TEMPLE: How Krishna consciousnes contributes to the world practically

Sunda feast class based on the acronym TEMPLE at the Radha Gopinath Temple on 22-7-07

T: Tranquillity

E: Education

M: Medication

P: Purification

L: Love

E: Engagement

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
that.
So, if you feel this piece was a little fast. Shri Krishnananda, Shri Advaita Gadadhara, Shri Vasadhi Gaurabhakta Vrnda, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna. So, today I’ll be speaking on the topic of, how Krishna Consciousness practically contributes to this world.
Ultimately the goal of Krishna Consciousness is to go beyond the world. But people always have this question, okay, you are chanting, dancing, singing. What does it do for solving the practical problems of life? Does it do anything practical? Okay, you have your belief system and according to your belief system, you will go to the kingdom of God and you’ll be happy there.
But are you doing something practical for this world? So, I have written a small book on this topic. It is entitled, Why do we need a temple? So, last week only we had this beautiful anniversary celebration for Lord Sri Sri Radha Gopinath. So, I’ll speak partially from that book and partially from other sources.
So, generally speaking, in our modern society, people evaluate everything in material terms. Material means that which is tangible with the senses, with the eyes, with the nerves. It’s like as Sri Sri Radha Gopinath was telling today in the morning, that if we tell materialistic people, you are wasting your life, they will tell us, you are wasting your life.
Tell us, you are spending two hours every day and you are getting, what are you getting in return? In practical, nothing from a material point of view. So, actually speaking, apart from the gross material things which are there, which have their importance in life, our happiness is determined not as much by our possessions as much as by our emotions. Possessions are external and they are important, but ultimately what determines our happiness is our emotions.
So, I’ll be talking about this, what Krishna Consciousness contributes in this world in terms of an acronym, the temple. So, T E M P L E. I’ll talk about six points. So, T, the first and most important and to some extent most easily perceivable contribution that we can get by our connection with Krishna is tranquilly.
Tranquilly is an inner sense of calm, an inner sense of peace and well-being. In fact, mental agitation is one of the greatest challenges in our society today. And in America now, sociologists are talking about an anxiety epidemic.
Just as we had HIV epidemic or now India is proud that we have removed polio. But, this is, according to statistics now, the number of people who suffer from anxiety is double the number of people who suffer from depression. Now, we may think of anxiety, don’t worry, cool down man, everything will be alright.
But, this is not like that. These are what psychologists call as anxiety disorders. And they can range from mild to severe.
And America spends something like 10.1 billion dollars every year on anxiety disorders. So, it is not just a matter that can be solved by yes, cool down, everything will be alright. That sort of pep talks are common, but they don’t seem to help.
So, actually speaking, just to get relief from the inner turbulence that is there. It is said that many people speak because they find speech more tolerable than silence. They find speech more tolerable than silence.
Because when they are silent, actually the mind is screaming from within. The mind is screaming wildly from within. And if I can’t talk, then I just get a machine which keeps talking constantly.
It can be television, it can be Facebook, it can be some other messaging system. So, people find that they can’t be silent. That’s why Krishna in the 17th chapter talks about the different kinds of tapa.
He talks about shariram tapa ucyate, vanmayam tapa ucyate and manasam tapa ucyate. So, there when he is talking about austerity or discipline, he places mauna not in the vanmayam tapa, not in the austerity of speech, but in the austerity of the mind. Manah prasada saumyatvam.
He describes various manah prasada, satisfaction, saumyatvam, general satisfaction. Maunam atma vinigraha, bhavasam shuddhirityetat, tapo manasam ucyate. So, maunam.
Maunam is silence. Now, in India people have the idea of mauna means, oh, just take a mauna vrata, don’t speak anything. But Krishna is telling something different when he talks about mauna.
He is saying that mauna is the austerity of the mind. Because even if a person is physically, verbally silent, the mind can be turbulent. And real silence, real tranquilly comes when the mind becomes peaceful.
So, that’s why mauna, Krishna categorises as the silence of the mind. And because people don’t have silence of the mind, people try to distract themselves. So, many times people have this question, why do you spend so much money? Decorating the deities and bathing the deities and generally whenever any lakshmi for the lord is spent, people contrast it with, there are so many poor people who are starving.
Wouldn’t it be better that instead of spending all that money on god, you fed all the money to the starving people. It’s interesting that people remember the starving people only when money is spent on god. You know when millions of dollars are spent on sports, millions of dollars are spent on entertainment.
And now there is a marriage of sports and entertainment in IPL. So, at that time nobody objects. Just for the inauguration of the IPL, the inauguration ceremony was millions of dollars.
So, actually why is it that we remember poor people only when something is spent for god? There are so many other ways in which money is being spent. And people don’t consider that to be a waste because they feel that’s entertainment, we need that. I enjoy playing sports.
Actually more people enjoy watching sports than playing sports. Because playing involves some physical exertion. So, watching playing means we get second hand enjoyment.
Somebody else is playing and we try to get some enjoyment out of it. But whatever it is, people consider that I need some… There is no roti-kapda-makhan in cricket or Hollywood or Bollywood or whatever. But people feel that’s authentic need.
They feel that the mind needs some relief, needs some break. And we get that through entertainment. And then if we want the entertainment, whatever is required to be spent for that, we should spend for that.
So, nobody objects over there. So, if, we can start at a basic level, that if some people find relief by spending scandalous amounts of money on entertainment, what is wrong if some other people find a similar sense of mental pacification and satisfaction by spending some Lakshmi for god? So, actually speaking there is a substantial difference between the kind of mental gratification or mental pacification that comes from mundane activities like sports and movies and other things like that, as compared to spirituality. But even if we assume for Aadhya and Sikh, both are equal.
So, if so much money can be spent for those things, why not a little for some other way in which people are getting some satisfaction, people are getting some peace. But more importantly, there is a significant difference between what material entertainment offers the mind and what Krishna consciousness offers to the mind. Actually, material entertainment may offer some titillation for the mind.
But it doesn’t offer any pacification. Titillation means some stimulation. Little stimulation is offered.
But it doesn’t make a person peaceful, truly speaking. It doesn’t make a person joyful. What does titillation mean? We have some small children and sometimes when relatives come to meet, the children start tickling, the relatives come and start tickling the child.
And as the child starts tickling, he starts laughing. Now, when the child is laughing when he is being tickled, is that happiness? Now, if that were happiness, then all of us can have our own perpetual tickling machine. Isn’t it? And all of us can be happy for the rest of life.
Isn’t it? How? That’s not really happiness. Because that is so superficial. Yes, there is some biological stimulus and that produces biological reaction.
But our heart is not touched by that. So, actually material entertainment is tickling at the psychological level. There is tickling at the physical level and there is tickling at the mental level.
So, material entertainment is simply tickling at the physical level. So, we feel some sort of relief, some sort of freedom from the burden. But it’s always superficial.
It doesn’t touch the heart in any way. It may stimulate or agitate the mind temporarily. But after some time, it’s all gone away.
Actually speaking, the mind is surely disturbed. And when a person is very sick and is in pain, at that time the doctors often give a double treatment. They may give a painkiller for immediate relief.
And they may give some medicines like antibiotics for proper treatment. So, the painkiller has its value. If the pain is very intense, then to calm down the person so that the person doesn’t have too much pain, painkillers are valuable.
But painkillers are no substitute for the actual treatment, for the actual medication, antibiotics or whatever therapy is being used. So, at the best, at the best, material entertainment is like a painkiller. At the very best.
At the worst, it can actually lead to more pain also. Because all the material entertainment creates further agitation of the mind. But anyway, even if the material entertainment turns out to be good, at the best, it is a painkiller.
Temporarily the effects subsides and then it all returns again. And generally speaking, if a person is only taking painkillers, and what has happening, externally the person is feeling that, okay, things are all right, I am okay. But internally the disease is worsening.
The disease is worsening. And because the disease is worsening, so people, when the sick person is there who is only taking painkillers, over a period of time, he has to start taking more and more strong painkillers. Because the normal level painkillers don’t take away the pain.
So, the painkiller intensity, the dosage has to increase. So, if we just look at the last 50 years, if you look at the forms of the entertainment that are there, you can clearly see that people, basically what is people’s idea of entertainment or enjoyment? It is just forgetting the emptiness and boredom of my life. If I can forget that, then that they think is, mata aagaya.
