Question
Dear Guru Maharaj,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to You and SP.
I apologize if I already asked you this question. I wanted to know if you have ever seen Krishna face-to-face. also I wanted to know if you have ever just seen Krishna maybe not face-to-face but
but actually saw him before . I wanted to know if You have definitively seen Krishna. and I wanted to know if You can tell me that you know 100% that Krishna is God? I hope my questions are not too personal or offensive ,that is not my intention. I just had to ask you these questions. thank you very much.
Your servant
Bhakta Richard
Answer
Dear Bhakta Richard,
This is one of those few questions that do not and should not have a definitive answer and I’ll explain why.
If I answer yes, I do see Krishna face to face, you have no proof that this is true. If you accept my answer, then your human nature will push you to try to imitate. It’s just question of time and it will happen.
You’ll think “my spiritual master gave me a cheap answer, so this is how it should be. Cheap and fake. So I’ll be Krishna and try to enjoy a rasa dance.” You’ll start writing to me telling all kinds of so called mystical dreams and vision which are entirely false. And you’ll become a Prakrita Sahajiya.
So this information is useless and dangerous.
You could also not accept my words and loose faith in me as your spiritual master. “My Guru has gone mad trying to make me believe he sees Krishna.”
Some other people will also think I am crazy, some other that I am a deviant and that I am a step from fall down (rightly so), and so on.
If I say no, I don’t see Krishna face to face, you may think, “he is only trying to be humble” and conclude I do see Krishna and we re-enter into the problems explained above.
Someone who thinks that one has to see Krishna face to face to be a bonafide spiritual master will say, “then why is he posing himself as a Guru? What type of useless teacher is he?”
I could also try to be very humble and say, “not only I do not see Krishna, but I understand very little or nothing about Bhakti.” But nowadays this is also useless and damaging.
Nowadays humbless is not understood, not perceived as so. In the past if one would have said “I am fallen” everybody would have thought, “how humble is he”. Today they would say, “he at last confessed”.
Time ago a godbrother spiritual master during a public class said “I am a fallen soul”. The same day I started to receive letters from his disciples all alarmed saying “my spiritual master said he has fall down. What happened? What should I do now?” It took me some time and a lot of typing to explain that this is the way great soul speak about themselves. He was trying to teach an aspect of Vaisnava culture. You read a lot of extreme self deprecating in the Sastras by great Acaryas.
In this period of time I’d suggest everyone to remain sober and balanced and not say or do anything extreme, in one way or the other.
If a pure devotee actually sees Krishna, he wouldn’t tell you. He’d deny. It is a very dangerous statement to make.
Srila Prabhupada in very few occasion showed ecstatic symptoms, when he just couldn’t control them. He always kept himself in a sober and controlled mood, so he wouldn’t cause a phenomen of foolish imitations.
The devotee has to be sastra-caksusa, or jnana-caksusa, see the Lord through the “interior eye” excited by pure knowledge. This is the correct way to see or feel Krishna.
Great personalities like Brahma, Narada Muni, Dhruva Maharaja and others never saw Krishna face to face or when some of them saw Him it was just for a few instants. They do not complain and remain happy to perform devotional service.
Knowledge and devotional service is the prefered way to see Krishna by the greatest souls.
As far as if I am sure that Krishna is God, yes I am sure. The limited understanding and realization I have make me sure of this 100%.
– Manonatha Dasa (ACBSP)
5 may 19
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