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Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, a revered spiritual leader, guides seekers on deepening their devotion to Krishn. In this Q&A, Swami Ji highlights the role of the intellect in strengthening our emotional connection with God, encouraging us to reflect on the urgency of finding Krishn, and the spiritual loss of missing this rare opportunity.

Question & Answer with Swami Ji

Question: How can I come closer to God?

Answer: There are two forms of mind: the emotional form, and the intellectual form. The intellect is the governing power in your personality. Whatever your intellect decides to do you act accordingly. You want to see, you don’t want to see, you want to get up, you want to lie down. Your mind says all the time, “This is bad. This is good. Go there. Follow this.” It is all the decisive mind, the intellect.

The simple answer is, the more deeply you understand with your intellect that, “Oh, I must love Krishn, He is my only beloved,” the more deeply you feel for Krishn. If there is less understanding, there is less giving of the heart. If there is more understanding there is more giving of the heart. Understand and you have given your heart simultaneously. There is not even a fraction of a second delay.

I’ll give you an example. There was a little boy. His school was past a wooded area, so he used to get scared when he came home in the evenings. One day he told his mother. She said, “You have an older brother, he lives in the woods. His name is Gopal and if you need him, he will come.”

One day when he was coming home late, he got really scared, in the dark jungle with wild beasts, jackals howling. He called out, “Gopal, Gopal, Gopal, GOPAL!” He called as if he was going to die. Gopal had to come. Gopal means Krishn.

Now take this whole incident. The boy took it to his heart in the very beginning when his mother told him, “Your brother is there.” He liked the idea of having someone, but he was not that desperate. But when he saw the disaster, he was desperate, “Oh, I have to find my brother Gopal.” He gave his heart completely to Krishn and He had to appear.

The same thing happens with every devotee. First, how seriously do you take that He is yours? Then, how seriously do you take it that if you don’t meet Him in this lifetime, what may happen. There are two things, what you will gain by finding Krishn and what you will lose if you don’t find Him. Both things incite your excitement towards finding Him.

If we keep these two things in our intellect our heart is already given to Krishn – to the extent of our understanding of that Divine love, which Brahma sought for millions of years but did not find. Oh, that love?! How great it is. And if you lose this chance? You may lose millions, trillions of lifetimes. Who knows?

Conclusion:

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati emphasizes that a deep intellectual understanding of Krishn’s divinity naturally opens the heart to divine love. By recognizing the urgency of connecting with Krishn and understanding the profound loss if we don’t, we can strengthen our devotion and draw closer to Him in this lifetime.

The teachings of Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, a revered spiritual guide, are dedicated to guiding devotees on their path to Radha-Krishn’s divine love. Heemphasizes the importance of self-reflection and sincere devotion for spiritual progress. In this insightful Q&A session, Swami Ji explains the true markers of progress on the devotional path, highlighting the role of faith, reduced material attachments, and unwavering confidence in Krishn’s presence. Through his profound answers, he inspires seekers to trust in the grace of their Master and the transformative power of divine love.

Question & Answer with Swami Prakashanand Saraswati

Question: How can we determine how much progress we are making on the path?

Answer: There are many factors involved in progress. Your past sanskars and your present devotion are the main ones. Past sanskars include all kinds of good and bad sanskars. Present devotion includes present association, study, environment, attachments, faith, dedication, and discipline in doing devotions. All these factors determine your devotion. So it becomes difficult for your own mind to judge its progress. This your Master knows.

Progress means faith and confidence.

Suppose a devotee has received for the first time divine-love-consciousness and he feels a great thrill and longing in his heart, tears in his eyes, and another devotee is not feeling those things, but he has great expectations, hope, that Krishn will surely come to him soon. Outwardly both look very different, the first looks very highly evolved, the second just ordinary, but it may be the other way. The first one might not have that much confidence in Krishn coming quickly to him. The second one might have more confidence and faith in Krishn. So it is very difficult to judge on your own.

However, you can see your material attachment. Is it lessening or not? If it is not increasing, if it is staying the same it’s not bad. It should not be increasing.