But actually, that’s not really pleasure. It’s just trying to drive away the boredom of life, drive away the emptiness of life. So, maybe 50 years ago, the Indian movies that were there, so the action was some, somebody coming and beating someone up.
But now, the internal emptiness is so great that, if there has to be action, there has to be a big building, boom, to blow it up. So, the more the person’s mind and senses are blown apart and bombarded, then they think, oh, mujhe baza aagaya. Something happened.
Or, maybe 50 years ago, the music was gentle, soothing. Now, we have bang, bang, bang, boom, boom, boom. Ah, good, good, good.
Something happened. Or, if we look at sports, you know, maybe 20-30 years ago, there were cricket matches which were Friday matches. And, you know, slowly the action goes on, tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk, people flip-flip.
But then, people find it boring. So, then they had this, from the time of Packers series in the 1990s, they started with one-day matches. And after one-day matches, that’s like increasing the dosage of the painkiller.
And after that, they found, okay, one-day matches also, it’s not enough dosage. So, now we have T20 matches. And in T20 matches also, okay, all the players are not very excited.
So, we have IPL, we have all the entertaining characters from everywhere together. And even that is not enough. So, we mix in Bollywood also over there.
And then we have cheerleaders also over there. And… So, basically, what is happening is, the emptiness, the inner emptiness of people is so great, that people want some sort of relief from it all. And for that, the entertainment is at best a painkiller.
At best a painkiller. So, actually speaking, it doesn’t solve the problem. On the other hand, if we come to a temple, if we remember Krishna, if we serve Krishna, what is happening is that it is connecting to us at a spiritual level.
So, we are linking with Krishna at a spiritual level. And that offers a far greater deep peace, deep tranquilly. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna describes the main cause of chinta, of anxiety and agitation of the mind is unbridled materialism.
chintam aparineyam ca pralayantam upashyatah kama upabhogah paramah etavaditi nishchitah In 16.11, He describes that chintam aparineyam ca immeasurable anxiety. Till what time does anxiety go on? pralayantam upashyatah Till the moment of death and destruction. kama upabhogah paramah What is the cause of this anxiety? kama upabhogah People think that material enjoyment paramah.
Krishna is paramah but for people, kama upabhogah paramah Sense enjoyment, Prabhupada translates this as sense gratification is the prime necessity of life. So, when people are interested only in material enjoyment, what happens is, material enjoyment can at best come only for a few minutes or a few hours per day few hours per day, few minutes per day. So, what do people do at the remaining time? The senses are made in such a way that they cannot give us gratification constantly.
So, we can get physical self gratification for a few minutes, maybe a few hours at best on some days but what do we do at the remaining time? Remaining time, life at the sensory level is boring and that’s why people need some sort of relief. So, actually even if somebody doesn’t believe in God, still if such a person comes to a temple, he will find that the atmosphere here is different. There are certain vibrations which seem to calm the mind down calm the mind down.
So, actually speaking, what is the great need for society today that the people’s inner lives need to be made a little bit order, little bit more peaceful, little bit more tranquil. That is what Krishna Consciousness offers. And actually, there are many other sources that promise to offer this.
But, what they offer doesn’t really satisfy much. We will discuss a little bit about what is wrong with it. But even if one doesn’t believe in God or believe in soul, at a purely experiential level, one can feel that there is something different.
And, even materialistic people, they also experience that if we do some sort of meditation, chants and mantras, then it becomes peaceful. So, now there are people who have got meditation for atheists. Now, if a person is atheist, what will the person meditate on? But no, they want to tap the power of meditation because these atheistic people are becoming peaceful.
Why should we not become peaceful? But fine, actually speaking, there has to be a proper object for meditation. But at experiential level, we can experience, we can find, verify for ourselves that the mind becomes peaceful, becomes calm, becomes tranquil when it connects with Krishna. And one primary place where we connect with Krishna is the temple.
So, if Krishna consciousness offers something at a material level, yes, it pacifies our mind. If the mind is not peaceful, then all the material enjoyments that are there in this world, actually they don’t seem enjoyable much. Mind is agitated, what can we do? So, Krishna says, अशान्तिस्य कुतः सुखम् नास्ति बुद्धिर युक्तस्य नचा युक्तस्य भावना नचा भावितः शान्ति अशान्तिस्य कुतः सुखम् In 2.66 he says, that if one is not connected with him in devotion, one cannot have बुद्धि, one cannot have भावना, one cannot have steady mind, and if one doesn’t have a steady mind, one cannot have शान्ति.
If one doesn’t have शान्ति, कुतः सुखम् Where is the question of happiness? So, that’s the first contribution. Tranquilly. Tranquilly.
Then second is, I’m talking about the acronym temple, so E is education. So, Sri Prabhupada made the temples of the Krishna consciousness movement with a focus on systematic philosophical education. Many people in the Indian tradition know that, okay, if you go to a temple, we should go in the temple and we should sit down over there.
But, actually what has happened over the centuries, because of foreign suppression and indigenous negligence, that just the cultural remnants are there, but the knowledge of the purpose of the culture has been lost. So, people understand that if you go to a temple, you should sit down sometime in the temple. But they don’t know what is the purpose of sitting down.
The purpose of sitting down is actually to sit and hear from spiritually minded people. So, without that knowledge, most temples in India are, at best, sightseeing places. People go and see and often, if one doesn’t have education, one doesn’t even find the deity very beautiful.
One is seeing the architecture and everything else in the temple. So, actually speaking, for many people, going to a temple is more of a social or a cultural affair than a devotional or a spiritual affair. But Srila Prabhupada made the temple in such a way that there is regular class, everyday classes in the morning.
When those who are residents, they have one more class in the daytime. And then there are regular programmes. Srila Prabhupada wrote books and he wanted his books to be available.
So, what is this education that is offered that society, that the Krishna consciousness offers to society? Actually, there is, as I said earlier, I talked about the peace of the mind. And before that I mentioned about emotions. So, our modern society offers us no education about our emotions, about our inner life.
Because the whole of science, science has developed in its own way, which is quite effective within a slice of reality, but it doesn’t know anything about our inner world. The whole purpose of medical science is to treat pain. When people are sick, to remove their pain.
But, there is no metre in any hospital anywhere to measure pain. There is no painometer at all. When a dentist is removing the tooth, extracting the tooth, he can sense, how far the extracting device has gone inside.
But, he has to ask, does it hurt? So, actually speaking, we can measure physical parameters. And the physical parameters may be indicative of how much pain might be there. But there is no direct way to measure pain.
So, pain is just one representative, but our whole area of emotions is unaddressed by the modern scientific education. And because it is unaddressed, it is undisciplined. And because it is undisciplined, it leads to chaos.
Some of you may be aware, just two days ago, in America, there was this well-educated, near doctorate in theoretical physics, who just went into a studio, and he started shooting people over there. And, this was the premiere of a big movie, and afterwards people caught him, and he himself doesn’t know why he did that. So, he was a little frustrated in his life, he was well-educated, and he was a topper in his academics, but still somehow he didn’t get a job, he got frustrated, and it was not just an impulsive action that he did, it was planned.
For several weeks and months, he was planning it. So, certainly, these sort of incidents are not one-off. They have a long history in the past.
what is happening? Why are people just going, just, you know, in flying language, you say that people’s fuse blows off. So, why does such a thing happen? Why do people find their emotions going completely out of control? Because there is no education about what emotions are, how they are to be dealt with, and because of that, the inner life is completely neglected, and it’s just left to people to deal with it whatever way they can. And most people can’t cope with it.
So, the education that the Krishna Conscious Movement offers us is to tell us, where our emotions originate from, and where they are meant to be directed. So, Krishna Consciousness, it has its otherworldly aspects, but it has even this worldly relevance. So, actually, the emotions come from the soul, and the soul is meant to connect with God.
So, in this world, when the soul doesn’t connect with God, the soul doesn’t get the satisfaction that it needs. And then, the soul starts finding substitutes. And whatever substitutes we try to find, none of them satisfies.
So, the whole area of emotional management is a complete mess. I studied some current texts in psychology, and they have different theories about what the mind is. Some people say the mind is just matter, some people say the mind is an offshoot of matter, just like when a train moves, the train gives a whistle.
So, like that, when our brain circuitry moves, suddenly the mind emerges like a whistle from there. So, they have all sorts of theories. Now, all these theories are very different in terms of their theoretical propositions.
But they are same in terms of practical application. None of them help people to control their mind. And this is not meant to be a criticism of psychology or psychiatry.
