Falldown from Spiritual Life...!!!

By: Nandagopal Jivan das

Part- I

This time, we decided that we’ll discuss a little bit on falldown from spiritual life. You might think this a discouraging topic. Krishna consciousness, after all, offers us great hope. It cleanses our heart, frees us from illusions, and re-awakens our dormant love for Krishna. And it does this potently and quickly. Why then should we talk about falldown? Simply: Because it happens.

After starting on the path, not everyone makes it all the way—at least not in one lifetime.

In one sense, that’s why we’re here. To be attracted to Krishna consciousness now, we must have pursued it before, in a previous lifetime. Yet somehow we fell short of our goal. And so we’ve come back, in another birth—and with another chance. By carefully using this opportunity, we can attain perfection, even in this life. And for the sake of success, it’s vital for us to know what dangers to expect along the way.

Striving for Krishna consciousness is like declaring war on maya. “The trouble with you,” Srila Prabhupada once told some disciples, “is that you’re not sufficiently afraid of maya.” Maya, illusion, is very powerful. And the serious transcendentalist never underestimates its strength. We should expect maya to fight back. So we should know Maya’s power and maya’s tactics. We should know how to protect ourselves. We should know how to guard our flanks, rescue the wounded, and recover from setbacks. And we should know that victory is certain—as long as we depend upon Krishna. Lord Krishna says in Bhagavad-Gita that maya is insurmountable because it is His divine power. But when we surrender to Krishna’s lotus feet we can overcome maya and enter Krishna’s abode, the eternal world of the Absolute Truth. To help us surrender to Krishna and reach that spiritual world is the purpose of ISKCON Youth Forum.

In Bhagavad-gita Arjuna asks Lord Krishna, “What happens if I start this practice of yoga and then later I fall down? Then I’m nowhere. I’ve given up my material life, and I’ve ruined my spiritual life. Now I don’t have anything. I’ve lost on both sides. So what will happen to me?”

This question comes up theoretically in Bhagavad-gita and it comes up practically within our own experience. After we take to spiritual life, either we may fall down, or we may see others around us fall down. Falldown is a concern that everyone—on any spiritual path—has to deal with.

First we should ask ourselves, what is falldown?

“When one vows to follow a spiritual path but later strays from it, one has fallen.” In Krishna consciousness, for example, at initiation one pledges before the spiritual master to chant the Hare Krishna mantra at least 16 rounds each day and follow four regulations: no intoxication, no illicit sex, no gambling, and no meat-eating. To break these vows is to fall. Beyond this, one may give up the spiritual life altogether. In 1966 Srila Prabhupada once said that one who gives up Krishna consciousness falls again into the material pool. Srila Prabhupada imitated the sound of a stone falling into water—“bloop!” From that moment on, “Bloop” soon became standard devotee lingo. To leave Krishna consciousness was to bloop.

In one sense, all of us in the material world have blooped. We’ve forgotten Krishna and fallen from the spiritual world. Now we’re trying to revive our spiritual life. And however far we’ve come, we ought to be moving steadily forward. Yet sometimes we stumble and slip back. Why? What causes falldown? How do we keep from falling—and help others keep from falling too? When devotees on the path do fall, how should we treat them? And what do we do if we should fall ourselves? It’ll be discussed here.

One of the most persistent underlying causes of falldown is not merely being careless with the regulative principles but maintaining offenses—in particular, offenses against the holy name—and not engaging in an effort to clear them up. If one is trying to clear up offenses, even though the offenses may be there, one is on the “clearing” stage and will continue to make spiritual advancement. But if one commits offenses and doesn’t try to rectify them, he stops making spiritual advancement, and after a while he gradually loses interest in the path of Krishna consciousness. That’s described in The Nectar of Devotion as the “waning-moon effect.” Somehow one’s enthusiasm for Krishna consciousness gradually disappears, like the waning moon. Why am I losing interest? It’s because of not trying to clear up offenses.

Actually this is not the only reason. There are many. Sometimes falldown might result from committing offenses against a devotee. And pride goes before a fall. Not enough hearing and chanting is also one of the reasons.

