2 Empower your outreach. Experience as praman. Dhanbad

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.

So, we continue our discussion today on how to make our outreach more effective. Yesterday I discussed about the basic principle of realization, remember, a quick recap of what we discussed that how, how many of you were there yesterday? How many of you were not there yesterday? How many of you were not there today? So, yesterday the main thing we discussed was about how our outreach needs to be able to connect with people. So, we talked about how the Gita has a timely and timeless message.

And especially this particular diagram of how, Hare Krishna, we need to teach the message. We need to teach the message of scripture, but teach it in a way that the audience can also understand. Audience can also understand, that’s extremely important.

So, from that context I discussed how Jiva Goswami wrote his Sanskrit and wrote about Krishna and even commented indirectly on the Vedanta Sutra through the Shastras, not directly but indirectly. And then we discussed how in today’s world logic is so important. So, if you want to connect with people’s interests, so, one interest is their source of authority.

What they accept as authoritative, if like one person is quoting the Bible, other is quoting the Quran, there will be no discussion. It will just be people talking past each other. So, if we are quoting Shastra and people don’t accept Shastra at all, then we will not be able to persuade people.

So, Shastra needs to be explained logically. So, I discussed how pratyaksha anuman can also be used in the service of shabda. So, yesterday I discussed about logic.

Today I will move to second part. So, logic is basically an extension of anuman. Anuman is basically, we can call it guesswork or speculation, but that’s a negative word.

The positive word is reasoning, inference, logic. So, it’s based on analysis using data. So, today we will move forward and discuss about the other aspect that is experience.

Let’s start with Bhaktivinod Thakur first. Now, if we look at the parampara, we have Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, then we have the six Goswamis, then we have the three acharyas who possess, from the first, Travelling Sankirtan Parthi, we have, after them, there is Vishwanath Chakra Thakur and Baldevidya Bhushan. So, it’s like, this is in Bengal.

Bengal and Puri. The Goswamis are in Vrindavan. The three acharyas, they are disciples of Yugoswami.

They come back to Bengal. Now, this is the time when Aurangzeb rules. So, because of that, this was the time when Akbar was there.

So, Akbar was a relatively tolerant ruler and during his time, the Goswamis were able to take, re-establish Vrindavan. But during Aurangzeb’s time, there was utter devastation. So, Srimas Acharya and the other two, they studied Yugoswami, but when they saw the ongoing destruction, they left Vrindavan.

And then after that, Vishwanath Chakra Thakur from Bengal, he again went to Vrindavan. So, after Aurangzeb, basically the Islamic empire more or less collapsed and then the Vishwanath Chakra Thakur led to the re-restoration of Vrindavan. Now, Baldevidya Bhushan was also in Vrindavan, he was in Jaipur.

Now, after that, a very big change happened. That after the fall of Aurangzeb, the British came in. And by the time Bhaktivinod Thakur was there, the British actually entered India, primarily the first stronghold they got was in Bengal.

And from there they spread across the world, across the country. So, now, during the times of the previous Acharyas, before Bhaktivinod Thakur, the Vedas were accepted as authority. And the question was mainly, what do the Vedas mean? What is the teaching of the Vedas? So, Shankara’s followers say that it’s actually Advaita Vedanta.

Madhava’s followers may say that it is Dvaita Vedanta. So, like that, the Vedas were the common source of authority for everyone. The difference was, what is the meaning of the Vedas? But with the advent of the British and their bringing of the scientific method and the western mode of thinking and education, so, till here, in the previous tradition it was, what do the Vedas mean? That was the issue.

But at the time of Bhaktivinod Thakur, it was not, what is the meaning of the Vedas? Do the Vedas have any meaning at all? It is that, is there anything of value in this? So, are they meaningful? Not what is their meaning. So, that is why, although Bhaktivinod Thakur studied the previous Acharyas at his time, you know, he was also a great scholar. But he did not write a commentary on Vedanta Sutra.

Nor have the subsequent Acharyas in our tradition written a commentary on Vedanta Sutra. Why? Because the Vedanta Sutra was no longer relevant. It is, the question is not, what does the Vedanta Sutra mean? Do any of the Vedas have any meaning at all? That’s why if you see Bhaktivinod Thakur’s books, they take a different approach.

Now, if you read Chaitanya Shikshamrita, Arjai Madharma, they are not filled with scriptural quotations. Because the audience he is trying to reach, they are people who are educated in the western, now today when we west we are moving to America, it was the British English way of education. And the English way of education at that time, it was not so much Christian as it was rational.

So, basically, if you consider, if this is the Bhaktivinod Thakur, his main outreach happened in the late 19th century, roughly from say 1880, he departed in 1915. So, 1880 to 1905, 1910. That is the time when his main writings happened.

He wrote something in 1870 also. But some books he wrote before he was initiated. And some books he wrote after his initiation.

So, now, with respect to Bhaktivinod Thakur, if this was his time, there were different groups at that time. So, I am not, Bhaktivinod Thakur is a very, you could say, a pioneering acharya. And he had to address many different demographics.

So, I will just mention it briefly, but our focus is on preaching with realization. So, he had four different audiences. One was the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, the Gaudiya authorities at that time.

See, what happened was that for Bhaktivinod Thakur, he was born in the Shakta tradition. He was not born in the Vaishnava tradition. And that’s why from the Gaudiya perspective, he was an outsider.

So, he on his own studied the, he studied various books. He studied Chaitanya Charita Amruti, he was very attracted. In fact, this is the teaching of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Gaudiya Charita, at that time, were a part of Bengali culture. But their teachings were obscured. Then, when their teachings were obscured, at that time, what does he do? How does he reach to them? So, but he, you see, first of all, he himself did not consider authority.

So, if he starts giving talks, who is going to listen to him? Because, say, somebody studies the Bhagavad Gita and says, I am going to speak on the Bhagavad Gita. So, now, he was inspired by Jagannath Babaji. But Jagannath Babaji was a avyudh kind of person.

He did not want to give initiation. And even if he gave initiation, at that time, the Gaudiya authorities were in two categories. One were the sanyasis who would mostly live like sadhus in forests or holy dhams.

And then the sanyasis, they are not like the sanyasi gurus in Iskcon right now. They are thousands of followers and they travel all over the world. It’s not like that.

These were really otherworldly people. So, you could go and hear a talk from them, get some inspiration. But they did not have like a dedicated band of disciples.

They did not have any influence. The real influence was with the temple priests. That there are various temples and the temples had priests who were within families.

So, it was like a generational. So, the caste system had penetrated into Gaudiya Vaishnavism also. And so, it had become like Jati Goswami.

Somebody is born in a Goswami family, then they become the priests. So, they were the real power holders. So, because ordinary citizens, ordinary people, you know, if they want to get their daughter, they want to have marriage in their family, they want to have the name giving of their child, they will go to the temple priests.

If some sadhu is visiting, fine, they will take their blessings. But the temple priests were their main authorities. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, he had to get himself legitimized from them.

So, that is why he, although he was inspired by Jagannath Babaji, he took initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami. The Bipin Bihari Goswami was a very influential priest and leader. Now, he took initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami, but Bipin Bihari Goswami was a very strong exponent of the idea that only brahmanas can be teachers and gurus.

Only brahmana, those born in brahmana family, it was the idea of hereditary caste system. That’s why later on you may have heard about the debate on brahmana and Vaishnava, which Bhaktivinod Thakur fought. Now, what we have often not known is that the person who was the main leader on the brahmana side was actually Bipin Bihari Goswami.

That he was the guru of Bhaktivinod Thakur. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, through his deeksha, he got validation. That he is, now Bhaktivinod Thakur said, I cannot challenge my guru.

So, he told Bhaktivinod Thakur, you go and debate with him. So, now that was one audience he needed connection with. Now, there were the general Bengali masses.

Now, these were very much under Sahajiya influence. So, for them, he wrote songs. So, they are more sentimental, they like songs and his songs, he was able to reach out to them.

