Understanding acharaya’s controversial statements
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Today, I will be talking on presenting controversial statements of our acharyas on how we how we can first of all understand and how we can present the controversial statements So now, there are some some fundamental conceptions we need to understand like some of the quotes of Prabhupada we take for Prabhupada quite often is Prabhupada said that my spiritual master never compromised and then I also never compromised you should also never compromise So this not compromising is not a license for unnecessarily confronting they are two different things not compromising means that we don't change our message I will give one there is one metaphor which I will be using throughout the class and then I will give different illustrations to to further demonstrate this metaphor See, our core message is like a medicine is like a treatment which is meant to cure a patient So now when any treatment is to be given at that time any generally if the disease is severe giving that treatment causes pain especially if the disease is severe and surgery is required then giving that treatment anyway causes pain Now the fact that pain is inevitable does not mean that unnecessarily pain has to be expected See, even in the surgery pain is inevitable at that time also in a surgery, anesthesia is given first then afterwards painkillers are given and in that way the purpose of the doctor is twofold one is to cure the patient but along with that to minimize the pain that the patient is in Now extend this metaphor further when a doctor is treating a patient the doctor may say this is the disease I have to treat this particular disease but then it is also the responsibility of the doctor to be aware if the patient has certain other complications that may make that particular treatment which is safe for other patients dangerous for that particular patient and knowing this is actually the doctor's responsibility and sometimes if the doctor is not aware of that then the doctor may have good intentions and may actually be competent also in terms of doing surgery but some other complications may come up and that may lead to unnecessary pain it may even lead to the death of the patient So it is important that that means now there are three different things one is when we say don't compromise that means the patient needs to be cured we have to give surgery we have to do the surgery so that means we don't say that in the name of being in the name of not wanting to hurt people we don't give the message only that would be like not doing the surgery that is not giving the message only but as I said not compromising does not mean that we have to become unnecessary complications being unnecessary complications can have two aspects one is neglecting to give the pain medicine the anesthesia or the pain killer or second would be neglecting to be aware of the specific complications that the particular patient has which may trigger various reactions so for example if somebody say has some neurological problems or some heart problems then the people they cannot be given anesthesia very easily if they fall unconscious then for them to come back to consciousness will be quite difficult so often then if they are given treatment in the surgery hospital they are offered local anesthesia not full anesthesia so these are specific complications that are there in particular patients and the doctor has to be aware of those so now when we talk about so now the acharyas may make certain statements which may be unpopular which people may not like now we have to see in which category the statements are popular for example now if we say self-righteousness leads to misery or that our body has been it is an illusion so this is all a central philosophical point we may not speak this in the first class because first you may want to establish a philosophical fundamental about existence of soul the reality of spiritual life the reality of spiritual happiness but these are points on which we will not we will not battle battle means to speak indecisively and not giving a conclusion so these are points which we will speak even this also if you see surgery and we do surgery surgery also has to be done at the appropriate time it is not that the first day the patient comes along immediately the doctor starts the surgery doctor tries to do the treatments at least develops the faith of the patient and then does the surgery so we should try to establish some fundamentals which establish us in the minds of the people as intelligent people intelligent people make sense and intelligent people believe it there are two things trust in a devotee can have many aspects but there are two primary aspects one is of the head the other is of the heart the trust of the head means this person is an intelligent person what this person says makes sense that is actually preliminary required but what that can come in many cases we don't even know who that person is it makes sense so that also establishes a certain level of faith but if we are expecting someone to transform one's life then that requires not just that head faith but heart faith heart faith means that this person is my religion this person wants my good wants to do something good for me so to the extent that this head faith and heart faith are established this person what he says makes sense and this person desires my well being to that extent then the unpalatable becomes acceptable it may not become palatable that which is painful will stay painful but will become ready to accept the pain just like when we go to a doctor first of all whatever the doctor says has to make sense the diagnosis, we use whatever the doctor says makes sense and along with that more and more in in medical practice the role of spiritual care is being more and more important nowadays but they don't necessarily their conception of spiritual care is not what we have in Bhaktivam hospital of say talking about spirituality and philosophy but there is spiritual more in terms of emotional there has to be a good rapport between the patient and the doctor and the, they don't use the word doctor, they use the word caregivers the caregiving staff and the patient when there is a good rapport when the patient feels comfortable with the caregivers then the treatment works much better this has been quite well demonstrated so there is, again this point of the head faith and the heart faith this caregiver