Dealing with ecstatic transcendental anxiety

Bhakti means transcendental anxiety. A devotee never strives for peace for he is not interested in peace but in service to Krishna. And however, much services we render, we always want to do more.

However well we are chanting, we want to chant purer, we want to chant more attentively because we want to give more to Krishna. And that anxiety is actually a transcendental form of ecstasy.

And it is that anxiety that will purify our heart and bring us to that state of ecstasy.

What is anxiety? To give more pleasure to Krishna. We should always be in that anxiety. And that is why we chant the holy name: to please Gauranga Mahaprabhu and Krishna. We want to do more and more forever.

In Vrindavan, mother Yashoda, how much she was in anxiety to do more for Krishna! How the gopis, when Krishna goes into the forest, they were in anxiety that perhaps he may step on a stone with his soft, lotus feet or even a thorn.

Sachimata and even Jagannath Mishra here in Navadweep - they were always in anxiety. How to keep our Nimai healthy, how to keep our Nimai happy, how to keep him at home?

If you want peace, bhakti is not the proper path. If you are in love, bhakti is the proper path.

And where there is love, there is always an eagerness to give more and more pleasure to the beloved, eternally. When we become complacent, we make no spiritual progress further than the point we are at. So yes, be in anxiety for Krishna – anxiety to do more and more.

Wherever we find the essence of unalloyed, unmotivated, uninterrupted surrender to Krishna -- that is where we find the essence of parampara. The main thing that you should be concerned with is, how you can become a surrendered soul.

Don't worry about everybody else. You accept a spiritual master. And you surrender to his will. And through purification; which absolutely must come through this process and all of these details are revealed, for until you surrender, until you give up the misuse of your independence, purification remains incomplete.

Then all of these others' questions and considerations are simply distractions. Krishna says all that you do, all that you eat, all that you offer away and all the austerities, all the religious performances that you perform should be done as an offering to me (Krishna).

One who lives by that principle is one with the Lord in interest. But one who performs religious activities with the desire for something for oneself, suffers from separate mentality.

Separatist consciousness comes when we desire sense gratification. And the consciousness of true transcendental oneness is when we simply want to please Krishna. Performing service with some material, selfish motivation, is separatist mentality.

But do not be in anxiety for your own sense gratification. That is material. When you are in anxiety because your desires are unfulfilled, that is the great impediment to spiritual progress.

But when you are in anxiety to do more service and please Krishna, it is transcendental. And that is the price of Krishna consciousness.

Radhanath Swami, spiritual guru at the ISKCON