The Monk’s Podcast 62 with Madhavananda Prabhu – Conspiracy theories

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Conspiracy theories – The Monk’s Podcast with Madhavananda Prabhu

Succinctly summarised by Chaitanya Charan Prabhu from 1.30.59:

So, we discussed today broadly on the topic of going beyond conspiracy theories. We may blame people individually when we face problems, either our own problems or problems in the society around us. When we expand that blaming mentality, we might blame someone, a particular agent, one particular cause, and that can become a conspiracy theory. And so, the problem with that is, first of all, you know, we don’t know enough to say that one particular thing is the cause of all problems. And it’s more likely that the problem is more like ignorance or incompetence rather than malevolence. And even if it is, that there is some one cause of all problems, now, what are we going to do about it? Whether it is somebody spreading and spreading biochemical by doing biochemical warfare through pathogens or somebody trying to convert a whole country, how is it if we become more obsessed with evil, then focusing on godliness, then we will end up becoming agents of evil.

You mentioned two quotes of Bhakti Siddhanta Thakur about reformation, that criticizing others is actually very difficult work. And a Guru must do that. He says, I’m forced to do that. But why are you going out of your way to do that?

So, criticizing could also mean obsessing over the evil and other people. And that’s why we might criticize and that can bring out the evil within us. So, the real problem with conspiracy theories is that we become more conscious of the problem than of Krishna as the solution, which can distract us from Krishna consciousness.

Krishna consciousness is the primary solution and as the tool within that, there could be various things. There could be some managerial change, there could be some change in power, there could be bringing awareness of some problems, various things, but then there is a conspiracy theory mentality. The second thing that is too first becomes the primary and Krishna consciousness is like pushed or retired upstairs, and then then we end up often being a part of the problem rather than the solution. In essence, reformation is required, but to think that we are the reformers, that is a problem.

And then you talk about how we focus more on the domain of ideas. So, at the transcendental level, we need to know that it is Krishna who is the solution. If we are part of the solution, it is because Krishna is acting through us and we need to stay connected with Krishna. So, there is more of a positive focus in trying to solve the problem, rather than criticizing things. Like Prabhupada did not criticize Gaudiya Matha so much as he focused on creating an alternative in the form of the Krishna consciousness movement.

And the problem with the conspiracy theories is that it creates a culture of distrust and we can question authority. But it is more important that we find likeminded Association. Varna ashram is not so much about dividing people into society, but creating a likeminded associate, having likeminded Association, where we all can make the contribution that we are meant to do- like Arjuna fought, somebody writes ,different people may do different things, but it needs to be in the context of our connection with Krishna, devotion to Krishna.

You also gave the example of Gaura Kishore Das Baba Ji, how he did not see that these people were beating him when he saw that Krishna is doing this to me. So, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Krishna is acting.

And then I mentioned these three things that if you want to make a change, contribute to changing the world. So purity is to stay connected with ourselves, then humility is to know that it’s not that I have the full solution, but I have a small part of a bigger solution. And I can see a small problem which I’ll work on and then maturity is a way that we don’t disrupt what is working but focus on creating something which is constructive. And while working on this inside out change, taking responsibility that we can avoid going into self-pity, beating ourselves up by knowing that our focus has to connect with Krishna, not on beating ourselves down. When we get involved with conspiracy theories we turn away from Krishna and start dreading something else.
Did I miss anything important Prabhu?

End of transcription.

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Hare Krishna Madhyamantru. Welcome once again to the monk’s podcast.
It’s wonderful to have you again. Thank you for letting me be here, get your association. It’s I who relish your association and so many other devotees also have appreciated the breadth of the discussions that we have.
So I was thinking today we could discuss about the issue of when devotees face difficulties in the sense of say failures, then how to deal with it without blaming. Now, often we talk about not blaming others, but there’s also the aspect of not blaming oneself and beating oneself down. So what would be the, what would be a devotional way of dealing with failure? I once saw a Christian article on failures in spiritual life.
They had a nice title, how to fail well. So how to fail well, even if you had to fail. So broadly, I’ve seen that for devotees, let me start in this way that, you know, most people, when they present spirituality in the outside, the devotional context, often spirituality is presented in a very affirmative way of by which people can feel good, feel confident, feel positive that you are indestructible.
You are a precious child of God. You are loved by God. And that way, even from the spiritual sense, people feel positive about spirituality.
And then that positivity helps them to face life’s challenges. But what I have seen in our devotional life, quite often, we don’t talk so much about the difficulties of life and facing life’s challenges. In fact, we said that this life is material.
It’s full of misery and it’s somewhat dismissive about life’s challenges. And instead, we have our own spiritual practices, which can be quite demanding. And then, so instead of bhakti, equipping a person to face life’s challenges, bhakti becomes like one more challenge in a challenging life.
Oh, I have to wake up in the morning. I had to do this sadhana. And then if somebody is facing, say, difficulties or failures in their life, and on top of them, top of it, they’re also struggling in their spiritual life.
Then what happens, that becomes an additional source of failure and negativity. So sometimes, actually, what I have talked with devotees is that they sometimes feel that bhakti practice seems to increase my problems. So I feel that this is a very negative approach to bhakti, or at least a negative presentation of bhakti, which they may have got.
But any thoughts on this direction? Yeah, something we talked a little before, I call the blame game. Yes. And that is that when the symptom of not being able to deal with my failure is, I blame it on someone else.
And that blame can be very subtle, or it can be very gross. I blame it on my wife, that I would be able to get up in the morning, but she was talking too much last night, or I blame it on the temple president, or I blame it on the institution. And in other subtle ways, it’s there too.
As you pointed out, this is an integral part of our philosophy, that we should see that Krishna Sarva Karanakaranam, he’s a controller of everything. But when we’re pushed up against the wall, when we’re put in a situation that we’re not in control of, and things don’t go the way we want, how do we react then? We should look at, do we look for some kind of conspiracy theory, that there’s some group behind this thing, there’s some vast conspiracy behind this, or do we look to see it’s my fault? And it’s a really interesting thing to me, if you look in Vedic literature, speaking about conspiracy theories. First of all, there’s one example of a group of people who basically had no conspiracy theories, and that’s the Brijbhasis.
And although so many demons were coming, and the demons coming, and the guy is a beautiful woman, her name is Putana, and Rohini and Mother Yashoda are so guileless and so simple. Yes, you can go in and offer your breasts to our baby, no problem, Vatsasura. They have faith in Vatsasura, the cowherd boys.
Pralambasura, they thought really it’s Krishna’s friend. Shankarachudha, Rupa Goswami says that even Brindadevi thought that he was coming, it was a sun god coming to worship Radharani. They’re simple.
They just depend on Krishna. They’re so absorbed in thinking of Krishna, for them there’s no conspiracy theories, there’s no blame game on anybody else. But we do find in Vedic literature a number of persons who do ascribe to conspiracy theories, and three such personalities that come to my mind are Ravana, Kamsa, and Venu.
Kamsa thought everybody’s against me, and I have to do something with all the members of the Yadu dynasty, because they’re all conspiring against me. And he was completely paranoid, and Ravana thought his own brother was against him. Venu also thought everybody’s against me, the Brahmins are against me, and I have to stop everybody.
So conspiracy theories, and as part of the blame game, it means we’ve not actually begun our bhakti. And although we may have begun in some external sense, with chanting, attending programs, and doing service, which is very laudable, but if we haven’t come to the point of what Brahma describes where I accept whatever comes is my own fault, then we haven’t really begun bhakti. Because the blame game and the idea of conspiracies is just completely opposite of bhakti.
Bhakti means that I see that Krishna’s doing everything. It’s a wonderful story you may have heard of Gorkha Shodas Babaji, that once I heard he was in Navadvip town, and some little boys started teasing him, making fun of him, and they started throwing stones at him. And Gorkha Shodas Babaji turned around and started yelling at them.
But he wasn’t exactly yelling at them, he said, Krishna, if you don’t stop this right now, I’m going to tell your mother. So he didn’t see a conspiracy, all the residents of Navadvip are against me, they’re putting the kids up to this. He didn’t see anything like that.
He just completely saw Krishna’s hand. And for me, that’s my job as a devotee. Every day, especially these days, I’m getting emails and things from people saying, oh, there’s this conspiracy, there’s this thing, from devotees.
And I think to myself, well, okay, maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not true. But I want to be a Hare Krishna devotee.
And what is our philosophy? What is our approach of dealing with that? And that’s very, very clear. We deal with bhakti. We take shelter of Krishna.
It’s like the bridge bosses. There’s a lot of striking points. See, so first, let me understand what you said about, so blame game, when normally we I might blame person A, person B, but when I expand the blame game, so that practically, like, there is a whole network out to get us when we think that that conspiracy theory is like an expanded version of the blame game.
