Krsna has a plan to eventually spread His teachings all over the world through His devotees. Every disciple of Srila Prabhupada has his own individual responsibility to follow in the footsteps of our beloved spiritual master. I’m sure that that has always been in the back of the minds of many of his disciples. They are thinking “It is MY personal duty to follow this process of surrender and become Krsna conscious. I don’t want to become a useless disciple by adding or subtracting anything to this sublime process.” Gradually, as Srila Prabhupada sees our sincere efforts to follow him, he will be merciful and pray to Krsna… “My dear Lord, my disciple such and such is unqualified. But he is sincere. Please bless him.”
So this opportunity is there in every disciple’s life. We all can take this opportunity to receive Krsna’s blessings to help us progress in devotional life. And that is Krsna’s plan. He has created this Guru-shishya parampara system from the beginning and now for thousands of years it has so far not become broken.
At any time and under any condition we can revive or enhance this gradual process by simply submissively hearing the transcendental sound vibration coming down from the spiritual world out of the lips of our beloved Srila Prabhupada. Everything else will follow.
Everyone has a relationship with Krsna, but a devotee’s relationship is different. it is more intimate. But there are different kinds of devotees, and Krsna deals with each of them accordingly. For a fully surrendered soul like our beloved spiritual master, Krsna is there so intimately protecting him, thinking about him, and finding ways to please him. This is due to the fact that such a rare soul like Srila Prabhupada is at every minute also trying to please Krsna, and there is a very intimate reciprocation and unbroken communication between them. But a third-class devotee like me who just thinks that my religion is Hare Krsna and I might go to the feast, but most of my day is spent maintaining my body and family, going to movies and kissing girls, is on a different platform.
I can’t expect to have the same privileges that I will gain when I become completely surrendered and Krsna is my everything. So these statements that we hear about how Krsna relates to His devotees can manifest differently and will change according to our own practice of Krsna consciousness and what kind of devotee we are becoming. Both Srila Prabhupada and I are “devotees,” no doubt. But I can’t say that there isn’t a gulf of difference between what our personal relationships are with Krsna, and how differently that relationship is characterized. Just saying.