actually care for me and the caregivers know what they are doing then the patient becomes cooperative with the doctor so same way in our outreach also that means even if we have to speak something confrontational which is a part of our core philosophy which is our core message which is unpleasant for people to hear which is unpalatable, then before we can expect people to accept that they have to have this head faith and this heart faith and then it is to some extent our responsibility to develop that in some people it may never be developed and then they will simply go away from the patient when they hear things which are unpalatable but others will accept it now this is now this need for head faith and heart faith or this how is this need fulfilled now one level is that now a person is very intellectual, very logical is very good at presentation that helps in developing the head faith but the heart faith is largely developed by community now when actually the person is desiring that oh great, I shall have it your desire is that oh this soul should become enlightened this soul should go towards Krishna should become happy then the purity helps in developing the heart faith at the same time you know purity of intention is not always a substitute for competence in execution that means you cannot say that just because I have pure intention you know whatever I speak is alright because people are also going to see how things are appealing itself because people cannot always perceive the purity of intention so this developing of faith is quite a challenging process and when we say we should not compromise that simply means that when this forum is appropriate for speaking the truth at that time we don't raffle about speaking the truth but then we have to speak the truth in a way that brings people closer to the supreme truth Krishna not that we speak the truth and send people away to the absolute truth so I will not go into this statement which are unpopular among people which are part of our core message I will not go into them right now because then we have to speak and usually they become a part of our say if you have Vagbhata course or if you have regular classes within them they come along at a particular progression but there are other statements which hurt people for various reasons so another probably the reason why I was asked to speak on this topic is certain codes of Srila Prabhupada have gone viral on social media and they have created a lot of bad perception there are some codes of Srila Prabhupada which were compiled by some non-devotee and he basically compiled together codes of 20-30 religious leaders mostly Hindus some Muslims also and he put them that this is this is the mentality of the leaders today of people who of those who people consider leaders and because these people have this mentality that's why in India there are so many rapes so that's why there is so much violence against women so currently the currently the social media is the social environment is very very sensitive about rape in general violence against women but especially rape it's very very sensitive so this is like in our example a particular patient having a particular complication so then if we see Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself he is God himself but he was very sensitive in this picture you see he lived in Puri but he did not disregard the existing temple order of Puri the temple the existing order was that those who are not born in Hindu families they cannot come inside the temple Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not insist on Haridas Thakur going to the temple he did not force Puri establishment to temples Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself he did not approve it but he did not make a mission to campaign against it another point is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a sanyasi was was it is expected that sanyasis have a very pure standard of living living also means eating so generally it was expected in the culture at that time that sanyasis take Prasad only at the house of Brahmins so when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was staying in Jagannath in Varanasi at that time he had the place filled with Mayavadis but he had sent two of his associates there to Varanasi and these were Chandrashekhar Acharya and Taparishit now Chandrashekhar Acharya yeah so now among these Taparishit was a Brahmin and Chandrashekhar Acharya was not from Brahmin family so what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did was he wanted to accommodate both devotees so what he would do everyday he would stay in the house of Chandrashekhar Acharya but take Prasad in the house of Taparishit now why was it like this because it is anywhere in the world anywhere in India a sanyasi taking food indiscriminately in anyone's house would be disapproved would be frowned upon but also in Varanasi where as it is we are at theological loggerheads that philosophy Chaitanya Mahaprabhu there is hostility in that don't increase the hostility Chaitanya Mahaprabhu precluded that criticism prevent beforehand he precluded that criticism by being sensitive so he took Prasad only at the house of Brahmin wherever he would travel he would take food at their houses and that's why when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was going to North India in North India in both the times when he travelled you know he would have most of the especially if you see in Vrindavan what he has described is Balabhadra Bhattacharya says that different people come and they invite me for food but that invitation happens in three different ways for food one is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu actually goes to their house and takes food which they have cooked which is rare another invitation is that he goes to their house and we see how this happened in the Telukic Brahmin who came to Jagannath Mishra's house he came to their house but he gave them Jagannath Mishra gave him the ingredients and he cooked it himself that's the second way you take Prasad third way is that they just bring Prasad they just bring Bhoga to your place and you use their Bhoga for cooking that is also considered he is taking food from them so in either way Chaitanya Mahaprabhu always whether he went to South India or North India he kept the Brahmin thing there was either Balabhadra Bhattacharya is in North India Kalpash Chudasi is in South India so the point is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was