Have you ever witnessed such a thing—a baby speaking its first words? Well, it’s a dramatic thing. The parents are waiting to see what the baby is going to say. If the baby says māmā, dādā, pitā, or ammā, the parents go crazy! They say, “He said my name! She said my name!” They will record it on video and play it over and over and over again. This is the real meaning behind the idea of "service with the tongue."
What Kṛṣṇa wants is our love. Just as parents want the love of their baby—where at first, it seems like the baby is just crying and wanting attention, and the parents give all their attention because they are so attached. When the baby finally gives something back, the simplest thing they can offer is just recognizing them and saying, “Māmā,"then, the parents' hearts melt. To them, that is the best service the baby could ever give—better than anything else they could do in their entire life. It is simply the baby recognizing, "Here is the one taking care of me."
This is exactly what service is when we chant to Kṛṣṇa. When we recognize, “Kṛṣṇa, You are my mother, You are my father, You are everything to me,” that is the real connection. Remember: this is a deeply heartfelt, personal process. It is not mechanical. It is not about merging into some impersonal light. It is entirely personal. We are persons, and Kṛṣṇa is a person. He loves us and wants us to come back to Him. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes in his purport to the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (1.2.17) on the verse śṛṇvatāṁ sva-kathāḥ kṛṣṇaḥ:
"Kṛṣṇa wants us to come back to Him even more than we can desire to go back to Him."
So, think of yourself as a baby calling out to your mother. That is the deepest connection and service you can perform. It is just acknowledging that He is there, and saying, “Kṛṣṇa, I only want You.”
Just imagine how His heart melts for you personally. It is not just a general thing where, "Oh, He likes everybody," He specifically likes you. I gave a class on this in London recently. In a section of the Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta, when Gopa-kumāra finally goes back to Godhead, he mentions that when he met Kṛṣṇa, he initially thought, "Well, yes, Kṛṣṇa loves all living entities—you can say that." But then he realized, "Oh, He specifically cares for me." That is when his heart truly melted.
That lack of personal connection is what vexes everybody in the material world. Everyone thinks, "God is against me. Nobody likes me." People are not even sure if their own parents like them! It is a deep psychological anomaly we are all stuck in. But when you experience that genuine reconnection with Kṛṣṇa, then your japa becomes absolutely essential. You cannot do without it. It stops being a mechanical process. It becomes real—the genuine, urgent yearning of the soul for what we have lost: our awareness of Kṛṣṇa's intense love for us. (14:55)
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