Why our personal experiences matter in our spiritual journey, The Monk’s Podcast 169-Yogesvara Prabhu

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Hare Krishna Yogeshwar Guru, welcome back to the Monks Podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining today.

It's a pleasure to spend time with you. It's an honor and a delight for me to also have you. So I thought today we could discuss a topic about which on experiential spirituality in the sense that for many people their personal experience is the basis of what they decide to do in life.

So we could talk about when one's experience points us towards reality and when the experience points us away from reality. So how authoritative can be one's experience in making choices? It could be of course personal choices but we are focusing more on choosing one's spiritual path. So will that be okay? Yes, a very profound topic and very important topic.

Yeah, I'll do my best. I always enjoy our time together so the contributions come from you and sometimes from me. That's right, most of the time from you.

So now broadly speaking if you consider historically, if I start from a historical perspective say we are increasingly what is in the postmodern age. So in this age most people choose a spiritual path not because necessarily there some authority tells them to whether it their religion or whether it is some sacred text which they have. So sacred texts don't have the authority which they had earlier which is primarily in the pre-modern times and then if you consider the modern times which to some extent are still there in some parts of the world and in some parts we're going to postmodern times.

In modern times it was reason, logic, science that was the primary basis for deciding what is to be done. But then even so on one side science and reason pointed out the limitations or even the questionability of following scriptural authority by and large. So that authority was compromised or challenged and rejected by many and even science its authority has eroded because of various reasons.

One is technology has been found to be quite destructive with weapons of mass destruction environmental degradation and other things and also relativity and other things quantum physics for those who understand it that science is not necessarily a tool for gaining reliable knowledge of reality. Although people still use technology very eagerly in one sense but still science is no longer seen as the source of universal truth or universal good. So then in one sense people are left without both these you know whether it is scripture or it is science.

So most people turn to what is feel good now what feels good to me what does my experience say and based on their personal experience they decide to choose what to do. That's broadly the postmodern ethos as far as I understand it. I mean you can clarify that also.

Now this I just conclude this point this in some ways opens a lot of opportunity for us because bhakti is an eminently experiential path. Bhakti does give us experience of ultimate reality. So in that sense it is a place where people can turn to if they are looking for a experience of higher reality in the process that they are following.

So this is a quick summary of the topic of experiential spirituality as introduction. Would you like to comment on this? It's a critically important topic because it speaks to how people decide to live their lives. It speaks to changing circumstances around us.

I mean what a what a bizarre time we live in where such a large percentage of the population doubts the conclusions of science. Now you know it's ironic because at the same time some individuals within the Krishna consciousness community derive science. Let's say science is fallible and it cannot lead to the truth and so on.

And yet I think those same people would very quickly turn to science if they had a medical emergency or if there was some concern that required medical intervention or some other science-based remedy. But it is a strange time nonetheless when authorities have shed such doubt on medical research and so on that people who are not qualified, who are not themselves physicians or researchers, feel that they can adjudicate their own health. So without wanting to detour into that topic you're asking an important question, namely where should we turn for guidance? It's basically what you're asking.

You know how do we know where to find good advice for the important decisions in our life? One thing I would caution Prabhu is that you know you referred to us being in a post-modern environment and previously in the past people had a different habit and so on. You know that my field is holocaust studies and if there's anything that I've learned working in the arena of testimony by witnesses to the holocaust is that you cannot generalize about holocaust experiences. You have to particularize.

That's a distinction that a good friend of mine professor Lawrence Langer makes quite often that you can't any longer it would be prudent to not speak in terms of them or us or we believe or they believe. There are individual men and women and children who respond to the circumstances of their life in their own particular way and there's I think some note of caution that needs to be sounded about painting the situation with too wide a brush. There was a time when people were more accustomed to approaching the guru, the teacher and then there was a time when more people were accustomed to rejecting religion because history goes in waves but it was never universal.

It's never been that everybody rejects gurus or everybody accepts gurus or everybody rejects science and everybody accepts science. It's individual and I think in that individuality is the answer to your question. Yes.

So before we go ahead if I may just say one point that I fully agree that if sometimes we make categorization and that categorization leads to our imposition of stereotypes on people who approach them then that categorization becomes an obstacle in our dealing with them individually. That's definitely true. At the same time we do need some level of framework to analyze.

If I'm going to approach somebody who looks like a villager from Maharashtra then I would normally speak to that person in Marathi. I'm going to approach somebody who looks like an American. I won't speak to them in Marathi or Hindi.

I'll speak to them in English. Now it could be very long. Somebody who looks like a very rural person might also know English and somebody who looks like American might have been in India and could speak to me in Hindi or Marathi also or Sanskrit also for that matter.

But it's reality so complex that if we were to approach everyone with complete individual openness it would be impossible to process reality. So for example now we are practicing bhakti. There is that much similarity between us.

Now even as devotees we know there is a wide diversity in how devotees are. So I would hesitate to reject all categorization as long as we understand that the individual is not to be reduced to a category as long as we use the categorization to at least broadly understand approaches. So my understanding would be that yes as you rightly said not everybody is a complete post-modernist nor is everybody a completely modernist or not.

Even today not everybody is. There are some people might be ready to open to accept spiritual authority also but understanding broad categories at least gives us some idea of available resources to know what to use and sometimes we're dealing with particular individuals we may need to use a hybrid approach. So for some of us even in our spiritual life we may to some extent rely on authority on say spiritual authority some experience we rely on our reason and to some extent we rely on our experience.

So we also would be hybrid but I'm saying that if we just reject all categorization then we would be left without any tools to deal with reality at all. So that's why I fully agree that whenever we have what is that saying as soon as you get a hammer you tend to see everything as a nail. So that becomes a problem but if you don't do that a hammer itself is a useful tool.

So like that categories are useful. So any thoughts about this? No I think you've said it quite well. Yes thank you.

So thank you. I hope I didn't interrupt your flow of thought. No no phrase your question so that we can engage in the discussion.

So the point I was making is that so when people rely more on experience than on authority of any kind so then how does that open for us doors for reaching out with Krishna to them? The one thing which I noticed in a significant difference in Indian outreach and western outreach is that in India when you speak and you quote a lot of verses it brings authority. People are impressed so you know so much scripture but in the west especially to a western audience who has not yet developed much you could say faith or faith in scripture for them if there is too much verse quoting it seems as if you're just throwing the party line. Can't you think for yourself? We just have to repeat something that someone else has said so to some extent quoting too many verses may actually decrease authority.

Decrease your or not you could say decrease one's own authenticity in people's eyes. So that is one thing which I notice as a significant difference in outreach. Again I don't want to absolutize but that's a broad principle so there in people want to see your own authenticity.

Okay what have you experienced? What have you realized? And based on that so if we share our personal experiences if you share something about how we came to the path or what we have encountered in the path so personal experiences in one sense attract everyone but I have been told and I've experienced also they seem to be far more convincing or appealing at least to a western audience. Again I'm using broad categories I guess we can't avoid using. Yeah I'm finding myself in a somewhat awkward position.

