an unfortunate mistake

Food offered to Krishna transforms, it becomes non different than Krishna. Eating prasada is said to be eating Krishna in that form.  It is similar to holy communion. It is also similar to having rules like the Jews and Muslims must have to make food kosher before taking ( although Krishna does not accept any meat offerings).

This brings to mind an interfaith event in which some attendant Jewish rabbis refused to eat prasadam at its conclusion because it was offered to "idols". This was an unfortunate mistake on their part. Reverend Hart, on the other hand, an Episcopalian who gladly ate the tasty prasada, intelligently noted that the Bible contains no prohibition against worshiping the transcendental form of God Supreme. Here's the verse from Exodus that gives so many people trouble:

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God..."

This mistake made by the rabbis most likely comes from difficulty with the word "heaven" used in this verse because their idea of heaven is confused with the kingdom of God which is eternal and fully spiritual. Heaven generally means to monotheists where the pious go after death, but that doesn't necessarily mean God's personal abode. The Vedas explain more carefully how heaven is also material or temporary because those who go there- although they have earned fantastic lifespans which relatively appear immortal, although everyone in heaven is a believer and worshiper of God almighty, and although they have earned immense opulence due to pious actions in their former lives- they must fall back down again to the earthly plane after the results of their pious deeds are used up. 

The true kingdom of God, on the other hand, is fully spiritual and understood to be beyond heaven, beyond the seven layers of earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego covering the material universe.  The rare soul who goes there never returns to this place of miseries. The Bible writers had to have known better.

With that understanding, it is the worship of the various deities or demigods in charge of the material elements listed in the above verse that are prohibited, not God Supreme. For example, Indra is the god of heaven, Varuna is the god of the waters, Yama the god below the earth, Bhumi and Durga the goddesses of the earth,etc. This would make sense since both Bible and Bhagavad gita advise against the worship of demigods contrary to worship of the Supreme Lord.

This is further supported when God in the Bible recognizes these demigods by saying, "For I am a jealous God." Jealous of whom? There'd have to be someone else to be jealous of.  

Krishna wants that we worship Him directly instead of through His servants the demigods. He calls demigod worshipers less intelligent, because the boons they obtain are always temporary and thus unfit for the eternal soul, and because all gifts are coming from Him, although in the case of demigod worship indirectly. For intelligent persons, their worship is discouraged by Krishna because it is much better to water the root of a tree rather than all the leaves and branches separately. The demigods are more easily satisfied by the worship of their master, although the Lord occasionally performs pastimes where He punishes one of His demigod servants in order to set them straight in this kind of thinking, and to further expound this point for our welfare.

Then there's the problem with the golden calf. It's fabricated., created by the Israelites who "considered this to be an image of the eternal". According to the Vedic view, one can only create an image in accordance to the descriptions given by revealed scripture, not whimsically. The example is given that if you want to mail a letter you cannot put it in any box lying on the street. You need a bona fide box recognized by the Post Office. Similarly, the genuine deity is carved according to the descriptions of the Lord found in scripture. The Lord is invited to appear in that form for the sake of the worshiper and then becomes an "installed deity", ready to accept our worship which is also dictated by scripture. 

Such deity worship is a hands-on form of God worship very suitable for the present condition of people in general. To be able to see, touch, and serve the Supreme in this way causes the devotee to remember and meditate on the Lord 24/7, thus giving simultaneously the benefits of yogic meditation in trance that are no longer possible in this age for most people. Krishna explains in His Gita:

"For those whose minds are attached to the unmanifested, impersonal feature of the Supreme, advancement is very troublesome. To make progress in that discipline is always difficult for those who are embodied. But those who worship Me, giving up all their activities unto Me and being devoted to Me without deviation, engaged in devotional service and always meditating upon Me, having fixed their minds upon Me, O son of Prthä—for them I am the swift deliverer from the ocean of birth and death."

The Lord kindly appears in this form because our vision is material, but over time the transcendental form of the Lord, which was seen as material by the neophyte is revealed according to the spiritual vision of the worshiper. There are countless cases and records of the deity reciprocating with His devotee even to the present day.