It is just objective reality. So, actually speaking, the inner education is what spiritual life offers us. The knowledge of the soul and the knowledge of God and their connection, that brings purpose to our lives.
That tells us what is it that I am living for. When people have no purpose for their lives, George Harrison wrote a song, you know, if you don’t stand for anything, you will fall for anything. The idea is that if people don’t have anything to live for, then whatever comes in their mind, that catches them.
So, the education that Krishna Consciousness offers us is extremely valuable and even indispensable. So, when Sri Prabhupada was in America, at that time, he met several professors. And when he met those professors, he had multiple discussions with them of different topics.
There was one professor, Benford. So, Prabhupada was going for a morning walk with him. So, he said, Swamiji, now we have… So, Prabhupada asked him, what is the current scientific knowledge about the soul? So, he said, currently, we have no scientific knowledge about the soul.
That means you don’t have any scientific knowledge. He said, no, no, no, no, Swamiji. Scientific knowledge is a different brand of knowledge.
For example, he said, there are these, they were in a garden where there is grass. He said, there are two big volumes of books about how grass grows. So, Prabhupada replied, even without your volumes, the grass was growing.
So, there, he said, he… He was a little taken aback. Nobody had spoken like that to him. But, Swamiji, he said, if God did not want us to study the grass, why did he put the grass here? So, he was, Prabhupada, he was intelligent.
He thought that he had got an answer. But Prabhupada was always, much better. He said, my point is that you study the grass and you forget the God who put it here.
So, actually, so, he wrote an essay when Sri Prabhupada departed from the world. Professor Benford and others, they wrote an essay about Sri Prabhupada. So, he said that after meeting Prabhupada, I felt as if I were like a prisoner who was studying everything about the prison except the escape way out of it.
So, material knowledge has its value. We don’t deny it. But ultimately, there has to be a purpose.
What is the purpose? At ultimate level, the value is that we go out of material existence, go out of misery. At immediate level, material education should be a formation of character. It should improve one’s personality.
One’s character and one’s personality. What modern science does is, at best, the slogan is, let’s make things better. Let’s make things better.
But, what spiritual science does is, let’s make people better. Let’s make people better. And making people better begins with us.
Let’s make ourselves better. With all due respect to science, actually, science offers no scientific education. We’re talking about education.
And today, most people think education is scientific education. But scientific education offers us no knowledge about how we can improve ourselves. Now, there’s such a big big hype in the news about the discovery of the god particle.
So now, we discover the god particle. Actually, this god particle doesn’t have any spin. It has practically an infinitesimally lasting lifespan.
And it doesn’t have any colour. It doesn’t have any fragrance. It doesn’t have any shape.
And it lasts for less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. Now, only to a person who doesn’t know anything about god, a particle like this sounds like god. Isn’t it? There’s no reason to call it a god particle.
But still, to discover this god particle, the scientists spent over 27 billion dollars. And they had the biggest biggest instrument in the whole world. What was that instrument? That instrument is a particle accelerator, which is 28 miles in length.
Now, all that expense to find one particle. So, one sceptic asked this scientist, he said, you know, how many particles are there at the fundamental level? So, the scientist said, you know, our theory proposes many particles. Then, he said, David Berlinski, the critic of science, he said, there will be as many fundamental particles as there are funding to find them.
So, now, even if that particle is found, how does that particle’s discovery make any difference in our lives, practically speaking? At best, it may lead to some development of some further energy applications. We may have some better lasers and better scanners and things like that. But, that is not the primary need of the world today.
We have adequate technology. Technology can be improved. But, if so much education can be given about a God particle, then why not some education about the godly particle? The godly particle is the Atma within the heart.
So, the part of God. So, actually speaking, Christian consciousness offers us the education that will bring meaning and purpose in our lives. In fact, when there is purpose, then even great sufferings can be tolerated.
When there is meaning and purpose, like a soldier is going on the war field and fighting, and at that time he gets wounded, he will feel, yes, I am going to die now, but my death is purposeful. I died for the sake of my country. But, so what people are afraid of is not death per se.
But, if the soldier is going on the battlefield and there is a car accident and he dies over there, this is terrible. So, what makes people face, people can face suffering if there is meaning and purpose in it. But, if there is no meaning and purpose to life, then even little problems become too much.
So, material education does not offer us any meaning and purpose to life. Why do I exist? What am I supposed to do? So, actually speaking, what is right and what is wrong? There is no education for that. So, according to medical scientists now, they said that, if the child is there in the womb, then actually he is not a fully developed person.
So, if you want, you can abort it. So, abortion became legal all over the world. Now, a band of scientists have said that, if the child is born, and after the child is born, if the mother feels that I don’t want this child, then we should legalise killing that child also.
Now, when they said, proposed this, it is horrendous. It created such a public reaction. And these scientific researchers said that actually speaking, from the biological point of view, from the scientific point of view, there is no difference between the child, whether he is inside the womb or outside the womb.
It is the same child. So, if you can kill him when he is inside, what is wrong in killing him when he is outside? So, the whole issue is, is the child in the womb conscious? So, now what to speak of deciding whether the child in the womb is conscious or not, science can’t even tell us whether you and I are conscious. Again, there is no consciousness metre.
So, actually speaking, what is right and what is wrong, science can offer us no guidance for that. So, modern education may have its value, may have its functional utility in terms of providing a profession and a living, but, there is livelihood and there is living. So, for our living, modern education doesn’t offer us anything.
It may offer us something for livelihood. How should I live? For what should I live? So, this is something which only Krishna consciousness can offer us. Spiritual education can offer us that.
So, that is education. I can go on elaborately in this, but I’ll keep it short then. M is medication.
So, what is this medication? It’s meditation medication, similar. Actually speaking, people’s desires, because they are misdirected, they have become deceased. Everyone’s desires are deceased.
And because the desires are deceased, people take pleasure in things that are harmful for themselves. So, things which seem pleasurable in the long run, turn out to be miserable. So, there was a article in Science magazine.
So, there they said that it was about TV addiction. It was not about alcohol or drugs or something like this. It was TV addiction.
So, what they said is that sometimes a mouse is caught by cheese. Sometimes a fish is caught by a bait. He says, what? Human beings get caught by cigarettes, they get caught by drugs, they get caught by excessive watching of television, surfing on the net.
Is there any difference between the two? He said, there is a difference. What is the difference? The fish and the mouse have excuses. He says, what they are attracted to seems like food to them.
And what they are attracted to, they don’t know in advance that it is harmful. But we humans have neither of the two excuses. A cigarette doesn’t look like food to anyone.
Isn’t it? And who doesn’t know that it is harmful? Cigarette smoking is injurious to health. So, actually speaking, in 1940s, when the research came out, the company said, no, no, we should not suppress the research as much as they could. But finally, it just came out.
When they came out, they tried to portray as if cigarette smoking was a very heroic thing. Yes. People will get diseases, but I won’t get diseases.
Smoke. And people started smoking. So, now, actually speaking, after that warning was put up, to some extent, the percentage of smoke was increased.
Because it ignited a daredevil streak within people. So, the problem in society is that unless people’s desires are treated, they cannot do good to themselves. So, many times people say that, as I said in the start of the class, why do you spend so much money on the deities? Why don’t you feed the poor? Why don’t you give something for the poor? Yes, fine.
It is good to do something for the poor, but actually speaking, survey after survey has shown that even when poor people are helped, they often are not able to take that. What does that mean? I’ll start from some practical experiences. Many times when we travel in trains, beggars come along and ask for some charity.
So, normally as devotees, we give prasad. I have experienced so many times that beggars say, no, we don’t want this. You give us money.
Why? At one time, I gave him a chapati and actually, he is supposed to be a beggar. He says, Can’t you see? I don’t have anything to carry. Give me money.
And he threw the chapati back at me. So, another time, one more year he told me that he was travelling and he did not have any prasad with him. So, he thought the beggar should give him something.
So, he gave him some money. He did not have hands and he also did not have legs. So, one part had gone.
So, there were crutches over there. So, he thought, let me give him some money. He gave him money and as soon as he got the money, he was sitting in the train.
Right in front of his eyes, this beggar called another beggar. The other beggar came, he had his pocket over here. He took it out of the pocket, took the money out of the pocket and went to a nearby stall, got a cigarette and lit the cigarette for him.
And in front of him, in his face, he was smoking. So, actually this is at a very gross level. But, in America, not in America, in Europe, Europe to some extent is what is called as a welfare state today.