I think I understand on general principles what you're doing and the portrayal of different responses to sources of knowledge. I know as many people from India who do not accept scripture as I do people who do accept scripture and I know many people in America who prefer a scientific path and I know many people who are hesitant about science and are very devout in their particular faith tradition whatever it may be. So I'm not sure whether categorizing things as eastern and western conveys the point you're trying to make.

Let's see if we can find another way of framing the question. Okay so let's see there's for some category of people quoting authority is helpful and for some people let's not call them Indian or western for some people the quoting authority doesn't really bring much persuasion to the case or at least doesn't bring as much persuasiveness to the case as say reciting one's own experience and talking about how the path one has chosen has benefited oneself benefited me not in the egoistic sense but how it has helped me to become a better person. So in one sense again the idea is that where something comes from is a source of authority for some people and for some how this has transformed you that is a source of primary authority for some people.

So without naming the categories so this would this be a more acceptable way of phrasing things for you? Well I believe the starting point here as you and I were have been discussing this particular we've had now I think four or five such conversations they've always been very gratifying when we were discussing this one I think your point to me was that spirituality people take to a spiritual path and sometimes it's based on their own experience and sometimes it's based on authority and when does experience get in the way of the spiritual journey if I've understood you correctly? Yes. And you know if you take it kind of a half step back there I think pretty much everyone operates from the basis of experience and faith whether they're rational scientifically minded individuals their faith may be in the mathematics their faith may be in the numbers and the formulas but there's still a certain degree of faith involved that this is reliable this is dependable and the person who prefers to receive knowledge in a lineage of teachers their faith is in the tradition their faith is in the wisdom of predecessor acharyas their faith is in the teachings of bhagavad-gita and so on so different people have different kinds of faith and perhaps if I understand the theme that you've proposed for our discussion today taking even further yet a further step back I think we come to issues of personality and psychic history because our relationship with authority is very often dictated by things that happened earlier in our lives they're not all objective and rational. This has been coming up fairly often actually in discussion when we you and I have had conversations for example about why it is that there seems to be such a reluctance on the part of certain institutional officers to broaden the scope of initiating gurus to include women or other changes other such I would call them advances in the in the habits of of the Krishna movement and it's not always because of philosophical uncertainties I think it's very often because people emotionally do not want to be identified as the ones who change the parampara system you know that's dangerous you don't want to be the one pointed out as it's his fault you know he's the one who changed things and now look where we are or perhaps one someone may have been brought up in a home a very strict disciplinarian home I know for example one person who is from within Prabhupada's movement who had to go through a very difficult court case for allegations of child abuse and when I was asked to mediate this case and it came out in the discussion that this was someone who had been brought up in a very very military disciplinarian family where the way behavior was addressed was physically and we know that armies run on discipline and obedience you know you can't have an army uh where everyone you know gets their relative point of view you know if you were to stop in the middle of a military campaign and tell your superior officer well you know I'm not too sure about the order that you've just given me if that's legal or not or whether it's ethically and morally correct or not so I'm not going to execute that order right now I'm going to just send a letter to my family lawyer and I'm going to find out about the background and I'll come back to you maybe in about a week or so I mean you know you'd be thrown in jail for insubordination yeah so you know if that's the orientation that you've had then it might be understandable that your response to disobedience might be very strict it doesn't justify abuse by any stretch but what I'm saying is that we are fallible creatures we human beings whether we're wearing neck beads or not we come from very specific conditions a very particular kind of orientation growing up and very often it's those factors that influence our attitudes toward sources of knowledge toward behavior definitions of what it means to be loyal and faithful and so on so it gets complicated yeah of course this could go the other way also that somebody has had very unexplained unpleasant experience with authorities and then any modicum of authority which might be reasonable they might associate with unreasonability so I would say that experience can bias one both ways toward inflexibility and toward you could say uh toward an excessive tendency toward change also toward rejection of authority or toward absolute acceptance of subordination to authority so the fallibility of our being works in both ways yes it's of particular importance just now because historically we're at a time when the uh in the um the reliability of authority is front page news we're we're confront we're confronting a greater understanding of the institutionalized racism that has afflicted American culture than in any time perhaps since the civil war there are things finally coming out that frankly are shocking in in their scope and their depth and um you know the things that we used to take for granted about the integrity of office public office and so on have been thrown into uh extreme doubt so it's not uh it's not just an abstract idea it's not a theoretical thing this is this is front page news yeah of course many of the criticisms with all due respect again the two sides of the story many of the criticisms of the past are also made by people with very particular agendas to reject traditional sources of authority and then impose themselves as authorities so I mean the same extreme leftism which is challenging racism in the west of course racial discrimination has been there but we see the same thing challenging in India and in India in Indian textbooks it's being taught that most traditional Hindu temples were actually built by Muslim fronts and which is a blatant lie so I would say that this questioning of authority has also gone too far where blatant lies may be portrayed to to support authority and blatant lies may be portrayed to oppose authority also so there's extremism in in responding to extremism also yeah and it speaks directly to your question for our discussion here today because how it's it's becoming even more challenging to present Krishna consciousness to people in an environment where authority itself has lost much of its allure and value I remember meeting Srila Prabhupada you know that was 19 69 right so a long time ago there was something there even though there was still this sense of you know defying authority I mean it was after all the anti-Vietnam war era and it was the peace marches in the south the freedom marches and confronting authority was as prominent then as it is now but still there was some sense that public office for example has an inherent integrity and dignity to it I think that's been lost to a very very large extent I don't know people who have faith in public office anymore it's it's gone away and I wonder what it means for the future of of our nation now it's funny talking about the future of our nation when the ostensible topic of our discussion is the spiritual path I mean after all what does you know the operations of government and the the antipathies across the aisle have to do with our daily sadhana for example and I I think it might be surprisingly closer than people imagine if you think of it this way that we practice our Krishna consciousness in this country thanks to the privileges of first amendment protection there is freedom of religion in this country that is not there in in many other countries if you go to several countries in the practice Krishna consciousness in public yes our devotees in Bangladesh cannot you you take your life in your hands it's a very dangerous thing so I think sometimes we take for granted in America North America that our Krishna conscious practices and temples are a privilege that we exercise under constitutional safeguards and if those safeguards are threatened that threatens the integrity of Srila Prabhupada's mission so you can say well you know I don't really get involved in politics that's not my thing and to those people I say fine that you're prerogative but if you care about the future of Srila Prabhupada's mission you cannot ignore the larger culture within which we operate yes so at least some devotees if not everyone has to be thinking about these issues not everybody may be inclined or even capable of wrestling with such bigger issues but at least some devotees in some some levels of leadership positions or in thought leadership positions they need to be addressing these issues at least are aware of these issues so that we can deal with them appropriately or at least we know how to deal with them in their eyes