From state of the art to state of the heart

[Sunday feast class at Columbus, Ohio, USA] Video:

Thank you very much.

Hare Krishna. Today I would like to speak on the topic of from state of the art to state of the heart. So, we all live in a world of constant technological innovation and whenever, say, some big company like Apple, they develop a new version of iPhone, the release of that phone itself is a big event.

And people sometimes, when a new phone is released on the website, the website crashes sometimes. So we want to get that new phone as soon as possible. Same way with new cars or new gadgets.

And everybody wants to have state of the art things. And technology is improving in significant ways by which we can get more and more facilities to do better things. Or even to do whatever we are doing faster or better.

At the same time, we see that with the advancement of technology, which was meant to solve certain problems. Say for example, one problem which technology solves, especially through the internet, through the social media, is communication and connection. That we can talk with people, correspond with people, we connect with people much better.

But the same technology, which enables us to connect with people, far away, ends up disconnecting us from people who are nearby. It's almost as if we are talking on phone, we are talking with someone, and then that phone rings. And then they look down and they say, I won't take the phone.

As if I am being very kind to you, and I am not taking that phone. So, yeah, it is the age of so much distraction that on one level we have facility to connect, but the same facility has created another kind of problem. It is, you know, we are too distracted and we are too disconnected.

And not only the distraction, disconnection. Now, whole set of problems associated with internet addiction, device addiction, screen addiction, that has come up now. Earlier it was more of, addictions were considered more of substance, related substances.

Like smoke too much or drink too much. But now, the addictions are not so much, they are there, substance related, but there are also behavioural addictions. That means, unless you click on the phone and do something, you could feel that something is missing in my life.

I have to do something. And, there was one boy in Thailand, he started surfing on the net, 70 hours he was surfing. And he got so caught in surfing, that he forgot to eat, he forgot to drink, and finally he got a stroke and fell unconscious.

So, as soon as his another friend was there, he heard him crashing and called him, and called the ambulance, and he survived. But, the nature of technology is that, on one side it solves problems, but on the other side, the same solution also ends up creating problems. So, when we consider that, there is the physical level of reality, which is where we live right now.

Then there is the mental level of reality, which is where our minds go here and there. And then there is the spiritual level of reality. So, we are souls, who are distinct from the body and the mind.

Now, the nature of physical reality is that, it is not always very interesting. Say, somebody is very attached to eating food. The Upanishads calls this Annamaya Kosh.

Annamaya Kosh means, food is the most attractive aspect of the world. That is where the consciousness is. newborn babies are at that level.

They experience the world through their tongue. Whatever they get, they pick it up, they put their finger in, they put their toys in, they put their toes in. So, they experience the world through food.

Now, sometimes people grow up and still they are at that same level. Now, if somebody is just caught in eating, eating, eating. Now, if you consider, okay, we can eat and enjoy, but how long can we eat and enjoy? Okay, we can't eat 24 hours a day.

We eat for one hour, one and a half hours, two hours. And then if that is what is exciting about life, the remaining 22 hours, 7 hours we sleep, but the remaining 15 hours, 14 hours, basically life is boring. So, we all have certain conceptions of what is enjoyable.

And, and things apart from that are seen as boring. Unless of course they are the opposite of enjoyable, then they become miserable. If I want to eat delicious food and the food is terrible, I will be miserable.

But in between, in the routine course of our life, life is never too enjoyable, never too miserable. But, if our consciousness is caught at the sensory level, then most of the time life appears unstimulated. And, in order to escape the unstimulating nature of life, we try to get stimulation through alternative means.

And technology is, in many ways, the art of creating a buffer between us and reality. So, for example, it's hot outside and I create air conditioning. I have air conditioning.

Then, I buffer myself from the reality. Now, this is not necessarily a problem. Sometimes the reality is so unpleasant or unpalatable that whatever we want to do, if it's too hot, we can't do it.

Then whether it's the use of hand fan or whether the air conditioning. We basically try to create a buffer so that whatever we want to do, we are able to do by it. So, the reality of the world is not very palatable and is boring.

Then, we create a buffer between us and the reality through technology. Now, after I create a buffer, what do I do? Is that buffer is for a constructive purpose. So, for example, I have to study something and it's too hot or too cold, I can't study.

I'll do some work. I can't do the work. Then, I have the buffer so that I can do the constructive work.

But, if I get the buffer and technology, my purpose of technology, getting technology is simply to create a buffer from reality. So, like when people go into watching entertainment, there is no real purpose in watching entertainment. The purpose itself is to have a buffer from reality.

So, we need a buffer so that we can do something purposeful. But, when getting the buffer itself becomes a purpose. So, we may go on the net and look for some news to read.

I don't know what is happening in the world. But, sometimes we go on the internet to find out something interesting. So, okay, maybe I read this, read that, look for something interesting.

And then, when we go that way, the reality around us is not interesting. We want some escape way, some buffer, some alternative way to direct our consciousness. And then, if technology uses a buffer from reality to pursue our purpose, it can be very helpful.

If I am far away from someone who is important for me, then, I cover up the distance through technology. But, somehow, I am not able to connect with people around me. And therefore, I search around all over the world to find someone who I can connect with.

Then, the problem might be that I have not really developed proper social skills, proper people skills. And instead of doing that, I am just hoping through the net, I am connecting with someone. So then, when buffering ourselves from reality becomes the purpose for which we use technology, rather than having some other higher purpose, then, we fervently keep looking for more and more buffers.

More and more aggressive buffers. So, more and more aggressive denials of the nature of reality. So, for example, if we have movies.

Now, entertainment has always been a part of life. But, if we consider even entertainment 50-60 years ago and now, the whole entertainment is much more aggressive. In the past, cricket was, say, 5-8 matches.

Now, after that, it was 5 days. Too boring. So, let's have one-day matches.

So, actually, if we look at the history of cricket, one-day matches started, people said, Oh, one day is too less for cricket. But now, we say one day is too much. So, we have T20 matches.

And T20 is also not enough. We want to have more excitement. So, we have different countries come together and we have IPL.

So, movies also, if we see, in the past, in action, one hero would fight with a few villains. But now, action means, there is a huge building, blow it up. Then, masaa gaya.

Something happened. Some stimulation was there. But then, when the need for such stimulation becomes more and more, then the result is that that buffering of reality by some external stimuli, we become more and more dependent on that.

