The most expected thing in a temple is a Deity form. Interestingly, in many of the temples in Hampi, there are simply the outer structures without any Deity. It is like a beautiful bottle without any water in it, or an elegant vase without any flowers in it.
The devotee who was travelling with me, and had first got mesmerized seeing the beautiful stone-like structures in the initial 1-2 places, later murmured to me in a dismissive voice, “Only the outer structures are here. Where are the Deities?” I too resonated with his feelings, and made up my mind that we won’t get devotees to those places when we come the next time.
When we expect to find Krishna at some place, and He is not, it is extremely disgusting. It is one thing to connect everything material and spiritual to Krishna, but at places where we already feel there is something spiritual, and it doesn’t exist, or we cannot see it, then to connect it to spiritual becomes challenging.
For a pure devotee, material vision doesn’t exist.
sthāvara-jaṅgama dekhe, nā dekhe tāra mūrti
sarvatra haya nija iṣṭa-deva-sphūrti
The mahā-bhāgavata, the advanced devotee, certainly sees everything mobile and immobile, but he does not exactly see their forms. Rather, everywhere he immediately sees manifest the form of the Supreme Lord. CC Madhya 8.274
Apart with temples, there are a few other places as well where we expect Krishna’s presence cent-per-cent.
1] Devotees who are advanced, or whom we hold in a HIGH esteem:
We expect a certain behavior from advanced devotees, and when we are unable to see that, we end up losing a bit or whole of our trust. When Gadadhar Pandit went to meet Pundarika Vidyanidhi along with Mukunda, he expected to find a sadhu sitting in a cave, just like him. But what he saw completely shook him to the core.
2] Holy Places:
When people come to Vrindavan, they expect to find Krishna waiting for them. If that is an exaggeration, they might imagine a picturesque place, with beautiful trees, elegant fields, fragrant flower gardens, and they may expect seeing Krishna hiding in one of the bushes. But they get utterly frustrated to find the open drainages, the apparently rowdy drivers, the Loi Bazaar superficial “cheaters”, and the beggars who exist at every other step.
3] Spiritual Books:
In Bhagavatam, when we read the topic of creation, or when dynasties after dynasties are described without any “Krishna” content, we are unable to understand why so many “material” things are put in a spotless scripture like Srimad Bhagavatam. When we read the rendezvous of the so-called gratifiers like Pururava or Yayati, it bewilders our “innocent” minds.
All these places and things are highly spiritual. But often, we are unable to match their expectations, or they are unable to match our expectations.
What should we do spiritual things don’t match our expectations?
A] Avoiding Mental Speculations:
Actually, when we have material vision, how can we see anything as spiritual? It requires spiritual senses to envision the spiritual.
Sometimes, we try to squeeze out spiritual imports from material things, and justify our sightseeing in the name of seeing Krishna’s creation. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura would even mention the seeing of Deities to be simply an “eye-massage” if it wasn’t accompanied by proper hearing.
But when it comes to see the spiritual, we may minimize its importance saying it as material.
Therefore, Caitanya Caritamrita mentions,
’dvaite’ bhadrābhadra-jnāna, saba—’manodharma’
’ei bhāla, ei manda’,—ei saba ’bhrama’
In the material world, conceptions of good and bad are all mental speculations. Therefore, saying ’This is good’ and ’This is bad’ is all a mistake. CC Antya 4.176
B] Learning to Adopt a Spiritual Vision:
We need to learn the art of seeing spiritual in spiritual, spiritual in material and spiritual in what we expected to be spiritual but turns out to be material!!
One part of adopting a spiritual vision is to understand that I cannot understand everything. Another part of adopting a spiritual vision is to not come at a definitive conclusion too early before we know the real import. And a third part of having that vision necessitates that we pray to Krishna to reveal the spiritual in the material.
In the spiritual world, there is no duality. Similarly, in spiritual vision, there is no duality. Prabhupada saw Bowery as Vaikuntha. Prabhupada saw the hippies as Krishna’s parts and parcels. He was the only person in the whole of America who respected them. He was beyond the world’s dualities. And therefore, he could transform even those people into spiritual.
When we learn this art of adopting a spiritual vision far beyond mental speculation, then the whole material world will be a place of ultimate joy for us – viśvaṁ pūrṇa-sukhāyate.
PS: This article doesn’t mean we have a license for seeing, or involving ourselves in anything material, and then learn the art of transforming it into spiritual. Otherwise, we will become sense gratifiers of the worst kind. Rather, this article focuses on the need to see spiritual in things that seem to be spiritually material to our vision.
