The bliss and misery of life in a spiritual society

Our spiritual society may be far from being perfect, and we individually may not be doing much better, but still, we have a responsibility to somehow practice and spread this spiritual knowledge.

Life in the material world is not easy. Souls live in peace in the spiritual world because there they are free from the false ego, connected with an eternal spirit of selfless service to Krsna. In the material world, our situation is the opposite: we act under the false ego and the three modes of material nature. These layers make us act in egoistic and destructive ways that create harm to others and ourselves. Acting in ways that harm others means to also harm ourselves because the suffering we cause to others will return to us in future lives. In this way, we become entrapped in a life of permanent struggle, life after life, causing suffering to each other.

Even when an empowered acarya tries to create a spiritual society, his effort is also not free from problems, because although a pure devotee may be personally perfect in his actions, other members of his society are still imperfect souls, who are still under the false ego and the material modes and are still propense to commit mistakes, quarrel and cause harm to others. Therefore, even spiritual societies will be plagued by problems, although possibly less.

Apart from problems caused by quarrels between the members, spiritual societies are also affected by problems caused by external sources, such as natural disasters, wars, and so on. Sometimes people who lack a high level of spiritual realization are put into positions of leadership, creating havoc.

As minute souls, entrapped by the material energy, it's hard for us to find the way out by ourselves. We need guidance from advanced devotees, as well as the friendship of peers. As we learn, we can also offer some service and guidance to newer devotees, and thus, as a group, we can progress in spiritual life. We can see that, although plagued by problems, spiritual societies are essential for our spiritual development, and this is the reason pure souls work hard to create such societies in the first place.

Apart from the benefit for ourselves, spiritual societies are also important from the perspective of people from the outside, who need some light in their lives in the form of books with spiritual knowledge, and other manifestations of Krsna Consciousness. Just like we couldn't find the way out of this material world by ourselves, even after many lives of struggle, others who are in the same situation will not be able to find their way out until they can somehow or other get in touch with devotees.

Our spiritual society may be far from being perfect, and we individually may not be doing much better, but still, we have a responsibility to somehow practice and spread this spiritual knowledge to others, despite all shortcomings. Despite the problems, the broadcast of Krsna Consciousness must go on. This implies we need to find ways of not only nourishing our spiritual lives despite all difficulties but also somehow giving our contribution to the general improvement of our spiritual society, as well as the improvement of human society at large. To accomplish that, we need to achieve maturity in our practice of Krsna Consciousness, a process that, although sublime, demands a great deal of dedication.

One can get much inspiration in this connection from understanding Srila Prabhupada's mood, expressed in letters like this one:

"My Dear Bhanutanya dasi,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter undated, and I have noted the contents with great concern. One thing is, I am very much sad to learn that you have left the company of the devotees over this incident at Gurukula school. Now you are living by yourself because you have been hurt by seeing that the children are sometimes mistreated, and because no one has taken your good advice in this connection. But you may be assured that I am always anxious about the welfare of my disciples, so that I am taking steps to rectify this unfortunate situation. Now my advice to you is to give up these feelings and return to your life of Krsna Consciousness devotional service, and if you go back to Dallas school and demonstrate to the other teachers there just the proper way to instruct and discipline the students nicely, that will be a great service. I am forwarding the copy of this letter, with your letter, to Satsvarupa for his immediately attention.

Now the thing is, children should not be beaten at all, that I have told. They should simply be shown the stick strongly. So if one cannot manage in that way then he is not fit as teacher. If a child is trained properly in Krsna Consciousness, he will never go away. That means he must have two things, love and education. So if there is beating of child, that will be difficult for him to accept in loving spirit, and when he is old enough he may want to go away—that is the danger. So why these things are going on _ marching and chanting japa, insufficient milk, too strict enforcement of time schedules, hitting the small children? Why these things are being imposed? Why they are inventing these such new things like marching and japa like military? What can I do from such a distant place? They should run and play when they are small children, not forced to chant japa, that is not the way. So I have given you the guiding principles, it is not that I must be consulted with every small detail, that is the business of the in-charge, but if no one is there who can manage in the right way, what can I do? Now if you have got the right idea how to do it, you may go there again and take some responsible post for correcting the situation, that will be your real duty, not that there is some disagreement and I go away disgusted, no. That is not Vaisnava standard. Standard should be that, never mind there is some difficulty, my spiritual master has ordered me to do like this, now let me do it, that’s all.

Hoping this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami"

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