And that has to become more and more intensified. So, if we consider, in India, people had two main buffers. One is cricket and other is Bollywood.

And then, a few years ago, both of them got married. And they produced a child. That is IPL.

So, there is intense entertainment over there. And then, something is happening. Now, when we go to watch movies, most of the times, people want to have some popcorn or something to eat.

Why? Because everything is imaginary. Something has to be real. So, we may try to buffer ourselves from reality and we may try to create more and more aggressive buffers from reality.

But, ultimately, reality is where we are living. And just by creating this kind of buffers, we can't deny reality. So, life itself becomes extremely boring, unstimulating and life becomes unlivable without the buffers.

So, if the entertainment is not there, there are people in some welfare states, in Europe and other places. If you don't have a job, the government provides you money. And many times, people have to choose between getting food for themselves or recharging their mobiles so that they can surf on the net.

And they will rather recharge their mobiles so that they can surf on the net. Of course, there are worse things also. People may take smoke and drink and they prefer to take drugs rather than feed their stomach.

But what has happened over here, we could say, why would someone do like that? Getting food for the stomach, that's a necessity. Whereas, okay, surfing on the net, watching some entertainment, that's a luxury. But, satisfying the necessity does not necessarily give any pleasure.

If you want titillation, if you want stimulation, okay, I eat food, okay, I feel some relief. But, to get that stimulation, people are ready to go and aggro with it. Do something, get some more intense stimulation.

So, the more technology we develop, the more, if we do not have a proper purpose for life, then the more technology can divert us from reality and we get just lost in an illusory world of fantasy created through technology. So, for many people, their surfing on the net is the most exciting thing in their life. And everything else, they fit in between.

Okay, I had to go and do this job, I had to run this errand, I had to do this, I had to do that. That is all, okay, I had to do it. This is the real thing in life.

This is where the real use of life lies. So, we have got disconnected from reality and we are imagining that in some virtually created, technologically created world, we will find better stimulation, we will find better happiness. Now, this is not the problem with technology, this is not the problem with those who are developing technology also.

We human beings have two aspects to our being. There is the outer side, which is at the physical level and there is the inner side, which is the mental and spiritual level. So, the nature of progress that has happened in the last few hundred years, we have focused a lot on the external world.

But the internal side has been largely neglected. In the history of western science, mathematics played a very important role. Mathematics was developed in India also, we are reading mathematics.

But in science, what happened was, mathematics was seen as the most fundamental tool for understanding reality. So, Galileo said that everything is numbers. That means that the idea was that which can be measured, that which can be counted, that which can be quantified, that is what is real.

So, at the dawn of science, when we approach the world through the scientific world view, science basically divided the observable world, which it was going to study, into two sets of properties. What they call as primary properties and secondary properties. They consider primary properties as the properties which you can measure.

Length, breadth, width, mass, speed. So, these are properties which you can measure. And science can do something about this.

We can make equations, we can predict behaviour, we can manipulate. Now, secondary properties, if we consider, when we interact with the world, the primary properties we are aware of. But we interact not so much with the length, breadth, height.

If we come into a house, you know this is a big house, this is a small house. But beyond that you see, what kind of decoration it is, what kind of colour it is, what kind of people stay in the house. Are they warm and welcoming, or are they cold and neglectful.

So, we experience the world in terms of colours, tastes, smells, which are all considered as secondary properties. And what we look forward in the world, or what drives us in the world is emotions. And experiences.

So, now if I tell you, I met so and so person. Somebody asked, how old is he? He was 5 feet 2 inches. Well, what do you mean by that? Okay, somebody is 7 feet, that's an interesting fact.

Somebody is 3 feet, that's interesting. But okay, he was 5 feet 2 inches. Okay, what after that? You tell me something more.

When we interact with people, the physical dimension is one aspect of it. But what makes a person lovable or unloveable, it is not just their physical dimension. It's their personality, their nature.

So, even from the physical perspective, colour, taste, all these are what we experience. Say, suppose after this programme we have prasad. Don't suppose, prasad is there.

But, say there is some special item. Now if we ask, okay, what is that item? Or somebody takes that, very delicious. Now if you take a mathematical measure, how delicious is it? How do you measure? What scale will you have to measure it? We can, with a mathematical measure, we can decide, okay, this is this much sweet, this much this, this much this.

We can discern that. But taste is something we experience. So, the point I am making over here is, in the development of state of the art, technology, the whole spiral, or the whole arrow of scientific and technological development was meant more and more towards changing, towards focussing on the measurable aspects of reality.

And by focussing on that, we are able to change many, many things about the measurable aspects. But, the internal aspects, the experiential aspects, as I said, what do we experience? We experience colour, taste, smell. We experience things, we have emotions.

So, all this was neglected. And, the development of this is left largely to the individual. And when that happened, on one side, technology gave us more and more facilities to buffer ourselves from reality.

When we have, when we encounter an unpleasant situation, what do we do? Either, we try to avoid it, that means, okay, this place is not very attractive, I won't go there. We avoid it. Or, we try to change it.

Okay, I'll go there, I'll clean this up. Or, if I have a car which I don't like, I'll try to use some other car, I'll avoid it. Or, I'll try to go and fix it up.

Or, I'll try to get rid of it. I'll send it off. So, basically, if we look at this, when something is unpleasant, we try to do one of these three things.

Avoid it, change it, or get rid of it. So, now, with respect to technology, we largely use technology for these three purposes. When we are interacting with reality, with the world, we try to avoid unpleasant situations.

If I am going to a particular place, if it's very cold over there, I'll not go there. So, if I am going there, I'll make sure that I have some warm clothes. Or, if we are in charge of a particular place, if we are staying in a house, then we will change it.

So, basically, this is a normal human response. Nobody wants unpleasant stimuli to deal with. At the same time, there has to be, after I do this, what next? What am I doing all this for? Krishna said in 5.20 in the Bhagavad Gita that, na praharishet priyam praapya no dvijet praapte cha priyam sthira buddhe asamudho brahma vid brahma nisthitah Do not be attached, do not be elated when you get pleasure, do not be dejected when you get pain.

Then what should you do? He says that asamudho, don't be deluded by pleasure or pain. Then sthira buddhe, keep your intelligence fixed. And fixed on what? Brahma vid brahma nisthitah Brahma vid is one who has spiritual knowledge.