In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna Himself pinpoints the causes, in the Second Chapter, verses 62 and 63. These are two verses every devotee should hang on the wall of his mind. “While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops, and from lust anger arises. From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool.”

So that’s it in a nutshell—the sad story of falldown. Lord Sri Krishna beautifully encapsulates it in the Gita.

Devotional Relationships

And now the question is why it happens? Prabhupada said, “Preaching is the essence.” He also said, “If you don’t preach, then very soon after I leave there won’t be any more Hare Krishna movement. You won’t be able to go on with this ‘Hari bol, Hari bol.’ And he said that if you preach, everything will be in perspective.” Also there’s a need for more instructions in the beginning. Because some people come to Krishna consciousness but they don’t know deep inside what it is about. They think it’s only wearing the dhoti-kurta, putting a tilaka on your head, and having a good time. There’s not enough training. We tend to preach until someone’s initiated, and then we stop preaching. Another problem is lack of honesty in communication.

We may fear to open our minds to other devotees because we feel that they may somehow say, “You’re fallen.” If a devotee’s not introspective enough to understand what his actual standing is, if he’s more concerned with what he should be than what he actually is, you can have a community of devotees relating to each other in a very superficial way. And that doesn’t lead to open dealings. There has to be someone you can go to and reveal your heart to who’s not going to turn you away but is going to encourage you to purify yourself and return to the standard. And there’s a need for self-honesty. You need to be able to accept your position and work from there and not be too hard on yourself. Not that you compromise the philosophy but that you give yourself a break. Encourage yourself.

There’s some seed of falldown in our mind, but we fear that if we say something our prestige will be damaged. So we keep quiet, and the disease grows, and we become more of a hypocrite as we dig ourselves deeper in. We need people to reveal our minds to. So we need to make friends among devotees. If we don’t have those devotional friendships, we’ll be stuck inside our own minds—and then we practically must fall down. In The Nectar of Instruction Srila Prabhupada says that the only reason ISKCON exists is to foster those personal loving exchanges. If we didn’t have a society of devotees who were concerned about one another’s welfare, we’d all be fallen.

ISKCON is an institution where we’re not just engaging in devotional service on our own but in the company of many others. So naturally our relationships have a social standing to them. And we may hold above the real purpose of the institution, namely becoming Krishna conscious, our standing in the institution or whatever. And if we’re thinking about our social status, holding more dearly to how others perceive us than to our own spiritual well-being—we can just get lost in the institution. Another classic cause for a falldown is ambition. Or when we achieve our ambitions, then attachment; then appears duplicity and that’s quite a lineup Maya’s got.

Counseling

One person we’re supposed to be able to confide in is the spiritual master. But, because ours is a preaching movement, the spiritual master may not be accessible to us every time. When we need some immediate counsel, he may be halfway around the world. Or you may not want to burden him with your problems…So, there is a need to have devotees we can feel intimate and open with and reveal our minds to and feel that they’ll be concerned about our best interest.

One thing Srila Prabhupada advised was to avoid politics and business, because our Society needs people one can trust. We need devotees who’ll concentrate on developing these qualities—simplicity, honesty, self-control—so that people will trust them. Such a great responsibility rests with sannyasis, gurus, temple presidents, leaders, senior devotees. We have to offer training. Those who have the inclination will take it up, and then people will seek them out. Ultimately, each person’s going to decide whom he or she has faith in. We’ve been conditioned for millions of lifetimes, and on our own we have no power, because the material energy is insurmountable. But Krishna declares emphatically in the Bhagavad-gita that one can get free from this if we surrender unto Him. And part of this surrendering process is prayer. So when a devotee has difficulty, that can be an impetus for really taking shelter of one’s guru and Krishna and praying for the strength and intelligence to overcome the difficulty he’s been caught in.

One time, maybe in the early 1970’s, when the movement was starting to spread a bit, Prabhupada was with some disciples in his room in Los Angeles. The temple was big and opulent, for those days. And Govinda Mataji had made Prabhupada a coat with peacock feather tassels to tighten its hood, and someone had given Prabhupada a gold lame bead bag. Prabhupada said, “Now we are getting so many things. So I’m just praying to Krishna that I may not fall down.”

• Read Part-II