(HH Kadamba Kanana Swami, Sydney, Australia, 11th May 2012)
(Transcribed by Smita Krishna Devi Dasi)
We begin to develop a little bit of faith. It might be true, it’s logical and we begin to deposit some of our faith in spiritual knowledge but at the same time not fully, because after all what if it’s not true? What if we miss out in the meanwhile? Imagine you are putting your faith in this spiritual knowledge, and in your whole life you just start to give up material enjoyment and then at the end that was not at all true. Imagine that, that might happen, the risk is too great. Therefore better we play safe and hold on to the material energy tightly!? Alright, give up a few things, the outright sinful things but hold on to as much material enjoyment as it’s possible and then experiment with the spiritual things and see what happens. This is the safe platform.
In this way, even in spiritual life we are very careful and we have some experiences. Oh, yes there is some taste, some higher taste until we come to the point where yes, we are attracted to both the spirit and to matter, then we are caught in a situation which is kind of catch 22, so to speak. So you can’t really be satisfied with just material things any more. Not possible, it must also be spiritual things at the same time but you also can’t just be satisfied with spiritual things alone, since there must also be material things. In this way, we are caught between the two worlds, and that is what we find in ourselves.
So in that situation one can remain for a considerable amount of time. What to do from there? It depends where we invest the most. We invest the most on the spiritual side, the natural spiritual side such as Krishna and Krishna’s paraphernalia. There is Krishna directly and Krishna’s abode, Vrindavan Goloka; there are kamadhenus – wish fulfilling desire cows and there are desire trees also; there are bodies of water and these are conscious and also devotees.
So in the spiritual world we find not only Krishna being attractive but the spiritual world is also attractive. So there are the expansions of Krishna. So we can appreciate Krishna and his expanded spiritual energy and then what happens is one associates either with Krishna or his expanded spiritual energy. We become purified and gradually our attachment for matter decreases and gradually our attachment to the spiritual things increases and that is what we call spiritual advancement, which seems to be most sole process, because our identification with matter is very strong because our faith is there!