Gender

Male

Location

Vadodara, Gujarat

Birthday:

October 10

Name / Initiated name

Ravi Panchal

Daily number of rounds of Hare Krishna mahamantra.

16

When, where and how did you come into contact with the Hare Krishna Movement?

The Hare Krishna movement is designed to assist persons interested in reconnecting with Krishna (God) by offering them an opportunity for association of like-minded people. Members of ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) follow the teachings of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. There are temples and gatherings all over the world where people get together and chant, read and speak about Krishna and work together to revive their loving relationship with Him.

Name the nearest or most frequently Visited ISKCON temple/ centre and name few of the devotees whom you know.

Gorwa, vadodara, Gujarat

Please describe yourself so that other like minded devotees can find you.

I am passionate about my work. I am ambitious and driven. I am highly organized. I’m a people-person. I’m a natural leader. I am results-oriented. I am an excellent communicator.

What are your expectations from this community?

Most people show up in a group how they are expected to show up. Most communities have aspirations for their members to behave differently within their group than in everyday life. Many community builders are afraid of explicitly asking for a behavior change and for a bigger commitment. Many communities suck at communicating their DNA; their rules, guidelines, expectations, value proposition. Unless specified, people come into communities with unclear and sometimes unrealistic expectations. If expectations aren’t explicitly set, some people will try to extract as much short-term personal value out of the group as possible. The deeper the engagement levels are within the community, the more important it becomes to manage expectations. The more volunteers do for the community, the more it matters to clarify expectations about give and get

Describe any specific service you would love to offer to Lord Krishna & His devotees?

Krishna is responding to everyone, devotee or non-devotee. He is revealing Himself or not revealing Himself according to the desire of the individual person. In another place in the Gita Krishna says: “I am within everyone’s heart and I am giving remembrance, knowledge and forgetfulness.” So one may ask why would Krishna give anyone the ability to forget Him? He states here clearly that He gives remembrance and knowledge — but He also gives forgetfulness. Krishna helps the devotees by giving them rememberance and knowledge so they can worship and serve Him–because that is what the devotees want, they want to remember Krishna, so Krishna helps them. But the demons do not want to remember Krishna. They want to become the supreme lord themselves, they want others to serve them, they want to be the master–they do not want to surrender to Krishna, they do not want to even know that there is a Supreme Personality of Godhead above them. So it is Krishna’s mercy to the demons that from within their hearts He gives them the ability to forget Him. In reality everyone is searching for Krishna in the different aspects of His manifestations. Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead and is fully realized by His pure devotees but everyone is realizing different aspects of Krishna according to their desires and their surrender to Krishna. The jnanis or the philosophers partially realize Krishna in the form of His impersonal brahmajyoti effulgence that is spread everywhere in an all-pervasive way, the yogis or meditators realize the paramatma or supersoul feature of Krishna within their hearts. In this way Krishna is the object of everyone’s realization and He reveals Himself according to one’s desire to have Him. In the transcendental world also Krishna reciprocates with His pure devotees just as the devotee wants Him. One devotee may want Krishna as his supreme master, another as his personal friend, another as his son and still another as his lover. Krishna responds to all the devotees equally, according to their different intensities of love for Him. In the material world also the same reciprocations of feelings are there, and they are equally exchanged by the Lord with the different types of worshipers. The pure devotees both here in the material world and in the spiritual world associate with Krishna in person and are able to render personal service to Him and in this way they derive transcendental bliss from His loving service. Also Krishna helps the impersonalists who desire to commit spiritual suicide by annihilating the individual existence of the living entity — Krishna helps them by absorbing them into His effulgence. Because the impersonalists do not agree to accept the eternal, blissful Personality of Godhead they can not enjoy the bliss of personal service to the Lord, having extinguished their individuality. So Krishna is rewarding the impersonalists in the way they want to be rewarded, by absorbing them into His impersonal effulgence and He is rewarding the devotees also by manifesting Himself before them in the way they want to see Him. Krishna directly states that for the non-devotees — because they do not want to see Him — He does not manifest Himself before them: