As Good As God

It is Krishna who makes the beautiful material world with its oceans and mountains.  You cannot thank Prabhupada for the creation, yet I feel, “Oh Prabhupada, thank you!”  What I mean to say is, “Thank you, Prabhupada, for enabling me to see the creation as the work of Krishna.  Thank you for giving me the eyes.”

I remember being in Prabhupada’s room in 1966 and thinking of him “as God”.  He was talking to a group of us.  I suddenly thought, “He is God for me,” but I did not say anything.  I had never had a direct experience of God, just talked about Him.  However, the Swami was a person who knew love of God.  Therefore, God was in the room when you were with the pure devotee.

What I felt that day was something I could not put into an essay.  When it is time for expressing things in writing, then we must make them very clear: there is an eternal distinction between the individual soul who is a pure devotee of Krishna and the Supreme Soul.  Krishna is the complete whole and all the devotees, including the liberated souls, are part and parcel of the Supreme Lord.  Everyone serves the Lord.  No one is the Supreme isvara except Krishna.  This is all very clear and the acaryas are the ones who make it clear for us.  Fortunately, we also have spiritual-emotional moments when we feel so grateful to the pure devotee that we utter, at least within ourselves, “You are God to me.”

By his grace, I meditate on the spiritual master who is one of the individual expansions of the Lord.  He is not an ordinary living entity.  His perfection is his intimate service to the Supreme Lord and to the Vaisnavas.  I meditate on that spiritual master who is described distinctly in each verse of the “Gurvastakam”.  He soaks us with rain from the ocean of love of God.  He puts out the forest fire of samsara.  When he chants the holy name, he sometimes dances and sheds tears in ecstasy.  He teaches us to worship the arca-vigraha of Lord Krishna and Srimati Radharani.  He teaches us to prepare food and to give it to Krishna.  The spiritual master is happy to see his devotees honoring bhāgavata-prasadam.

I meditate on the spiritual master, who is always engaged in the pastimes of Radha and Krishna, assisting the assistants of the gopis.  He is able to do this by virtue of his intense devotion to his own spiritual master, and this has enabled him to enter the pastimes of Vrindavana.  The spiritual master is accepted in all the scriptures to be as worshipable as God Himself because he is the confidential servitor of the Lord.  When we please him, we please Krishna; when we fail to please him, our destination is unknown.