certainly but I do think to some extent it involves anyone who is awake to the value of our Krishna conscious tradition and heritage and practices there was a time not that many years ago you know just within very recent memory when immigrants to this country were being turned away at the border where people living in this country with immigrant status were being sent home and if you expand the target from the specificity of Muslims to include anyone of Asian extraction then what's going to happen to all of our devotees who come from India here what's going to happen to all the people here who are still working to get their green card and who wish to practice Krishna consciousness and upon whom our temples depend what happens if if they're sent home so you know it wasn't that far-fetched just a little while ago and it could happen again yeah of course I would say the other extreme is also there that if there is excessive immigration from one particular demographic and that demographic takes over even then the religious freedom could go away even what to speak of in India in Mayapur devotees cannot go out and do kirtan in some parts of Mayapur because the demographic has changed because of Bangladeshi immigration so I would say the concerns are not just one way because of restriction to immigration but because of no restriction to immigration also there are there are problems all right now we're getting into it here you want to talk about the spiritual path and people's sometimes let us call it some people have a misimpression about what the spiritual path is as something separate from the workings of society and these issues about politics and government or finance or whatever that's not our concern if you think in terms of this moment historically being the moment of the largest migration of human populations in history oh yeah due to climate change due to political unrest there are more people uprooted from their homes sometimes traditional homes where their families have been for hundreds of years and forced to flee here on Long Island I attended a meeting about a month ago when the government was overthrown in Afghanistan I attended a meeting at the Islamic center here on Long Island and there were many different religious leaders speaking the president of the Islamic center is an airlines pilot and he described how he piloted three flights from I don't know if it was Kabul I think it might have been Kabul airport to America with with refugees and he said these people were getting on board the plane some of them didn't have time to put their shoes on some of them maybe had a backpack but that was all they left all their possessions and had to flee for their lives so multiply that by a hundred or so hot spots around the world and you get a little bit of a sense of the kind of movements of human groupings that are taking place today that's going to directly affect our temples that's not so far afield that we're not going to feel that impact and rather than taking a passive role perhaps it's worth discussing whether our call it Krishna conscious ethos our the role we are meant to play in society might actually include inviting some of these people and giving them shelter in our temple communities if refugees come they have not for all we know they could be doctors they could be educators you don't you don't when people get on a plane with nothing no identification no background no possessions you have no idea who they are so this is an interesting exercise if you're asked you know this person here is a very influential person in their country and they've had to flee their country because of political unrest or whatever it may be if you give this person shelter they have offered to get 100 people back home to chant hari krishna and read bhagavad-gita would you do it now change the offer this person has some influence back home and if you give them shelter they have promised to get 10 people from among their friends and family back home to chat hari krishna and read bhagavad-gita would you do it now let's change the offer once more here is this refugee coming from abroad abroad we have no idea what this person's background is we don't know what their skills are we don't know what their influence is but they need shelter will you offer them shelter what is the definition of our krishna conscious compassion how far does it extend is it qualified is it motivated or is it unmotivated devotional service these these issues should be discussed i mean if you want to talk about what is the spiritual path i think these are the questions that need to be addressed and i wouldn't put it as simply unmotivated and motivated even krishna states that he is giving this knowledge not to a beggar on the street he's giving it the bhagavad-gita knowledge is given to a rajya rishi a saintly king because arjuna is an influential person and he can influence society in a big way so it could very well be you know we are motivated but it would also be that we at this time in our history are a very small moment and we need to consider how best we can contribute to society so whether it is by offering refuge to a person how much is that going to in one sense promote krishna consciousness i don't think if we consider whether this only this one person taking up 10% taking 100% taking up that is necessarily a selfishly motivated calculation it could be to some extent strategy is always a part the prabhupada could have gone to some obscure country in africa and tried to preach over there prabhupada discriminated in coming to america and that's why we all have been seen so so i wouldn't put it as i agree i understand your point but i'm just in today's talk i'm repeatedly taking the opposite side i hope you don't mind that but i understand that's part of what makes these talks fun is that we get to take opposite sides with each other so prabhupada also when he was in india he whenever he went to people's houses for prasad one of the conditions from what i heard was that they should become a life member and life member means that they give us a significant amount so prabhupada could have gone to any person's house and there are times when prabhupada has gone to others who have contributed in a very significant way but not in a financial way prabhupada did that but prabhupada knew he had limited time and he had to consider how he could be most effective so i would say considering the effectiveness of a particular choice may not always be self selfishly motivated it could of course be no doubt about it but we can't assume that it is always selfishly motivated so we as a movement uh for example with respect to immigrants you know we as a movement really don't have much of a kshatriya component today so we have not developed that component of self-defense and things like that so what if that particular migrant is coming in turns you could say that person will be completely innocent of any extremist motives but it could also be that the person could be an extremist and there are well-documented evidences of through immigrants through the ranks of immigrants terrorists coming in and infiltrating into european countries and uh there have been harms now again i don't want to i'm in no way saying that all immigrants are to be treated suspiciously that's not my point i'm saying that compassion in the case of immigration it's nuanced it's not simple oh there's immigrants and we offer them it is our duty to help them yeah it is our duty to help of course also you know protect those who are offering that help and if you bring somebody in and that person turns out to be dangerous then we are just as morally responsible to those who are already here as in fact we could say we are more morally and spiritually responsible to those who have already taken up the practice of bhakti as we are to somebody who might be in future likely to take up the practice of bhakti maybe maybe not so it's a nuanced issue in my understanding yes of course my problem but used to say that just because we're compassionate doesn't mean we go around hugging tigers okay you know so of course we have to be discerning in in in our actions um at the same time we're also called upon by our faith to exercise extreme compassion radical compassion where the the calculation may not be as potentially lucrative or rewarding or safe as it might be otherwise you know the the situation these days is such that the person who delivers the mail to your door 10 years from now may be your child's spiritual master that's a radical thought yeah true so we had telling the king that you are the you could be a servant look at our look at ourselves as examples we can only just look in the mirror to see examples were we such you know hot shot uh you know heavy duty uh attractive uh targets that uh we qualified for extreme mercy i don't think so i remember sitting with sridhar prabhupada at bhaktivedanta manor it was out back on the uh the lawn outside his room it was a warm summer day and there were about 10 of us there chanting on our beats chanting japa with him and um looking around saying srila prabhupada you know raised my hand yes jogeshwara srila prabhupada if there are 10 people in a room and they're all equally unqualified for devotional service one of them becomes a devotee and the others don't why is that chaitanya chan i have to tell you he looked at me with such a pitiable expression like you he just shook his head and said don't try to find a formula for causeless mercy it's causeless and then he said ultimately it's up to the mercy giver so thank god srila prabhupada was not always calculating when we walked in the door well this one is worth getting some mercy that one doesn't look like there were thank goodness he didn't discriminate but your point is is well made of course you know we we have to be careful you know you don't want to invite trouble