Welfare state means, in my opinion, they say that if you are not able to earn a living, the government will provide for you. So, they have welfare state. So, many of these people who go and take money from the government, they use the money not for getting food, clothing, shelter.
They use the money for drugs. They use the money for drugs. Because, okay, feeding the stomach will give you some relief.
But taking any stone makes us high. And as if this were not bad enough, in the West, many times men, women unite before marriage, outside marriage. And then they sometimes have unwanted pregnancy.
They can’t abort it when they have a child. And then for the woman to take care of the child, as well as to maintain herself, many times these women are not doing education and things like that. So, this happened in Switzerland and 2-3 other countries in Europe.
They found that many of these women, their life would get really disrupted. And sometimes they would just abandon the baby somewhere and go away. So, the government decided that if there are single mothers, then the state will provide financial support for them.
So then they started doing that and then the end result of that was what? That if there are 2 girls who are going to college and one girl becomes a single mother, then she gets paid by the government and the other girl, she has to maintain her finances, she has to do her studies and she has to balance everything. So, what happened is the social system started rewarding injustice. And many women, just for the sake of getting their allowance, started becoming single mothers.
So, at a material level, if people are not able to treat their own desires, even if help is offered, the help can’t benefit them. The help can’t benefit them because it’s like if there is a glass, if I pour water in it and below there are holes in it, then no matter how much water I put in it, it’s all going to flow out. It’s all going to flow out.
So, like that, people can be helpful at a material level. But unless they have some basic level of self-discipline, basic control over their desires, the help that is offered only contributes to harming them. It only contributes to they themselves making things worse for themselves.
So, that’s why what people need is purification of their desires. Sorry, it’s medication, it’s treatment. And what is that treatment? That is Krishna Consciousness.
Vishwaprabhupada went abroad, went to USA. At that time, there was this extraordinary species of human beings called as hippies. So, why am I using the word species? Because they were such extraordinary people that the whole American mainstream couldn’t relate with them.
All the values that we are living for, they are rejecting it. We don’t want education, we don’t want marriage, we don’t want jobs, we don’t want to have anything to do with the mainstream society. And they were just taking drugs.
At that time, there was this notion that by drugs, you can get spiritually high. So, they were taking drugs. And Vishwaprabhupada went there and the US government with all its infrastructure was at its wit’s end how do we treat this drugs pandemic? And Vishwaprabhupada went there and taught them to chant Hare Krishna.
And those who took it up they found themselves transformed. Dramatically transformed. So, actually there is also one historian of Hinduism who said that this Krishna conscious movement is remarkable.
Why? Because in one sense, Vishwaprabhupada was preaching for 40 years in India. Nobody paid any attention to it. So, practically speaking, India rejected Vishwaprabhupada.
At least, initially. And America had rejected the hippies. But two rejects came together and they transformed society.
So, what did Vishwaprabhupada do? Actually, the connection with Krishna one gets inner satisfaction which gives a basic level of self-mastery. And that is a treatment. So, if people have bad habits, with all the medical facilities that we have, the de-addiction centres are not very effective in freeing people from bad habits.
So, why is that? Because addictions are not just biological, they are psychological. And what happens in the realm of psychology, modern science can’t deal with it much. Spirituality helps to understand that what happens at the psychological level originates at the spiritual level.
And, when we connect with Krishna, people become free from their self-destructive habits. You know, he is known as the present preaching ministry. So, Chandramouli Maharaj is the present preaching minister.
And he has written a beautiful book called Holy Jail. Holy Jail. So, there is a picture of a person’s hands coming out of the prison bars and he has got a Bhagavad Gita in his hand and looking at it.
So, there are such amazing stories of people getting transformed. So, there was this young American boy, Chris. He is in Atlanta in America.
And, he got into drugs in his childhood, in his teenage years. And he went from mild drugs to hard drugs and he got completely ruined. Normally, once a person becomes an addict, soon the person becomes a thief also.
Because he cannot satisfy the addictive pullings by honest means. So, one day he had broken into a shop to rob and then he took drugs over there itself and when he came back to consciousness, he found himself in the prison hospital. So, he had fallen unconscious.
The shop owner had called the police. The police had rushed him to the hospital. The doctors had battled for hours to save his life.
So, then when he came back to consciousness, he was tried and he was sentenced for 10 years in jail. Just before that, he had got married. He had got two daughters.
So, he was devastated, thinking that I will not be able to be with my family for 10 years now. And he felt that I will never have anything to do with God in my life. Why did God do this to me? So, as he started living in the prison, he started feeling that I will go insane over here.
First of all, there was a physical constriction being in the prison. Along with that, there was a psychological constriction of not having drugs. So, it was a double trouble for him.
Then he felt I need some spiritual relief. So, in many countries, in the prisons, the government invites spiritual organisations to come along and do prison reformation programmes. Because what happens is, many times when people go to a prison, the prison instead of reforming them, deforms them further.
Why deforms them? Because minor criminals meet hardcore criminals. And Sangat Sanjayate Ka Maha, I call it association desires develop. So, the Tihar jail has now got a separate Tihar youth prison.
Because they have for, youth should not mix with the other hardcore prisoners. So, like that. Anyway, so this Chris, he started enquiring about some programmes and he found a Bible course over there.
He attended that. And he, practically all the spiritual fair that was available, you know, first he attended some Bible classes, then some Kabbalah classes, then some Quran classes, then some Zen Buddhism, then some Oneness Meditation. And after two years of searching, he was as lost as ever.
At the end of it, he prayed fervently, Oh God, if you are there, please help me, I need you. No sincere prayer ever goes unanswered. There were a few days when he was attending a Bible class, the student next to him, not a student, he was a prisoner, he was a prisoner student.
So, he opened his Bible and he saw there was a leaflet of a Bhagavad Gita programme. So, the programme was already over, but there was an address for correspondence. So, he wrote at that address and he got Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita as it is.
When he got the Bhagavad Gita, he started reading it. He felt it was like a breath of fresh psychological air for him. He said, we are not the body, we are the soul.
All the sufferings are because we have gone against God. And he says, we can connect with God by chanting this mantra. So, then he started chanting Hare Krishna in the prison.
As he read the Bhagavad Gita, he became a vegetarian inside the prison. And he started this picture of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. So, he started offering whatever food he had got to the picture of Krishna and then taking the food over there.
And then he read about Karma Yoga. He started thinking of his prison assignments as Karma Yoga for Krishna. And all the other… So, he writes in his prison diary that he said, as I started chanting Hare Krishna, I felt more free than I had felt ever before in my life.
Although I was inside the prison shackles, but I was more free because I had become free from the sickening desires of the mind. I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this. That was a big feeling.
And other prisoners could not but notice. He said, you are living the same way we are living. You are working the same way we are working.
You are eating the same stuff that we are eating. But we are miserable and you are so peaceful. What is the secret? And he started teaching Bhagavad Gita to all of them in the prison.
So, he became a preacher in the prison. Then he was released from prison after 8 years. 2 years was short because of good behaviour in the prison.
Then he came out. As soon as he came out to his family, the first thing that he did, after racial courtesies, he had two daughters. He taught both of them how to chant Hare Krishna.
He said, you will also become young when you come to youth. And everybody gets this attack of passion. And if one is not good to deal with that passion, you can ruin oneself.
So, then he felt that I should do something for Krishna. I was there in the dark prison cell when Krishna sent his message to me. Then he got an inspiration.
There are so many other prisoners languishing in the prison. Let me go and become a messenger of Krishna for them. So, the same Kris within a few months of his release who was earlier a prisoner, he started travelling from prison to prison and giving talks in prisons and he became a prison minister.
From prisoner to prison minister. Now, is there any technology that can cure people like that? This is actually and this is not just one case. There are hundreds and hundreds of cases like this of people getting transformed.
So, this is medication. So, next is purification. Some people when they hear stories like this, they think, oh, ok, ok.
There are some people who are very weak minded. For them spirituality is good. But I have control over my mind.
I don’t need spirituality. They think spirituality is a crutch for weak minded people. And those who are weak, for them they need a crutch like this.
However, spirituality can make bad people good, but it can also make good people better and best. All that we can be. Actually, we have so many talents and abilities within, but because our mental energy is dis-focused, then we are not able to utilise those talents.