Isn’t it? That’s what you’re saying? Yeah. Okay. Now, let me interject real quick, too.
Sometimes in ISKCON, we say, yeah, there’s a conspiracy. And it’s the conservative devotees, they’re doing this, or the liberal devotees are doing, and we put a label on a group of devotees. And we blame them for the problems in the society, everything would be going okay.
But the problem is, because these people are not. But bhakti means let me be the source of change. Let me give up the attitude that I’m the reformer.
I’m sorry for interrupting. Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay, this is, I once heard a class in my early days.
Okay, you know, the title was, I won’t mention the devotee’s name, but the ultimate conspiracy theory. And that’s my conspiracy, ultimate conspiracy theory. And it was that how Maya Devi is the ultimate conspiracy agent.
And through all the agents, through various sources, temptations are coming upon us and she’s attacking us. And she’s constantly trying to pull us down. And, you know, in terms of the metaphor, I was quite intrigued by how the devotee drew out the metaphor.
But afterward, I started thinking, as devotees, we don’t want to have some kind of paranoia or persecution complex. Yes, there is there are temptations in the world and we have to be cautious. But we need to be more Krishna conscious than temptation conscious.
We need to have more faith in Krishna than fear of Maya. Yes, of course, fear is required. But so at a big level, some devotees consider that in some ways that there is one aspect of faith in Krishna.
And some devotees consider that actually skepticism toward the material world is a sign of their intellectual maturity or their intellectual brilliance. And often those who are conspiracy theorists, they actually feel that they are more intelligent than everyone else. That you know, I’m able to see these patterns over here.
And you can’t see those patterns. So in some ways, we could say that in the 18th chapter, Krishna talks about intelligence in the mode of ignorance, where he says that sarvaarthan viparitams ca buddhi sa partha tamasi adharmam dharmam itiya manyate tamasavratah that that intelligence, which considers the dharma to be a dharma and a dharma to be a dharma. And that ends up seeing everything opposite.
That is intelligence, but it’s in the mode of ignorance. So in some ways, if we are seeing conspiracy theories, it could be that we are more conscious of that conspiracy and how it is working, rather than how Krishna is working. So and I mean, there are many theories, like, some of them are like too distasteful to even mention, but say some things about what happened in our movement after Prabhupada departed.
And then there were some people who were power hungry, and they did some things. And these theories, sometimes people make it their mission to counter that theory and Krishna consciousness can get sidelined. So that could be a big problem with conspiracy theories.
So that there is certainly intelligence is involved over there in coming up with a theory also in justifying the theory. But at the end, that intelligence is centered more on skepticism of the world. And whoever is in the world, even if there are devotees in the world, then the focus is not so much on faith in Krishna, but on skepticism of the world.
Any thoughts about this? Yeah, that’s what a beautiful set of comments. I really appreciate that. It reminded me of a famous lecture Shiva Bhaktasiddhanta gave at Radhakund, you must be familiar with, we said that our goal is not anarthanubhrithi, but it’s arthaprabhrithi.
Our goal, we don’t want to become free from anarthas, rather, we want to become absorbing Krishna. And if all that we see is maya, this is maya, that’s maya, and we’re just conscious of maya. And sometimes devotees think that being conscious of maya is Krishna consciousness.
I see all the faults and everything. And it’s not Krishna consciousness at all. I was also appreciating, I think part of the problem is sometimes with the conspiracy ideas and things too, is that you were mentioning about something which you unpleasantly mentioned, people get concerned about the society and the way ISKCON is gone.
But I think part of that problem is that it’s a manifestation of our own lack of Krishna consciousness, our own shallow Krishna consciousness, where I’m identifying myself with the institution, or I’m identifying the institution with Krishna consciousness. The institution, as we spoke before, is a medium to give Krishna consciousness. But Srila Prabhupada in Nectar Devotion says there are many Krishna conscious societies, and someone would do well to join one of them.
It’s not that ISKCON is the only one. In fact, Prabhupada says that there are many and we can join anyone. Sorry? Yes, many Krishna and someone should join one.
Oh, okay. So is Prabhupada referring to various centers of ISKCON? He’s speaking about different Vaishnavas. Really? Okay.
And he spoke that way about his Godbrothers in his purports. And he spoke that way about his Godbrothers in his books and those other there’s so many Vaishnavas. But this is our state with some of the missions we spoke the last two times.
And I want to serve that Seva Sangha mission, but to return, look back what we spoke about before, I don’t put that as my identity. If I identify with it, then I think, oh my God, there’s this big problem. But Krishna’s in control.
And my business is to be Krishna conscious, but I’m not in control of everything. That’s an inherent problem, I think, with conspiracy ideas and the blame game is the root of that is that I think that I’m the controller and I’m frustrated with it. I learned something very distressing recently, that some devotees are so distressed right now about the situation in the world and trying to figure out what happened and who’s behind everything, that some devotees have become so depressed and initially the devotees I heard in Europe, they’re not taking drugs.
Because this became so disturbed by the situation in the world today. So it was not like antidepressants or literally narcotic drugs, like marijuana and alcohol, whatever like that. And I think that the point is, is that if we’re not taking shelter of Krishna through hearing and chanting, then we’re in trouble.
We’re in big trouble. And we just see all the bad things. We just see Maya, Maya, Maya.
Where’s the hope? This movement’s not about Maya. In America, you didn’t grow up with the born again Christians, although you’ve probably met a few. I grew up with them.
I think I met them when I was, I don’t know, six or eight years old. My family were Baptists. And then they decided to become Methodists.
I can’t even tell you the difference between the two. But I remember when we became Methodists, my grandmother cried for two weeks. And she said, you’re going to go to hell.
I can’t even tell you the difference between the two. And so there’s some very dogmatic people like that. And we’re used to that kind of framework sometimes in the West, where we’re trying to approach, we see Krishna consciousness in that way.
And that’s their approach, those kind of religionists. And they’re, in one sense, those kind of Christians, they’re also our brothers, because they’re propounding something spiritual, something anti-material, good qualities and things. I think we should see them as our brothers.
But I’m not very attracted by their general presentation that you’re bad, you’re bad, and you’re going to go to hell and just focusing on the sins and faults of people. That’s not Bhakti. That is so true.
It’s not just the sins and faults of others. Then eventually what happens is it becomes not just outside world, it becomes devotees also. And then you start doing with devotees also, and then it becomes a problem.
I was reading one book about conspiracy theories and one statement over there struck me a lot. The author says that, where many people presume malevolence, there are some bad people out there, out to get us. He says, most often ignorance or incompetence are sufficient explanations.
Ignorance or incompetence. So now, if you consider the COVID crisis itself, now, it could be that say one particular country has launched a biochemical war against the whole world. But, you know, it’s ignorance or incompetence seems to be a much more feasible explanation.
Because in many ways, the world today is so complicated that for any one agency or one country or one power to launch a conspiracy that can actually cover the whole world, it is quite unlikely. So most often when people, even people do something that hurts us, it is either because they don’t know, they’re just ignorant, or they are not able to do the right thing well. So it’s mostly ignorance or incompetence.
So I felt that this explanation acknowledges that things are wrong, but it takes away the persecution complex to some extent. There’s somebody out there to get me. Hey, let me share with you something.
Why don’t you enable my screen sharing? This is a beautiful quote from Albus Huxley, the famous British philosopher and writer. Yes, I think you can share now. Just check.
Okay, here we go. Let’s see. So I’ll go ahead and read this too.
The effects that follow the constant and intense concentration upon evil are always disastrous. Those who crusade not for God and themselves, but against the demons and others, never succeed in making the world better. No man can concentrate his attention on evil, or even the idea of evil, and remain unaffected.
To be more against the demon than for godliness is exceedingly dangerous. Every crusader’s apt to go mad. He’s haunted by the wickedness that he attributes to his enemies.
It becomes sort of a part of him. It’s a beautiful statement. And I found a number of similar statements also in Narada Purana, in Mahabharata, that this concentration on evil, that’s not what Christian consciousness is all about.
And in such persons, they never succeed in making the world a better place. You know, just when I was reading this quote, it struck me that not that as there is in the Updesha Amrit, there is that words about how the topmost devotees shouldn’t be the Mipsita Sangalabdha. And they avoid criticizing others.
And also in the Bhagavad Gita, also the godly nature, it is said, the aversion to fault finding, that’s 16.2. So normally we think about, don’t speak the faults of others, or don’t criticize others. But we could extend that is don’t obsess on the evil in others also. And this is what he’s saying.
Obsess on the evil in others, then it’s amazing what the quote is that that will actually bring out the evil within us. And I have seen there are some devotees that again, no disrespect to them, but it’s almost they have this idea that there is a particular group of people, like you said, the conservatives are out to take over the movement, and they are out to control and crush everything or the liberals are out to control and crush everything. So in general, there is now there are two aspects to this I would like to discuss.
