120826 Bhakti is With Our Senses Serving Krishna.mp3 (44 minutes, 20.4 MB)

An excerpt from this lecture:

Krishna is giving so much love and as Srila Govinda Maharaj would say, the bhakta is depositing it in Krishna. He is not keeping it in the pocket because the liberated soul is not an enjoyer, the liberated soul is a servant–but not the way we think of service in this world, as being oppressive. In that [spiritual] world it is the most liberating eternal connection.

sarvopadhi-vinirmuktam tat-paratvena nirmalam
hrishikena hrishikesha-sevanam bhaktir ucyate
(Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu: 1.1.12)

“Bhakti, or devotional service, means engaging all our senses in the service of the Lord, the master of all the senses. When the spirit soul renders service unto the Supreme, there are two side effects. One is freed from all material designations, and one’s senses are purified simply by being employed in the service of the Lord.”

The service of your senses to Hrishikesh, the Lord of the senses, the enjoyer–that is bhakti. Bhakti is with our senses serving Krishna. Now we are spiritualizing our senses in the material world. Krishna says in Bhagavad-gita that in the practice of bhakti the Lord, the individual, and the things that are being offered–all of them merge into transcendence. Which is to say, this is all Krishna’s property. When you are offering a flower to Krishna it becomes spiritualized because it is of Krishna’s nature. It is his energy: “Everything is strung upon Me like pearls strung upon a thread.”

Everything becomes transcendent. Srila Sridhar Maharaj, Srila Prabhupad, and Srila Govinda Maharaj also talk about how everything is spiritual because everything is connected with Krishna… It is not disconnected. The disconnect comes with material consciousness. That is the only disconnect. But with Krishna consciousness everything is Krishna’s property and everything rises to that level of spirituality. The thing which is being offered is no longer mundane because it is Krishna’s energy. You can see like that. Everything is part and parcel of Krishna.

om purnam adah purnam idam purnat purnam udacyate
(Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad: 5.1.1)

Everything is perfect and complete but the perfection is not realized until we have connection with the complete which is purnam Krishnam.