Now, his biggest, most lasting outreach, like today most of you are talking about who he took deeksha from, why he took deeksha from. No, you may have heard about Bhaktivinod Thakur, you never heard about this. Because this was not really, it is not a timeless thing.

It was a timely, it was a strategic thing required. But his biggest outreach was to what is called at that time the Bhadraloka. The Bhadraloka were the English educated people.

So, to reach out to these people, for them, they were a complex mess. Some of them had converted to Christianity, some of them were attracted by the west. It happened in Britain, that this time Britain was also undergoing a lot of turmoil.

Like yesterday I mentioned, America is the most religious country in the west. But it’s not that simple. In America, there are two main political parties.

And one is the Republicans are much more conservative and religious. They can say they are religious or they at least nominally support religion. And the Democrats are highly liberal and quite anti-religion.

So, like that, in Britain also there are two parties, the Tory party and the Labour party. The names were different at that time. So, one party was very protestant Christian.

And they said that if we have got the rule of India, then this is given to us by Jesus and we should use it to convert Indians to spread the light of Jesus, light of the Bible to these ignorant heathens. Now, the other party, they were saying that actually we want to remove the darkness of Christianity from Britain itself. Why should we be spreading it in? Why should we be spreading it in other countries? So, they were more rationalist kind of parties.

So, now, depending on who would be in power, in India, Christian outreach would be either funded and supported by the government or it would be checked by the government. Now, of course, all this happened after 1857. Before that the East India Company was there.

That was different. After 1857, the British government took the power officially in its own hands. Before that it was under a private company.

But why am I discussing all this? The point is that although their agenda about Christianity was opposite, but both, the religious party and the rationalist party, both were united in the criticism of Hinduism. Because Christians considered Hinduism as a religion from the devil and the rationalists considered that this is a superstitious, outdated, irrational belief system. So, both were united in their criticism of Hinduism.

And now, at that time, Bhaktivinod Thakur, the educated people who were there in India, who were working in the British government, they were influenced by these British ideas. And what happened? India had been ruled for almost 700 years under various Islamic rulers. There was not one Islamic ruler.

There were different rulers there. Delhi Sultanate was there, the Mughals were the longest, but many others were there at different times. But what had happened was that although Islam had gained political superiority, even political dominance to some extent, Islam was never seen as an intellectual threat.

It was never seen as even an intellectual competitor. So, even during the times of our Acharyas, whether it is Ramacharya or Bhatibhya Bhushan, none of them considered necessary to write any books critiquing Islam. Because the lifestyle and the values and the culture was such that, okay, these people may have more power than us.

And lot of people were converted by force. But it was not considered an intellectual threat. So, there was not much intellectual engagement required.

But when the West came to India, when colonialism came to India, it was not just a political dominating power. Much more than that, it was an intellectual threat. Why? It was an intellectual threat because the, what, you know, when in the history of the world has it happened that so small a number of people have ruled so large a country for so many decades.

At least, many Muslims, Roman invaders, they came to India. Some like Tughlaq and others, they were plunderers. But Babar and others, they came and made India their home.

So, they settled over here. But for most British officers, British people who worked with the British government, for them, the posting in India was like posting in Andaman Nicobar or something like that for them. They felt that the posting was a punishment.

They considered India to be a hot country filled with diseases and people who were stupid and blind and irrational. So, basically, very few British people made India their home. So, their purpose was basically, they wanted that India has to be managed but we won’t have so many British people to come and manage India.

So, they needed Indians to voluntarily submit to them. Now, this was not unprecedented. Even under the Islamic rule also, there were lots of Indians who were working under the Islamic rule.

So, for example, Shivaji Maharaj is a famous ruler from Maharashtra and he built the Maratha empire. Now, when he was arrested, A. Afzal Khan, Shahistakhan both tried to arrest him and he managed to elude them. But then after that, it was Jai Singh too.

He was a Rajput king who actually arrested Shivaji Maharaj. Because he was working under Aurangzeb. So, the idea that Indians working under the foreign rulers was not unprecedented.

But here, that was primarily political agreement. But basically, under the British rule, what happened was that they educated Indians. And Indians started getting attracted.

So, it was very impressive that the West had so much technology. And the advancement of science and technology was very impressive. And beyond that there was a rational approach which they doubted.

And that seemed also very attractive. So, lots of Indians were getting attracted seeing that the British educational system or the British knowledge system and it’s true from historical perspective that 200-300 years before the British colonial rule or around that. Now, Britain did attract, like places also have like a mass karma.

So, it seems Britain had a karma by which very very intelligent people whether Newton, Galileo and all those scientists, they were all born at that place. And they all led to the advancement of science. So, Indians were captivated by that.

So, that’s why when Bhaktivinod Thakur started speaking, his primary focus was in this audience. And for these he wrote Chaitanya Shiksha Amrita, he wrote Jaiva Dharma, he wrote Krishna Samhita. He wrote various books like these.

And he was, Prabhupada calls Bhaktivinod Thakur as the founder of the modern day Krishna consciousness movement. Not founder, sorry, he was the father. The father of the modern day Krishna consciousness movement.

So, Bhaktivinod Thakur was the first in our tradition who focused on rationally presenting bhakti. Now, in the first essay, like he himself has a spiritual journey. He was born in Shakta family.

And he was not exactly a devout Shakta. In his childhood he says that when he had to go out and he would feel afraid, his grandmother told him that, his grandparents would chant the name of Ram. He said, I would chant the name of Ram and I would start feeling, my fear would go away.

So, he was fascinated by it. So, over a period of time, as he became established in the British government, then he started writing books to reach out to the contemporary audiences. So, for him the contemporary audiences that most of his books focused on was these educated Bhadralokas.

And his focus was on both rationality and experience. Reasoning, logic and experience. One of the first books that he wrote, it was actually a speech he gave to his friends.

And that is called the Bhagwat, the essay. It was about his theology, his philosophy and his teachings. So, when he spoke on the Bhagwatam, the Bhagwatam was known to Bengali people at that time.

So, his essay, which was later published, in those times people would often read speeches. Now also politicians read speeches, but often it doesn’t appear as if they are reading. They have these, what do you call it, screen, screen board like that, you know, which in front of them, they are spread all over and it looks as if they are speaking spontaneously but just reading the script from there.

Teleprompter. Teleprompter, sorry. Screen board teleprompter.

So, but at that time he read out his speech and then later he refined it and published it. So, he talked about that for the understanding the Bhagwatam, what would be the obstacles and how to address the obstacles. So, he says, there are three main obstacles.

Doctor, what do you know? He says, when I was growing up, when I studied, I also considered the Bhagwatam to be like a primitive book with no value. And I read the books of western philosophers as I attracted them. But over the years, my understanding has changed.

And then he starts sharing his eye history. So, if we consider the Bhagwatam and the Bhadraloka audience. So, he says, three main obstacles are the biggest at that time was its cosmology, its chronology and its morality.

So, now cosmology and chronology can be put together. But the chronology that there is Satyuga for, there is Satyuga of thousands and thousands and thousands. Kalyuga is this long.

Now at that time the western dating system of the earth had come up. And the idea that these yugas could be so long that people could live for hundreds upon hundreds and thousands of years. This seemed irrational.

Then again the idea that there could be oceans of milk and all the things that are described in the Bhagwatam. That and especially the idea of hellish places where people burn, that was quite difficult. And with respect to the morality, at that time, see the British, they had critiqued Hinduism and generally what happens is, if a boxing match is going on, then both players are throwing punches.

And then when they are throwing punches, you hit the other person. And when you hit the other person, the other person winces slightly. And you know, oh, that person is injured over here already.

Maybe there is a pre-existing wound. Then they will what? Hit where it hurts. So, the British, especially now I am talking about the British as the colonialists, but not the British colonialists, even the rationalists, they found that among all the targets within Hinduism, they found two targets to be the strongest to hit.

This is in terms of the objects of worship. In terms of cultural practices, they attack Sati. Especially Sati was a strong target of attack.

Then there was the caste system and primarily untouchability within it. But we are not talking about cultural practices. We are talking about the teachings.