One is that there’s a transcendental vision that Krishna has ultimate plan, and everything is in Krishna’s control, as you said. Simultaneously, at a practical level, if there are some dangers, they need to be dealt with. So say, let’s, if we consider the COVID crisis right now, so a conspiracy theory that there is somebody out there to get the whole world out and let that week, I mean, I would say that it’s everything is possible, but it’s not probable.
And even if it were one of my concerns with conspiracy theories is that, okay, even if it were true, what are you going to do about it? How is it that how are we going to make any major difference with it? So, so then the question comes up that there is also something practical that we have to do to deal with the situation. And if we have a better understanding of what is happening, then we can deal with it practically better. So how can we balance this idea that Krishna is ultimately in control, and I meant to be Krishna conscious, and simultaneously, now I have to act in the world to deal with the problems of the world.
So how can we be both transcendent, have a transcendental vision, and do the necessary practical action, whatever is required? Yeah, Srila Prabhupada famously told that to Giriraj Maharaj. We have to be practical. I can’t remember the exact phrase, but I think you made that exchange.
He was asking him something, what is, how is the movement going to go on? He said something about chanting Hare Krishna, Prabhupada. Prabhupada said no, but by being practical. But Prabhupada wanted that.
But at the same time, I feel obliged to point out something too, that Giriraj Maharaj was someone, Srila Prabhupada was very close to Prabhupada, Prabhupada loved him, and Prabhupada gave him a big responsibility of management. And I personally have not gotten that responsibility, thank God. And so I should act according to my means.
Krishna Nagita, he says that better to do your duty, even if it’s imperfect, than to do someone else’s duty perfectly. And that’s part of the same mentality too, that the conspiracy idea and things, and I very much appreciate your point, and it’s something I think of too. I don’t like to argue with somebody who wants to come and say there’s this big conspiracy, and all the scientists are against this, or this, or that.
I don’t know. I’m just a simple Hare Krishnan, I’m living in Mayapur in this little room. I don’t know everything that’s going on.
But even if it’s true, what am I supposed to do about it? And there definitely is a conspiracy on behalf of maya and her agents to keep us in this material world. But I want to see beyond maya, I want to see Krishna. And no matter what you can point out is the fault or is the conspiracy, maybe you figured it out, or maybe you haven’t, maybe you spend your whole life and you haven’t really figured it out, or maybe you find somehow you do figure it out, the solution is going to be the same.
There’s really only one solution. Niranjan Maharaj, he comments to us sometimes, the devotees write him letters, Maharaj, I had this problem, and Maharaj always says, I only have one solution, and that’s Krishna consciousness, that’s chanting Hare Krishna, reading Srimad Bhagavatam, that’s the only solution. And I want to be a Hare Krishna devotee.
I can’t say that I am, I’m aspiring for that, as we spoke before. But I want to have faith in this process. And I want to see behind the curtain, as they would say in The Wizard of Oz, there’s a famous movie, and there’s a man behind the curtain who’s doing everything.
I want to see behind the curtain. And I want to see behind that I want to see Krishna’s hand in everything and see that this is Krishna giving something to me for my good, because Krishna cares for me. It becomes, I find this time right now, we’re speaking about the COVID thing, but I appreciate your other comments about the society.
And I applaud how you’ve done that, because it’s not just the COVID thing. But there’s a bigger issue behind all of that. And that’s what I was wanting to speak about originally, which is the blame game.
We’re always looking to blame someone else, to blame something. They did some conspiracy against Prabhupada, or this or that. So many ideas people have.
But they’re not accepting that Krishna’s in control. And they’re not accepting, I’ll just be very blunt, there’s no GDC, there’s no temple president who can spoil my Krishna consciousness. I’m the only one who can do that.
There’s nobody who can do that. And as long as I’m Krishna conscious, everything’s going to be okay. And that’s the best solution I can give for our movement and for our world.
I don’t see any other solution. Yes, that’s a very powerful statement that actually nobody can spoil our Krishna conscious except we ourselves. And maybe I would like to place this in the context of our previous discussions, where we talked about how within an institution devotees need to create space for themselves.
And if that space is not there, we feel choked. So now creating space is involving at some level, some practical action. Because I might be told to do things in a particular way, but I do it in somewhat different way.
So at one level, we understand Krishna is in control. At another level, we also need to see what is it that Krishna wants me to do in this situation. Now, of course, one thing is I chant and I study the Bhagavatam and do directly Krishna activities.
So one thing we could say no conspiracy theory or any blame game should consume us so much that it deters us from our direct sadhana, from our direct connection with Krishna. So it could well happen that the idea of a conspiracy theory can become Maya’s conspiracy to distract us from Krishna. That our very belief in conspiracy theory can distract us.
So at one level, we make sure that our direct Krishna conscious activities are going on well. Now, apart from that, there is my remaining services there, my professional life, my family life, everything. Bhakti sadhana is one part of our life.
But in the remaining part of our life, when we have to face situations, we have to decide, okay, how does Krishna want me to act in this situation? So now, so some devotees may, if I continue this point of the blame game or a conspiracy theory, some devotees may start feeling that, you know, actually this is the real problem. The real problem is that say all allopathic medicine is just a big money-making racket and there are alternative medicines and they will cure you. So now, okay, now there are some devotees who might be in alternative medicine that might have benefited them and it has cured them wonderfully of some diseases.
So, so there could be, if a particular devotee is inspired by a particular cause. So then if, if that cause leads to some tangible constructive action, rather than simply, I say, criticism of some like a pervasive enemy. So for example, if you consider this COVID case only, that if there is only a constant criticism of allopathy, that this whole is simply a money-making business, then that would be much more negative.
On the other hand, if somebody does something, okay, this is alternative medicine, this is alternative branch of medicine that works, and this is what can be done to explore it, to test it, to adopt it. So if we do something positive and that becomes our primary focus, rather than say, criticizing that which we perceive as negative, then it will be much more constructive. Isn’t it? Yes.
Very, very nice. Thank you. Yeah.
I, I, I kind of alluded to your question earlier before, I’m sorry. Yeah. And that is, we have to have some practicality also.
I mean, in my particular role in the society, I’m, I focus more on ideas than I do on management. Yeah, of course. So, but management is very, very important.
And it reminds me of a statement that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu told the Rabindranath Das Goswami. He said, that internally, you’ll be fixed in Krishna, you’ll be fixed in Krishna consciousness, but externally, you act like an ordinary person. And so I find even amongst devotees, when we speak about management, of course, this is a Krishna consciousness movement.
And we can, we do proper, did place stress on proper management of monies, proper construction of buildings and life members and management organization like that. But everything was always to be Krishna conscious. Everything was always to encourage individuality and free thinking, as we were discussing before.
So if we don’t do that, then we’re, we’re in the wrong movement. But at the same time, I find this is Mahaprabhu instructed Rabindranath Das, Antoneshwar Bhargava, that if you do that, and sometimes we go and we say, just be Krishna conscious, just chant Hare Krishna. And people look at you and say, that’s not practical.
I need to do something else. And it’s a fact we do need to do something else. Why do we need to do something else? In one sense, really, all we need to do is chant Hare Krishna.
In Hari Bhakti Vilas, Sanatana Goswami gives a list of a bunch of verses from different shastras, describing how if you just chant the holy name, you don’t need to take medicine. And the holy name will cure any disease. And I remember our Guru Maharaj giving a class about that once.
And after the class, Jagadatma Bhuvali, his God, brother and friend was there. And he said, Guru Maharaj, he said, you take medicine. And Guru Maharaj replied and said, yes, I’m not, very humbly, he said, I’m not on that level.
And we shouldn’t imitate that. And I don’t know, I’m not going to try to comment on what level my Guru Maharaj is on. That’s another matter.
But I don’t think it’s appropriate for us as a society to practically just tell everybody, just chant Hare Krishna. And that’ll solve everything, although that will solve everything. But the problem is, we don’t have sufficient faith in it.
And so then we need to have other things. People need to think, yeah, something’s going on. They’re collecting lots of money.
They’re collecting lots of money. We’re making lots of life members and this and that. But the really, the real thing that’s going on is if we’re pleasing Srila Prabhupada, we’re pleasing Krishna.
That’s the real thing. And then they’ll do everything else. But some people, because their faith is not that deep, they need to see this.
And I think as a society, I think Srila Prabhupada acknowledged that by creating the society. He created this international society, as we spoke last time too. Otherwise, Prabhupada couldn’t have sat under a tree, as he told some of the early devotees.
He said, we don’t even need this society. But because people need to belong to something, and they need to see, oh, this is a solution going on, then we have so much management. We have so many divisions and things.