into your community so that's understood so overall i mean we started from the point of experiential spirituality so we have gone into a little bit into the not just the experience of people that makes them take the spiritual path but you could say experience of others as spiritual practitioners or spiritual seekers who are on a spiritual path and how we how that experience is shaped by our spirituality so one of the points which you were making till now is that uh i think that's where from there we went in different directions is that our our past experiences say our upbringing and other things they they shape how we see things and even in krishna consciousness so that is that is very true so maybe we could continue on that topic of course unless you want to continue in direction right now sure no the the only additional thought that comes to mind is that again you know when we talk about people on a spiritual path you have to be specific they're individual men and women on a spiritual path and for each one of those individuals the path may be radically different from the person next to them it's not one size fits all in krishna consciousness i remember someone coming to shreela prabhupada with the idea for a book 108 steps to self-realization that's a terrible idea he said it's not mechanical like that we're personalists you know each of us has a particular path in our krishna conscious life and it's very very unique to us yeah and we really have to be careful about judging other people by what we think is the right way to execute devotional service that's a very dangerous thing it's gotten us into a lot of trouble in in our society and years gone by that you know we think we know we know how it should be done and yet for someone else it may be radically different radically radically different and um i think our job is to really dig very deep inside ourselves and be willing to accept that this person's behavior is not up to standard they're not they're not up to standard but if they're sincere if they are sincere they have to be accepted the same way you can't reject someone because they're not doing regulative principles up to some uh you know general standard of things for all you know one year from now this person's concerns troubles obstacles will be resolved and they're going to zoom ahead a million miles past where you are today and you who are maybe doing very well with your 16 rounds and uh regulative principles psychically there is something you have not addressed yet and and it's creating this obstacle in your life and you're not getting past it because perhaps you're afraid to confront it you know the things that stop us in our spiritual life are not are very often not that we're neglecting to go to tulsi puja you know that's that's not usually what's holding us back from advancing spiritually yeah i think this is so true i've seen this through that if something gives me strength and it's wonderful i i if i know that and i can use that to strengthen myself my spiritual life but then what happens is if i find that someone else is having problems in their spiritual life i presume that they are that the problem is because they are not doing the things as i am doing them and that's what is causing them weakness but it could be very different so what you said is somebody's not going for tulsi puja somebody's not going for money program that's almost given like a standard solution to all problems yeah i i can i confess something to you i've never told this story ever oh dear i've never told this story before because it's so embarrassing i was a young devotee in paris maybe less than a year certainly less than a year and uh but i was very you know very proud of being a devotee and i was the first one up in the morning i led the kirtans now i lead the sankirtan party i was giving the classes you know it's like yogeshwara and i had a friend someone who was a friend who wasn't living in the temple he had a job outside in paris and um he was performing devotional service but he wasn't up to the regulative principles you know he was married and he had a different way of doing things so i remember once i was staying at his apartment i don't remember whether there was no room at the in those days the temple was just his little house so i'm not sure why i was living with him but i i went into the kitchen and i saw under the sink there was a bottle of wine an open bottle of wine and uh i got so this is wrong you know and i poured that bottle of wine out in the sink about a day or two later this person asked me if i could find some other place to live and there was an expression and he was in his face he was so hurt he was so uh humiliated ashamed disappointed disappointed in me disappointed at himself i can't tell you for certain but i've never forgotten that this this attitude that i had this holier-than-thou attitude that i was discouraging someone who was trying to be a devotee by judging him and by taking action like you know interrupting the life that he was living with i never told i've never told that story to anybody but it comes to mind now because i realized i was so young and so headstrong and so i i really lacked compassion you know i thought i was doing something to help this person in their Krishna consciousness not at all i was just being arrogant and um so i i think we need to you know do do better but now you know we're called upon to do better and and to be very very very careful to never discourage someone else just because they may not be doing it the way we think is right or they're not up to the standard or whatever you know our job is to encourage everyone be very patient understanding now obviously if they're hurting someone you don't let them hurt people you don't do that but yeah thank you for sharing this too it's such a delicate line and now i i would say out of your humility you're saying that you had a fuller than our attitude but you probably thought that actually helping this person and what i wasn't i may have thought that but i was pushing them away and i think it it probably interrupted their Krishna consciousness for a while thinking do i really want to be associating with such fanatics yeah it had the opposite effect is my point yeah i agree i remember once uh one of the senior leaders in india asked my spiritual master a question is that if somebody under us somebody whom we are guiding or training that person is engaged in some breaking of some regular principles so we see that we tell them don't do it but they don't listen to us then what should we do he said because they are doing something wrong especially if they initiated then we will we also get a part of the karma that they're doing especially if we have recommended them for initiation so the first thing uh my spiritual master said is that don't think about karma think about how you can encourage and help them so sometimes we become more karma conscious than Krishna conscious and which is that is not a factor which might have been in your mind but i was thinking that most preachers or devotees oh if i'm staying in a house where somebody's doing like this that's going to contaminate me with karma so that's also a factor so what he said is that yes if they're doing something something wrong you know we want to help them and if at the end of the interaction that person ends up feeling more discouraged than what they were in the beginning then we have done a disservice our purpose has to be to encourage them and what i understood is that and i talked with that devotee afterwards and he said you know this is he was it's interesting how people perceive you know he said that maharaj has speaks at a level of compassion that is not he didn't say that is not practical he says that is not practical for me so he said that so then he said if i encounter a person i will hand them over i'll hand their over to someone else so he was candid about that so i appreciated that also but it's true that sometimes i have seen the karma factor also comes in and we start becoming very calculative because even compassion becomes calculative so how is this going to implicate me or how i'm so it's in the bhagavad-gita i think 326 krishna says that don't disturb the minds of people even if they are attached and ignorant even if they are attached even if they're ignorant and even if you are enlightened and you are detached but engage them in a way engage in such a way that they can be gradually elevated so that is really tough and i think thank you for sharing that too i remember i have done many mistakes like this if you start making a record of how not to preach we can write a book how not to do it so i remember there was one devotee one one college friend who came to me i was in a we used to work together in the same company after i graduated so during the about 45 minute to one hour ride he would never i would never talk with anyone i would just be i think all of these are karmis they're just here for money so i'd hear some class or chance some rounds not talk with anyone so this friend was because we are from college we are friends one day he made the mistake of asking what are you doing and then it was again 45 minutes a crash course in the bhagavad-gita right from existence of soul existence of god how krishna is the supreme and not vishnu and not the devatas and how impersonalism is wrong and by the end of it his eyes were really and then afterward i noticed that i would enter the bus first and my stop was earlier than a couple of stops later he would come in so then i noticed that whenever he would enter into the bus he would peep in through one door see where i was sitting and then enter from the other door and go far away from me so i think you know about just before the pandemic in 2018 i met him in seattle and then we had a good laugh and i apologize for my overbearing approach fortunately