So, they found Krishna and Kali to be the two gods that they could hit the most. So, they said, how can anyone worship a god who is so brutal? A god who wears a necklace of skulls? What kind of monstrous beings would even imagine such a god? And so, they targeted Kali for the apparent brutality and they targeted Krishna for the immorality. The idea that what kind of perverse people would actually celebrate the immorality of someone? So, now these were formidable obstacles at that time as they are today.

So, Bhaktivinod Thakur systematically addresses these ideas. I am not going to get into the specifics of how he addresses them. But the point is that, so, none of these obstacles, you will see, when he is talking about the obstacles, he is not talking about Advaita Vedanta.

He is not talking about what had been traditionally the focus of the Vaishnavacharyas. Because that was not relevant. Now, when we came to Srila Prabhupada’s time, so, it’s interesting when Bhaktivinod Thakur sent his disciples to the West.

He told them, present themselves as the messengers of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who had come to teach the message of love of God. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur often compared Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to Jesus. That’s why Jesus had a teaching of love of God.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also taught love of God. And then he presented it that way to some extent. Now, by the time of Srila Prabhupada, things had changed.

India was on the verge of gaining independence. The independence movement had become very powerful. And the independence movement had to a large extent been able to unite Indians.

So, what had happened? Now, I am speaking a lot of information. If it is not clear, we will have time for question answers. But what I am trying to do over here, if all the information seems overwhelming, don’t worry.

You will get overwhelmed even more after this. But the point is, the information is not as important as specific as, the point is, acharyas are teaching according to time, place, circumstance. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, he focused on the point that we are presenting the message of love of God.

Now, by the time of Srila Prabhupada, things had changed. The Indian independence movement, by that time had become substantially influential. India had even got independence when Prabhupada went abroad.

So, now, one of the biggest problems for the Indian independence fighters was that in India, there were so many religious faiths. So many religious faiths means there was Shaivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism and all that. So, it was very difficult to unite everyone.

So, that’s why, while the Bhagavad Gita was an important book, previously also, like Prasthantraya Bhagavad Gita was important. But the Bhagavad Gita was not the book of the masses. You would have Katha on the Bhagavad, Bhagavad Katha you would have, Ram Katha you would have.

Generally, most people would not have Mahabharata Katha because the Mahabharata was seen as a book of war and violence. So, people were, there was a little scepticism about it. But still, Mahabharata characters were well known.

But it was not that Bhagavad Gita Parvachan would happen widely. Because Bhagavad Gita is a difficult book to understand. It is complicated.

So, but what happened was the Indian independence fighters, they felt that the Bhagavad Gita is the most convenient book to unite Indians. And just like the Christians had their Bible, only one book, which could be, this is our book’s teaching. So, the Bhagavad Gita became very important.

Now, Prabhupada made the Bhagavad Gita the basis of his outreach. The book that Prabhupada wanted to most widely distribute was Bhagavad Gita. So, the idea of Bhagavad Gita was to unify Indians.

And in order to unify Indians, primarily Hindus, what they did was, almost all the commentators, see everybody, they are approaching from particular perspective. Whether it is Aurobindo or whether it is, before it is Swami Vivekananda, or whether it is Mahatma Gandhi, or it is Bal Gangadhar Tilak. All of them, they are, what they did for the country, it is, in their way, it is valuable, invaluable we can say.

But for them, they were not primarily spiritualists. They were, they had a spiritual dimension to their life, but their primary focus was national awakening, national activism. So, for them the Bhagavad Gita was a tool for that.

So, they significantly downplayed or even denied the devotional element within the Bhagavad Gita. Because the devotional element would make the Bhagavad Gita sectarian. Because if we say we have to worship Krishna, that is the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, then what happens? Why only Krishna? Why not this devta and why not that devta and why not that devta? So, I was in America and… Now, one devotee showed me a cartoon.

This is an American boy, American college student or school student is asking this Indian co-student, why do you people, why do you guys worship so many gods? This Indian boy thinks and just, we like to keep backups. So, the idea of worshipping many deities is, is very confusing and people come up with their own explanations. So, the Gita, as it was presented during the Indian independence struggle, it significantly downplayed Krishna and it’s definitely downplayed bhakti to Krishna.

So, Prabhupada, it is, Prabhupada made the Bhagavad Gita the basis of his outreach. The Bhagavad Gita had become immensely influential in India and in the West also to a significant degree. And then I went for Ralph Waldo Emerson and others had also read the Bhagavad Gita.

They had been attracted by it. So, Prabhupada made the Bhagavad Gita the basis. But in this Bhagavad Gita, Prabhupada systematically emphasized what had been de-emphasized by the other commentators.

Or sometimes people say that Prabhupada in every comment, every purport is bringing bhakti. Sometimes the, there is no bhakti in the verses where Prabhupada is bringing bhakti. And yes, that’s a valid observation.

But the important thing is Prabhupada is not denying the Bhagavad Gita. Prabhupada may translate Karma Yoga as Bhakti Yoga, but Prabhupada gives us the original Sanskrit. And Prabhupada lets us read what is happening.

So, what is Prabhupada actually doing? The Bhagavad Gita is clearly bhakti conclusive. That means at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna gives various parts and he says, that sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam sarva-dharman parityajya. So, the Bhagavad Gita is bhakti conclusive.

So, what Prabhupada does is, what the conclusion of the Gita is, he gives throughout the Gita. So, even when Krishna is talking about Karma Yoga, he is talking about Gyan Yoga, Prabhupada says, these processes are not so practical today. We should focus on practicing bhakti.

So, Prabhupada is not denying the teaching of the Gita. He is giving us the Sanskrit, but he is ensuring that we don’t get confused by giving us the conclusion throughout. So, what in many ways Prabhupada is, while giving the timeless message, he is also giving a timely emphasis.

Because the contemporary commentators had substantially downplayed the devotional dimension of the Gita, Prabhupada is emphasizing this more and more. So, to go back to our earlier point, that in our tradition, you see that Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Bhaktisahastra Thakur did not even bother to write a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Bhaktivinoda Thakur wrote two commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, but they are not so much commentaries as, they are Bengali translations of the commentaries of Vishwachandra Thakur and Baldevidya Bhushan, and with some small notes from his side.

They are not elaborate commentaries. So, at the time of Srila Prabhupada, he wanted to present the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. But what had happened, at his time, the Gita, let’s put it this way, the Gita is a part of our tradition and the Gita was also relevant for people today.

So, Prabhupada took the Gita and he presented the Gita. He gave a devotional presentation of the Gita. So, we could go further and discuss, you know, Prabhupada could have commented on many many books.

Prabhupada commented on the, after Gita, he commented on the Bhagavatam. Then he commented on Chaitanya Charita Amrit. Prabhupada said, I would like to comment on the Ramayana also, I would like to comment on the Mahabharata also.

But he did not have the time. So, how it was that? See, there are, just to illustrate this point, there is a broad Vedic teaching. Prabhupada in one sense, in the main books that he commented on, there is Vedic, there is Vaishnava and there is Gaudiya Vaishnava.

So, it’s like a funnel. So, if we move it upwards, so, Prabhupada gave us the broad Vedic teachings through his Gita. Prabhupada gave the broad Vaishnava teachings through his Bhagavatam.

And Prabhupada gave the Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings through his Chaitanya Charita Amrit. So, in this way, Prabhupada took us on a whole pathway. And Prabhupada is very very clear in his focus that although he is an acharya in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, in the Bhagavad Gita, the entire Bhagavad Gita, Prabhupada mentions Radharani only once.

You know where he mentions? In the introduction when he is reciting the prayer, Tapta Kancha Raghav Rangi Radhe Vrindavan Vishwa. So, that’s the only place. Throughout the Gita, there is no mention of Radharani at all.

Why? Because Prabhupada is focused on foundational teachings. That’s what he does to the Bhagavad Gita. Then in the Bhagavatam, the focus is not just on the broad Vedic teachings.

So, Vedic teachings are that we are not our physical side, we are the soul. The soul transmigrates. That ultimately we need to practice yoga to grow spiritually.