And we shouldn’t minimize those. It’s like someone minimizing vanashram dharma. Vanashram dharma is important.
It’s very important for 99% of the population until we come to a superior level of faith. But when we’re doing that vanashram, it should be vanashram. And we should always be plugging in the electric current of bhakti and always, always getting them to chant more and do it.
And then we’re raising up the consciousness. Otherwise, there’s so many societies in the world, as we both know, who are much better managers than us. That’s true.
There’s so many. We’re more expert at making money. There’s even societies who are more expert in counseling and taking care of people’s problems like that than we are.
But our special quality as a society is bhakti. And so we need those other things. I acknowledge that.
And how those other things will come up. Well, I want to respect the managers and leaders because that’s their job to come forward and do that. And it’s a duty of devotees who are acting as preachers or thinkers and writers to inspire them to always be Krishna conscious and give them Krishna conscious solutions.
But it’s those thinkers jobs to let them manage things and even let them make mistakes. Because that’s their responsibility. It’s like a child has to learn.
We don’t learn without making mistakes. Yeah, that’s true. So now you’re clearly differentiating between the domain of ideas and the domain of, say, management, which is the domain of, say, practical action to some extent.
So now if somebody is coming up with a conspiracy theory, would that fall in the domain of ideas or would that fall in the domain of action? Because the person may do both. So let me give an example of a recent incident, which I was interacting with a devotee. So this devotee told me that how when the British came to India, they made a long term plan to interpret the Vedic literature in a way that would make Indians lose faith in them.
So Max Muller was a prominent Indologist. He wrote a letter to his wife, quite a famous or infamous letter that, you know, he will translate these books in such a way that Indians will see the error of their own belief systems and then they will give it up. So now he also says that it will take me, I will not be able to see the fruit of my work in my lifetime.
It will be a long term work. So then this devotee is saying that right now in India, similarly, there is a conspiracy afoot to Christianize all of India. And we need to counter that.
Now, in some ways, the both these facts that yes, Max Muller did have a long term vision to make Indians lose their faith in the literature. And yes, there is a lot of extensive missionary efforts going on. So now if some devotee can see the big picture and say, okay, this is what is happening.
But this is also in the domain of ideas. Okay, there is a concerted effort to say undermine spiritual culture or the Vedic Dharmic culture of India. And then there is some kind of action to be done to counter it.
So would we call this kind of like a bigger vision of things? Now this itself can become an obsession of some people. And then sometimes they may start seeing every problem. Oh, this must be, this must be if any particular say Indian spiritual teacher has some scandal or something like that, or this must be a conspiracy of the Christians to put him down.
So you can do like that also. So basically there’s a difference between having a bigger picture of things so that one understands what is going on and getting obsessed with that and going into the zone of conspiracy theories. Because sometimes I have also seen that while I agree with this point that yes, there could be a much more, there is a concerted effort.
But sometimes I feel that the devotees who get into this, they become more, you could say anti-Christian conscious or anti-conversion conscious than Krishna conscious. And they feel that you are being too impractical. You are not really aware of the reality of the world that so at one, so I was not talking about the practical management, but it’s talking this sense about, you know, a devotee has to find out with the vision I have of things, what is the role I can play? What is the contribution I can play? So any thoughts on this? Yeah.
First of all, there’s a lot of people we can’t speak to. There’s some people you just, they just have their conception, their idea, and they just have to go with that. You can tell them that no Krishna consciousness is a real solution.
But if they’re in the mode of passion, then they’re going to see money as a solution, that they’re going to see management as a solution, that they’re going to see power as a solution or expose. We’re going to expose all the bastards and put all this information on the internet, and that’s going to be the solution. And the problem I have with all those so-called solutions is that ultimately, especially if they’re coming from devotees, they give another message.
And the other message that they give a subtle message, which is definitely there, which is that chanting Hare Krishna is okay, but it won’t solve all your problems. If you really want to be serious, then you need to do expose. You need to, you know, expose a conspiracy.
You need to deal with money. You need to do this or that. And that’s a real, real, real solution for things.
Integral also in that attitude of what I call the self-appointed reformers, is the idea that they’re actually appointed by Krishna. They’re thinking like that. We don’t have anything.
It’s not that we want to propagate that everybody should just sit down and talk philosophy and just lay on their back and chant Hare Krishna and not do anything. That’s contrary to the philosophy of Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna’s telling Arjuna, you go and fight, you kill them all. So I found that when I speak with devotees like this sometimes, and then they comment that they’re, what I would call a little sarcastically, I’m sorry, they’re on a mission from God.
It’s like, we call it hijab in Islam, that I have this this mission I have to do. I have to expose everybody to this and that. And they really feel like sometimes that Krishna’s appointed them.
Okay, that’s fine. Maybe Krishna has. But there’s a bigger thing behind all that also.
When we talk about a society, I can start waving my hands and jumping up and down and saying that I know everybody’s wrong. I’m the only one who does know. But the next question, and maybe I’m right.
Who’s going to listen to me? And if I can’t get the devotees to listen to me, what’s the value of my huffing and puffing and saying so many things? And the devotees, the massive devotees in our society, they want to hear from Shastra. They want to hear what Shiva Prabhupada has to say. Because in general, when we talk about reformers, or reformer, the ultimate reformers is a pure devotee.
The ultimate reformer is guru. And there’s a beautiful statement from Shiva Bhaktasiddhanta. I just found that statement while you’re talking.
Yeah, there’s a couple of statements something about the reforming a reformer. Oh, yeah. Is this the one? The world stands in no need of any reformer? Yes, that’s beautiful.
I was thinking of that. But I had another one too. But go ahead and share that.
I was also thinking of that. Okay. So I want you to go ahead and read it.
The world stands in no need of any reformer. The world has every competent person for guiding its minutest happenings. The person who determines that there is scope for reform of the world, himself stands in need of reform.
The world goes on in its own perfect way. No person can deflect it even the breadth of a hair from the course chalked out for it by providence. When we perceive any change being actually affected in the course of events of this world, by the agency of any particular individual, we must know very well that the agent possesses no real power at any stage.
The agent finds himself driven forward by a force belonging to a different category from himself. The course of the world does not require to be changed by the agency of any person. What is necessary is to change our outlook on this world.
The scriptures declare that it is only necessary to listen with an open mind to the name of Krishna from the lips of a bona fide devotee. As soon as Krishna enters the listening ear, he clears up the vision of the listener so that he no longer has any ambition of ever acting the part of a reformer of any other person because he finds that nobody is left without the very highest guidance. It is therefore his own reform by the grace of God whose supreme necessity and nature he is increasingly able to realize by the eternally continuing mercy of the Supreme Lord.
Wow. What a profound statement. Very profound.
You know, so to three points about this. Now, this, you mentioned this point that power is a solution, exposing is a solution. So now all of these we can say at one level, they might be parts of a solution.
Sometimes bringing awareness of a problem, or maybe say bringing some change in the power structure in the management, or that might be a part of the solution. But when we start giving it greater priority than being Krishna conscious, so then we just like push Krishna consciousness to the, there is a saying in India that you know, that you push someone upstairs. That means you nominally respect that person, but relegate them out from all practical, practical dealings, don’t take their guidance in a practical way, just nominally venerate them that way.
So there could be a tendency of pushing Krishna conscious upwards, upstairs, and thinking that this is the real solution, Krishna conscious can come afterward. So, so this is, it’s not that this need not be a solution, but we just need to keep our priority right. Is that what you’re hinting at? That’s part of it.
First of all, let me just make a real quick comment on this beautiful statement from Srivabhakti Siddhanta, which is also one of my favorites. When he says as soon as Krishna enters a listening ear, he clears up the vision of the listener, so he no longer has any ambition of ever acting the part of reformer of any other person, because he finds that nobody is left without the very highest guidance. So that’s very interesting.
Indirectly what he’s stating here is, this is a symptom of proper hearing. If you’re hearing properly, then it means that you don’t, you no longer have an ambition to reform anyone, because you see everybody has the highest guidance. And therefore, he says, his own reform he’s able to realize.
And at that point, he’s able to become a real instrument for the Lord. I had another statement from Srivabhakti Siddhanta in mind. Let me share this with you.
Can I have the screen back? Yeah. Yeah. I got it.
This is from a letter in 1931, Srivabhakti Siddhanta. I received your card dated November 26. Another letter following that, Srimad Bhagavatam has instructed us not to praise or criticize others’ nature or activities.
It is said also in Sri Caitanya Bhagavatam that one goes to hell by criticizing others. My instruction to you is not to criticize others, but to correct and purify yourself. And he says, I am forced to criticize my own disciples and those who have come to me for instruction.
I do not understand why you would go out of your way to try to perform such a difficult task. Oh, God. Amazing.
