23/05/2024
WHY ARE WE LOSING SO MANY DEVOTEES?
By Devaki Devi Dasi
Any devotee who is a little observant and has been active within ISKCON for a good number of years may have seen a certain phenomenon taking place in most communities around the world: so many people come to Krishna consciousness, they stay around for some time, but then somehow or another many of them fade away. And we may not see them any longer. Sometimes, when we re-visit a temple after fifteen or twenty years, the only personalities familiar to us are the Deities. All other faces are new.
Once when re-visiting a community after fifteen years, where I had spent a considerable amount of time in the beginning of my Krishna consciousness, I was excited to visit after such a long period, expecting to meet old friends. Anxiously awaiting the first Sunday program, I could hardly see any old and well-known faces. I thought to myself: ‘Surely, everybody will be there when our gurus and traveling preachers visit.’ But again I was disappointed. I was anxiously awaiting the Janmastami celebration, and once again I had to ask myself: ‘Where is everybody….?’
This experience disturbed my mind - I was trying to analyze what was happening. I couldn’t stop wondering what we were doing wrong - why we could not keep devotees enthusiastically and actively involved for their whole life time.
Shortly after, I joined the Devotee Care Committee of the GBC Strategic Planning Group. Interestingly, this Devotee Care Committee was initially a Preaching Committee. And within this Preaching Committee we had two moods: one was ‘let’s make new devotees - let’s reach out and bring new people to ISKCON.’ And the other was: ‘Where are all the old devotees? What happened to them? What is the use of making new devotees if they fade away after some time?’ Then the Preaching Committee turned into the Devotee Care Committee. This is how the whole concept of Devotee Care evolved - through the realization that we like to concentrate on making new devotees, but we make only very little effort to inspire and nourish the older ones. In a letter to His Holiness Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami on 16 June, 1972, Srila Prabhupada instructs:
“You mention you like to speak now very often, but the first business should be to preach to the devotees. It is better to maintain a devotee than to try to convince others to become devotees.”
In several letters, Srila Prabhupada expressed his concern in regards to putting too much emphasis on making more and more devotees, rather than training them thoroughly, and he gave the famous analogy of boiling the milk. In a letter to Hamsaduta on 22 June 1972, he gave the following instruction:
“Now we have got so many students and so many temples but I am fearful that if we expand too much in this way that we shall become weakened and gradually the whole thing will become lost. Just like milk. We may thin it more and more with water for cheating the customer, but in the end it will cease to be any longer milk. Better to boil the milk now very vigorously and make it thick and sweet. That is the best process. So let us concentrate on training our devotees very thoroughly in the knowledge of Krishna consciousness from our books, from tapes, by discussing always, and in so many ways instruct them in the right propositions.”
It is certainly much easier to attract new people to Krishna consciousness
and impress them, rather than inspiring and uplifting a practicing devotee. In order to give inspiration and nourishment to a senior devotee, one has to be able to come up with something deeper and of substance. We can only uplift others according to our own level, but not higher than that. This may be one reason why we tend to put more emphasis on attracting new people - because it is easier.
Sometimes, we can detect the following attitude within ourselves: while a person has not yet accepted Krishna consciousness we reach out and are trying to take care of them in a very personal way. And as soon as the person ‘joins’, we think: “Now he is one of our people.” And we expect and demand service from them and easily lose the mood of caring for their spiritual development. We tend to forget how much care and nourishment the bhakti-lata needs in order to continuously develop and ultimately bear the fruits of pure bhakti.
It is not enough to simply bring a person to Krishna consciousness. In Chaitanya-Charitamrita, Madhya (19.152 to 162), we find the analogy of a devotee having to become an expert gardener. We don’t simply plant the seed and every now and again throw a bucket of water on it. It requires regular and ongoing care, nourishment and cultivation. The process of devotional service is meant to bring about a deep transformation of our heart. It is a dynamic process we are meant to undergo under the guidance of senior devotees. Spiritual life is ever increasing - we never reach a point where we have learnt and realized everything. We don’t want to become stagnant, but progressively move forward to higher and higher levels of spiritual experience.
Giving and accepting shelter is the very essence of spiritual life and accompanies us throughout our entire life within Krishna consciousness: we are meant to continuously endeavor to take shelter - in the holy name, in guru, Krishna and the Vaishnavas. And we are meant to qualify ourselves more and more in order to reach out to others and give shelter. Unless we endeavor to get to deeper levels of understanding of what it means to take shelter, it easily remains external and superficial, and we take shelter in name only, as a formality.
However, deep within our hearts we maintain our independence. Furthermore, understanding the connection between the principles of giving and accepting shelter and culture serves as an eye-opener. In spiritual culture, they form the natural foundation of any meaningful relationship, whereas in materialistic culture it is unknown: nobody wants to accept shelter, and nobody wants to give shelter to others....
