Purification-The inner change that brings outer change 5 Karma logically explained Kolkata

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

So, we discussed the mind is a transmitter and a mind is a transformer. Now, mind as a transmitter, it has to continue functioning. We do not have to change anything in that.

The mind as a transformer, it is meant to be a transformer. The mind as transformer, that is what we will discuss. Sometimes, it may transform in a way that is good for us.

That means, what does good means? Good means that that is the important information that becomes magnified. And that is unimportant becomes demagnified or minimized. So, all the transformation can be a bad transformation.

Bad transformation means like I was giving the example in the previous class, this friend of mine, he saw a bottle of alcohol and then just stay stuck in his mind. Now, we might see some obscene image somewhere and then just stay stuck. It like, it is, it has become maximized and we do not even, there is no minimize button only visible anywhere.

What do you do? It just, it is stuck in my mind. Sometimes it happens, somebody speaks some hurtful words to us. And other, somebody says, just forget it.

I say, you know, there is no button to forget it, you know. How do I forget it? It just, it just maximize. Sometimes, you know, there are some very intrusive ads, which just occupy the full screen and there does not seem any cross anywhere.

The cross is in the same color as the background, you cannot detect the cross. So, how do you minimize? It just, it seems it has hijacked our screen completely. So, some conditioning seem to be like that.

So, the transformation can be good or bad. Good means what? That which is, that which is valuable, that is maximized. That is good transformation.

Any valuable information, that is anything that is coming in, if that is maximized, that is value, that is good. Bad means that that which is, that which is irrelevant, that which is harmful, that which is deceptive, that gets maximized. That which is distracting, distracting and irrelevant are the same thing.

So, those gets, that gets maximized. So, what we would like to do is make our mind healthy. We want to transform our mind so that instead of this, we will have more of this.

So, we do not want this, we want this. The mind should be a transformer in a healthy way. That means, if you come to a temple and take darshan of Krishna and that darshan of Krishna should get impressed in our mind and throughout the day we remember the darshan.

But on the other hand, we are coming along to the temple and there is some ad and some picture over there and that picture gets stuck in our mind. So, that is something which we do not want. So, basically, the mind should be transforming.

When you say always remember Krishna, how are we going to remember Krishna? Krishna is not visible everywhere around us. So, then whatever, whatever memories we have of Krishna, those should be maximized by the mind, isn't it? So, in Hindi we say, remember God, but if you do not have any memories, how will you remember? Isn't it? So, first we have to have some memories of Krishna and those memories need to be maximized. So, that is how that transformation of the mind is what we are looking for right now.

So, when we are talking about transformation of the mind, we are talking about from a spiritual sense but also from a functional sense in this world. Because the mind can obstruct us not just in spiritual life, the mind can obstruct us in daily life also. So many people who have mental health problems nowadays, addiction can ruin a person materially also.

People who are traumatized by something, for them, even normal functioning of life becomes difficult. So, when we talk about the transformation of the mind, by destiny, we have a particular kind of mind. And now, how much can we change the mind? How much do we work with the mind? How much do we accept that this is not going to change at all? That is what we will try to discuss now.

So, I am not going to make this class very long. We will have a good amount of time for question answers. So, if I move to the next part, the insight.

So, if we consider the mind has impressions inside them. So, how do the impressions work? They are formed by our previous actions. So, now the mind is like a programmed device, it is like a software.

So, it is programmed. And we have a certain amount of programming with it, already there. It is programmed, but it is also programmable.

It is programmed and programmable. So, for example, if you consider a phone. Now, in a phone, if you have Android phone or if you have an Apple phone, there is a basic OS, that OS we cannot change.

So, like that, there is a basic level of subhava which we have, we cannot change it. But above that, there are certain apps which are installed. Now, we may not be able to uninstall them, but we decided I do not want to use them.

We can install some other apps also, which we want to use regularly. So, the idea is, programmed means that there is something which is coming from the past. Now, some of it is fixed, some of it is changeable.

Like you have on our phone, there may be certain apps which the manufacturer only provides. Some of them we can delete if you want, some of them, you may have to root the phone to delete them. It is a little more complicated, but you can do it.

So, some of the programmable means, of course, they are changeable. So, like somebody is, what the Gita says, Arjuna, if you are a Kshatriya, you can live austerely like a Brahmana or a Sanyasi for some time. But that is not how you all want to live life, look.

That is not who you are. So, the idea is that we all have certain programming, which it is very, very difficult to change. But some programming can be changed.

And sometimes you can write new programs also. So, with this, now, with this understanding, let us look at, we talked about broadly, if we consider the mind. We discussed there are two kinds of programmings in the mind.

One is the instincts, that is the vrittis, and the other is the impulses. Now, broadly speaking, when I say the instincts are positive, the impulses are negative. So, impulses could be lust, anger, greed, jealousy, all these are impulses.

Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, these are all, these are the instincts which we have. So, now, Shudras, sometimes we may consider them as foolish people. Or sometimes it is used that Shudras are not foolish people, all of them.

They are artisans. They are an important limb of society. And they may not have the same level of impulse control that the Brahmanas have.

But they also have instincts. And Shudras can do many things that Brahmanas cannot do. They are competent in certain areas.

And within the Vedic tradition, there has been two schools of thought. See, we sometimes have a very Mayavadi idea of the Vedic tradition. What do we mean Mayavadi idea? Not that all of it was all Mayavadi, that we think everything was the same throughout history for millions and millions of years.

No, life changes, the world changes, things adapt. So, in the Vedic tradition, now the common idea is this, this Varanashram is hierarchical. Like you have the body, the head is at the top and the legs are at the bottom.

The Brahmanas are the head. But there is another conception also mentioned in the Manusmriti, in some indirect words, so not very directly. But that is that these four Varanas, instead of being like a body, they are more like the lanes of an expressway.

Society has to move along all the four lanes. Society needs everyone. So, rather than the focus on the hierarchy, it is focused on the cooperation.

Now, even within the hierarchy, hierarchy means top down, even within the hierarchy also cooperation is there. The head and the leg both have to work together. But the leg is below and the head is above.

But if you consider four lanes in an expressway, then what happens is, normally if you have, that is not the best metaphor, it is like basically four parts, like if you have a train which goes on two rails, suppose there is a train which requires four rails to go. So, society moves on four rails. So, all four rails are required.

Society requires Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra. So, we can go in the hierarchical direction, but we do not have to necessarily always go in the hierarchical direction. Kshatriyas also have impulses and instincts, Shudras also have impulses and instincts.

And now, instincts as we discussed, they need to be developed and the impulses need to be curved. The impulses need to be curved, the instincts need to be developed. With this understanding now, how does this work? So, the key point is for the mind, if the instincts are to be developed, what does that mean? That is if somebody is good at music, then they practice music, they listen to music, they create music and gradually their music sensibility increases.

Somebody is good at language, they write, they read, they analyze, they come and they review and they just learn to use the right words more and more and more. So, basically, the key for reprogramming the mind is practice. Let us try to understand this.

What we want to do? The instincts we want to improve, the impulses we want to curve. But either way, whatever we want to do, how do we do it? So, there are basically the abhyas and vairagya. So, how does this, what does it mean? How does it work? I am based in Mumbai.

Have you heard of this small thing in Mumbai? So, there is this Bollywood. Now, if you are part of the world, I had gone to Panama, there also people know about Bollywood. So, they know, suppose somebody has visited a website called bollywood.com. Maybe they have visited it 100 times and they come for a spiritual talk and they hear about the Bhagavad Gita.

And they say, okay, I want to know what is the Bhagavad Gita. So, they want to visit bhagavadgita.com. They open their browser and type B. What happens? Bollywood.com comes as an autocomplete. But did they want to go to bollywood.com? No.

It comes because that was what was there previously, already there. Now, if they want to visit bhagavadgita.com, what do they have to do? They have to type it all. So, bollywood.com comes as autocomplete.

They have to choose not to go there and they have to type all the 12 letters, bhagavadgita.com. So, going towards bhagavadgita.com, typing that is abhyasa. And not going towards bollywood.com, that is the vairagya. So, abhyasa and vairagya.

What that means is that the impression that we want to reinforce, we do that. The impression that we want to get rid of, we stay away from it. Now, if we do that, what will happen by this? By this gradually, suppose we visit 5 times bhagavadgita.com, then next time we type B, still if you have visited bollywood.com 100 times, bollywood.com will come as the first autocomplete.

But bhagavadgita.com will also come as one of the autocompletes. Now, if you visit 25 times or 50 times bhagavadgita.com, then bhagavadgita.com will start coming as the first autocomplete. So, the idea is abhyasa and vairagya.

So, the mind can be programmed, what do we do? Just do what is desirable, what is healthy, what is constructive and avoid what is unconstructive, what is counterproductive. And if you keep doing that, so abhyasa can be done. Abhyasa, we can call it as persistence.

Vairagya is abstinence. So, what we want to persist, we create some bonds with it, I will do the trigger. What we want to abstain from it, we create some boundaries.

So, this is the simple way that the mind can be transformed, that we all need certain bonds and certain boundaries. So, consider how the mind transformation works. So, if we are functioning, there are bonds yes or no on the x-axis and boundaries yes or no on the y-axis.

Then we will have 4 quadrants in which bonds but no boundaries is quadrant 1, neither boundaries nor bonds is quadrant 2, boundaries but no bonds is quadrant 3 and both bonds and boundaries is quadrant 4. So, what does this mean? That means let us say we visit bhagavadgita.com and do not visit bollywood.com, that will be quadrant 4. Now, we do not set any bond that I have to visit bhagavadgita.com, do not set any boundaries, bollywood.com, let us go there only. So, we could say for transformation, which is the best situation among these 4 quadrants? 4, yes, this is the most transformative. If we are having bonds and boundaries together, that is the way we can be most effectively transformed.

So, when we take diksha, we form bonds and boundaries. The bonds are, we will chant a particular number of rounds. The boundaries are, we will follow the 4 regulations.

Now, that is important, but it is not just a mechanical thing. I have taken this vow, I will follow this. Each one of us also, those are universal bonds and boundaries that we may commit to.

But beyond that, each one of us based on the mind that we have, we may have to decide these are the kind of bonds I want to develop further and these are the boundaries I need so that I do not get carried away. So, each of us may need this. Now, if we have neither bond nor boundaries, then this will be the most destructive or even destructive.

The most destructive because here is whatever is the conditioning, there is no attempt sustainably to transform it and that conditioning is being perpetuated. If somebody is an alcoholic, they do not attend, say, Alcoholics Anonymous or some meetings like that to try to change themselves, they do not make up any bonds, no responsibilities and they have, they have lots of alcohol in their home itself to drink. Then what is going to happen? They are going to get more and more addicted.

So, no bond, no boundaries is not going to work. Now, let us look at the other two quadrants. If we have bonds, but no boundaries and if we have boundaries, but no bonds.

