The first word in devotional service is surrender. The only meaning of surrender is to accept that one is a servant of God. Even great scholars and philosophers like Dr. Radhakrishnan will have to perform heaps of austerities and penances before they will yield to the process of surrender. This is the conclusion of Bhagavad-gītā. Dr. Radhakrishnan's explanation of the six limbs of surrender is superficial. Originally defined in a Vaiṣṇava text, these six limbs of surrender pertain to Lord Viṣṇu, or Kṛṣṇa. Ānukūlya means "loving devotion to Lord Kṛṣṇa." The Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu states, ānukūlyena-kṛṣṇānuśīlanaṁ bhaktir uttamā: (CC Madhya 19.167) "One should render transcendental loving service to Lord Kṛṣṇa favorably. That is called pure devotional service."
Servant of God (Books)
Bhagavad-gita As It Is
BG Chapters 1 - 6
A pure soul is the eternal servant of God as His fragmental part and parcel. He comes into contact with māyā (illusion) due to the desire to lord it over māyā, and that is the cause of his many sufferings. As long as he is in contact with matter, he has to execute work in terms of material necessities. Kṛṣṇa consciousness, however, brings one into spiritual life even while one is within the jurisdiction of matter, for it is an arousing of spiritual existence by practice in the material world.
The yogī sees equally because he sees that all living entities, although in different situations according to the results of fruitive work, in all circumstances remain the servants of God. While in the material energy, the living entity serves the material senses; and while in spiritual energy, he serves the Supreme Lord directly. In either case the living entity is the servant of God. This vision of equality is perfect in a person in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
BG Chapters 7 - 12
By searching after knowledge one realizes that his self is different from his material body, and when further advanced he comes to the knowledge of impersonal Brahman and Paramātmā. When one is fully purified, he realizes that his constitutional position is to be the eternal servant of God. So by association with pure devotees the inquisitive, the distressed, the seeker after material amelioration and the man in knowledge all become themselves pure. But in the preparatory stage, the man who is in full knowledge of the Supreme Lord and is at the same time executing devotional service is very dear to the Lord. He who is situated in pure knowledge of the transcendence of the Supreme Personality of God is so protected in devotional service that material contamination cannot touch him.
BG Chapters 13 - 18
The constitutional position of a living entity, represented by Arjuna, is that he has to act according to the order of the Supreme Lord. He is meant for self-discipline. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu says that the actual position of the living entity is that of eternal servant of the Supreme Lord. Forgetting this principle, the living entity becomes conditioned by material nature, but in serving the Supreme Lord he becomes the liberated servant of God.
Srimad-Bhagavatam
SB Canto 1
The servants of God come to propagate God consciousness, and intelligent people should cooperate with them in every respect. By serving the servant of God, one can please God more than by directly serving the Lord. The Lord is more pleased when He sees that His servants are properly respected because such servants risk everything for the service of the Lord and so are very dear to the Lord.
SB Canto 2
In the Bhagavad-gītā it is stated that one can serve the Lord by offering the result of one's own work; it does not matter what one does. Generally men may say that whatever they are doing is inspired by God, but that is not all. One should actually work on behalf of God as a servant of God. The Lord says in the Bhagavad-gītā (9.27):
- yat karoṣi yad aśnāsi
- yaj juhoṣi dadāsi yat
- yat tapasyasi kaunteya
- tat kuruṣva mad-arpaṇam
Do whatever you like or whatever may be easier for you to do, eat whatever you may eat, sacrifice whatever you can sacrifice, give whatever you may give in charity, and do whatever you may undertake in penance, but everything must be done for Him only. If you do business or if you accept some employment, do so on behalf of the Lord. Whatever you may eat, you may offer the same to the Lord and be assured that He will return the food after eating it Himself. He is the complete whole, and therefore whatever He may eat as offered by the devotee is accepted because of the devotee's love, but again it is returned as prasāda for the devotee so that he can be happy by eating. In other words, be a servant of God and live peacefully in that consciousness, ultimately returning home, back to Godhead.
SB Canto 4
Everyone, by constitutional position, is an eternal servant of God. Therefore, a devotee's business is to awaken everyone's Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That is his mercy.
In the present age, the king or president forgets that he is the servant of God and thinks of himself as servant of the people. The present democratic government is proclaimed to be a people's government, a government by the people and for the people, but this type of government is not sanctioned by the Vedas. The Vedas maintain that a kingdom should be governed for the purpose of satisfying the Supreme Personality of Godhead and should therefore be ruled by a representative of the Lord.