So, this reminds me very much of some statements from my Guru Maharaj, where he spoke very strongly that fault-finding and correction is the business of Guru. Now, let’s back up to that statement for a moment. What is Guru? Guru is someone who’s empowered by Krishna.
Arjuna is Guru. And here, for Krishna, it says, nimita-matra-bhava-sadhi-saksham. That means, sakshabdha-ritam.
Nimita-matra-bhava-sadhi-saksham. You be my instrument, means sakshabdha-ritam. He’s endowed with the potency of Krishna, and therefore he can do something.
So, it’s not my business to go and say, Arjuna, you know, you shouldn’t be going around and fighting with people, and you’re just on this trip of trying to control everybody. He’s empowered by Krishna, and I should just get out of the way. And so, theoretically, there may be persons who are also empowered by Srila Prabhupada, or Krishna, to reform our society.
But, I have the right to be convinced. You have to convince me. And our society has that right.
And as far as that goes with myself, if I see that you’re not taking shelter of Bhakti, or if you’re criticizing other people, as you were quoting earlier from Upadesa Amrita, nindari-shunar-hidam, ipsita-sangalabhya. Ipsita-sangalabhya, I want to associate with that person who is nindari-shunar-hidam, whose heart is free from the potency to criticize others. That criticism means you’re disqualified, if it’s just mundane criticism.
Now, Prabhupada, you may say, but Prabhupada criticizes, but Prabhupada is guru. You want to continue sharing the screen, or we can have full screen discussion? Yeah, we can have full screen. Yeah, Prabhupada is guru.
And I think, if we slow down a little bit, when we say, well, Prabhupada chastised people, and I should also chastise people, and Prabhupada called them hogs, dogs, camels, and asses. And so, I should also go and do like that. We need to start spitting in the sky, anything.
And you know what happens when you spit in the sky, it comes and lands on your own face. So, if I’m not qualified, if I’ve not been empowered to do that, and again, the question comes, because there’s a long queue of people who are lining up and telling you they’re empowered. A long queue of people who are directly or indirectly telling me that they know the real siddhanta, they know the real truth about this conspiracy theory, or about this thing, or that thing.
They’ve got the real deal, and I should listen to them. So, what are we going to do? It’s like going to the market, and there’s a thousand people trying to sell you their goods, and they’re all saying their good is the best good. So, we have to be discerning.
As a society, we have to be discerning, and as individuals. And I want to be by guru sadhu and shastra. I want to see that your solution is in line with bhakti.
I’m not saying that if you’re taking a bow and arrow like Arjuna, your solution is to kill a bunch of people on the battlefield. I’m not going to say that’s maya. He’s Krishna conscious, or somebody, maybe Krishna wants him to make money, or build a building, or do whatever, or chastise people.
But I have to see the character of someone, because chastisement is a work of guru. And guru is someone who has the qualities of Krishna. We see they’re very gentle, and we can intuitively understand that they have some care for me.
And if I don’t have that faith in them, then their reform is not going to work for the society, or for our ISKCON society. We’re just huffing and puffing like the big, bad wolf in the literature history. That’s a little boy.
Okay. So, you know, this quote, I’ll just refer to that once again. They’re saying, why do you want to go out of your way to take a difficult task of criticizing others? So I was thinking that actually, it’s difficult in many ways, first of all, our criticism may not be precise, because we may not really know all the facts of the situation.
Secondly, even if we criticize, it can often have many unexpected counterproductive effects. So both in terms of understanding what is wrong, and then doing something to correct it, it can be a very complicated issue. And so when you talk about, it’s a guru’s task to do that.
And earlier you mentioned about like a self-appointed reformer. So the difference, we could say critically is how strong is one’s own connection with Krishna? That if one is very deeply connected with Krishna, then we could say that, maybe they are getting some intelligence from Krishna. So then somebody might do this, but it is much better to maybe do this in one’s own sphere and bring about some change, bring about some results rather than just criticize the whole system.
Isn’t it? It’s like, even if say, I have been guided by Krishna. So if we take Prabhupada’s example itself, Prabhupada did not spend much time. He was quite disappointed with all due respects to his godbrother, the Gaudiya Mutt.
He was disappointed because they did not have so much of a missionary spirit, he felt. But he did not spend time criticizing them too much. Maybe one or two Vyasa Puja offerings where he speaks a little strongly saying that we should preach.
But after that, he just started, he just did whatever energy he had, whatever time he had, whatever resources he had, with that he started. And then he continued his service and Krishna provided a result. And Krishna provided an extraordinary result.
So we could say that, in a sense, even if something is going wrong, rather than criticizing what is wrong, it’s better to start doing what is right. And then my own reform can mean both my internal connection with Krishna and can also mean my external contribution. But it’s better to focus on doing some positive contribution, rather than criticizing what somebody else is doing wrong.
Any thoughts on this? Yeah, that’s beautiful. We made a magazine which we spoke about in our last discussions called Putana, false gurus, institutions in the holy name. And that article I’ve noted is a little popular amongst a lot of people.
And they point out the faults in organized religion. They say, just see, we’ve got this and this. But an irony that I see is that the people who oftentimes are shouting the loudest about the need of reform, the shouting the loudest, pointing the blame of this and that, they’re the problem themselves.
Because they become Putana. Putana is a false guru who wants to present herself that she’s offering some nourishment to the baby, but her real desire is to kill the baby. And so similarly, if we appoint ourselves as guru and appoint ourselves as a self-appointed reformer, we’re running around jumping up and down.
Bhaktivinoda says that Putana is the bad mind, the non-Krishna conscious mind. That’s also Putana. So such persons, they’re not helping the situation.
It reminds me of Prabhupada’s description in light of the Bhagavad, how in the nighttime, during the darkness, it’s the time of self-appointed reformers. And they’re like the fireflies. He doesn’t speak about self-appointed reformers, but he speaks about the fireflies.
And those fireflies, they look very brilliant at night. But as soon as the sun rises, they’re completely insignificant. So on our own, by our own strength, we may shout a lot and do this and that.
But if someone’s actually appointed by Krishna, then by them speaking Krishna consciousness, by them chanting, everything will become clear. And we should have firm faith in that. Although in our society, we have managers, we have accountants, we have construction workers, we have money collectors, we have so many different important services, which never should be minimized.
At the same time, the real reform is accomplished through Krishna consciousness. And let me give one example of that. There’s several I could think of, but one is in Jiva Dharma.
There’s a story of a person whose name I think was Sanyasi Thakur or something, later became Vaishnav Das. And he was in Benares, the center of impersonalism. And he was a hardcore Mayavadi.
He was on the platform of Paramahamsa. He was reciting Vedanta every day. He was a very dry person.
And he became a Hare Krishna devotee. How did he become a devotee? Nobody said anything to him. There was no debate.
There was no, he didn’t even read anything. All that happened, he was going to the market one day, and he saw a devotee. And that devotee was such an advanced person.
He was so absorbed in Krishna consciousness, he was rolling on the ground, crying, and calling out, And he had this funny tealock on, funny to that Mayavadi, two lines going up. And he just saw him for a moment. Wow, who’s that guy? And then he lost sight of him.
And then he started asking people about it. Somebody said, Oh, those are Hare Krishna people. They live in Mayapur.
And that’s how he became a devotee. Then he came. He had faith in someone, because he saw the potency of someone.
And we shouldn’t have any doubt. This is what Siva Prabhupada did. He came and sat underneath a tree in Tompkins Square Park with a pair of cartels.
And he was so absorbed and so powerful that he struck people, and people wanted to change their lives. He didn’t come and say, Look, I’ve got a great management idea. I know how to manage your money.
I know how to do some counseling and psychiatry for you. He didn’t say any of those things. He was just Krishna conscious.
It’s a very, very powerful thing. Now, again, I’m not trying to minimize management. That should also go on.
But we have to understand the best example, the best preaching is our example. In the words of, I’ve heard a saying from Sisi, you know this one? Yeah. He said something that I’ve heard that he told his followers, you should preach.
And if necessary, you should say something also. Yeah, preach only and speak a few words when necessary. That’s true.
Okay. So, you know, this also, I mean, since what if I get what you’re saying is that our, our Krishna consciousness as it is reflected to our actions is going to cause the biggest transformation. And in that sense, in trying to bring a transformation in the world, if we lose our Krishna consciousness, then we are putting the cart before the horse.
So it is our Krishna consciousness that will bring about a transformation. And I agree with you fully about this. We’re just going back to Prabhupada’s example of Prabhupada’s potency, sitting at Tompkins Square Park and chanting.
Now, we could also say that Prabhupada did the practical effort of going to America. You know, he could have sat under a tree in Vrindavan and done the chanting also. He didn’t do that.
