Youth outreach for community-building & world-transformation, The Monk’s Podcast 113 with Radheshyam Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Gracias. Hare Krishna Radhe Shyam Prabhu.
Please welcome to the Monks Podcast. Hare Krishna. It is a long cherished desire to have you here.
And I am grateful that you could spare the time today to join. Thank you. and the entire culture of serious spiritual discussions.
I learned from you when I was at Pune. You spend a lot of time answering questions. And then when we were doing classes together in youth outreach, we would discuss how to present concepts, how to answer questions.
So I think the taste for philosophical discussion, I have got it from you. So I’m grateful that you are here today. And I thought we could discuss about the topic, which I know is very dear to your heart, as well as you have done landmark contribution in this, which is making spiritual knowledge relevant to the youth.
So I will start with some questions and then you can share your thoughts. Yeah. Thank you.
One of my interests in reaching out to youth is to see, you know, very intelligent youth like you reaching out the message of spirituality to the whole world. When you were in Pune, I remember in the very early days, you became a writer in Speaking Tree. I have never seen somebody writing 50 articles in Speaking Tree.
You know, in those days, we used to think that Speaking Tree was one article in five years, but you wrote in one year so many articles. So I used to always think that the intelligence of India is going all across the globe for further studies in MS and PhD and people become technical business magnates and they are running big industries across the globe. Some intelligence of India, the Brahminical intelligence, should also become utilized in studying Gita and spreading across the globe.
And you are doing it through the Gita daily nowadays. Every day people are opening their smartphones and reading your Gita daily articles. I feel very joyful to see that.
So I feel that this kind of outreach that you are doing is reaching to nook and corner of the world. So the young Indian’s intelligence should actually spread the Vedic wisdom like a lighthouse giving light to the ships in the ocean, ocean of this Kamsara. So India is a spiritual capital of the whole world and you are actually doing such a valuable piece of work all across the globe.
I am very grateful to you and I’m very appreciative and I feel proud of having the opportunity to be one of your colleagues in the same ashrama in your early days of practice in Pune. Your humility is heartbreaking actually. You were my guide and mentor and I still see you as one of my most prominent spiritual teachers.
So, so taking this forward, how did you become inspired to focus on youth outreach? Was it something which say even in your pre-devotional days you had a zeal for sharing wisdom with others or it was primarily after you are introduced to Krishna Consciousness? One of the primary inspirations for this came in my engineering days. In my first year engineering, my father actually brought me to Chennai and told me that since you are from a Brahmin family, I want to see you staying safely with Brahmin as good association. So he identified two Brahmin boys staying in one room and requested them can you please take my son and keep with you so that his character and good values will be should be preserved and they agreed.
So I joined their room. But within a couple of days I came to know that they are Brahmins in name only. But they used to bring in suitcase or liquor bottles.
They were reading pornography books. They were smoking and getting into all kinds of dirty habits and I was still shocked to see that although they are born in Brahmin families, they have a sacred thread, but they indulge in all kinds of impure habits. And when I went to my college also, I saw students suffering from drinking after the exam results would come.
So at that time, one type of very strong urge arose in me that actually we should teach the modern day youth, you know, leading a very clean life, life free from bad habits. That’s one thing. And after that first year of stay with these fellows, in fact, I but by Lord’s grace, I could preserve my purity living with them.
I learned from them what not to do. That’s what they taught me. And in the second year and third year and fourth year, I got a very good companion, one Krishna Kumar.
Right now, he is in a very senior position in Rashtriya Sanskrit Association, which is propagating Sanskrit all over the country. So he’s in a very active role there. So he and me, we both stayed together and then we used to walk for our first time to Vaishnava’s house.
So he would always every day tell me two, three words from Vishnu Sahasranama, names of Lord Vishnu and explain to me the meanings. He came from a very pious family. So in his company, I could also advance in my devotional service.
Prior to that, in my seventh age, we used to have a lot of spiritual books on various organizations and they had a group of 25 students. During my seventh, we used to come together for spiritual discussions like that. Of course, we were not very clear about what the ultimate truth is and what is God and the goal of life.
We were not very clear. We were very sure about one thing. Spirituality is very vital.
You know, material pleasure is not all in all. The material pleasures are actually often deceptive, you know, and we actually used to discuss about how to control the urges like lust, anger, greed in us and also help others also to rise above them and develop devotion to God. So we used to put up festivals for God as well as at the same time discuss about overcoming the lower urges.
These were some of the discussions we used to have. So when I met this boy, it was a very nice company for me. So when I came to IIT Bombay, when I was studying, what really took me by surprise was Americans.
For the first time they came to the campus, I saw, you know, tall and shaven-headed and wearing saffron and taking Mridangam, Kartal books and then giving a lecture. It was very, very inspiring. Yeah.
Before you get to introduction to Krishna Conscious Devotees, little backtracking. So it seems your upbringing was not just like nominally religious. Your upbringing was also quite spiritual, isn’t it? You seem to have a very clear, clear understanding of the values to live by.
So overall, how was the atmosphere in your home? Was it like devotional, ritual or philosophical or how was it? Actually, my father had done, you know, many English degrees like M.A., M.Phil. And he was very fond of Shakespeare, you know, Charles Dickens, Oliver Goldsmith, you know, Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and this kind of authors. So he collected thousands of books practically at home, few thousands of books he had. So in my school days, he would give me five, five books to complete with me, like Ulysses, you know, like Jonathan Swift’s, that Gulliver’s Travels.
He would give me a few books I would read and then give it back to him. So he was building my values and morals in my early days. And also I was living in a village set up where many Brahmins were living in one lane and we had a Vishnu temple.
We would go regularly and hear Ramayana Katha, Mahabharata there also. So both spirituality and morality were actually embedded in our lives. Not only me, there were about 20 to 30 students in lane.
We were all friends together. So that’s how we were brought up in our very early days in our village. When I came to fifth standard, we moved from village to town and then that seed which I got in the early stage helped me to look for more spiritual knowledge and philosophical knowledge.
Actually, me and my friends were more on the philosophical side, discussing about meaning of life, goal of life, why this world is created, who is God, is God personal or impersonal, why these lower natures are dragging us down, these kind of things. So it seems that you had a religious or devotional upbringing, but also you had a wide reading exposure. So I think for somebody living in a village to read so many, not just contemporary western authors, but classical western authors, that’s not so common in India.
Actually, my father was an extensive reader. I have read a few books, I can say. My father was actually into English.
He was a head of the department of English in a government arts college for 35 years. He was teaching English and mathematics. So because of that, he would inspire me also to read.
And we both have written also some of the essay contests, like CSR, that Competition Success Review, you know, he would write contests. So there was a lot of encouragement I got in literature, studying and learning, and that gradually, inclination towards spiritual literature increased over a period of time after that. Yeah.
So even writing was a habit which you had at that time. Eventually you become a prominent, a prolific writer in bhakti. So even writing, the roots also were from quite a young age for you.
Actually, my father would correct my grammar always. When I would write, I would give it for evaluation. Then we both will send it to the magazines.
So in one sense, everything in your life was preparing you for the time when you came to IIT Mumbai. And then you saw, as you said, you saw the devotees there. So can you describe what was it that attracted you about them? One of the first things that attracted me was that Westerners are actually taking to the knowledge of Bhagavad Gita and practicing it and preaching it.
You know, although they have very, I mean, their culture is quite different in the Western world there. For them to come to India and live in this equatorial climate now, hot climate and wearing the robes of a saint and, you know, accepting, adapting to the Indian scenario here, you know, where the kind of, you know, facilities and amenities are not as much as they have it in their country, which is pretty lavish for them. So they have sacrificed their lavish facilities.
You know, they have given up their motherland and they have come to India here and they adapted the very culture wholeheartedly, not just superficially. It is not lip service or something. There are even many Indians who once in a week or so go to some temple and ring a bell, but rest of the time they are absorbed in their, you know, material progress, you know, just money making and, you know, career making.
And they don’t have much time for God. But these people have given their lives to God totally. So that really deeply touched me.
And when I went to the class, I heard them speak Sanskrit verses eloquently. So I actually, in my third standard, once when I was walking on the road, I heard the Sahana Vavathu verse. Sahana Vavathu, Sahanam Poonam So the dissertation really touched my heart.
So I requested my father, why don’t you put me in this Gurukula instead of that school? But my father said, see, you come from a well-to-do family, you know, we will call a Gurukul teacher to come and teach you at home, he said. Some mantras you can learn like this. No problem.
Vishnu Sahasa Namastotra, we will, you know, train you in that. And you don’t have to go to Gurukul and join there. You become an engineer or a doctor, you know, and these things you can learn side by side.
He had told me at that time. And then he told me, after becoming a doctor, if you still have a desire to be a monk, I will not stop you. Then you can go ahead in life.