So, among these two, which is better? Having both is the best, isn't it? But if you see, if you have bonds, but no boundaries, what will happen is, here we will be always endangered. Endangered means what? Say, we are sitting down to study Shastra. We want to study Bhagavad Gita properly.

We are sitting down to study Bhagavad Gita, but we are sitting in the same room where there are five other people who are watching TV. So, we are sitting down to study Shastra. We sit and study Bhagavad Gita, but they start cheering something, they start laughing, they start making noise, what happened? Oh, this happened, this movie is going on, this is going on, we get caught in that.

There are bonds, but no boundaries, we will always be in danger. So, isn't it? Because there are no boundaries over there. Now, if there are boundaries, but no bonds, then what will happen is, we will feel suffocated.

This is what I won't do, but what will I do? So, many times when we make resolutions, we often make resolutions of what we will not do. I will not do, I will not eat this kind of food, I will not offend devotees, I will not do this, I will not do that. We are setting boundaries, but boundaries without bonds don't work very well.

See, the simple fact of psychology is that, with respect to mind management is that, we cannot do a don't. We cannot do a don't. What does it mean if I tell my mind, okay, don't think about a pink monkey.

Whatever you want you can do, just don't think about a pink monkey. What will the mind do? Think about the pink monkey, we cannot do a don't. So, when we set a boundary without a bond, it is like we are trying to do a don't.

So, for us, if we want to change, we need to try to set bonds and we try to set boundaries. Now, to the extent we do this, to that extent we will be able to transform ourselves. Now, we could also say that destiny may determine to what extent can we set some boundaries and to what extent can we set some bonds.

But we have some freedom for that. When I was in America last year, one devotee showed me a clipping from an old American movie, not maybe 10 years, 200, 10, 15 years ago. He says, one person, one man is asking another man, are you a vegetarian? I am an American.

So, the idea is if you are American, how can you be a vegetarian? So, they think that meat is a normal part of their diet. But that is not true like that. It is changing much more, vegan is quite a, vegan and vegetarianism is quite becoming popular and cool in the West.

So, somebody might be in a position where they, the meat is just a normal part of their diet. So, for them to set that boundary may be very difficult. Some boundaries may be easier to set, some boundaries may be more difficult to set.

So, destiny may determine how easy or difficult is it to set a boundary. Somebody grows in a culture where drinking wine is just a normal part of daily life. Then if a person, they say I do not want to drink, they have to go out of their way to avoid the drink.

Somebody is born in a culture where people, most people do not drink only. And setting that boundary is not a very difficult thing. So, destiny may determine how easy or difficult is it to set a boundary.

But the principle is wherever we are, we need to set some bonds. And the principle is that we need to set some bonds. So, now how easy is it to set up some bond? That depends.

I was in America this year, I met one devotee, he had come from Iran. So, in Iran, during the pandemic, he was introduced through, he was searching for some spiritual stuff, one of the Muslim family. And he was searching for some spiritual stuff, he came across Krishna Consciousness, quite inspired.

And then now we have some devotees in Iran also, but among the various countries in the Middle East, as of now Dubai and UAE are the most liberal. Bahrain is the most liberal. Dubai is, they are portraying themselves as very liberal because they want to attract tourism and everything.

Sharjah and others are more conservative. Saudi Arabia is quite conservative. Iran is the most conservative, not conservative in a positive sense over here, it is very restrictive.

So, he just, he wanted association of devotees. He started staying in touch with people online. The association of devotees is an important thing.

It is a bond. But there is no possibility of any public gathering for devotees in Iran at all. Even a private gathering is very dangerous.

So, he had a, his company parents were quite wealthy, but they were in a family which involved leather and meat and all those things. So, then he physically also, professionally also is quite difficult to be, has a conducive environment. So, then he decided to change his career.

He got in, he said he had some interest, but he got into academia, into say Middle Eastern studies, Middle Eastern studies, Middle Eastern studies in sociology, political science and geography, all those geopolitics. And then, so he gave up flourishing business. He did a one-year course in Iran, and then he applied for a university in America.

He got a two-year course over there. And then during that time, he got some other job and now he has got association of devotees. So, for him to get some, develop that bonds.

Now, he had that longing for association of devotees that was quite there. But by destiny, he was put in a situation where the practical association of devotees was very difficult. So, he had to work for that.

So, some bonds may be easy to form, some bonds may be difficult to form. But the principle is universal that if you want to transform our mind, we need bonds and we need boundaries. Now, this applies for both the vrittis and the vasanas.

For the vasanas, we need boundaries. For the vrittis, for our impulses, we need boundaries. That for the instincts, we need bonds.

So, for example, if somebody wants to say, I'm going back to America, they have their guns legal, but somebody wants to learn self-defense. Maybe somebody wants to learn martial arts or whatever. Now, if they want to learn martial arts, they have to form some bonds.

Okay, every day I'll go and attend a session, I will do this workout, I'll do this time for practice. That's the bonds. But then, once they learn those martial arts, they should also have the boundary that they don't use the martial arts on innocent people.

Just because you have strength, you cannot beat up people. Krishna says that, balam balavatam chaham, kamaraga divarjitam. That we have that bala, but we have to use it within boundaries.

Dharma aviruddho bhuteshu, kamo spi bharatasyam. So, broadly speaking, for us, if we are dealing with a particular artha also, we need bonds and boundaries. But broadly speaking, we need bonds to develop our instincts.

And we need boundaries, sorry, that is a different diagram. So, we need bonds to develop our, we need bonds and boundaries, bonds for our instincts and boundaries for our impulses, for our viptis and vasanas. And in that way, we can be transformed.

So, the last point now, you are going to take away for us, with respect to the transformation, that there is the universal and there is the individual. What do I mean in transformation? There is a universal aspect to it and a individual aspect to it. Universal aspect is that everyone, for everyone, whoever may be, the principle of bonds and boundaries applies.

For everyone, from wherever we want to change, we have to have bonds and boundaries, that is universal. But the individual will be which bond and which boundary. Not everybody can form the same bond, ultimately want to form a bond for Krishna, ultimately we want to have boundary from maya.

But which bond to work on now, which bond to work on later, which boundary to focus right now, which boundary to focus later, that is something which each one of us has to individually decide. Of course, we need guidance, but everybody is an individual, like each of us has our own field. And so, if in our field, particular seeds are likely to grow more, then we have to have bonds, that means we should make sure that those seeds, we are nourishing them.

If in our field, our particular weeds are likely to grow more, then we have to be careful that we guard against those weeds. So, in this way, every one of us, we take responsibility for our transformation. Now, for us, some bonds may be easy to develop, some bonds may be, boundaries may be easier to establish.

Some bonds may be difficult to establish, some boundaries may be difficult to establish. And that is just the way of life. We need to accept that and we choose our matches accordingly.

This particular anartha, it is going to take time for me to deal with, this particular anartha, it is an emergency, I am going to work on it right now. This particular talent, I am going to develop it right now. This particular talent, you know, I just do not have my life in such a place that I cannot explore it right now, maybe I will explore it later.

That is something which we all will have to decide according to our Nesha Kaalo Bhadra. So, now, what does bhakti do in this? How does bhakti transform? Bhakti is like a game changer. What bhakti does is, even in bhakti, the principle of bonds and boundaries is there.

But in normally, it is like we are trying to change our mind, we are trying to change the impressions in our mind. But suppose, you know, we have a phone that is locked by our employer. So, there are only small things which you can do in the phone.

There are many things which you cannot change. Like that, we have a device mind which is locked. There are few changes we can do.

But suppose we contact the employer itself and say, you know, I do not want this app, this app is troubling, I need this app. And the employer can make changes that we cannot make changes. So, like that, bhakti is where we tap the power of Krishna.

And Krishna can change things dramatically. But that will happen as per Krishna s plan. We cannot control when he will do that.

That we will discuss in the last session about how bhakti works in transforming the mind and transforming our conditions. But broadly, this is the key of, this is the point of transformation that we discussed today, transformation of purification. That the concept was that for each one of us, wherever we are, our mind, transform the mind means what? The instincts that are there, we want to make them stronger.

And the impulses, we want to make them weaker. And that way, each one of us would like to transform our mind. And now the insight is that the mind is programmed and programmable.

So, some part of your programming is, given programming is changeable, some is not changeable. But whatever is changeable, the way we change it is through bonds and boundaries. And we discuss the four quadrants accordingly.

And finally, we discuss the takeaway for us is that there is a universal principle and there is a specific individual practice. Universal is a bond-bonded principle, the individual is which bond to focus on and which boundary to focus on. In that way, each one of us can move ahead in our life.

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. So, are there any questions or comments? Are these from yesterday or today? Any questions about this class right now? How does one differentiate with the instincts in joy that one gets by doing one sadharma and the joy one gets by serving Krishna? Well, first thing is, there is no need to differentiate very precisely.

As long as we are getting it within the domain that is positive, that is good. So, overall, if somebody has a sadharma towards music, they love music and they have an interest in bhakti also. So, they are ready to do practice, they are ready to sing about Krishna, do music about Krishna.

So, now, over a period of time, they will start noticing that doing music about Krishna gives a sublime level of joy that does not come from other performance music. So, that will be a deeper, more lasting, more transformative kind of joy. So, over a period of time, although they like music, they will stop liking so much music that does not have the Krishna element.

That way, the differences will come up. But initially, it is best to stay connected rather than worry too much about whether the intrinsic happiness is coming from there. So, the question? In the Krishna Purusha, like in Bhagavad Gita, we read that we act according to the three modes of materialness.

So, how we can understand this thing in synchronous with that? That we act according to our conditioning and the bondage and all. And we, our action is based on that three modes we are in. So, how we can understand both three? So, we act, Krishna says, prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ, for example, 327.

So, now, if you look at the 14th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna talks about it, he also says that we can by conscious choice situate ourselves in a particular mode. So, while we are in the material world, we will be controlled by the modes. But we can gradually choose, gradually, incrementally choose which mode we want to be controlled by.

And in that sense, we can move towards a higher mode. It will happen gradually, say, for example, after we take lunch. Now, we could study, we could go out and chit-chat with people or we could sleep.

Now, we could say sattva, rajas, tamas. Now, if we decide I want to study, but if we decide to study where, we decide, okay, I'll lie down in my bed and I lie down in bed, I will study. Well, we won't be on top of the book, the book will be on top of us.

So, if we are going to put ourselves in a tamasic environment, the tamasic choice is going to become much more likely. But if we consistently put ourselves in sattvic environment, say we go to library where everybody is studying, then we are more likely to study at that particular point. So, the small choices we can make, and as we keep making small choices, we will be situated more and more in a higher mode.

So, there may be a default programming by which we may go towards a particular mode. But we can gradually change that mode. Can I ask you a question? Okay, let us start with one.

The questions that we have, most of them are based on our destiny. So, that's one. This is, we have, we have, coming from previous life also.

