Impetus to Act

The attitude of the devotee is he is always looking to see what is the desire of Krishna and what is the desire of the spiritual master. He doesn't initiate anything except when he gets that inspiration from them. Then he acts. The materialist is always cooking up something, always inventing something, concocting something, and he wants to distinguish himself from others by creating something unique, but a devotee is just the opposite. He is always looking to Krishna and to Prabhupada, what do they want, and on that inspiration he acts, and on that basis he uses his creative potency and his passion.

Translation [Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.15.21]: "I have the very same Gandiva bow, the same arrows, the same chariot drawn by the same horses, and I use them as the same Arjuna to whom all the kings offered their due respects. But in the absence of Lord Krishna, all of them, at a moment's notice, have become null and void. It is exactly like offering clarified butter on ashes, accumulating money with a magic wand or sowing seeds on barren land."

Purport by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada: As we have discussed more than once, one should not be puffed up by borrowed plumes. All energies and powers are derived from the supreme source, Lord Krishna, and they act as long as He desires and cease to function as soon as He withdraws. All electrical energies are received from the powerhouse, and as soon as the powerhouse stops supplying energy, the bulbs are of no use. In a momentís time such energies can be generated or withdrawn by the supreme will of the Lord. Material civilization without the blessing of the Lord is childís play only. As long as the parents withdraw, the child has to stop. Human civilization and all activities thereof must be dovetailed with the supreme blessing of the Lord, and without this blessing all advancement of human civilization is like decoration on a dead body. It is said here that a dead civilization accumulation of money by a magic wand and the sowing of seeds in a barren land. [End of reading.]

Krishna withdrew his power, because the lila (pastime) was over. Although he had all the same… [Arjuna was saying] "I have the same bow, the same arrows, everything, but nothing stopped them." But in every lila, there are so many aspects. The ladies also were cursed, so that curse had to be fulfilled, and the lila was over, so there was no necessity for Arjuna to be powerful. But there was a necessity for the ladies to be kidnapped, so all these things. Krishna is orchestrating everyone in lila.

The thing that we always forget… we always feel that we have the potency to exercise our will and our discretion. And we do, but if Krishna over-rides it, then…. The ultimate cause of everything is Krishna, and whatever we are able to exhibit is only because He allows us to do it. We are always secondary, and He is always primary. This is the difficulty. This is the thing that the materialistic person cannot accept. Spiritual life, to him, means becoming… that he has no… that is, his will to act, his inspiration is removed, and he sees it as something like being dead.

The attitude of the devotee is he is always looking to see what is the desire of Krishna and what is the desire of the spiritual master. He doesn't initiate anything except when he gets that inspiration from them. Then he acts. The materialist is always cooking up something, always inventing something, concocting something, and he wants to distinguish himself from others by creating something unique, but a devotee is just the opposite. He is always looking to Krishna and to Prabhupada, what do they want, and on that inspiration he acts, and on that basis he uses his creative potency and his passion. The inspiration for the karmi's action is just false ego, and for the devotee, the inspiration is the will or the ego (if we want to say that) of the Lord, the ego of the spiritual master.

Vrindaranya Das: You are speaking of the Krishna lila, pastimes of Krishna. A devotee may try and refrain from doing something that is sinful, but then due to his imperfection to understand Krishna's desire, he does something wrong, how do we explain that?

Hansadutta Das: Well, you can ignore Krishna, or you can… Ignoring Krishna means doing sinful, IS sinful. Just ignoring Krishna is sinful. To not be conscious of Krishna is sinful. That's what sinful is: to be unconscious. It results in sinful…. And to be conscious of Krishna means to be spiritual, Krishna conscious. So we are practicing Krishna consciousness, to be conscious of Krishna always, even when sleeping. Prabhupada said that a pure devotee doesn't sleep; he's in a trance. He's not sleeping. We sleep. Because our mind wanders, we think of non-Krishna things while sleeping. But a pure devotee apparently, even when sleeping, is thinking in some way of Krishna, so he's not sleeping; he's actually conscious of Krishna. And we're always sleeping. When we're sleeping, we're sleeping, and when we're awake, we're sleeping. Occasionally we have some glimpse, a glimmer of Krishna consciousness. Hare Krishna.