He was a very open-minded man, my father. So, therefore, when I saw these people, I felt this is what I should be doing. And I was thinking, if I just become an IT engineer and just make a good amount of money and fill up my pocket and I went in a small family, then what about the millions and millions of suffering souls in this world who are actually suffering? I already knew by the time because I had gone to a dozen organizations before that.
I know about cycle of birth and death. I know about the transfer of soul from one body to another. I know about Moksha.
I wanted to be more clear about what is the ultimate Moksha. I wasn’t very clear about that at that time. So, I knew very well that in this world, the goal of life is not just earning bread and butter.
The goal of life is not to chase after the mirage of glitter and glamour. The goal of life is actually to attain perfection of the Ananda, which is Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vijnanamaya, Anandamaya. So, what is that Anandamaya state? Is it a standstill state of peace or is it meeting the personality of Godhead and exchanging love with him? So, those kind of questions I had at that time when I was meeting these people and then seeing them very eloquent in their scriptural study and in their practice.
So, two things at that time very much attracted me to ISKCON in their training programs. One is, you know, in ISKCON, they teach you to utilize all your senses in Lord’s service rather than denying the senses. Like many other organizations taught us to go to Himalayas are very much restrictive, you know, shut your senses or deny your senses.
It’s self-denial process. Whereas in ISKCON, I found that with your eyes, you can see the beautiful deities. With the ears, you can hear beautiful songs and hear lectures.
So, this kind of engaging senses is one thing I liked very much. Another thing I liked very much in ISKCON society is, I always thought in my life that I should not attain liberation alone, myself. You know, I should do some good for the other suffering souls also.
Why should I selfishly think about my own moksha? That is some kind of selfishness. I clearly knew that even before. And when I came to ISKCON, precisely it hit me really hard when I learned that in Prahlad Maharaj, Sripada Ramanujacharya, you know, Haridas Thakur, Vasudeva Thakur, they all actually have taught about how to work for liberating the suffering people in this world and take them all back to the spiritual abode.
That really like resonating with my heart when I heard that. So, Srila Prabhupada repeatedly says, we should live in the heart of the city and we should do welfare work for the people and supreme welfare is to connect all the orphan children who have turned away from God back to God and make them supremely happy. The goal of our organization is to make everyone supremely happy.
So, somebody is in a small house of five, six members, somebody can identify with their caste people, somebody identifies state people or country people. As our love expands, it’s called love agape, we call it, which is a universal love. Universal love is actually a love for not only humans, but all creatures.
As Krishna says, Sarva Yonashi Paunteya, and that really touched my heart. Krishna is a father, all Jivas are his eternal children and Vasudeva, I have a Kutumbakam and ultimately he wants to see all the sufferings come from material plane to spiritual plane and that really clicked for me very well. I understood this is what I want to do.
Oh, it’s amazing. So, you could say that what you had, the values which you had already learned, you got further inspiration and direction about how to channel all those through your association with devotees and then more clarity, more energy. So, specifically, how did you get into, you focus on youth outreach? Was it because you were introduced as a youth to spirituality, so you naturally felt inspired to continue that? After I completed my studies and joined the temple in Bombay in 1994, when I joined the temple, I was given one of the first services of spiritual scientist magazine to you know, print the magazine and publish it and every month distribute it also, you know.
So, it was like, to begin with, we were doing like 500, you know, then later on about 1000 magazines. So, I have to raise some funds for it also, for getting it printed. There was one Chaitanya Valla Prabhu in Bombay who was helping us with some donations also and we would collect and then we would get the articles written, printed, published and then reaching out to various addresses, maintaining databases, big services at that time.
In those days, later on when you took up that service of spiritual scientist, you made the e-sign also and then it virally went all over the world, thousands and lakhs of people watching it. In the early days, it was going to have a thousand, two thousand people. So, that was one of my very early day services.
Another service was to go to college preaching. So, I was doing college preaching also. These two were main and also rolling chapatis for the devotees in the kitchen.
I’m doing some service in the deity department, cutting fruits for the deities. Radha Gopinath would be Pujari and I’ll be assisting him cutting the fruits. So, these kind of services I was doing.
So, that was the time I felt that the youth preaching. So, before I joined in 94, I was working in Pune between 92-93. So, that was the time I was staying in Negri where I was working in Thermax company and in my room I started some youth activities, youth preaching activities there.
So, eventually we found that 20-30 youth started regularly coming and getting connected and attending morning program and evening. Then I would go to the Niggade Krishna temple and put a book table there. In the book table, many intelligent people would come and purchase books and ask questions also.
One of the people who came for the book table was a very brilliant boy with a spark in his eyes, very intelligent boy. I requested him to write an article on vegetarianism. The next week he brought a 10-page article.
On a rainy day he came with an umbrella and gave it and that was the boy who later on became Gauragopal Prabhu. And similarly many other people, Sundar Krishna Prabhu and people. So, I understood one thing, putting book table and reaching to the youth in the temples is one thing and also going to the you know, houses and conducting program where both youth and congregation were coming like that.
So, that’s where my interest was generated and then when I joined the temple, His Holiness Bhaktivedanta Maharaj told from Rajanath Maharaj that Rajanath has been doing youth preaching. It would be nice to put him in youth preaching. Like that they were told.
So, in 1995, I was sent to Pune just after one year, three months. So, in Pune, both GBCs, my spiritual master from Rajanath Maharaj and my GBC of Pune from Gopalakrishna Goswami Maharaj, both of them at two different times told me to do youth preaching separately. Rajanath Maharaj wrote a letter to me when I reported him about what’s happening in Pune.
So, he gave eight point instruction one by one. In that he told me that college students should be encouraged to complete their academic studies and they should not leave the studies in between and let them complete it. At the same time, they should practice Krishna consciousness side by side along with their studies.
And he also had mentioned that you should emphasize on the philosophy and as well as the practices as well as the Vaishnava culture. So, Siddhanta, Swadhyaya, I mean Sadhacharya, they should be taught to be engaged in Seva and at the same time they should be performing their duty to parents. Everything should be balanced.
A very, very beautiful letter. So, that became like a blueprint for me. And then I started in Pune and things were booming over the years by Lord’s grace.
It built up, built up, built up from 1995 to 2003. So, 2001, we had coined the term BACS, B-A-C-S, Bhaktivedanta Academy for Culture and Education. Then eventually after three, four years, I found that the term became very prominent and many other temples started using it also.
But the problem was the BACS term was used more like a place where youths congregate, stay together and take prasadam. That became BACS in some places. People just stay together, have a cook, the cook cooks nice prasad, they take prasad, go to college or school and come back.
But the morning programs were not very much emphasized and the philosophical training program in some places across the country. And at the time we designed a new name called VOIC, V-O-I-C, Vedic Oasis for Inspiration, Culture and Education. So, that it will have its uniqueness, it will have its purity standards, it will have its very well documented goals and objectives, mission, goals and objectives.
We did that and eventually we saw the preaching expanding very powerfully. Various leaders came up, came to the preaching and by the grace of Vaishnavas in Pune temple, we have a community of 6,000 members, all married people, married community members and almost approximately 500 celibates have not only come through Pune, they joined, they were all sent to different parts of the country, almost 14 different temples. They were, I guess to some temples we sent 25, 30, to some temples we sent even 40 or 43 also one of the temples, some temples we sent about 15 like that.
I clearly told them in 2001, the goal is every Indian Niskanth temple should have 50 brahmacharis and 1000 congregations. I told them that effect whatever we can do, we will do. So, say for example, I am sending 10 brahmacharis to one temple.
So, but then they will go there and preach. Just picturize that in your mind how wonderful it will be every temple has a thousand congregation and you know 40, 50 celibate devotees staying and taking care of the lordships and preaching and distributing books and everything. So, in this way we will have a very nice and India Prabhupada says is actually a spiritual capital of the whole world and then later on these temples can cater the needs of all the other temples worldwide and they can help and assist in propagating.
Lakshmi Prabhupada himself went in his old age to preach in America. So, we also want many, many educated Indians who have either become good grahasthas or even grahasthas I would say every age of 50 grahasthas husband and wife can become international preachers. You know they can actually their son and sons and daughters are grown up and they can actually take care of their business then 50, 60 you have earned out some money you know put it in the bank and then go around the world and preach those are especially Indians and those are brahmacharis they can take sanyas and they can also go around the world and preach.
So, it will be very nice missionary lifestyle which this is what Shri Prabhupada wanted. Yeah. Yes.
So, actually in one sense from Pune you have been able to demonstrate I would say at least in the contemporary ISKCON history a new way to build a community quite often the focus is on say building a temple or focus on book distribution all these also have eventually happened in Pune in quite phenomenal ways but the idea of say having a focusing on youth and yeah taking the youth uh youth outreach as the crux of the community as the as the nerve or the vibrant center of the community. Exactly. So, from youth brahmacharis come from youth congregation grahastha husband wives come and when their wives come they do children preaching and they do girls preaching wives so they bring the girls they bring their children in fact we have almost 60 couples in Pune who are leaders called counselors in within the counselor system we have about 4500 people 4500 people we have and then another 1500 are upcoming devotees.