Furthermore, conditioned souls have trouble accepting that God has a human-like form. This is because they have no clear understanding of what is actually God, and secondly, their experience of a "person" has generally been not very palatable within the material sphere. Some are so fed up with the human experience they wish to eradicate it in their spiritual existence as well. For them, anything is better than being a person, what to speak of dealing with a "Supreme Person" (!).

A person has likes, dislikes, demands and so on. Thus we see so many paths of impersonalism and voidism becoming popular. They say, "God can't have a personal form, God can't have relationships, can't have feelings.... God can't, can't, can't.... because that would put limits on God." 

Yet this kind of talk begs the question, just who is putting limits on God?

everyone thinks his way is best

Once a guest said to Prabhupada:  "So everybody thinks that his way or his way of thinking, his theory, his religion is the most superior one."

Prabhupäda answered: "That's all right. That is all right. If you accept progress... Just like you are seeing the sun, I am also seeing the sun, the boy is also seeing the sun, but the understanding of the sun may be different. Everyone is seeing the sun. The objective is the same. But a child's understanding of sun and an elderly man's understanding of sun, a scientist's understanding of sun, or one man who has actually gone to the sun planet, there are different categories. Do you accept or not? The sun is there. God is accepted in every scripture. That is a fact. But in the same way, how far He is understood, that is different. That is different. The same example, that everyone is seeing sun: "Here is sun," there is no doubt. But a child's understanding of sun, his father's understanding of sun, or a scientist's understanding of sun, or a person who has gone to the sun planet, his understanding of sun is different. The objective is the same. And everyone is right. Either you understand fully sun or not, as soon as you come before the sun you get the light. The child is getting the light, the scientist is getting the light, and the ordinary person getting the light. Everyone is getting light, heat and light. But their understanding different, of degrees."

God the Father?

It makes no sense, something that was created has to suffer eternally? But this is the Judeo Christian and Islamic belief that the soul (if that is what they call a person that survives the bodily death) was created by God, but after death lives eternally either in heaven or hell.

So how does something that never existed before, suddenly exist forever afterward? And if that existence must continue perpetually in hell, wouldn't it be more merciful to just undo the dust-sculpting business done in the first place? 

This they cannot answer.

Krishna, on the other hand, says in His Bhagavad gita:
"Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you,...nor in the future shall any of us cease to be." 

That is what eternal means. There is no creation, there is no death. The soul may have been in some sort of dormant state, but individuality is always existent. It is only the body that is created from the eight material elements. 

In Gita the Lord describes them in comparison to the living entity: "Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego—all together these eight constitute My separated material energies. Besides these, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is another, superior energy of Mine, which comprises the living entities who are exploiting the resources of this material, inferior nature." So there is a distinct difference. One is superior due to consciousness. The other is unconscious matter which by nature is temporary.

Thus how can something that had a beginning have no end? If we were not eternal to begin with, how can we exist eternally hereafter?

In Vaisnavism we understand the living beings are of the same superior spiritual nature of God, but being only a minute particle, one can become forgetful of this by misdentifying with the Lord's inferior nature, matter. That's where troubles begin.

No amount of suffering is permanent, however. Like a truly loving father, that is God's mercy; the nature of the material energy we try to enjoy separately from Him is flickering.  There is always some happiness or relief from the suffering. From a logical point of view, therefore it still makes no sense that some religions suggest that God is so cruel that after death a sinful person will suffer punishment forever, something even the most ordinary father would never do.

 

 In the Vedic scriptures are elaborate descriptions of both the material heavenly planets above the earthly plane and the hellish worlds below along with the punishments inflicted according to the sins committed. It is a subject matter too lengthy to print here. Just know that, there is not just one hell, but many many hells. The good thing is that you are not sent there eternally, it only feels that way since it's so awful. Trust me, you don't want to go there.

contentment or consumerism

Does one's belief encourage contentment or consumerism? 

Any genuine religious process that values contentment with whatever nature arranges for one's maintenance, over consumerism, is much easier to implement if there is a belief in another life. Because  then there is not the fear of "missing out" if one does not finish his business in this life, or if one decides to take seriously a life of sacrifice and austerity for the sake of spiritual enlightenment instead of material advancement. It takes the edge off the competitive spirit and gives rise to the spirit of cooperation.

