We need to be conscious before becoming Krsna Conscious

We are serving Krsna here and the inhabitants of the spiritual world are serving Krsna there. We are both serving Krsna, but there is a great difference in the quality of our service.

In 2022 we lived for a few months in the Iskcon Tbilisi temple, in Georgia (Caucasus region). As in other temples, there is a donation box on the altar, and it is there 1980's. This donation box is always there for mangala artik, sundya-artik, and all other functions. It heard the holy names more than anyone else in the temple and accumulated more hours of service than anyone. However, this donation box is never going back to godhead.

Once Srila Prabhupada said "You need to be conscious before becoming Krsna Conscious". This is a quote no one will find in books or letters; it was said in private to some disciples and is registered only in their memories. However, it is consistent with the teachings of Srila Prabhupada, and thus we can accept it as authoritative.

The reason the donation box will never go back to Godhead is that despite its faithful service, the box is not conscious. It is just a lump of matter. Although the box is there for every program, it is not aware of what is happening around it. Because there is no soul there, there is no consciousness and no question of making any spiritual progress.

The reason I'm bringing up this point is that sometimes we may commit the same mistake in our spiritual lives. We may stand on managala artik for years, just to realize in the end that we didn't really make much spiritual progress. The reason is that frequently we do things on autopilot. sādhana is a very important part of our spiritual lives, but the autopilot is a great trap in our progress. When we are not conscious of what we are doing, we don't make much spiritual progress, even when we do it daily.

We are serving Krsna here and the inhabitants of the spiritual world are serving Krsna there. Although we are both serving Krsna, there is a great difference in the quality of our service, and the main factor that creates such a gulf of difference is attention.

In the spiritual world, everyone is very attentive in their service, observing the lilas and fully attentive to the minimum details, so the pastimes can happen flawlessly. Here on the other hand we are frequently standing there while our consciousness is somewhere else. We make many mistakes and fail to notice even the most obvious flaws just because our consciousness is absent.

In his pure state, the soul is fully conscious and engages this consciousness in the service of Krsna. However, as the soul falls deeper into material contamination, his consciousness is covered, up to the point of the soul becoming almost unconscious as a plant or bacteria. Under the influence of the lower modes, the soul loses more and more his original spiritual consciousness and gradually becomes unconscious, almost like inanimate matter.

Developing our consciousness is an integral part of our spiritual progress, and the only way to become more conscious is to engage our attention. As long as we are not conscious of our activities, we will be like the donation box standing there without making much spiritual progress. Worse still, we will be forced to continue taking birth in this material world, since this is the place for unconscious objects.

What about the concept of objects being used in the service of Krsna being conscious?

The point is that in the spiritual world, everything is conscious. Krsna's flute is conscious, Krsna's dhoti is conscious, and so on. Lord Balarāma expands Himself, taking the forms of all Krsna's paraphernalia, and similarly, souls can have the forms of objects, just as much as they can be plants, animals, or people. When we speak about the spiritual platform, there is not really much difference between a person and a rock, everyone is conscious and is engaged in the service of Krsna.

So, if the donation box is engaged in the service of Krsna, it must mean that it is spiritual and therefore conscious, right? Not so fast. This is actually much more complicated than it may appear at first.

Matter is fundamentally different from spirit in nature. In the Bhagavad-Gita (2.16) Krsna gives a very condensed explanation of the difference between the two: nāsato vidyate bhāvo, nābhāvo vidyate sataḥ. Everything spiritual is real in the full sense, being conscious, eternal, and unchangeable. Everything that is material goes through many transformations and eventually reaches its end. Everything that is changeable is ultimately āsat (illusory, or unreal) because it is created at a certain point and destructed later. Because it's temporary, it never really exists in the full sense, as defined by Krsna.

However, when material objects are engaged in the service of Krsna they become spiritualized, acquiring a dual nature. One good example is prasādam. At the same time, it is composed of material elements, but on the other hand, it has a spiritual quality due to the touch of Krsna. When we honor prasādam this spiritual quality nourishes our spiritual identity, while the material elements are used to nourish the body. A mṛdaṅga is composed of material elements, but being empowered by Lord Balarāma it can produce transcendental sound, and so on. This is similar in principle to a śaktyāveśa incarnation when a jīva becomes a conductor for Krsna's potency. In this case, matter becomes the conductor.

In this way, a material object used in the service of Krsna can become surcharged by spiritual quality, just like a bar of metal can become red hot due to the touch of fire. However, just like the bar of metal never becomes one with the fire, a material object touched by the spiritual energy doesn't become spiritual, since the energy remains independent of the material object. Just like it's said that the body of a pure devotee becomes spiritualized because it's being fully engaged in the service of Krsna, but it is still left behind when the soul finally goes back to Godhead. The body becomes a conduit for the energy and devotion of this exalted soul, but the body and the soul remain different.

A material object used in service to Krsna can become thus a conduit for the spiritual energy, but there is still a difference between the spiritual energy and the material object.

A donation box can thus become a conduit to the spiritual energy, just as a mṛdaṅga, worship paraphernalia, or prasādam, but still, there is a difference between the spiritual energy and the object itself. It would be sentimentalism to start talking to the donation box, for example, or expect that it will manifest spiritual qualities like being conscious or being eternal. In other words, this is another example of the principle of being simultaneously equal and different.

A pure devotee sees in the spiritual platform and he will thus see only the spiritual energy and not the material object. If we ask, he will say that it is spiritual and not material. However, if we are not on the same level, we may still be using our material senses and thus be dealing with the material object, although it helps to have the philosophical understanding that it is being touched by spiritual energy. This may help us to get used to the idea that in the spiritual world, objects are also conscious and eternal, just like people.