The Calamity Within

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
24 June 2013

I am very happy to have an opportunity to speak to the devotees from all over the world. Ratha Yatra is coming now—this year (2013) it is on 10 July, and about 200-300 devotees are going with me to Puri. If you can, come and join the Ratha Yatra festival, whatever country you are from. Some may think, "Oh, we have been there many times, what will we go there for?" If you have time, come at the Ratha Yatra time, it is good for you—it is Jagannath Dham, Puri Dham!

I am also sad to hear the news that people go to Kedar and Badri for their own benefit, punya, and so many people died there recently. You can see the news on the Internet—thousands of people died there this time (because of the flood). They went there for their own eye exercise, not for service, and they all died. Gurudev, Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj, and Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur also took devotees to those places, but not for their own benefit—for the preaching purpose.

So many people left their bodies, all the buildings are demolished, and many people ask me, "Why is a holy place demolished?" The holy place also wants a Vaishnav to come and purify it. People come to a holy place, do some bad karma and leave that bad karma there, in this way the holy place becomes polluted. Ganga Devi and Alaknanda thought, "I will demolish everything, then all sin will be removed from there." That is why so many people died and so many buildings are demolished—now it has become clean.

We must understand that in the course of your service so many obstacles will come. Prabhupad said "sata ganjana, sata lanchana" (শত গঞ্জনা, শত লাঞ্চনা, you will be humiliated and abused hundreds of times)—you might have heard it in Gurudev's lectures. It means you will face so much austerity, so many bad things will come in your spiritual life—you will be told so many bad things, you will be criticised so much, but please do not leave Krishna consciousness. This is my request, and this is Gurudev's and Prabhupad's request also.

Do not leave Krishna consciousness. So many things will come, but it is a test—Krishna wants to see how much patience, how much tolerance you have. He wants to see, "Will you still practise? Do you really want to stay with Me? Do you really want to get Me?" This is high thinking. You want to get the Supreme Personality but how much patience do you have? How much quality do you have? How much of your ego can you leave?

We are small, tiny, but our ego is very big, that is the problem. We think we can do so many things, but you see that within twenty minutes the whole holy place, Kedar and Badri, were destroyed. Now every day fifty helicopters go there to rescue people—so many thousands of people are staying there without any food, waiting to be rescued. They are getting so much austerity. Then you can see what Krishna can do. If you still do not believe it, what can I do?

Scientist can do so many things in this world, but you can see what Krishna can do just within twenty minutes. Eight-storey buildings, ten-storey buildings—everything was demolished in these twenty minutes, and only the Siva temple (Kedarnath Siva temple) is there. Over 500 sahajiya and mayavadi ashrams, temples, and maths were broken by Krishna. Now there is nothing there, not even the road—only the hill and the ruins are there, and so many people died. It all happened in only twenty minutes!

So, if people still do not believe that Krishna exists, that Krishna is all-powerful (that He can do anything), that is their own ignorance... You must understand it and tell it to them.

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