So, in this way we we see that over a period of time the cream leaders are the ones to ultimately take care of the community congregation but the temple brahmacharis they stay in the temple they cater to various categories boys from the age group of 10 10 to 18 we call teenage boys and then 18 to 25 we have the boys we have the boys voice and everything and those boys are working we call it as a yoga group we call yoga stands for youth of gods above so we have one group for them also and then they get married life by 27 28 they join the congregation so and the children below 10 are taken care by the ladies the temple is like the heart through the youth outreach everything that is required for a community develops in one sense if I was thinking that the Prabhupada also started like that isn’t it in America Prabhupada focused first on individuals and then eventually temples were built and then rath yatras happened and everything happened yeah I think what you’re saying about putting the horse before the cart that’s what so Prabhupada was not exactly doing college outreach but he was also youth outreach in a different way because in New York in New York many many people became celibates and in San Francisco almost all became and there has the couples yes so both types of people he got yes for you so now when you’re talking about the youth centers voice so typically what would you feel are the challenges that the youth face in taking up spirituality taking up because at one level it’s India’s own culture it is India’s own wisdom but what are the obstacles that they face in coming to in embracing say Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom and how do we facilitate them in in removing the obstacles for them okay in in our experience I tell you there are so many years of experience and there are different type of youths like we find that majority of youths because of the media madness you know the smartphone you know where they watch different type of YouTube movies you know they play video games and and all the time you find them with the smartphone they have the and the smartphone nowadays especially the pornography so this is one category of youths who get carried away by and the glitter and glamour of the world outside through the media madness this is one category which actually carries them away I observe that that means you know we can say immediate pleasures petty pleasures you know that glitter and glamour attracts the one category of youth then there are others who are not after just the enjoyment in life not just the eat drink be merry there’s a little more serious category they are more academics oriented and they think that in India the university pattern the examination dates are all unpredictable there’s uncertainty and unpredictability and they’re all the time in tension about you know writing assignments and the writing tests nowadays it’s increasing more and more load is increasing academic load in fact IIT Hyderabad three boys jumped off from a building I mean committing suicide because nowadays academic pressures are increasing and job placements have reduced so there’s a lot of worry about job placement worry about academic pressures so then where is time for spirituality they are most of the time worried about academics so that is one category of people we find and then we also find people’s you know suspicion you know doubt in accepting the authority of God religion scriptures you know people have become agnostics because of global you know now there is a like the whole world is part of the global village now everybody is connected to everybody else in the village through the net now people know all over the world so like many Americans are coming to India to learn the Vedic culture and now Indians want to go to America to enjoy the western culture you find like that like you know India we can say is like a spiritual capital or a spiritual lighthouse I told you you know America has a statue of liberty it’s a country which actually teaches freedom of speech freedom of thought freedom of action so Indians sometimes feel boys feel restricted in India they want to go there and experience freedom and Americans have already experienced the freedom they want to come to India and learn self-restraint you know they are more interested they come here and our people go there you know so going abroad getting placed in good jobs making a lot of money enjoying life you know need drink and be married that becomes main goal now there are youths who are pious coming from pious families and also little inclined to spirituality so we have a very good series of programs beginning with the course called discover yourself first we do one-time program in the college on topics like power of habits you know or stress management or art of harnessing mind power which is done for like 500 or 800 students we do you yourself have done a program in NIT Ravikilla the beat the mind 1000 boys attended that is the biggest program we have done till now you know where you know thousand students four digit number attending under one group which you did yourself so this type of programs we do in the colleges and then after that we don’t chase after uninterested people we only we know very well according to Vedic life so there are four categories of people we call it Tata we call it teachers administrators traders artisans so in these four people the artisans should learn loyalty the traders should learn morality the administrators should learn religiosity and teachers should learn spirituality so loyalty morality religiosity and spirituality so what is religiosity religious is not just some rituals are right they should actually you know protect the dharma in the country dharma also include the respect for women you know protection of the cows protection of children you know protection of all the people and protection of the teachers of the wisdom of the Vedic literature so so the therefore if you see these three or four categories that in a typical Vedic community there will be if you take thousand people community you know there will be you know one brahmana at the top you know like one brahmana and nine kshatriyas and 90 Vaishyas and 900 shudras like we call it four categories which means one teacher and nine administrators and 90 traders and 900 artisans okay like that so if you take a typical Vedic community therefore the spirituality is most easily understood by the teachers level which is actually very therefore even Shril Prabhupada said all over the world even if you know five percent or ten percent of the people take to Krishna consciousness the whole world can be happy he said because they will spread good vibration through the administrators so the kings or administrators can do see the difference between administrators and teachers is what teachers are advisors administrators are actors like you know Krishna is giving advice Arjuna is acting like that yes so these two people combined they can actually do great good to society so therefore we also in our preaching we want to see that those who are actually having refined culture coming you know those who have a spiritual inquiry you know so if they come to our programs and even if the number is small we don’t worry but we see that there’s a good number of people having such inclination also the administrators and the teachers they can actually transform society exactly yes so you are in a sense you are very and what struck me about what you explained is two things first are you talking about how there is a structured program for everyone but you also have a clear vision about whom you are targeting yeah who’s the target audience yeah so so from your experience although you have a specific target audience even that is not small there are a number of students who are of the relation of teachers and administrators yeah actually one another good thing that happened by a lot of ways is that we are not confining only to Pune you know we have devotees sent to Kolkata Kanpur you know Bangalore Hyderabad different different place parts of the country so just like you know if a tree is producing some fruits and then you take the seeds and you sow the seeds elsewhere then they all grow trees also it multiplies it has a multiplication effect because they all put their efforts in fact they grow better in another place than getting choked in one small place too many people trying to do big thing in a small place so when they were when they were given went out opportunity and they are all doing very nicely in their respective places now now if you see all over the world there are two things everybody is looking for ego-friendly environment eco-friendly environment and ego-friendly relationships that’s beautiful because for health what we want for good health we need eco-friendly environment even people working in IT company go to the garden and sit with the laptop in the garden and they’re taking a deep breath they don’t like a synthetic office isn’t it similarly people are looking for eco-friendly environment but ego-friendly relationships with people so you will see in our training program we focus on you know good health good habits values character and loving relationship so these kind of things we emphasize in our training program so when body has a good when they have a good health and good habits then the mind is peaceful a healthy mind and a healthy body so people eat pure food you know they they lead a life free from vices like meat eating gambling intoxication illicit sex you know then they have pure habits so they have good health they have pure habits then that that leads to a very peaceful mind yeah and then they’ll be able to focus on living a life based on values and character values morals ethics character with all these things and spirituality becomes something within their grasp yeah that becomes a springboard for them to from there jump to the spiritual understanding the spiritual understanding is another mystery one requires a very cheerful and peaceful disposition of the mind to be able to focus on that modern day youths are actually you know struggling with their body and mind not knowing the right path so therefore our presentation of philosophy is the most relevant to them their lives ours is such a beautiful and pure lifestyle our youths actually sleep by nine get up by three latest by 9 30 get get up at 3 34 in the morning six hours they sleep they eat the purest of the food it is not only hygienically cooked it’s offered it’s a karma free diet it’s offered to the lord so they eat pure food and like i remember i had gone to one company seminar on stress management they made the big big managers with the coat suit tie and everything they told them to run in the hall touch that wall that is his fault whoever does it 20 times and comes first they’ll get a prize they said so they made them run back and forth and after 20 many of the managers are breathing heavily running and they gave them a gift also and the speaker of the management seminar was telling i wanted to bring out the child in you he was telling because you guys have become cooked up in your head with too much stress i want to bring out the child in you so many many such techniques are used by management experts to bring out the child in us but we have a program every morning which brings our child in us every day which means you know to be enthusiastic to be cheerful to be dancing to be singing so our boys do it every morning they dance in circles you know they dance in formations they sing they also do meditation by chanting you know and they also hear a class for about half an hour 40 minutes from the gita every day one sloka they hear in this way they are doing every aspect of a human personality is taken care because if you take care of only the body somebody is going for gym and keeping a very healthy body looking body or jogging or you know arabic exercise many many people different exercise that’s like we call them as a good animal because they only take care of the body but if somebody keeps a very good relationship with family members and friends you can call them as a good friend somebody keeps somebody is very expert in their profession you call them as a good craftsman and somebody connects with god through prayer every day call them as a good saint and if you take all the four aspects you know good animal good friend good craftsman and good saint this makes a complete human being and that is our training our training is not one-sided people have a wrong notion that spirituality means all the time you chase after god you don’t do other things actually we we balance we have a study chart for the college studies also many of our boys who are seventh graders became 9.5 9.8 graders in just a matter of staying just one year in fact many of the university toppers are devotees also may have