Appreciating the potency of online outreach

[Address to the ISKCON Desire Tree team, Mumbai, India]

So, I’m grateful to meet all of you after working with many of you for quite some time now. So, I probably know more of you by names than by one-to-one.
I’ll just make two-three points. I was in San Francisco a couple of months ago, and there one boy came and met me. He is having long hair, wearing shorts and multiple tattoos on his body.
And he he came for the program. It is a youth program for Western audience. And he told me that he has been hearing my classes for the last one and a half years.
Every day he has for several hours. And if you see him, you probably, if you think of something as someone as a devotee, the furthest you could have from the stereotype of a devotee, he was like that. So, and I talked with him.
He is a very intelligent boy. So, somehow, like Shri Prabhupada’s times, people had got into a rebellious mood, and they were into drugs and things like that. So, that’s how it had happened with him also.
So, actually, the number of people whom we can, in our small way, reach out to is extraordinary. And there’s another. He was a Christian.
He is a Christian pastor. In fact, he is a Christian traveling preacher. And he, many years ago, he received a Bhagavad Gita on the streets from somebody.
And he is a fiery preacher. In fact, he has written courses on how to teach Bible to others. So, when he read the Bhagavad Gita, he felt that I should refute this.
And then he read Prabhupada’s Gita, just couldn’t understand anything. So, he said, how can I refute it if I can’t understand it? So, then he started searching online, and then he found Gita Daily. And then he went to a temple.
Now, he wanted to go and experience the temple also. Now, in the Abrahamic tradition, Abrahamic tradition means that Christ Judaism, Christianity, Islam, these religions, there is a very strong opposition to the idea of deity worship. They call it as idol worship.
So, he said, the first time he went to a temple and he looked at the deities, the first thought that came in his mind was, these should be destroyed. That was the thought that came in his mind. He did not think I should destroy it, but these should be destroyed.
But then, so, he searched online and again he came, he searched online on YouTube of Bhagavad Gita. He came across some Gita Daily articles, Gita Daily videos, and he started reading Gita Daily articles. And he, when I had gone to, there is a state in America which is known as the Mormon state.
Mormon is a small group of Christians. And there is Salt Lake City. So, I had gone there.
Utah is the state. I had gone there. So, there he had come to meet me.
He said that, I have been reading your Gita Daily for about two, two and a half years. And he said, 90% of what you say, I agree with it. So, he said that, actually, I found there are so many similarities.
And somehow, he started chanting Hare Krishna. And he started, why are these people, he said that, I have been preaching, I have been practicing, but you know, we don’t do anything. Why are these people chanting for two hours every day? Let me find out.
So, what had happened, in the Christian tradition, they don’t have many regulative principles. So, somehow, he used to smoke. Not like a chain smoker, but he used to smoke.
And he had a history of lung issues. His parents had pulmonary issues. So, he got, his physician warned him that you have to stop smoking.
So, he had been, he had been trying to stop, you know, he has been a Christian preacher for 15-20 years. He had been trying to stop smoking for five years. And he started chanting Hare Krishna.
And then within one month, he just gave up smoking. And he said, it took me some time to realize that, how do I give it up? He thought, my willpower has increased. But then, actually, these two were like independent things for him at that time.
He was chanting, he thought, I will just test this out. And he did not find chanting anything special. But he gave up smoking.
He had given up smoking and about one month, he was chanting, he gave up smoking, he chanted for one more month, he stopped chanting. And suddenly, the desire for smoking came back to him. And it struck him, what happened? They thought, maybe, isn’t this chanting that is helping me to give this up? He started chanting and immediately started resisting the desires.
So, then, when I met him, he said that, actually, right now, we are at a crossroads. Because externally, he is preaching Christianity. But he is chanting and he is experiencing the potency of chanting.
So, now, then he talked with several devotees. He talked with me also a little bit. And then, now, he is, he is a well-known Christian preacher.
So, he decided to, he talked with devotees and decided to continue his preaching Christianity and gradually try to get people to become vegetarian within Christianity. And, personally, privately, he practices his bhakti. So, now, he has got his own deities.
Small deities he has got. So, he has this, you could say, double life. So, that’s why, he is internally, so, nobody knows who he is.
But many devotees, if he has some, we want to discuss something about Christianity, he is very learned in Christianity. So, even his introduction to the proper understanding of the Bhagavad Gita, he read the Bhagavad Gita when he got it on the streets, but it was again through online. So, now, every one of us, actually, we all have our lives, we all have our families, we all have our challenges.
What we all, we all have problems also. Now, we are not so much actually afraid of problems as we are afraid of pointless problems. If we are just walking along, we are just going through a house and suddenly a nail is protruding or it cuts us, then we just feel irritated.
I got wounded. But the similar kind of cut that happens if we go to a hospital and we have to give a blood sample, that also similar cut may happen. But we will ourselves put our hand out, you know, pierce me.
Because in both cases there is pain, but in the first case it is pointless pain. In the second case it is purposeful pain. So, similarly, all of us when we are trying to serve Krishna in whatever position we are at, we all have challenges, our personal challenges, our service challenges, our relationship challenges.
I was doing a program on relationships, seminar on relationships, so I asked the devotees. In spiritual life, we have to tolerate many things. So, what are the things we have to tolerate? So, one devotee raised his hand very enthusiastically.
Yes, we have to tolerate devotees. So, I said, yes, it is a good realization that we should tolerate devotees. But after we advance a little bit more, we will also understand that devotees are tolerating us.
So, for all of us there are difficulties. Somehow some people can work together, some people find it a little more difficult to work together. But if we understand that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves, part of something which is benefiting many many people in various parts of the world.