And brahma nisthitah means one who is situated at the spiritual level of reality. So, Krishna is saying that, by being purposeful, by having a fixed intelligence and by becoming indifferent to pleasures and pains, progress towards spiritual realisation, progress towards spiritual reality. So, the purpose of life is spiritual evolution.

We want to rise to spiritual level of consciousness where we can experience enduring happiness. We are souls. The soul by nature is joyful.

Ananda is the characteristic of the soul. But the soul is not able to experience joy because the soul's consciousness is caught at the material level, the physical level. And the whole purpose of human life is to raise the consciousness to the spiritual level.

So, if you consider, this is the physical level of reality, this is the spiritual level of reality. Now, the physical level of reality by nature is not very stimulating. You can try to get some pleasure over here.

But eventually, the pleasure in material things doesn't last for long. The same activity that gives us pleasure today, after some time, you know, say, there is a gulab jamun. You take one gulab.

Very good. Can I have a second hand? Somebody use third. Fourth.

Somebody offer us. Oh, now I feel enough. Somebody offer a second.

You also take. So, we tell them to take, not because we are concerned about them, but because now it is all giving us a lot of pleasure. So, then we remember about them.

So, psychologists call this phenomena as anhedonia. Anhedonia means that the same thing which was giving pleasure earlier, hedonism refers to getting materialistic pleasure. Anhedonia means the same activity which is giving us pleasure, it stops giving us pleasure.

That is what happens at the physical level of reality, sooner or later. So, the purpose of life is we seek pleasure at the physical level, we understand that physical level pleasure, the pleasure will never be satisfied. So, then I have to rise to the spiritual level.

And when we rise to the spiritual level, that is where lasting satisfaction is there. We are souls, we are parts of Krishna, and Krishna is all-attractive. He is In connection with him there is constant newness.

And when we rise to the spiritual level, we will get the highest satisfaction. But unfortunately, instead of rising to the spiritual level, through technology, we create a virtual level of reality. And we think that the purpose of life is to get more and more into this virtual reality.

So, virtual reality could be simply that I want to create more and more comfortable houses, or I want to have more and more faster internet, so that I can surf on the net. Or it can also be, I want to smoke and drink, so that I can forget this world. These are all different ways through which we try to not experience the emptiness of physical reality by going to some other level of reality.

So, whether technology can be used to directly create illusion, I gave a talk at a college, that name of the college was American Institute of Illusion. So, basically that was, that is a college which helps people to make movies. So, the movies are basically creating illusion.

That is the American Institute of Illusion. So, basically, technology can be used directly to create illusion by which people can get some entertainment. But it can also be used, say, now for example, if people want to take drugs or alcohol, that is also distributed using technology.

That is also advertised using technology. That is also promoted. So, basically, today, when we talk about state of the art, that means we use technology to develop more and more attractive virtual worlds, or virtual experiences.

Or developing those virtual experiences themselves is not the problem. But those, if that becomes our life's purpose, then what are we doing? We are going from the physical level to another kind of illusion. A deeper illusion from which there is actually, where there is no reality, there is no master, there is no satisfaction ultimately.

And that is why I want more and more stimulating kind of those experiences. And ultimately they don't satisfy. So, if the same, the buffering from reality, that is done through technology, if that is used as a tool to rise to spiritual reality.

Yes, I want to practise spiritual life. I want to chant the holy names. It's very hot.

I turn on a fan. I turn on a music. I want to learn about Krishna.

I go on the net. I surf on some sites where I can learn about Krishna. That's fine.

So, the technology, we are focussing more and more on developing state-of-the-art technologies. And we are trying to get more and more of them. And we are considering that progress.

Yes, that is one aspect of progress. But, unless we give due attention to state of the heart. State of the heart means, what is it that is in my heart? What is it that is truly important? What is it that matters to me? If we don't give due attention to that, then the nature of the distractions which are provided through technology is that we will start making the trivial to be very consequential.

Something which is not very important will make it extremely important. In India, I was there a few months ago. So, I read a news.

Actually, 2-3 different news at different time. But, it's all related. A few years ago, there was a Bollywood movie about how there is lot of drugs in Punjab area.

So, at that time, I read a news also that one boy, he wanted money from his mother to get drugs. And when he refused, he refused, he got so angry, he attacked her. And in a spate of anger, he hit her with a cricket bat, with a chair.

He killed her over there. Now, that drugs is a terrible thing. So, the drugs became so important that as compared to that, the life of a mother was brought in life.

So, you take that. But, just a week ago, I read about one boy. He was in engineering college or something like that.

His exam was there. Not engineering college. He was in 10th, 11th.

So, his exam was there. So, his mother took away his phone. He didn't study.

He got so angry with her and he just pushed her. He pushed her so forcefully that she fell down. Her head cracked against the head and she died on the spot.

Now, it is horrible. But the point here is that that phone became so important that he just lost perspective. So, basically, when we don't focus on the state of the heart, then the trivial can become extremely important for us.

And it can distort our sense of perspective. Intelligence can have many definitions. Intelligence, we can say, we measure through the IQ score.

Nowadays, we try to measure through EQ, emotional quotient. All that is fine. But a basic function of intelligence, Prabhupada writes in 10th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita Purport, that intelligence means to see things in their proper perspective.

To see things in their proper perspective means to understand that this is more important, this is less important. But when we focus too much on technological progress alone, then that buffering oneself from reality becomes the most important thing. Say, I want drugs.

That's the most important thing. I want my phone. That's the most important thing.

So, because of that, other things just don't make sense. Okay. Other things, I just do it so that I can get on over here.

In Mumbai, there are several areas where taking selfies is banned. Why? Because there are people who just the fun, the adventure in taking a selfie in a dangerous pose, you know. Okay, I'm leaning out from a truck or some other vehicle is coming behind, a car, a train is coming behind me, I'm on the track, then take a selfie of that.

And they get a sense of adventure through that. And there have been many tragic deaths caused by this. Now, okay, clicking a photo is fine.

But what has happened? The sense of perspective is lost. That getting a thrilling photo which one can put on one's Instagram or Facebook or whatever, that becomes so important and one is ready to risk one's life also for it. So, unless we have a balanced system of education, the technology can create more and more distractions for us.

And those distractions or living in those avenues becomes more important than real life. And this distraction is one thing. If you say, okay, it's a problem, but distraction can soon lead to destruction.

It may not lead for everyone, but it does lead to a destruction of our intelligence in terms of understanding what is more important, what is less important. So, where is my heart invested? That is important. If my heart means, what is it that I consider important? Where are my emotions invested? If my emotions are invested somewhere in somewhere which is not really so important, then my life quality is getting diminished.

