A Devotee's Question: What happens to an aspiring devotee who may have read Srila Prabhupada’s books, read his lectures and loves serving and associating with the devotees but can not find a spiritual master on the level of Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada has said that the disciple should accept the spiritual master as good as God and be ready to sacrifice their life to him, if such an aspiring devotee feels this way towards Srila Prabhupada but can’t find anyone who satisfies.. as good as God , is he then forced to take initiation of someone who does not have full respect?
HH KKS: I can say that I can appreciate the search for a spiritual master and who is like Srila Prabhupada. At the same time I think that Srila Prabhupada was not the ordinary spiritual master…of course there are no ordinary spiritual masters….but Srila Prabhupada certainly was more than a spiritual master… Srila Prabhupada was more than a sanyassi. Srila Prabhupada was such a wonderful pure devotee of the Lord that such a spiritual master may not always be there and we must take it then Krishna has a plan….So we are in this predicament that we find ourselves in spiritual life and we need to make advancement, so we can wait and wait and wait we can weigh and weigh and weigh , this one too light, this one not too heavy enough..I have heard that guru means heavy , so you’re weighing and weighing and each one is not heavy enough….. because Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasavati Thakur he says that a guru is heavy…… not heavy in the sense that he speaks heavy, he may or he might not, he may speak very sweet but he is heavy because he never changes his position . so every time you may find ..yes..that no one compares to Srila Prabhupada ..that maybe… but meanwhile we are always looking at the qualification of the spiritual master and we may think that well is he powerful enough . but are we looking at our own qualification as a disciple , we should also look at our own situation and we are probably worse off than all these spiritual masters that we are looking at. We may look at the spiritual master and say I found something that may not be up to the level….but where are we? We are in a position where we need all the help we can get and for us we can find only Srila Prabhupada suitable to give us guidance …the only problem is that now we can not directly ask him a question , or now he will not directly turn to us and correct us as we need it…so…if we find a spiritual master, if we find a vaishnava who is truly a dedicated servant of Srila Prabhupada and mature in that service to Srila Prabhupada then we will find that that Vaishnava can help us very much to increase our relationship with Srila Prabhupada , as Srila Prabhupada had a relationship with his spiritual master , and his spiritual master had a relationship with his and like this the whole sampradaya works …in our movement Srila Prabhupada is the founder Acharya and that way, always, the guru of all the members of this movement …but some may have that relation with Srila Prabhupada by serving the servant of Srila Prabhupada , not to the exclusion of Srila Prabhupada but rather to enhance their relationship with Srila Prabhupada.
So one can spend a whole lifetime saying I can’t find anyone as qualified as Srila Prabhupada …and meanwhile you don’t accept any guru and in that way we actually become our own guru and once I heard a statement that one who is his own guru accepts a fool for a disciple.(crowd laughs)