The word prabhu means "master," but actually the living entity is not a master; he is the eternal servant of God. When the living entity abandons the shelter of God, Kṛṣṇa, and tries to become a prabhu independently, he travels all over the creation. There are 8,400,000 species of life and millions and millions and trillions of planets within the creation. The living entity wanders throughout these various types of bodies and throughout different planets, and thus he is like King Purañjana, who traveled all over the world looking for a suitable place to live.
The living entity independently wants to become a prabhu, but as soon as he gives up this idea and becomes a servant of God, Kṛṣṇa, his happiness immediately begins.
SB Canto 5
Every living entity has the constitutional position of being an eternal servant of God. Therefore Lord Brahmā advised Priyavrata, "Be situated in your original position as an eternal servant of the Lord. If you carry out His orders, you will never fall, even in the midst of material enjoyment." Material enjoyment achieved by dint of one's fruitive activities differs from material enjoyment given by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. A devotee sometimes appears to be in a very opulent position, but he accepts that position to follow the orders of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Therefore a devotee is never affected by material influences. The devotees in the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement are preaching all over the world in accordance with the order of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. They have to meet many karmīs, but by the mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, they are unaffected by material influences.
Lord Ananta is the original person and the great mystic controller. At the same time, He is a servant of God, a Vaiṣṇava. Since there is no end to His glories, no one can understand Him fully.
SB Canto 6
In the Padma Purāṇa there is a statement that persons whose hearts are always attached to the devotional service of Lord Viṣṇu are immediately released from all the reactions of sinful life. These reactions generally exist in four phases. Some of them are ready to produce results immediately, some are in the form of seeds, some are unmanifested, and some are current. All such reactions are immediately nullified by devotional service. When devotional service is present in one's heart, desires to perform sinful activities have no place there. Sinful life is due to ignorance, which means forgetfulness of one's constitutional position as an eternal servant of God, but when one is fully Kṛṣṇa conscious he realizes that he is God's eternal servant.
The svābhāvika, or one's natural tendency, is the most important factor in action. One's natural tendency is to serve because a living entity is an eternal servant of God. The living entity wants to serve, but because of his forgetfulness of his relationship with the Supreme Lord, he serves under the modes of material nature and manufactures various modes of service, such as socialism, humanitarianism and altruism. However, one should be enlightened in the tenets of Bhagavad-gītā and accept the instruction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead that one give up all natural tendencies for material service under different names and take to the service of the Lord. One's original natural tendency is to act in Kṛṣṇa consciousness because one's real nature is spiritual. The duty of a human being is to understand that since he is essentially spirit, he must abide by the spiritual tendency and not be carried away by material tendencies.
"My dear brothers, you are being carried away by the waves of material energy and are suffering in many miserable conditions. Sometimes you are drowning in the waves of material nature, and sometimes you are tossed like a swimmer struggling in the ocean." As confirmed by Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, this tendency to be battered by the waves of māyā can be changed to one's original, natural tendency, which is spiritual, when the living entity comes to understand that he is eternally kṛṣṇa-dāsa, a servant of God, Kṛṣṇa.
This will keep one always in the association of Kṛṣṇa. Tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti so'rjuna: thus after giving up his gross material body, one accepts not another gross body but a spiritual body in which to return home, back to Godhead. Thus one ends the tribulation caused by his association with the material energy. In summary, the living entity is an eternal servant of God, but he comes to the material world and is bound by material conditions because of his desire to lord it over matter. Liberation means giving up this false consciousness and reviving one's original service to the Lord. This return to one's original life is called mukti, as confirmed in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (muktir hitvānyathā rūpaṁ svarūpeṇa vyavasthitiḥ (SB 2.10.6)).
SB Canto 7
"The spiritual master is to be honored as much as the Supreme Lord because he is the most confidential servitor of the Lord. This is acknowledged in all revealed scriptures and followed by all authorities. Therefore I offer my respectful obeisances unto the lotus feet of such a spiritual master, who is a bona fide representative of Śrī Hari (Kṛṣṇa)." The spiritual master, the servant of God, is engaged in the most confidential service of the Lord, namely delivering all the conditioned souls from the clutches of māyā, in which one thinks, "This person is my enemy, and that one is my friend." Actually the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the friend of all living entities, and all living entities are eternal servants of the Supreme Lord. Oneness is possible through this understanding, not through artificially thinking that every one of us is God or equal to God. The true understanding is that God is the supreme master and that all of us are servants of the Supreme Lord and are therefore on the same platform. This had already been taught to Prahlāda Mahārāja by his spiritual master, Nārada, but Prahlāda was nonetheless surprised by how a bewildered soul thinks one person his enemy and another his friend.
When the Supreme Personality of Godhead is pleased with the living entity because of his devotional service, one becomes a paṇḍita and does not make distinctions between enemies, friends and himself. Intelligently, he then thinks, "Every one of us is an eternal servant of God, and therefore we are not different from one another."