So, purification means that just as there is a treasure underground, which has to be brought out naturally. So, like that, Krishna Consciousness brings out the treasure that is within the heart. Prahlad Maharaj describes that an ordinary person, even if he walks over a gold mine, he’ll say, this is just ordinary ground over here.
He’ll walk away. But a person who is adept, a person who is a mineralogist, he’ll say, this gold over here, he’ll dig there, and he’ll enrich himself with the gold. Similarly, this ordinary person thinks, okay, that’s the body and that’s love, that is life.
Inside that there is a part of God, that is the soul, and that is the ultimate treasure, because within the soul is love for God. So, actually speaking, Krishna Consciousness helps us to bring out the divinity within ourselves. When it brings out the divinity within ourselves, we can do so much.
Benefit for the world. Not only can we benefit ourselves, we can benefit the world. So, there are people who go out and do compassionate work.
There are people who give out charity. So, when people give charity, they feel that, I am doing so much for the world. I am feeding so many hungry people.
I am doing this, I am doing that. It’s good. But unfortunately, much of the compassion is often motivated not by concern for others, but it is often motivated by one’s own ego.
There are many atheistic organisations who give charity. There is one organisation whose slogan is, they do a lot of disaster relief work. So, when they do disaster relief work, they say, God, in double quotes, God sends calamities, we send relief.
So, it’s such a demoniac idea. It is not God who is sending calamities. It is our own bad karma that is causing calamities.
But the idea is to deny and denigrate God. But, the number of people who give charity like this is also not much. So, there may be many people who are not addicted to bad habits like that.
But so much amount of material wealth and material energy is spent on frivolous things. So, on one side, when you talk about medication, you are talking about, when poor people are to be helped. There are starving people who need to be helped.
So, first of all, the poor people should be able to receive the help and benefit from it. For that, there has to be some medication which cures their desires. And then, those people who have something with them, they should be inspired with compassion to give, to share with others.
So, how does that compassion emerge from the heart? That compassion actually emerges in a sustainable way when there is connection with God. When one sees that everybody is a part of God. So, that purification is what Krishna Consciousness brings out.
Without this purification, a person just goes on a self accumulation, self aggrandisement mission. There are so many millions of hungry people in the world, but according to UNESCO statistics, that the amount of money that America and European Union spends on perfume every year, that money is enough to feed all the hungry people of the world. So, 10.1 billion dollars or something, perfume is only one type of cosmetics.
There are so many other types of cosmetics. So, what does this indicate? If people think, I am the body, then I have to decorate my body. And then that leads to so much expenditure.
So, bodily consciousness makes people not have any compassion for others. They get so self obsessed. So, once a person was walking on a street, and suddenly he was walking with his dog, this happened in America, and suddenly he saw that there was a dog who had been milked by a car.
And the dog was lying in a spool of blood over there. So, he saw that, he was shocked. This is a distressing scene to see, but he saw that, he was distressed when he looked at it, and suddenly he looked at his dog.
And he found the dog was completely nonchalant. Although another member of the same species had been injured, the dog was completely unconcerned. So, then it struck him that actually, animals live in a dog-eat-dog world, and they don’t really care for others.
The capacity to be concerned for others is a human endowment. To the extent we develop it, to the extent we can benefit others. So, the divinity within us comes out by Krishna’s mercy.
When we connect with Krishna, it purifies our heart. It purifies our heart, it brings out the latent divinity. So, what happens is, that when there are wealthy people who become connected with God, then instead of accumulating and possessing more, they start sharing what they have.
And that is the real solution to the problem of scarcity and misuse that is there in the world. That’s purification. Now, L is Love.
Love, ultimately, love is what all of us are hungry and hankering for. So, what exactly is love? Most people nowadays think of love in Bollywood or Hollywood terms, but that is a caricature of love. That is not love.
That is just, as I said, a caricature of love. That means, it is a very showy affair, which does not involve any commitment or any lasting connection at the emotional level. It is just basically at the physical level.
And that’s why, there is more and more westernisation happening in India. So, first we had joint families, then we have nuclear families. Now, the nucleus is also split.
And there are atoms, electrons and neutrons rotating around. So, when a nuclear family is split, the number of children who are born outside marriage in America, as compared to 1950s to 2000, it is 6 times it has increased. So, there are people who are just living all alone.
So, the movies talk so much about love, but in real life, there is so much disorder. So, why is that? Actually, the Bhagavad Gita describes, the Vedic literature describes in general, that love is directed in two ways. We have a vertical relationship and we have horizontal relationships.
Our vertical relationship is with Krishna. And that vertical relationship is the pivot of our love. If that vertical relationship with Krishna is not there, if you only have horizontal relationship with others, the horizontal relationships cannot be stable.
What does the horizontal relationship mean? That means, we have a relationship with our spouses, with our friends, with our relatives, even our relationship with our parents or with our children. They may be hierarchical in the generational sense, but they are all horizontal relationships, because they are also all living beings like us. So, we have horizontal relationships and we have vertical relationships.
So, our horizontal relationships are temporary. Only our vertical relationships are eternal. That doesn’t mean the horizontal relationship is to be minimised or rejected, but it means that the horizontal relationship is to be used to solidify our vertical relationship.
That means, when the marriage happens, it’s a sacred bond. What makes it sacred? Because actually it’s a bond in front of God, the two people are coming together to serve God together. So, that vertical relationship gives a higher purpose to the horizontal relationships.
Without the vertical relationship with Krishna, if there is only a horizontal relationship, then what is the purpose of that relationship? The purpose is just instant gratification. If you give me pleasure, then I have a relationship with you. If you don’t give me pleasure, then get lost.
So, you know, men treat women like sex machines, women treat men like ATM machines. So, that’s how things become so utilitarian. So utilitarian.
So, actually speaking, it is our relationship with Krishna which brings a long-term perspective to our material relationship. When we are connected with Krishna, then we understand that we are not here, we are not together here just for our gratification at a material level. We are also here together for our evolution at a spiritual level.
And, that’s why we will see, to the extent there was a spiritual culture, whether in India or the West, the relationships were much, much more stable. And, as materialism and godlessness are coming together, everybody talks about love more and more, but people experience love less and less. And, because of that, we see the relationships are not really stable.
So, actually, what Krishna consciously offers us is an eternal relationship of love. So, when that connection is offered, then all our other connections become stabler and stronger. So, ultimately, we need an eternal relationship.
And, the whole purpose of Vedic culture is to make the temporary a springboard for the eternal. To use our temporary relationships to strengthen our eternal relationship. So, that means the children should obey their parents.
But, what is the purpose of obeying the parents? The parents are devotees and the children also become devotees. And, when they become devotees, they obey their parents. So, the father and the mother come, father and mother bow down before the deity.
What are the parents doing? He also bows down. Sometimes we see the temporary child is bowing down and looking about. What is my father doing? What is my mother doing? And then they get up.
Parents fold their hands. They also fold their hands. So, Prabhupada writes, imitation of a good thing is good.
So, these are all samskaras that are formed. So, basically, the horizontal relationships are, they are made as vehicles for developing the vertical relationship. Then, they become stabler in this life and they offer us a foundation for going towards the next life.
And, without that vertical relationship with Krishna, all our horizontal relationships become very very self-centred and very unsustainable. And, that is what we see in society today. So, we experience Krishna’s love maybe sometimes, occasionally through chanting, through kirtans.
But, we experience it through our relationship with devotees. And, this relationship, the relationship with devotees, actually gives us an experience of Krishna. And, one of the times when this happens the most is, some devotees are nearing the last days of their lives.
Sometimes, even when we are relating with devotees, we have our material conditionings and we tend to keep neglecting things that are transcendental even while practising spiritual life. So, the material relationship takes a our relationship with devotees also sometimes descend to the material level. But, when there is practise at the spiritual level, then at that time, or rather when there is the last moment that is coming up, then, everything else is put aside.
So, Giriraj Maharaj is writing a book called Many Many Moons, which is describing about many of the Vaishnavas who departed gloriously from the world. So, I had the opportunity to edit that book. So, there he talks about Sridhar Maharaj.
Most of you know Sridhar Maharaj. But, his last days were quite extraordinary. So, he was in America and he got cancer.
He got a lung disease, and he was going to collapse. So, at that time, he was thinking, I’ll just stay with my disciples, Sridhar Maharaj Association, and then I’ll depart over here. So, he called up Indra Pradhan Maharaj, and Indra Pradhan Maharaj told him, No, you have served your disciples throughout your life, now it is time you should go to Mayapur or Vrindavan and leave your body over there.