The Bhagavatam is much more a Vaishnava book. Focus on bhakti. Focus on hearing about Krishna, remembering Krishna.

And then after that, when we go to the Gaudiya Vaishnava, Chaitanya Charita Amrit about specifically Mahaprabhu’s teachings, our particular tradition. So, Prabhupada has given us a fairly comprehensive way of growing. So, he has given someone for people who are interested in broad Vedic teachings, something for those who are interested in Vaishnava teachings, those who are interested in Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings.

So, these could be different groups of people or this could be the same seeker moving forward. Both ways. So, that brings us to the main part of the talk today.

I won’t spend too much time on this. I want to have time for question and answers. That, see, the world has been changing rapidly.

And yesterday I think regarding the question of the moon, that point came up. So, Prabhupada primarily preached between 66 and 77. So, of course, he preached before that in India.

But the Krishna conscious movement primarily spread during that time. And that was the time when the outreach was most effective. And now, say, we are in 2026 now.

So, what has happened during this time? Roughly, it is difficult to state the exact time, but till around 2000, this was what is called as the modern age. And after the 2000s, it is what is called as the postmodern age. Now, sometimes we still use the word modern for postmodern also.

But what is it? In modern times, science, logic, rationality, this was considered very important. This was the source of authority for the masses. That is something scientific.

So, every religious tradition tried to prove that. Oh, the Bible is scientific. The Quran is scientific.

The Bhagavad Gita is scientific. The Dhammapada is scientific. That is the Buddhist book.

So, everybody tried to prove how our teachings are scientific. But over a period of time, so, what happened is that slowly that while today also science is very much valued, but science is valued today more for the technological utilities it provides. Science is not necessarily seen as the source of truth and wisdom.

That there is a big difference. That science can make our life more comfortable and science can tell us what is true. So, there was in the age of, in the modern age, there was a lot of hope and expectation that by science, by rationality, we will understand what is true and what is false.

But repeatedly it happened that science, while definitely we are not here critiquing technology or science for that matter. But the idea that science can help us arbitrate what is true, what is real, that has more or less lost the grip on the mainstream mind. For many reasons, starting from the Second World War itself.

See, the start of the Second World War and the end of the Second World War. That was a spectacular triumph for technology and a disastrous defeat for science. That how spectacular triumph for technology because air warfare became very very big.

And actually Hitler’s Germany was very technologically advanced. That’s how they were able to succeed. But then eventually two atom bombs being dropped by America, it just ended the war fully.

So, America eventually became more technologically advanced. So, it was a big success for technology. But in terms of science, see, Hitler, one of his reasonings for claiming that the Germans, the Nazis should rule the whole world was that he had adapted the Darwinian theory of evolution and he had adapted it to the idea called social Darwinism.

So, just as there are different species and some species are fit and some species are unfit. So, there was this idea that within human beings also the different races are there. And some are fitter and some are unfit.

So, he considered the Germans are the fittest. And the gypsies and others are all unfit. So, I mean, it is no laughing matter.

During his times, he started by all people, for example, who were physically handicapped. He first had all of them castrated so that they will not reproduce. Then similarly people who were mentally retarded, he had all of them castrated.

Then after that he said, you know, they should not reproduce, why should they even live? So, he had them systematically killed. Then he had the gypsies killed. Then he had the Jews killed.

So, his idea was that these are all unfit and anyway by nature’s rules they will die. So, he says, now that we are advanced in technology, what nature will do gradually, we can help nature do faster. So, I am not blaming Darwin’s theory of evolution for Hitler’s Nazi ideology.

It’s too simplistic. People get their ideas from many sources. But this idea of racial supremacy, they definitely had some basis in the idea of, like Darwin’s idea was struggle, Darwin’s survival of the fittest, the struggle for existence.

Hitler’s autobiography was Mein Kampf, that is, my struggle. So, how science can lead to radicalization, that was horrendously demonstrated. When science can lead to radicalization is different from saying science causes radicalization.

They are two very different things. But similarly, when Einstein, he suggested to the American Prime Minister that you should develop nuclear weapons, he was concerned that Hitler might develop it. But when the atom bombs were actually used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the devastation it caused, that caused an irreparable scar on the human mind.

And during the Cold War, there was constant fear that humanity might destroy itself. So, the lure of technology as being the source of all good and more that science can make human beings better, science can guide human beings towards the truth, all that went down. The beyond that and the theory of relativity developed and then quantum physics came up.

So, another thing that came up was that we started understanding that reality is too complex to be explained by any one model, even if it be a scientific model. So, what do I mean by this? That, a simple explanation is that whatever is reality, each theory is like a map of the reality. And the map helps us to navigate the reality, but the map is not the reality.

So, when Newton developed his idea of the clockwork universe, the Newton’s laws of physics came up, then they thought that this Newton’s laws are actually describing reality. But then as they found that at the subatomic level, the motion of the particles were not following Newton’s laws. Huge objects moving at the space of light, they didn’t seem to be following Newton’s laws.

So, other theories had to come up. That’s how quantum physics and relativity came up. But the idea is that reality could be explained by science with some model.

That started getting challenged and countered. So, now most people understand that science offers maps to reality. And the maps are useful, the maps are valuable.

But those maps are not final. That what science may propose today, this is how things are. Tomorrow it may say something different.

And tomorrow the evidence may falsify it. So, that is why, in the postmodern world, the biggest source of authority became experience. What do I mean by experience? That if something works for me, if something benefits me, if something makes me feel better, then I am going to try it out and I am going to use it.

So, this is how spirituality and religion both have grown. When I had first gone to Australia in 2014, I had been invited to interfaith conference. And the topic of the conference was, why has God not died till now? Now, what does that mean? That since the Friedrich Nietzsche almost 100 years before had predicted the idea that God is dead.

So, their idea was that as science progresses, as rationality increases, more and more people will realize that the idea of God is so stupid and irrational. How can anyone believe in this? And people will give up that belief. But that has not happened.

Yes, atheism has increased. But across the world, there has been a significant resurgence in religion. In India, we see a resurgence in religion.

Hinduism in the Middle East, there is a resurgence, fundamentalism is there, but there is a resurgence in religion. Africa is quite aggressively religious. America also, there is a resurgence.

South America, huge resurgence. After communism fell in Soviet Russia, Russia is aggressively religious. Specific religion might be different.

But the point is, its religion has had remarkable, not a stain powered, but resurgence. So, people thought, yeah, this religion stuff is irrational. How can anyone believe in the idea that some Christian group claimed that the earth is 5000 years old.

How can anyone be so stupid as to believe this? Thousands and thousands of people are young earth creationists. They believe that. So, what happened is that through the practice of religion or spirituality, people experience something that science cannot predict.

See, technology can provide entertainment. But it is religion that provides peace of mind. Technology cannot provide peace of mind.

The mind is agitated and we watch some movies and we forget the agitation of the mind. But it’s not that watching a movie makes us peaceful. After the movie is over, all the agitations of the mind come back again.

So, a sense of peace, a sense of connectedness, a sense of community. Basically, it is the sense of managing emotions and feeling overall positive about oneself, about life. That is what religion provides.

And now some people say, I am not religious, I am spiritual. That’s okay. We can discuss that separately.

But the point is that even people who do not want to be religious, they want to be spiritual. And they may say religious means, okay, they identify certain activities as religious. Many big companies, when I go to America, if I go to Silicon Valley, most companies there are open to monks coming and giving spiritual talks.

Salesforce has a meditation corner in their main building in San Jose. Why? Because they find that their employers are stressed and actually doing some kind of meditation, some kind of mindfulness, some kind of mantra chanting. It calms people.

So, yoga has become immensely popular across the world. Not because some groundbreaking research papers were published which shows how yoga is beneficial. Some research has come.

But it is primarily because of experience. People had incurable back pain and started doing yoga and their back pain went away. So, what has happened is, in the postmodern times, the biggest authority is not science, it is experience.

If something works for me, then I want to try it out. And similarly, if, don’t tell me what is right, tell me how this works for you. If your story sounds authentic to me, I will accept it.