his sister has become a devotee and she probably did better better presentation of krishna consciousness what i did that's how we come to the temple that's true so this is so overall if i understand right when we talk we're talking about experiential spirituality and the point which we have arrived at is that rather than imposing what is right even if it is based on our own experience on others we need to respect people's experience and then let them find what is right for them spiritually or help them find what is right based on their experience we shouldn't impose what we think as right based on others without considering their experience could that be like a broad trajectory that we have taken till a broad summary we discussed many nuanced things but a broad some broad overview of the principle that you discussed till now yes i think so there's another dimension to it there's another quality to it which is that um anything can be a starting point for that spiritual experience you don't necessarily have to have a verse from the bhagavad-gita and a class on the bhagavatam and you know a govardhan puja celebration that you know in in the nectar of devotion there are direct causes of ecstatic love and then there are indirect causes you know so direct cause you'd be seeing the deity for example but an indirect cause if if someone is a sensitive person then looking at the flower seeing something in nature or a piece of music a beautiful piece of music a child playing innocently can be an impetus to thinking what a beautiful creation this is and um the advanced devotees like well Srila Prabhupada everything was an impetus to his love for Krishna he he could look at anything i remember talking with him one time about um art and uh you know what is an artist you know in Krishna consciousness what is our definition of an artist and he said uh art an artist in Krishna consciousness is someone who puts something in its proper place for best utility you may not understand what he meant he said uh putting something in its proper place for best utility said yes i said okay so in that sense then um if someone is a street sweeper just sweeping the street but they're doing that job making the street best utility by that cleaning but they're doing it as an act of uh devotion to Krishna there let me make this street clean for Krishna yes probably that's an artist that person is an artist and then there's that lovely translation in the bhagavad-gita that devotional service is the uh the art of life art of work so you know we're we're artists you know we're we're meant to highlight and bring out the beauty in things for the appreciation of others and um a sensitive a a rasik you know someone with the proper adhikaris who can see Krishna manifest in all the detail anything can be in impetus for so i'm having this conversation with Prabhupada for example and he from his desk he he took a rose rose flower from the vase and he turned it around like this you know so the flower was turning turning like this he says just see Krishna's artistry and he smelled it and he said how did this flower know to take this particular fragrance from the earth there are so many fragrances in the earth how did this flower know to take this one particular fragrance so he's thinking this is my Krishna this is the artist see what an artist my dear Krishna is by looking at a flower so i think um i think the the the devotees who achieve a degree of proficiency in in in Krishna consciousness and spiritual life they're they do that they're they're capable of inspiring others with with anything with describing a flower or um a piece of music whatever it may be they you know they they they seize the essence Bhaktivinoda Thakur called it saragrahis the saragrahi the essence seekers people seek the spiritual essence of every experience in life yeah i love i love it normally we say use it as seek the essence but what you are saying is seize the essence is that what you use the word you know seize by the sense of urgency and action to it is it like getting carpet and seize the moment very good carpet dm yeah beautiful translation seize the essence yeah it's not just a passive like okay it's intellectual seeking it is there but for a devotee it's seizing and here also yeah it also isn't that beautiful isn't what a life we've been given what a beautiful life yeah you know i just thinking that here also some sometimes the kind of anecdotes about Prabhupada we tell also depend on how we reflect like i remember one of my friends was a big appreciator of nature and the beauty of nature and he had gone to Rameshwaram seen the beauty of the sunset in south india sunrise and sunset it's one of the most exquisitely beautiful sight see the sun rising from the Rameshwaram in the complete southern coast of india there we see the sun rising from the ocean and setting into the ocean so he came back and told a devotee it was such a beautiful sight and this devotee said Prabhupada said we are not interested in beautiful things we are interested in the maker of beautiful things well it's a good principle but it's a complete misapplication he felt so rejected by that isn't it unfortunate yeah so and the same point could have been made in a different way it's wonderful you had this experience how do you think it happened you know what is it i don't know i don't know how often why it is that so often there's this a tendency that some people have to emphasize the negative aspect of something you know you look at the same thing from a different angle and it's inspiring it's exciting it's beautiful it's wonderful i think that's that's the vision that's you know the kind of vision that we're compelled to cultivate in devotional life is to see the uh the exciting beautiful heart and soul of every moment every experience Prabhupada was so good about that he took every experience of his life and he he used it he found some Krishna conscious message every experience of his life he would he would tell us about when his father took him to the circus or he would tell us about uh when he was um working in Dr. Bose's laboratory or you know this was happening with the British or you know when he was in school he learned that it like it wasn't ego it was ego-less because he was acknowledging that these experiences have been entrusted to me by God these are treasures of my life that now it is my responsibility to pass these treasures along to you so every experience of his life every moment of his life he saw Krishna there and he was able to evoke Krishna from the smallest of thing that's the tiniest of you know he would see the essence of it and and he would share it with us really beautiful those memories are so precious to me i'm having spent that time with him this is you know the way you articulate it also is so amazing that these experiences have been entrusted to me by God it's such a different way from looking at it as oh this is just the illusion of this world playing out this is just my conditioned senses encountering the sense object it's it's uh so dismissive of people's lived reality and i love this so now of course there is the there's the danger that we may get so consumed by our own experiences that we may not see Krishna but to say that we can never see Krishna in our own experiences it is it is quite a it is quite an artificial way of living as if the Krishna has nothing to do with our day-to-day living at all so love this it's a sad way sad way to the lonely that's a lonely way to live i think if if you do not see that presence Krishna's presence and everything then it can be a very lonely life you know it's a cold world out there but for those with the eyes to see they're they're never alone they're always surrounded by Krishna and his expansions and the world the world of Krishna consciousness is perfectly populated and you're never alone never there's never any alone is different from loneliness you can be alone but that's a healthy thing i know if i didn't get some alone time i'd never get my writing done yeah but loneliness is is uh only if you choose not to see how many beautiful divine beings you're surrounded by remember when uh in London when Prabhupada gave a lecture at Conway Hall only a handful of people that turned out to become the introduction to Isopanisad you know that lecture Conway Hall yeah and um afterwards the devotees said to him you know sorry we didn't do enough advertising only a few people came he said you didn't see Lord Brahma there Narada Muni was there he saw he saw other people all the beautiful demigods were present oh my god this is so true that Prabhupada was uh there could be times when for educational purposes Prabhupada could have been uh could have been you know don't just focus on this experience see something higher but Prabhupada was also i could say alert enough to understand what approach would be most effective for whom if you just take one approach and dismiss people's experiences that that is very that is that makes what what is left for them on the basis of which to come toward Krishna as you said yeah it's their experience it's not just come to Krishna but also keep moving toward Krishna keep moving toward Krishna so we do love the stories when people write or people tell how i came to Krishna consciousness it would be also very interesting to see what experiences keep has going in Krishna consciousness and for me it may not be just you know i went to this kirtan or i went to this yatra i heard this class there could be a whole gamut of experiences by which they get their the realizations that keep them moving those are the those are the road marks of spiritual progress is in the in the small humble moments when when you find that impetus to ecstatic love from some little thing Prabhupada would speak about a mother seeing her child's shoes and she would start to cry she's not crying