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Devotees Are Made One at a Time

The 4-Hour Working Week is the title of a book published in 2007. It promises to turn the dream of a four-hour working week into reality by making Internet entrepreneurs out of its readers. It offers the promise of a life of leisure—free from hard work and maintained by a secure financial system that effectively “makes money while you sleep!”

I don’t know how viable the plan for financial freedom in that book is, but wouldn’t it be great to have an automated system that could make devotees for us? Then we could kick back and take it easy and— over a big nectar drink (natural fruit sugars only, of course) —watch the bhaktas roll in.

However, because humans are persons, and devotional service is all about people and their relationship with Krishna, the Supreme Person: it’s all personal. It takes a person to preach. Temples don’t make devotees, programs don’t make devotees, systems don’t make devotees, formulas don’t make devotees —devotees make devotees. If there is no one willing to do the hard yards, to “reach out to bring others in,” then no one will become a devotee. There is no way around this.

Because people are persons, there is no “one size fits all,” cookie-cutter approach that can be mechanically applied to everyone. Devotees are made by devotees, and devotees are made one at a time.

And that’s ok, because what would we do if we didn’t have that work cut out for us? We wouldn’t sit around enjoying our nectar drink for long. In pretty short order we’d be sitting at home being miserable—arguing with our partner or fellow ashram residents and obsessing on our trivial problems and the imagined dramas of others’ lives. Luckily for us, Krishna has mercifully given us the opportunity to put ourselves out to share Him with others, and in this way get Him for ourselves!

When I told H.H. Prahladananda Maharaja about one of my premises for this article—that devotees are not made by a system—he responded, “Yes they are. We made twenty devotees in one month in Philadelphia using a system.” He then proceeded to describe how he, along with Sivarama Swami, Tripurari Swami, and Tamal Krishna Goswami, in one month in the late 70s cranked twenty bhaktas through the temple. I didn’t want to contradict the Maharaja while in his presence, but now (from the relative safety of my study) I would like to point out that that is one heck of a lot of devotional firepower for one team, and no one is replicating that formula with equivalent success. In other words, devotees are the critical factor.

There may not be an automated system that we can switch on and leave unattended, or a magical “one-two-three”-step formula that we can mindlessly follow and that works in all places all the time, but there are a set of simple principles that we can intelligently and sensitively apply repeatedly in a wide variety of circumstances to create a favorable environment in the heart of another person for the awakening of devotion to Lord Krishna. If we “rinse, lather, and repeat,” the process will grow organically into something that appears to be producing many devotees, but if we examine closely, we'll will see that devotees are still being made one at a time—only by many people side by side.

The first three stages of the development of bhakti are: ajnata-sadhu-sanga (unknowing association of devotees), sraddha (awakening of faith), and sadhu-sanga (conscious association of devotees). Thereafter, the stage of bhajana-kriya (systematic spiritual practices) begins. Cultivation and preaching don’t stop at this point—in fact, they don't stop until we go back to Godhead (and maybe not even then)—but for the purposes of this presentation we will consider only the first three steps.

The initial ingredient for this is at least one (1) person, who must be willing to give of their time and give of themselves. Bhakti comes from bhakti, so the spiritual potency of this person, arising from their personal practice, is the spiritual flame that will from them and draw out the dormant spiritual fire in another person, just as a burning piece of wood causes another piece to alight.

(I perfer the impersonal over the masculine form for indefinite gender. Doing both (his or her) is unwieldy, and I'm sorry, but I'm just not doing masculine by default.)

Ajnata-sadhu-sanga means getting the association of a devotee without knowing it. This can happen to people in different ways. For me it started with interactions with sankirtana devotees on the street, seeing the harinama downtown on Friday nights, buying a samosa from a mobile prasadam caravan at a rave, having a friend invite me to the local Hare Krishna restaurant.
All of these interactions done unconsciously on my part allowed me to get association with devotees, and allowed them to engage my senses in devotional service. The more outreach (contact) programs we have, the more opportunities we create for people to engage in devotional activities, and the more favorable the field becomes. We can also increase effectiveness by strategically concentrating our efforts—rather than spreading the mercy widely and thinly, we can consider how to give mercy in a concentrated fashion, for a deeper effect.

By rebalancing our resources, can we create more opportunities for a smaller group of people to get more mercy?

When we have the facility for it, my wife and I establish a center where we offer yoga classes—something that she can do (it’s something at the intersection of things we can do personally and things people are interested in)—philosophy workshops, and discussion-and-kirtana nights, all followed by dinner. This allows us to create an environment where people can come up to five times a week to get this ajnata-sadhu-sanga. People come for a wide variety of reasons, ranging the spectrum from a desire to do yoga, to an interest in kirtana or Krishna consciousness, to the invitation of a friend (in addition to book distribution and increasingly a Google hit on our website, word of mouth, and tapping into existing social networks are our biggest draw). However, regardless of why they come initially, in the end they all get the same thing: ajnata-sadhu-sanga. After the program that they ostensibly came for, we all sit down together around the table, take some healthy, tasty prasadam together (mostly organic and vegan-friendly), and talk—that’s the actual program.

