee: I keep going back and forth. Will I make more advancement if I just concentrate on the fact that I’m a little baby in bhakti?

Srila Gurudeva: You can follow your Prabhupada and myself. Both of us are doing bhajana and also giving something to others. When I sit at the lotus feet of my Gurudeva, I see that I am very foolish, actually knowing nothing. Then, being anywhere else, I see that everyone is sleeping; they don’t know anything about bhakti, not even ABCD. I will then tell them whatever I have heard from my Gurudeva.

So, we should do both – bhajana and preaching – as our forefathers and acaryas have done; otherwise, we will be deficient.

Devotee: We’ll be lacking something?

Srila Gurudeva: Yes, yes. According to what our Gurudeva has taught us, we have to preach. Caitanya Mahaprabhu has told us, “You should preach, ‘Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna.'”

yare dekha, tare kaha ‘krsna’-upadesa
amara ajnaya guru hana tara’ ei desa
(Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Madhya-lila, 7.128)

[Instruct everyone to follow the orders of Lord Sri Krsna as they are given in the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam. In this way become a spiritual master and try to liberate everyone in this land.]

kabhu na badhibe tomara visaya-taranga
punarapi ei thani pabe mora sanga
(Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Madhya-lila, 7.129)

[If you follow this instruction, your materialistic life at home will not obstruct your spiritual advancement. Indeed, if you follow these regulative principles, we will again meet here, or, rather, you will never lose My company.]

Mahaprabhu said, “You should become guru, and on My behalf give the holy name to the world. Because I am with you, no worldly maya will come and touch you.” But do not think, “I am an acarya, I am guru.” Think only that, “I am fulfilling the wish of Caitanya Mahaprabhu. I am carrying out the orders of my Gurudeva.” Telling others what I have learned from my Gurudeva is also a kind of bhajana.

Suppose I am giving class and I am sitting on a ‘throne,’ higher than others. Still, when Gurudeva or any senior Vaisnava comes, I will get down from there and pray to them, “Please speak. I don’t know anything.”

Devotee: We try to remember the pastimes of Krsna, and you have said that the pastimes are personalities. But the pastimes include many personalities, like Yasoda, Krsna, Nanda Maharaja…

Srila Gurudeva: They are all included in one.

Devotee: How?

Srila Gurudeva: This is their speciality.

That pastime personality is prema-bhakti, and in prema-bhakti there are five different personalities: Santa (neutral relation), dasya (servitorship), sakhya (friendship), vatsalya (parenthood), and madhurya (conjugal service). We should pray to madhurya-bhakti, which lives in the gopis, and among the gopis, Srimati Radhika is the embodiment of hladini-sakti (Sri Krsna’s pleasure potency). When hladini-sakti and samvit-sakti mix together, that essence is called lila-sakti, or Yogamaya. If we pray to this Yogamaya, Paurnamasi, who is a manifestation of Srimati Radhika, she will arrange that a chain of pastimes will automatically manifest in our hearts.

Devotee: So, the pastime personality is Yogamaya?

Srila Gurudeva: Yogamaya.

Uddhava-kyari