So, my question was that, it is because you gave an example of a person who is an alcoholic, and if he sees an alcohol shop, then we start thinking of that. Or a person who has a vasana, if he is passing by some shop, he gets attracted to it. So, it means that he has performed similar activities in the past and the previous life.

That of, if he has some anartha, he has performed in his previous life also. So, my question was that, from the time immemorial, we are practicing this vasana for receipt. So, in the spiritual world when we came here, so, is it that we are also designed to have some particular vasana from the very beginning, which got transformed and became vasanas like that, and that's why we are practicing it.

Because if we do not have the access to perform those activities from the very beginning, then it will not have impression. But we see that we performed from very lifetime. How it began? See, the question how it began, how was the beginning, that question has no ending.

So, let us skip that question. Let us move to some other question. Some questions are like intellectual banana peels.

You slip on them, you step on them, you slip and fall. So, it needs a little bit of humility in the intellectual domain. Intellectual humility means that there are some answers that we, some questions that, whose answers we do not have and we may never have also.

So, that, and the question of beginning is like that. No philosophy, whether it is, whether it is Big Bang or Atheism or Christianity or Buddhism or Mayavad or Vaishnavism, no philosophy has a satisfactory answer for the beginning. A fully intellectually satisfactory answer.

You can go to degrees of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the answer. So, we would say that the atheistic idea that from matter came consciousness, there is no basis for that. The idea that we have free will and we can misuse our free will, there is a possibility for that.

But in the beginning is something which Krishna has arranged. Krishna has arranged that Krishna maintains different people. And that maintaining is not just physical, it is also intellectual.

That means, whatever conception a person wants to have, Krishna gives them reasons to have those conceptions. And that is why with respect to no philosophy in this world will we ever have absolute certainty. That is, this gives a certain categorically sure answers to everything.

There is no philosophy like that. That is because Yoga Swami says that Krishna is bigger than our intelligence. And Krishna s reality, Krishna s world is also bigger than our intelligence.

So, we can get some understanding. So, it is almost like we get to the most reasonable understanding and not the conclusive, definitive understanding. You also mentioned that emotions are like information, similar to the physical information which we get, like if the temperature is low, then we feel cold.

Similarly, if there is some accident, then we feel the emotion. So, my question was that, is it also based on the law of nature that if there is low temperature, then the natural instinct is that we will feel cold. But we feel that is it possible to change it like if there is emotional activity is there, then the natural information is that we can become, a different emotion is coming.

Is it possible to confirm it that… Some degree yes, some degree yes, definitely. See, say an Indian who goes and stays in say New Zealand. New Zealand is quite cold, the lower part of the eastern part of Australia, New Zealand, like Sydney and Melbourne, Melbourne is very cold.

If somebody goes to Calgary, the western part of Canada or Vancouver, it is extremely cold. Now, if they go there to some extent, their body will get adapted. And the same level of coldness, they will not feel that cold.

And they come to India, the heat they may, earlier it was tolerable, now it becomes unbearable for them. So, the body changes. So, like that the mind also changes.

So, something which was not tolerable earlier can become tolerable. So, mind changes, but there is a range over it. Beyond one s tolerance capacity, there is a particular level of heat above which the body itself will become dysfunctional and damaged and die.

Same with respect to cold also. So, within a range, our emotional responses can definitely be changed. And we should change that.

So, there is a maladaptation of our emotions, we have to learn to find healthier responses. So, emotion is information, but what is the information? That is something which we will have to carefully understand. It is not that the information normally is, whatever information we are getting is the right information.

Say, for example, consider somebody who takes alcohol. Now, they take alcohol because they are social drinkers. They want to just belong to a particular group of people who they think are cool.

Now, to belong to that group, they drink alcohol. And in the belong to that group, people, they just hang out with people, they chat with them, they feel good about themselves. But now, is the good feeling coming from drinking alcohol or is it coming from being with those people? Wherever it is.

Emotion is, I am feeling good. But after some time what may happen is, I am feeling bad, I want to feel good, let me drink. And then drinking instead of, for belonging to a particular group, drinking becomes their coping strategy.

And as it becomes a coping strategy, then it starts feeling, it starts becoming more and more addictive and destructive. So, the idea is emotion is information. But what exactly is the information? That sometimes we may misinterpret the information.

That is why to process the informational content of an emotion, we have to use our intelligence. We sometimes need guidance. So, I am feeling bored.

That is emotion. But then what is the information conveyed is I am bored. What does it mean? Maybe I have to take more interesting subject, maybe I have to find more interesting subjects.

Maybe life itself is boring and I have to just end my life. That is ridiculous, is not it? But the point is that emotion is information. And what information we take from it, that is something which we ourselves have to be very, very intelligent.

That is the dhammi buddhi yogam tam. As we practice bhakti, we learn to take better and better information from the emotion. When Parikshit Maharaj was cursed, what did he see that? He said that okay, I am cursed.

He could have said that oh, this is so unfair. No, this is Krishna s plan. So, we have to become expert in that area.

We will take some more questions afterwards. So, yeah. So, I have some experience and knowledge of psychological counseling.

I very much like the therapist create a safe space so that people take therapy, start trusting the therapist and share any aspect in the space of life. Can we integrate this method of counseling psychology in your preaching? Will it be helpful? And can you guide how we can proceed in this direction? Well, professional counseling and preaching cannot go together. Because preaching means we are trying to share, we are trying to impart our values to others.

The whole idea of counseling is, especially professional counseling is, you are not preaching over them. You are helping that person get in touch with yourself. So, professionally, if you start teaching any particular religion, in most countries, you will be debarred, disbarred from practicing.

But the broad attitude, so if somebody becomes a professional therapist, they cannot teach a particular religion. Now, if they position themselves as a faith psychologist or faith therapist, and they affiliate with a particular religious organization, like the Catholic Church has every major Catholic center, they have a set of therapists who they recommend. If you have mental health problems, you go to this therapist.

And those therapists will give guidance that is not contrary to church principles. So, it is possible in some areas. I think there are slowly devotees who are getting into therapy and learning this.

So, yes, it is important, especially as we are moving towards more and more people being mentally traumatized, mentally wounded by life. We will need devotees and professionals who are devotees, who work in this area together. Otherwise, as devotees, we are not necessarily competent to offer counseling for very seriously problematic cases.

And even if we want the amount of time investment required for that, we do not have that bandwidth. So, I am doing currently a podcast series with one therapist, Mataji from Bhakti Yantra Hospital about emotional health and spirituality. Basically, we are talking about there are young children who are committing suicide, young kids who are committing suicide.

So, we did one podcast on the occasion of World Suicide Prevention Day on the 10th of last month. And then I was in Melbourne at that time. Now we are able to do next on 2nd of October.

It is a vacation. It is going to be online. So, slowly devotees are working in this area.

And I think we have to find like-minded devotees and explore what are the options for taking this up. But generally, if we think that we can preach through this, then that is not what it is meant for. A doctor is meant to offer medical treatment.

Now, on top of that, if you have your spirituality, that is okay. Spirituality cannot replace your medical treatment. If somebody has a heart attack and the heart surgeon who is a devotee says, I promise when I am doing heart surgery, I will chant Hare Krishna.

How will you do the heart surgery properly? I cannot guarantee that I will chant Hare Krishna. Even if that patient is a devotee, that patient will say, I want to go back to Krishna but not so soon. So, we cannot, I cannot overemphasize this principle that if we are in a particular profession, we have to do what is expected of that profession.

Our spirituality can be a bonus on top of it. Our spirituality cannot replace what is expected of that profession. So, to consider an example for this, suppose some top cricketer, maybe Virat Kohli, he is retired but Virat Kohli was a devotee.

And say there is an India-Pakistan cricket match, World Cup finals and ISHA Cup finals over there, whatever. And India loses that match and Virat Kohli is the captain. And after the match gets over and there is a post-match interview, and the interviewer asks, what happened? Why did India lose the match? Since win-loss, all this is temporary, chant Hare Krishna and be happy.

Now, you cannot imagine a more damaging form of anti-spirituality. See, it's a perfectly valid and valuable message. But if you have failed at your job and then you are using spirituality to justify your failure, that will alienate people, antagonize people from spirituality.

So, our spirituality has to be in addition to our job, not in the replacement of our job. If we are doing a particular role, we have to do that role properly. And then additionally, as is appropriate, we can talk about spirituality.

So, this actually happened with George Harrison. George Harrison started doing, he met Prabhupada and Prabhupada said, have songs about Krishna, sing songs about Krishna. And in his concerns that people would come, thousands of people would come to attend, he told them chant Hare Krishna.

And people had come expecting the kind of music he had been producing. And they paid for that. And he told them to chant.

They started throwing bottles and throwing tomatoes and throwing eggs on him. And all the reviews started panning him, saying that, you know, this George Harrison is such a great musical talent. And he got involved in this Hare Krishna cult.

And the world has lost such a great musical talent. So, he met Prabhupada. He told this.

Prabhupada said that. He said that, Prabhupada, for everyone, you told me to make songs about Krishna. He said, for one person, I'm bringing closer to Krishna.

I feel a hundred people I'm driving away from Krishna. What should I do? So, Prabhupada said, use your intelligence, balance it out. Then he started making the kind of song that he was making before.

And in between, he would bring in a little bit of Krishna. And then the media started saying, oh, George Harrison is back. He's out of this cult now.

So, after that, he largely hid his Hare Krishna affiliation. And then in between, he would bring Krishna into his songs. So, Arjuna, when he was on the battlefield, he did not say, OK, you know, there's no need to fight.

I just put my bow down, chant Hare Krishna. The enemies will be killed. If India was in Operation Sindoor and the soldiers there say that, OK, we chant Hare Krishna, Krishna will take care of Pakistani aggressors.

No, that will not work. Whatever area we are working in, Krishna says, Lok Sangraha. Lok Sangraha is very, very important.

That Lok Sangraha is where we have to play our part in maintaining the world. If we are taking a responsibility, we have to do that responsibility. Somebody cannot take salary from the Indian army and then say, oh, this war is just mundane politics.

I don't want to kill anyone. I don't want to fight. Well, if that is your value, then don't join the army.

Don't take salary from the army. So, if we are going to go into therapy, our goal should be to heal people emotionally. It is not to preach Krishna consciousness.

Now, while healing people emotionally, if we can give them Krishna, that's fair enough. Just like we have Bhakti Yantra Hospital in Mumbai, where we treat people physically. And while treating people physically, there is also spiritual care department where we offer spiritual care to people and people benefit from that.

But if we are offering spiritual care without offering medical care, it would lead to disaster. So, sometimes we face career reversal and material loss, we have tendency to blame our spiritual advancement or the time invested in spirituality. So, how to deal with this process? Well, we all need guidance.

We all need intelligence and guidance to balance our life. When Yudhishthira becomes the king in Indraprastha, Narada Muni comes to him and tells him that you have three areas in your life and balance all three of them. He says there is Dharma, Artha and Kama.

