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If we look around, we can usually see many devotees who practiced seriously for some period of their lives, but later gave up spiritual practice almost completely, returning to most of their previous habits. When we meet them, they often look like ordinary people absorbed in work or other activities, not spiritualists. If they speak about Kṛṣṇa at all, it is usually with nostalgia or regret, something they did when they were young but have since lost or moved on from. If we could go back in time, we would see the same devotees waking up very early to chant and attend spiritual programs, running away from home to join the temple, distributing books or chanting all day long, fasting, praying, etc., all of it out of eagerness to reach Kṛṣṇa. How to reconcile these two selves?
It may look difficult to comprehend, but this just shows the natural tendency of the individual soul to forget. When we are conditioned, going from one body to the other, we forget all the time. We don’t remember at all what we were doing in previous lives, and we can easily forget even what we were doing a moment ago. Perfect souls who live in the association of Kṛṣṇa do not forget Him at any point, but still they can forget details or particular circumstances. Arjuna is always with Kṛṣṇa, appearing as His friend life after life, but still, when he saw his relatives on the other side of the field, he forgot why he should fight. Similarly, as Kṛṣṇa explains, Arjuna was present when Kṛṣṇa spoke the Bhagavad-gītā to Vivasvan, millions of years ago. Kṛṣṇa still remembered it perfectly, but Arjuna forgot.
Therefore, even in the liberated stage, the soul can forget. The point is that Kṛṣṇa never forgets, and thus, as long as we are connected with Him, He can remind us. Kṛṣṇa is infallible, and as long as one remains connected with Kṛṣṇa, one can also be infallible, but as soon as we distance ourselves from Kṛṣṇa, our natural tendency for forgetfulness becomes prominent, and we can fall back to the level of a common person, completely covered.
Once we come to Kṛṣṇa, sincerely starting the process of devotional service, we get something that is permanent: we start reviving our eternal relationship with Him. This is like the ember that continues burning even after we put out the fire. There is no visible fame, but because the ember is there, the fire can come back as soon as there is opportunity. Similarly, having practiced Kṛṣṇa consciousness sincerely for some time is not a guarantee that we will continue to practice all our lives sincerely, because we have free will at every stage. I may be serving Kṛṣṇa today, waking up early, chanting, going to the temple, etc., but this doesn’t automatically mean I will be doing the same tomorrow. Every day (and in fact every moment) I have to continue making the same decision. The moment I decide something else is more important, my practice can easily stop.
We come then to the question of material desires. Everyone has certain dreams and desires, things we would like to do if we had the chance. However, there is a difference between having a desire and acting on it. A man may see an attractive woman and have desire, but this doesn’t mean he should leave his family and go after her. Desire is always there, but the intelligence has the mission of resisting what goes against our goals.
Therefore, the main question is not desire, but what is our goal. As long as Kṛṣṇa remains the goal, we will not stop our spiritual practice. We may make mistakes; we may fall at some points, but these faults are ultimately not very important, because after the fall we get up and continue. We may fall a dozen times on the way home, but if each time we get up and continue, we still get there. The problem is not the fall itself, but if at some point we give up the goal. That’s the real problem.
Everything we do in life can be connected with Kṛṣṇa. We can connect our family with Kṛṣṇa; we can connect a career or business with Kṛṣṇa; we can connect hobbies with Kṛṣṇa. Even scrolling can be connected with Kṛṣṇa if we follow devotees who post about Him. Therefore, none of these things are real impediments. The problem is when we come to the conclusion that one of these things is more important, when some of them become the goal itself.
When this happens, the focus can completely change. Then, it is not that I’m a devotee who is trying to come to Kṛṣṇa, despite working on a job and responsibly taking care of a family. The job itself can become the goal. At this point, chanting and spiritual practice become superfluous, and I can easily give them up, because they don’t pay my bills.
That usually leads to the phenomenon we discussed in the beginning of the article. It is not about material desires or weakness, but about a conscious decision, made at some point, where one decided that something else was more important. It doesn’t have to be a decision made at once; usually it is the result of a process that takes years.
Initially, we come to the conclusion that work, family, or something else is more important, but that we still want to maintain some level of spiritual practice. We may then try to chant 16 rounds and follow the basic principles, but over time, because spiritual practice stops being the focus of our attention, we gradually lose the taste for it. Then, we may continue following for some more time out of a feeling of obligation, but once the taste is lost, it becomes difficult to maintain. Eventually we completely stop, and when this happens, the other activities completely take over. At this stage, we forget, and as time goes by, our devotional practice, the sacrifices we made for Kṛṣṇa, the spiritual goals we at some point established, etc., become just part of the past. When this happens, time goes by, and when we look around, 20 or 50 years have already passed.
How can we avoid it? We need to keep spiritual practice our main priority in life, and organize other activities around it, instead of the opposite. The best way to maintain that is to wake up early to chant our rounds and study the philosophy. If we can reserve two hours per day early in the morning for these two things, before anything else, we can go a very long way. Because we are starting our day with our spiritual practice, our consciousness will remain organized around it. With time, as we become purified, we get a taste for spiritual practice, and this becomes the time of the day we actually crave. That’s the reason many advanced devotees start to go to sleep very early, and wake up extremely early. No one tells them to do that—often the social pressure is the exact opposite—they do it because that’s the part of the day they actually enjoy, and thus they want to maximize it. We have the extreme, superhuman example of this principle in the life of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Thākura. He was waking up at 10 PM (before midnight!) and spending the whole night chanting and writing. After a short rest, he would answer letters, chant more, receive visitors, read, etc. Only after almost 12 hours of that would he go to the office and do his work as a magistrate.
Another dimension is to hear about Kṛṣṇa. That’s another aspect we should cultivate as much as possible, following spiritual teachers we are attracted to, hearing their classes on the way to work, while we walk in the park, in the shower, and whenever else we have the opportunity. As long as we keep hearing about Kṛṣṇa, we continue to remember Him, and everything else works.
The conclusion is that we don’t have to sacrifice our work and family to follow spiritual life. Most of us will reconcile these three things during most of our lives. What we need to give up is part of the time we are doing directly doing these things, the time that we would otherwise waste, sleeping over time, scrolling, watching TV, cultivating bad habits, etc.
And, even if our spiritual practice has already become a distant memory, the ember of our previous service is still there. It’s always possible to fan it again by giving Kṛṣṇa a new place in our lives. SB 1.5.19 is very instructive in this connection. As Prabhupāda mentions there:
“There are certainly many instances where devotees of the Lord have fallen down due to uncongenial association, just like fruitive workers, who are always prone to degradation. But even though he falls down, a devotee is never to be considered the same as a fallen karmī. A karmī suffers the result of his own fruitive reactions, whereas a devotee is reformed by chastisement directed by the Lord Himself. The sufferings of an orphan and the sufferings of a beloved child of a king are not one and the same. An orphan is really poor because he has no one to take care of him, but a beloved son of a rich man, although he appears to be on the same level as the orphan, is always under the vigilance of his capable father.”
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