sensitive although he used the supreme law and although he is coming to give the supreme message he is opening the doors of Goloka to everyone but still he was sensitive so we shouldn't think of sensitivity being sensitive as compromising so in that particular culture that was the tradition and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu respected that tradition we see Prabhupada especially when he used to go to different places in India he would go to many people's houses and he would take Prasad why? because that was unmovable for preaching as long as the people would cook people would go to non-movable houses and in general he made a policy that if you become a life member then I will come to your house and take Prasad so that way he made them connect with Krishna and he made them commit themselves to Krishna so that particular principle of a sanyasi taking food at a particular classical house that was not very strict in the time of Prabhupada so Prabhupada did not bother too much about that particular so sensitivity means it is that anyway the surgeon is going to cause pain so minimize that pain and if the person has got particular particular complication individually then make sure that we don't speak those things or make sure that we don't do things which further aggravate the complication which is what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu demonstrated that way Ashwath Gopal often spoke in confrontational ways but if you look at the forums where he spoke this I once did a research on Prabhupada's Vedas Prabhupada uses the word fool and rascals how frequently does he use it in his purports how frequently in his letters how frequently in his conversations and how frequently in his lectures so if you see in his purports Prabhupada generally called it conservative he doesn't use strong words very frequently it's occasional it is most frequently in his conversations and in the Vedas there is a priority given the whole Tattva Sandarbha is basically what is it called as it is called as Shastra Taratangya Shastra Taratangya means Taratangya means hierarchy hierarchical arrangement so what Jiva Goswami is doing in Tattva Sandarbha is he is showing which Pramana will fall at what level so he says there are Tamasic Puranas, Tamataras Puranas Rajasic Puranas, Satvic Puranas and ultimately there is Mahabharata which is Amalapura, which is the Paramapramana he says that word he uses is Sarvapramana Chakra Bhakti Mantra the emperor among all Pramanas so what he is doing is he is doing a Pramana Tarakamini classification of Pramanas so like that there is a classification of Pramanas with respect to Prabhupada's works also so the most authoritative is his Purpura second is his lectures third is his conversations fourth is his letters and these are all according to Purpura Sanksha more or less but the letters are very specific and the conversations are little more helpful but they are also specific Prabhupada is speaking to a particular group of people and his lectures are to a particular audience although they may also have all of these may have some universal component but the specific component is more as we go down in Sastra Sartra in the Tarakamini so now there was a letter of Shila Prabhupada where it is in 1975 or 76 so at that time Prabhupada's Purpuras were still being published regularly Prabhupada I would like to transcribe all your lectures so that I can understand your message assimilate your message and Prabhupada writes back and says there is no need for that my message I have given in my Purpuras and transcribing my lectures will be Prayas there is no need for this so now what does this mean? we don't have to necessarily mean Prabhupada has given many different texts but the point is that Prabhupada did not consider his lectures as important as his Purpuras now unfortunately in our enthusiasm in our movement's enthusiasm to make the pure devotees' Vani available to people what we did was we put everything that Prabhupada has said freely on the internet accessible to everyone and there are many things which Prabhupada spoke to a private audience to his disciples and Prabhupada did not speak like that in public forums so now after this statement came out I am part of one of the GBC conferences there is a subject called hermeneutics hermeneutics means how do we understand the art of understanding scripture so there is a Prabhupada academics committee and they are discussing how do we understand Prabhupada's works how do we understand Prabhupada's works so one of the GBC conferences he said that I have interacted with Prabhupada so many times if if Prabhupada had been there today and if he had told Prabhupada that there is so much controversy being created by this statement Prabhupada would have said I am 100% sure Prabhupada would have agreed to this he didn't disagree it's on record now how can we be so confident about this Prabhupada would have said something like this see Prabhupada himself told us how do we understand his message he says there is Guru, Sadhu and Shastra so Prabhupada says my authority comes because I am speaking I am repeating the message of Shastra as I have heard from many people now does this mean that every single thing that Prabhupada has spoken is spoken from based on what he has heard from his Guru but every single thing that he has spoken is something which has directly come from Shastra not necessarily why because it's not that Acharya lives with closed eyes and closed ears when we live in this world we observe the world and we learn from the world so there are multiple sources that even Acharya uses for explaining things and when there are controversial statements that come up at that time we have to see what is the source of those statements so if those statements are directly coming from Shastra and they are a part of our Siddhanta then we have to find ways in which we can defend but if they are not, I will give different examples of this for example now let's take a very clear example of the difference between the point which I am going to make here is there is a message and there is a medium for the message so at one level the medium for the message is the language so Prabhupada spoke and wrote in English now that was the medium that he used now when an Acharya gives a message the medium the Acharya's message is perfect but the medium may not be perfect it's not that the Acharya has to be an English scholar it doesn't happen in fact Prabhupada writes