Haṁsadūta dāsa Adhikārī

Suppose you wanted to offer service to the president of the nation-how would you go about it? After thinking on it for some time, we can conclude that it simply isn't possible. The president is so great that an ordinary citizen has no power to approach him. Similarly, if someone wants to serve God then how will he do that? Where is God? What is His name? What does He look like? And what does He want from us in the way of service? If we cannot even see God then how will we begin to serve Him? Most will conclude that because we have not seen Him, He doesn't exist. Others will imagine that God is impersonal, or void, and still others will declare that they are themselves God or that everybody is God.

In the Bhagavad-gita, Krsna who is actually God Himself, declares to Arjuna "Just try to approach a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render him all kinds of service. The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth. And when you have thus learned the truth you will know that all living beings are in Me and are Mine." When the President wants to give information about his activities he sends his representative before the press, TV and Radio, who must accept his words as authorized information. Otherwise, they may invent so many things, but such information cannot be accepted as authorized. Similarly, in the material world, if we want to understand God then we have to be prepared to accept the words of the bona fide representative of God, the spiritual master. The spiritual master is the confidential agent of the Supreme Lord, and the conditioned souls have the opportunity of understanding and rendering service to the Supreme Soul Krsna only in the degree that they are able to please the spiritual master. An ordinary citizen cannot approach the president. But if he can somehow or other gain the favor of the president's most confidential servant, then it becomes very easy. This fact is supported by Srila Visvanatha Chakravarti: "The spiritual master is honored as much as the Supreme Lord because of his being the most confidential servitor of the Lord." Then again he says, "Without the grace of the spiritual master no one can make any advancement in spiritual life."

But if there are so many people claiming to be spiritual masters, how can I know who the bona fide spiritual master is? The answer is: The spiritual master is that person who has perfectly heard and is delivering without any adulteration, the words of Krsna coming down from the disciplic succession going directly back to Krsna 5,000 years ago and when he spoke Bhagavad-gita for the enlightenment of all mankind.

The spiritual master is transparent. The spiritual master is not giving his opinion or fashionable interpretation of God, now will he claim that he is God. In the Bhagavad-gita it is stated that "the great souls who are not deluded are under the protection of the divine nature. They are fully engaged in devotional service because they know Me as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, original and inexhaustible. Always chanting My glories, endeavoring with great determination, bowing down before Me, these great souls perpetually worship Me with devotion." In the purport of this verse it is stated that a mahatma, or spiritual master, cannot be manufactured by rubber-stamping an ordinary man; the spiritual master must show positive symptoms. In other words, he must be engaged in chanting the glories of the Supreme Lord without any other engagement. Everyone, from the street sweeper to the king, is engaged in glorifying someone and hearing the glories of someone. But the spiritual master can be distinguished from all others by the difference in subject matter. The spiritual master is glorifying Krsna.

The spiritual master is simply engaged in delivering the words of Krsna. The spiritual master is just like the postman who brings a letter without adulterating it by adding something or scratching something out. When Krsna says that everyone should surrender to Him, the spiritual master does not interpret, but simply points out the truth of Krsna's words and makes it clear by his own exemplary behavior that we have to surrender to Krsna.

The spiritual master is not a particular person but the spiritual master is the principle of truth. There may be many spiritual masters, but the spiritual master is one, just as there may be many mathematics teachers but each one is teaching two plus two equals four. Therefore, the teacher is one. The duty of the disciple is to become himself a spiritual master by distributing the message of Krsna as he has received it from the lips of his spiritual master. In Bhagavad-gita Krsna also says, "For one who explains this supreme secret (of Bhagavad-gita) to the devotees, devotional service is guaranteed, and at the end he will come back to Me. There is no servant more dear to Me in this world than he, and never will there be one more dear." (Bg. 18.68-69)

Without a spiritual master there is no question of spiritual life, just at without a father there is no question of material life. The father impregnates the mother and thus birth is made possible. Spiritual life is the second birth, and it is made possible by the spiritual father. Just as a bird is born once in the egg and twice when he becomes free from the darkness of that egg, everyone of us was born in ignorance, conditioned by this material body due to false identification, and the spiritual master has descended from the spiritual platform to help us break the illusion of bodily identification. The prayer in this connection is, "I offer my most humble obeisances unto the lotus feet of my spiritual master. While I was standing in the darkness of ignorance, he forced me to open my eyes with the torchlight of knowledge."

God is not impersonal or void but from the scriptures and the spiritual master we learn that God is the supreme living being, or the leader of all living beings. God is not lying lost like an inert stone waiting to be found; nor is He insentient as some imagine the Truth to be. On the contrary, as it is stated in the Vedanta-sūtra the Absolute Truth is the origin of everything. The origin of everything cannot be impersonal, but must be the supreme intelligent living being amongst all other living beings. Therefore we can understand that everything is moving under the direction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The spiritual master is an emissary of God moving in this material world under his dictation. The spiritual master is empowered by the Supreme Lord to accept service on His behalf and to deliver the whole universe back to home, back to Godhead.

The disciple should never credit himself with finding the spiritual master, what to speak of finding or understanding God. Personally I do not know anything of God, and neither I can claim any understanding of my spiritual master. All I know is that he has taken me in and due to his causeless mercy he has allowed me to make myself a place under his lotus feet. Whatever he does is good; whatever he says is true. He may be wrong, he may be right, but he is always right. Sastras say that to one who has firm faith in his spiritual master and the words of the scripture alone are all the truths of spiritual science revealed. So let everyone take advantage of this opportunity and resolve always to pray for eternal guidance at the lotus feet of our spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who is so kindly taking us back home, back to Godhead.

Hamsadūta dasa Adhikari
G.B.C.-Germany and Eastern Europe