So, he says Dharma is our spirituality, broadly speaking. Artha is our job and Kama is our family. So, he says do not pursue profit at the cost of religion and pleasure.

Do not pursue pleasure at the cost of profit and religion. And do not pursue religion at the cost of profit and pleasure. So, balance it all out.

So, we all need to learn that balance. And if we are getting into spirituality so much that it is affecting our career, then we may have to decide that okay, this level of spiritual commitment may be possible for me at a later stage. At this stage, I need to balance this.

Now, so that is a principle. Specifically, if we face a setback, was it because of our spirituality? Maybe it was, maybe it was not. The mind is always looking for a scapegoat.

And Krishna consciousness can easily become a scapegoat. So, we have to carefully evaluate that okay, how much time did I spend over here? And because of this time, this happened. Is it factually true or not? If it is factually true, then we take corrective measures.

And this Bhaktivedanta Hospital was started in Mumbai. So, Radhanath Maharaj was the primary spiritual guide over there. So, he told the doctors, you know, for the smooth functioning of this hospital, all of you should function in the mode of goodness, irrespective of whether you are above it or below it.

What he meant by that is, if a surgeon has to do, has to do some surgery and they say, oh, you know, my spiritual master is in Bhagavatam class. So, I have to go for the Bhagavatam class. No, if it is emergency surgery, you have to be available for that.

So, being in mode of goodness means responsible. So, we all need to be responsible in our conditioning. How to, how do we use deep analytical thought process to improve our daily life issues? Focus in job, work, habits, etcetera? It depends.

For each one of us, we need to decide how much analysis is too much for us. You know, if you consider what is deep thinking and what is overthinking? How do you know the difference? Since my childhood, I used to have a lot of questions. So, I would ask questions to my teachers, I would ask questions to others.

And many of my teachers would say, you think too much. And I would not reply this to my teachers, but my friends would also say that you think too much. So, my default retort in my mind was, you think too little.

So, how do you know something is deep thinking and something is overthinking? So, the idea is that when we are doing deep thinking versus when we are doing overthinking. When we do deep thinking, we go into an issue, we explore it from various perspectives, get a multidimensional view and come out with a clearer understanding. When we are doing overthinking, we just get caught in the issue and keep going round and round and round and round and round without getting any clarity.

So, we have to see what level of analysis can help us to get a clearer understanding. And when does that analysis is becoming too much? So, generally, when we think about an issue, we get clarity. We keep thinking about it, the clarity does not come, we just get stagnant.

If you think too much, then the clarity goes down. So, thinking to this level is sattva. But then if you go too much, rajasas tu phalam dukkham, just a waste of time.

And then, pramada mohaya vacha, in tamas, we just become mad, we just become totally confused. So, each of us will have, based on our capacity, our situation, we will find out where my thinking is being productive and when it is becoming unproductive or counterproductive. Then we stop at that time.

So, if intent is also a part of determining what karma, what is karma, then does that thought process also affect in performing any action, result? Yes, thought process does affect. And kalyuga, we are not held responsible for our thoughts. But if you keep thinking about something that will lead to, that will lead to us doing that thing eventually, that is why it is better to be careful about our thoughts also.

So, if you are trying to change a tendency and you are failing repeatedly, then what can we do to gradually change the tendency? Well, we have to choose our battles. Like say, now India has Pakistan as enemy, China has enemy. Now, India has taken some action against Pakistan, we haven't taken much strong action against China.

Why? Because we are not strong enough right now. So, like that, we have different anarthas. Now, we may have anger, we may have lust, we may have greed, we may have jealousy.

Now, one of them might be like Pakistan, one of them might be China. Now, if India had wasted all of its energy in fighting with China, you know, we would not have made any success, we would have, we just exhausted ourselves a bit. So, we have to choose our battles.

So, which conditionings can I deal with right now? Which conditionings I cannot deal with right now? I cannot deal with, it does not mean we are letting China just walk over India. It is not that China is just continuously conquering Indian territory and we are letting them conquer. We have set some parameters, some boundaries.

But it is not that we are taking the fight to China. Does that mean we will never take the fight? Maybe we will in the future. So, choose your battles.

That decide among certain anarthas, some anarthas, they may be just too strong to deal with right now. See, Krishna says the anarthas are real tricks. So, sometimes the metaphors are given and those metaphors, they are useful to a particular point.

But no metaphor captures the reality completely. So, what do I mean by that? There is a metaphor sometimes we use that there was this baby elephant which is tied by a rope. And the baby elephant grows up, grows up, grows up.

And in its childhood, it tried to break the rope or break the chain, it could not break. And then it stops trying to break. So, now it has the capacity to break when it cannot break or it does not break.

So, like that, its anarthas are more conditioning of the mind. Well, yes and no. The chain is real.

And some chains may be so thick that even an adult elephant cannot break the chain. So, some chains may think that, okay, the childhood elephant could not break it, the adult elephant can break it. So, that is why anarthas are real things.

It is not that kama, lust is not just a desire that comes within us. Lust is also a conditioning that is there inside us. Krishna says, It is permanently there inside us.

Sometimes it pops up. Sometimes it becomes very strong. But it is permanently there inside us.

In some people, it may be very strong. Some people, it may not be that strong. So, choose your battles.

Try to see which battles we can fight at present and which battles we need to fight later. Another point is that, see, we all have these urges. And these urges, it is not that those urges are constantly high.

There are phases when the urges have surges. So, when the surges are there, we may feel that is unbearable. We just cannot do anything about it.

And that may be true. But then, even if we cannot resist the urges, we can persist between the urges. Okay, when anger comes up, I just cannot do this.

When this comes up, I just cannot do anything. But when it is not there, what are we doing? At that time, we are consistently practicing bhakti. At that time, we are consistently trying to purify ourselves.

And gradually with time, what will happen is that the same anarthas, the urges, they will come less frequently and they will come of a lesser magnitude also. It will happen with time. So, we choose our battles.

I will explore this answer a little bit more about we may fail to deal with certain conditionings. So, I mentioned three different things. First is that choose your battles.

Some anarthas may be very difficult to overcome at present. Second is that even if they overcome at that particular time, don't define yourself solely by that. That okay, it happened, but it is not happening all the time.

It is not that the craving is that strong all the time. But I shouldn't. What am I doing at the rest of the time? So, am I continuing my practice of bhakti? Am I trying to purify myself? If I am, then gradually I will become stronger.

The third point that I will talk about is that, see, we talked about conditions and conditionings. Now, there could be negative conditionings and there could be negative conditions. And the worst situation is where both of them come together.

So, it's like we have conditions that can be positive or they can be negative. And we can have conditionings. Generally, we use the word conditionings in a negative sense, but it doesn't have to.

Conditioning refers to the impression in the mind. They can be positive and they can be negative. So, now the most dangerous situation for us is where by destiny, we could say, because by destiny means by circumstance, we are put in a negative situation.

And at that very time, suddenly a strong conditioning also gets triggered inside us. Suppose somebody is trying to fight alcoholism. They are trying to recover from alcoholism.

And they are working in a particular job. And for that job, they have to go to a retreat. They have to go to some training center or wherever.

And in the training center, after the training session, they have a big party and everybody is drinking over there. So, by destiny, they are put in that situation. You can say it's not destiny.

It's their choice. They took that job. But it's not that people have freedom to take whatever job they want all the time.

So, it's not that they went to a bar themselves. They just went for a corporate retreat. And by destiny, it happened that they, remember I use the word destiny for uncontrollables, things beyond our control.

So, they are put in a situation where everybody is drinking. And that is the time they also have a weak moment. You know, wondering what is the big deal? Who will come to know? What's the issue? So, now this is the worst situation to be in.

Where we are in a dangerous condition and at that same time, a dangerous conditioning also pops. And this can be very, very difficult. So, it's like, I have a friend in the Indian Army.

So, he was telling about Pahalgam, what happened over there. Is that somehow, for some reason, the defense forces were lax. Or the defensive arrangements at a particular place were not proper.

And that was the very time the terrorists attacked. That's what happened in Israel also with respect to the October 7th. Their defenses are normally very strong.

For some reason, their defenses were weak. That's the time when the Hamas attacked. So, that's a deadly combination when the external attack is heavy and the internal defenses are low.

So, the internal defenses refer to our conditionings. Internal defenses being low means our negative conditionings are popping up. And the external attack being high means what? That is the time when the temptation comes up in outside.

So, broadly speaking, the 11th Canto says that when we succumb to sense gratification, that when there is sense gratification or sense indulgence, it can happen in two ways. One is that the senses go to the sense objects. That means it's more like an inside-out thing.

We first get the desire and then we search for the sense objects. The second is the sense objects come to the senses. That means what happens is we are just going around a normal life, but suddenly in the course of a normal life, a very attractive sense object comes up and captivates us.

So, sense indulgence can happen in both ways. Now, we may say senses going toward the sense objects is more of we choosing to do certain things. And that is true.

And sense objects coming in the path of our senses directly, that is more of destiny. So, let us with this analysis take the example of Ajamil. In Ajamil's case, what happened? Did the senses go to the sense objects or sense objects came to the senses? Yes, let us look at the stages one by one.

The first stage was the sense object came to the senses. That means he was going along a normal life. In fact, not even a normal life.

It was a pious life. It was said that he was going out to collect firewood for his father. And there is no further description much in the Bhagavatam or in the Acharya's commentaries.

It is not described specifically. He was going to a new place where he had never gone before to collect firewood. No, he was just going where he would normally go.

And there it happened that he saw this particular couple who were doing very exclusive activities. Now we can say this was completely 100 percent destiny. There was nothing that he did to get into that.

So, say we are visiting some site like Wikipedia or somewhere we are getting some information. There somehow from somewhere some obscene pop-up comes up. So now it is not that we have gone to some site where such pop-ups are expected.

It just comes up over there. So it is almost like that. So that is 100 percent destiny.

Now somehow he just saw that he got agitated, but he pulled himself out of it. And he came back. But he came back and somehow that thought, that image, that desire stayed with him.

And then after that, what are the next things that happened? Then the senses went to the sense object. So he went to that particular prostitute. Now, can this be called destiny? And this is where it becomes difficult.

That is, now we can say that this is certainly, nobody can call this as 100 percent destiny. But still we could say that he was completely, he was unprepared and he was ambushed and he was overwhelmed. What he did was terrible, a very wrong thing to do.

But still we could say maybe the fact that he was put in that situation, the fact he got that particular desire, that was still, you can say, maybe 80 percent destiny, 20 percent his free will. 20 percent is karma. The desire was so strong that he just couldn't resist it.

Maybe you can say it was destiny or rather it was not destiny. It was just that what he saw at that particular time that had such an impact that he was pulled by that desire. And he just couldn't resist it.

But after this, now one time succumbing to something can be, it is bad, but it can be circumstantial. But then what did he do after that? He decided that not only that I once want to be with her, I want to be always with her. And therefore, he rejected his wife, he rejected his parents who were elderly.

