2021.12.12 - Crisis of faith - Bhakti Vijnana Goswami

The development of a devotee is very much similar to the development of a child. The development of both a child and a beginner devotee is the development of their ego. We, as devotees, develop spiritual ego. Ego has two aspects: 'I' or ahanta and 'mine' or mamata. Ego is the beginning of everything. Spiritual ego defines your role (service, mood) in a spiritual world. For the development of ego, both spiritual and material, you need proper association. If this association is nourishing and healthy, it helps us to develop our proper spiritual identity and will contribute to our success. Any influence, which we have in the formative years of our development, is crucially important for the development of our personality, because in the early years our protective shield is not developed, therefore we are very vulnerable. The crisis is an event, which necessarily takes place when you go from one stage of spiritual development to another. Sometimes it’s very painful, it is the internal process, which manifests externally. If you overcome the crisis, then you come one step closer to Krisna, you become more integrated internally and you become more integrated into the society of the devotees externally. Sraddha means appreciation of devotees. It is a period of nourishment. A person with sraddha needs to have shelter of selfless and unconditional devotee, he also needs knowledge of the Vedas. At this stage we have a crisis of trust. Oftentimes sadhu has to show some miracles, for a beginner devotee to develop and strengthen faith in this sadhu. Sadhu-sanga means you like people, and you start looking at them as your gurus. To come to this stage we have a crisis of independence. At that stage we take pranama-mantra, and we learn how to speak as a devotee. First initiation means bhajana-kriya. On this level we learn how to act as a devotee, and it is very important to have peer association, without it there will be no development. There are many crises on this level. We practice devotional service, but we don’t have profound taste in it because we are too engrossed in matter, therefore we try to derive taste from something else. There is crisis of the substitution of goals, when we have false goals, and crisis of lack of spiritual taste. When one overcomes all these crises he becomes a powerful preacher, but his spiritual ego is still immature. Therefore to get to the nistha platform he has to destroy the “spiritual persona” which he developed, and Krisna will help him to do it. This is a very painful crisis, but it helps to become tolerant, ready to respect anyone.