So there was a practical effort. So he, so that means there is a simultaneous combination of the transcendental. At a practical level, Prabhupada labored a lot to get the facility to go to America and then find a place over there and do all that.
But he was not consumed ever by the practical. So I think that is what it said about Prabhupada. His head was in the sky, but his feet were on the ground.
So let’s go back a few steps to what was Srila Prabhupada’s success? What was the cause of Srila Prabhupada’s success in America? I would say it was not just the fact that he got a ticket on the Jaladuta. It wasn’t the fact just that he talked to Dr. Mishra or that he got a storefront or this or that. It was Krishna.
We could ask the same question, who was it that killed all the Kauravas in the Battle of Kurukshetra? And someone may say it’s Arjuna. But was it really Arjuna? Krishna says, nimita-mata-bhava-sabhi-sacchan. Now, of course, Arjuna was the immediate cause for that thing.
We see the immediate cause. And as a wonderful example you gave and you followed up with, Srila Prabhupada, we have to do our duty. But Krishna is the one who’s actually doing it.
And Guru tells us, go to the West and preach. And we work hard to get a ticket on the steamship. We do whatever we can.
And Krishna gives credit to that devotee. He gives credit to Srila Prabhupada. But in another sense, we see it’s Krishna behind it.
Krishna gives credit to Arjuna for killing all those warriors. But ultimately, it was Krishna who did that. Okay.
So in that sense, again, it is for us as well as others. That quote says that if any person seems to bring about a change, it is actually God who is, it is actually a principle categorically different from them that is bringing out the change through them. So in that sense, when we see either some devotee or even somebody who is not a devotee, they bring about some social change.
We need to be able to see Krishna as the ultimate agent behind that. Now, just going back to the earlier point about, say, like a transcendental action and practical action. So if a devotee feels inspired, driven, say, to maybe counter Christian conversion in India or the devotee feels inspired to counter what he, what they feel is, you know, allopathic medicine has many side effects and is destructive.
So I would like to share Ayurveda, Ayurvedic wisdom, or a devotee feels inspired that, say, some devotees may, India may feel inspired by a nationalistic zeal. Some devotees in America might feel that there is systemic racism over there. And we want to counter all the racism over there.
So now, if a devotee wants to get engaged in such causes, because they see that there are certain, in their vision, there are problems in society. And so perceiving like big problems in society and not getting caught in a conspiracy theory. So how could we differentiate between the two? That conspiracy theory in one sense, my understanding would be that we make one thing to be the cause of various or all problems.
So it’s like almost it’s scapegoating this, if this is removed, then all problems will be solved. So if you could, if you could instill that in people, we’ll solve a lot of problems. If we could see what is the difference.
Honestly, Deepak Goswami in Bhakti Sundarbar, he raises an interesting question. He says, why is it that some people attracted to bogus ideas bogus shastras, bogus gurus? Okay. He says there, he quotes a couple of verses from Brahma Vaibharta Purana, which described it as due to sin in the heart.
Now, as devotees knowing Madhuri Kadambani, we can append that also, we can see its tenses as devotees, perhaps too. So first of all, we generally can’t see the difference between what actually Krishna wants me to do and what is just my mundane vision. And we just really can’t see the difference.
So then what are we going to do? And therefore we have Varnashram Dharma. Therefore we have a society guided by guru. And therefore the first thing that we’re told, generally speaking, in Varnashram Dharma is to find like-minded association.
And we have a Brahmin sasan where Brahmins work together and they’re encouraged and inspired and empowered in their work. We have Kshatriyas who work together in Vaishyas and et cetera like that. But in our Daivi Varnashram system, they’re simultaneously chanting Hare Krishna.
And that chanting of Hare Krishna, we know is the all-important thing. And what’ll happen is, it’ll darken the margin. That by that chanting, their heart will gradually become cleansed.
Bhaktivinoda in one place, he says that the darkener, the mirror of the heart is so dirty that you can scrub and scrub. It’s like oil on a mirror and you can wipe it and wipe it, but it doesn’t get clean. But if you keep wiping after some time, you start to see some vague image.
And that vague image is my position within Varnashram that I should be a grahastha, that I should do Brahminical work or that I should be a manager or whatever. That’s the first thing that I begin to see. And then if I keep cleaning the mirror, cleaning and cleaning, then I can see myself and maybe I can even see Krishna standing behind me.
So I think a big question comes, as I think it was John Lennon who wrote, we all want to change the world, right? And the white elephant. How do we become a vehicle for change? And to me, this is a really, really heartfelt, very important topic because I joined the Hare Krishna movement for this reason. When I got out of high school, I graduated from high school in San Jose, California.
And I hitchhiked that summer all the way to Washington, D.C. with a friend, a long, long journey with no money. I hitchhiked all the way to the other side of the country because I wanted to attend a political rally, because I wanted to be a cause for some change. And we went there and we all got tear gassed and beaten up by the police.
And then the news didn’t even say anything about it. And I got discouraged and I saw it. And I tried over the years, before I came to Krishna consciousness, I tried political solutions.
I’ve seen money solutions. I’ve seen psychological solutions and counseling solutions and astrology solutions and so many solutions. But I came here because I don’t believe in any of those solutions.
And I’m not saying it in a negative way, we spoke in the beginning, but I see that Krishna Bhakti is the only solution. It’s a positive solution. It’s not negative.
So if we want to be a vehicle for change, I think we have to look very, we have to become Krishna’s instrument. Some people like Arjun, the way that they become Krishna’s instrument is to fight. And someone else may go to America on a boat and someone else may make a million dollars to build a temple.
And we can’t say that one is better than the other, because they’re all very dear to Krishna. They’re all empowered by Krishna. But the underlying principle of all of them is the same, that I want to be Krishna’s instrument.
And I want to give up the bad idea that I’m the reformer, that I’m the doer, as you were giving this beautiful quote. And as soon as we give up that idea that I’m reforming, then I can actually be an instrument of reform. Amazing.
The two, three thoughts I got, each of them could be elaborated, but just I’ll mention it quickly. When you talk about Varanashram, what you are mentioning is more like, like-minded association, that Varanashram is not necessarily like a division of society, but it is like-minded association, which helps us understand how we can contribute. And for example, in the Vedic culture, the king is called Naradev, that’s the God on earth.
So it’s not just so much like people should respect the king like God, but actually the king should be connected with God. King should actually be acting as a representative of God and doing, being in the mood of a servant as Pratap Uttara was doing when he was cleaning the road in front of Lord Jagannath. So then, about what you said that we, you joined Krishna Consciousness to be a part of the change, to actually change because you had the faith that this is what is going to change the world at all, if it is going to change.
I remember my Guru Maharaj, Radha Maharaj mentioned once to us that there are many devotees who criticize the scorn, criticize the scorn leaders, they make websites about it and they feel that they were betrayed by some of the earlier spiritual masters who had some difficulties and fell away. So what Maharaj told us is that, Radha Maharaj mentioned, is that actually it is not just they who were betrayed, even we were betrayed. If you consider most of the leaders today in our movement are different from the leaders who were there in the first 10 years or first 15 years of our movement.
So he said that we chose to rebuild from within. And those who are opening websites and criticizing all the leaders, they went out and they’re trying to, in a sense, destroy what Prabhupada created with the hope of we’ll create something else in the future. So in a sense, their intentions, maybe they were, everybody gets wounded in life and especially those are very big wounds.
If somebody whom we are spiritually trusted lets us down, but what do we do about it? So is it that, like going back to Prabhupada did not, Prabhupada did not go about, say, criticizing and trying to undermine or destroy the Gaudiya Math. Prabhupada focused on creating something positive and so if a devotee is inspired, if a devotee is connected with Krishna and they feel inspired to do something, they can do it. So in a sense, if I understand rightly, the court is not condemning reformation per se.
The court of Bhakti Sahasrara is condemning the idea that I will be the reformer. Isn’t it? Yes. So if I first connect with Krishna and reform myself in the sense that I become well-connected with Krishna, then maybe Krishna will guide me how best I can contribute in the world to deal with various situations or various specific problems that are there.
An indirect, I think, message I get from that quote, what I’m about to say is a little unpalatable, but I think it’s an obvious thing he’s saying, is that if I see someone else as being the cause of my problems in that, then it means I haven’t properly practiced Krishna consciousness. I haven’t reformed myself and therefore I’m seeing all these other outside problems and things and these people caused me this problem, that it’s their fault. And that’s the nature, especially when someone’s been hurt.
You’re seeing an animal and the animal has been beaten or something like that, then it doesn’t trust anyone. And so that’s our nature. When we’ve been hurt, we want to blame other people, but we shouldn’t be like animals.
We want to be Vaishnavas. We want to see, oh, Krishna had his hand in this. And even those devotees, those leaders in our society had their problems.