I was in Canada and there one devotee introduced me to his father. And this devotee is one of the temple leaders in Toronto itself, there are three temples. So, the second temple that is in there.
So, he introduced me to his father. His father told me that he had come from India and he was from a religious background. And he used to, he has retired now and every day he was constantly watching this Aastha channel.
And when he came to Canada, his father, his son told him, why don’t you watch Hare Krishna TV. So, then he said he started watching Hare Krishna TV and he says, I got so hooked to it, I stopped watching Aastha now. So, he said that he had seen me over there and that’s why he wanted to meet me.
But that’s how he actually started understanding the practices of Bhakti. He started practicing. So, there are some services in which the results are more easily seen.
Results in terms of the end product. The end product is like somebody who is not a devotee becomes a devotee, somebody who is depressed becomes joyful. Those end results we can see very easily.
But sometimes the end results are not that easily seen. And at that time, it is a challenge to keep going through the struggles even when we don’t see the immediate results. There is a story in in the pharmacy business that how there was a particular medicine that was very powerful in curing people who are on the verge of death.
It was like a, not exactly a vaccine, but a curative medicine. But the people who are manufacturing that medicine, they were becoming quite lax, not mixing the chemicals properly, not preserving, packing it properly, not preserving it properly. And the management tried to threaten them that you will be fired.
The management tried to cajole them, tried to offer them some as a charitastic approach, punish you or will reward you if you do it well. But still nothing was working. And finally, they hired a consultant.
This consultant told them that for one week, you stop all your production and just send your entire staff down to the field. Let them become the deliverers of the medicine. And they did that.
And then they actually went to different places where there were epidemics, where people were sick. And they actually saw how these medicines were saving people’s lives. Then they realized that actually we were being so nonchalant about this.
We were being so lax about it. But if we, the life and death of people is in our hands, if we take care of these medicines properly, then it can make a lot of difference to people. So, of course, that sort of real life experiment, of real life experience of the transformative potency of medicine, that same principle applies even to Bhakti wisdom, the principles of Krishna Bhakti.
Not every one of us has the opportunity to actually go on the field and see the effect because I am traveling a little bit right now. So, I get to see different people and hear from them. So, initially, before I started traveling, I would think, I just go for a class, give the class and come back.
And I just feel socializing with people is a waste of time. But now, it’s not just socializing. People who hear, heard my classes, read my articles, they just generally practice Krishna consciousness.
When I talk with them, I get to know a lot of how Krishna consciousness is benefiting people practically. So, when I was doing a lot of writing, Radhanath Maharaj, my spiritual master, told me that never become only a writer. That you should be, even if your major service is writing, should always be on the ground also, interacting with people.
Then you will be able to connect with, what you write will be able to connect better with people. So, we are, all over the world, devotees are working very hard to connect people with Krishna’s message. But in our movement, not much emphasis is being given in terms of practical action for connecting people to Krishna through the online medium.
So, all of you, all of us are a part of a project that is actually getting into an avenue or taking Krishna into avenue where his presence is otherwise not much there. And it’s very much needed. But many, many organizations, there’s a Pew Research Foundation, which is the single biggest research organization for religious statistics, how religions are growing or shrinking.
So, their statistic was that in the age group from 15 to 35, almost 40% of people who converted to Christianity in the last 10 years, they were from online outreach. So, it’s not just in terms of increasing the numbers of people coming to Krishna, but actually in terms of benefiting people by helping them raise their consciousness. And one last point, I’ll conclude that as I travel everywhere, whenever we have a service, sometimes devotees ask me, how do we understand what is our nature? What is the service that is best according to our nature? So, that is, we talk about Varanashram, we talk about serving according to our nature.
So, one thing is true that if we ask our mind, am I suited for this service? Is this service my nature? What is my nature? The mind will say, whatever you are doing right now, that is not your nature. The mind will simply keep us dissatisfied no matter what we are doing. That is just the nature of the mind.
Even if we go to paradise, the mind will say, yes, but it will simply keep us dissatisfied. So, even in devotee community, even in the Skaan, let me sometimes say, people are lost in the material world. They don’t know what is the goal of life.
That they’re just trying this, trying that, trying so many things to become happy. But there are many people who come to Krishna’s movement and again get lost. That means, they are in Krishna’s movement, but they don’t have any clear service.
So, there can be souls who are lost within Krishna’s movement also. So, if we have a service, even if sometimes seems demanding, sometimes seems very exhausting, but it gives us a purpose. It gives us a direction.
It saves us from being lost. Rupa Goswami says, there are various ways on which we can meditate on Krishna. Nama Dhyan, Rupa Dhyan, Leela Dhyan and Seva Dhyan.
So, we can meditate on the names of Krishna. We can meditate on His beautiful form. We can meditate on His pastimes and we can meditate on His service.
So, for most of us, we can connect with Krishna most easily through our service to Krishna. And that Dhyan was what Srila Prabhupada had most of the time. Prabhupada did not just, he would chant, he would comment on the books, but his focus was on how to serve Krishna, how to get people to Krishna.
Once Prabhupada was asked, Prabhupada says in lecture, how do you know whether you are Krishna conscious? So, he could have said, oh, you chant 16 rounds attentively, you wake up in the morning. But he said, very striking, if you go to the temple and look at the deities, and if you feel the deities are asking you, what are you doing for me? What are you doing for me? Then you are Krishna conscious. The most people go to the temple and ask the deities, what are you doing for me? So, Krishna has already given us a lot to do for Him.
And if we have a forum, if we have a structure, if we have a service, by which you can stay connected with Krishna, that is a wonderful fortune that we have.