Devotee: How do we develop faith?
Maharaja: We develop faith by coming in contact with an extraordinary person, like Prabhupada automatically creates faith. We read his books and faith develops. He is teaching and he is living it …and showing the symptoms of extraordinary happiness, which is very convincing. So like that a great devotee becomes the root of our faith. But then we need to have a broad basis of faith. Just like a tree with many roots. So as we are prodding with the basis, like you can see in my talk that I am trying broaden the basis and trying of show how Lord Caitanya’s movement had come, with filling in background information just to create more roots in that way. When we have many roots that have faith….many many roots, then it is very strong!
So therefore, we now have to deepen our relationship with Srila Prabhupada, who is our ācārya. For better understanding we have to connect with him better, and then we have to broaden our knowledge by gaining more knowledge about Krishna; more knowledge about bhakti; more knowledge about the great devotees from the past, and all these things will add more roots, and will also increase our faith! And then we become so strong just like Srila Prabhupada, and even when we are alone (the only devotee in the world!) still we go on. Prabhupada was alone in the jungle of New York, alone – the only one, everyone else is on the go. So like that our faith deepens like a tree with many roots!
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