So, he was in Canada. So, he said, Can you come with me? We’ll go together. He said, Maharaj is in South Africa.
He said, I’ll come to London, you also come to London, and we’ll travel together. So, then they both came to London and they went to the temple to stay overnight. Next morning, they were planning to go.
So then, Indra Pradhan Maharaj was supposed to be the escort. So, he was just checking the luggage of Sridhar Maharaj. Normally, when western devotees come to India, they normally come with a return ticket.
It’s cheaper and it’s more convenient to have everything booked. So, as he was looking at the ticket, he said, Sridhar Maharaj, Maharaj, you have only a one-way ticket, not a return ticket. And he suddenly struck it, what he said, Maharaj is going to depart from the world.
So, there, Sridhar Maharaj’s address, Sridhar Maharaj was embarrassed. Sridhar Maharaj smiled, he said, yes. Krishna has given us a one-way ticket back to the spiritual world.
He was completely fearless. So, Maharaj then took a bath and came back. And when he came back, at that time he found that some of his blood vessels had turned, almost like purple.
So, Sridhar Maharaj saw that, he said, actually, these are the blood vessels that have gone now. The small ones have gone. When the big ones go, I will also go.
He was completely fearless. Finally, they took him to the airport and they got him into the plane. And as in the plane, the pain started increasing too much.
For him, at that stage, to take such a long ride was not advisable. Krishna wanted to go to Mayapur. So, he started moaning a little bit.
So, in his moaning, Maharaj was in the medicine and the air hostess came there. Is something wrong? So, Sridhar Maharaj had just been moaning and his eyes were closed. Suddenly, he opened his eyes.
There is always something wrong in the material world. And he started preaching to her. And he said, the only solution is to get out of this world.
She saw that he was a monk. Is that what you are doing? He said, that is exactly what I am doing now. So, she did not understand.
And then, to his amazement, Sridhar Maharaj looked around. He was so weak, he took out a book from his bag. And he said, if you also want to get out, read this book.
And she said, yes, thank you. I will come and give a donation. And she took a book also.
And finally, they came to Calcutta. And then they had arranged a car to take him to Mayapur directly. So, when he was there, one of his million disciples had come there.
Maharaj was thanking him for all the services that he had done. And then finally, when they reached Mayapur, they reached around 8 o’clock in the morning. So, that time the annual GBC meetings were going on.
So, that day they decided to cancel the whole Bhagavatam class. And all of his cons who’s who, the sannyasis and the gurus and everyone was actually at the entrance of Mayapur temple doing kirtans to welcome him back. Prabhupada, the heroic warrior, who had battled with many friends all over the world, now he was returning back for his final journey.
And when Shri Narayana Maharaj finally came, he was lying on a stretcher, and Narayana Maharaj said, just see. And he opened his eyes and he saw practically hundreds of devotees there to welcome him, doing kirtan to honour him. And tears started coming from his eyes.
And he said that, actually, Krishna has been so kind to me. Prabhupada has been so kind to me. So, he said that, we cannot experience Krishna’s love, or even our spiritual master’s love, without the help of our God brothers and God sisters.
It is through our God family that we experience Krishna and his spiritual master’s love. And finally, he went and had darshan. And then, they took him to a room in the conch building.
So, by the time he got there, he was completely exhausted. So, his stomach had become bloated again, and he was breathless, and it became very critical issues. It became serious.
They called for a doctor, and the doctor came along. The doctor with a stethoscope was touching his stomach and observing. And Sridhar Maharaj came back to the conch and opened his eyes.
He saw everyone looking very solemn. And he saw the doctor touching his stomach. He looked at the doctor and said, Doctor, is it a boy or a girl? So, Sridhar Maharaj was called by devotees that he was a jolly Swami.
He was always very cheerful. So, during the last days, I had gone to Mayapur for a camp. So, I also had a chance to have a darshan.
So, at that time, he was telling us, we were doing kirtans, and he was telling us, Actually, there is a lot of gas in my stomach. And normally, somebody will tell this in a very mouthful way. There is a lot of gas.
He said, you know, they can set an ONGC plant over here. So, throughout his last days, he said, I had three desires. I want to be in Mayapur.
I want to reach Mayapur. I want to be there for the Panchatathu installation. And then I want to be there for the Gaurapurnima festival.
So, Krishna fulfilled all his desires. He was there for the Panchatathu. He was right there on the altar.
If you see the Panchatathu installation, you will see him. They were doing aarti. And then Gaurapurnima came.
And then, they asked him, would you like to depart at the time of Gaurapurnima? He said, no. He said, this Gaurapurnima is Chaitanya Mahapuru’s festival. I don’t want it to become Shiva Swami’s festival.
He said, I don’t want the attention to shift from Chaitanya Mahapuru to me. I don’t want to depart at that time. Even at that time, he was so much thinking that people should fix their mind on Krishna.
And finally, a few days later, at the time of the Shiva’s Thakur’s appearance day, he departed from the world holding a beautiful picture of Radha, Madhava, Vishnu, Prabhupada, Chalana, Amrit, and the devotees in the kirtan around 4 o’clock early in the morning, Brahmamuthu time. It’s a glorious departure. And actually, these sort of events bring devotees together at a much deeper level, where we experience love not just at a material level, but at a spiritual level.
So, these are extraordinary experiences. And there are many spiritual organisations also, which can have big big centres and thousands of followers and millions of books. But ultimately, what happens at the time of death? How many people are there who can actually depart in a peaceful, serene, transcendental way? That is a test.
If the spiritual path has led to its success, then there are so many extraordinary stories of devotees living like this. So, that is actually love. And the last is engagement.
Engagement means what? That when we practise Krishna Consciousness, when we practise spiritual life, how do we practise spiritual life? We have to do something. We have our eyes, we have our hands, we have our legs. So, Krishna Consciousness offers us practical engagement in this way.
So, we use our talents for serving Krishna. Whatever abilities we have, whatever skills we have, all of us can do some service to Krishna and by that we can become Timbuktu. So, a temple becomes an arena where hundreds and hundreds of people can come and become engaged in Krishna Consciousness.
Most people say that we don’t have time. Now, in 1880s, there was a British philosopher who wrote the book, after 50 years, what will be the greatest problem in the world? He said, the greatest problem in the world will be that people will not know what to do with all the time that they have. Because he said, as machines become more and more better, then they will start doing all the work and people will have no work.
And people will have no work, they will not know what to do at that time. So, actually what has happened is that as machines have come up, people’s lives have not become more smoother, they have become faster, faster, faster and people don’t have time. But actually, why they don’t have time? Because the machines often eat so much of their time.
So much of their time. So, people don’t have, either they don’t have productive engagement or if they have productive engagement, in terms of their earning something, but remaining time, they are just wasting their time. In the modern material life, people do three things basically.
Work, watch, shop. Work, work, work, work. When they work and come back home, I need a break.
And break means, sit in front of the idiot box. Watch, watch, watch. And when you watch television, what happens is, basically television commercials and television programmes tell us, your hairstyle is wrong.
Your clothes are wrong. Your watch is wrong. Your cell phone is wrong.
Get this one, get this one, get this one. So, when people sit and watch, what happens when they watch? They get filled with all these desires. And then they go out and shop.
There is a whole, I wrote a book on recession, so there I talk about there is a whole breed of addiction called as, like we have alcoholism, there is shopaholism. Shopaholism. And actually the percentage of shopaholics is more than the percentage of alcoholics.
So these people are compulsive buyers. They cannot live without buying. And what happens is, that earlier we had some simple shops, grocer shops, where you can just go and take what you, I have a list of these things, and I go and purchase it.
But now we have supermarkets. Supermarkets means, super illusions. So what happens, when we are going through the supermarket, we don’t just have a list of what we want.
We see all the other things that are there. And then, ध्यायतो विशयान तुम्स संग्रस्ते शूप जायते, as we observe the circumstances, maybe I will take this also, maybe I will take this also. And if you don’t have a bag, no problem, we will provide you a van.
You know, we will provide you a trolley. You can carry everything that you want in a trolley. If you don’t have money, we will provide you a credit card.
And then, people just purchase so many things. Shop, shop, shop, shop. And after shopping, they find, oh I am still in debt, what do I do? Oh, I have to work more.
They work more, and after working more, they find, I am so tired. Come back and watch TV more. And when they watch TV more, they get all more desires.