university toppers department toppers in computer science and department the reason is we just don’t you know you know go in a one-sided way for spirituality we keep a balance of everything that’s fascinating so as i said that sometimes people’s perception is that spirituality will make us too impractical or otherworldly so what you are saying is that by spiritual practices a person can even become more competent in their material life because of the regulated lifestyle and good habits and good health very naturally most of the students i remember when i was in iit days you know the students will call me for eating out in woodlands hotel in the campus i won one boy call him at 12 30 at night i said well that you’re going to eat now he said yes now we are going in a group come on you also join us i said i have a fixed time for eating and we have morning and afternoon and evening so boys have very bad eating habits sleeping habits pre-mixing with the opposite sex and also in order to forget their tension and stress they drink and they smoke and they take the drugs and modern day students are really suffering very terribly and our movement actually can teach them first of all lead a regulated and pure lifestyle by which they will feel even material happiness right now people don’t even know how to materially become happy also in the name of becoming happy they are actually increasing their sufferings it is it is actually worsening their situation but they are imagining it to be happiness in the name of happiness so therefore in our training program we we give you attention to every aspect of life and overall when we have this this program so how did you evolve the idea of a voice and creating a structured program so did you based on your experience of living in living in a college and sharing bhakti at that time is because that is i think the specific idea of a center associated or dedicated specifically for not just youth to come and attend programs but to live together that is itself a significant you could say adaptation which has been very powerful in helping youth take up spirituality so how did you come up with that that vision or that particular idea this idea first time in 1996 when when there were a group of six students in the early days you know they were becoming devotees so the first thought came to me because i was very fond of gurukul i told you in my third standard i saw the gurukul boys so i thought that gurukula is the best place where you know children come together who are spiritual minded they come together you know they take only prasadam they lead a clean life and also prophet says in his network instruction and all like in chamber of commerce all the stock exchange people come together you know birds of the same feather flock together so keeping that in mind i had gathered five six five to six people in the beginning and they stayed together and they went to give a program and i found that for the weekly program they get 40 people for the weekly program these are only five six people each of them call their friend five to six six so i felt that these five six people are like brahmanas i told you spiritual they they can understand spirituality well but the next 30 40 people who come they may either be administrators or they may become traders so if they become administrators they can also assist in expanding the movement and if they become traders they can fund our programs they can assist in sponsoring our events and all so they brought people like that so we understand that even if 40 50 people come at the end of the day you may get about 10 like i have very simple formula we start with four five hundred people in the college one time program we do at the end of the year people who stay in our center we get about 10 people that’s all 10 committed dedicated so first year i get 10 second year i get 20 total 20 and then total 30 so in a given center in four years of preaching you can have about 30 to 40 people staying and then they will start passing out also like that so we don’t aim at a very big number and out of this we find maybe two may want to dedicate their lives fully in two or three max and the others seven six seven people and sometimes even eight also may want to become married so the number may appear small people may say oh they may get discouraged also that’s all but in the long run it has a multiplied effect if you work on quality you get quality quantity for a period of time yes so there’s a nice point so if you focus on quality initially and then the multiplier effect because the year after year things are going on so when you chose to focus on youth outreach yeah i’ve been traveling across the world and of course in the other parts of in america and uk and australia the challenges are significantly different for them much more for youth outreach but youth outreach itself requires a significant uh investment of resources not in terms of time energy devoted resources so how does this start means you say you have started doing it for you did it in pune but other temples have also taken it up over the years yeah because in general we also look for say if you’re putting in efforts what are the results that come in so youth outreach takes at maybe half a decade or more to provide it takes considerable time it depends on the leaders of the temples only certainly in pune i was a president on one hand i was also the youth preacher so because of which i could balance both it was easy in some temples the youth preachers are different and temple president is different and sometimes their interest may be different also temple leaders may want some life patrons to uh donate money to the temple and they want that more instead of youths taking seven eight years to dedicate their lives or become committed to justice it takes time certainly only like we say you know when one should be actually looking for uh one should be able to have a like we say long-term vision one should have only then one can appreciate this but the temples have seen across the country in india i see the people have understood it’s very valuable to have intelligent educated devotees who are very humble uh committed and uh you know very focused in proper admission such people can do very great good to iskcon society in fact many of the youths actually can run small small preaching centers in different parts of the country eventually iskan also has a plan to have like you know 2000 or 3000 uh preaching centers in the country now right now we have about 800 temples across the world but eventually number of small small mini centers are going to increase and each mini center will require a good leader capable leader dedicated committed devotee you know so many of these youths as brahastas or brahmacharis whatever capacity they can you know they can actually lead the centers and do great good to the world you know why only people should just become doctors or engineers lawyers accountants why not some of the in the vedic times the brahmanas were not only brahmacharis necessarily some of them are also similarly we can also have leaders uh who are actually leading small preaching centers and instead of going to a company and earning money they actually distribute proper books they do harinam sankirtan they cook prasadam and distribute and people who come and hear the classes and they give classes so people become inspired and they actually fund the temple by charity and this kind of it can increase in fact ramanujaputra freedom if you hear in south india i heard there are 5000 cottages in south india made by ramanuja it was like a you know covered in the top with the pillars you know and open space open thing people can come and sit in the evening and do kirtan together and study ramayana mahabharata bhagavatam and books like that you know and people would gather together satsanga hmm so that’s the whole principle people unless they come together they are not together in the evening to you know discuss something spiritual then they are going to have mundane engagements people okay so our our goal is this make circles of people we have bhagavatam study circles in a bhagavad-gita study circle in each circle about 10 10 people come together and they study the spiritual books and get spiritually awakened and once they’re awakened they will be light emitters they will not be sufferers anymore they will be wisdom emitters light emitters and they will do great good to the world that’s true so there’s one thing about sometimes people are especially concerned in india that we are making so many people into brahmacharis and they neglect their family responsibilities so i think one thing which you as far as i remember you were one of the first persons to emphasize that uh in our movement when we when we do you thought people have become brahmacharis that they should actually students should complete their family responsibilities and not just either abandon their education or abandon their family correct so uh can you explain how how this is done and what inspired you to focus on that aspect also yeah actually we teach people that mother and father are the first gods in life and it is a fact actually we say no first mata then pitha then guru then dev in india it is well known so the child sees only mother who is the breastfeeding mother without drinking the breast milk of the mother child has no scope to grow at all in life child will perish actually without that so the children should be taught first to respect the mother then the mother shows hand to the father then the father takes responsibility for the child and then educates him grows him up and then engages him in a job and then the father shows hand to the guru and tells the boy learn spirituality learn good principles in life what to do what not to do from a guruji then guru shows hand to god guru shows that ultimate goal of life is to go back to godhead and while executing your duties to go back to godhead you also have to balance like dharma should be balanced with artha correct no both should be balanced like when narada met uh are you doing only artha at the cost of dharma or you are doing only the cost of artha or you have shunned both dharma and artha for the sake of enjoying the petty pleasures of the world like that so generally we teach this only but it is seen that sometimes the boys are very outstanding in spirituality and they develop a very deep taste even in the first year second year they exhibit because where does it come from it comes from the previous lives krishna says that jignasarapiyogasya shabda brahmatiparthate satratambuddhisamyogamarte paurvatehikam he says so then such people we tell them that okay you have a lot of interest dedicate your life but not now first you finish your studies and they finish their studies by 21 and we tell them to work for at least a few more years they have to work and earn money to support the parents so they work for about four five years and after that also they have to ensure that their mother and father will never be alone and cared for at any time in their life no mother father should suffer without food and they should not be in the street or tomorrow coming to the sun in the ashram saying you’re better you have no money please help us it shouldn’t happen and also many of the boys have sisters you know parents are worried about the settlement of the sister like i myself had three sisters you know i got them all married and settled and my father actually was a millionaire he had you know he had a few crores of property so money was not a big issue but still i worked and earned some money and gave so we don’t admit anybody into the ashram unless they show us in black and white paper clearly that my parents have sufficient amount of money and my sisters are all settled and many of the parents of our brahmacharis are staying right next to the temple there is one krishna dhama apartments in pune where more than 25 to 30 parents are staying and the parents are very happy seeing their son there’s a dedicated namaste they hear their son giving classes to thousands of people parents themselves they applaud they appreciate like one of our boys from pune he is the president of the kanpur temple it’s called kanpur temple so his parents went to wisconsin kanpur they saw the 14 acre land and they saw the guest house they saw the huge temple there is a very big big temple there is 80 crores temple and there are hundreds of thousands of devotees visiting there the father and mother had tears in their eyes they said son my son you are doing such a good job you’re leading such a big community here we are proud of you you are you are actually they were saying that you know in north india as you know very well people you know propagate this hanuman chalisa also ramayan katha bhagavad katha and all it goes so the parents saw that this intelligent son who