Now he was a brahmana. If a brahmana has rejected his family and is staying with a prostitute, who will want such a brahmana to come and do their vivaah ceremony? Who will want them to come and do the marriage ceremony or the name giving ceremony or any other pious activity? Now if you are living in sin, how will we want you to do some pious activity for us? So naturally because of this, he lost his job also. And then he had to start robbing.

So he had to start robbing and stealing and he became almost like a full criminal. So now after that, not the senses going to the sense objects, like senses, they are bonded to the sense objects. Now to form this bond, he had to actually break a lot of boundaries.

One thing is, say the defensive wall that was there between Palestine and Israel, Hamas used some means to break it down and they attacked once. But now after that, you don't build the wall. Okay, once the wall was broken, now let's break the remaining wall also.

If you break the remaining wall, that means you don't want to defend yourself. So what he did was, so you could say here, the first wall was broken. Or you can say first time, wall means the wall of dharma, the wall of right behavior, wall was broken.

But then here, it was partly broken. One wrong thing was done. But here, he went down and he himself fully broke the wall.

So this is where we could say, this part, we can call it, it was circumstantial wrong. That he was put in circumstances and he did something wrong. But here, it becomes totally intentional wrong.

So circumstantial wrong can be attributed to destiny. We are put in a particular circumstance and we succumbed over there. It is still bad, but it is attributable to destiny.

So that means the defensive wall around us was somehow broken and we were attacked and we fell. But then if we ourselves go out of the way, intentional means what? We are creating the circumstances. Rather than being trapped in the circumstances, we are creating the circumstances to do that wrong.

So to go back to the question once again, that when some conditions pop up and we are just not able to resist them, then that means, okay, for some time, you will not be able to resist them. But after that, do we decide that, okay, I am going to build the walls again? Or is it that, okay, this wall was broken now? Why keep the wall? Let me break it down for you. So that will determine what our eventual fate will be.

So that is why what I said is, here we go back, we cannot resist the urges. That means sometimes we cannot resist the urges means what? Internally the desire has become very high and externally also the temptation comes. Then we might succumb.

But do we make that state easier to happen in the future? Or do we make that state more difficult to happen in the future? If we are creating boundaries for ourselves, so that it is not that easy to do that again, we are creating defensive walls for ourselves, then we will be protected. And one last point I will make that even with respect to boundaries, the boundaries do not have to be digital. It does not have to be like a one zero thing.

It can also be analog. Analog means what? That any case of boundary, let us say India with respect to China. Now there is some disputed territory in Doklam, there is some place in Arunachal Pradesh.

Now there is some dispute about whether something belongs to India, something belongs to China. China may have occupied some Indian territory. China claims that India has occupied some of their territory.

Now we may not be able to get back all the territory that China has occupied. In 1960s, we had a war and we lost and they took some territory. But they have taken some territory, it does not mean that we are going to let them come and take New Delhi also.

That does not mean that we are going to let them come and take Kolkata and take Mumbai. No, just so there could be one boundary that is aspirational. Aspirational boundary means that this is the level I would like to be at.

So, for example, you know, I do not even want to have any lusty thoughts. That could be an aspirational boundary. But then we could have a non-negotiable boundary.

Non-negotiable boundary would be no matter what happens below this level, I am never going to go. See, we all have anger within us. Now, we may say my aspirational level is that I will never get angry.

Now, what does I never get angry mean? That it could mean that I will never raise my voice against you. That could be aspirational level. But if we cannot get the aspirational level, sometimes we may raise our voice.

But we may decide no matter what happens, I am not going to use foul words. I am not going to speak obscenities. That is in any cultured society, that is expected.

However angry you get, you do not use this kind of language over here. So, anger management can also be on a sliding scale. That just because we raise our voice, which we should not have raised our voice, just because we raise our voice does not mean we have lost the battle against anger.

But okay, even if I raise my voice, this is a level below which I am not going to go. So, that way, when we are trying to deal with our anathas also, instead of thinking of it 1-0, even if I succumb, I would not succumb below this level. That way, so, you know, Prabhupada talked about, for example, no illicit sex.

Now Prabhupada gave that also like a spectrum. The aspirational level is sex only for procreation. But all the initiation lectures that Prabhupada had, in the initiation lectures when Prabhupada talks about no illicit sex, he defines in those initiation lectures that no illicit sex means no sex outside marriage.

So, from sex only for procreation to sex within marriage, that is a spectrum, that is a range. Now, sex outside marriage will be adhatama. That is a non-negotiation.

So, like that, when we talk about standards also, we can have a range. Now, based on a particular society that we are in, a particular ashram that we are in, a particular responsibility we are in, what that range will be, will vary from person to person. But that range is required.

So, if we have this understanding, it is a range, then we would not think, okay, if I have not won the war, that means I have lost the war. No, I could not win it at this level, but that does not mean I am going to lose beyond this level. So, that way, our conditionings may sometimes drag us down.

So, we would like to be at this level, but because of our conditionings, we may drag down. But we may decide this is a boundary below which I am never going to go, no matter what happens. And that is something which, see, forget spiritual life.

Even in daily life, we all have this understanding of certain level of boundaries, that mainstream society is quite sexually liberal. But even in that westernized liberal society, there is a boundary that most people respect, that is consent. So, a person cannot force themselves on another person.

Now, of course, there are people who do that, but that is a crime. So, most law-abiding people will not do that. So, the idea is that consent is not dharma, of course not.

Dharma is a much higher boundary. But my point is this idea of boundaries is universal. Nobody can live without boundaries.

Now, what is the boundary that will vary from person to person? I was speaking in Amazon and the question came up, is morality relative or is it absolute? So, now generally the mainstream idea is morality is relative. If you believe that is wrong, it is wrong. If you do not think it is wrong, if I think it is not wrong, then it is not wrong.

But then I asked them that, I asked the person to ask this question. So, do you, this was Amazon in Seattle in America. So, I asked them that, is there any activity right now that somebody is doing that, that is wrong? Yes, of course.

The terrorists killing innocent people, there are rapists, there are child sex offenders. I asked him that, do the people who do this think that they are doing it wrong? That thing that they are doing is wrong? It does not matter whether they think it is, he answered, it does not matter, it is wrong. So, I said that since you yourself are saying that morality is not relative.

They do not think it is wrong, but what they think does not matter, you are saying. It is wrong, is not it? So, after that, after class one person came to meet me, he was one of the top managers in Amazon in that place. So, he said that, in our company also, like there is a whole section in Amazon for apparel, apparel is clothes.

So, normally when they are selling clothes, they will show people wearing clothes, men, women wearing clothes, so that people will buy those clothes. But they say that when it is children's clothes, we will not show children wearing those clothes. Because their idea is that there are sexual predators who may prey on children.

And we do not want to trigger any such sexual desire there. So, they also have a boundary over there. So, the idea is that everybody has boundaries.

What the boundaries are there, that may vary from person to person. So, for us, we need to decide that by destiny's force, I may not be able to stick at this level of boundary. But from this level boundary, can I say that whatever level I go down, it is all destiny? No.

Now, by destiny, I may get angry and may yell at you for five minutes. But there is a difference between anger and hate. Anger is what? Anger is temporary.

Anger is hot-headed. Sometimes we get angry and we do not even know what we are doing. But hate is not hot-headed.

Hate is cold-blooded. Cold-blooded means what? I deliberately plan, I will get you over here, and you will be unaware, you will be unprepared and that's the time I will hurt you. So, anger might be because of destiny.

But hate is because of karma. You choose to be hateful. So, anger is hot-headed.

Hot-headed means just at that particular time, the head becomes hot and you do something. But hate is cold-blooded. So, in this way, there is a difference that by destiny, certain conditionings may be very strong and we may not be able to overcome those conditionings.

And there are flexible boundaries. In the Vedic tradition itself, Brahmacharya Ashram is one boundary. Grahastha Ashram is another boundary.

But both are boundaries. So, the idea is, there is a range of boundaries. But ultimately, everybody has to learn to live within boundaries.

And we all need to have a certain level of boundary, which is non-negotiable for us. No matter what happens, this is something which I will never do. Yes, please.

There is something called Purvagraha, the producer. So, the producer has talked a lot about it. Because of our intellectual conception and perception, which is not aligned with the Sanskrit conclusion and the way Acharyas have explained the pathway and mission.

So, that producer which has been deep-rooted, how do we overcome it? Because Vasana, it's easier to overcome compared to the Purvagraha or the producer. So, how do we get on trying to overcome this? Can you give an example of what you mean by that? For example, let's say that someone happens to be a communist. Someone happens to be a communist.

A communist. And he is very much commissioned about the idea of communism. And for him to accept the Vedic truth and the Vedic guideline is a Vedic truth.

Similarly, somebody could be very… Yeah, I got your overall point. I got your point. Thank you.

So, see, there is in the Vedic tradition an incremental approach also. Like say, when Vrgari was met with by Narada Muni, Narada Muni didn't tell him stop killing. He told him what? Kill the animal full.

So, it's like sometimes from a terrible level to get a person to a less terrible level. That is also a step up. So, Prabhupada, for example, when he was talking about communism, he talked about spiritual communism.

So, Prabhupada didn't say you have to reject communism. So, you can spiritualize it. Now, we could say communism itself is aggressively anti-religion.

And yes, the greatest ever attack against religion which happened against Christianity was in Soviet Russia where thousands and thousands of churches were destroyed and talking about recent times, not in medieval times, Islam destroyed a lot of other temples and other places, not Islam, radical Islam, you could say, similarly. But the thing is that it has happened. So, communism was quite aggressively anti-religion.

But then the basic value within communism is that some people have concentrated their wealth, have taken all the wealth, and most people are in poverty. And there should be some level of equality. So, now, how that equality is to be achieved and whether by having a central authority of state to decide that, okay, we will redistribute wealth with everyone.

Will that really work? The question is to be addressed. So, my understanding is that some people may be more from a left-wing ideology. Some people may be from a right-wing ideology.

And it is very, very difficult for somebody from a left-wing ideology to suddenly become a right-winger and for a right-winger to be left-winger. How many of you have heard this word left and right? Do not raise your left and right hands over here. So, what is left and right basically? See, the idea is that basically, okay, I am going on detour right now, but it is an important question.

So, how should I put it? That in general, there is an existing social structure. So, generally, the right are conservative. The right is concerned with what is right in the existing social structure.

And they want to preserve it. The right says, this society has worked for thousands of years. And it is you are a problem, you fit into the system.

You adjust yourself and things will be fine. So, right is concerned about what is right in the existing system, right in the system. Now, the left is concerned about those who are left out by the system.

You say the system is working, but the system is not working. For so many people, the system has not been working. So, the right focuses on individual change.

You change yourself and you fit into the system. The left focuses on social change, social justice. Society itself has to be changed.

Because this whole system is not working, I am going to change the society itself. Now, who is right? Well, it is not that the right is always right. Sometimes the society itself has become corrupted.