right in the Bhagavatam 1.5.22 where he says that actually our attempt to present this in a foreign language will definitely fail but we hope that people this is after all a technical analysis of spiritual values we hope that people will take that seriously so now we can easily understand that if Prabhupada's mastery is not perfect then that does not in any way mean that his message is not perfect so it is not that when Prabhupada says Krishna has given me this message Krishna does not give the words to Prabhupada Krishna gives the point to Prabhupada Prabhupada uses his English if we are going to say that Krishna gave the exact words the exact sentences it's obvious Krishna's English is not having any problems why is Prabhupada saying that it's not that we are saying Prabhupada's English has problems Prabhupada himself admits it and Prabhupada told his editors and he admitted it and he wanted his editors to fix up the language so Krishna gives the message Prabhupada puts it in the medium which is intelligible to people so if there is a problem in the medium, we understand medium is not a valid issue it's not natural to use English which is improper, it doesn't matter now in the medium there can be something more that can happen there is a famous conversation of Prabhupada Jayadvait Maharaj where Prabhupada Jayadvait Maharaj asked Prabhupada how do we understand when the Guru commits mistakes so Prabhupada says the Guru never commits mistakes but Jayadvait does it at times and he says that we see practically that the Guru sometimes forgets the verses, sometimes puts the verses wrong Prabhupada says sometimes he just goes and reverses the words in some verses sometimes he puts the verses wrong so Prabhupada says that is materialism that means that our conception of perfection is wrong Prabhupada says yes but Acharya is perfect because he gives Krishna's message it is not that his message has to be factually correct in terms of everything that he says Acharya is perfectly conveying Krishna's message the intention that Krishna has Acharya has the same intention and the specific sometimes some verses may be quoted wrong and the memory may sometimes fail that is all fine, that also we can understand as a part of the medium the memory is also a medium that we use for conveying the message, sometimes the medium may be wrong there are some devotees who are some devotees who are hardliners so Jayadvait Maharaj has explained all the editings that he has done the editing itself is a very laborious task I have done editing for many of senior devotees and itself is a very laborious task and to explain the editing to the author itself takes a lot of time but if you have to explain the editing to a person who has done no knowledge it takes such a lot of time, so now in the Bhagavad Gita they did hundreds and hundreds of small and big changes so Jayadvait Maharaj has gone to the bbtedit.com website where painstakingly they have given each editing they have given a scan of the original manuscript of what they have transcribed to Prabhupada and they have given the change and they have explained the change it must have taken weeks and weeks to do that so it is because some people said that there should not be any editing in Prabhupada's books there must be the simple point that some verses from Isha Upanishad and Prabhupada is in his dicta form he is saying that Krishna said that it is said in the Bhagavad Gita what do you do? do you keep it in Srimad Bhagavatam? do you inject it in Srimad Bhagavatam? do you change it in Srimad Bhagavatam? do you put Om in front of it? obviously we can't do that so there might be some things which are recollection errors and then it is the responsibility of the devotee to make sure that those recollection errors do not come in the publication now beyond this so first I talked about language second I talked about recollection I am just building this up to make a particular point third is a very important point that Krishna Prabhupada was practically the first Acharya in our tradition to integrate social commentary into his scriptural purpose to integrate social commentary into his scriptural purpose if you see that in Vishnachakra Dhakra Vishnachakra uses Saharatha Darshan now he is writing the commentary of the Bhagavatam just soon after just soon after the reign of Aurangzeb when Aurangzeb destroyed Vrindavan and Vishnachakra was the pioneer in re-establishing in restoring Vrindavan to its spiritual glory but throughout this Saharatha Darshan there is no reference at all to the rule and terror that has been created by the Mughal rule now for him scriptural commentary is different from sorry scriptural commentary is different from social commentary and he doesn't go to social commentary why? because at that time books were primarily written for scholars but actually it was only in the 15th century when 15th century in America when Gutenberg developed the 15th press and then books started becoming accessible for people in general and that by the time it came to India it happened in 18th century 18th century so originally books were written with hand and manuscripts were not largely available so books were written by scholars for scholars and the social issues were dealt with in the oral tradition so in the oral tradition the speaker knows the audience and the audience knows the speaker and the speaker contextualizes everything according to the audience and speaks now the first Acharya to make social commentary was Bhaktivinoda but he wrote separate books on social commentary even he did not integrate social commentary into scriptural commentary so for example he wrote books like in which he analyzes the European philosophers and he gives a contextualization of their philosophy in terms of the Gauge philosophy and like that he has done social commentary on various issues very deep Krishnasambitha is a controversial book of his but basically what he is trying to do is he is trying to address social commentary in terms of rational science and how do we consider rational science as a scriptural analysis a scriptural presentation so here also if you look at his Amrut Prabha, his commentary on G.C. or even if you look at Gaudiya Bhashya which is the commentary of Bhaktishanth Thakur on Jyotindra Amrut again here also he does not integrate social commentary into scripture Bhaktishanth Thakur may give social commentary only in terms of in terms of the deviations which are there in the practice of Gaudiya Vishwanath in the