And then shop more. So, work, watch, shop. WWS.
It’s worldwide stupidity. So, unfortunately, people feel that we don’t have time, but when they have time, they do things which just agitate them further. So, Krishna Consciousness offers an alternative from this.
We can have engagements that are according to our abilities, according to our interests, and they uplift us. They give us a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment. And they help us in moving onwards towards Krishna.
So, once Jai Jait Vaharaja asked one young boy who was coming for a youth programme. He said, why don’t devotees watch television? Why don’t devotees watch go-to-movies? So, Maharaj said, we get better entertainment without payment. So, actually, when people go and watch movies, what are they doing? There’s a hero and a heroine who are dancing and embracing, and people are whistling and imagining, if I was there, it would be so nice.
So, it’s all second-hand enjoyment. Somebody else is enjoying, people think I can enjoy. But, when we come to temple, we ourselves dance and sing.
It’s first-hand enjoyment, not second-hand. So, you get proactive engagements. And these engagements are not just engagements for killing our time or just lifting the burden of the other things that we are doing.
They do that, but they also purify us. They also take us towards the ultimate aim of life. So, in this way, Krishna Consciousness offers us benefits even in this world, in this life.
That’s why one time Prabhupada was asked that if you chant Hare Krishna throughout your life and you find at the end of your life that there is no Krishna, what will you do? So, Prabhupada said, still I will chant Hare Krishna and practise Krishna Consciousness. Because our life is so joyful even in this world. Then Prabhupada said, if you don’t chant Hare Krishna and at the end of your life you find Krishna is God, what will you do? So, the point is that even in this life there are benefits.
If we observe, and these are benefits which materialistic culture, materialistic education, materialistic society cannot offer us. And they are actually invaluable. To some extent, indispensable means also.
And because Krishna Consciousness caters to them, it has bred for us, so that we are not only just chanting Hare Krishna for our own good, by our chanting Hare Krishna, we are benefiting others also. Because we are creating a sustainable culture which can provide for the authentic inner needs of people. Before I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness, I was a part of a social welfare organisation and we used to go to slums to teach the children, to offer free tuitions to the children.
I was in my college and I used to go to the slums close by. So, we were part of the organisation. One of my friends, he was very much into it.
And he went to a village and he took up the village as sort of his mission. And he found that children get spoiled because their parents are all drinking, especially the father is drinking. So, then he was going there to teach the children but he started talking with the parents also.
And then he got all the parents, all the elders in the village, he was a dynamic young man, he got all of them to give up alcohol. And they all gave up alcohol. But then, the home atmosphere all became reasonably good, but then the elections came.
And when the elections came, the local politicians brought five trucks of alcohol bottles. And he said, whoever votes for me, all of them will get these bottles. And the next time when he went there, everything that they had done for the last three, three and a half years, all went out.
So, that time we were discussing, if at all we want to benefit anyone, the material level of education or even counselling, it is not going to help. There has to be some means by which people should transform themselves to empower people for inner transformation. And when we do that, then there is a sustainable benefit.
And that is what Krishna Consciousness is all about. So, every one of us, when we are practising Krishna Consciousness, not only we are benefiting ourselves, but we are also sort of creating a culture which is benefiting others. One time, one devotee asked Prabhupada, Prabhupada, when we take prasad, prasad is great with Krishna.
So, there are germs and worms in our stomach. So, when they come in contact with prasad, what happens? Prabhupada said, even they get purified. So, when you take prasad, you are doing social service.
Of course, taking prasad is not the only way we can do social service. But this also. So, actually speaking, just by participating in Krishna Consciousness and sharing Krishna Consciousness according to capacity, we are creating a more sustainable world where people can live peacefully and productively.
I’ll summarise what I discussed. Started by talking about what are the worldly benefits of Krishna Consciousness. I talked about six things.
Fear, tranquilly, how people with movies and entertainment and everything, it’s all a pain killer. It’s just titillating at the mental level. It is tickling at the mental level.
It doesn’t touch the heart. It doesn’t benefit people tangibly. E was education.
I discussed about how our emotions are offered no education, no training, no transformation by modern education. Krishna Consciousness offers educational, transformative process for our emotions. That’s the education.
M was medication. I talked about how people, even if you want to help them, I gave three examples of beggars, of drug addicts and of the single mothers in the welfare countries. Even if you want to help them, people cannot take help if they are not having some basic self-mastery.
And that is the medication that Krishna Consciousness provides. And there is purification. If somebody says, I don’t have any of these bad habits.
Whatever virtuousness is there within us, that can be brought out further by Krishna Consciousness. Because it removes the coverings of the soul, the treasure that is within and shines forth for the benefit of ourselves and for the world. Then we discussed love.
Horizontal and vertical relationships. Vertical relationships make our horizontal relationships steadier and stronger. Discussed about Sri Dharamaharaj’s departure leela at that time.
And then lastly we discussed about engagement. So how without engagement people’s lives just becomes a vicious cycle of work, watch, shop. But with Krishna Consciousness the productive engagement that purifies us and uplifts us towards Krishna Consciousness.
Towards happiness as much as possible in this world and ultimately beyond this world. Thank you very much. Do we have time for questions? Are there any questions? Okay, there.
Do we have time for questions? Do we have time? Yeah. Okay. Where is the mic? Hare Krishna.
Prabhuji, you mentioned in the lecture that emotions come from the soul. Yeah. My understanding earlier was that emotions can be a part of the mind also.
So are the emotions part of the mind like sometimes if the mind is not very stable then people go into depression. So or elation. So is the emotions are the part of mind or the soul? Are emotions part of the mind or the soul? Emotions originate from the soul but they are rooted through the mind.
Just like I can say that the instrument of speech is the voice box. But ultimately the desire for speaking and the content of the speech that originates from the soul. So just as I need tools for speaking, tools for seeing, tools for hearing.
So when we are in the material realm we also need a tool for thinking and feeling. The tool for thinking and feeling is the mind. So all emotions are, because the mind is also dead.
The mind is not living. The mind is also material. So in that sense the mind cannot have any emotions of its own.
Ultimately all emotions originate from the soul. However the mind sometimes appears alive. That is because it is subtle matter.
Subtle matter means if you are working on a computer, the computer has a software and a hardware. So the hardware we can clearly feel is dead. The mouse is lying here, the keypad is there, the monitor is there.
The software, sometimes it keeps prompting you. Do you want to make this your default browser? Do you want to do this? Do you want to do that? So now actually the software is also as dead as the hardware. But the software is programmed matter.
So because there is a programming so certain options are prompted by the programming itself. So like that our mind is subtle matter. So there are programmes in the mind.
And because of those programmes the mind has certain default patterns of thinking and feeling. So those are those emotions are default options which are provided by the mind. But ultimately the soul that accepts them.
That means as soon as say a drunkard sees an alcoholic, sees an alcohol bottle. Enjoyment. So you think that is enjoyment.
Although he has experienced so many times that he is suffering. But the mind offers that default programme. So but it is the soul who has to accept.
Just like, do you want to do this? Yes. So we tend to say yes. The mind is itself there.
But because it is subtle matter, it has programmes. We only have programmed it from the past. So our emotions at this level, at our current sadhaka level, they are mostly material.
That means those emotions often stem they often get stimulated from the programme of the mind. Say there is a male-female attraction. The soul is neither male nor female.
So where does the male-female attraction originate from? Actually ultimately all consciousness comes from the soul. But when we experience emotions, the pattern of emotions that we experience is often determined by our mind. If somebody is not an alcoholic, that person will not feel any emotions when he sees alcohol.
But because there is no programming about alcohol in his mind, or there is a small child, there is no programming of sex active within his mind. So even a small boy and a girl are playing, they don’t feel any emotions. Because that programme is not active.
But ultimately, that activation the yes, no, all that happens from the soul. The soul is the source of consciousness. Now Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita describes both sides.
In 2nd chapter 17th verse he says that the chetana comes from the soul. But in 13th chapter 7th verse he describes that chetana is a part of the kshetra. It is a part of the field material nature.
So what does that mean? At our state most of our emotions are connected with material things. And they don’t have anything to do with the essential nature of the soul. But still, if the soul were not present, say somebody is getting depressed, if a person is dead, the dead person cannot get depressed.
Because there is no soul over there. So ultimately, the source of emotions, the source of consciousness is the soul. But the kind of emotions that we have, that is determined by our mind.