The social system has to change, sometimes the individual has to change. Yesterday, I talked about dharma as individual to collective and collective to individual, isn't it? So, the conservatives say that the right says that as an individual, you fit better into the system, you contribute better to the system, the system will help you grow. The left says the system has to do better.

So, both could be right. So, my point is that generally any thought system that is there, there is something right in the thought system and there is something wrong. I am not saying it is 50 percent, 50 percent.

There could be 90 percent wrong and 10 percent right also. But we have to find out what is right in that thought system. And then help that person connect with that right part and then whatever is the wrong part, that will be gradually dealt with.

So, I would say somebody who has come from a leftist ideology, for them to accept the Varanashram aspect of Krishna consciousness is going to be extremely difficult. For them, Varanashram will seem just like caste. Now, if that is the case, then okay, we have to tell them, okay, stop.

Okay, don't worry about Varanashram. Anyway, we are not trying to impose Varanashram on any society. You practice Krishna consciousness, you chant Hare Krishna to understand the principles of our spiritual core and bhakti and grow in your life.

So, for them, maybe throughout their life, they will not be able to accept Varanashram. Now, can they go back to Godhead without accepting Varanashram? Well, if they develop love for Krishna, they can. Krishna says, antakaale cha maa meva sphanmukta akalevaru.

So, relationship with Krishna and love for Krishna, how much it depends on giving up particular intellectual conceptions, I am not sure about that. The different devotees will have different opinions about it. But from what I have seen within our movement since I have been travelling for the last 10 years across the world, that many devotees themselves have different opinions.

For example, what is Varanashram? How are we to implement it in society? So, now evolution, for example. Now, I know many devotees who are like, I know a devotee with a double PhD in evolution. And he says, there is no way I can ever believe that I will ever accept evolution is wrong.

So, he says, you know, whenever devotees give any arguments criticizing evolution, I just laugh at them. He said that anybody with a first-year knowledge of postgraduate level evolution knowledge, he can just demolish all the arguments that devotees are giving. Now, is it true? Maybe it is.

So then, now within evolution, there is a whole range over there. That there is, in all the interactions we devotees had with Prabhupada, nobody asked Prabhupada about theistic evolution. See, Prabhupada always presented evolution as atheistic.

By polymathistic evolution, that if evolution is like the law of gravity, does the law of gravity exist? It exists. Does it disprove the existence of God? No, it does not. So, could evolution be a mechanism through which Krishna has made the species manifest in this world? Maybe it is.

We don't know. Now, there's a lot of intellectual jugglery I will have to do to see, okay, the Bhagavatam describes Brahma and other things. So, devotees say that is describing the higher planetary systems.

Brahma, Manu and Diti and all that. How life came on earth, that's not described in the Bhagavatam. So now, I don't agree with that argument completely.

My point is that if somebody cannot give up evolution, should they not practice bhakti? Or should we say that if you're not giving up evolution, don't chant Hare Krishna, don't practice bhakti? Now, that devotee, who I said is a triple PhD in Kailasa, a very prominent devotee, does lots of services, is very influential in mainstream society, in the scientific community and in the devotee community. So, I told him, I appreciate that you found a community where you were accepted. In many communities, you might be guilted and shamed and you might just leave bhakti.

So, somebody who has not studied evolution, okay, this is what Shastra says. I reject evolution, you reject evolution. That's okay.

Somebody else may not be able to reject evolution. So, now if you study Ayurveda, especially if you study Sushruta and others, there's a lot in Ayurveda which talks about evolution, some things like evolution, like you know, how species change and how, not even species change, how things adapt themselves. I'm not going into the defense of evolution.

My point is that what intellectual conception is categorically wrong? So, I would say in an aspirational to non-negotiable, if somebody says the implication of evolution is no God exists, then such a person cannot be Krishna conscious. If somebody goes from accepting evolution to accepting atheistic evolution or rather atheism as an implication of evolution or atheism as a necessary preconditional solution, then that becomes non-negotiable. That's what happened with respect to the moon landing when India had the Chandrayaan mission.

So, then several devotees asked me, Prabhupada apparently said the man didn't go to the moon. How do you understand? So, I made a video about it. I said Prabhupada has given six different kinds of statements.

Prabhupada said that maybe they didn't go out of the earth at all. They went out of the earth, but they went somewhere else, some other planet. They went to the moon, but they didn't access the moon because the moon is a higher planet, they couldn't access it.

They went to the moon and they just got back some dust particles. What was the use of it all? There Prabhupada says, oh, they have spent so much effort in going to the moon. Why don't they spend so much effort in raising their consciousness? There's a whole spectrum of statements that Prabhupada has given.

So, why take only one and say, if you are to be faithful to Prabhupada, you have to accept that man didn't go to the moon. No, Prabhupada made a range of statements. Now, somebody might say that Prabhupada made these statements more and made these statements less.

That's okay. That's possible. But Prabhupada has made all those statements.

So, I would say that this whole idea that we have to become like a thought police and eradicate or annihilate certain thought processes. I think that is dangerous. That can lead to a lot of… that can make devotees stop thinking.

And if devotees stop thinking, then if, God forbid, if some power hungry person grabs power and nobody raises questions against them, then that's how fanatical religion comes up. One of my friends has done his PhD in California. He has done his PhD in terrorism.

They don't use the word terrorism. They call it radicalism. So, what radicalizes people? So, when the Islamic states have spread, many Europeans and some Americans, not Muslims, whites who had been born in America and Europe, they joined the Islamic states.

Now, why would they do that? So, some of them, they left and came back and some of them were there. He actually did an interview of many of these people who had joined terrorism and become radicalists. So, one of the things is that they basically felt that the world is so complex and Islam gave us a very black and white identity.

This is right, this is wrong and that's all there is to the world. So, we didn't have to think anymore. That's a very dangerous way to be.

So many things, I have accepted this. I don't have to think anything more. Then, somebody else will do the thinking for you and can monstrously misuse you and manipulate you.

If Krishna had wanted Arjuna to outsource his thinking to him, Krishna could have finished the whole Bhagavad Gita in six words. I am God, obey me, fight. Bhagavad Gita Sampoorna.

Krishna did not do that. Krishna helped Arjuna to improve and empower his thinking. And the test of it is that when later on Ashwatthama had to be punished, Krishna did not give any guidance to Arjuna.

Arjuna arrived at his own decision and Krishna approved of that decision. And then later on, when Krishna departed from the world, at that time, Arjuna remembered and took shelter in the Bhagavad Gita. So, in one sense, Krishna was preparing Arjuna.

Krishna was not giving ready-made decisions to Arjuna. Krishna was preparing Arjuna to take decisions in a way that would be mature and responsible and spiritually harmonious. So, I think that, I am not sure whether this idea that can you categorically say that everything about a particular conception is wrong and who is going to decide, say, if some devotee says communism is wrong or some devotee says capitalism is wrong.

Some devotees, I have seen so many devotees get caught in this. Like when the vaccination came, I was just talking with one spiritual master. I was there in Australia.

So, he said almost 25 of his disciples, they rejected him because he refused to condemn vaccines. So, he said, and he knows one more Prabhupada Sannyasi disciple, he said that almost more than 75 of his disciples, they rejected him. So, there are devotees who became anti-vax campaigners.

You know, these vaccines are all a global conspiracy and we should not be taking vaccines. Simple living, high thinking means no vaccines. Now, is that the central idea of ISKCON? Certainly not.

Now, can devotees be pro-vaccine or can devotees be anti-vaccine? Well, that is up to individual devotee. Don't make it a Krishna conscious issue. Isn't it? So, can devotees have positions on vaccines? Of course.

But can you say that if a devotee is pro-vaccine, he is debating for Krishna consciousness? And if a devotee is anti-vaccine, that devotee is debating for Krishna consciousness? Now, that is, that is taking, that is like becoming intellectual police. And we don't need to do that. Who is going to decide that? That, you know, this particular ideology is wrong.

Like say, organ donation. Should devotees donate their organs? Now, I have talked with several devotees. ISKCON as a movement has not really matured enough that we have a body of scholars who will deliberate on these issues and give proper statements.

So, I have had different devotees talking about different things about this. That some devotees say that, you know, if that person misuses the organ after you give it, then you will get the karma for that. So, better don't give it.

I know other devotees who say that, you know, after you as a soul have left your body, why are you so attached to that body that you are going to control what happens to that body? If with that body something good can happen to someone else, why not let it happen? And if that person misuses it, that's up to them. So, here again it goes to, I discussed the intent, content and effect. So, some devotees may look at the effect and say, there can be a bad effect of this.

But some devotees can look at the intent and say, your intent is good, do it. So, should ISKCON make an official policy that no ISKCON devotee should ever donate their organs? Or all ISKCON devotees should donate their organs? No, we should not become thought police like that. So, I think that idea itself, that somebody should be controlling what intellectual conception somebody has.

As long as those intellectual conceptions are not affecting our personal relationship with Krishna. Now, this particular devotee who I talked about evolution, so, if you look at him, he is a very, very dedicated devotee. When another devotee was in the final stages of his life and that devotee wanted to go to Mayapur and things like that, this devotee, he used all the influence he had so that he could arrange for that devotee to stay in Mayapur.

And he did a lot of service. My point is that, if you look at that devotee, there's no doubting his devotion. So, that's why it's like there can be different people with different conceptions.

There can be left-wingers who are devotees, there can be right-wingers who are devotees. But there can be left-wingers who can be violently anti-devotional and there can be right-wingers who are violently anti-devotional. I know right-wingers, they say, you ISKCON people, you always talk about you're not the body or the soul and you do nothing for society.

You do nothing for dharma. And they are quite violently anti-devotional and oversimplifying their argument. So, rather than thinking that the whole Upanishads, the Upanishads give basically intellectual room for people to use their intellectual ability.

So, just as we give room for desires, I think different people can have different desires and still they can move towards Krishna. So, like that, different people can have different intellectual conceptions, they can move towards Krishna. We are not intellectual Mayavadis that everybody has to have the same intellectual set of conception.

No, we want to have harmonization, not homogenization. Harmonization is that all of us have the same ultimate purpose. Homogenization is every one of us thinks exactly alike.

That is a dangerous expectation to have. Yes, please. Where's the mic? We just want to discuss the case of Kajanga, that in the beginning it was circumstantial, but later it was intentional.

How it gradually fell down. Last year, we were discussing the concept where we were walking near the border of a cliff and we are taking one step towards the border of the cliff and when we step off the cliff, then we are calling and while we are calling, we cannot change. Can you please explain that? See, broadly, once we choose an action, we cannot choose the consequence of that action.

Our choice is when we do an action. After the action is done, the consequence will come itself. So that is the idea that if you step off a cliff, then gravity is going to take over.

So now, what this means is that every choice will have consequences. But some choices, they have far bigger consequences than others. Like somebody may lie.