When people aren’t with us, they’re with the material energy, and in most parts of the world today that means heavy, heavy modes. Asat-sanga (unwanted association) counters the effect of sadhu-sanga, so we want to reduce the asat-sanga and increase the sadhu-sanga. This means that opportunities for more association must be there for them to scale up to. It means we have to give of our time, give of ourselves.

Srila Prabhupada was once questioned by disciples about a statement in one of his books—how one who takes to devotional service is understood to have performed all Vedic yajnas, sacrifices, and many pious activities: “But we haven’t done any pious activities in our lives, so how is this possible?”

Srila Prabhupada replied, “I have created your good fortune.”

So this is ajnata-sadhu-sanga. People are lazy regarding spiritual life and will not do any work, so someone must take on that burden for them. Without this spirit of sacrifice for another (para-artha), nothing will happen.

When we arrived in Brisbane four years ago we had no facility. So we began at the local temple, which has a program each Saturday night. We met one young lady there (now Acyuta Bhava devi dasi; at that time, Alison). She had already received a lot of mercy through Jagat Pati dasa and Taruni devi dasi, devotees who run “Gaura Nitai’s” restaurant in Cairns, where she is from. She had received and read Bhagavad-gita As It Is, and had even tried to become vegetarian and chant.
This is an example of someone who has already passed to the third stage and is tottering on the fourth, bhajana-kriya. She had received so much mercy that she was then seeking out the devotees and wanted to engage in spiritual practice. However, she did not have the necessary steady association, sadhu-sanga, to undergird that practice.

So we made friends with her. Friendship takes time; it means an investment in a relationship. My wife, Param Satya devi dasi, spent time with her and found things they could do together. They painted the temple. They talked. I wrote a study guide for the Science of Self Realization for her. She had recently finished a university degree and wanted to systematically study the books.

Please note that we didn’t simply put her on a roster for service, or put her in a class. We developed a personal relationship with her around those things.

Soon she was ready to move in with us. She wanted to deepen her practice, and the environment where she was living had become less and less attractive to her—sadhu-sanga, asat-sanga-tyaga.

How many people like that are around you—people drifting in and out of your existing programs, tottering on the edge? They represent “low-hanging fruit.” Don’t think about how you can “make them all devotees.” Just find one and invest time in a relationship with that person. Find someone with whom you have something in common. You want to make genuine friendship with people; so just be yourself and put yourself out to give someone a hand up.

If you have a functioning temple ashram situation for people to go into, and they can take advantage of it, then great. Otherwise, every devotee’s home should be an ashram, whether it is in a temple or not. If ISKCON is a hospital, then people need to come in through the ER and be operated on by specialist, first-line surgeons. Don’t take people out of the back of the ambulance and put them into the hospital toilet with a mop and bucket. If you don’t have an ER facility in the temple, then create a triage station in a house outside it.

With Acyuta Bhava, we rented a small upstairs space in the city and opened a center. My wife staffed it, teaching and cooking, and Acyuta Bhava and I financed it with our day jobs. From there we snowballed. We picked up another person, Campak Gaur devi dasi, who drifted into a Sunday feast at the restaurant, also having had most of the initial stages of cultivation done elsewhere.

In many places we are set up to do a substantial amount of ajnata-sadhu-sanga, but not much beyond that. One boy from a Christian background once said to me, “You throw out a lot of nets, but even when they are full of fish, you never pull them in; then the fish just swim away.”

Our first two people here in Brisbane were fish that swam out of other people’s nets—but then we caught one in our own net. Dhruva das, our local sankirtana man, sent Elliott, (now Prema Yogi dasa), up for a yoga class. He came a few times in early 2005, then Param Satya tracked him down at the market where he worked and asked him to teach for her while she went to the States for Bhakti Tirtha Swami's Vyasa Puja. Prema Yogi taught for the six weeks, and we made friendship with him. Then he moved in. He didn’'t do any bhakti-sadhana for the first few months he lived with us. In fact, he even said that he thought that we were cool, but he didn’'t want to be a devotee. He just did Hatha Yoga three hours a day, because that was his thing. He was still on the ajnata-sadhu-sanga stage, with a small spark of sraddha manifested as appreciation for the devotees. We fanned that spark and didn’'t try to artificially push him beyond that point. He didn’t do any sadhana— but we were doing it for him.

ISKCON means Society and Krishna consciousness. We are (or at least we should be) fulfilling people, on both a social level and a spiritual level. We can satisfy them spiritually, in a way that no one else can; and to the degree that we can also satisfy their social needs, we give them the stability they need to apply themselves to spiritual practices.

Imagine a person to be a bundle of connectors, cables with plugs on the end; these connectors represent social connections. The more of these connectors that we can capture with sadhu-sanga, the better. The less of these connectors that are connected to asat-sanga, the better. So our goal is to connect people socially to a spiritual network.

People who have few and/or weak existing connections will always be easier to reconnect to the spiritual network; they’re generally new in town, or undergoing a major shift in their life. Now, please note that I’m not advocating some kind of cultish manipulation of people here—I’m simply sharing my observations over the years of making friends with people through the centers we’ve opened or “done our thing” in, and at places where we’ve lived.