How much faith do you have? Faith means how much confidence you have that Krishn will really come, “I will see Krishn, without doubt.” With this feeling, you feel a kind of closeness with Radha and Krishn, while working, or not working, even while sleeping you feel Krishn is always with you. So, both decrease in your material attachments, and an increase in your feeling of confidence and closeness with Krishn are a few indications of your progress. But don’t try to judge others. When you cannot judge your own progress exactly, how can you judge others?

If you want to know exactly where you are, think in another way. How much love, reverence, confidence, faith do you have in your Master and Radha Krishn? More than that they give you Their own Grace and blessings.

Conclusion: Swami Prakashanand Saraswati shares that true progress involves reducing material attachments, deepening our faith, and feeling closer to Radha-Krishn. Trust in your Master’s grace and their divine guidance to stay steadfast on the path of devotion.

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati was a revered spiritual teacher who dedicated his life to explaining the profound depths of divine love and the path to God realization. He emphasized that Krishn’s love represents the ultimate sweetness and bliss in the Divine realm, far surpassing all other forms of divine experiences. His teachings help us understand that while the essence of God remains one, the bliss experienced in Krishn love is unparalleled, as illustrated by the saints and scriptures throughout history.

According to Swami Prakashanand Saraswati…

Krishn is the absolute, supreme, and the ultimate sweetness of Divine love. God is only one, but there are variations in Divine status. The blissfulness of Krishn love does differ from the blissfulness of other Divine forms. Although it is totally impossible to intellectually comprehend how these differences exist in the Divine world, we can still try to faithfully understand this fact according to the historical events and the experiences of the Saints.

Brahma attempted to fathom the greatness of Krishn love with His own ultimate yogic powers, and He failed. Bhagwan Shiva resides in the Divine abode. He himself is God. Yet, He came running to receive Krishn’s grace and vision when Krishn appeared in Braj 5,000 years ago.

When Bhagwan Ram appeared in TretaYug, there were many great devotees living in Dandak forest. They desired the ultimate experience of Divine-love from Bhagwan Ram. Because He is a modest form of Divine-love, Bhagwan Ram blessed them to be reborn as Gopis in Braj in order for them to receive the supreme form of Divine-love, the ultimate bliss of love through Krishn, which they received during Maharas.

These instances show the ultimate supremacy of Krishn love. Try to understand with this example: a sweet drink can be made sweeter by adding honey or maple syrup, which will dissolve and make the drink thicker without increasing the volume. The thicker drink is sweeter. Similarly, there are varying intensities of Divine sweetness and blissfulness.

In this world material happiness and love has two stages: conscious and partly engrossed. There cannot be total engrossment in material pleasure because at every step of worldly enjoyment your soul remains dissatisfied and desires the bliss of the Divine. Any worldly happiness is short-lived and requires the sacrifice of your time, energy, effort, and intellect. Your soul is not satisfied by material attainments. It demands the experience of ultimate, Divine bliss, beauty, and contentment.

Before the Divine attainment, there is a devotional stage. In the devotional stage there is an experience of blissfulness which is neither Divine nor material. The engrossment in devotional love increases as the devotee proceeds on the path to God realization. When your mind is fully engrossed in divine-love during the devotional period, you enter into divine- love samadhi (divine-love trance). The devotional experience of love occurs in all the three stages: the conscious stage, partially engrossed stage, and fully engrossed stage. This happiness is far greater than worldly happiness yet much less than Divine happiness.

The first Divine stage is like the experience of Vaikunthdham (the abode of Mahavishnu and almighty forms of God). The second is like the blissfulness of Saket or Dwarika dham (the abode of Bhagwam Ram and Dwarkadish), and the third and ultimate is like the bliss of Vrindaban dham (Krishn love). Although these are all Divine stages there are variations in the experience of blissfulness.

In Ujwalneelmani, Jeev Goswami explains the various stages and experiences of devotional and Divine blissfulness in Krishn love. In the devotional stage one “enters” into samadhi, but in the Divine stage there is a natural, eternal samadhi (sahaj samadhi). In that Divine samadhi there is a stage where one is Divinely conscious even in the dream state and deep-sleep state.

He experiences an ever-increasing blissfulness of Divine-love. There are seven states of conscious samadhi and nine states of semiconscious and unconscious samadhi. For instance: jagratjagrat, jagratswapna, could be translated as natural, Divine transcendence in a fully awakened state, natural, Divine transcendence in a fully awakened-like, dream state, and so on. There are sixteen Divine states of Gopi love or Krishn love which a devotee experiences with the Divine grace of Radha-Krishn.

