This discourse from Shri Praveen Radhakrishna addresses three of the most commonly expressed struggles among Sadhakas on this path: depression, loneliness, and the sense of being perpetually misunderstood. Rather than offering comfort, he offers a profound reframe — one rooted in the example of Sri Krishna's final hours. The depression you are experiencing, he argues, is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It may be the most reliable sign that you are progressing.
Why Sadhakas Experience Depression and Loneliness
The comments and emails Shri Praveen receives consistently reflect the same pattern: relationships are failing; people who should be supportive are indifferent; the Sadhaka feels alone, unseen, and perpetually on the wrong side of things.
His response is immediate and unambiguous: anyone who is genuinely progressing in Sadhana will not have a perfect life. A perfectly comfortable, socially integrated, materially satisfied life is a characteristic of the early stages of a soul's human journey — not its advanced stages.
The Sadhaka in Kali Yuga has arrived at this lifetime after a long journey through births across multiple yugas. The soul has moved from Satya Yuga through Treta and Dwapara, accumulating experiences, desires, relationships, and karma. In Kali Yuga, the purpose is not to accumulate more — it is to burn it all off. The Sadhaka is, in effect, filing the final tax returns of multiple lifetimes simultaneously. Everything that hits them — the collapsed relationships, the absence of support, the misunderstandings — is Karma arriving for settlement.
By the third or fourth year of serious Sadhana, non-reactivity sets in. What once caused anguish begins to slide past like water off stone. This is not indifference; it is karma reducing its balance.
The Problem with Special Days
In one of this discourse's most practically pointed sections, Shri Praveen addresses the widespread habit of treating Ashtami, Amavasya, and Purnima as spiritually elevated days deserving special effort — while the other 300+ days receive no such attention.
If you can do something special for your deity on Ashtami — extra malas, an extra lamp, a longer puja — you have already demonstrated that you have the capacity to do it. The question is: why would you choose not to do it every day?
Assigning special days implies that on all other days, the deity is less important or less responsive. For someone in genuine Sadhana, this logic breaks down entirely. Shri Praveen's own practice has no special days — not because he ignores Amavasya and Ashtami, but because every day holds the same completeness of practice. External calendar observation has given way to internal signals: the way the deity communicates, the state of the moon observed after evening prayers, the quality of the meditative space that day.
There is a distinction to preserve: Upasana (worship) naturally includes special observances and commemorations. Sadhana is a different category — it is one step below Tapasya (deep austerity), and its nature is relentless consistency. If you can do an extraordinary thing on one day, the honest response is to make it ordinary across all days.
The Spiritual Void No Animal Knows
Shri Praveen draws a sharp distinction between the human experience of depression and what he calls the animal mind.
An animal does not experience existential depression. Its needs are clear — food, safety, territory, procreation — and once fulfilled, it rests without further anguish. This is not a limitation of the animal; it is its appropriate state of consciousness for its stage of journey.
Human beings in the early phases of their soul journey can operate similarly. They cycle through physical needs and social needs, find satiation in material accumulation and relationships, and do not feel the spiritual void. These humans are not failing — they are exactly where they are meant to be in their evolutionary arc.
But for a human being who has accumulated hundreds of human births and is approaching the final phases of that cycle, something shifts. All the material needs are met, all the social needs are met — and a profound emptiness remains. This emptiness is precisely the Garbhagriha (inner sanctum) of the soul, waiting to be filled by the divine presence that nothing external can provide.
Depression that survives material comfort and social connection is not a pathology. It is a spiritual diagnostic — it reveals where the actual home of the soul is.
This is the Sadhaka who reaches out to Bhairava. This is the soul that belongs on this path.
Sri Krishna in the Forest: The Greatest Teaching on Loneliness
The central teaching of this discourse arrives through the story of Sri Krishna's final days.
After the Kurukshetra war, after the flooding of Dwarka, after all the karmas of his life as Sri Rama had moved to their inevitable conclusions through his life as Sri Krishna — he walked alone into the forest. He knew the arrow was coming. He sat beneath a tree and waited.
Shri Praveen insists on something most devotees are reluctant to accept: Sri Krishna's human body felt pain exactly as yours does. He was not shielded from the physical agony of the arrow by virtue of being an avatar. He came into human form and accepted all its limitations. The arrow pierced his leg, and it hurt — with the same intensity it would hurt any human being.
There was no army of attendants. No loved ones keeping vigil. No extraordinary divine intervention to stop the event. Just a solitary figure in a forest, surrounded only by nature and animals, bleeding out alone.
And he did not resist.
This is the greatest message Sri Krishna gave for the Kali Yuga: Your most important burning of karma will happen in your loneliness.
When you are surrounded by people, you are still earning karma — through interaction, through attachment, through the ripple effects of your presence in others' lives. When you are alone, that accrual stops. What remains is only what has to burn. The burning begins.
Sri Krishna did not rush back to Dwarka. He did not save the city from submersion, though he could have. He understood that the city's karma had arrived; the lives of those lost were not his to intercept. Every great soul, at their highest level of realization, reaches this: you cannot carry another person's karma for them. Attempting to do so is not compassion — it is a misunderstanding of how karma works and a delay in the other soul's own burning.
He waited for the arrow. He accepted the bleed. He attained Moksha not in triumph but in solitary, loving surrender.
What to Do When Depression Strikes on the Path
The practical teaching drawn from this is both stark and liberating.
Accept the loneliness. The depression and isolation the Sadhaka experiences are not signs of spiritual failure. They are the process. The path of Bhairava has always been a lonely path — do not mistake its solitary nature for abandonment by the divine.
Do not intercept others' karma. When someone close to you is suffering, the instinct is to absorb their pain through prayer or effort. Shri Praveen is clear: if someone has made a mistake, they must burn it themselves. You cannot burn for another person. You can hold compassion, but do not attempt to spiritually circumvent the karmic process of another soul. It delays their growth and entangles your own.
If the path feels premature — step back. If the detachment, the loneliness, and the dissolution of relationships feel unbearable rather than quietly acceptable, this is valuable information. It may mean this particular stage of the path is being entered before the inner readiness is there. Going back to Batuka Bhairava and Maa Durga, traversing the full journey of material engagement and gradual Vairagya, is not a retreat — it is proper sequencing. Move through Sri Krishna's life stages as a template: the child, the teenager, the warrior, the strategist — and only then arrive at the forest.
Talk to your deity — cry if needed. Not to another human being. Not to a counselor with a spiritual title. To your Ishta. Fight with them. Demand answers. This channel of communication — direct, private, unmediated — is where the Sadhaka's strength lies. The moment you seek consolation from a human being, you have placed that human above or equal to your deity in your internal hierarchy of trust. The window closes.
Conclusion
Sri Krishna sitting alone in the forest as the arrow approached was not a tragedy. It was the final, perfect act of a life fully lived and fully surrendered. He burned the last of his karma not in glory on a battlefield, but in solitude, in nature, bleeding quietly. When the Sadhaka on the path of Bhairava faces depression and loneliness, they are not abandoned. They are sitting beneath the same tree. The arrow of karma is doing its work. Let it.
Bhairava Kalike Namostute.