Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj discusses the prime importance of spreading Krishna consciousness.
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The standard is not with the insane but it is with the saner section; they all will welcome the movement that was inaugurated by Swami Maharaj over the whole globe. And our Guru Maharaj began that attempt to attack maya, the illusory energy, and to devastate and smash it. This is kirtan, this is preaching. This is Harinam. And Mahaprabhu came here with this:
“Don’t fly away, don’t run away for fear of maya, misunderstanding. Ultimately it is misunderstanding but you want reality, so why should you be afraid? Your basis is a real one—you are standing on fundamental reality so you should not be afraid and run to the jungle or to the cave. Even there, you will also always be afraid that maya will enter. That is not being a bold soldier of the sankirtan party fearlessly wandering through the length and breadth of the world and chanting about Krishna, about Truth. Truth! Take up that missionary work and Maya won’t venture to approach you, for maya is misunderstanding. By repeating your Krishna consciousness to others you will generate the truthful consciousness. With the help of Krishna consciousness you will be able to do away with everything infectious by spreading and distributing the disinfecting substances. That will be your duty. Be an agent of the disinfecting section who are throwing around the medicine to disinfect the infectious area. Be such an agent and thereby drive away infection from all around. If you go on in that way then infection cannot approach you. Because you are distributing disinfectant all around you, the infection cannot come to attack you, and at the same time others will also be saved.”
There is only one necessity: the necessity to spread Krishna consciousness. And our object is prema. Prema means to acquire more energetic tendency to spread higher and higher levels of Krishna consciousness. Dasa’ kari’ vetana more deha prema-dhana*: prema will help us more intensely to engage in service—to serve, and to get the remuneration as prema. The nature of prema is that it will excite us more and more for service. It will move in a circular way: what we receive as remuneration will be the tendency to produce more service to the object of our reverence. That is prema. Prema is not a separate thing from service, but it will help us more and more towards service. So it is continuous, it is dynamic. It is not that, “I have acquired prema, now I am like a king and shall enjoy it—now there is no longer any necessity of service.” Such a stage will never come, rather prema will promote the speed and quality of the service. Love will actuate us more and more towards the service of the object of our love. So service will acquire prema, and prema will induce us to serve. That is our object of life.
(Excerpt from Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion, Volume III)
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*Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu expresses:
prema-dhana vina vyartha daridra jivana
’dasa’ kari’ vetana more deha prema-dhana
“Without the wealth of prema, life is meaningless and poor! Make me Your servant and give me a salary of prema!”
(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Antya: 20.37)