over seeing a shoe she's seeing her child there that's a lover of god sees god everywhere oh this is god's flower this is god's chair everything is connected to to Krishna let's go through maybe one important point we could discuss that here that there is our experience which can be the foundation for come for moving us toward Krishna but sometimes our experience may also make us hostile toward Krishna and or not residual Krishna toward maybe certain manifestations of Krishna maybe as we discussed earlier religious authorities institutionalized religion or even some sacred texts because of maybe how they were used or presented in in childhood so whatever it is so when somebody uses their experiences or i would say uses somebody's experiences make them unreceptive or even hostile toward Krishna and towards the path of bhakti so how do we deal with it at that time it could be for a practicing devotee they have very negative experiences or they have negative experiences and we could say more that they arrive at certain inferences which take them away from Krishna so i'll just give a couple of examples to illustrate this point that i was in Mayapur once and i heard a class and this devotee was speaking on why so many devotees left our movement so i would i mean i i found a little uncomfortable his conclusion although his reasoning was interest this was scripturally it was sound so he said when they had difficult experiences he said they hadn't internalized this was that their difficulties were Krishna's mercy and because they didn't see the difficulty this Krishna's mercy therefore they went away from Krishna's movement i feel this is a very harsh way of looking at it it could be true but we could also say that it is not just that they didn't look at it look there are other when somebody is having harsh experiences at one level then there need to be others who offer them sweeter softer kinder experiences so we can't just place the blame on them for failing to process their distresses in a Krishna conscious way it is we who have to help them so that was just one example of how some when somebody has some negative experiences which makes them go away from Krishna then you could we could just demonize them or blame them but then i remember another devotee here the class that he says Krishna protects his devotees this Krishna protects his devotees faith also that devotee said that how does the Krishna protect his devotees faith through other devotees so when a devotee goes to painful experiences it is the devotees around them that need to embody Krishna's love to that person and you think you're the example of how lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu say rejected i think was it Bala Bandra Bhattacharya because he got involved with the Bhattaharis but then the other Vaishnavas they all supported him they all engaged him they sent him to Mayapur and they didn't simply the lord is rejected so we'll all reject you so in that sense it was it was wonderful uh that that that you know rather than expecting people alone to process their experiences in a devotional way we need to offer them help to process it in a devotional any thoughts about this you know i have to tell you Prabhu um the older i get and the more i continue to chants very Krishna in my feeble little way um the more cautious i become about generalizing about anything i i tell you truthfully that um you know the more advanced devotee they look at a situation of adversity and they're able to see x y or z i i've become very cautious about that very very conscious i cannot tell you sitting here talking with you today that the progressive path is the path where you find an answer to every question and you see Krishna's hand in everything that is happening i i can't tell you that i believe anymore that that is some kind of universal principle for everyone it may just be and i'm speaking for myself here and i'm sure for others as well it may just be that to advance in Krishna consciousness you sometimes have to take a step back you know it's like Hanuman when he wanted to make that leap across the Indian Ocean to Lanka he climbed up the mountain then he had to step back in order to be able to spring forward with strength sometimes i think we encounter setbacks and i'm i'm i i'm not as afraid of them as i used to be i'm not afraid of having doubts and i confess to you confess i i explained for you objectively here i have doubts doubts meaning not that i question whether Krishna is God but doubts that first of all that i have understood anything um doubts also that there is only this one way to see things i think it may just be that the universe is so vast creation is so vast and there are so many dimensions to this majestic wonderful creation that sometimes spiritual progress will come disguised as spiritual setback my god okay that the very thing that you are so afraid of the very thing that you are interpreting as a failure a fall down just may be evidence of continued progress now i don't know if i can explain to you exactly what i even mean by that except to say that i've seen too many people i love in Krishna conscious life go through the most difficult of situations and some people came out of it quickly others never came out of it but who am i to say that therefore they are not making progress and i i think uh if we're ever going to mature in our spiritual life and after all that's the subject of our discussion is it not we have to break ourselves of this habit of judging people we have to break ourselves of this habit of saying this one is spiritually advanced that one is not spiritually yes certain things of course you have to acknowledge my goodness look at this Prabhu there's what an amazing devotee can you say that you know everything about that person can you say you know everything that's going inside that person's heart right now they seem like such an amazing devotee how do you know that they're not having the most severe doubts that anyone could possibly have because maybe you know you reach a point you chat how do you i've been chanting Hare Krishna now for 50 whatever 53 years 53 years i cannot say to you that Krishna has come before me that i've had very deep spiritual realization i don't know what are this what are the criteria of my spiritual progress well i know i'm doing better with regulative principles that i did when i was younger i know that i'm i'm more comfortable presenting myself as a devotee to anybody and everybody i no longer have that sense of awkwardness that was awkward at one time i show myself to be a devotee especially in the workplace you know very often i think young some young people are afraid that you know if i let on you know that i'm one of them you know that it's going to hurt my career options i i just don't know anymore but i don't know that i can tell you i i do know from my own experience that sometimes progress comes disguised as failure that i can tell you so i don't i know i no longer wish to pretend to know anything i no longer wish to be able to evaluate someone else i wish to live my life honestly i wish to live my life putting other people's interests before my own i wish to live i wish to offer prayers more heartfelt prayers but i can't tell you that i understand anything about Krishna consciousness because i've seen i've been wrong so many times you know and and um someone who seemed like this person has no chance whatsoever you know and why bother look at their behavior they're despicable but then i would say you know what let me give them the benefit of the doubt i'm thinking of someone in particular right now that they treated me miserably the kind of treatment that you would say you know what good luck to you and i never want to see your face again and i said you know what let me try let me just see what happened so i said okay put that aside put that away and um oh look at the one you've done such wonderful service here oh i'm so proud of you for you look at what you did that's wonderful service and and that person is a close friend man i i i don't i can't judge it anymore it's too much of a mystery to me i don't have anything else to say about and that's so true actually in one sense uh how should i put it that uh there are i can say i mean i've not been 50 years practicing only 20 years but i can say that many of the things which were rock solid certainties for me 10 years ago now they're no longer certain i was talking with sansidhi devotee he was telling me provide disciple only said that when we joined we had this slogan don't trust anyone above 30 so he said now in krishna consciousness i have another this don't trust anyone below 50 he said they don't know what they're talking about of course it's a very broad generalization but the principle is that sometimes in the early stages we think i know this is how it is this is right this is wrong so much of reality exists in the gray zone between black and white too so if i'm thinking of someone i know his philosophy is don't trust anyone at all oh god so so if i understand right what your answer to the question was that that how a person interprets their experiences rather than evaluating that we can just try to encourage them in whatever way it works for them rather than this is not the way you should see it this is the way you should see it maybe they are they are interpreting their experiences in a way that that might seem like a spiritual failure but it could work out to be a spiritual success for them yeah and don't dare judge it we do not have the right to judge it we we have not neither the skill nor the insight the insight nor the moral or ethical compass to be able to look at someone else and say i understand this person's path i know where they're going i know what they need and and uh to be able to come to that kind of a uh an analysis you know kind of a like a doctor