society but Prabhupada is the first Acharya to give social commentary in his scripture now when there is social commentary there are advantages and disadvantages the advantage is that it becomes relevant to people because see when I said Bhaktishanth Thakur is giving a commentary on the Bhagavatam he is already assuming that people are interested in the Bhagavatam and people want to know what is the meaning of Bhagavatam and then he is explaining that meaning to them but Prabhupada is writing to an audience in who he can't assume there is interest he has to generate interest and that's why he has to connect Shastra with the issues that people are facing so social commentary will always have a a time sensitivity to it because social issues keep changing and the social commentary on those issues may also keep changing for example Prabhupada in the Ishopanishad he talks about how there is a conflict between the communists and the capitalists and unless both of them acknowledge the supremacy of the lord there will be fight and then destruction of the world now if you see now today there is no conflict between communists and capitalists now communism has practically been eradicated from the world even if China is politically is managerially communist but in economically it is also capitalist to a large extent so the point is that that social commentary is no longer relevant to me why? because social commentary is society keeps changing and there is time dependence for the social commentary similarly social commentary can change according to what people in society consider relevant what people in society consider important so if you see now this is also we have in our mind we have not done any history, we don't have published ISKCON's history at all I was asked about 4 years ago whether I could write ISKCON's history as a book for the 50th anniversary of ISKCON I'm not talking about that but then I decided I thought it's a very complicated project because history itself is history will have to depend on too many contradictory pramanas different devotees have different perspectives as of now nobody is doing the history of ISKCON but objectively from what we know about the history of ISKCON from different sources if you see when Prabhupada brought ISKCON to India at that time it created a sensation to see the western devotees Narendra Modi Kutta, Shari, Jai Narendra Krishna and even dedicate lives every day to Krishna at the same time although it created a we could say a pure sensation very positive sensation but in terms of common demand not many people not many Indians became devotees during that time and actually ISKCON started growing in India largely in the 1980s 1980s second half of 1980s from that time ISKCON started growing in a big way in India and now as of now India is a powerhouse of ISKCON in terms of number of temples in terms of number of devotees in terms of books distributed in terms of funds raised not in all parameters ISKCON India is a powerhouse so what happened when Prabhupada was present at that time also many people became life members but now many people became committed practitioners there could be many reasons for this but one of the reasons which those devotees who preached at that time and when I started this project I did some interviews of some devotees some Prabhupada's disciples and some gurus but then the project became too much one of the things which was mentioned at that time is that Prabhupada when he went to the west he preached the hippies and the hippies already had they had a mood that our government is bogus our government is useless, our religion is useless our education is useless our economy is useless and when Prabhupada came and gave them philosophical reasons why it is all useless so the two gelled very nicely but when that, the hippies already had a confrontational mood but then when Prabhupada came to India and he gave his disciples to India Prabhupada was very mature in presenting himself properly to the Indians and even if Prabhupada was sometimes confrontational because Prabhupada was such a great guru because Prabhupada was so aged, Prabhupada was so learned they could take it but when many of his disciples adopted that heavily confrontational mood, they alienated people in India and they just couldn't take it up, Indians just couldn't take it up and overall, through a physically broad culture of India, the way Swami has become successful in India is not through a confrontational approach, it's not that we have compromised the philosophy, but we have learned sensitivity in our presentation and that's how it grows so the point which I am making over here is that an Acharya knows how to present things according to circumstances but when we indiscriminately reproduce the same Shastras as Acharyas, that may lead to complications so Prabhupada may use certain language because he is talking to the hippies but that language will no longer be relevant now so I'll give a few examples of this first is that Prabhupada uses the word cult quite frequently, the cult of which Acharya Mahaprabhu has spread all over the world now the word cult nobody in ISKCON uses it why? because it has got a terribly negative connotation at the time when ISKCON was spreading in the west there were many other so called religious spiritual teachers, they were also spreading one of them was Reverend Jim Jones and he had his own reclusive sort of community where his followers would be cut off from the whole world and they would read only his books, they would hear only from him and he was using them for doing a lot of illegal activities and a lot of terrible things and finally a US senator came to investigate him when he came to the airport, he got his followers to raid the airport and they killed him at the airport itself and then the US sent its army to catch him and what he did was, before the army came he gave all his followers arsenic and he told them that I have come to deliver you if you have faith in me you take this faucet and if you take this faucet you will attain salvation and just 30 minutes before the army came to rescue the people 1000 people committed mass suicide and because of that there was a big current scare in America that any religious community which cuts itself from the whole world which hears from no one except its own teacher and basically any religion which is cloistered lives in itself people became very suspicious about that and not only did such closed religious groups become an object