Sri Krishna
Some years ago, a Christian woman gave me a book by A.W. Tozer, a Christian writer. “You’re someone looking for spiritual life,” she said, snidely dismissing my twenty-five years of following a spiritual discipline.
I laughed. I was used to arrogance from Christians. When I would go chanting with the devotees on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1970’s young Christians often challenged us. If you pointed out their own discrepancies in following the Bible they would counter with “You’re judgin’, brother.”
“You’re judging too,” a devotee would answer.
“When I judge, my judgement is true,” answered one young man, but he didn’t say it directly to me; otherwise, I would have told him he was crazy for talking as if he were Jesus, and if his judgement was true, so was mine.
Anyway, I read part of the book by Tozer, and one thing that caught my eye was his statement that the glory of God cannot increase because then God would be changeable.
The forms of Krishna (left) and Radha at ISKCON Mayapur, India. Radha is the greatest of all devotees. No one else can equal her love for Krishna. (We should note that this love is without any mundane desire.)
photo: Umapati Swami
But who can tell God that his glory cannot increase? Shall we tell God he cannot defy our mundane limits? Krishna defeats Tozer’s guesswork:
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My sweetness is always newer and newer. Devotees taste it according to their own respective love. My sweetness also has no room for expansion, yet it shines before that mirror [of Radha’s love] in newer and newer beauty.
There is constant competition between my sweetness and the mirror of Radha’s love. They both go on increasing, but neither knows defeat.”⁓Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita
The constant expansion not only of the sweetness and beauty of God but also of love of God never stops and is thus a changeless part of his nature. Now that sounds more like God, doesn’t it?
Eternally touching my head to the floor at the lotus feet of my spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada,
⁓Umapati Swami, August 14, 2018
Photo top: Naughty Krishna holding a piece of candy (Jishnu Das)>
Srila Prabhupada
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is the teacher who brought Krishna Consciousness from India to the West and then to the rest of the world. He is the founder of the worldwide Hare Krishna Movement as well as the author and compiler of many works of Vedic knowledge. He left this world in 1977.
Umapati Swami
One of the first American devotees of the Hare Krishna Movement, he became Srila Prabhupada’s disciple in 1966. Since then, he has preached Krishna Consciousness in many countries. He is the author of “My Days with Prabhupada,” available from Amazon. Now 84 years old, he has started this blog to share what he has learned.
© Umapati Swami 2018
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