I am like obsessing so much over some small, small things and big things. I am missing out. When just a few months ago, I think it was India-Pakistan Champions Trophy Final.

India was expected to win and India lost terribly. There was one boy who told me, after three nights, I could not sleep. I said, probably the cricketers were sleeping.

So, the emotions get so locked over there. Now, this boy is in India, the match was in England probably and then the emotions get so locked over there that I lose the sense of perspective. Not only that, few years before that, India-Sri Lanka Final was there, World Cup Final and then and that Sri Lanka before that, 2-3 World Cup Finals they had lost.

Not T20 or whatever World Cup, they had lost. So, in a series, they lost multiple tournament finals. So, when they lost that final, there were 5 cricket fans who committed suicide.

Just because they feel lost. So, now, okay, sports is fine for enjoyment, but why end one's life? Because what happened is that emotions got so locked over there that the loss of that cricket match was unbearable. So, where our heart is invested is very important and for that, on one side, in today's world, we get very little guidance of understanding what is important and whereas, because of technology, so many things are presented in such a glamorised, attractive way that people just get completely captivated by that.

So, when we get spiritual knowledge, then we understand that what is actually worth investing our heart in. So, I'll conclude with two points and then you can have some questions. So, first I'll talk about what is the mind and what is the heart.

Now, the word heart can be used in the true sense where it refers to the organ that pumps blood. When somebody says, you have broken my heart, it's not that the organ is broken. So, so that heart, which we refer to, is more, is used in a metaphorical sense to refer to our seat of emotions.

Now, wherever our emotions are situated, that seat is called the heart. Caitanya Mahaprabhu in the Kshatriya Kirtan says, Moraman Vrindavan. It is my mind is Vrindavan.

Now, what does he mean by that? That, so, we know that there is a body, there is a gross body, this is what we see each other, there is a subtle body, in which there is mind, intelligence and ego. And then beyond that there is the soul. The soul is who is conscious.

And because of the soul, we are all conscious. We all appear to be conscious. The body appears to be conscious.

So, ultimately emotions also come from the soul. Emotions are also experienced by the soul. The mind refers to the, it is our mind that gets attached to things.

So, broadly speaking, the mind, the soul is the source of emotions. Consciousness and emotions, they all come from the soul. But the mind is presently the seat of emotions.

say somebody wants to watch cricket, at all cost. So, where is that? It is not the soul that is attached to cricket. It is the mind that is attached to cricket.

And the soul identifies with the mind. The soul identifies with the mind. Means, for example, suppose say, we are caught in watching a cricket match on TV.

And a thief comes along. And the thief comes on to steal the TV. And the thieves are stealing the TV and we are so caught in watching the cricket match that we follow the thief and keep watching the match.

So, like that the soul's consciousness is more or less locked to the mind. Although the soul and the mind are different, but the soul identifies with the mind presently. And so, our mind is presently where most of our emotions are seated.

So, in that sense, presently our mind and heart, we can say, are the same. The soul is indestructible. The soul is transcendental.

The soul is joyful. But whatever we are attached to, that attachment is situated in the mind. And whatever we are attached to, that is where we experience the most emotions.

So, for practical, for functional purposes, we could say, the mind and the heart are the same. So, whatever our mind is attached to, we experience emotions intensely in relation to that attachment. And the nature of the digitally altered or technologically altered world is it offers us many many things where we can invest our emotions, to which we can get attached.

But none of these are lasting. None of these are fulfilling. So, the process of bhakti is to situate our attachments in Krishna.

Krishna is eternal. Krishna is all-attractive. He is the eternal lord of our hearts.

And to the extent, we can redirect our attachment towards Krishna to that extent we experience that as such. In physics, there are two concepts. There is a centre of mass and there is a centre of gravity.

The centre of mass is if you have a physical object, which is the central point of that mass. But if that object is shaped in a particular way, in some odd way, then the gravitational force that acts on it in a way according to the shape, the centre of gravity and the centre of mass will be different. Or similarly for us, the seat of consciousness is the soul.

So, we could say that the centre of mass of our being is the atma. But our consciousness is currently invested in many different things. And that's why our centre of gravity is somewhere else.

That means with respect to the soul, actually we don't experience much emotions. They, in spiritual life, they said we need to become detached from material things. But actually that is not the most important thing.

Our real problem is not that we are attached to things. Our real problem is that we are detached from Krishna. We are just detached from Krishna.

So, what will happen? Whatever is related to the soul, there is very little emotion in connection with that. So, for us the centre of mass and the centre of gravity, what is actually our core, that is we are the soul and part of Krishna, but where we have identified ourselves, where our emotions are invested, there is a distance between the two. And the greater the distance, the greater is our alienation from our true nature.

So, if that distance, if I am emotionally invested in, say, drinking, then the soul is here, there is mode of goodness, mode of passion, mode of ignorance. So, the person who is hooked to drinking, they are very very far away from their spiritual nature. Somebody who is just hooked to making more and more money, that is what they want.

Then, they are in the mode of passion. There is also a distance from their spirituality. Somebody is in the mode of goodness, they just love to read books.

I want to read this, I want to read that, I want to read that. And, maybe that reading is happening in the mode of goodness. So, they are a little less distanced.

But basically, wherever our emotions are invested right now, that is where our heart is. And the process of bhakti is meant to make our centre of gravity align with our centre of mass. That means our emotions get invested in the reality of who we are.

To the extent our emotions are invested in anything else, to that extent, we experience some stimulation in relationship with that, but we also set ourselves up for a lot of tribulation. Because anything goes wrong related to that, it is just unbearable. And, now, the process of bhakti is inclusive.

Inclusive means, that there are some forms of spirituality which involve rejecting. Okay, reject the material to connect with the spiritual. But bhakti is not so much of rejecting the material to connect with the spiritual.

It is of using the material to connect with the spiritual. So, using the material means that, the material, if it is, if we see its connection with Krishna, and we use it to connect ourselves with Krishna, then that can also be spiritualised. In the Bhagavad Gita 4th chapter, 24th verse, Krishna says, So, the word Brahma comes multiple times.

And most people when they read this verse, the verse is about Brahma, but the understanding its meaning they get Brahma. What does it mean? So, Brahma is the object to which we are offering. Brahma is the object with which we are offering.