Other philosophies on the other hand, seem to encourage or excite earthly existence and exploitation. Take for example, the typical theistic view. There was a movie about a man who died and went to heaven, but he kept looking down wistfully at his wife on earth, wishing that he could rejoin her. Most obviously because "heaven" was a bunch of clouds to stand upon while his wife had plenty of interesting things to do down below. In other words, ambiguous scripture makes human life look much more appealing and dampens the motive to go beyond. 

Then there is the monist philosophy that after death one merges into oneness, one homogenous spiritual existence with no room for individuality. These are the people who tell you, "I am God. You are God"... They make no distinction between the minute living entity and the unlimited Supreme Lord. Their philosophy culminates in what's known as "spiritual suicide" in the attempt to permanently disable one's individuality by merging into the brahmajyoti or white light. How that kind of goal also contributes to materialism is pointed on in this Srimad Bhagavatam 1.1.1 purport:

"The whole material creation is moving under the principle of sex life. In modern civilization, sex life is the focal point for all activities. Wherever one turns his face, he sees sex life predominant. Therefore, sex life is not unreal. Its reality is experienced in the spiritual world. The material sex life is but a perverted reflection of the original fact. The original fact is in the Absolute Truth, and thus the Absolute Truth cannot be impersonal. It is not possible to be impersonal and contain pure sex life. Consequently, the impersonalist philosophers have given indirect impetus to the abominable mundane sex life because they have overstressed the impersonality of the ultimate truth. Consequently, man without information of the actual spiritual form of sex has accepted perverted material sex life as the all in all. There is a distinction between sex life in the diseased material condition and spiritual sex life."

And then of course there is basic atheism which appears in various forms and coverings. Unless they are interested in doing good for the sake of goodness or for their kids, then why not eat, drink, and be merry since after death there'll be nothing to do at all, not even hanging out in the brahman effulgence like the above impersonalist aspires for, nor the clouds like the guy in the incomplete description of heaven? Srimad Bhagavatam 3.20.19 continues to explain:

"Andha-tämisra involves considering death to be the ultimate end. The atheists generally think that the body is the self and that everything is therefore ended with the end of the body. Thus they want to enjoy material life as far as possible during the existence of the body. Their theory is: 'As long as you live, you should live prosperously. Never mind whether you commit all kinds of so-called sins. You must eat sumptuously. Beg, borrow and steal, and if you think that by stealing and borrowing you are being entangled in sinful activities for which you will have to pay, then just forget that misconception because after death everything is finished. No one is responsible for anything he does during his life.' This atheistic conception of life is killing human civilization, for it is without knowledge of the continuation of eternal life.

"This andha-tämisra ignorance is due to tamas. The condition of not knowing anything about the spirit soul is called tamas. This material world is also generally called tamas because ninety-nine percent of its living entities are ignorant of their identity as soul. Almost everyone is thinking that he is this body; he has no information of the spirit soul. Guided by this misconception, one always thinks, 'This is my body, and anything in relationship with this body is mine.' For such misguided living entities, sex life is the background of material existence. Actually, the conditioned souls, in ignorance in this material world, are simply guided by sex life, and as soon as they get the opportunity for sex life, they become attached to so-called home, motherland, children, wealth and opulence. As these attachments increase, moha, or the illusion of the bodily concept of life, also increases. Thus the idea that 'I am this body, and everything belonging to this body is mine' also increases, and as the whole world is put into moha, sectarian societies, families and nationalities are created, and they fight with one another. Mahä-moha means to be mad after material enjoyment. Especially in this age of Kali, everyone is overwhelmed by the madness to accumulate paraphernalia for material enjoyment."

The ancient Vaisnava tradition, on the other hand, encourages environmental and psychological health. For one thing, the Vedic literatures such as the Bhagavad gita As It Is, Srimad Bhagavatam and Chaitanya Caritamrta give detailed descriptions of God, His name, address or personal abode, form, personality, pastimes and activities, associates, our relationship with Him and the process to reach Him. Thus one's consciousness can be transferred from hankering for material things to hankering for what is spiritual. Material detachment becomes very easy by becoming attached to the spiritual, namely Krishna.

science?

