Positive Thinking 13 – IDEA at work 2 – Facing reversal after reversal positively

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Transcript

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Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, welcome back to our discussion on positive thinking, we are discussing the concept of the idea at work, idea is an acronym that conveys the fundamentals of spirituality, identity, divinity, eternity, and activity, in our previous talk, we discussed an ancient historical incident, of how the atrocious murder of Abhimanyu, and the negativity that came because of that, was countered by Vyasadeva’s spiritual wisdom, now we will see, how in modern times, modern day saint, was able to overcome, reversal after reversal, and persevere, achieve stupendous success, by the positive thinking coming from, this spiritual worldview, imagine, a 69 year old person, from, elderly mendicant, from India, wandering on the streets of New York, without knowing anyone, without having any money, without having any organizational support, and, if we, look back at this person’s life story, what was it, in 1921-22 he got, the mandate from his spiritual master, to, share the message of spiritual love with the world, but, he instead of, striving to, instead of, he tried to do that in India, for almost 30 years, 40 years in fact, and, he got very few tickets, he initially decided, to try to establish a business, pharmaceutical business, so that he could finance and sponsor his spiritual master’s mission, but, despite repeated tries, his business was burglarized, and ruined, for a business person to, lose one’s business, is, the end of one’s very purpose of existence, it was a catastrophic reversal, that he perceived, he in 1944 tried to start a magazine, based on the, spiritual wisdom, that he had received from India’s bhakti tradition, and, unfortunately in India, that was enamored, by political change, that was enamored by western culture, western notions of progress, and India that was, crippled by financial concerns, this in India, was not interested in spiritual wisdom, and again his magazine found very few takers, he, wrote a manuscript of a book, but unfortunately, that was just, lost and sold away as garbage paper, unwittingly by some of his relatives, he started an organization, at Jhansi called the League of Devotees, and he envisioned that this place, in Jhansi would become the headquarters of a global movement, but, a political click against him, not only stopped the growth of his organization, but also had evicted from the very place, that was going to be its headquarters, and he found himself not only organizationless, but homeless and practically, friendless, he persevered on, seeing that Indians were not interested, in the profound spiritual message, of the Vedic literature, he decided, seeing that Indians wanted to imitate, the West being enamored by the West, he decided, to go to the West, and inspire people in the West, he managed to take up the message of Bhakti, and, for that purpose, he decided to go to America, after great struggle, he managed to get the sponsorship, he managed to get the visa, he managed to get, get free passage on a cargo ship, which is not very comfortable, but somehow he decided to go, tolerate it and go, and yet, on that ship, he got two devastating heart attacks, and there was no medical assistance available on the ship, so, it was extremely painful, and somehow endured those terrible attacks, and then finally he came to America, well in America, he had his own, small office, in New York, and then the janitor of that office itself, burglarized his typewriter, and his other possessions, and he already had very few things with him, and those were lost, finally he moved to the Lower East Side, to the hippie area, and there, he started teaching, started teaching Bhakti Yoga to, to the hippie students who came, one of the students became interested, started moving with him, and was aspiring to become, his disciple, and yet, one day, in a drug induced mania, this young man, went crazy, and ran, charged towards this elderly Swami to attack him, and, Bhaktivedanta, and this Swami had to, rush out of the house, the four stories, he had to run down, and go into the streets, and not knowing where to go, helpless in a foreign land, with the threat to his life, from a person, who was supposed to have given his life for a Sikh, this was the story, of A.C. Bhaktivedanta, Swami Srila Prabhupada, till 1966, and yet, he persevered on, he, he was not, he had met reversal after reversal after reversal, but he persevered on, with the knowledge, with the confidence, that God was watching, God was appreciating his endeavours, and God was pleased, that itself was a success, and in God’s time, in the time of his beloved Lord Krishna, all success would manifest eventually, and as he persevered, and seeing this devotional integrity, of his disciple, of his devotee, Krishna, awarded Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, with stupendous success, in the last 11 years of his life, in those 11 years, he established 110 temples, in all the inhabited continents of the world, he circumnavigated the globe 14 times, he, went around the, he went around the, he inspired, thousands and thousands and thousands of people, all over the world, to live, lives of integrity, and service, devoted to God, and to all living beings, in relationship with God, and he, he wrote over 70 books, which comprise the spiritual literature, illuminating all of humanity, with timeless values, and thus, he persevered, and attained extraordinary success, by his, positive, optimistic attitude, based on his, spiritual foundations, later on, in his, the years when he had, he was working, at spreading spirituality, at the international level, one of his female students, wrote to him, expressing, her discouragement, at the various problems, she was facing in her spiritual practice, and Prabhupada wrote back, saying that, we are not discouraged, because we live on a platform, beyond encouragement and discouragement, we work at a different platform, that different platform, meant that, his focus was primarily, the spiritual understanding of reality, he was reciprocating love, with the supreme, with Krishna, and, he was getting supreme satisfaction in that, and that was an, inexhaustible source of positivity, for him, from within, the love of the lord, and the lord’s love for him, they were an exhaustive source of positivity, that countered, and transcended, whatever negativity, devoid my daughter, and attaining that, different higher platform of consciousness, connecting with an inexhaustible, well of positivity, that, is, what we can all do, by understanding and tapping, the principles of spirituality, as, described in the bhakti literature of ancient India, what those principles are, and how we can tap them, we will discuss in our future sessions, thank you,