Brahma is the object who is offering. The Brahma is what is being offered. And the mood of offering is Brahma.

What is to be attained is Brahma. What is Brahma? So, what Krishna essentially means by that verse is, that, if we cultivate a spiritual consciousness, then we can see everything as spiritual. Which the Prabhupada would say that, if you are speaking with this mic, is this mic material or spiritual? In terms of functionality, it is made of material elements.

In terms of structure, it is made of material elements. But in the function, it can be used for Krishna's service. And if it is used for Krishna's service, the same mic can transmit the knowledge, by which both the speaker and the hearer can go closer to Krishna.

So, in that sense, it becomes spiritualised. Same way with respect to technology. Technology itself is not the problem.

But our unidimensional focus on developing technology alone, without developing our spirituality, that is what causes the problem. But Bhakti spirituality is so inclusive, that we can use technology and whatever technology provides, also in devotional service. In fact, we can use it as a tool for advancing in devotional service.

So, the intellectual faculty, which has been used to develop technology, the people who develop technology, are often brilliant. It requires a lot of intelligence and thought to develop technology. But unfortunately, what happens is, technology is used developing intelligence, but often the users of technology lose their intelligence.

So, the phones are made using such features. If you look at the features of a phone, every single thing, you can do this, you can do this, so much thought has gone into it. So, a lot of intelligence is there.

But people use it to just watch some movie, do this, do that, do that. And then, in the past, television was called as the idiot box. Now, the idiot box is not just in our house, it's in our pocket right now.

So, we can get completely distracted. So, technology, if it is used, it is made using intelligence, but is it used for furthering the intelligence? There are people who are using it for that also. No doubt.

But there are many, many more who are using it to just numb themselves from the experience of reality, using just mind-numbing forms of entertainment. But bhakti is so inclusive that the intelligence which is used for developing technology, the intelligence which is required for developing state-of-the-art things, we can use that also in Krishna. We can use the products of those things, we can also use the intelligence underlying it also.

But what happens is, we make sure that our heart is invested in the right place. If we invest our heart in anything other than Krishna, we will find that we will get some stimulation, some satisfaction, but soon after that, soon there will be frustration. There will be, first of all, dissatisfaction, the law of descending returns, and then eventually there will be frustration.

But if we invest our heart in Krishna, then we will find that there will be purification and there will be supremely fulfilling reciprocation. And to get us the stimulus, I mean, with respect to technology, is that, say, A, somebody is very addicted to, say, watching some cartoon characters, you know, maybe Harry Potter or Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, whatever. Just caught in that.

That's fine, as entertainment characters, one may see them. But, no matter how many movies of, say, Batman we are going to watch, no, we are not going to, Batman is not going to appear out of the movie and meet us. No, people will fantasise about that, but that's not going to happen.

With respect to Krishna, however, Krishna is a real person. That is supreme reality. And Krishna already loves us.

It's that, we just have to realise it through the practise of bhakti and the purification. So, there is a physical reality, there is a spiritual reality. And there is a virtual reality, but it's not actually reality.

So, we get excited about things in the virtual reality, but that virtual reality is never going to become reality. Whereas, spiritual reality will eventually manifest. Somebody may say that, no, actually, okay, you like to hear about Krishna, that's just your imagination, I like to hear about Batman, that's my imagination.

But it's not like that. I have a whole class on this topic, which I won't go into, but the three points basically, we look at three E's, the explanation, the exponent and the experience. Explanation means that, if we look at Krishna as God, and the philosophy underlying that, there is a profound philosophy that explains life.

There is a call to think and understand. But with respect to any fictional character, there is no philosophy associated with that. It's not think and understand.

It's stop thinking. Stop thinking and enjoy. So, if we consider there is a whole worldview which explains, so this is not that how there is a physical level of reality, there is a spiritual level of reality, how this world is a reflection of the spiritual world, there is a profound philosophy that explains that.

That's the first point. Second is exponents. Exponents means, who are the people who are talking about Krishna? There are so many people who may talk about this fictional star, this novel, hero, that, and if you look at them, okay, there are some creative people, some of them may be creative geniuses also, but they are just living their own lives.

And they have created a character by which they are minting money now. But if you look at the exponents who are talking about Krishna, there are people who have left everything for Krishna's sake. There are great sages, great saints, who down the tradition over millennia, they are people who are not just creating some, who are interested in creating a fantasy.

Some of the people who became great sages were great kings. Kulasekhar Maharaj was a great king who had all the pleasures of life, but he left it all so that he could experience Krishna. So if you look at the calibre of the exponents, their character, their wisdom, their selflessness, you see it's of a completely different level.

That they have no reason to create any fiction. That they left this world because they wanted to experience some higher reality. So there is explanation of life, there is exponents who talk about Krishna, thirdly is experience.

Now all of us can, by connecting with Krishna, experience Krishna. Now experience Krishna means, yes, seeing Krishna face to face is a long way away for us. But even before that, we can have experiences.

The experience of Krishna is what the process of bhakti gives us. Bhakti gives us the experience of Krishna, and that experience of Krishna is so fulfilling that we no longer see the need for other stimulating experiences. So the inner transformation, the inner satisfaction that comes through the connection with Krishna is for a devotee the experience of Krishna at our level.

At our level, we cannot see Krishna immediately, but that doesn't mean that Krishna can't be seen, that doesn't mean Krishna can't be experienced. When we chant his holy name, when we come and take darshan of the deity, when we hear about Krishna, so at times when we are actually experiencing Krishna, and Krishna already loves us, Krishna wants us to come back to Him. That's why Krishna is present in our own hearts.

He says, He is present in the heart of every single living being, and He is there to guide us. He is situated in the heart, wherever we are going, He goes with us. Because He loves us so much, He cares for us, He wants us to be with Him.

So Krishna is close to us. We are far away from Him. Why? Because our consciousness is turned away from Him.

We are close to Him in the sense that He is in our heart, we are also in our heart as Atma. But our consciousness is turned away from Him. That's why we are far away from Him.

But the process of bhakti helps us to come close to Him. Sri Sanatana Goswami has written a book called the Brihad-Bhagavata Amrita, in which he describes the adventures of a sadhaka, of a Gopakumar. He wants to search to understand what is the ultimate purpose of life.

And then he searches, he goes through different levels of existence, ultimately he goes to spiritual world. And finally he reunites with Krishna. And when Krishna sees him, Oh my dear friend! Krishna is so delighted.