And I follow it. So, experience has become a huge adjudicator. Now, experience in many ways is pratyaksha.

Within science itself, pratyaksha and anumal are two distinct schools of thought. They are called empiricism and rationalism. And there have been fights among empiricism and rationalism in science also.

So, like that is pratyaksha more important, anumal more important. So, many times, when people do some meditational practice, people do something spiritual, they join a particular group. Now, from a logical perspective, the beliefs of that particular group might seem completely irrational.

And people say, how can anyone believe this? How can anyone follow this? But, you know, people have not come to that particular group because of logic. They have come because of experience. And enabling people to have a positive experience is very important.

Mr. Prabhupada, yes, he was quite sharp in his logic and sometimes you see his conversations and his talks. He has very sharp logical answers. But Prabhupada was actually a person who was very warm and loving.

And he was able to win people’s hearts. So, he was able to give people a warm, uplifting experience. And while Prabhupada did talk about the four regulatory principles, that was not the emphasis, you can’t do this, you can’t do this, you can’t do this.

The overall emphasis, the experience that was there with Prabhupada, Prabhupada presented Krishna Consciousness not as a set of rules. It was Krishna Consciousness actually adventure in the service of God. An adventure in the service of God.

So, the hippies, they like to do crazy things. But the upper man doing crazy things, they would get into trouble. But even among the crazy things they would do, like in the western culture, every culture dancing is seen as a celebration.

But in the western culture, they would not dance on the streets. The police would come and arrest them. But Prabhupada started the Rathyatra festival and now they were dancing on the streets.

And the police were not arresting them, the police were escorting them. So, Prabhupada actually made Krishna Consciousness exciting, adventurous. So, the rules were there and the rules are difficult to follow at times.

But that was not the focus of Sri Prabhupada. So, for us, when we are ourselves practicing bhakti and we are sharing bhakti with others, it is this dynamic experiential aspect of Krishna Consciousness which is extremely important. So, whether it is we come and do kirtans, we go for yatras, or we hear classes.

Yes, there is a philosophical component of classes. But there is an experiential component of coming together in the association. So, that experience.

Now, how do we facilitate helping people to have that experience? When Prabhupada came to Mayapur, he said that we can sit under the tree and we can chant. But when people come over here, we want them to have a positive experience. People who are not particularly conditioned, they can see the spirituality of Mayapur and be attracted.

But people who are more particularly conditioned, for them they need to experience, they can’t tolerate too much physical discomfort. Otherwise, they will not be able to connect with the spirituality. So, for us, that means pratyaksha and anubhav.

The experience and the logic, both are important. Now, Radhan Maharaj wrote the journey home book. That is, he is sharing his experience of a spiritual journey.

And many reasons why he wrote that book. But one of the things is that, see you cannot argue, you can argue with a person’s logic. You cannot argue with a person’s experience.

What do you mean you cannot argue with a person’s experience? If somebody says, you know, I had lost my, somebody says that I had lost my child and I was in great depression and I went to the temple and I heard classes, I read the Bhagavad Gita and I found a difference. So, you are lying. You don’t know.

You cannot argue with experience. Experience is not the ultimate authority. So, somebody may say, I drink alcohol and I feel good.

So, I experience good. But then, that experience temporarily is good but afterwards it leads to lot of negative experiences also. But the idea is, the experience has its own persuasive power.

And in the bhakti tradition, it was largely about giving experiences to people. So, whether it was a kirtan, like around Ayodhya, another place, Varanasi, there is a Ram Tatha. So, people come and they see the Ram Leela being enacted.

And the idea is, while the Ram Leela is being enacted, people experience some of that emotions. In India in 1950, the first Ramayan movie was made. And when it was released in the theatre, at that time, it was 1958, so actually when Lord Ram appeared, all the people in the movie theatres got up and offered obeisances to Lord Ram.

And I was in 1980s, Ramayan was on TV series. So, when Lord Ram would appear, people would be waiting with their aarti plates and when Lord Ram would appear, they would do aarti of the tea. So, the idea is, you may say this is superstitious or this is irrational but it is an indication that people were getting so immersed in that experience.

And that immersive experience transformed people. Now, today if you see the Ramayan series, Ramayan Sagar, from technological perspective it is not very high quality. But now we have so much advanced technology but from the experiential perspective, people felt uplifted, people felt connected.

So, offering that experience to people is very important. So, that’s why one of the aspects of youth culture is we have youth centre where we come and stay together. Why we stay? We can come and hear classes.

But when we stay together, we experience bhakti in association. When we go to yatras, we experience bhakti in association. Whether it is song, dance, drama, music, movies, all these are ways we experience the culture.

That we experience Krishna through the culture of bhakti. So, I will conclude with one last metaphor over here that see there is science and there is technology. Now, what do I mean by science and technology? I am putting them as two different circles because science is more about theory.

It is about the nature of reality. Technology is about the application. So, the number of people who understand the science behind say the internet or the science behind AI, they are few.

The number of people who use the internet, number of people who use AI are far far more. So, similarly, there is philosophy and there is culture. The philosophy appeals to the reason.

Yesterday what I talked about is logic. And the culture gives experience. So, through both of these, the outreach happens.

Now, while logic is important. Now, am I saying the culture is irrational? No, that’s not what I am saying. I am not saying that culture is irrational.

I am not saying technology is unscientific. What I am saying is just as most people do not know how technology works, but still they use technology. Similarly, most people who are attracted by the culture, they don’t know the philosophy behind it.

But just as if a gadget stops working, somebody needs to know the science to make sure that it works properly. If a phone starts exploding, how do you stop the phone from exploding? Somebody has to know how to do that. So, like that, the culture, what is behind that culture? Some people need to know that.

If that is not known, then the culture can start exploding. That means, the culture can be misused, misapplied, exploited. So, for us, when we are trying to do outreach, there is a philosophy and there is a culture.

The classes that we give are the philosophy. But how we conduct ourselves apart from that, how we connect with people, how we care for people, that is the culture. And when philosophy and culture both come together, that’s where there is a transformative spirituality, where Krishna is experienced.

When we say, ye na ke na prakaare na mana krishna nivesha ye, that means that at different times, whatever way a person’s mind and heart are attracted towards Krishna, we facilitate that. So, generally, for most people, there is a logical side and we need to appeal to the logical side. For many people, for a majority of people, the experiential side is more important.

And we need to be able to provide good experiences. So, it’s a combination of both. But the exact component, how much would be the logic, how much would be the experience, that varies from person to person.

That varies from situation to situation. But the idea is, according to one’s interests, when we present bhakti wisdom, our outreach can be more effective. So, I will summarize what I discussed today.

I talked about three main points. The first point was, I focused on Bhaktivinod Thakur’s context. That how, this was lot of information here, how basically during his time what happened? Are the Vedas meaningful? Not what is the meaning, do they have any meaning at all? That was the question.

There is a radical change in context. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, his challenge was to present the Vedic wisdom to in a rational way. So, while presenting it rationally, he discussed about the cosmology, the chronology, the morality of the Bhagavatam and he presented it accordingly.

We also talked about the demographics he was trying to reach. How he had established authority among the traditional Gauri Vaishnavas. How among the masses for them he wrote songs.

So, then I discussed about how during Shila Prabhupada’s time, Shila Prabhupada’s teaching or Shila Prabhupada’s context was that Shila Prabhupada, he according to Deshkala Patra, he emphasized the Gita as the basis of the Vedic teachings. Gita had become very influential and he made the Gita the foundation of his teaching. With the Bhagavatam, he gave the Vaishnava teaching.

And through the Chaitanya Charita Amrit, he gave the Gauriya Vaishnava teaching. And in this way, Prabhupada reached out to a large number of people. So, Shila Prabhupada presented bhakti in a way that was progressive as well as expansive.

Progressive means the same seeker can move from the basic Vedic teaching to Gauriya Vaishnava teachings. And expansive means if somebody is already at a Vaishnava level, somebody is already at a Gauriya Vaishnava level, Prabhupada offers them something also. And then we consider today’s context.

