How can one distinguish similarities from realities?
By listening from a spiritual guide who is hopefully not illusioned by the similarities.
Another deceiving feature of the material energy is the hope for comfort to be found within the boundaries of this material world.
Too often devotees get caught by the idea to achieve emotional equilibrium despite the severe beatings we all receive in form of miseries derived from other living entities, our own bodies and supernatural powers. The speech Durga is speaking is indeed harsh in order to wake us up from our dreaming state.
Nevertheless, over and over again the conditioned soul reaches out into this miserable world in order to find true love and true peace it so badly desires. Recently one manager asked me how he can avoid being "heavy". When asked in return what would be his definition of "being heavy", he couldn’t specify this expression. As it is based on purely emotional perception, it is ambiguous and so vague that it carries the same meaning as "to be too soft".
Soon or later any preacher and manager in the line of Srila Prabhupada will be accused to be "too heavy". This accusation comes usually from devotees who grew up in some sort of illusory state of believing still into the shelter derived from the myth of social welfare state, academic education and a hope for some sort of career within the material society.
It is for this reason preaching becomes more effective and rewarding in countries and areas where the local residents recently experienced total collapse of such ideals, or never hoped to achieve them to start with. With bullet ridden bodies or suffering from severe economical shortages, such desperate souls are often far more eager receivers of Lord Caitanyas mercy as those fools who still reside in their so called economical advanced countries, wrapped into the illusion of shelter being delivered by a demoniac system which uses them as sheep, just to be shaven or finally killed by their own masters.
Even when finally diving into the pages of Bhagavad Gita or Srimad Bhagavatam, still being habituated to simply being effected by their previous dreams and hopes, engaged in merely academicals studies, such so-called brahmanas ignore the evidently harsh environment they are living in. One of my senior godbrothers exclaimed after more as forty years of studies of the scriptures: “I always preached that we will all die. But NOW I am starting to understand it”. Such is the difference between jnana and vijnana, theoretical and realized knowledge.
Even hearing about the most severe trials of intimate devotees of the Lord in this material world, we still tend to think these "stories" to be allegorical. Not feeling the pain of those whose heads and arms got chopped off on the battle field of Kuruksetra, not feeling the pain of terrible injustice being done to those who deserved to be glorified as great devotees of the Lord, still we cannot follow and understand their pain and the amount of difficulties they had to face.
Despite the false claim of the biggest altruists in this world, only Krsna and His pure devotee can truly understand the cause and the effects of the pain of a conditioned soul. It was here where Srila Prabhupada stopped at a golf course while seeing old men stupidly pushing little white balls into holes in the grass, wasting the last days of their lives; it was here Srila Prabhupada spontaneously cried. At this point when Srila Prabhupada stopped under a tree, observing the pile of bird stool bellow it. To the puzzled devotees he explained that “since there is so much bird stool here, it means that these birds are very attached to these trees. And that means they will have to take birth over and over again in these trees.” It was here where Srila Prabhupada when asked what his most difficult days was said, “Better I don’t tell you”.
It is this impact of pain which brings us closer to the reality in this world and induces us to call out loud for the mercy of the Lord. We have to be eventually torn apart by pain of physical and emotional kind, facing our defeat, rejected by brutal act of divorce, experiencing the loss of those we were most attached to. Finally we will have to lie down and leave the very same body which was the carrier of all our hopes, so we can unconditionally take shelter at Srila Prabhupada’s and Krsna’s lotus feet.
And so the accusation of "being too heavy" remains a comical memory while experiencing the "really heavy" impact of the material energy. Those who have sufficient intelligence will appreciate the "heavy concern" of those who try to save them from their own illusion. They will seek such a "heavy advice" eagerly as they know that "better one asks and looks for few minutes like a fool, as not to ask and look for the rest of one’s life like an idiot."
Cheaters often appear in all kinds of "soft" forms, while well wishers may appear as being uncomfortably "heavy". Srila Prabhupada quotes a very appropriate story in this regard:
Once a man lived in a simple Indian village alone with his son. Every morning he gave his son a clay pot in order to fetch water from the local well. Giving him the pot he slapped him lightly, warning him: “don’t break the pot”. Doing so every morning, he earned the criticism of some of the villagers. “Why are you slapping your son in this way? He didn’t do anything, he didn’t break any pot!” The man responded in a calm and simple way: “Well, what’s the use to slap him AFTER he broke the pot?”