Krishna comes forward to hug him. And he hugs him, and then Krishna is so excited that Krishna faints. Krishna loses his Krishna consciousness.

And then everybody, all Krishna's associates say, What did you do to our Krishna? Half of them just go, I didn't do anything. And then, when he wakes up, Krishna again hugs him and says, Oh, I missed you for so long. You rejected all the pleasures of this world just to come to me.

So happy you are back. Krishna welcomes the soul in exuberant delight that Krishna is our lord. And he is waiting for us even now.

So we are actually, we just turn towards him. We will start connecting with him and slowly but increasingly we will get experiences of Krishna. So we may ourselves have many, many anarthas.

I talk about state of the art. We may ourselves be hooked to technology. We may have a tendency to be distracted.

We may have various weaknesses. But these weaknesses are secondary. Our greatest weakness is our unwillingness to believe that Krishna loves us.

If we can just develop that. Not even faith, just the willingness. The willingness, yes.

Devotees are talking about it, scriptures are talking about it. Let me act on this functional assumption. Let me try to practise bhakti with that assumption that Krishna loves me.

And we try to connect with him. We will start experiencing Krishna's reciprocation in terms of inner purification, in terms of inner satisfaction, in terms of inner conviction. And thus we will rise to a higher level of reality.

Thus the state of our heart will become more and more secure. It will become more and more mature. And become more and more satisfied.

Okay, yeah, good question. So while population is increasing, although religion has been there for a long time, we see the human population increasing. First of all, if we look at the vastness of the time scales, we will talk about population increasing, but for how long do we really have a serious population count? Census itself, serious census started just a few hundred years ago.

Before that we can have estimates how much is the population. But even if we look from that perspective, that okay, even if we stick to only the empirical measurable data, we can't say for sure how much is the population say several hundred years ago. There is no hard data at that time.

But even if we go with the assumption right now that okay, the population has been increasing. What it essentially means is that souls are eternal. And the souls are present in many different bodies.

So, we understand that the soul is not present only in human body. There is transmigration which happens forward and backward also. Forward means from the lower species to the human species and from human species down also to the lower species.

It goes both ways. So we may say that the human population is increasing, but the souls which are there in many many different bodies, they can go from one body to another body. Now, have we done a census, okay we have done a census of human beings.

But have we done a census, has anyone done a census of say the number of trees in the world, the number of grass in the world, the number of mosquitoes in the world. There are so many different species. So if we look at the history of the world in recent times, there is so much loss of biodiversity, so much trees have been cut down, so many animals have become extinct.

So the souls, if we consider total number of souls, souls may go from one species to another species. So all that we are seeing is the souls in human species are increasing or rather human population is increasing. But conversely, there can be many other species whose count has gone down.

And also another point is that in the Vedic understanding in the souls perspective, the life is not limited to this planet. There are many levels and the soul can go from one body to another body also. So if we look from the perspective of cosmic time, the few hundred years that we have counted population, it's like a very small time.

If say an alien came from an outer planet to Columbus, Ohio and came to this room and took a sample of this room's population from say 9 o'clock in the morning till 1 o'clock. 9 o'clock the population was very low. 10 o'clock it has increased more.

11 o'clock more. 12 o'clock there is an explosion of the population. But at 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, hey, what happened? The population has gone down.

So, basically that alien is taking a very limited sample in both limited in space and limited in time. And in that limited sample there may be variation but that variation doesn't mean extinction or creation. It simply means relocation.

People are coming here, people are going. So at a particular time there may be more, another time there may be less. So similarly, with respect to the earth and with respect to not even the earth, just a small few hundred years and human species.

So yes, human population may be increasing but the other souls may be going down. So, we see as I said that other souls and other species may be going down. Other species have also become extinct.

And another way to understand this is that when the soul wants to enjoy mating in nature to some extent the soul is given the facility for that. So, in the last few hundred years we have put all our intelligence which is meant for spiritual growth we have used it all to try to improve things at the material level. Try to combat disease, combat old age, combat infant mortality.

So, with this exercise of the intelligence we can improve things. So, we have improved things to some extent. At the same time, there is the free will of the soul by which the soul can act and improve things.

But there is also the principle of karma. There is also the principle of that whatever actions we do, we will get the reaction. And this is Kali Yuga.

This is the age of spiritual darkness. So, what happens is that the people have created more and more comforts trying to make this world a better place. But the karma and the karmic reactions are going to come.

Whatever we do, the actions are going to come. So, one way the increased karmic reactions the karmic reactions which we have avoided by avoiding diseases, by creating some and more comforts through technology one way those karmic reactions can come is through the increased population. So, earlier we didn't have resources.

People didn't have food to enjoy. People had to struggle and scavenge to get food. Even if we go simply by the narrative of history as we get from modern science.

But now, because there is so much population there is competition again for that. So, the increased population even in the relative framework of few years could be a way in which reactions are coming. The increased population is not necessarily a good thing for places where there is a population explosion.

It may be a good thing where the life span is increasing and where the facilities are available for people. But it's not true everywhere. So, within the limited framework which we look at it's we understand simply the variation from one species to another species.

Souls in a particular species have gone up and souls in another species have gone down. And what could be the reason for that? As I said, one reason could be that we are just the increased population is the way where through which karmic reactions are coming to us. The increased competition that happens because of that.

Another could also be that the souls are not evolving upwards. So, Krishna says, Those who live in the mode of fashion they stay here. So, by the natural process of evolution souls from the animal species are coming here to the human form.

But most of the world today is in the mode of fashion. There are few people in goodness. There are good number in ignorance also.

But largely we are in the mode of passion. Those who live in the mode of passion they stay, Krishna says, the same level of reality. The souls from the lower species are evolving to human species.

Majority of the human souls, they are not evolving upwards. Because they are not spiritually inclined. Not only in the mode of goodness.

So, they are in the mode of passion. So, they are staying over here. So, that could also be a reason why the population is increasing.

But the population increase is simply a variation within space and time that we observe right now. But that doesn't necessarily in any way contradict any aspect of the spiritual philosophy. It's fully explainable within the broad parameters of the spiritual philosophy that is given in the Bhagavad Gita.

Does this answer your question? Now people say that there is no such thing as right or wrong. So, what does it mean to say intelligence means to see things in the right perspective? Yes. Now this idea of moral relativism is quite common nowadays.

Where people say that actually morality is completely just subjective. What you feel is right is right. What you feel is wrong is wrong.