So, we discussed how the world has changed for various reasons. So, especially post 2000, it was modern, pre-modern, that is science was important, logic was important. But after that it became primarily post-modern.

Now, post-modern means that the idea that science itself comes up with many different theories like maps and there is no one exclusive, exhaustive, expansive theory that explains everything. So, therefore, rather than relying on science as the arbiter of reality, people turn towards experience. So, when experience something is experienced as good, and good means not just sentimentally I take alcohol and feel good, but actually my emotions become more settled.

I feel more peaceful. I feel more connected with the universe. I feel that my life has some higher purpose.

So, that sense, that is what people are seeking. And within our tradition, we discuss how there is science and technology like that there is philosophy and culture. So, the philosophy helps us to see the logic, the culture helps us to get the experience.

And we all need both, but depending on particular context and particular people, logic may need to be emphasized, experience may need to be emphasized. And that way what we are presenting is Shastra, but we present it in a way that logic appeals to the head, the experience trunk appeals to the heart, the emotional, rational side, emotional side and that is how people get attracted. Thank you very much.

Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, please. It’s nice of you and your practice to say that they want to be spiritual but they don’t want to be religious.

And it’s your role also to say that we are teaching spirituality, we are not teaching Hinduism. So, but the thing is that like, you want to say like that, but people may argue that whatever you are doing, you are worshipping the Hindu God, you are reading the Hindu scriptures. So, like how we can answer to the masters when they ask this question that you are saying that you are not teaching Hinduism.

Okay. So, this question, how do we answer people, say are you, you are teaching Hinduism, you are not teaching Hinduism. See, there are different focuses at different points.

So, there is what Jiva Goswami uses the terminology, Shankaracharya uses originally, that is paramarthik and vyavaharik. Paramarthik is transcendental, vyavaharik is practical, operational, you can say. So, from a paramarthik perspective, we are souls, we are not our physical bodies.

But say if I go to America, at immigration they ask me, from which country are you? I cannot say I am a soul from the spiritual world. Isn’t it? The immigration authority will say, if you are a soul, my sole goal is to get you out of the country. So, our vyavaharik identity is important.

Isn’t it? So, I was talking about, you know, we get some western people to come to India. We take westerners on a tour of India. They want to go to Rishikesh and Vrindavan and other places.

So, many times they, most of the people come from a yoga background and many of them are females. So, they ask, you teach that you are not the body or the soul. But there is one, there is one American Matheishi said that, you know, it is only when I started practicing bhakti, I am constantly reminded that I am a body.

Because I am a female. That I am taught that I am not the body. But in the west, I was never, you know, okay, I am a female, I am doing a lot in my life.

But I am constantly reminded, you are a woman, you can’t do this. You are a man, you should do this. So much rigid separation between men and women.

So, if you are really the body and you are really the soul and not the body, why do you need such rigid separation? Act at the level of the soul. The point is that to realize that we are the soul, we have to see what identity is conducive for us and what identity is not conducive. So, biologically, psychologically, the male-female attraction is very strong.

And if we are not cautious, then that identification will overwhelm us so much that we will not be able to function at a spiritual level. That’s why some amount of gender separation is required. So, why I give these two examples.

Krishna himself tells Arjuna that, he says that you are the soul. Technically, Krishna does not say you are not the body. Krishna says that you are what is within the body.

But immediately after that in 2.14, Krishna uses two describers. That is Matarasparshastu, Kaunteya, Tamasthikshasva, Bharata. Both Kaunteya and Bharata are body-based designations.

Isn’t it? Kunti, he is the son of Kunti. That’s his body. His soul is not the son of Kunti.

Isn’t it? His soul has not descended in the Bharata dynasty. Isn’t it? So, why is Krishna using a body-based identifier immediately after telling that actually your identity is beyond the body? That’s because, Prabhupada explains the purport that if a body-based identity can inspire us to act spiritually, to act responsibly. You are born to a great mother.

You are born in a great dynasty. Therefore, act in a responsible way even if it is difficult. So, why am I talking about all this? That the Vyavaharik identity, the practical operational identity, which identity to emphasize when and which identity to de-emphasize when.

So, for example, that male-female, that gender identity we will emphasize. So that we don’t want to get caught in the body. But, if there is a caste discrimination, we will de-emphasize that identity.

When all of you are coming and sitting here, nobody asks you which caste are you from. Why? Because that is the identity that is not going to increase our bodily function. So, when Prabhupada was bringing all this to the point of Hinduism, that we are Krishna devotees, we are practicing the path of love of Krishna, that is our transcendent identity.

But, from a Vyavaharik perspective, from an operational perspective, we are Hindus. So, if you want to be classified, like Vrindavan as being a part of the spiritual world, is not in the material world. But, if you want to put it on the map of the world, we are not going to put it in Pakistan or China.

Isn’t it? It is not in the material world, but it is in India. How is that possible? Isn’t it? So, that’s the Vyavaharik perspective. So, like that, from a Vyavaharik perspective, we are Hindus.

And I don’t think we should deny that. So, there was a certain amount of negativity and sectarianism associated with religion. And religion focuses primarily on faith and believe this.

But Prabhupada’s presentation of Krishna Consciousness was not so much believe this. It was experience this. It was in practice this and see the experience, experience the transformation that happens in your own life.

So, from that perspective, what Prabhupada presented was actually not religion as people thought it to be. So, ISKCON has a communications ministry and it has released a statement saying that we are, ISKCON is a monotheistic tradition within the broad family of traditions known as Hinduism. So, we acknowledge that we are Hindus.

But that’s not all that we are. So, I think there is no need to negate or reject that identity. So, for example, if Islamic extremists attack us, if we tell them we are not Hindus, they say, you are the most Hindus that are there among Hindus.

Isn’t it? Because of our dress, because of our shikha, tilak or whatever. So, if we are going to need protection, who are going to protect us? Will we have Kshatriyas? Maybe we will have in the future. But if right now we do not have, we need protection.

So, we can’t dis-identify. See, that’s why there is a difference between emphasizing a spiritual identity and rejecting a material identity. That when we have that pastime of Chitra Ketu, his son says when he is called like which mother, which father.

But when is he saying it? After that child has died. And the child is on the next life journey. So, at that time, the child has had many many, the soul has had many many lives.

And he is asking which mother, which father. You know, if we are right now in a relationship, we can’t tell our parents which mother, which father. I have so many mothers, so many fathers.

No, right now, that vyavaharika identity is important. When Krishna meets Vasudev for the first time, what does Krishna say? That a child is meant to bring joy to the parent, but because of me, you suffered so much pain. Even before my birth, so many of my siblings were killed because of me.

So, he says, please forgive me for all the pain I have caused you. And I will try to serve you and bring joy to you. So, we have to recognize the importance of the vyavaharika identity also.

Any other questions or comments? Correct, yeah. True. Is there a systematic way? I don’t think we can have a, because experience itself is subjective.

But, say for example, we have beautiful paintings in our temple. That’s art. It gives an uplifting aesthetic experience.

The deities are decorated nicely. That gives an aesthetic experience. So, broadly you can say that when people come to Krishna, they come for different reasons.

There could be many, but we could put them in four broad categories. One is that people come for social reasons. Social means they want to hang out with good people.

So, this is one of the main reasons why Indians outside India often become more religious than Indians in India. Because what happens, Indians outside India, initially they may want to have fun. Oh, there is so much freedom and enjoyment over here.

But, after sometime, maybe once they get married, they have children. Say, you know, we want our children to grow up with our values. So, we want like-minded people.

In the Middle East, we have, if you go to UAE, Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I think within one hour distance. But each of these places, they have their own separate Sunday programs.

Abu Dhabi has about 500 people coming for its Sunday program. Then Sharjah has about 1000 people coming. Dubai has, Sharjah has about another 500 people.

Dubai has about 1000 people coming. And these are all Indians. Muslims come over there, obviously.

But why are they coming? Because they want to hang out with like-minded people. So, some people come for social reasons. Modern society can be very democratic.