Lying is not a good thing. Again, related to the same point, in the Mahabharata, there's a discussion between Bhishma and Yudhishthira that there is the moral and there is the legal. So should everything immoral be made illegal? So for example, if somebody speaks lies, now should the police be catching everybody who speaks lies and punishing them? Well, don't the police have anything better to do in life? The lying is not good.

But what happens is that if you die, if somebody lies on a legal document, if somebody lies while giving testimony in court, then there will be much more severe consequences. So the point is that we all make choices. And sometimes some choices are small, in the sense that even if you make a wrong choice, it doesn't make much difference.

But once we develop that habit of making a wrong choice, and we are not even conscious of making a wrong choice, then we may make a wrong choice at a point where the consequences could be huge. So that's why catching the wrong choices when we are making them, even when the consequences are small, that is much better. So you are going off the track, and this is the road, and we are going off the road toward the cliff.

One step toward the cliff, no problem. Second step toward the cliff, no problem. 10 steps away from the road, big problem.

So just because a wrong choice has had no consequence does not mean all wrong choices will have no consequence. So some choice points are far bigger than others. And when we will be encountering a sudden big choice point, we may not realize it.

That's why it's better to try to make good choices on a regular basis. Is it clear what I'm saying? Yeah, but I was just asking how we are now, right now we are discussing that in the beginning it was circumstantial, that we have seen that… Yeah, so see, okay, I got your point. See, we all do some mistakes, and those mistakes are difficult, some of them are difficult to forgive, but some are forgivable.

So see, when he was rejecting his wife, when he was rejecting his parents, would something inside him not have felt, maybe I'm doing something wrong? Would his parents have not protested? Would his wife not have protested? Would society, elders not have warned him? And he rejected all of them. So, when we start breaking down the boundaries that are protecting us, at that time, when somebody warns us against it, somebody urges us to stop, maybe don't stop, then it becomes a problem. So now exactly when it becomes a big problem, that might be exact point may be difficult to decide.

But so from the circumstantial, when does it become intentional? Broadly, my understanding is that circumstantial means the circumstances comes upon us. Intentional means we create the circumstance. Now exactly which circumstance was, at what point did this change from here to here? That may be difficult to say.

But clearly from here to here, there is a difference, isn't it? So, he seeing that prostitute while he had gone for his duty, and he now living with that prostitute, you cannot say this was destiny. So, that is why we all need to define, we need to establish and erect our own boundaries, construct those boundaries beforehand. That no matter what happens, this is what I am never going to do.

And we need to be aware of our boundaries. If we are not aware of our boundaries, then we will be keep crossing boundaries one after another, after another, after another, after another. You would not realize how far we have gone.

And then it may one day we find we have just gone too far. Is that okay? So, if our conditionings are, if you want to make a best possible choice, but we have a conditioning on our attachments, do not they restrict us? Yes, they do. That is why we have to make the best choice within whatever conditionings we have.

So, we may not be able to make the best choice absolutely, but within whatever conditioning I have, say if I have a fracture, or if I have a weak limb because of fracture which is recovering. So, I cannot lift up a 10 kg weight. But can I lift a 1 kg weight? Can I lift a half a kg weight? Well, maybe half a kg is possible.

So, ultimately, it requires honesty with ourselves. That in this situation, how much can I do? So, as I mentioned earlier, I got polio. Now, I have some mobility with my leg.

At one time when I was about 9 or 10, my parents took me to a particular very intensive exercise treatment. So, I was not going to school. So, almost 8-9 hours a day, I was doing vigorous exercise.

It was quite exhausting. It was quite, some of the exercises were quite painful also. Because of that, I have at least some mobility right now.

At that time, so my mother had also taken a leave without pay and she was staying with me at the place where this clinic was. So, I used to tell her that this is just so painful, I cannot continue it. So, my mother told me at that time, I do not know when the pain is going to be too much for me.

So, if you say the pain is too much, I am not going to force you. She said, I will tell you one thing. She said that, see, it is you who will be able to walk more or walk less at the end.

So, whatever choice you make, you will have to live with that choice. So, that was quite sobering for me. So, ultimately, nobody else knows what our capacity's limit is.

And even we ourselves may not know. And sometimes we may overestimate our capacity and sometimes we may underestimate our capacity. And that is why, we have to try it out.

Life is an experiment. We try it out and decide how much is our capacity. Is doing our prescribed duty itself punya? Do we have to do some charitable duty or vrata or tirtha yatra to get punya grades? Well, there are degrees.

Doing our prescribed duty is also very important. You should not devalue it. And if you do it, that is good.

Now, if you do charity and do something like that, that is even better. Now, if you do it for Krishna, that is even better. So, in the name of valuing something higher, we should not devalue something which we are doing right.

I see, like I mentioned this, that we belong to some immediate whole. And if we are a part of a family, if the family is giving something to us, we have to do something to the family. So, that is immediately adharma.

Now, if we are in society and we can do some charity, then that is, we are going beyond it. So, there will be greater punya. It is not something which you are expected to do.

But if you do it, that is good. So, now if you do it for Krishna, and that Krishna consciousness means that we will have eternal benefits from that. This karma concept is more complex than engineering mathematics.

Why are we struggling so much to understand this? After all, we are going to this conclusion, our present actions matter. Not everything is destined. Yes, that is the conclusion.

But then we will all face situations where we will have to decide, which of my present actions matter? And how much of the present actions matter? So, what we are trying to do through this class is this, gain a sense that our mind can start playing games with us. Our mind may make us go in two ways. In the mind, when we all have to, in life, we all have to, life and mind we can put it this way.

We can over-endeavor or we can under-endeavor. So, in between is the adequate appropriate endeavor. So, finding this balance is not easy.

So, our actions matter, but how much do they matter and when do they matter? So, sometimes we may over-endeavor in particular areas, although there is not much use in it. We may have to accept that. Sometimes what happens, we may try to gain the approval of some person, maybe in our childhood, we were compared unfavorably with a sibling or the neighborhood friend.

And throughout our life, we are trying to gain the approval of a particular elderly person, particular father figure or particular parent figure. And now some people may never approve of us. No matter what we do, even if we do 100 things for them, they will only look at the 101st thing we have not done and criticize us for that.

So, then we may end up over-endeavoring. See, if you see what the six limbs of bhakti, over-endeavor is what? Prayas. So, do not do prayas, but then under-endeavor would be the opposite of utsaha.

So, we do not want prayas doing too much. We do not want under-endeavor also, no utsaha. We need to have that balance.

It is a very important role in our bhakti and in our daily life as well as in bhakti. So, somebody may try to very much to become a preacher. And now, maybe they can do very good service cooking, maybe they can do very good managing, but they try to preach and to prepare one class.

They have so much anxiety because of that. Sometimes what happens is, we try to do a service and not only are we in anxiety because of the service, we put everyone around us in anxiety also. And then, even if that is the case, is that service really that important? Maybe it is and we have to learn and grow.

Maybe it is not. So, all of us, we need to understand where things will go into over-endeavor, where they will be under-endeavor. That is how we can move ahead in life.

What is talent? How is it related with destiny and karma? Well, talent is some ability that we naturally have. Like I use the word instinct. Some people have natural ability in music, maths, language, art, decoration, whatever.

So, we get talent by past karma, by destiny. And then, when we use that talent by our present karma, that is our commitment, then we come to achievement. So, talent plus commitment leads to achievement.

So, talent is destiny, commitment is present karma. What is daiva? Daiva is the same as destiny. So, in regards to dharma, can you shed light on why Yudhishthira gambled and not even a single guru saved Draupadi from getting disrobed? This is one of the most difficult incidents in the Mahabharata.

So, to understand what happened, let's try to look at a broader picture. I mentioned this briefly yesterday. But Yudhishthira, like I mentioned, he was always bending backward to try to avoid a war.

When he was given just the barren half of the kingdom, when he was given Khandav, Bhima was upset, Bhima was enraged. But Yudhishthira gracefully accepted it. Now, it was half the kingdom, but it was completely barren.

So, Yudhishthira accepted it and then by Krishna's mercy, the Pandavas' hard work, what they did was, they made it a flourishing kingdom. Sometimes devotees have the simplistic idea that, you know, that city life is bad and we should live in villages or that simple living means village life. No, that the Pandavas converted a wilderness into a city is considered the mercy of Krishna.

That from the Khandav forest, they made it into Indraprastha. So, the idea is that they made a flourishing kingdom over there and then they did the Rajasuya Yajna. And when the Rajasuya Yajna happened, at the end of it, Vyasadev, who was the presiding priest, Yudhishthira approached him and offered him Dakshina and sought his blessings, saying that, O sage, bless me so that I can rule according to dharma and bring peace and prosperity for my kingdom.

And Vyasa became very grieved. Vyasa said that, O king, I see the dark clouds of war in the near future. This is what you desire will happen, but after that great catastrophic war.

So, Yudhishthira on hearing this became very pensive and he thought that what is the cause of war? War is caused by conflicts that are unresolved. When two people have disputes and they can't resolve it, then they fight. Now, why are conflicts unresolved? Because there is no authority that is accepted.

So, for example, two people go to court and they get a judgment. One person gets a judgment, they don't like the judgment. They go to a higher court.

You go to a higher court, the other person gets a favorable judgment, the first person doesn't like it. Then you go to the highest court and you get a judgment, you don't like it. Then both will decide, we don't accept it.

We have extrajudicial, we will fight. If the authority is not accepted, then conflicts become unresolved. And why is the authority not accepted? Because there is not a spirit of obedience.

That I should obey my elders. So, he said that in order to prevent this whole thing from happening, I should avoid no obedience. I will always obey my elders.

And now, what happened after that? Shakuni manipulated Duryodhana and Duryodhana pressured Dhritarashtra and Dhritarashtra sent Vidura to Yudhishthira to call him for a gambling match. Now, when this happened, the first thing Yudhishthira said when Vidura came with the news of the gambling match, he says, you know, oh Vidura, if we gamble, we will fight. Gambling will be disastrous.

I think this is terrible. So, Vidura agreed. But Dhritarashtra had called.

So, Yudhishthira felt that how can I disobey my elder? So, he thought that if I disobey, that will lead to greater conflict. And that's why he went there. And when he came there, the first thing Yudhishthira said to Duryodhana is, oh Duryodhana, why do you want to steal from me the wealth with which I want to serve the Brahmanas, I want to serve society.

I want to take care of my citizens. Duryodhana said, who is trying to steal wealth from you? This is just a gambling match. Just having some fun.

So, then when the gambling match started, Duryodhana said, Shakuni will play on my behalf. Yudhishthira said, this is wrong. He said that the person who puts the wealth should be the person who casts the dice.

So, Duryodhana laughed and said, if you are afraid, don't play. Yudhishthira said, I am not afraid, but this is improper. He looked at Dhritarashtra.

Dhritarashtra remained silent. So, what happened was, Yudhishthira started playing. And when he started playing, he lost once, lost twice, lost thrice.