Prabhupada also loved them. And they also did a lot of amazing things for our Krishna conscious movement in terms of distributing books and making buildings. And they also created a lot of problems and did a lot of bad things.
But let’s not only see the bad, they also did a lot of good things too. And Krishna used them in some way. I think we were mentioning before how I heard this from Dhristadyumna.
Yeah, Dhristadyumna Prabhu was a sannyasi at the time, Prabhupada’s disciple. He was in New York at the time of the Ratha Yatra. And there was, there’d been one big, biggest kind of leader, one of the biggest leaders at the time was a sannyasi who fell down with a woman and he went away.
And so Dhristadyumna was a sannyasi and he was asking Srila Prabhupada privately, Prabhupada, how do we understand this? And Prabhupada told him very, very heavy thing. Prabhupada said, actually, none of you are qualified for sannyas. Now, let me make a little comment on that statement.
First of all, I don’t think that that meant carte blanche that all of Prabhupada’s disciples that he gave sannyas to weren’t qualified or all the devotees in the future, but Prabhupada was saying it for a certain time and place. He said, actually, none of you are qualified. And he said, it’s just like in the time of war, when there’s no leaders, then you make everyone stand in a line and you count every fifth person and you make them a lieutenant.
He said something in the same way I’ve been using. And someone may take that statement as a way to demean or belittle those devotees. I don’t see it that way at all.
I see that as the glory of those devotees. The Srila Prabhupada chose them and used them and they became, to a greater or lesser extent, at a particular time at least, Prabhupada’s instrument and Prabhupada worked through them. And then maybe because there was some, as we say in electricity, there was some resistance in the wire or something, then the electricity stopped coming and there were some problems in our society and problems with that devotee.
But still, let’s see the good things about it. And why do I have to be obsessed with that? This is a society for Krishna consciousness. I want to become a Hare Krishna devotee.
What am I supposed to do? How do I join? We were speaking about in the last couple talks. How do I join? I join by becoming Krishna conscious, by focusing. And then Krishna will make it clear to me, Madhavananda, I want you to solve all the problems in this town and make a website or be a manager or make money or cook or do this thing or that thing.
But I want to look for Krishna’s voice. What does Krishna have to speak for me? But if we’re not careful, if we’re not purifying our heart and we’re not putting bhakti in the front, then we may hear the voice of our mind. We may hear the voice of Maya and we may put on a good show.
We may even convince other people that the voice of my mind is actually Krishna’s voice. And people start following us. And that’s why I call such people little Putinists or little false gurus, even though they’re the ones who are waving the banner of reform.
They’re presenting themselves as a big reformer. And ironically, they become the very disease they were trying to fight against as we’re reading a statement from. So, just two thoughts I had in this, when you mentioned this.
First is that when we are trying to solve any problem. Now, all of us, based on our particular psychophysical nature, our particular situation, we get a particular perception of things. And in our perception, this may seem to be the most urgent problem.
And we may work to solve it. Say, for example, at one level, the two of us are having this discussion. And in a sense, we are, we may be felt a need to have candid discussions on often undiscussed issues.
And in that way, maybe we are, we are helping create a culture of Gujarati. So, there was something which we felt maybe is lacking. It is for our nourishment as well as for the other community nourishment for other devotees who are like minded their nourishment.
So, but when we are doing this, so it’s not that we don’t, if we see a particular thing that is lacking, and we want to, we do something to deal with it. So, this is something which we all need to do according to our vision, our inspiration, our ability. But we don’t think that like this is going, the lack of this is the cause of all problems.
And this is going to solve all problems. They understand that maybe like going back to the earlier point of, you know, what, when does it become a conspiracy theory? And when does it become like a focused contribution in a particular arena? So, if I see that, okay, there is a, there is a big problem. And there is a, the problem is far bigger than me.
And the solution will also be far bigger than me. But if I can, okay, I can notice this part of the problem. And I work to solve this part of the problem as an agent of Krishna in the mood of service to Krishna.
And I respect others who are addressing other parts of the problems. Krishna may act through me in this way. And Krishna can act to others in other ways.
So, then if we see ourselves as like one small part of a bigger solution in which there are many other parts and maybe other parts are much bigger than us, then we won’t have, we won’t succumb to that obsessive conspiracy theory kind of mentality. At the same time, we won’t become just passive thinking that, okay, everything is in Krishna’s control. Why do I need to do anything at all? If everybody has Krishna’s guidance, Krishna is in control, then there is no need to do anything at all.
So, we can avoid both those extremes that way. Any thoughts on this? I like that very much. You were speaking about Guhyamakhyati Prachiti and made me think that, I thank you for that.
We should be creating a culture of Guhyamakhyati Prachiti, which is a culture of trust. But if we don’t have faith in Sadhu, as Sivabhakti Siddhanta says in one place, that if we don’t see a Sadhu present, then we’ll be forced to engage in blasphemous, critical, envious types of activities if we don’t have faith that there’s a Sadhu present. And then we’re promoting a culture of distrust.
So, we want to be a solution. Everyone wants to, we all want to save the world. That’s why we’re having this talk today, right? Because we want to save the world.
Of course, we all want to do that. But that comes, Krishna’s teachings, Rupa Goswami’s teachings, Guhyamakhyati Prachiti, it comes when we create a culture of trust, of intimacy. But when there’s a culture of distrust, and it becomes a verb that we’re actively distrusting people, and we’re promoting the idea you should distrust people, not have faith in anybody.
When I was going to high school, I came from that kind of background. It was like the hippie era, and it was the end of the Nixon era and things in America. And in high school, I would sometimes ask, raise my hand and ask the teacher to go to the bathroom.
And so he would let me go out, and I would stand in the hall and wait for a few minutes. And my friend who was in the same class, after a few minutes would raise his hand, and he would go to the bathroom, putting in quotes. And then I would stand on his shoulders, and we had these bumper stickers that I would stick on the wall in the school that said, question authority.
And that was our motto, question authority. There’s nothing wrong with question authority. We should question authority.
We should be independent thinkers. That’s important for bhakti, but we don’t want to create a society of distrust, where we’re actively encouraging everybody just to not have faith in anyone. That’s a kind of atheism, and it’s a horrible, horrible thing to do to our society.
And this is what I think that Radhanath Mara mentioned, that there’s some people who are basically trying to destroy what Prabhupada created. Of course, if you say that to them, they’ll become offended. No, no, no, we’re not trying to destroy it at all.
We’re trying to destroy all the Putinists. But you’ve become Putin. As Huxley says, when we see evil all the time, we become obsessed with evil, then we become part of the problem.
If we become obsessed, it becomes us. And we’re no longer the solution. We’re no longer the Hare Krishna movement.
We become some other kind of thing. I love this phrase, culture of distrust. And it very precisely describes the mentality of conspiracy theories, eventually creates a culture of distrust, rather than a culture of Krishna consciousness.
And that’s, that would be something very counterproductive. While there has to be, we could, like you said, questioning authority, pariprashnena, there is a culture of questioning also. But the overall attitude is more to learn and contribute, not to like, not to lampoon or destroy, not to assassinate the character of anyone.
So if, like you said, we all want to save the world has a very Christian and negative connotation. But we all want to play our part, maybe say we can say making things better at whatever extent we can. So if we, so, you know, if I, I don’t want to take your time beyond what we had planned, but two, three attributes I was trying to summarize.
See, one is that we need to have some amount of purity in terms of our connection with Krishna. Then we need some amount of humility. That is not that I know everything and that I know the, all the problems and I can solve all the problems.
Okay. I am a one small part of the problem solution. And if Krishna wants me to play a bigger part, he will give me a bigger part.
But if there is this humility and there’s humility, and then maybe a third thing I thought of is some amount of maturity, maturity in how we present ourselves. What would you say again? Humility, purity, humility, and maturity. Purity, humility, maturity.
I like that. Purity is our inner connection with Krishna. Humility is recognizing that I have a small part in the solution, not that I am the solution and maturity in the sense that in implementing my solution, I don’t end up creating disruption.
I don’t disturb other people’s faith in things that may be working for them. Therefore, so for some devotees, like we discussed about the individual and institution. Now for some devotees, say working within the institutional framework may work very well for them.
Okay. This is my authority. I follow them and they grow nicely in their devotional life.
So we don’t want to disrupt what is working, but okay, but for some people, they need some more space. We try to create that space for them. So if we have these, then we can make a tangible contribution without becoming obsessed with specific problems or without making, without fostering a culture of distrust.
Any concluding thoughts Prabhu or anything you would like to say? Yeah, just looking back on the line of our discussion, Tat Tenu Kampam and how we should see everything as coming from Krishna and be Krishna’s instrument. I appreciate very much discussing with you and sharing your ideas. I want to be a vehicle for change.