is an mba you know he’s propagating through the mass media you know spiritual sound vibration and the whole world is suffering from you know impure material vibration and you are actually you are youngsters as well as the community members are all reaching out to so many people we are protecting the cows they have a you know you have such a nice spiritual books being distributed and children are being trained in good sanskaras youths are being trained in very pure habits and everything parents are very very jolly they stayed there for a few days they said if you are simply an mba working in a company we won’t be so happy as much as when we see you leading such a wonderful project and doing great larger good to the society you know may the wicked become virtuous may the virtuous become tranquil may the tranquil become free and may those who are free set others free isn’t it so it’s such a good work it is so in this way many parents come and tell me we are very joyful to see a person doing this type of service in pune we have vice president his parents are in pune his father himself gives charnamrit comes to the temple his mother is coming for seva to the temple so actually there are only a small fraction of parents who have opposition maybe i can say two percent one percent that is because of the son’s irresponsible behavior not because of any other reason actually responsible sons make sure that they take care of the parent even i myself although i had three sisters and i am the only son my i have been in regular touch with my sisters sisters children my parents on phone and i visit the homes of home also regularly take care of them my father was telling i’m really proud of you although you are a busy man traveling across the globe you always keep an eye on your sisters families and children and encourage them guide them and my father got old he was 84 mother was 80 they both actually wanted to shift to pune although they were in local language here hindi but still they said we are very happy to be next to the krishna temple so they took a house watching the temple go upram my father spent his last six months in pune and left his body and and in this way not only my parents i’m telling my mother also my mother was coming every day temple morning evening and she made friends with a lot of devotees in pune so in this way the parents actually get a very glorious opportunity to grow in krishna their sons and daughters were practicing so our moment is a very very moment with tremendous positive energy we are not people who teach people to give up the relationships and escape from the relatives we actually tell the different hindi we say connect everybody to krishna that is the way we have been training people and also the people who join say india has 120 crore population if you take so even if we take one percent of the population becoming saintly people how much it should be one crore at least one crore are there one crore sadhus in india if you take all the sadhus in iskcon sadhus it will not be not even be 5000 in india so where is one crore where is 5000 how much percentage of 120 crore think about it no it is not even 0.1 percent it’s less than point yeah 0.01 so why do people make a such a big hue and cry i don’t understand for this if that small if that small percentage of saintly people are not there where will this country go to india is actually the land of saints it’s a land of ramanujacharya madhvacharya shankaracharya you know tukaram in the narsimhaitha india is the land of saintly people great saintly people so one mother was telling me i’m so proud to see my son as a saint falling in the picture of the great saints of india so but there are a few parents who make a big hue and cry we don’t discourage them we tell them take your son your son is here son is first the property of mother father we don’t take anybody against the parents we tell the parents take him home if you are convinced in his training program here you send him otherwise we will not take him we have done that for a few people yeah and then the boy goes home parents see that he’s very very sincere stays for six months one year at home and then he comes with the permission of the parents yeah oh so you’re saying that they need the parents consent yeah that’s true yeah oh in fact even for our one year course which we do yellow brigade first year they have to take permission for the course income yeah oh okay overall yeah do you see you we have been you have been doing youth outreach from the 20 1995-96 roughly so we’re 2020 now the world has changed significantly in the last 20 years especially with the spread of the internet yeah so have you had to do some adaptations in your youth outreach we do a lot do you see the receptivity increasing for spirituality or the the distractions increasing and the receptivity of spirituality decreasing because of that or how are things happening yeah actually the taste for spirituality has also increased a lot in the recent past especially during the covid time people have become very inquisitive like i did one course called gita rahasyam you know thousands of people participated now i heard that many other temples also started similar 18-day program and they are and they are actually connecting the lakhs of people actually now during this period and also as you rightly said times have changed in my times we never had even a mobile also we had only a landline slowly the mobiles came over the period of time now there are a lot of things which people do through you know media like whatsapp and twitter facebook and things like that but actually i have not in our style of teaching as you as i told you we are actually looking for people who are very strongly inclined to spirituality so we don’t too much focus attention on spreading a very wide net we don’t do that we actually do only in the beginning little bit and then after we do one or two such programs after that we have a very clear cut six session program and then subsequently three camps we hold in one year period or so we come to 16 hours of chanting hare krishna so our focus is mainly on the serious practitioners now somebody may say if you do that then what will happen to the rest of the world will they not get neglected or something but there are many other actually are doing large-scale outreach also there are many people who are in youtube they are heroes even in ISKCON i’m telling you like we have Amoghila Prabhu, Amarendra Prabhu, Gauranga Prabhu even yourself we have many other preachers like that who are actually reaching to lakhs and lakhs of people the large number of operation also get like your Gita daily actually goes to lakhs of people actually and your lectures also podcast and everything goes so i feel that there are many preachers who are reaching out to large number of people in fact from that large outreach some some people may become interested to be put through the training programs and all and so i would say that my strength or my focus has been always designing courses like discover yourself then after that that’s a game PT we call it Gita for all made easy positive thinker course we have in fact and and even for those who are organizing our voice centers we have a management course also called as email we call it efficient management and inspiring leadership e-m-a-i-l okay so that is a 32 session goes to our seats so we have training program for that and then we have another program called slate we call it sermon leaders applied training and education so this is this is about you know 60 topics each topics in six hours you know so therefore our training programs are all for serious people and those people who are really keen to take such ongoing training and therefore of course on youtube we have certain lectures going on for the mass of people also but that we don’t put too much energy in that um yeah we are actually looking for people who are actually looking for spirituality and uh and we screen them out and only take them we have even iq eqsq test also we have you know actually why we do that i’ll tell you it is better to get interested people than get people interested otherwise then otherwise what happens both will suffer like you know i am trying to induce the spiritual inclination in somebody and they are not interested it becomes like a like a snake is unable to swallow a frog and swap both are suffering frog is half inside half outside wagging his hands and legs and snake is also not able to swallow him so both teacher and student will suffer from that so we are looking for interested people who are actually looking for knowledge of gita bhagavad-gita therefore some of our recent courses we are giving directly on gita bhagavad-gita we’re telling them this is what you’re teaching if you want to come you can come yeah that’s true so you know you’re talking about the internet even online there are a lot of people who are directly searching for spirituality also like what is the meaning of the bhagavad-gita how can i apply the bhagavad-gita there are there are people who are interested in utility and spirituality but there are also people interested in direct spirituality also yeah we need a structured way of reaching out to them and i think uh you have a lot of attractive acronyms also for all the courses that is something which you have been doing from right from the beginning right from base and voice and email and all this gita made easy for everyone game that’s also very easy gita for all made easy okay yeah attractive so overall when we when you are when you are reaching out to youth like this and from the youth whole community is building do we also try to build bridges with say universities and where we are doing our programs and say or we don’t want to attract uh means are our programs like parallel to the university or we are also doing something within the universities where we are going actually we could actually spiritualize the education itself if you could provide some spiritual impetus within the mainstream educational system that would reach a much broader broader reach of people then what we do in parallel in separate initiatives yeah when we go inside the university the number of students are enormous like for example in the first year about thousand students are joining and we will need many teachers to teach them number one number two another challenge we face is what when you go to university they will need more very elementary type of knowledge for the students like secular very basic knowledge like you know how to harness their mind power and how to you know develop good habits we teach without the core spiritual knowledge these topics are superficial for them they may attend we can we have even have courses like you know a dozen topics we have which we are ready to offer for the first year students and first students attend once in a month once in a month they attend and in the end of the year we give them a certificate they take certificate and go you know we have done such kind of courses also so now then what after that now how many students will you be able to reach i’ll tell you for example i was teaching eight and nine students in one single education in one of the schools i found that the children are sometimes mischievous they’re naughty they make sounds in the class sometimes you know sometimes they don’t keep quiet they disturb the other students also then we changed our style what we did instead of teaching values to all the children we make a colorful pamphlet and we give it to all the children to go and give home give the pamphlet to parents at home discussing the parents and come back and register for the course in each class about five or ten children register and you know six to seven eight nine standards and then those interested children are registered for them they need a program they are really keen interested so therefore in the schools also in colleges also we prefer conducting our program for the interested children who are voluntarily chosen to come for the program instead of doing it as a mandatory program for an uninterested lot okay yeah because ultimately see you know very well nowadays even tuition home tuitions how they do they advertise in the net and here is a teacher here is a student and then the demo is given by the teacher so the student likes the teacher teacher student match is happening then the tuition thing happens in the same manner we feel that some students who are inclined to spirituality now overall even krishna says that manushyana ratio so out of thousand people one is inclined to spirituality krishna said and out of the those thousands of such people one can understand in truth so now will it not be discouraging to the monks and the preachers when krishna says this oh number is going to be small therefore we don’t get into the number game because i know