“It’s Kali-yuga, Prabhu!” Suffering in Spiritual Life

Humans are the only species in all creation that complain about getting exactly what they asked for. There is a statement in the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam that turns everything we know about the age that we live in on its head. The inhabitants of more auspicious ages, Satya, Tretā, and Dvāpara, are said to aspire for birth in Kali-yuga:

kṛtādiṣu prajā rājan kalāv icchanti sambhavam
kalau khalu bhaviṣyanti nārāyaṇa-parāyaṇāḥ

My dear King, the inhabitants of Satya-yuga and the other ages eagerly desire to take birth in this Age of Kali, since in this age there will be many devotees of the Supreme Lord, Nārāyaṇa. (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 11.5.38)

It goes on to elaborate that those who are actually advanced do not lament their birth here – they worship this age. Kaliṁ sabhājayanty āryā guṇa-jñāḥ sāra-bhāginaḥ – those essence-seekers who understand the hidden quality of Kali-yuga glorify it because all perfection can be attained simply by saṅkīrtana. Therefore, souls with even a little intelligence look at this broken-down, quarrelsome age with all of its problems and choose it deliberately.

To follow that idea to its natural conclusion, if one knowingly aspires to be born into the iron age of quarrel, then the difficulties of that age should not be something unexpected. They are all natural parts of the arrangement. Whether you are one of those rare souls who chose such a birth, or just arrived here as a result of your own karma, the disturbances we spend so much energy resenting do not have to be an obstacle to that truth that we originally came searching for in Kṛṣṇa Consciousness.

An ocean of faults

The anchor for all of this is Śukadeva Gosvāmī’s verse at the very close of the Bhāgavatam:

kaler doṣa-nidhe rājann asti hy eko mahān guṇaḥ
kīrtanād eva kṛṣṇasya mukta-saṅgaḥ paraṁ vrajet

My dear King, although Kali-yuga is an ocean of faults, there is still one great quality about this age: simply by chanting the Holy Name of Kṛṣṇa, one can be freed from material bondage and attain the supreme destination. (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 12.3.51)

Notice that this verse is not recommending Kali-yuga for a comfortable life. Kali-yuga is does not have a couple of unfortunate blemishes – it is an ocean of faults (doṣa-nidhe). One supreme quality (chanting the Holy Name) is positioned over that ocean of defects. The search for reality becomes increasingly urgent when there is a forest fire behind you and the only way is forward. The difficulty is not subtracted before the blessing is given – they arrive at the same time. It is not a mistake.

Śrīla B.R. Śrīdhara Deva Gosvāmī Mahārāja explains this with characteristic force when speaking on this very verse:

In this Kali-yuga the environment is very anti, so to preach at this time is not an easy thing. Kali means kalaha – quarrel. So many opinions are there, and they are all quarrelling to establish their own superiority. “Why only Kṛṣṇa? Why not Śiva, or Kālī, or Jesus? What is the proof that God exists?” Every word is an objection. In the midst of so many different ideas, we have to get some position. To do this is not a fashion – it is something that we must do! Some attention must come from our heart with intensity and with all sincerity. Then we shall get the highest achievement. It is not an ordinary thing. It is not a luxury or a fashion, but a reality.

Pleasant Māyā

There is the secret. The hostility of this age is not an obstacle to our practice – it is what forces the practice to become substantial. A comfortable environment leads to a comfortable faith – a faith of fashion and luxury, worn lightly and rejected at the first inconvenience. Such a comfortable situation always keeps your real spiritual pursuits on the back-burner. My Guru Mahārāja used to call such a situation “pleasant māyā.”

Whether we like it or not, Kali-yuga will not permit you that luxury (or at least not for long). It keeps objecting, keeps disturbing, keeps stripping things away, until all that remains is either nothing at all or something genuine. The naked truth is that we are the masters of our own suffering. Kali-yuga is not simply some imposition by some external force – it is the collective accrued karma of all living beings.

What were we promised?