of suspicion but the world cult became a linguistic untouchable it became a jhooth so after that nobody today uses the word cult to refer to Islam why? because the world had such a strongly earlier connotation so although Prabhupada used that word, we cannot use that word because it has such earlier connotation so this is again what a particular socio-cultural event has created a particular connotation, that's like a patient having a particular complication cult originally meant simply a group of people but here it means, to people today it means something different, so that word cannot be used, now Prabhupada may have used it but where did Prabhupada get it from? from the existing language at this time during the language at that time he did not do anything with it so now an Acharya I was talking all this to make the point that Prabhupada introduced social commentary in his times and when social commentary is given, there is always a time sensitivity to it, it's relevant at a particular time it may not be relevant at a particular time not only may it not be relevant at a particular time it may become underproductive at other times so if we use the word cult now not only will it not attract people it will alienate people so social commentary we cannot repeat as it is so we can't mistake social commentary to be spiritual commentary spiritual commentary is a universal message now social commentary how does an Acharya make social commentary? so there are multiple ways for example now if Prabhupada is commenting about the Indian independence struggle now there is nothing directly about the Indian independence struggle so then Prabhupada may be now he was in India at that time he saw the society he heard something from different people and they showed that he made some comments now if you see social commentary it is not coming from Guru Sadhu Shastra an Acharya does social commentary an Acharya has a broad Shastra Chakshu but a specific comment that the Acharya makes will be based on observing society through Pratyaksha Hanuman and combining with Shastra and then giving some commentary and in some cases there may be no combination with Shastra at all Shastra may not be required because social commentary is given now I will give an example of where social commentary can actually turn out to be factually incorrect because of inadequate information if you see Prabhupada's comments on Hitler many of his comments are quite positive because Hitler was a gentleman and Hitler was ruined by the Britishers for bad publicity so now you see where did these comments come from at that time when Prabhupada if you see Prabhupada lived in Bengal and Prabhupada's superior was Subhash Chandra and Prabhupada lived in a country at a time where for thousand years almost the nation had been under foreign rule and for 200 years it was under Muslim rule British ruled for 800 years 700 years it was under Muslim rule so at that time the country was under foreign rule now anybody who would help India to come out of foreign rule was considered to be a friend so Subhash Chandra was allied if you know the second world war politics Subhash Chandra was allied with the Axis powers Japan, Italy and Germany so now what happened because Subhash Chandra was allied with them and the Britishers also no doubt they did a lot of terrible things in India and also during the second world war but overall because of that particular cultural atmosphere see the Indian national army which was under Subhash Chandra both had a spirit of heroes they also had a heroic spirit to liberate India but the alignment with Hitler was purely a politics and at that time even till the second world war got over even the allies did not have an idea of the magnitude of what Hitler was doing to the Holocaust it was only when the allied soldiers came and they saw the concentration camps they saw Auschwitz and other places even now in Auschwitz there are something like 3000 tons of hair people were killed and after that the bodies were destroyed it's like sometimes an animal body takes the hair out to use it for commercial purpose so like that people would kill them gas chambers, kill them and then take out their hair and use the hair for commercial purpose so it was very brutal so the point is Prabhupada did not study history he was not a historian and based on whatever contextual information he had he made certain statements so this is just Prabhupada's statement from his perspective and he is giving statement now isn't that for all time all the scorned devotees have to say Hitler was a Hitler no we don't have to say it because that's the simplest commandment and if information changes Prabhupada himself will change his position so Prabhupada gave a particular statement based on a particular information that he had so if we need these statements there can be only three possibilities we have a say that because an Acharya said this this is what we have to do this is completely wrong an Acharya has not come to teach us history or geography or politics he has come to teach us bhakti so we don't have to Prabhupada himself said that I have come to my authority is because I am a pretty Krishna now Krishna is also a Hitler anyway so there is no need to read this one possibility is that we ourselves are necessarily higher in those things the other extremity is that some people who are enemies of this form they pick up these statements and they say this is what this form needs to be and the third is we ourselves, we don't propagate those statements but we make them available as pure devotees want and then whoever wants to search it out at whatever time they want so the third is what will happen right now now if you look at Prabhupada's statements on rape there is in the Shastra there is no direct mention of rape there are 8 kinds of Vibhahas that are talked about in Manu Samhita and the last is 8th among is called Vishachirvaha Vishachirvaha means that a man has a forcible intercourse with a woman and then after that they get married so most of Ravana's consorts, Ravana is not a consorts, it is Harem Harem is the collection of women that a man has for his enjoyment, most of Ravana's heaven was acquired through this Vishachirvaha he would violate his women and then they would be ruined to society nobody would know that man would accept them they would just come with him and he would keep them with him now when he violated Rambha like that, because Rambha was already married, so he did not take her he just left her