Thus the Divine experience of Krishn love is absolutely supreme and beyond all Divine experiences of Divine blissfulness.

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati thus explains how the divine experience of Krishn love is the highest form of spiritual bliss; it surpasses all other divine experiences in its depth and intensity. Prakashanand Saraswati illustrates how progression through the stages of devotional love leads to an ever-increasing awareness of this supreme divine love. Following this path, a devotee may finally be graced to receive the ultimate state of true Divine Love, which is beyond worldly comprehension.

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati emphasizes that true human happiness transcends worldly pursuits and is rooted in the soul’s longing for Divine perfection. He guides us to recognize that while mental desires are fleeting and limited, the soul’s ultimate goal is to connect with Krishn and experience pure, unending Divine love.

Swami Prakashanand Saraswati emphasizes…

Every human being has two kinds of desires: (a) An internal desire comes from the soul which is to find Divine perfection or God and (b) many other desires which the human mind forms on its own. All mental desires relate to perception. When a person perceives something interesting, he begins to desire for it, not before that.

For instance, a person who is blind since birth and has never seen anything in the world cannot desire for anything that is visually beautiful. The world is full of many interesting and attractive things that multiply your desires every day, these are all worldly desires.

Your inner desire is only one and it is to meet God. It comes from your soul, which is located next to your fully unconscious mind. Next to your soul is Krishn and between your soul and Krishn there is a cosmic veil, the mayic curtain (known in our scriptures as chit-jad-granthi), which prohibits the soul from receiving Krishn love. The soul’s desire for Divine perfection is transferred through your fully unconscious mind to subconscious mind, which transfers it to your conscious mind. But your conscious mind only sees outwardly, it cannot interpret the Divineness of the desire, so it tries to fulfill the soul’s innate desire by offering it worldly things.

Saints give us the knowledge that we are desiring for perfect love and happiness, which is non-existent in the material realm. Furthermore, every worldly situation has its negative aspect: pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, life and death. You may try for billions of lifetimes to achieve perfection and to change this situation in this world, but you can never succeed because mayic energy has an inherent nature of both, good and bad qualities, and also has limitations.

Saints and the scriptures explain that the Divine realm has a nature and character of unlimited peace, joy, luxury and love. This Divine realm is just next to your soul. When you accept these facts, it is the beginning of jigyasa (the desire to know the truth).

You have lived uncountable lifetimes and so your mind has developed worldly consciousness, which stays in your conscious mind. Worldly consciousness means attachment to your physical body, friends, and relatives. A devotee has to transcend this kind of consciousness and realize his true and eternal relation with Krishn.

The heart is the seat of your mind, your soul, and Krishn. All three reside in your heart region. There is a Divya-akash, the Divine space, located near the center of your heart. Bring your mind to your heart and try to feel it centered there. Expand your self-awareness along with this feeling that Krishn is your eternal Divine beloved and you are His eternal lover. Practice this meditation during your devotions, in the morning and evening, and gradually your awareness of Divine love will expand, and you will realize that Krishn is next to your soul. At this stage you will receive less attraction to the world and more attraction to Krishn.

When this awareness develops it is called ‘divine-love-consciousness”.

Even the greatest yogis cannot cross the fully unconscious part of the mind, be- cause the subconscious mind is the limit of yog, and you have to cross the fully unconscious mind to reach Krishn. Shankaracharya says:

“Shudhyati hi nantratma Krishn pad-ambhojbhaktimrite”

“Only through the Grace of Krishn your heart is completely purified.”

You cannot proceed on your own efforts. Only Krishn’s Grace takes you across subconscious, unconscious and fully unconscious mind and ensures His vision.

So, try to keep the awareness of Krishn love in your heart. Retain this consciousness for the maximum time each day and night, and you will be proceeding towards the desire of your soul, the ultimate Divine realization… the Krishn love. Thus, Swami Prakashanand Saraswati elucidates that while mental desires stem from worldly perceptions and are inherently limited, the soul’s true desire is to experience Divine love and perfection. By focusing on spiritual practices and seeking Krishn’s grace, one can transcend material desires and achieve the ultimate realization of Divine love.