Where most of us go wrong is that we misread the situation because we came to this spiritual path with mixed motivations. Many people come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness on the strength of a kind of spiritual advertising. “Chant and be happy! Take up this process and be free from anxiety! Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and your life will be sublime!” None of these statements are false, and many positive outcomes are genuinely felt. But as with so many things in life, after some time – without determination and other qualities – the long road of devotional life can become very difficult. Over the years, a quiet substitution takes place, and we sign what I would call the ‘comfort contract’ – “I will keep up the practice, and in exchange the practice will keep me comfortable and free from anxiety.”

We originally came for a revolutionary conception in regards to the self and its connection with the Ultimate Reality, but, like everyone else here, we got caught up making our bed here in the material world. This is avidyā, ignorance.

Thus, when disturbances arrive – when life goes topsy-turvy, as it will, when wealth is taken from us, when we lose a job, or a marriage fails, or even when we ourselves precipitate some total, life-changing decision in pursuit of Kṛṣṇa and it goes wrong – we treat it as a breach of contract. The bliss that was advertised has stopped. Therefore, something must be terribly wrong with the process.

But what if nothing has gone wrong? What if the disturbance is the process, working exactly as it was meant to? A soul who is even a little awake understands that the loss of an attachment is not Kṛṣṇa breaking His word – it is Kṛṣṇa keeping it! He comes as a thief, loosening our grip, finger by finger, drawing us toward the internal side of devotional life that all our years of comfort never even once touched. We signed up to be carried across an ocean – why are we so shocked to find ourselves getting wet!

yasyāham anugṛhṇāmi hariṣye tad-dhanaṁ śanaiḥ
tato ’dhanaṁ tyajanty asya svajanā duḥkha-duḥkhitam

The Personality of Godhead said: If I especially favour someone, I gradually deprive him of his wealth. Then the relatives and friends of such a poverty-stricken man abandon him. In this way he suffers one distress after another. (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.88.8)

How are we meant to understand verses like this, in the very scripture that we read every day? This statement is not just someone’s opinion after having a bad day. This is God speaking directly.

“I never felt anything”

There is a complaint I’ve heard again and again from those who leave Kṛṣṇa consciousness – “The happiness that was advertised never came. I never got a consistent taste for anything.” The frustration behind this sentiment is real enough, but it is not looking past the surface.

Such a statement tends to draw one of two responses – the insecure, hard-hearted devotees insisting, “We’ve never lost a sincere man!” or the bitter veterans’ club gathering round to swap their own horror stories. Neither one of these makes any difference for the better. Pious dismissal or bitter reinforcement are both equally useless.

The answer is that a taste does not come before sacrifice – it comes after it. This is true even in ordinary life. No friends can boast of lasting relationships just by hanging out – the depth of a friendship is paid for over years, by sacrifice made on one another’s account, and only then does something good and lasting appear. To stand at the door demanding the reward before paying the entry fee is to guarantee you will feel nothing. A taste only comes on the far side of giving, never on the near side. A genuine experience awakens in those who entered with a little sacrifice in the company of real sādhus. Those who waited for the experience to wake them up are generally still waiting – and many of them have since walked out, certain that the room was empty all along.

There is, of course, another soul here whose case is different and whose grievance is real – the one who did give sincerely, and was misguided, cheated, or taken advantage of for his trouble. Among them, there are those who, even in the most trying and difficult of circumstances, manage to find the light in the darkness, and there are those who spend the rest of their lives trying to right the wrong, even long after the perpetrators are dead.

Suffice to say we will only ever move forward when we can finally fundamentally recognise the whole situation as our own fault. That recognition is the hardest thing we will probably ever do, because it requires beginning a process which is discussed in all of our spiritual literature – the dissolution of the false ego. Without genuine sādhu–saṅga it’s nearly impossible. But if we are not even searching for such association, then we are not really looking to move forward at all. We will only ever be wounded soldiers looking for other broken men to wallow in our misery with.