When Prahlāda Mahārāja's teachers and demoniac father asked him how his intelligence had been polluted, Prahlāda Mahārāja said, "As far as I am concerned, my intelligence has not been polluted. Rather, by the grace of my spiritual master and by the grace of my Lord, Kṛṣṇa, I have now learned that no one is my enemy and no one is my friend. We are all actually eternal servants of Kṛṣṇa, but under the influence of the external energy we think that we are separately situated from the Supreme Personality of Godhead as friends and enemies of one another. This mistaken idea has now been corrected, and therefore, unlike ordinary human beings, I no longer think that I am God and that others are my friends and enemies. Now I am rightly thinking that everyone is an eternal servant of God and that our duty is to serve the supreme master, for then we shall stand on the platform of oneness as servants."
Sri Caitanya-caritamrta
CC Adi-lila
It is a most sinful activity to attract attention by exhibiting mystic powers and then to utilize this opportunity to declare oneself to be God. A real saintly person never declares himself to be God but always places himself in the position of a servant of God. For a servant of God there is no need to exhibit mystic powers, and he does not like to do so, but on behalf of the Supreme Personality of Godhead a humble servant of God performs his activities in such a wonderful way that no common man can dare try to act like him. Yet a saintly person never takes credit for such actions because he knows very well that when wonderful things are done on his behalf by the grace of the Supreme Lord, all credit goes to the master and not to the servant.
When the living entity perfectly performs spiritual activities under the direction of the spiritual master, he becomes perfect in knowledge and understands that he is not God but a servant of God. As explained by Caitanya Mahāprabhu, jīvera "svarūpa" haya—kṛṣṇera "nitya-dāsa": the real identity of the living entity is that he is an eternal servant of the Supreme (CC Madhya 20.108). As long as one does not come to this conclusion, he must be in ignorance. This is also confirmed by the Lord in the Bhagavad-gītā (7.19): bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate . . . sa mahātmā su-durlabhaḥ. "After many births of struggling for existence and cultivating knowledge, when one comes to the point of real knowledge he surrenders unto Me. Such an advanced mahātmā, or great soul, is very rarely to be seen." Thus although the Māyāvādī philosophers appear to be very much advanced in knowledge, they are not yet perfect. To come to the point of perfection they must voluntarily surrender to Kṛṣṇa.
CC Madhya-lila
Both brāhmaṇas were pure Vaiṣṇavas. The younger man took special care of the older one simply to please Kṛṣṇa. In Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (11.19.21) Kṛṣṇa says, mad-bhakta-pūjābhyadhikā: "It is better to render service to My devotee." Thus, according to the Gauḍīya-Vaiṣṇava philosophy of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, it is better to be a servant of the servant of God (CC Madhya 13.80). One should not try to serve Kṛṣṇa directly. A pure Vaiṣṇava serves a servant of Kṛṣṇa and identifies himself as a servant of a servant of Kṛṣṇa. This is pleasing to Lord Kṛṣṇa. Śrīla Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura confirms this philosophy: chāḍiyā vaiṣṇava-sevā nistāra peyeche kebā. Unless one serves a liberated Vaiṣṇava, he cannot attain liberation by directly serving Kṛṣṇa. He must serve the servant of Kṛṣṇa.
CC Antya-lila
Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura comments that one should always remember that he is eternally a servant of Kṛṣṇa. Whether one is engaged in material activity involving pounds, shillings and pence or is in the renounced order, he should always think that he is an eternal servant of God, for that is the real position of the living being. Both taking sannyāsa and dealing in pounds, shillings and pence are external affairs. In any condition, one should always consider how to please and satisfy Kṛṣṇa. Thus even if one is involved in great material affairs, he will not become attached. As soon as one forgets that he is an eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa, he becomes involved in material attachments. However, if one is always conscious that Kṛṣṇa is the supreme master and that he is an eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa, he is a liberated person in any condition. Entangling material activities will not affect him.
Other Books by Srila Prabhupada
Renunciation Through Wisdom
Dr. Radhakrishnan has used the expression "self-conscious man." We do not object to this term if it indicates a state of consciousness of the self in which a person realizes he is an eternal servant of God, Kṛṣṇa. Lord Caitanya came to teach this truth. Once the jīva realizes he is an eternal servant of Lord Kṛṣṇa, he ends his life of misery. He becomes liberated by that realization. And later he understands that liberation personified is standing nearby, waiting to serve him and all other eternal servitors of the Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa.
| Page Title: | Servant of God (Books) |
| Compiler: | Visnu Murti, Ingrid, Mayapur |
| Created: | 22 of Nov, 2010 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=4, SB=15, CC=4, OB=2, Lec=0, Con=0, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 25 |