And as he kept losing, he started feeling that, you know, I had to do my dharma. I had to do my seva. I would take care of my family.

I had to take care of my citizens. If I just win one round, I'll get something back and I'll be able to do my dharma properly. So, like that, he kept gambling, gambling and he kept losing and losing and losing.

So, two things went wrong with Yudhishthira over here. First is that, yesterday I talked about when an artha is made into paramartha, that leads to an artha. So, when obedience is an important value.

But when obedience is made the supreme value, obey your elders. That is good. But do we not have to consider what the elders want? Are the elders wise? Are the elders well motivated? When obedience becomes the supreme value, that leads to an artha.

So, the second thing that happened is that good intentions are not the same as good intelligence. Just because we have good intentions, that doesn't mean we have good intelligence. Or just because we have good intentions, doesn't mean that we can do without good intelligence.

I know one devotee, this happened in London, that this devotee, he took, he was into investment and from investment he went to the stocks. And he persuaded some devotees who were going to donate some money to the temple. They had saved that money to donate to the temple.

He said that, instead of donating to the temple, you give it to me. You invest with me. In six months, I'll give double.

And then you can give double to Krishna. And he took that money and what happened, he lost it. When he lost it, instead of acknowledging it, he told other devotees, you also give, I'll also make your money double.

And then eventually, this one devotee, he was actually a very good devotee, he ended up bankrupting an entire community. And then after that, as a scorned devotee, we made policy that just because some devotee, the senior devotee, that even if it's your spiritual master, your spiritual guide, if they tell you invest money over here, you have to use your intelligence. The spiritual master is your spiritual master.

The spiritual master is not your financial master. The spiritual master is not your medical master. So, there's a difference in areas.

So, my point is that this devotee was very well-intentioned. Let's give more money to Krishna and he ended up losing all the money. So, life is cruel.

And if we do not have the expertise to deal with a particular field and we deal with another field, our good intentions are not going to save us. We will be destroyed. Abhimanyu went with good intentions, but he didn't know how to come out of Chakravyuh.

He was destroyed. Sita told Jatayu, you will not be able to defeat Ravan. Don't try to stop Ravan.

Just inform Ram that I have been abducted by Ravan. Jatayu felt Sita is like my daughter. How can I just stand by and watch her being abducted? Jatayu attacked.

Now, his spirits were great. His fighting was heroic and his sacrifice was glorious. But at the end of the day, he lost.

So, my point is that good intentions do not substitute for good intelligence. So, Yudhishthir, this was his second mistake. And then after that, now I will talk about mistakes.

From the word mistake, I see a little jarring, but I will talk about it later. Let us complete this past time analysis at this level. Then after that, what happened is that everybody, this incident of they wanted to drag Draupadi in and disrobe her, this was such a horrendous incident and everybody was shocked, aghast, what is happening? And there is something in psychology called the bystander syndrome.

Bystander syndrome means what happens is everybody thinks that somebody else will do something and everybody waits for someone else to do something and nobody does anything good. So, basically, nobody could believe that this was happening. And somebody should stop.

Now, South Indian Acharyas when they talk about it, they say actually in that assembly, everybody committed adharma except Draupadi. Draupadi was the only person who stuck to dharma and reminded everyone of dharma. Even the Pandavas, they miscalculated.

The Pandavas, they had lost themselves and they had become slaves. So now, yes, you have become a slave, but does that mean the slave has no rights? Does it mean just because they are slaves, does it mean that they have no responsibility to protect their wife? So, they chose dāsya dharma over pati dharma. Dāsya dharma is we have to obey our masters.

Pati dharma is I have to protect my wife. So, they chose dāsya dharma over pati dharma. So, everybody comes out from that particular assembly.

Nobody comes out with a good light. Everybody is scarred over there. So, this is the analysis from an ethical perspective.

But this is not the only level of analysis. Scriptures can be analyzed at four different levels. At a literal level, we look at the story and enjoy the story.

At the ethical level, we try to understand who is right and who is wrong. At the allegorical level, we try to look at the symbolism in the story. And at the devotional level, we see it as Krishna Leela.

So, right now, I analyze at the ethical level. Now, at the devotional level, we can say that ultimately, whatever Yudhishthira did, whatever everyone did, it was ultimately meant to demonstrate how we have no protector except Krishna. So, the devotional and ethical, they do not necessarily contradict each other.

They are just different ways of looking at things. So, Yudhishthira at the end did not say that, I did not make any mistake. Whatever I did was so that Krishna could teach a lesson.

No, Yudhishthira felt responsible. And what did Yudhishthira do? Yudhishthira, in some ways, he became life hardened or battle hardened. So, some people say he was just a gambling addict.

He is not a gambling addict at all. He had a misplaced sense of morality. And he realized that obedience is important, but you have to look at addition.

We have to look at the intentions of a person also. You cannot make one particular value into the supreme value. So, this does not mean we should not obey our elders.

That is not the point. The point is that obedience should not replace intelligence. The point of obedience is to strengthen our intelligence, not weaken and replace our intelligence.

So, I wanted to ask you, like you said, Yudhishthira is not a gambling addict, but it was gambling nature. No, at that particular point, that point was Duryodhana was under the water, he was not ready to come out. They wanted to have a fair fight.

Now, Duryodhana also had his ego. And Duryodhana would not have chosen anyone else. His whole life he was preparing to defeat Bhima.

He had lost all everything that he had lost. One battle I wanted to win. So, Yudhishthira could tend to be a bit more magnanimous.

And sometimes that might not be the best thing. So, we all have our nature. And Yudhishthira also felt very guilty at the end of the war.

So, the Mahabharata does not deny the individuality of devotees in the name of saying that they are pure devotees. Yudhishthira is very much an individual. And as an individual, he is a much more soft hearted person.

And that is why at the end of the war, when he came to know that Karna was his brother and he had celebrated the killing of Karna, he just all of it accumulated and just became a burden for him. I have lost my sons, we have lost so many of our relatives, so many soldiers were killed. And what kind of person am I that I celebrated in joy at the death of my own brother? And that very brother had the opportunity to kill me.

But he did kill me and I goaded my brother Arjuna to kill him. I think of myself as a good person. But if I am really a good person, then wouldn't my mother have entrusted me with this truth? Why didn't she tell this to me? So he started feeling that I cannot be a king.

I'm not worthy of being a king. So he's a great devotee. But what the Mahabharata depicts is that life can sometimes be tormentingly complex.

And it's tormentingly complex. And sometimes what is the right thing to do can become very, very difficult to do. So now, like in a cricket match, after India loses a match, everyone becomes an expert cricket advisor.

They say, oh, you know, this person should have given the ball, this person should have come first to bat. You know, everybody can give advice like that. What they say is that hindsight is always 20-20.

That means once you're looking after the event, you can say, you know, this should have been done, this should not have been done. But actually, when you're going through that event, it's a challenging situation to deal with. So Yudhishtira at that particular time made a decision.

And that might not have been the best decision. But that also shows his nature. So is that a weakness? Well, no, it's a feature of a nature.

And sometimes that feature can become a weakness. Sometimes it can be a strength. One last question we'll take.

There are some more questions remaining, but we'll take them in the later session. Mr. Vishnabh, I think you have already answered the question I'm going to ask. But again, I'm asking because I want some more elaborate explanation on that.

Let's suppose often we see that we set some goals in our life and we start acting on that goal. We perform duties like, we set goals like I have to crack UPSC or I have to crack IIT. And we start studying for it.

But somehow or other, we do not get results as per our expectations. So the question is, so whatever activities we perform, whatever duty we perform like studying. So will this be a good result maybe in the future or maybe in the next life? Or it will not be counted as a good karma or something like that.

That will give me a good return in the future. So thus only charity gives good credit and it will give good result, good reaction. Or doing our duty as well, which we have not got the result right now.

But maybe in next life or in next life. I got your question. There are different degrees in this.

See, the point of in bhakti, when we talk about transcendence and going back to the spiritual world. At that time, anything other than bhakti may just be equalized. It is all temporal.

And it is not really valuable. But Bhaktivinoda Thakur says that there is a big difference sometimes. We may equate rajoguna and tamoguna.

So, for example, say we are going to go beyond rajoguna and tamoguna and come to sattva. And then go beyond sattva to bhakti. So that is true, but he says rajoguna is a hundred times better than tamoguna.

Let us use the word hundred times. He says tamoguna is poison and rajoguna can be an antidote to the poison. So what do you mean by that? Like, say, if you consider Indian parents.

Indian parents may be very rajasic. There are a lot of expectations on the children. You know, you should get this much marks and you should do this and you earn this much money and should marry in this way and this and that.

There is a lot of rajoguna. But then any Indian parent, if the child falls sick, the parents will be ready to move heaven and earth to try to treat their child. Now, we may say rajasic parenting is just material, materialistic.

That is true. But what about tamasic parenting? I met one devotee. He was telling that basically his father was never in the picture.

His mother was always single mother. And when he was four or five, at that time, his mother became a drug addict. And he said, practically from the age of five, I was taking care of my mother.

So, he said, my mother didn't even know that I existed sometimes. She was so stoned. So America is a welfare state somewhat.

Not exactly a welfare state, but a lot of welfare policies are. So, you know, if you don't have a job, then you can go to a, you have food stamps and you can get food. He said, as a five-year-old child, I would go with a neighbor and I would go to food stamps and I would get food and I would feed my mother.

So, you know, a parent who doesn't even know that their child exists is definitely a tamasic parent. And a rajasic parent is a hundred times better than that. So, in terms of degree, when you talk about punya, being in sattva is punya as compared to rajas and tamas.

But being in rajas is also punya as compared to being in tamas. So there is, materially also somebody can be irresponsible. Somebody can be materially responsible and somebody can be materially and spiritually responsible.

So there are degrees. So being materially responsible is also a good thing. And if you don't get results, we are learning some, by working hard in a particular field, we learn some discipline.

We learn something valuable. And yes, that will count in a particular way. What particular way, we don't know.

But whatever we do, ultimately that will help us grow and then contribute to the future in some way. So, ultimately the system, that the basic principle is that if we act responsibly, that is a good thing. Now, which action is a responsible action? Which action will be more responsible? Which action will be less responsible? That's something which has to be individually carefully deliberated.

We get our next life by our karma and by the remembrance at the time of death. Suppose somebody got an animal body. At that time, we know the law of karma is not applied.

And animals, then how do they get the next body? Well, generally, once a person leaves a human body, more or less their subsequent trajectory is fixed. So, the antah kaale chamamayuva principle primarily applies to human form. It does not so much apply to an animal form.

Because, as you say, animals don't have free will. So, of course, if the animals are attached to a devotee who is attached to Krishna, that's a different situation. But generally speaking, whatever form, whatever karma we have, that will determine when we left the last human form.

And if you go into animal life, the subsequent trajectory of life is more or less determined by the karma from the human life itself. Thank you very much.