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It is said that a man is known by the company he keeps. As Prabhupāda used to say, if one wants to become a businessman, one should associate with businessmen, and if one wants to become a pure devotee, one should associate with pure devotees.
Good association is an essential factor for our spiritual progress. Pure devotees can maintain their practice alone, as they often do, chanting in seclusion, but even paramahaṃsas are attracted to the association of other pure devotees when it is available. If even pure devotees benefit from the association of other pure devotees, what to say about us?
We can see that traditionally Vaiṣnavas prefer to live in holy places, like Vṛndāvana, Mayapur or Jagannātha Puri, because many advanced devotees live in these places. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (10.84.13) mentions that one who goes to a holy place just to take a bath is not more intelligent than a cow or an ass, for the real benefit in visiting a holy place is in associating with the saintly persons living there.
Prabhupāda, however, envisioned a different model. Instead of simply telling everyone to go to live in Vṛndāvana, he worked to create smaller communities around the world, where devotees could live, congregate, and enlighten each other. He established both rural communities centered on the idea of simple living and high thinking, and temples that serve as centers for urban communities. As he described, temples are like embassies of the spiritual world.
Life in the cities, however, brings a series of challenges for our spiritual practice, for it involves a series of complexities that take away our time and attention. The main goal of Kṛṣṇa consciousness is to take away our attention from matter and focus it on Kṛṣṇa, but modern life pushes us in the opposite direction. Considering that going to live in the nature and having simple living high thinking immediately is not possible for us, how to make the best out of a bad bargain?
As in other situations, we have to do the best we can with what we have. The situation we live in is frequently determined by factors that are beyond our control. Fortunately, spiritual practice is not something that is necessarily tied to a particular external situation. One can remember Kṛṣṇa even in hell, and we can surely remember Him even while living in a congested metropolis if we can develop the right mentality.
Ultimately, reality is actually not so much dependent on where we are but on what our attention is focused on. A pure devotee can serve Kṛṣṇa in the spiritual world, even while technically living in a material body, by completely focusing his attention on Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes. Prahlāda Mahārāja was living in a quite terrible situation, living among the asuras and being constantly watched by his demoniac teachers, but he was not affected the least by such an atmosphere because of his absorption in Kṛṣṇa and the remembrance of the instructions he received from Nārada Muni. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, it is mentioned that his absorption was such that his material body moved more or less automatically by Kṛṣṇa’s arrangement, while his consciousness was completely fixed in the spiritual platform.
During Soviet times, many devotees were imprisoned for distributing books or simply practicing Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. Although living in incredibly difficult conditions in Soviet gulags, many describe that, spiritually, these were the best periods of their lives, since it was the time when they felt more strongly connected with Kṛṣṇa. Just as in the case of Prahlāda Maharaja, a materially adverse condition can become positive in terms of self-realization if it impels us to surrender to Kṛṣṇa.
Most of the time, we can’t control or change our external situation, but we can still direct our thoughts. We always have the choice of thinking about Kṛṣṇa, chanting His names and remembering His pastimes, or focusing our attention on something else. Regardless of our external situation, we can create our own small world, where we are always with Kṛṣṇa.
By always thinking about Kṛṣṇa, we connect with the spiritual reality. As long as we are capable of maintaining this connection, we will indeed always be with Him. Vṛndāvana is not simply a geographical location but a state of consciousness. One may not be able to visit Vṛndāvana even after living there for a whole lifetime, while another may be able to live there even while residing thousands of kilometers away.
Of course, this demands us to be in a quite high level of spiritual realization. Even though we always have a choice, the environment we live in undoubtedly affects our consciousness. It’s much easier to remember Kṛṣṇa while we are amongst devotees, so what to do when it’s not possible?
Another way of creating our small world is by building a Kṛṣṇa-conscious family. That’s actually what most devotees do, with varied degrees of success. One of the greatest mistakes we can make in family life is separating it from Kṛṣṇa. When we exclude Kṛṣṇa from our family life, it becomes just another source of illusion. Conversely, when we can bring our spiritual practice into our family life, we can make our home a small temple, and we can find inspiring devotional association among our family members.
Although a little harder, it’s also possible to connect our work with Kṛṣṇa, be it by working in some activity that is directly or indirectly connected with Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, or simply by working in a regular job, but having the mentality that we are doing this to maintain our family, this small group of devotees who are practicing together with us. We can also apply part of the money to other devotional activities, and thus have the mentality that we are working to be able to sustain these projects. All of this can be performed as karma-yoga, as an offering to Kṛṣṇa.
As we can see, by following these steps we can remain quite well connected with Kṛṣṇa, even while living hours away from other devotees. Ultimately, being in the material world, or being with Kṛṣṇa, is a conscious choice. The place we live surely has some influence, but the deciding factor is how we spend our energy, and especially where we focus our attention.
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