Sharanagati

Yadunath: As you mentioned three spheres: me, the others and God, how could we serve Divine Truth in those three spheres?

Tirtha Maharaj: Jive-doya name-ruchi vaishnava-seva. So how can we serve ourselves? First we have to be merciful for others and to ourselves also. How can you be merciful for yourself? I will not join the campaign of the nowadays very popular, pseudo-spiritual processes: “Love yourself!” No. You should be merciful to yourself. That means: give yourself a chance, don’t miss the chance of taking part in mercy. Don’t obstruct the flow of divine mercy. That means merciful to yourself – to give yourself a chance. I think this is quite obvious – don’t oppose the divine arrangement coming to. And to feed myself means name-ruchi: to take the higher taste for the holy name. And finally – serve the devotees: vaishnava-seva – by this we can express our gratitude. Because they are connected to God, therefore if we offer our service to Krishna through them, this is a safe way.

Bhakti-yoga is a kind of mystic way. Yoga means to be connected to God. And Bhakti gives the quality of that connection – divine, loving, affectionate feelings. And connection means minimum two parties, there is a subject and there is an object; time is there and connection is there. And if there is a connection, there is a flow. If I block the flow, there is no connection, practically. And that flow is heart-to-heart flow. And there is eye-to-eye contact… It is very difficult to go on. So don’t stop, don’t block the flow. It will tell us everything. I think I cannot really go on, I am sorry…

Some teachers die when they mention eye-to-eye contact. When they talk about the eye-to-eye contact of Radha and Krishna, then they all of a sudden stop the lecture, go to their rooms and die.

So there is a flow, connection means flow. What was the question…?

Ramvijay: About the serving on the three different spheres.

Tirtha Maharaj: Ah yes, yes, yes. Sorry. So I think we could understand our personal dimension – that we help ourselves more or less. But how can we serve the other two planes? We should always be mindful of the two principles. One is the human and the other is the divine. If, serving the humans, you forget about the divine, sooner or later you will be frustrated. Do you agree? Sooner or later there will be some mistake. If, serving God, I forget about the humans, it’s a mistake from the beginning. So we should always have in mind these two principles – the human and the divine. In “Shrimad Bhagavatam” it is said: “It is a wasted oblation if somebody is offering respects to Me in the temples, but neglects the living entities.”[1] So the two somehow must go together. Because finally, ultimately, we, all the living entities, are brothers and sisters, we belong to the same family of God. But that is practically true, if you see only the human side, sooner or later you will see some mistakes. Reality is always different. You think that the other person is like that, and he is not. So we should not forget about the divine principle. And if you offer your services in this manner, though a person to divinity, you will never be frustrated. What you have given, don’t mind! If you have given this to God, it is not wasted.