Now, some people come for cultural reasons. Cultural reasons means, you know, okay, I grew up going to a temple. I like the vibes of a temple.

So, they come for cultural reasons. I want to, I want my children to see the Arteen, see the deities. You want to go there and the cultural reasons are there.

Now, some people come for psychological or emotional reasons. Some people come for rational or philosophical reasons. So, psychological reasons means what? That people want to feel peaceful, people want to feel calm.

Now, actually and philosophical is people have questions. I want answers to my questions in life. So, now each of these is quite distinct.

So, for example, if somebody comes for a psychological reason. Now, what happened? Actually, Prabhupada was one of the first person who introduced Kirtan in the West. But, now Kirtan has become a big genre in the West.

But ISKCON has fallen behind. There are many other people who do Kirtans. And there are people who they have like Kirtan concerts.

And people pay to go and sit in the Kirtan. And what about he, you know, he does Kirtan concerts and people pay may be 50 dollars to 100 dollars just to go for attending a one hour Kirtan. So, now, but ISKCON people are slowly entering into it.

What happened was when people go for Kirtans, they want peaceful, serene, uplifting experience. It’s like if you are interested in classical music, not the rock music, the classical music is like Beethoven or something like that. It’s very serene, uplifting.

So, what happened? Our Kirtans are not peaceful. They are ecstatic. Now, sometimes we have these vampers.

You know, for somebody who is an insider, it’s ecstatic. But for somebody who is not an insider, it just seems too noisy. So, what happened was our cultural Kirtans do not appeal to people who are coming for psychological reasons.

So, that’s why there are some Kirtans where people just, there are, so, for example, our main temple, many temples just started that. We have Shayan Aarti, which is very peaceful and gentle. Radha Bhavan temple is in Mumbai.

Shayan Aarti is at 9 o’clock and Gaur Aarti is at 7 o’clock. There are, both Aartis are well attended but Shayan Aarti, people, it’s like crowded completely. So, I was talking to some people, saying at the end of the day, this helps me to decompress.

Yes, come and you participate in this Kirtan, I feel peaceful, then I go back home. So, people who come for psychological and cultural reasons can be very different. Sometimes culture can seem noisy and not very peaceful.

Similarly, people who come for social and cultural reasons can be completely opposite. A cultural reason means, okay, if I want to go to the temple, I will wear dhoti kurta, if I have my family, children, we all wear traditional clothes, we put tilak and we go. Somebody is coming for a social reason, they are feeling lonely, they are feeling lost.

So, if somebody comes for a social reason, and I remember this one devotee told me that, he is a devotee kid, he went to America and he went to a particular temple. He said he was, he had just gone to America and he was feeling, he was feeling lost over there, getting college admission. He went to the temple and the first thing they asked him in the temple is, why are you not wearing tilak? He felt so disgusted, he said, everybody is judging me over here and I come here to get acceptance and belonging.

They are judging, I don’t want to come here again. So, then there are specialized western outreach centers where they are not so big on culture, external cultural aspects. So, he said, he felt much more accepted and welcomed over there.

So, those who come for a social reason and those who come for a cultural reason, they can be quite opposite. Social reason means, I want to talk with people, I want people to understand me, not judge me. Now, as soon as culture comes in, judgment comes in immediately.

If you are following a particular culture, how well are you following that culture? Isn’t it? It comes in immediately. Why are you wearing these clothes? Why are you not wearing that clothes? So, it is important that we understand why a person is coming. Somebody comes for philosophical reasons.

So, among these four, you can guess which reason I came? Yeah, I know philosophy. So, other aspects were attractive, but philosophical was the most attractive for me. So, now for such people, you know, okay, the aarti and the kirtan and all that is fine, but the class is not important.

Who is giving the class? What is the content of the class? So, one of the most frustrating things for me when I was growing in bhakti was this concept of achintya. Because what happened, I felt that, you know, whenever a speaker does not have an answer to a question, they say it is achintya. You know, it just, the English word is, it’s intellectual cop-out or it’s intellectual escapism.

So, then actually I talked to devotees who are serious Gaudiya scholars. And then I actually studied Jiyu Goswami’s work. So, achintya is a very specific concept.

He says that when scripture has made some statements or rather scripture has made two statements which cannot be easily reconciled. That time for two scriptural statements that don’t make sense logically, that is the point for using achintya. So, God has form, God does not have form.

Scripture has both kind of statements. How do we reconcile it? By achintya. But we often use it for anything and everything.

And so, you know, this kind of, so, when I would not get satisfactory answers to questions, I would be disturbed. And then when I would still, you know, this did not make sense. So, when I would tell that to some senior devotees, they would say, why are you taking it so seriously? The class was so nice.

There are so many other good points in the class. So, first I was disturbed and then I was disturbed and they were not disturbed. So, the idea is that what will give a person that good experience depends on what they are seeking.

And that is one of the big reasons why our outreach in the West among Westerners has gone down. Because it’s gone in the West has become predominantly filled with Indians now. And the more Indians come, the more Indians come for experiencing Indian culture there.

And the more they come for experiencing Indian culture, then Westerners feel, oh, this is just a Indian group. And I don’t want to come over there. So, it becomes difficult.

One devotee told me that, he was, he is a Western devotee, he said that, you know, his girlfriend brought him to the temple for the first time. They came together in the same car. But when I came to the temple, it’s all that men and women sit separately.

So, he said that, you know, he had been to a church. In the church, the whole family sits together. In fact, they joke that often the church is the only time the family sits together.

But the thing is, he said, I just couldn’t understand the talk. I couldn’t understand the, what was happening. I didn’t understand the aarti.

I didn’t understand anything. From the Western perspective, you know, much of our culture can seem weird. I was in Australia and I was supposed to attend a feast class and probably Western audience was there in the temple.

So, one middle-aged Australian woman, she came and she said, can I ask you a question? I said, yeah. She says, when that shell is blown, why do you people kiss the floor? So, when we offer dandavat pranam on Ashtang Brahma, what is happening? Why do you kiss the floor? So, he said that, I told my girlfriend, I am never going to come to this temple. So, then she took him to a Western outreach center where primarily Western people come and there they don’t impose any gender separation.

You know, people can say it the way they want. So, that’s when I started feeling that I could connect, I could understand. So, what will attract people depends on what will give people a positive experience between what they are looking and what is obstructing them from getting what they are looking.

That’s why Deshe Kaala Patra is so important. Any last question? Anyone else? You can come back to me if you don’t mind. Thank you so much.

So, what’s coming next? Because you showed a complete picture, timeline, what is going to be the most important for all of us as devotees. Just out of curiosity. In future, what is going to be the most important? We can’t really say because the world is changing so fast now.

In many ways, in the past 200 years, the world changed faster than what it changed in the past 2000 years. In the past 20 years, the world changed faster than the past 200 years. And you can say in the past 2 years, it has changed faster than the past 20 years.

So, with AI coming up, things are drastically changing. So, what will be most effective? I think things will have to look at as things evolve. So, one thing in our tradition is we understand that Krishna is time.

So, if you understand Kalos, Krishna says, I am time. What that means is that when we are adapting to the times, it’s not just that, oh, you know, these times, this is Kali Yuga and people are so ignorant. That’s why we have to do these things.

No. It is how is Krishna manifesting as time? And how can I serve Krishna as He manifests as time? So, for us, we don’t consider history. Simply as a sense of mundane events.

Very much in our philosophy, history is what? It is his story. History is his story. So, of course, there are some feminists who are arguing that the name of the subject should be changed from history to her story.

And they say, why his story? It should be her story. But… So, but the point I am making is that we have to learn. As times change, we observe the times and we learn.

So, one of the things that is definitely happening is as loneliness is increasing, as societies are changing, structures are changing. So, what to emphasize and what to de-emphasize? Hmm. I think probably… So, what is it? One observation was like when AI is doing many things and what I was doing yesterday may not be relevant today.

So, after some point of time, we feel what’s the purpose actually? What I am actually supposed to do? The kind of… I think that is a challenge. Ultimately, there is a means of living and there is a meaning of living. The means of living will change drastically.

