There is a Bengali saying that “when the pure devotee comes, he brings order to chaos. When he leaves, chaos returns”. Srila Prabhupada told us that when Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati came on the scene, Vaisnavism had fallen into a degraded position. He fought hard to dispel so much nonsense and again he established the proper siddhanta. Later Srila Prabhupada took up his gurudev’s mission and spread this transcendental science throughout the modern world.
After our Srila Prabhupada returned to Krsna, chaos may be trying to return in our lives. But the situation is not hopeless. Krsna has a plan to eventually spread His teachings all over the world. 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 duty to follow this process of surrender to the completion. 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.”
Krsna, Prabhupada explains, is always wanting to please His pure devotee. So when the spiritual master is pleased with his disciple’s insignificant but sincere efforts to serve him and he prays to Krsna to bless his disciples, then to please His confidential servant and friend, Krsna will give us the understanding from within our hearts to advance in Krsna consciousness and He will also purify up from within.
If somehow this process can continue faithfully through the many pitfalls in our lives, gradually all the anarthas can be removed from our hearts and we can eventually become free from the reaction or our past sins and come to the transcendental stage. All this is done by pleasing Srila Prabhupada, who asks Krsna to bless us. And once we are free from the clutches of the three modes of nature by this process of following in the footstep of our beloved guru after being blessed by him, Krsna will empower us to repeat His message as representatives of our blessed spiritual master. Both Krsna and Srila Prabhupada desire this for us.
So this opportunity is there in every disciple’s life. And there are a few rare and pure souls who will follow this process to fruition. And occasionally we will see a cent percent surrendered soul who has followed this path to the highest perfection become empowered by Krsna to spread Krsna consciousness everywhere. That is a rare thing but we can just continue step by step in our lives, while praying for the mercy of Krsna. Is there another choice for us?
And that is Krsna’s plan. He has created this param para 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.