So it is not the heaviness in itself which can cause harm, but the lack of concern. The biggest violence towards any human being is to deny him the right to exist, in other words to ignore him. This mayavada based negligence to the real spiritual need of the individual soul is the ultimate definition of cruelty. And so, despite being "heavy", those who try to facilitate others in devotional service by freeing them from their illusion are truly "soft".
Once, when asked by His disciples “Srila Prabhupada, who are actually these mayavadis?”, Srila Prabhupada’s answer came quickly: “YOU”.
I guess after that there was quite some silence. What is there more to ask?
More as often devotees emerging from the material world in all kinds of depressed shapes and forms embrace the message that this world is a world full of miseries and pain… and get stacked with it. After all, more in pain as being simply curious, in search for money or search for knowledge, most of the new seekers on the path of bhakti lived their lives filled with hedonism leading to frustration and frustration leading to voidism. So empty the world appeared to be that we got fascinated by the appearance of happy chanting bhaktas.
But the path doesn’t end here. Did we really joined Krsna consciousness or we simply remained stacked on the pendulum while it has swung from bhoga to tyaga?
Once being placed in the fire of Krsna consciousness our real motivation will be tested. The test comes in form of other patients in Srila Prabhupada’s wonderful hospital we meet, patients in different stages of recovery and different stages of disease. Realizing one’s own diseased condition should make it easy to join them while eagerly taking the universal medicine Srila Prabhupada administered to us. Remembering the choice we always have, to return to the perfectly insane environment we came from where everybody considers him sane and happy while dying should enable us to appreciate the presence of those who do eagerly embrace the process of Krsna consciousness as given by Srila Prabhupada.
But alas, even in the hospital some start to believe to be of sound health while listening to their minds and false egos. Proudly they march down the corridors, commanding other patients as if they were the creators of the very same institution they derive benefits from. Sometimes even the doctors become diseased, forgetting who the chief and the creator of the institution they serve in really are. And so they may be finally replaced by the agents of maya, just to make room for new, more grateful and humble servants, who are eager to glorify the hospital Founder.
Then there are those who insist to dwell in the existentialistic bitterness, defining any relationship as being mundane. Those who once tasted the sweet rice mixed with sand declare any sweet rice to be contaminated and so they think spiritual progress means to fast. Never leaving the mental platform they insist to see the world through their minds and the perverted intellect. Using the sastra to simply justify their social incompetence they, despite their academic knowledge, flee in presence of "danger" to be personally addressed and possibly exposed. They hide behind achman cups, institutional designations, they retreat to lonely locations, they burry their heads in the laps of their soon departing wives, they seek shelter in Holy Places, masquerading as renunciates, while the only thing they truly fear is the presence of their own personal identity.
And so, as strict ritualistic followers they are, they are scared of the final challenge, to serve together Srila Prabhupada’s mission while putting aside one’s own conditions for material and even spiritual survival. Not understanding the openheartedness of those who serve unconditionally, free of fear of personal identity, such introverts sometimes declare such enthusiastic preachers to be "fanatics" without any "deeper realizations". As they sink deeper and deeper into the darkest regions of their minds, believing "academic" to be "brahminical", such introverts and narcists cannot understand the bliss of those who gave their hearts to Srila Prabhupada.
And so, despite their strictness and their academic knowledge, they remain contaminated by mayavada, limiting their spiritual life to mental regions only. As the mind has no limits while creating either total illusory or at best improper identities, the truth finally has to come out and such an unpurified "bhakta" has to return to wherever his unfulfilled desires may take him. He may either go mad by still surprising such desires entirely or he may break out of his mental cocoon and indulge in most primitive and basic sense gratification.
It is here where Srila Prabhupada, coming from a "culture of open windows" as he once so nicely described, issued his warning when he showed us that mayavada is far closer as we can imagine. Seeing Krsna consciousness as an escape from relationships of any kind or as some exit from responsibilities our personal existence brings to us is a grievous misunderstanding. Not embracing the true nature of our very self, us, being eternally individual and personal souls, trying to hide behind the practice of one’s chanting and sastric studies is of such a schizophrenic nature that such a kanistha adhikari must either give up this self destructive mentality or… go insane.