So yes, our mind does influence our emotions a lot. But the source of our emotions is the soul. The type of our emotions, that is determined by our mind.
So people who are non-alcoholics, they will experience no emotion with respect to alcohol. Whereas, alcoholics experience so much emotion. That is because their mind is different.
So when we become purified, the material stimuli don’t create the same emotions within our mind, because the mind has become purified. So emotions originate from the soul, but their pattern, their type, their kind is determined by the state our mind is in. By the kind of programmes that we have set up in the mind.
Does it answer your question? Like you were telling that small children, they don’t have attraction towards the opposite sex, but as they grow, then the soul has remained the same now. So that’s what I said. The pattern of emotions is determined by the mind.
So as the biological growth as the pre-puberty and puberty time comes along, along with the biological growth, when the proper biological apparatus is available for the mind, then the mind starts expressing the dormant programme. So the point which I am making is that our shape of our emotions is definitely determined by our mind. But the mind is not the source of our emotions.
Is this difference between source and shape clear to you? Ultimately my ability to think and feel comes from the soul. But what I think and what I feel will be determined by my mind. Is the difference clear? Thank you Prabhu for a very wonderful class.
So I just wanted to clarify this point you mentioned about when there is a meaning and purpose in life, then great suffering can be tolerated. But sometimes the situations are there, troublesome situations are there. How to always recollect that we are in a mission where there is a purpose and there is a meaning and these sufferings we have to tolerate.
So when there are sufferings, how to remember the purpose and meaning. In general, suffering is something which everybody has to face in the world. Whether we are devotees or non-devotees.
But if we have taken shelter of the philosophy properly, studied the philosophy, taken shelter of the philosophy, then the sufferings of this world become confirmations of the teachings of the philosophy. That means that Bhagavad Gita tells us that this world is a place of misery. And when we experience misery, that’s what Bhagavad Gita is saying is true.
What happens is everybody experiences suffering in the world. But material life and material illusion is such that people think I am suffering, if I just become like that person, I will become happy. So what material illusion makes us think is that suffering is the exception and enjoyment is the norm.
And somehow my life has always been in the exception situation. In the future, I will go to the normal situation. I will start enjoying.
But that’s not the reality. Actually, suffering is the norm in the world. Everybody is suffering.
So when we get suffering, if we can connect it with the philosophy, Bhagavad Gita says this world is Dukkha Nair Vishashvatam. And I am experiencing it to be Dukkha Nair. So that’s the first point.
Then we start understanding that it’s not an exception, it’s a confirmation. What Krishna has taught, I am experiencing it. But Krishna’s teachings don’t end on a pessimistic note.
Saying that this world is a place of suffering. Just suffer. People try to imagine there is no suffering in this world.
And if you tell them this world is a place of suffering, they will say, why are you so pessimistic? Well, you know, if I want to drink water, there is no water in this. And I tell Prabhu, please can you get water? Prabhu tells me, Prabhu, why are you so pessimistic? Imagine that the water is there only. So, actually speaking, if the glass is half full and if I say it is half empty, that is pessimism.
But if I say that the glass is empty, and if I say that it is full, that is not optimism, that is stupidism. That is stupidism. So when I recognise actually this glass is empty, then I can find out how to fill it.
So the first part of the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching is to tell us this glass is empty. That this world is empty in its potential for giving pleasure. There is no pleasure over here.
So most people never come to this realisation only. They think, yes, my glass is empty, but others’ glass is full. Everybody else is enjoying.
Maybe the people around me are all enjoying. But the people in the television, in the movies, in the advertising, they are all enjoying. And I want to become like them.
But the first part of the teaching is this world is a place of misery. And we experience that ourselves when there are some sufferings. The second part of the Gita’s teaching is that we can tolerate and transcend misery by cultivating Krishna Consciousness.
So when we focus on that, when all of us can experience how by remembering Krishna we can experience the shelter of Krishna. So I gave the example of Sridhar Maharaj in the face of death. We may not have such extraordinary experiences.
But each of us can experience. Mind is troubled and somehow we can chant Krishna’s name, connect the asana with Krishna. The mental burden goes away.
So it’s like a patient, a person who is sick. Imagine there are two people who are sick. Both of them are in pain right now.
But one person has not been diagnosed what his disease is and no treatment has been prescribed. Whereas the other person has been diagnosed properly and the treatment is prescribed. So although both seem to be suffering right now, there is a world of difference in the suffering of both of them.
For one of them, person who is undiagnosed or untreated, the suffering is only going to increase. Whereas for the person who has been diagnosed and treated, the suffering is going to decrease and go away. So that is the difference between a non-devotee and a devotee.
Both of them are suffering. But the non-devotee, not only is he not diagnosed, many times, non-devotees have diagnosed the cause of their suffering as the cure for their suffering. They think that the more I increase my lust, the more I increase my greed, the more I increase my pride, I’ll become happy by that.
So actually, they are just increasing their suffering. As devotees, we also have suffering. So that’s the first part.
I understood this. I have got a serious disease. So recognising that I am diseased is the first part of the Bhagavad Gita.
The second is that there is a treatment. So then I take shelter of the treatment. When I take shelter of the treatment, then I experience the transcending potency of Krishna Consciousness.
So just like now, now this room is air conditioned. So I can feel a soothing coolness over here. As soon as I go out of this room, I’ll feel the afternoon heat against my skin and start sweating.
So like that, when we remember Krishna, we are like entering a Krishna conditioned room. We are placing our consciousness within that. So when we place our consciousness within that, when we place our consciousness within the remembrance of Krishna, then we experience the calm, the relief, the comfort, the joy, the fulfilment, the enrichment, the empowerment.
All that comes. But as soon as we come out, then again the misery of material existence starts hitting us. So therefore, when the misery comes upon us, we have to come inside the Krishna conditioned room.
We have to come and take shelter of Krishna. Often, Krishna is inviting us inside. But instead of coming inside, we start quarrelling with Krishna.
Why is this happening to the outside? Why is this suffering coming upon Krishna? Suffering is there. Come inside. I’ll give you relief from suffering.
You know that story. I’ll conclude with this. You know that story.
There was one atheist doctor, so one devotee went to him and he found this devotee was having Tilak and you believe in God? There is so much suffering in this world. How can God be there? So the devotee didn’t say anything. He went out.
After few minutes, he came back. He said, there are no doctors in the city. What do you mean? He said, come out.
He came out. Outside his clinic, on the footpath, there was a beggar who was coughing. He said, the very fact that he is sick proves that there are no doctors in the city.
Are you foolish? He is sick because he is not coming to me. Where is one exactly? People are suffering because they are not going to Krishna. So, Krishna opens his arm and says, come to me.
I’ll give you relief from suffering. But, we keep our mind dogged with the problems. In the problem, our process is to become Krishna conscious.
But when problems come, problems can be an impetus to become Krishna conscious. But instead of becoming Krishna conscious, we stay problem conscious. Why this problem? Why this problem? Why this problem? And when we are problem conscious, it’s like we are staying outside the AC room and wondering why it is hot.
Come inside the room, the heat will go away. So, if you become Krishna conscious, it’s not that the problem is going to disappear, but we get a broader perspective. What happens is, a problem is as big as our mind makes it to be.
The problem is there and we have to deal with it. But the more we dwell on the problem, the problem becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And we just get sapped mentally because of that.
We just lose our mental energy. If there is a big skyscraper building, if I am on the ground, the skyscraper building appears very, very big. But if I rise up and I am going in an aeroplane, the building is the same.
But the building appears small. Krishna says, if you don’t become conscious of me, this is the 18th point of the Bhagavad Gita, you will be frustrated. But if you become conscious of me, sarva-durgani mat-prasadat tarshisa, you will transcend all sufferings by my mercy.
Transcend doesn’t mean the problems will disappear immediately, but the burden of the problems for our mind will substantially subside. And then, we will be able to cope with them for whatever is required. So, often, we say that the only problem in the world is the lack of Krishna consciousness.
But the problem in my life is that I don’t have good health, I don’t have a job, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. So, for the world, the problem is the lack of Krishna consciousness. For me, the problem is the lack of a job or a lack of this or lack of that.
How is that? Actually speaking, we are all within Krishna consciousness, but the only problem in Krishna consciousness is the lack of enthusiasm for Krishna consciousness. If you become enthusiastic for Krishna consciousness, you will experience the magical potency of how Krishna consciousness purifies us and helps us transcend the misery. Thank you very much.