(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 16 October 2014, Sydney, Australia, Srimad Bhagavatam 7.4.43)
It is a blessing to have some good karma. It is a blessing to be detached. It saves one a lot of trouble. It is a shortcut. Such piety is valuable. The blessings of bhakti are amazing, bhakty-unmukhī sukṛti (Caitanya Caritamrta Madhya 22.45 Purport). They are amazing because the blessings of bhakti may naturally make us take to Krsna so easily!
In Germany, once I was sharing a room with Bhakti Bhusana Swami. Bhakti Bhusana Swami is a devotee who joined this Movement in its very early stages in Germany, at the very beginning. Basically what happened was that Krsna consciousness started in America and then it came to Europe…
First, there was one devotee named Sivananda. First, he went to Amsterdam but he could not find a place to stay so he went to Germany. Then in Germany, he started it all by himself. Kirtan on the street with some kartals and a few Back to Godhead magazines that he had brought from America. So this boy went up to him and he was interested and he took a magazine. He read the magazine and the next day, he came back and he joined the Movement and he later became Bhakti Bhusana Swami!
How can you join by reading a magazine!? How can you do it? I mean, I could never do that. I did not get involved in that way.
I asked him, “Maharaj, tell me, how could you do that? How could you just join?”
He said, “I have always been like that. When I was convinced that something was true, I just did it!”
This is bhakty-unmukhī sukṛti. This is piety from devotional service in the last life. Therefore, immediately he knew it. This is it. There was no doubt, he just did it. But we are impious, like in my case, you think like, “Well, um… I do not know. I am not sure.” Such thoughts kept me back. But then, we see how previous devotional service can give us conviction in the case of Bhakti Bhusana Swami..
Therefore, the power of bhakti is that we recognise the truth in our next life. We recognise the truth immediately! We get lifted above our small mindedness – durātmā. A devotee becomes very broad-minded. Srila Prabhupada explains in the introduction to the Caitanya Caritamrta that spiritual life is like taking off in a plane and as you go up, all the things that you are leaving behind become small. So it is like that, all the material things we leave behind, they become small as we go up in devotional service. So like this, all those things that were so important, lose their importance.