over there and further Brahma also cursed him, so all that happened but in general that is not, when it is said that this is one kind of Vibhaha this is not a recommended thing see in scripture there are two things, there is prescription and there is description prescription is this is what you should do, description is this is how things are being done we shouldn't be mistaking the description to be a prescription so description, for example there are predictions about how things happen in Kali Yuga there is a description, it is not because I am in Kali Yuga so I have to have long hair, because Bhagavatam says people may have long hair Bhagavatam is giving a description so this eight kinds of Vibhaha, the first four are auspicious Vibhaha, considered auspicious and the last four are considered inauspicious normally Vishachirvaha is considered to be most inauspicious so there is no statement anywhere in Shastra that women women like to be raped so there is, if it is not coming from Shastra there is no need for us to highlight it or to even defend that statement so now where did Prabhupada get this idea and what did he mean by women like to be raped so Prabhupada says in one lecture that that actually he had there was a court case in Kolkata and there was some woman who was raped and then the lawyer asked her, grilled her in the cross-examination and he asked her, did you enjoy and she said that yes, I got some pleasure then he said, then how did you enjoy and that's how the lawyer got the man of the book so now Prabhupada Prabhupada uses this several times in his conversations and he uses it for different points sometimes he uses it to make the point that the lawyer was so expert that he had to pull off the book other time he says that in sex whether there is force or there is consensual there is some pleasure so now this particular statement is what Prabhupada has acquired from his examination as I said there is no Shabda for this statement now is it something which is which now we can look at this statement at four different levels first is when Prabhupada says that women get some women like to be raped or whatever he says, there are different actually if you look at the Bhagavatam statement it is not very problematic Prabhupada writes in Bhagavatam that there is women like men who are expert at raping now actually speaking rape requires it does not require any expertise rape requires brute force what is the expertise required and if you look at the past tense that is going on there is no question of a man raping a woman over there so there the word rape simply means aggression within affection aggression within affection a man and a woman already have affection relation but because of some flirting or because of some contrary moods, coyness the woman is saying no, no, no and the man wants to see how he has the man's heart and the woman is pleased by that he gets so if you see the word rape if you go back on the internet there are dictionaries which give the meanings of word at different times so the word rape has multiple meanings and one of the meanings is to ravish it is to basically it is aggression within affection that is also one of the meanings of that word so that is one meaning and that is what is the that is where there is some expertise required you have to forcibly violate a woman does not require any expertise but to convert a yes convert a no of a woman into a yes through one's affection and aggression that requires some expertise that is what the Bhagavad Gita portrays now another meaning of the word rape is abduction not necessarily violation for example T N Griffith the famous Ramayana translator and in the the chapter one of the chapters he titles as the rape of Sita now when that particular chapter what happens in the internet the copyrights are there for 75 years after a person writes a book for 75 years the books are copyrighted after that it comes in the free public domain so when that particular book came in the public domain so at that time many Hindus protested that book is still there on the internet now you know Sita was never physically violated so then his publishers they give dictionary they say at that time when you use the word rape rape simply means abduction rape doesn't mean abduction, it means to kidnap it does not mean physical violation so that is also another meaning of the word rape and third meaning is of course what we use in terms of forcible intercourse but even in this meaning the word rape the jarring connotation that it has now it did not have that connotation at that time when Prabhupada used it so Prabhupada even when he says women get some pleasure, they like to be raped or they enjoy getting raped now what is he literally saying by this why people feel very upset, very outraged by this is for multiple reasons because this encourages the mentality of people to rape and especially in a lot of violent pornography this is depicted that a man comes and forcibly violates a woman and then initially she says no, no, no and then eventually when he violates her then she starts smiling and laughing and doing all the things and then they say actually woman even she is saying no, she is saying yes she wants yes so what this is that is this violent pornography is a misleading depiction and it encourages people to commit crimes against women so now is Prabhupada when he is saying that women like to be raped is he by in any way form shape or form encouraging rape not at all because what to speak of the whole debate today, if you see in the Vedic culture, rape was not considered, there is not much reference to rape, why because today the concept of individual rights are supreme that has become so central that if anything if she violates my individual rights that is a very great crime whereas if you see in the Vedic culture sex itself is considered to be a problem today the problem is not sex, if it is consensual they consider it no problem when it is forcible then it is a big problem so the point is that Prabhupada when he talks about when he talks about sex in general now he is talking about sex control in such a way that even the consensual sex that is considered very commonplace in today's world, Prabhupada does not even approve that so if he does not approve even consensual sex, what to speak of approving forcible sex so in no way shape or form Prabhupada is approving rape then what exactly is he saying when women enjoy being raped so I had a long discussion with Jaydev Maharaj, I put this