very well like i am one person in pune here i came in 95 you know i became a president in 97 now simply i have to stay in pune and practice spiritual life so that many many many people will come connect you know they’ll connect to the temple they’ll connect and i have to make sure that my my orientation is to take care that i simply become a transparent uh instrument via media in the hands of shilpa and my guru and i act as the like you know whatever they want to give to society i act like a transparent glass to give it to the people and then take the respect of the people and give it to them so if one person is acting like this he can actually touch so many people same way later on one becomes sanyasi he can do even more and one becomes a spiritual master he reaches to lakhs and crores of people he can reach like this so therefore i i’m i never bother about the the number uh which may be sometimes smaller and that is the reason i also in order to increase the number we have actually expanded ourselves to various centers we have sent but although we have expanded various centers i’m still in touch with many of the preachers monthly once we meet for a couple of hours we have we call it as when the groups we call it like for example 60 preachers come together in one forum so we have several forum blish forum gloss forum brinda forum like that i have forums where i make two two hours different groups of leaders who are preaching in different parts of the country so we all gather we discuss together and we do both we discuss the spiritual subject also that will nourish the leaders and make them strong leaders and we also discuss practical ways by which we can perform better in our service either we do both so in this way the preaching expansion is taking place like one example i’ll tell you you know bangladesh in bangladesh there are 42 42 voice centers bangladesh 42 voice centers amazing yeah and they have they have translated all our voice books into bengali and all these courses are going on there they conduct the same courses and all the top leaders i visit bangladesh one week uh in a month i mean one week in a year just i go for one week program i go but other times they are in touch with us through email and other things so and youth preaching is happening very very powerfully there and that land is a holy land that chaitanya mahaprabhu’s justice there so many many acharyas are born there so uh how this can be scaled you can see in the same manner in india also like like in puna we are preaching to 25 colleges 25 centers now if you ask in hyderabad if you ask in bangalore if you ask in kalkata and kanpur and dharwad and juhu and other places where we have sent devotees they are all doing very well um everybody is expanding very nicely so everywhere we are doing similar type of preaching only quality preaching we may get a small number of people but if you see the number of centers in each center you get small small groups of people the total is a big big number yeah like coming here we are going to celebrate the silver jubilee in our 25th year of pune uh our voice preaching so i told them recently to take a survey of how many uh people have become fixed up in our devotees and who those who are connected to our centers they said about 2300 people have been 16 hounders who have been uh fixed up stable devotees who are continuing yeah and uh and there are also many others you know who have got this disconnected from us but they are in different parts of the world also yeah so we may and lakhs of people are approached you know if you see several lakhs have been approached for the one-time programs like otp or impact program they call it in the colleges and that is also a welfare activity because that also ultimately reaches good vibrations to many many people and also inside the college also uh there are some clubs like grua clubs or swc we call it uh you know it’s called student welfare club which are actually run by a group of youth who are inspired by our programs and then they take lead in the college and do uh they like this poor principles you know no meditating no gambling no in touch no logistics and chanting one round some of them are doing it and then they are actually administrating many programs and we actually offer them support of preachers you know those who can give a sermon like that like we did one program for abvp group of people we did one for the uh you know nss nss also we did programs for them so many colleges actually request us to give programs especially for the leaders because they want the leader to have the character as their spine because without the character many leaders are falling prey to vices if you don’t become wise then we will suffer from vices yes therefore they are beginning to understand so i gave one program on servant leadership these kind of programs i also have a great desire then the time to come i have designed a few courses for uh mba students you know which can be done in the college on leadership like you know teaching them uh servant leadership you know that type of topics which could be taught to the mba students so we have some plan in the coming future at least we want to do some programs in the inside the college campus for like elective subjects you know they can choose like it’ll be affiliated to pune university yeah the gauranga prabhu is coming up with the brc bhaktivedanta research center so through that we may get affiliation from pune university for conducting some courses inside the college that we may not be doing but there are many congregation devotees already we have done in a few colleges and that we want to expand in a big way so that students who may not take the spirituality very seriously also will be benefited that’s amazing so over the years uh as you said through multiplier effect the multiple levels of people are being benefited and so how do you see the say our movement as it is expanding in broader the broader country do we see in the near future uh say you said that you would like to have something like 50 celebrates and thousand thousand community members in every community so in india do you see the overall trend as optimistic or because there is so much as a westernization or so much distraction for various reasons so do you feel overall the way things are going now yeah you feel optimistic about the future or do you feel uh that it’s kaluga and things are going to go down or how do you see the future basically no no actually as per scriptures also you know when bhakti mata goes abroad she goes and then bhakti comes back to india and after there is going to be a bhakti explosion all over the world for the next 10 000 years now only 500 years are over next 9 500 years it’s going to be a big bhakti explosion all across the globe and that is going to happen it’s already predicted in the scriptures and also la chaitanya mahaprabhu also has predicted it nastradamus has predicted it so there are many prophecies about how the spirituality is going to expand the world i see that although materialism sometimes rears its ugly head repeatedly you know it is not last longing it is a repeating theme we have seen in this world you know materialism increases and people get slaps and kicks and punches and you know everything and then again it goes down and then people turn to spirituality for example you know before the covid times you know you can see that man was headlong going in materialism but during covid time people have turned to spirituality in a big way many many places all across the country we are getting roaring response for children program for youth program congregation program everywhere all temples are reaching out to hundreds and thousands of people now so and also i am seeing that people have become more open like you know recently one one of the organizations had invited me i generally give them 10 topics corporate topics so i had given them but they chose this topic we want to learn learning leadership tips from hanuman’s lanka trip that is the topic they chose so i asked them is it all right oh everybody wants it you know we don’t want stress management time management you know we have heard it a million times from so many organizations now many are saying teachers from ramayana teachers from mahabharata teachers teachers from uh srimad bhagavatam they are developing a lot of faith now that the scriptures are having a lot of valuable tips for the leaders to to apply in their lives therefore recently i published a couple of books one called art of smart work and just a smile two books and i want to produce some 10 books like that which i could conduct in companies but these are all actually uh you know character development and leadership skills development based on scriptures like bhagavad-gita srimad-bhagavatam so one of my two goals i have in this corporate uh programs one is to teach the people that most of the ideas you learn from self-help books and they are only in tidbits that they are offering you the original source is the scriptures like gita bhagavata mahabharata ramayana they give actually they go to the root of the problem but self-help books may help you to superficially you know find out a mental adjustment whereas scriptures teach you to go to the root of the problem therefore go to the scriptures that is one of the goals second goal is to teach people that the supreme lord krishna or rama or vishnu they are the embodiment of oceanic sublime qualities and like krishna the mentor you know i have uh i have uh 10 clips which i have put it in leadersvoiceindia.com there i have uploaded it leadersvoiceindia.com and i will be uploading many more such clips why because these clips show clearly video clips they show that lord actually is a first class leader he is empathic uh in understanding problem he’s a he’s a uh you know friendly leader empathic leader he’s a philosophical leader understanding leader encouraging leader so this type of so when people see that they get twin advantage one is they get some tips how to become a good leader and they develop affection for the lord also so in this way they develop attraction for lord krishna at rama and also they also develop faith in scriptures as the basis for all you know scriptures as a basis for getting ideas for effective leadership and management even all the 32 topics i do in my email posts they’re all based on shivamathbhagavatam and the chaitanya tamil yeah i use that as the basis so then people say that my administration leadership management in my company is interwoven with my real life they feel that it’s not compartmentalized not that i have to put a facade in the office and i have a different person at home and i have different you know you don’t have multiple identities you will be like janaka no or one will be like ambarish maharaj vishnu maharaj for them everything is imbued with spirituality so they will learn that yeah yes you can on a concluding note can you tell something about your books various books which you have written and because you have written a lot of books in what inspired you and how they contribute to your vision for outreach yeah actually i have i mean i prepared the one of the first books i prepared was discover yourself which is now much much more evolved now over the years now if you if you go to dys.radheshnamdas.com i have uploaded the recent ppts also there dys stands for discover yourself so it is a it’s eight session course now and the book is also getting refined now and the ppts are much more simplified now very easy to use for anybody and that has become internationally acclaimed course because youths across the globe where you find it very logical and very scientific very reasonably presented and the spiritual subject matter is presented in a way that youths can grasp it very easily they can appreciate it with a lot of video clips and everything like that like i have taken some videos on discovery channel and i have also quotes from einstein and many other scientists like that so they find a blend of science and spirituality and after they complete that book i had a series of books called as essence of bhagavad gita five volume edition now that is the series of volumes i am modifying under another name now called gita for all medicine okay again this gita for all medicine why i am changing it the reason is i had in those days um you know questions for which they have to write exhaustive answers but now i am converting them into multiple choice questions easy to answer you know and that kind of questions i am making it so and i am also making the lessons more lucid so i have been polishing these books and apart from that i had one series called spirituality for the modern youth the after the discover yourself there is your best friend and your secret journey victory over death so these books have multiple articles which will reinforce the