It's been said that material science can never be fully objective. This is because every human being conditioned to identify with their material bodily nature has four frailties identified by the Vedic scriptures as 1. a tendency to cheat 2. a tendency to make mistakes 3. a tendency to become illusioned and 4. imperfect senses.

These tendencies include being biased in one way or another. Everyone knows that Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, vegetarians, meat eaters, feminists, pacifists, etc., all have their biases.

Everyone knows atheists have a natural bias against the existence of God, so even if they took courses on the subject, they still cannot understand. That's because they don't want to.

So when a textbook tries to pass off a theory like evolution as if it were already accepted as an extablished fact, that is not science. That is ignorance or even cheating. And material science is forever  changing its theories. Thus it will remain imperfect.

when self-realization is not enough

So the question has been raised, "How did I get here in the first place?"

The Bible gives a very nice illustration. God provided a wonderful place for Adam and Eve to live with Him, and he had just one request, "Don't mess with the tree in the middle of the garden."

Now remember, they had an entire garden, replete with fruit trees and so on. But no, notice how they just had to go and eat that fruit!

Similarly, the Vedic scriptures describe that the fall down of every soul is due to envy. We just gotta have what God has. We want to be the Enjoyer rather than the enjoyed. We want to be the Creator rather than the created. We want to be everyone's Best Friend and so on.

So basically we fall to the material consciousness like Adam and Eve did, becoming self centered rather than God centered. That's when Adam and Eve saw they were naked, allegorically speaking. There was a shift in consciousness that separated them from God.

 That's the material world. Its for separatists, because when one becomes envious of someone, one wants very little to do with him or her. We see this practically. The more materialistic a society becomes, the more the people try to divorce themselves from nature as well as each other.

This envy can continue all the way to the spiritual platform. Most notable are faiths that teach their followers to destroy the sense of self altogether. After all, that's much better than having to deal with the demands of a Supreme Person. Relationship is seen as the root of all pain.

No one to talk to in the void gets boring, however, so impersonalists eventually fall down again to the worship of family and friends and all living beings and even themselves as God by acts of charity and other piety. The problem is lumping Lord Krishna in there as just another living entity. "There's nothing special about Him.  He just happened to discover his divinity before I did." So many translations of Bhagavad gita have been translated in this envious, competitive spirit. This is why Bhagavad gita As It Is is recommended reading instead. It gives us Krishna As He Is.

Bhagavad gita tell us how to become happy by self satisfaction or realization of the soul and how to transcend this material nature. More importantly we can uncover the activities of the soul. They involve one's eternal loving relationship with the Supreme Soul Mate, Sri Krishna. Living for and being with one's beloved, even in a mundane sense is undoubtedly the topmost happiness in which every normal person hankers. If we can't find it, it's because we are looking in the wrong place. By definition, only God is infallible.

Coming to this understanding of a loving relationship with God, however, is when one can see another side of envy and another pitfall for aspiring transcendentalists. In other words, some spiritualists get so impatient in reawakening that relationship, they jump over the scriptures and teachings of experienced souls and concoct their own way. They make a show of loving God, but it is all imitation, used for gaining recognition via a competitive spirit. This is common in India, but evangelists rolling on the ground and crying in love for Jesus aren't much different.

The Lord kindly facilitates these choices because exercising our minute independence gives meaning to love.  Going back to the tree in paradise, Adam and Eve represent that ability to choose. We choose whether to serve Him indirectly via dictations from His material energy or serve Him directly via dictations of His spiritual energy (divine love). His energies are so powerful, they can even make a devotee forget the Lord's position, just so there can be exchanges beyond awe and reverence.

So there is self-realization and there is Self -realization. The small "s" signifies realization of the self or what some call the soul. The large "S" signifies realization of the Supreme Self, the Supersoul or expansion of God seated in the heart of every living being. Some call it the "higher self" and mistakenly equate the two. They say we are persons, but only in the stage of material consciousness, but when we remember that we are "God", personhood is disposed of as inferior.

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Yet, forgetfulness doesn't seem very qualifying when considering the definition of God as all- powerful, all- knowing, etc., nor does the loss of individuality into a homogeneous oneness appear appealing. Nor is the question answered, if God is originally formless, where does form come from.

