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A story is told about a mountain climber, who was also a devotee, liked to climb tall mountains for fun and to impress his friends. After years of preparation and training he felt he could handle any mountainterrain in the world, regardless of the degree of difficulty.

During a climbing trip, with five other devotees, he decided he would make the final climb to the summit, solo, so he could get there first and claim the glory, while the others slept. After the rest of the climbing partyturned-in for the night, he put on his climbing gear and headed toward the summit. As he started his climb, he was very glad there was a full moonto help him see where he was going. Although it was foolish to climbat night, alone, he did use a rope and put in good piton protection ashe climbed. With the benefit of the full moon, he made rapid progressup the mountain, in spite of the fact he was climbing at night. Hisconfidence soared as he neared the summit, but unfortunately, thickclouds were starting to build around the mountain, and visibility wasdeteriorating rapidly, as a winter stormdeveloped. In just a few minutes visibility dropped to almost zero, asheavy clouds and fog surrounded him. It was now too late to turn back,so he continued to climb up the mountain, hoping the storm would blowby quickly. While moving along a narrow traverse, now in totaldarkness, he got into some “rotten rock,” and slid down the side of theridge and over the edge of a cliff. The good news is the protection heput in held, and he was still alive after the fall; although he nowfound himself dangling in the air, suspended from his rope, unable tosee anything around him. The bad news is, he had loosely tied his outerheavy coat across the top of his backpack while he was climbing, and henow discovered he had lost it during the fall. Slowly the cold nightair from the storm began to chill him to the bone through hislightweight inner jacket. After struggling to turn himself around in acircle, and not finding anything to grab onto, in desperation he criedout, “Oh Krishna, please help me!” Suddenly, from above he heard astrong deep voice boom out, “Cut the rope!” “What?!” As the climberlistened over the wind, once again he heard a deep voice say, “Cut therope!” Except for the wind, silence followed, as the climber continuedto hang onto the rope, while hoping to be able to grab onto somethingthat would enable him to climb to safety. Unable to see his truesituation, the climber concluded, as most people would, that hangingonto the rope was his only hope. He thought it would be stupid to cutthe rope.

The following day, the rest of his climbing party discovered him frozen to death, still dangling from his rope -- only eight feet above a large out-cropping of rock. Had the climber cut the rope, he would havedropped down to a safe area, where he could have built a fire, usingsome of the surrounding scrub brush, and probably survived the night.

Moral - Krishna has millions of ways of helping us and He helps the devotees every time. We are attached to this material world with a rope. It’s up to us to cut it and go back to our original home.