spiritual faith of the apart from our regular courses these are like self-study books which students can read our students who are serious about spirituality they read this book and there are some small pocket books like stress to smile art of smart work so there are a few pocket books like that so those pocket books are easy to read so many many people tell me even today the art of mind control in those days had published a book it must have printed about probably you know 50,000 to 100,000 books must have gone you know about the years because it goes like hot cakes used to sell it in five five rupees since the early days so people it’s like we can say like appetizer we can say when they buy a small book and they read it wow it’s interesting now i want something more what is it take bhagavad-gita i can give them then they can then the bhagavad-gita is bulky but they will want to read it because now they developed interest now so that is the goal of the pocket books yeah so these are the things currently uh i’ve been doing and now i understood that although i’m making these books many people across the globe may not be getting it so nowadays i’m making uh the sites like bys.tradition.com h1 and the leaders voice india.com i told you so these are sites where i upload the videos as well as powerpoints anybody can download and i forgot to tell you one very important goal of my very existence is to actually assist the preachers across the globe in providing them materials like for example gita rahasya 18 powerpoints are there they are 19 powerpoints for 19 chapters in the first can and in the same manner discover yourself powerpoints so one of the goals is to make books and as well as powerpoints and videos which can be used by the preachers themselves and they will i am very very sure if preachers get these materials and they use it and they feel some gratitude and they bless me and that will help me make progress in my spiritual life also that’s one of my goals in uh in making materials available and to the people make it very user friendly and there are many people right next to me because that’s so not only i want to reach the students and teach them krishna consciousness i also want to prepare because you know as we get aged as we get older you know one of the aspects of servant leadership means a good leader is one who makes many leaders it is said not only that he should actually leave behind a legacy which will be last longing for long long time to come he leaves such a spiritual influence which will not be forgotten for a long time the materials that he leaves the vision vision objectives that he has taught it remains to people and then they’ll be able to utilize it and the good work will go on for a long long several centuries it can go so that is one of my goals in making the materials accessible but the basis of all my materials is purpose books i i generally hear proper lectures a lot regularly every day i hear a few lectures and then make i take proper lectures only and make it more simpler and i mean add pictures and everything and make it uh approachable easy for the people so that’s one of my ambitions in life that i become a servant of the devotees and provide them materials for preaching and make it easy make preaching easy for them make it user friendly like recently we made this uh quizzes online quizzes for the dvs it’s become very easy now so one can go to and same with my youtube channel also uh in my original i had done this the whole madhya lila i completed uh two months of one month ago i completed that whole madhya lila chapter i went to verse by verse with purpose of purpose also reading it and elaborating it like so in the same manner first the college youth then the youth preachers you know then the congregation teachers so for all these people if i can give support and tomorrow i’m very very sure that if they all get some kind of assistance in their preaching it will be a very good service for them yeah ultimately we are trying to please proper if proper becomes pleased by this little endeavors actually proper later on i was surprised when i saw some of the proper letters where i read proper says that same thing what we are doing for youth preaching proper is saying the same thing in his letters he says go to the universities go to the colleges preach to the youth and evoke interest in them and don’t just preach one day and go away you know stay for a few days and create interest and then those are inclined some are intelligent men you know recruit them in our movement as dedicated leaders to run this movement and take this then our movement can go to great heights reach the people so it has been proposed this year proper actually got one facility in gorakhpur university they were ready to give land to properly inside the university for starting a center many universities are now realizing it’s very important for our boys to be taught from vedic literature like panchatantra utopadesha chanakya nithi ramayana mahabharata bhagavad gita and all and the beauty of this are what they give you day-to-day you know usable tools also at the same time they are all basically from scriptures so they are like true north they are spotless so therefore i am very very confident in the time to come india is going to flourish in our spirituality and going to become a beacon light for the whole world in spirituality and hundreds and thousands of preachers are emerging now you may be aware that you know in gv has produced very good subodhini guides after which the culture of studying bhagavatam all across the globe has increased now very very popular chaitanya siddha amrita and srimad bhagavatam in the same manner gv is doing a very good laudable service in reaching across the globe i feel that these are all actually lords the divine orchestrations by which he is going to manifest that golden age of 10 000 years what lots of the mahaprabhu period is supposed to happen that’s going to happen the time to come that’s amazing so you know not only are you see i guess by hearing you talk you can feel infused with the missionary spirit to share krishna bhakti but not only the spirit is important but the resources are also important yeah one sense uh the books that you are providing are like resources if warriors are there they need fighting spirit but they also need weapons so you are providing them both it’s wonderful so i’ll usually at the end of the podcast i try to summarize some things yeah summarize what we spoke and then if you have some concluding words you can speak those are there other things you would like to discuss as such apart from this what you discussed yeah actually uh one very important thing that uh she’ll purpose wanted and proper names we have nirvishisha sunyavaji it is said the purpose name so the proper desire was actually the western purpose it had two ambitions here one ambition is to make all americans into vaishnavas and the second ambition is to make the whole world vaishnavas through those americans now proper said this was his two ambitions so now due to the new age invasion now there has been a great scanty population of people becoming very dedicated serious devotees so in the recent past there has been a lot of discussion about many of the leaders are talking about how the west that could be very good preaching uh expansion so that is one of my prayers and one of my longings to see that not only good pitching happens in india which is naturally a punya bhoomi you know people are naturally spiritually inclined but in the western world also we need to generate large number of devotees like proper during his times in proper times there were 10 000 devotees i heard uh 5000 initiated and 5000 were aspiring from proper so one proper in his old age did what a magic or a miracle so uh i would uh pray that you know in the west also uh in future we want to see many of the indians you know those are very stable in that spiritual life go to the west and assist in the mission of kira papa giving the taste of krishna consciousness to the westerners not just the taste of vegetarian food or not just the taste of indian culture of wearing sari or just wearing dhoti or the indian cuisine or yoga but along with all any other indian attractive thing culture for them the spirituality especially the krishna conscious philosophy the esoteric philosophy krishna consciousness teaches us you know what lord chaitanya came to give the cultivating the feelings of loving separation from krishna so this is one of my most deepest longings even if i don’t get to do i would like to see many many indians taking this even the second half was sublime teachings to the people of the west i think this is the need of the hour now because america is the first world country and they are extremely influential all across the globe and i i’m very happy to see you doing a lot in america you have done you have influenced the professors and writers and you know many of the philosophers and everybody in the west through your lectures and everything and i wish to see that happening more and more yeah thank you thank you for your good wishes yes i think western outreach is a big frontier for us to move forward and you have also been doing quite a bit in terms of visiting there and establishing youth centers so yes there’s a lot to be done so i’ll try to summarize quickly so we discussed broadly the theme of youth outreach as the basis for community building as well as we can say broadly world transformation yeah started with your your inspiration about how you had very good values and devotional upbringing and then especially in colleges when you saw that it was very superficial people who came from good background also were not necessarily living living authentically and then when you saw western people taking up bhakti so seriously so in one sense indians were practicing superficially but westerns people were practicing so so seriously and that inspired you to yourself uh yeah become a missionary and your father told you nice question master himself he was a 19 year old boy when he came to india yes you know he was born in chicago he came in the age of 19 years and he was touched by the uh you know culture of brindavan dham where everybody everybody is the mood of a servant and so eventually he surrendered his life to kaupar so that and after i got to meet him personally and seeing his commitment and dedication and purity and his preaching expansion that was one of my great inspirations to get initiated by him in 1993 and then followed by preaching he has been always my great guide in my life because every year i get to meet him two three times for an hour or two each time and i report him and also take guidance from him on how i can serve better and therefore he himself is from the west and he did miracles in india by his preaching now he’s trying to do miracles in the west also yeah yes so thank you so you so you already in the childhood wanted to be in a gurukul and learn sanskrit but your father’s father said that first get academic education mainstream education and then if you want to do this you can do this so you felt my father said if you are academically qualified then people will listen to you yes that’s true even when i first heard from you the fact that you were a i.i.t graduate that was quite impressive so so then you basically were doing some kind of youth outreach even when you’re working in thermax in pune then you came to mumbai and started it started writing spiritual scientists and then came back to pune after it was remarkable after one and a half years of being in the ashram you are sent as a leader of a different project entirely and as a youth leader at least and then from there things expanded so the whole idea of voice i think the youth center base or later it was called voice and that is one of the most transformative contributions of yours many contributions but that has really provided a structure that can be widely adopted and replicated for the youth outreach and the fact that instead of community of 5000 5000 congregation and over 500 celibates that’s unprecedented in the history of our movement and so all that has resulted from youth outreach so if you place cultivating devotees right in the beginning and that’s like putting the horse before the putting the horse first then everything else will follow and then even when we take care we have youth so the obstacles that the youth face are some of them are distracted by media media madness some are very stressed out by the demands of the academic pressures others are obsessed with going abroad and having a better life so amid all this there are still some there are significant number of pious students who pious children coming from pious backgrounds who want to be to live a good value-centered life and so if we focus on those interested people there is a