But we could turn this question around and ask such people who propagate moral relativism. Do you think that there is somewhere in this world someone is doing something wrong? Of course. There are terrorists which are killing innocent people.

There are perverts who are abusing even small children. But then those terrorists they don't think they are doing anything wrong. They think they are doing the right thing.

So, are they doing wrong? No, no. They are killing innocent people. That is wrong.

But if morality is simply decided by one's own thinking then they are thinking it is right. So, actually nobody in reality is a moral relativist. Because we all have a sense of right or wrong.

And there may be differences about some specific things. But you can turn this question around to anyone. And nobody will say that okay, there is a child abuser doing the right thing.

Terrorist killing doing the right thing. No, they are doing wrong. But then they are thinking it is right.

Thinking okay, I want to enjoy. This is what gives me enjoyment. Why can't I do it? So, at one level, moral relativism is not sustainable.

Nobody actually in real life is a moral relativist. But the idea of moral relativism has come because people feel that religion or tradition that is prohibitive. You want to do some things and religion stops us from doing these things.

Tradition stops us from doing these things. So, don't impose your morality on us. So, rather than thinking in terms of imposition of certain moral codes, that is not so that is not at all appealing in today's world.

So, we say that what is right or wrong it is not just based on some moral code that somebody has given. It is based on the reality of who we are. The first point is nobody is a moral relativist.

Then how do we decide if we accept that there is some objective morality is there. Everybody should accept that. That okay, killing innocent people is bad.

Killing innocent children is bad. On what basis are we deciding this? So, the objective basis is that when we understand that we are spiritual beings. We can present this as a hypothesis.

Nobody doesn't have to accept the Bhagavad Gita for that. But we have a spiritual side to us. And that spiritual side is actually our essence.

And the actions that help us to realise our spiritual side. To evolve spiritually towards self understanding, they are what are good. And anything that takes us away from, obscures us from our spirituality, that is what is bad.

So, rather than using the words good or bad, especially with post-modern audiences who don't like these words of good or bad. And there was one, there was one post-modern thinker. He said, it is forbidden to forbid.

So, he said, you should not forbid anyone from doing anything. You should not forbid anyone from forbidding anyone else. But you are forbidding.

So, we can't have absolute, we say moral relativism, but then we make moral relativism into an absolute doctrine. So, it is forbidden to forbid. You are already, you are saying, you are forbidding something.

So, moral relativism is not sustainable. It is self-contradictory. But, if we present it from the perspective of that there is a spiritual soul, and whatever promotes the spiritual evolution, that is what is to be chosen, whatever obscures the spiritual evolution, whatever obscures a person's self-understanding, that is to be avoided.

Then that understanding is something which people can digest. And then eventually we can say, okay, this understanding of what is right and what is wrong, or what will help our spiritual evolution, what will impede, hamper it, that is explained in certain spiritual texts. So, then we go forward over there.

But if we start with the morality, this is what you should do, this is what you should not do, then people get alienated. But if we start with the spirituality, start with the philosophy, which explains the spirituality, and then bring the morality later, then it works. Unfortunately, we often do the opposite, especially when we are interacting with people.

When people ask us, what do you Hare Krishnas do? It is like, we tell you, no, we don't do this. No meat-eating, no gambling, no intoxication, no this and that. No Krishna consciousness.

It's like, any product, say, if a new iPhone is released, no advertisement will start with the price. First they tell, oh, this has this camera, this has this memory, this long battery, this, this, this, and somewhere in the bottom, oh, this is the cost. So, when we are presenting Krishna consciousness, if we start talking about morality right in the beginning, people feel it's too much a price to pay.

And they don't, first we have to present, you know, it brings meaning to life, it gives higher joy to life, it gives a whole higher, it opens a higher world for us to experience. So, we present the product first, and then present the price. The spirituality is the product.

And the morality, which you have to follow is the price. But if we present the price first, then what happens? It's like some people, they want to flaunt, you know, I purchased this new phone, it's so expensive. Be impressed, how wealthy I am, what a phone I have.

Others may get impressed, but others, I can't purchase this phone. Sometimes when we do that also, we flaunt, you know, I follow these principles. You keep following that, I don't care.

It becomes like that. So, we present the spirituality first, and then the morality later. So, how do we convince ourselves or others of Krishna's love when we experience so many distresses in today's world and so many obstacles because of our conditionings? How do we convince them about Krishna's love, or how do we convince ourselves that Krishna loves them also? Or which one? Both.

So, when people are so lost in delusions, somebody is totally drug addicted or something, then how do we, where do we see Krishna's love in that situation? Yes. One of the three conditions of love is free will. And free will means that if somebody wants to, chooses not to love Krishna, Krishna has given them that freedom.

Love actually has no meaning without free will. If a boy comes to a girl and he kneels down and he offers her, you know, I love you, will you marry me? And she says no. And he takes out a gun, marry me! That is not love.

So, in love, you cannot have force in love. There has to be free will. So, Krishna gives us free will.

And free will means that we don't have unlimited free will, but we do have some amount of free will. And Krishna has created this world in such a way that the use of this free will brings its consequences. And sometimes, certain consequences may be such that the connection with Krishna may be obscured for that time.

Say, for example, a soul goes into an animal body. Krishna is present with the soul even in the animal body. But, in the animal body, there is not much facility to reciprocate, to cross spiritually, to connect with Krishna.

That means, if the soul in the human body previously showed by actions that I simply want to live for bodily pleasures, I don't want to have anything spiritual, anything to do with spiritual, then the soul is given as a reciprocation of those desires and as a consequence of those desires, both, a body where they can simply enjoy bodily levels. For the duration of the animal species existence, the soul cannot experience spiritual reciprocation much. Of course, if a devotee gives the soul prasadam in an animal body, or the devotee chants Hare Krishna and they hear the kirtan, there is some benefit of it.

But there is no conscious action that they can do. Not so much. So, sometimes the result of the way one has used one's free will can create some consequences which temporarily obscure the possibility of spiritual growth.

So, somebody who has become a drug addict, that means they acted in particular ways because of which they have now become addicted. So, now the drug addiction is not eternal. It may be for this it may be for a few years in this lifetime, it may be for this entire lifetime also.

But this lifetime is not all of life. It is not all of existence. Unless we can understand the length and the breadth of our existence.