For impersonalists and voidists, individuality is the disease to be done away because of bad experience with material relationships. They reason that if we simply stop desire we'll stop suffering. If we simply stop living, that is, because how can one live without desire? Their proposal is comparable to a foolish person who cuts his head off to stop a headache.

Worst of all,  when this limited realization of the Absolute Truth as ultimately impersonal is passed off as the whole truth about existence,  it causes people to take to materialism even more profoundly. More sex, more intoxication, more animal slaughter for the pleasure of the palate and so on, since spirituality has been reduced to simply consciousness, with no complete knowledge of the Absolute or the actions of personal expression beyond the material condition. We see this practically whenever doomsday is predicted such as the Y2K. People spend more just in case they will be dead soon.

To some extent the Sri Isopanisad agrees yes, the Lord is inconceivably one with our puny selves, we being His parts and parcels or mini expansions made in His image, but simultaneously He is aloof or separate from His entire creation. This is said over and over in many ways inside the Vedic scriptures. Here is a very nice verse:

"The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance." --Sri Isopanisad, Invocation

Any object, upon examination, is an entire object in an of itself, but simultaneously comprised of many parts. For instance, the keyboard I am writing on.  We call it a keyboard, but if you look at all the separate parts that make up the keyboard, each is complete as an entire unit itself. Such as the keys, the letters on the keys, the white paint the keys are comprised of...even the individual molecules that make up all the plastic parts and paint are individuals.

Impersonalists, on the other hand, say something like, "The one you are looking for is the one who is looking". There is no distinction between whole and part. That means no God which means no relationship. Just the self is looking for the self.

Granted someone is becoming partially self aware as a spark of God in a spiritual sense, but to equate the part and whole is nonsensical. And there's No juice. No real joy unless there are two - the lover and the Beloved, our original source. Bhagavad gita says that after many many births, such speculators may finally understand that a relationship is the most satisfying, and a relationship with Krishna is everything.

LATER NOTE: Materially or spiritually, our very nature as jiva is self centered, either fixed on a false bodily conception of self or upon the Krishna, the Supersoul or, in this case, the Superself.

Bhagavan

QUESTION: According to your words, Krishna = Jehovah. But I wonder why the same God said differently in India and Israel, respectively.

REPLY: In the Vedic tradition, God is called Bhagavan. Bhagavan was defined by the sage Parasara as the one who is the most beautiful, the richest, the wisest, the most famous, the strongest and the most renounced. Every living being has some of these characteristics, but when Lord Krishna advented on this earth, it was noted that He exhibited all these six opulences fully.

The Srimad Bhagavatam states that Krishna is the source of all incarnations., "O brahmanas, the incarnations of the Lord are innumerable, like rivulets flowing from inexhaustible sources of water....All of the above-mentioned incarnations are either plenary portions or portions of the plenary portions of the Lord, but Lord Shri Krishna is the original Personality of Godhead." (SB 1.3.28)

Lord Brahma in Brahma samhita also supports this: "Krishna who is known as Govinda is the Supreme Godhead. He has an eternal blissful spiritual body. He is the origin of all. He has no other origin and He is the prime cause of all causes."

And although Krishna is the source of the material world, simultaneously He is aloof. It is comparable to a first class king who doesn't need to supervise His kingdom directly. He has unlimited expansions to do that, such as Lord Brahma in charge as secondary creator.

Vyasadeva in Srimad Bhagavatam states, "O my Lord, Shri Krishna, son of Vasudeva, O all-pervading Personality of Godhead, I offer my respectful obeisances unto You. I meditate upon Lord Shri Krishna because He is the Absolute Truth and the primeval cause of all causes of the creation, sustenance and destruction of the manifested universes. He is directly and indirectly conscious of all manifestations, and He is independent because there is no other cause beyond Him. It is He only who first imparted the Vedic knowledge unto the heart of Brahmäji, the original living being. By Him even the great sages and demigods are placed into illusion, as one is bewildered by the illusory representations of water seen in fire, or land seen on water. Only because of Him do the material universes, temporarily manifested by the reactions of the three modes of nature, appear factual, although they are unreal. I therefore meditate upon Him, Lord Shri Krishna, who is eternally existent in the transcendental abode, which is forever free from the illusory representations of the material world. I meditate upon Him, for He is the Absolute Truth."

