Serve – connect – feel – experience (Srila Sridhar Maharaj)

Srila B.R. Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj

*

Excerpts from Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion, Vol 1

*

Whatever beautiful and valuable things we come across, we cannot but surrender ourselves to them. That is the criterion. If we come across anything higher within our vicinity, our appreciation means surrendering ourselves unto that. So according to the degree of our surrender, we have to measure what degree of quality of truth we have come across. That can be measured only according to the degree and intensity of surrender, or how much we could surrender to what we came into connection with, to the point of no return. 

*

When our appreciation for saranagati [surrender] comes, we will realize that we have come into the relativity of a great substance. Otherwise one cannot find the necessity of saranagati at all. “Why saranagati? We want mastery over everything!” Modern science, the exploitationists, the karmis – they want everything under their control. But this is just the opposite, and opposite to the highest degree. In this, we shall find such a great and noble aspect of nature that we will voluntarily offer ourselves to be the eternal servant of it. “I am in the relativity of such a magnanimous, noble thing!” Saranagati, herself, is reality. She contains Krsna within her boundary. Come to saranagati, and you will find Krsna. The halo of Krsna is saranagati. Through saranagati you can approach the Krsna conception [of the Absolute], but not by inquiry. 

*

And then service – to be utilized by Him. To serve means to taste the juice. Only by serving can we connect, feel, and have any experience.