And I think we also want to encourage everybody to be a vehicle for change. As we were mentioning earlier, John Lennon, I think he wrote that, so you say you want a revolution. Well, you know, we all want to change the world.
I wasn’t thinking of the Christians who would save the world, but we want to change the world. And everybody wants to do that. And it’s the duty of this Krishna, every member of the Krishna conscious movement to be a vehicle for change, but change, we want to be a vehicle for positive change, not a vehicle for distrust.
That’s my number seven. You know, there is probably, because this is a big subject, and maybe for a future discussion, we could extend this point. But if you want to say one or two sentences right now, there is, we can say that we need to make inner change before we can actually bring about outer change, or we should at least try to connect ourselves with Krishna.
Sometimes in that process, like you should take responsibility yourself. But in that process, we can blame ourselves and we can beat ourselves down. And that can also demoralize us.
And that can itself be a problem. So maybe because this is a big subject, we could discuss in a future session about, say the difference between taking responsibility and blaming ourselves. We don’t want to blame others.
But if we’ve been in the name of blaming ourselves, we beat ourselves down. There is the infamous Catholic guilt, which makes people feel that they are completely worthless and sinful, and they’re going to go to hell unless they get Jesus intercessionary grace. So we don’t want to constantly feel bad about ourselves also.
So any quick thoughts on this? Or should we reserve this for a future discussion? Sometimes we speak about Vishad yoga, which is a big topic, but just to touch on it. Yoga of lamentation. And there’s three types of lamentation that we find in our philosophy.
One is self-pity. And that’s the lamentation which Arjuna externally was exhibiting in the first chapter of the Gita. Oh, I can’t.
How can I kill them? It’s going to ruin my life. They’re part of my family, and I can’t do that. And we start wallowing in self-pity.
And then we can’t do our responsibility. The second type of lamentation is what my grandma used to call atma krandhana, or the crying of the soul. And we realize our fallen position.
And the third type of lamentation is transcendental. And we see, we hear the gopis crying in separation from Krishna and like that. All three are lamentation.
But there’s three very different types of lamentation. And I think this is kind of underlying what you’re saying. Many people have self-pity.
And when we have self-pity, it’s very destructive. Many people, they can’t face what they are. And so they take to drugs or alcohol to forget about the fact that they’re an abuser.
They’ve abused women. They’ve hurt other people. And so they can’t face what they are.
And they’re wallowing in self-pity. And they can’t face their own responsibility. So we need to come to the point of bishad yoga, which bishad means two things.
Bishad means lamentation. Abish means poison. Ad means to accept.
It means a yoga of accepting poison, the poison of my fallen position. That’s the beginning then of atma krandhana or the crying of the soul. Oh, it’s beautiful.
So three types of lamentation. And this is a big subject, you know, we will discuss it in the future, but it’s a very important point. So when we are saying take inner change, that should not go into self-pity.
And I beat myself down. I feel sorry for myself. But it also means meant to make us connect with Krishna more enthusiastically, to call out to Krishna.
Yes, true. So shall I try to summarize? It’s a big discussion. I will see what I can do.
So we discussed today broadly on the topic of it became almost like going beyond conspiracy theories. So we may blame people individually when we face problems, either our own problems or problems in the society around us. And when we expand that blaming mentality, we might blame some one particular agent, one particular cause, and that can become like a conspiracy theory.
And so the problem with that is, first of all, we don’t know enough to say that one particular thing is the cause of all problems. And it’s more likely that the problem is more like ignorance or incompetence rather than malevolence. And even if it is, that there is some one cause of all problems.
So what are we going to do about it? That whether it is, say, somebody spreading biochemical, by doing biochemical warfare through pathogens or somebody trying to convert a whole country. How is it if we become more obsessed with evil, then focusing on godliness, then we will end up becoming agents of evil, as you quoted the Aldous Huxley. Yeah, so then discussed, you mentioned this point about the two quotes of Bakhtisaraj Thakur about reformation, that criticizing others is actually very difficult work.
And a guru has to do that. He says, I am forced to do that. But why are you going out of your way to do that? So criticizing could also mean obsessing over the evil in other people.
And that’s why we might criticize and that can bring out the evil within us. So the real problem with conspiracy theories is that we become more conscious of the problem than of Krishna as the solution. And then that can distract us from Krishna consciousness.
And Krishna consciousness is the primary solution. And as a tool within that, there could be various things, you know, there could be some managerial change, there could be some change in power, there could be bringing awareness of some problems, various things. But when there is a conspiracy mentality, then the second thing that is a tool becomes the first, becomes the primary.
And Krishna consciousness is like pushed, retired upstairs. And then we end up often being a part of the problem rather than the solution. And then, so the world does need, in a sense, reformation is required.
But to think that we are the reformers, that is a problem. And then you talked about how we focus more on the domain of ideas. So at the transcendental level, we need to know that it is Krishna who is the solution.
And if we are a part of the solution, it is because Krishna is acting through us. And we need to stay connected with Krishna. So there is more of a positive focus in trying to solve the problem, rather than criticizing things.
Like Prabhupada didn’t criticize Gaudiya Mata so much as he focused on creating an alternative in the form of the Krishna consciousness movement. And the problem with the conspiracy theory is that it creates a culture of distrust. And we can question authority, but it is more important that we find like-minded association.
So Varnashram is not so much about dividing people into society, but creating a like-minded association, having like-minded association, where we all can make the contribution that we are meant to do. Like Arjuna fought, somebody writes, the different people may do different things. But it needs to be in the context of our connection with Krishna, our devotion to Krishna.
And you also gave the example of Gaurakeshwara Babaji, how he didn’t see the immediate that these people are beating me, but he saw that Krishna is doing this too. So we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it is Krishna who is acting. And then I mentioned these three things that purity to stay, if you want to make it, we all want to make a change, contribute to change in the world.
So purity to stay connected with ourselves, then humility to know that it’s not that I have the full solution, but I’m a small part of a bigger solution. And I can see a small problem which I’ll work on. And then maturity in a way that we don’t disrupt what is working, but focus on creating something which is constructive.
And while working on this inside out change, taking responsibility, we can avoid going into self-pity, beating ourselves up by knowing that our focus has to connect with, to become connected with Krishna, not on beating ourselves down. Did I miss anything important, Prabhu? Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. I was just thinking when we were speaking about all of this, that some of the biggest demons and conspiracy mongers, one of them was Kamsa. And he got together a whole gang of great demons.
What was the response even of the devotees, the members of the Yadu dynasty who were living in Mathura, who were great devotees, Jiva Goswami comments about Akra and how someone asked him, look, what are you doing, man? You’re working for Kamsa. I mean, what are you doing? And Akra, Jiva Goswami says that Akra said, no, you don’t understand. I want to be there when that day comes and he dies.
He’s killed. I want to see that. But he has faith in Krishna.
He’s waiting for Krishna. And he’s so tolerant that even he’s still working for Kamsa because of that, he can’t do anything else. Bhishma Dev is another one who’s working for Duryodhana, but he’s actually a devotee of Krishna.
So sometimes devotees, rather than seeing conspiracy theories and taking upon themselves of fighting, sometimes great devotees like Akra and Bhishma Dev even seem like they’re working for the wrong side. Even now, there are some Bengali, even Bengali Vaishnavas, the Bengali nationalists, they still don’t understand why Bhaktivinoda Thakur stayed in the employ of the British government instead of countering the British government. So, of course, he was working inside out for change.
And Bhaktivinoda Thakur also had quite relationships with the British government. I think the Governor General came to Mayapur. And so, in general, our tradition didn’t focus so much on gaining political independence.
So some people might say we were cozying with the opposite side, the colonizing side. But actually, we were doing what, our Acharyas are doing what is required for raising consciousness in that situation. So, that was a superb point that I never thought of correlating Kamsa with conspiracy theory.
Kamsa was really, even when his wives would come, he was saying this is Krishna and Balaram. So that is the extent of obsession with that. Of course, he was being conscious of Krishna indirectly.
But in that case, he was fearing Krishna. But we are not, when we get caught in conspiracy theories, we turn away from Krishna and start dreading something else. But you know, that is a beautiful example of correlation with Kamsa.
So, thank you very much Prabhu for your time and your association. I look forward to your association again in the near future. Okay, my friend, you please keep doing what you are doing.
Thank you very much. You are a great inspiration. I really appreciate it.
You are a fount of such wisdom, maturity and realization. And today’s talk, I especially found that your consistent, consistent emphasis on cultivating Krishna consciousness and not getting caught in something that was, in the previous session, you talked about create practical room for yourself, for your creativity. But in today’s session, you focus on that point that, you know, we don’t think that any practical solution is the ultimate solution.
You have to focus on Krishna consciousness as the ultimate solution. That was a, that is a wonderful point. Thank you.