So if Jehovah in the Bible can match this criteria then, yes, we could equate Jehovah with Krishna.
I do not know the meaning of "Jehovah" and how it was revealed, but coming from the Bible, it must has something to do with the Lord in His various categories concerning the material manifestation

But although devotees love to hear about the Lord in all His various appearances and never tire of such recitations, they are naturally most attracted to the more intimate names of the Lord which involve His direct loving dealings with His devotees. In other words, the pastimes of Krishna acting as one's dependent child, best friend or lover are more personal than His activities of creation, maintenance, killing demons, directing a person from within the heart as Paramatma, etc. . When Krishna descends on earth to display His lilas, His personal expansion of Vishnu is always present; it is Vishnu who takes care of those matters.

It's like the difference between knowing (but often never meeting personally) someone who is in charge of an entire business corporation, or knowing him as your best buddy you hang with. With His pure devotees, Krishna kicks back and takes His crown off. He wears a peacock feather on his head.

He has a picnic with His friends on the bank of the Yamuna River each day.

He teases His girlfriends.

He steals butter from the neighbor's houses. 

He's runs home to his loving mother:

It's a whole other mood, and He displays all the propensities of a human being which makes Him a bewilderment. Often in India therefore, Krishna's expansion of Lord Narayana is considered God Supreme, and Krishna is His incarnation instead of vice versa, because Lord Narayana fits the God -mode. He is four-armed and worshiped in awe and reverence and has attractive opulences.

Krishna, on the other hand,  prefers simple village life amongst His cows and intimate associates. He is the source of Narayana. Nectar of devotion explains sixty transcendental qualities Lord Narayana and Krishna share, but Krishna has four more, which are not manifest even in the Narayana form of Godhead, what to speak of the demigods or other living entities. They are as follows. (61) He is the performer of wonderful varieties of pastimes (especially His childhood pastimes). (62) He is surrounded by devotees endowed with wonderful love of Godhead. (63) He can attract all living entities all over the universes by playing on His flute. (64) He has a wonderful excellence of beauty which cannot be rivaled anywhere in the creation.


In the beginning of my life, I could not think of God as anything beyond "Father" or"Master" or "Lord", whom I am sometimes angry at. I still think this way but with increasing affection because one cannot jump to a higher platform artificially. There are rules and regulations to prevent this, from becoming a sahajiya or mundane sentimentalist. We must be invited by the Lord and gradually we will see how we can naturally overstep these boundaries.  I came to realize that although I feel totally unqualified to love Krishna any other way, it is He who wants this. He wants intimacy. Scriptures state that He is not satisified with awe and reverence. The Lord once said to His devotee:

"My dear child, please give up this attitude of fearful respect that your reverence toward Me has produced in you. I do not so much like this sentiment in My devotees. Instead, just feel free to express your love for Me. When a devotee looks at Me without hesitaiton and speaks to Me affectionately, My pleasure grows with every new moment. Although I am eternally free from all limitations, such behavior binds Me with ropes of love. Although I am unconquerable, My devotees can conquer Me. And although I am subject to no one's control, I become their subordinate subject." (Sri Brhad-bhagavatamrta)

This explains to the atheist why God does not appear at our demands. He is only controlled by love. In Gita Krishna says, "Only by loving devotional service may I be understood as I am. Only in this way can you see Me standing before you."

But the love for God being described in this post is considered very rare. Why? Because for most montheists, awe and reverence is fine and dandy. It is the general rule of all the spiritual planets called Vaikuntha ruled by Lord Narayana's unlimited eternal expansions. You love God, you visit with your family and friends His holy temple daily to sing His glories and view His lotus feet, He rules His kingdom like a loving father, etc. But the Supreme Planet of the Supreme Vishnu, Lord Krishna, on the other hand, is only revealed once in a day of Brahma whenever Lord Chaitanya makes His advent. It is Chaitanya's special contribution. Once one has even heard there is more than awe and reverence and becomes attracted, their spiritual path is never ever the same. One just can't settle for anything less and a special hankering for associating with those in higher relationships with Krishna develops. You want to personally be with Krishna always, and even a moment of separation feels like years are passing by.