writing out a prescription you know i mean sometimes people ask because they want to be told what to do you know probably just tell me what to do yeah yeah you know i try never to answer that question never never oh you should do this or you should do that well first of all then you become responsible if it's the wrong advice so don't do that but also i find that it it is in the act of embracing that uncertainty that we find the impetus for us for for um spiritual energy it's it's in the act of stepping forward and saying you know i'm going i'm willing to take a chance here i don't know what the outcome is going to be i don't know if it's the right thing or the wrong thing i'm just going to pray and uh i i wish to do this as a gesture of devotion to krishna and then even if it's wrong even if it's wrong this is this is my point don't judge you know we say sometimes you know you judge something by the results but you may not have the eyes to judge the results beautiful point you know i don't presume don't presume to understand someone else's situation our job is to love them that's it our job is to love them isn't that what we want for ourselves to be loved so true actually this is a beautiful point that our job is to love them you know that's what Prabhupada did if Prabhupada was judgmental then when some of his disciples had some difficulties in following say sannyas standards or whatever he not only didn't condemn it i remember i think it happened in mayapur that one of his servants he got the letter of one prominent leader having some difficulties and he publicized it to everyone that's what happened Prabhupada was very angry with that disciple why did you do that now we have made it so difficult for him to for him to come back to also in terms of our job is to love people probably but you know some people they're always saying no they probably very stern you know we have to be like him you know lion gurus like you know kick on faces how you been in the room Prabhupada would yell at someone you know i think that's how they leave the room then he looked at me and he started laughing really laughing you know oh he barked why are you doing you're a rascal no get out and then he left he started laughing in what sense was he laughing i mean because he loved us yeah sometimes he had to yell at us but it didn't mean that he hated us didn't mean that he was so upset with us that he never wished to see her face again you know yeah he loved us sometimes we needed some tough love yeah oh he yelled at me sometimes but you felt good about it you know and then the next minute he'd say so he'll get what is the program for this afternoon yeah that's so true that in one sense Prabhupada didn't let past experiences like some negative interactions let that define the person in in his eyes forever i mean the juhu temple case there was the n's wife she actually got the got some thugs to come and attack the devotees and demolish the temple but eventually so at that time Prabhupada was quite quite upset angry like a tiger on the chase you could say but later on when she came and met him met him and they signed the and the deal deal details then Prabhupada said you're like my daughter i'll take care of you so just such a yeah um that is hard that is hard to do you can't imitate that i i know i know for myself there have been some people in the movement i used to say to myself okay you know what i'm gonna love everybody but not him he's exempt he's not in he's not in the circle that guy right there finished and then uh and then years later you know i find out something different or or not they might still be the same obnoxious person they were years ago but i would feel bad that i had not been able to be of greater service to that person it's very hard to do this it's very hard it's very very hard and we're living in a time when it's impossible if you if you look around at the way people are behaving in government so such bitterness such tragic hatred and and vitriol and and my gosh it's so sad it's so sad that the hatred that that people are exhibiting but what a terrible terrible time anyway Prabhupada showed us a different way right so we have to try we have to so so oh maybe one last question i don't want to take too much of your time here so say while we say we shouldn't judge others um that at the same time sometimes you can say that a person is say drawing a wrong inference from a particular experience a wrong might be a strong word but maybe they are looking at reality from a perspective that may be very incomplete and we may be able to offer something to broaden their perspective so so there are two parts of this question the first is that while we are not meant to judge others but at the same time there are situations when because of because everybody is finite everybody is fallible including we ourselves but there are some situations but this is the example that say if somebody is walking off a mountain cliff and maybe for whatever reason they're drunk or whatever maybe they're sleepwalking and they don't realize it and at that time we may yell at them and they don't listen we may rush towards them and pull them physically and forcibly prevent them from doing that and he said that is sometimes sadhu's compassion and i gave added recently that this was actually it seems emmanuel can't give this example also that sometimes in some extreme situations you can almost override a person's free will especially if they are because of certain situations not thinking clearly and intervene in a forceful way so that's the aspect of the sadhu's words being like knives or swords that cut the cut the knots of illusion and bondage so there is a time for that we could say forceful intervention also of course my concern and fear is that we we presume we know the right thing and we do things very hastily and i say sometimes you may presume that you are cutting off the knots of illusion but you may be actually cutting off the seed of the creeper of devotion you'll be cutting off the bhakti lata beach so there has to be caution great caution in in in strong speaking or intervention but isn't there a valid room for that also well not only is there a valid room for that but it is a part of our humanness to do so um joe joseph campbell the late mythologist tells a story that he and his wife used to live in california in a part of the state where there were high mountains and there was one particular place there was a it was called suicide point on this mountain the wind was very strong and people would go to that place specifically to commit suicide so there was a barrier like a cement barrier and then they would climb over the barrier and they would jump off the edge of this high very very high cliff so he tells the story of a police officer and his partner who were cruising the area just on security patrol and they happened to go by suicide point and they they saw this guy getting ready to jump on the other side of the barrier the cop who was driving the car jams on the brakes pushes open the door runs and dives over the barrier and grabs this guy's hand just as he let go just he's about to fall to his death but he didn't the cop didn't have enough time to secure his own safety so this guy was pulling him over the cliff too they were both going over the cliff so just at that moment the cop's partner shows up grabs him and pulls the two of them back to safety later when the the the the ambulance came and and the the reporters came there was a journalist who asks the policeman why did you why did you do that you didn't know this man and you you put your own life at grave risk why would you do that he said i i can't tell you that it was some conscious thought on my part but all i can tell you is that in that moment as i saw what he was about to do i remember feeling not thinking so much but feeling that if i do not go and and help this person that i'll never be able to live with myself ever again there's a there is something built into the human being being human that responds to others and if you wanted to get you know all bhagavad-gita on me you know you could say that it is that uh quality of all beings as you know they are in me and they are mine those kinds of verses from bhagavad-gita that we acknowledge a part of ourselves in others because we are all sparks from that supreme fire that is god uh but it's not a rational thing it's not it's not a a a formula of some kind you know we recently someday i hope we'll talk about this code of ethical behavior that just recently got approved by the gbc very important document but ultimately you don't mandate ethical behavior you don't mandate compassion by voting into law a set of regulations it is a part of the compulsion of being human that we reach out to others and i for one believe that it was to nurture that compulsion to our humanness that srila prabhupada came here and i believe that that was as much a part of his mission as anything else to inculcate in us to revive in us that quality of our humanness that for too long has been sacrificed in the machine the cold mechanism of consumer culture of uh of physicalist science the things that numb us to our own divinity that numb us to our own humanness i believe it was his mission to revitalize that so that's that's worthy of further discussion that part of ourselves it's critical and important that's beautiful all right you know prabhupada wanted to activate our our humanness whether you put it as that the inner compulsion to act ethically to act compassionately to actively you know one of the first purpose of his con is to correct the imbalance of material spiritual values so in one sense how are you going to collect correct that it's not just through like institutional mandate or or conformity with tradition it's actually by as a change of the heart change of the heart doesn't just mean you