on my site also Jaydev Maharaj quoted some psychologists so what happens about women I am not sure whether he said this may not be suitable for Brahmacharis so I will not go into specific details here see whenever there is bodily union whether that is consensual or forcible there is some pleasure in the physical way now many times rape victims after the drama feel very conflicted because they feel that they didn't want to do it, they were forced to do it but when it happened they got some pleasure did I really enjoy it, did I want it they get psychologically very disturbed because there is a physical reaction that happens for example Ekadasi women decide to fast but then if we see a feast there is saliva that will come to the lips that does not mean that we wanted to break the fast or that we have broken the fast so there is a physical reaction that comes and the physical reaction leads to some pleasure so what Prabhupada what Jaydev Maharaj said what Prabhupada is saying is in limayal language that at a biological level women experience some pleasure but is he recommending that not at all there are so many codes that Prabhupada says that actually sense control is what differentiates human beings from animals and a person, a human being is not sense controlled then that human being is an animal so sense control is what is Prabhupada's defining message so this is a statement which actually has nothing to do with Shastra and Prabhupada is using a particular word with a particular sentence which was there at his time and now there is no need so what we have to do first of all there is no need for us to ever quote such things unfortunately as I said I talked about three categories we ourselves quote it, somebody makes it readily accessible on the internet and some animal finally uses it so what happened is this third case that was because some devotee himself had made a blog where he put all of Prabhupada's quotes on this issue at one place and this person just quoted from there so it's like we ourselves have not been intellectually responsible in presenting Prabhupada's message properly so if these sort of statements come up any controversial statements of Prabhupada generally come up so then especially if they are not central to our message and they are not necessarily coming from the root of Shastra then there is no need for us to highlight them so now currently now at the official level we are dealing with this in three steps, three measures one is that we are preparing some statements and we are preparing further statements and then Prabhupada and I have got a team who are working on it so on how to clarify these particular issues so we prepared some statements and circulated them widely but it's not that we have posted them on websites because we don't want to draw attention of those who attention is not already being drawn so did you get that statement of Anantama Prabhu on Spontaneity? Anantama Prabhu's statement is there, Vishakha Mahadeva's statement is there Jaydev Maharaj's statement is there few statements are there so for those of you who want you can take from Spontaneity, that's first level second level what we are working on is there are major social issues ISKCON as it expands it will develop its own theological positions which will be based on Prabhupada's statements, on Shastra and our broad understanding of how Shastra has been presented by Acharyas, that means today if somebody wants to know okay what do you people say about social service or what is your position on rape if somebody answers this question if we just, we can't do Prabhupada's course because those are very complex issues so what, now we have a body of devotees being formed together, panelists being formed and they will come together and on the various important social issues on which we are likely to face problems there will be ISKCON's official positions that will be there and then if any quotes are paid that quote might be there but Prabhupada came at a particular time, in a particular context, he made a particular statement and that is not ISKCON's official position this is ISKCON's official position so that way we will be able to minimize the future challenges that might come up because of similar issues and third is we also need to increase ISKCON's positive presence on the net so what has happened is we have done a good amount of preaching but on the internet we have many devotee sites for devotees many spiritual masters have their sites but most of the spiritual masters have their sites it is nothing customized for the internet it is largely what they have put whatever lectures they have given at different places, it is just generated and put on the net so now GDC is taking up a serious initiative to systematize ISKCON's online presence if you go for any organization if you go for Jehovah's Witness if you go for any organization the top sites that come are the sites which give their philosophy for new people but if we search for ISKCON on the net the sites which have come are either ISKCON Desire or VedaBengs or Krishna.com or Dandavat.com these are all for these are all for devotees the good sites they may not be anything necessarily controversial to these sites but they are all for devotees there is nothing suited for new people so although there has been some amount of anti-preaching that has happened because of this overall we see that we can see this as Krishna's wake up call Krishna has given us a sort of shock treatment to kickstart ISKCON's vigorous online preaching according to the latest Pew Research Forum is a forum which does special research on religious thoughts according to the research forum they said that one third of all people in the last 10 years one third of all people who have come who have taken to any religious or spiritual path they have come to it through social media on the internet one third, it's a very large group and so it's a huge presence, huge potential is there and some of our movement has not utilized it enough, so because of this negative preaching probably this is going to act as a joy for us to take on our positive, increase our presence on the internet so as Krishna says that, as Bhaktivinoda Thakur says that obstacles are the servants in the path of devotions, so this is an obstacle but it will help us in moving forward in increasing Krishna's presence Krishna's positive presence on the internet thank you very much are there any questions? so we can discuss personally thank you very much thank you.