The disease that seals itself shut

There is a subtler version of the same failure, and it afflicts people who have been around a very long time. They are not feeling anything themselves, and then they notice someone who plainly is – someone for whom Kṛṣṇa consciousness is clearly alive and substantial. This produces some predictable poisons – either straight up envy, or a kind of blind certainty: “Because I am not feeling it, no one can be feeling anything! It must be hollow. It must be fake.” Ātmavan manyate jagat – “One considers the whole world to be like oneself.”

This is a recognisable spiritual disease, born out of suspicion and doubt, and it is a particularly cruel disease because it seals itself shut. The very faculty that could cure the patient – the capacity to recognise something real in another and find inspiration from that – is the first faculty the disease destroys.

Here the law of consciousness cuts both ways. We rightly warn that finding fault in others draws that fault to ourselves – by dwelling on it, we take on its colour. But the reverse is just as true and less often discussed – when you can recognise genuine qualities in another devotee and be happy for them, that too comes to you. The ability to see something real in another soul is the seed of utsaha, or real spiritual enthusiasm. Envy starves it, while sincere appreciation feeds it.

A relationship cannot be forced

Underneath all of this lies a point about free will that the more dogmatic misrepresentation of our philosophy tends to crush. A heavy, rule-bound, ‘because-I-said-so’ approach does not breed the right mentality. It breeds external compliance and calls it surrender – people going through the motions because they were told to, never once asking whether they chose any of it themselves.

However, here we must remove a false duality, because it does enormous damage. People imagine the whole question is ‘in or out’ – “Am I staying, or am I leaving; am I a devotee or am I not?”

But this is not the actual question. If I had to put my finger on what is actually wrong in that picture, it is this – you have not yet made your own decision and chosen Kṛṣṇa for yourself. Somewhere underneath, you feel there is an external pressure – that you are being asked, or pushed to do something that you are not entirely sure is your own choice. Therefore, you plod along on someone else’s mission.

This is exactly why so much emphasis is placed on taking responsibility ourselves, which means a lot more than people usually think. It is not only accepting blame, but also making a decision – to stand up and say clearly, “I like this. I want this. I have chosen this! My free will has been used, I was not coerced, I was not tricked, I was not merely talked into it by someone who was more intelligent than me.”

The moment you can say that and mean it, something shifts. Enthusiasm appears, because now that thing has become yours. When you choose something, it becomes part of you. When it is merely imposed upon you, it never will.

The entire pursuit of Kṛṣṇa consciousness requires free will. The very idea of a relationship with God presupposes it. A relationship that is forced is not a relationship at all. Without free will there is no choice, without choice there is no love, and without love then what exactly are we doing?

Thus, disturbance turns out to be a gift in that with it comes realisation and a desire to advance. Just as in Caitanya-caritāmṛta the journey of the jīva is described as piercing through the layers of the material universe – Bhur, Bhuvah, Svah, Mahar, Janah, Tapaḥ and Satya – until finally reaching the border of the real world of spiritual experience. We need that negative encouragement to break our lethargy and force us to use our free will and take some positive action in the search for Śrī Kṛṣṇa and the company of those who are truth-seekers.

The suffering was already coming

Finally, there is a point which is easily lost in the midst of difficulty. Spiritual life does not add to your suffering. You were always meant to suffer regardless – by karma, by the nature of material existence, by the countless frictions of dragging a material body through this world. The pain was already on its way before you ever heard the Holy Name. Spiritual life does not create hardship, but it brings light to a hardship that was always coming. The real question is whether you meet that hardship armed with the torchlight of spiritual knowledge and the means to turn it into something inspirational, or whether you meet it in the dark with empty hands.

So, when the iron age grinds against us, when quarrel, loss, and disappointment arrive precisely on schedule, we should not consider it to be a sign that we made a mistake. The mahājanas of previous ages saw that the draw of the material world becomes weaker for sincere spiritual seekers. Like the gravitational pull of a planet, it weakens and becomes easier to leave orbit for those who know how.

Matter is complex, spirit is simple. The more we can understand this and gradually finish our interest in this world of complexity and suffering, the sooner we can come in touch with that sweet simple reality.

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