know we become ecstatic by loving krishna it also means that our compassion becomes like a inner calling it's beautiful so so this brings us to the point that if we have a very narrow or reduced understanding of spirituality then we may not appreciate that human human compassion or human call calling in others when we see that i don't know human calling is the right word the calling to do the ethical calling we could say or a calling at a humanitarian level because this is just mundane and that would be quite quite again dismissive so if that so it's like that inner compass is activated in a holistic way not just that i have to chant hare krishna and worship that is of course we have to do that but in a holistic way then that's i think that's what probably must have meant when he said that my followers are perfect gentlemen ladies that it is it's that he's not just saying that they're chained they are like waking up in the morning and chanting hare krishna with perfect gentlemen ladies well that's what the code of ethical behavior is meant to do is to spell out what did he mean by that that is the entire purpose behind the code of ethical behavior which was ratified and voted into law on august 21st of this year that is not very long i think there's 14 or 15 articles ethical behavior toward all living beings ethical behavior uh online in online environments ethical behavior with regard to finances and so on uh to uh with regard to sexual behavior it's all it's all spelled out there based on previous gbc resolutions it is specifically for that purpose to to to stimulate and to nourish something which is at the heart of being human it's it's not imposed this is a natural the natural quality of life is to exhibit these these qualities of compassion and so on and they've been sacrificed on the altar of of consumer capitalism and it's been so tragic so maybe next time we can talk about that it's important yeah actually you know this is such an important topic i mean there are many aspects to it but something like you could talk about something like developing our own inner compass or in inner you know how much this is related with that we talked about experience but you could also talk about conscience now how much aid can we rely on our conscience or our company compass when it points in the right direction when it doesn't point in the right direction and how that can be developed so it's a very important subject you know there's one saying that you know our one extreme is to say that our inner our conscience is completely compromised because of our conditioning and the voices of the passions within us lust anger greed and one extreme so we just can't can never trust it and that would be almost denying our our individuality our humanity the other extreme is that we consider that as the ultimate authority when it could also be culturally conditioned so it may not always conscious we don't always point us to the right thing so that's a very important subject but we discuss that in our next podcast as you rightly said so thank you i'm always grateful to you for the time that we spent together and i hope that your followers derive something of of use for themselves definitely i think today was a very important discussion and in one sense okay let me try to summarize and then i'll try to summarize the summary one sentence which is so basically our topic was experiencing spirituality and in one sense i was thinking that we go in the direction of how how based on their experiences we can attract people toward krishna but we focused more on how as devotees when we are having our experiences how how to process them and how to respect other experiences so the first point you made as i classified pre-modern postmodern and moderns he said that it's important that when we deal with individuals we have to particularize we can't generalize so categories may be useful tools for us to draw upon but if you impose a category on other on anyone then and reduce or label them that that becomes detrimental so in that connection we discussed about how in today's world things are so unstable and so so rapidly changing and polarizing so you talked about political polarization the mainstream society the erosion of authority especially that people don't trust the government people don't trust political leaders so there's erosion of authority and what would happen by that so somebody says we are just chanting harikrishna we don't care but our practice of bhakti is predicated on the government providing political environment providing us our right to religious freedom and that is lost then it would have catastrophic consequences for us and it's and we take it for granted and one reason for but we need to be able to engage with it and understand it at least some devotees need to be informed about it and we we see that a very different environment in the middle east and the recent events in bangladesh for devotees also then we discuss one of the biggest sources of change in today's world is the immigration of people due to climate change due to political unrest also say because of of people looking for greener past better ways of living so then in that case how are we to deal with that so at one level we want to offer compassion compassionate help to everyone but another level we are a small movement and at now at this stage how do we do we prioritize how do we prioritize on what basis and how we need to be compassionate and not become too calculative so discerning is required but discerning doesn't mean that we dismiss people or devalue people and from this we talked about both that there is extremism where authority is foisted and there is extremism which authority is rejected both are going on in today's world and because we live in such a unpredictable world and we are we have all come from that world so we are shaped by that to some extent and even now we are being shaped by that so how a person perceives even Krishna consciousness is shaped by how they were brought up and what their previous experience experiences were well it may be it may be yeah not necessarily but it is a part of that and then an important point was that when we are dealing with people we need to affirm their experience not dismiss or devalue it so that's a nice way of putting it yeah thank you so build on their experience and sometimes they it was a beautiful connection that my lecturer talks about causes of ecstatic love in terms of direct and indirect but we could apply that even cause the causes of triggering of the spiritual spark that what triggers somebody's spiritual spark and spiritual journey or spiritual devotional stimulation that can vary from person to person and instead of instead of assuming that the sources of strength for us in spiritual life will be the source of strength for others and seeing their problems simply as because they are not doing the things that strengthen us we need to actually understand and encourage them where they are at so it could very well be that what seems like a spiritual failure maybe a spiritual maybe a spiritual progress or impetus for spiritual success so rather than judging our our job is to offer love and assistance in whatever way we can and Prabhupada's statements about you give many examples of Prabhupada's experience your experience with Prabhupada how he he acknowledged people's experiences and engaged them accordingly but he said that our Prabhupada could draw from his past experience whether it is his father taking him out to a fair or his interactions in his in Mr. Bose's employment or his observations about the British rule in India he could see them as as like his experiences are entrusted to us by Krishna to to help us see Krishna and move forward so if so seeing Krishna doesn't just mean seeing say some objects and remembering Krishna it's also seeing our experiences in devotional or spiritual light and if we devalue people's experiences if we devalue our own experiences it's a very lone lonely and lonely way of living in a very cold world we need to see Krishna's presence and if we devalue others experiences then the often we may we may take away from the them we made the very things that might bring them to Krishna and of course if somebody is making some choices that are wrong that are harmful rather than wrong we could say harmful like somebody walking off a cliff it's a human duty to intervene and when we intervene in fact so we could say that that human that our part of our humanity part of our divinity that inner calling to go out and help others like you said this cop he said I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try to save this person so developing that inner instinct inner conscience is weak is actually that was one of the purposes of Prabhupada's spreading Krishna consciousness absolutely the ethical code of conduct is it's not so much as to be mandated from outside as is to be cultivated from inside and this is just like it's like a road map for okay this is the direction which I should be going and when devotees you made a point earlier also when devotees have problems in their spiritual life it's rarely because they are not conforming to certain certain religious rituals like going for Tulsi puja it's deeper issues of course those practices are important but the deeper issues need to be understood and addressed and then everybody can build on their experiences and move toward Krishna so any points you want to add so I wanted to summarize the summary that actually we can say that instead of rejecting people's experiences as maya or illusion we we help them to build on their experiences to come toward Krishna so it's a beautiful discussion you want to add any concluding points to this no no you you you you you you have a gift I always love your summaries thank you for affirming my experience I can say you're the short-term memory.