People who are new in town don’t have a lot of existing connections; they have loose connectors looking for something to connect with. Ever noticed how many tourists come to the Sunday Feast? Acyuta Bhava was relatively new to Brisbane, so she had only a small circle of acquaintances and friends, and her connections were not so deep. She had time and space to get involved with another friendship.

Yet we need to be careful, for birds of a feather will tend to flock together. I’ve seen places where, because the out-of-towners are quicker to become involved, the outreach network has become saturated with people from out of town, and, in some cases, even predominated by foreigners. Once that happens, it becomes more difficult to reach the locals. Your scene then looks very alien. It’s always good to have locals involved.

Those who are deeply embedded in the local society have many well-established connectors that are locked in. They have social obligations that limit their time. They might come once a week, but their social calendar is too busy to come more than that. They will take a longer investment of time. In one of our centers, if properly structured, a person like this can take up to three to five years to “come to the boiling point.” But as soon as people in this category start to boil, things really happen.

People who are undergoing a major crisis in their life also often have weak or disconnected connectors. They may be experiencing a change in their level of adhikara, a major relationship breakup, or some other factor. A significant percentage will avail themselves of devotee association only until they get themselves together, and will then head straight back to the material energy. That’s life. But some will stay. Some will be transcendentally charged from previous lives and will burst out of the grid. Those people are gold and will become valuable team members.

We have to create so many opportunities, both for the busy people (to find an opportunity to come once a week) and for interested persons (to come three to five times a week). If our resources are limited, then we can focus on one person and do what it takes to facilitate them. Invent things – just for one person. The devotees told me that they had lunch together at their center near my office every day. I went for three months. Later I found out that they started doing it the day after they told me they did it, and stopped the day after I stopped coming.

Once we have a team of people, we can do something more structured. We have to always remember that we’re trying to create environments and opportunities for people to connect and make friendship. While we do this, we should remember that friendship requires unstructured time, so we don’t want to overprogram ourself or our team.

We often do things like a picnic, a trip to the beach, a lunch on the deck, a dinner at someone’s house, even a weekend retreat, where we invite our friends and hang out together, doing kirtana and shooting the breeze. We've lived in Brisbane for four years, but we don’t have a lounge room; our lounge room is in Atma Yoga, our center here (www.atmayoga.com.au). That’s where we “do life” with people. We could have a lounge room at home, or have some other environment for people, or even just one person, to come around. We need to create a space where friendship can blossom. A sterile, impersonal, or public space, such as a temple corridor, a side room, or a public restaurant is not the best venue for this. Let people into your life and they will let you into theirs.

Think of a race car that comes into a pit stop to be swarmed by a pit crew—our center or home should be like that. We have a team of people and we create an opportunity for people to pull in to our center, with its warm and personal environment, so that they can feel at home and relax (just like a friend’s lounge or dining room) and hook up their social connectors to our network. We can swarm them. Then, across those relational connections, we transmit spiritual association. Tri Yuga dasa, who in this fashion became a devotee in New Zealand and now heads the Urban Yoga outreach center in Melbourne, has as the tag line of the center: “Spiritual Friendship”, and that sums it up.

We shouldn’t try to make people (or even one person) into a devotee; we should just be a devotee and make friends with others. If we are strong in our practice and a well balanced person, then nature will take its course, and they will automatically become devotees. And once that happens, we must take care of them. They will then naturally do the same for others, with a minimal amount of guidance and prompting. If we build a supportive network for practicing spiritual life together and for sharing that with others, it will become more and more attractive and effective in spreading Krishna consciousness.

Everyone wants to join a winning team, and one that is based on serving Krishna together is irresistible.

After four years, the eagle has landed.

This week for the harinam in Greenslopes it was me, Prahlad, and six ladies. It joins other unique configurations such as Kangaroo Point (four guys plus Prahlad), and Hawthorne (the largest group so far).

Our assembly point was the appropriately named "Curd St".

By the way, Prahlad is the only one who has been on all twenty-four climate change harinams so far.

Greenslopes is a suburb overlooking the city, with many huge properties in it. This particular one looked like it could be a temple:

Many of the residents were retired persons. I've noticed that in suburbs where the property values are high people are very, perhaps even over protective of their houses and their neighbourhood.

Contrast this with photos from our kirtan in Inala, a less affluent suburb, a few weeks ago.

To explain my comment at the beginning of the video - five minutes after we dismounted in the neighbourhood, Prahlad hopped up on the wall of the house there. The man came out directly and yelled at him to get off the wall, then stood peering out of a spyhole in this door, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we could see his body through the window.

Anyway, Lord Caitanya and His devotees are very liberal - they give the mercy without discriminating as to whether one is rich or poor, young or old. Param vijayate sri krishna sankirtanam!

We're off to mangal-arati at the temple tomorrow morning. His Holiness Ramai Swami is in town and will give class tomorrow. He gave class tonight at the Sunday Feast.

Here's a photo of Prahlad before we went to wake the Deities last Friday.