Length means that it's not just before this life we existed, after this life also we existed. And breadth means we are not just the body, we are the mind and then the soul, beyond that. So, unless we understand the length and the breadth of our existence, we cannot really perceive Krishna's love.

Because from this life's perspective, there is so much inequity so much unfairness, so much misery and this is one of the main reasons why, although Christianity also talks a lot about God's love but because they don't accept reincarnation it becomes very problematic for them to explain in the face of the world's misery how does God love us. So, we understand that yes, God does love us but because he has given us free will by the way we act according to our free will, sometimes we may disconnect ourselves from him significantly but that disconnection is not forever and during that disconnection also some connection with Krishna can be established through, if some devotees somehow give prasad, have some spiritual music or whatever, but that disconnection is not permanent, it is there for some time and it will end. So, Krishna giving us free will is also an expression of his love.

In the Mahabharat, we have Krishna going to Duryodhana to seek peace I gave once a whole class, Sunday class in India, when God sins how can God sin? God is omnipotent but when he went as a Shanti dude, as a messenger of peace, to try to petition for peace with Duryodhana, he sinned and what does it mean? Is Krishna omnipotent? Krishna is omnipotent but his omnipotence does not mean stamping out the free will of others. So, he had given Duryodhana free will and he tried to appeal to Duryodhana's intelligence to make him see sense but when he refused to see that then in this particular situation then Duryodhana's free will trumped I shouldn't use the word trumped nowadays it triumphed so but in this case, but then eventually Duryodhana had to meet his consequences of his misuse of free will but so Krishna he he loves us but one aspect of his love is that he uses free will he gives us counsel by which we can use the free will properly and by that counsel, if somebody can take that counsel however locked they may be in illusion, they can come out of that illusion so sometimes it can happen through dramatic ways like there is a story of Shintamani, he was completely obsessed with a prostitute but then at that time if he had been so attached to Krishna, he would have been so much better what am I doing? and he was illuminated at that time and Krishna did not reject him oh you have lived so sinfully in the past so for some people those moments of illumination may come so even if somebody is addicted somehow Prabhupada said that on the way to Krishna that if somebody cannot give up drinking if they just think that the taste of liquor is Krishna then one day they will become a great devotee by drinking they won't become a great devotee by thinking that the taste of this liquor is Krishna, there is some connection with Krishna that is established so even if somebody is addicted if they can think what is there in this drug that is captivating you so much everything attractive manifests the spark of Krishna's splendour so everything attractive comes from Krishna but everything attractive doesn't take us to Krishna the taste, the attractiveness of drugs also comes from Krishna but it is in Tamoguna, it keeps us further and further away from Krishna so one may not be able to give it up but even in that situation if one can think this taste where is it coming from? it is a manifestation of Krishna's attractiveness if that much thinking of Krishna is also there there will be that connection and gradually that connection will develop so sounds your question? to summarise what I spoke I spoke about from state of the art to state of the heart so technology has developed enormously and it provides us a lot of comforts in some ways technology is about creating a buffer from reality that is not necessarily bad if we have some higher purpose to pursue but when there is no purpose to pursue then just creating more and more buffers from reality becomes the sign of progress becomes the purpose of life and when that happens then basically when we experience something unpalatable then either we try to avoid it, we try to change it or we try to get rid of it but then avoiding that, not wanting to experience that unpalatable becomes our primary focus and so the physical level of reality is not very stimulating that's why through technology we try to create alternatives for it and when we get hooked into those alternatives then we can become so dependent on them that we lose perspective so firstly we need more and more buffers like entertainment, sports, cricket it has to become more and more intense to be stimulating because after sometime there is a law of diminishing and hedonia, that same thing stops being pleasurable so we want more and more and the result of eventually of this is that we lose our sense of perspective and something which is very small becomes very important so charging my phone becomes more important than feeding my stomach or it can be that that you know somebody for getting money for that for getting their phone they can just attack someone else so intelligence means to see things in the proper perspective but when we focus only on the state of the art but not on the state of the heart then our heart gets invested in trivial things and those trivial things become excessively important that's why for people to look good in that digital world of Facebook and Instagram and to get a good selfie they are ready to risk their life in real life the sense of perspective gets lost and why did this happen? because when science and technology started progressing they divided the world into primary and secondary qualities so primary is measurable and we used that we changed the world using measurable qualities but we experienced the world in terms of colours, forms taste, smell and emotions but these were largely the development of that was largely neglected because they are secondary, they are not measurable and that led to we having a lot of technological development but not having the understanding of how to develop ourselves internally so our heart is not just a biological or physical organ but heart refers to the seat of emotions so functionally it is situated in the mind where whatever attached to that's where we experience emotions that's where the heart is so through technology we can get hundreds of distractions, hundreds of trivial things in which our heart may get invested and then that if my heart is invested just in sports matches, somewhere else in the world then the quality of my real life goes down because of that, so real life becomes simply an interruption between what I am enjoying in the digital world it is a very tragic way of living so we want to get our get our seat of emotions, our heart to align with our soul the soul is a part of the whole Krishna so currently the soul is like the centre of mass but where our mind is, that's where heart is, that's like the centre of gravity, so you want to get the centre of gravity and centre of mass to realign back and the process of bhakti yoga is meant to connect us with Krishna to get our emotions directed towards Krishna, invested in Krishna and reciprocated by Krishna and the process of bhakti it is so inclusive that we can use everything, even technology and intelligence that can also be used in Krishna's service but we have to get our priorities right and through technology we can create many virtual fictional characters and people get lost in them you also created people in the past have created another fictional character that is Krishna but no, the difference is that three things, what is that? Explanation Exponent and Experience, there is a full philosophy that explains that who is Krishna, what is the nature of this world, what is the purpose of life, there is no such thing with respect to fictional characters when we look at the calibre of the exponents they are very wise, saintly, compassionate selfless people who have given up the world for the pursuit of Krishna and experiences, we ourselves by the practise of bhakti can experience something sublime, some higher security, some higher joy and that's how for us, by the practise of bhakti, Krishna will be perceived as a reality but that's not going to happen for any fictional character and for us to redirect our emotions, the primary thing we need is, not worrying about I have this weakness or that weakness the biggest weakness is our unwillingness to believe that Krishna loves us so in the association of devotees by practising bhakti we can get that willingness then that willingness will transform into faith and that faith will become the positive experience of Krishna and there we will have not just the highest stimulation, highest reciprocation but also the highest satisfaction in relationship with Krishna thank you very much Hare Krishna.