significant number so you said that the voice lifestyle which is regulated with healthy food healthy habits that helps them it’s called jet age group jet age group that’s a beautiful word yeah so that jet age one leg in the college one leg in the center so they earn engineering degree or medical degree along with that they also earn a spiritual degree yes so it takes care it provides them a steady material foundation by which they can take up spiritual life seriously and not only that it becomes spiritually committed but also they become materially more competent because of the regulation and discipline and what was especially significant i felt is that we encourage them to become responsible that they take care of family responsibilities and that very moving stories of a whole apartment of devotee brahmachari’s parents staying near the temple and appreciating and being proud of their proud of their children sons who have now become temple leaders and leading big projects so that is i think a significant misconception remover that what you shared over there and further we talked about when you’re doing youth outreach the focus is on providing engagement for everyone so that’s why if even if you’re focusing on as i said get interested people rather than get people interested so if in each place there may be a small number of interested people but if you go to many places then overall there is a multiplier effect and we get dedicated people so we focus on quality and we in one sense reach go to a lot of places so then we get quantity also in the long run and overall if each temple had that numbers are significant you know 50 and 100 50,000 50 celibates and thousand 50 brahmacharis thousand brahmacharis then our outreach could radically expand and it’s already happening through puna and so many other places and also you discussed how there is structured programs through very for various age groups and also for the students as they come forward through one-time programs and youth so i think this structure structure and clarity of structure of process and the clarity of purpose i think they are very significant defining features of what all you have been doing and then towards the later part we discussed you know there is every reason to be optimistic because spirituality is growing although you said the nice point that materialism goes up and comes down because people eventually get infatuated may get infatuated but they eventually get frustrated and so while focusing on those serious people who are interested in serious spirituality there is also a trickle-down effect where others also get benefited especially what you talk about i allowed the idea of you know teaching servant leadership by using the lord’s example so they learn values for good leadership but they also develop appreciation for the lord and there is receptivity in that sense so if it is it is presented in a in a value additional way not in this not in a sectarian way and it is it is there is a lot of receptivity so and folks marshal they call they gave me the topic krishna the mentor oh okay okay so then also you have very attractive play of words also what was it that leadership tips from hanuman’s trip that’s very good play of words and of course great acronyms like gita gita for all made easy and game so through all of these what is happening is you said that we can be very optimistic the 10 000 year prophecy of lord chaitanya is becoming manifested and being fulfilled and we all can become instruments in that so your specific legacy that you try to leave is that create dedicated devotee communities and then provide resources for devotees so that they can do outreach so those are your several of your books are resources like that and especially during covid is that a lot of people like gita rahasyam and others devotees have and devotees and new people are appreciating that and lastly to our western outreach you mentioned that there is a need for that and indians like prabhupada was one indian who did so much in the west so in future can hope that further some indians can also contribute to western outreach and that way that is significant i had not heard that prabhupada wanted americans to become vaishnavas and then americans to make the whole world vaishnavas wonderful and overall i feel that that was very attractive translation of what did you say that may virtues may wishes become virtuous become it can become virtuous may the virtuous become thankful may the thankful become free that is beautiful it’s a very universalized explanation of that verse so i feel this combination of of spiritual wisdom and proper structured implementation that has a very powerful potency for transforming and that’s what you talked about this tata also the teachers administrators traders and artisans so especially teachers and administrators they are going to be the leaders influencers of society leaders of society so if we can help them become spiritualized then if we can say spirituality for teachers religiosity for lead administrators then morality morality honesty and then loyalty yes so we can have in one sense very spiritual even if a small significant number of people become spiritual and a larger number of people develop some values that can actually help create a much better world and usher in the golden age yeah thank you very much large number of people talking about morals and values without that top two categories of people strongly rooted in spirituality if that is not there then this mass of people talking morality will not last for a long time although a lot of organizations are talking about values morality character importance and all that you know being good and doing good and all that but that will be very hollow without few people in the world very strictly showing the true not principles of spirituality that’s very vital so our goal is summarized i can summarize my talk with two phrases for our voice the motto of all is rekindling wisdom reviving love so love love is of the heart and wisdom you know we gain knowledge and then it turns into wisdom so rekindling wisdom and reviving love so when wisdom is revived gradually one becomes more and more realized to a point where one’s heart blossoms with love love for god and love for all so that is actually the goal of all our training programs and one person i would very gratefully remember now jesus grace antaradweep who is uh who has been like my younger brother right next to me all the materials which i’m preparing i’m very very haphazard and protecting all the materials what i’m making because in computer i have thousands of files and i’m very poor in keeping records but he is one person very meticulous very attentive in putting everything in records and making it in a way available to all the preachers and everybody i’m extremely grateful to him because without him now he is the chairman of voice now i have been a director of voice for many years but i met in the salmon of voice i see him as a very capable successor uh who actually knows in and out of whatever i i spoke uh he actually lives it and he exactly translates into action whatever i request of him so i am very very grateful to him without him i would be handicapped i can say honestly because i many times do many good things but i’m not a very good i mean i don’t keep proper records registers and also i’m very poor in modern day media that like in terms of you know now as you rightly said the media new new things have come up now and i use a simple you know this is my phone this is a better phone i use you know i use it only for receiving phone calls and making i never use a smartphone also so therefore having under the coupon the team of uh we call it as a domiciliary voice preachers and also there is one group called as a bigger group called as royal we call it so royal stands for actually rajarishi outreach you know youth uh rajarishi outreach uh r-o-y-a-l we call it actually s stands for leaders association actually royal outreach youth association for leaders actually you doesn’t have leaders actually these leaders are all youth pitchers in different parts of the world they all come together and i’m very grateful to them too because they are in the field they are actually managing and teaching and bringing success for proper admission i’m very very grateful to them although i may talk many things i put many things in paper but the translators are other devotees who are putting their sweat and toil in making nice things happen and grateful to every one of them and thank you for opportunity for helping me to think aloud about what we are doing and also sharing these things with you i’m sure will also give me more opportunity to contemplate and make our service better for the welfare of the world and i have a lot of things learned from you too because i have seen you from the early days if you remember you know when when you started writing uh articles and gradually bringing out books and the kind of vigorous outreach that you do i consider you like a walking talking university you know it’s like your university which carries you have bhakti shastra courses you are you are giving through your videos and you’re reaching out to scientists you’re reaching the philosophers you are reaching the students you are reaching to the even alachua senior deceptive paupers are appreciating your lectures you are category catering to the needs of different grades and levels of devotees across the globe so seeing you i feel what i am doing is a small layer of service one percent of what you are doing actually and i wish i take that inspiration from you and also you know in the time to come do something even more tangible um in terms of youth preaching um despite all my limitations thank you thank you for the opportunity you know it is humility leads to an inversion of reality so what i am doing is a very a drop of what you are doing and i am doing it also largely by the training and systematic thinking and uh and uh systematic especially i feel that if i have developed an approach for systematic study of philosophy and systematic presentation of philosophy now that is largely because what i saw you doing what i learned from you and when i assisted you in editing some of your books and you helped me in my writing so i’m grateful to you personally for all that you provided me with and over the years other services other dharmas have called me but many of our students are using your faq book faq book they’re using it for mantra meditation groups they’re using that they are also using many other of your books actually science and spirituality books also and you you actually bring out books exactly fitting the need of the hour when recession came in the world you brought a book on recession after that y2k sorry this uh after that we had this movies movie you know what is that movie which came pk and omg pk so how to respond to the false ideologies created by them you know so you you bring books exactly and especially your book on reincarnation which you published what is the name of that book we give it as a gift for all the winners toppers in the colleges oh okay demystifying reincarnation demystifying reincarnation lot of solid scientific evidences are given in that book very good book it is yeah so i find them very interesting now actually i’m reading your gita daily regularly to deepen my understanding of bhagavad gita which are multiple articles on even the same verse you know so i even make workshop for the students from your gita daily articles like you know from weakness to victory not weakness to wickedness yes this kind of you take some some inspiration from somewhere and develop it further because i usually talk about weakness and wickedness but it’s nice further play on weakness to victory so are you a victor or a victim you know so this kind of very very beautiful i’m getting lot of depth in your i see a lot of depth in your articles of gita daily and i’m going to plunge deeper and i am sure the more i learn them well actually they are very very fit for both two types of people for college youth and corporate youth for both of many of these things which are doing are very good so therefore in that sense i also consider you as a very vigorous youth creature so like pen is mightier than the sword you know i see that as your blessings i can continue my service in some small way i’m very grateful for you to spare your time and share not just your wisdom but also your i would say vision and especially your energy i always felt that whenever i get to spend time with you that urge to share spiritual wisdom with others that is what we all are in one sense dedicated to that but the energy is very evident in your words and your actions and i feel spiritually surcharge myself so thank you very much for your association and sharing your time and your wisdom thank you