Now, there is a lot of AI alarmism that because of AI, our people’s jobs will go away. Well, I think yes and no. If you see throughout the history of technology, when the printing press came up, at that time the Catholic Church was strongly against the printing press.

Why? Because they said if printing press is there, the Bible will be printed widely. If the Bible is printed widely, then people will read the Bible on their own. If people read the Bible on their own, then they will not need the priests to explain the Bible to them.

That was one of the main reasons why Catholic and Protestants split. Protestants said that everybody has a right to read the Bible and understand it in their own way. The Catholic Church said no.

The Bible is to be learned through the priests, the clergy as they call it, who are the teachers of the Bible. So, did Christianity implode and get destroyed because of that? Did pastors and preachers become unemployed because of that? No, the way of teaching changed. So, through every technology, changes happen substantially.

So, definitely what happens is that technology does not replace people, but technology replaces the people who refuse to work with technology. So, if somebody is going to hand write books and somebody else write books on a computer, then the person who is writing books on a computer will definitely supersede the person who is hand writing books. So, we also have to learn that.

So, I think how to use AI, that is also like AI prompt engineering itself is becoming a huge field now. So, we will have to find out the means of living. But the meaning of living, ultimately the soul longs for Krishna.

The soul longs for enduring meaning in life. That longing for meaning is not going to change. That longing for meaning is something which has always been there and which will always be there.

So, technology will be used by people in sattva, by people in rajas, by people in tamas. So, AI for example, the internet led to a huge access of pornography that you can say in tamas. But through the internet, people came up with things like Wikipedia, where there is a free body of knowledge available.

It is not only free for everyone to use, it is prepared entirely by volunteers. Now, we may say it has a left wing bias or whatever. But the point is that who would do something like this? There are people in sattva guna.

And there are people in sattva guna who are doing this. So, AI will also be like that. There are people in sattva guna will use AI for sattvic purposes.

People in dhaja guna will use AI for rajasic purposes. People in tamo guna will use AI for tamasic purposes. So, many Christian theologians, especially in the field of analytical philosophy, have worked very strongly over almost decades to give rational arguments for the existence of God.

So, there was this famous atheist. He had an argument with AI, does God exist or not? And what happened was, he gave various traditional atheistic reasons for the non-existence of God. And AI responded again and again and again.

And by the end of it, he angrily said, are you saying God exists? So, he basically, he wanted to say how can AI be so stupid? He says, yes, if you consider the verdict of logic and evidence, you can say that, you cannot deny the point that God exists. And he published it as if to say how AI is biased. A long text was there.

But the result was the opposite. Because AI had made very systematic arguments. And people who read it said, wow! This is like AI is proving the existence of God now.

So, I think knowledge and technology depends on how we use it. So, we have to learn to use it. And technology cannot get people from tamo guna to sattva guna.

So, technology will not… Of course, somebody in sattva guna can quickly go to tamo guna through technology. Like somebody in the temple, if they want to go to a bar or a brothel, they have to physically go from one place to another. But with technology, what happens? In one browser window, you might be hearing a Bhagavatam class.

Another browser window, just people can change and they can go to a porn site or something like that. So, shifting from one guna to another guna becomes very easy. And because of the human vulnerability, going to the lower modes will become much easier.

So, we will always need spirituality to raise human consciousness towards a higher level. But ultimately, technology, no matter what all it provides, it’s superficial. Many times, especially outside India, when I travel, parents are asking, our children are addicted to their phones.

What can we do? So, often people become very dark and gloomy and pessimistic about it. No, you should be asking a different question. That when the phones provide us so much stimulation, so much entertainment, so much updates, why is it that everyone is not addicted to their phones 24 hours a day? Because ultimately, there is a part inside us to understand this is superficial.

There has to be something more in life. So, that basic search for meaning, that no AI, no technology can eradicate that. And that search for meaning will ultimately inspire people to use technology in sattva and beyond sattva towards spirituality.

We will stop here. Any last question? So, thank you very much. Okay.

Last question. What is my measure of success? I asked my spiritual master Radha Hanuman about this. He says, I have always been more of an educator than a cultivator.

Cultivator is if you stay at one place, you connect with people. My main stress is basically, give knowledge and let people decide how much they want to practice, how they want to practice. So, I asked Maharaj about this.

Maharaj laughed and said, if you are invited again, you are successful. Then I said, why Maharaj, that is like a very baseline level of success. That means if you are not invited again, it will cause so much damage that people don’t want you to be.

So, Maharaj said that there are different ways of measuring success. So, it is that in the tradition, there were two kinds of sages. There were city dwelling sages and there were forest dwelling sages.

So, the city dwelling sages would live in the, like Vasishtha Muni was a city dwelling sage in the Ramayana. Vishwamitra is a forest dwelling sage. So, the city dwelling sages, they are more associated with the institution.

So, they work very closely with the king. They are still brahmanas, but they work very closely with the king. The forest dwelling sages, so they are concerned with the king’s initiatives.

Okay, I am going to attack and conquer this kingdom. Let us do this yagya for this purpose. I want to do this particular thing.

How do I go about doing this? So, the city dwelling sages, they focus much more on tangible measurable results. Now, the forest dwelling sages, they don’t focus on that. For a city dwelling sage for example, it will be that if you are doing the yagya for the king’s prosperity.

Then does the king’s kingdom expand? Does the king’s royal treasury increase? That’s what is concerned about. But the forest dwelling sages, they are not concerned if they are living in a forest. Okay, now I had a hermitage with five people, now I have a hermitage with 500 people.

If they wanted 500 people, they would go to the city. The reason why they go to the forest is they want seclusion. So, the idea is that there are, even within the tradition, the forest dwelling sages, the city dwelling sages, they have different definitions of success.

So, some forest dwelling sages may also have lots of disciples. Like Valmiki’s ashram was a big ashram. But in the Ramayana itself, there are other sages like he means, Lord Ram means Agastya Muni, Lord Ram means Vaishampayan.

These sages don’t have that big hermitage. So, for the forest dwelling sages, it’s more that they are there to share wisdom. If somebody comes and receives wisdom from them, that’s wonderful.

If they don’t, that’s also fine. So, for me, primarily, for me, the books that I write and especially, I am writing books for a mainstream audience. That means, through mainstream publishers you reach out books to people who would not normally go to a temple and buy books from them.

Because they see that as religious literature. See generally, people who are thinkers, who are thoughtful, sattvic people generally. For them, when you go out in the streets and distribute books, then they think you are propagandists.

You have an agenda and like political party, they spread their pamphlets. So, we can still reach people. But people who are thinkers, they don’t like books being given to them.

So, let me go and find books where books are available. So, me reaching out to the mainstream audience, writing books in a language and in a presentation style that can reach out to people who would not necessarily come to a temple to buy a book. That is one of my main focuses.

And so, you could say that it’s what I offer is more of like descriptive spirituality than prescriptive spirituality. Prescriptive is, okay, you change this many rounds, then you start this morning program, then this is how you go spiritually. That is prescriptive, do this, do this, do this.

What I focus is more on descriptive spirituality. That this is what it is, this is what this book teaches, this is what the Bhagavad Gita teaches. This is how it can be applied.

Now, how much you want to apply it, how much you want to be benefited by applying it, that’s up to them. So, I think, like yesterday I said there are different definitions of success. So, for me to, it’s almost like to present spirituality to people who are put off by the religious aspect of spirituality.

That is what I am trying to do. And it’s more like self-paced spirituality. You can practice it at whatever pace you want.

So, I am still learning how to reach out to a broader audience, what kind of topics to write on. So, one of my books, Gita for the CEO, that is quite well in the, it’s national bestseller, is quite well in the mainstream market. And I have got quite a few invitations in companies to come and do talks over there.

But then, do we have a cultivation network? I am not looking for that. But eventually, as our movement expands, you know, cultivation networks for different demographics will build on their own. And then we can actually reach out to people in different ways.

But that’s my current focus. Thank you very much. Shloka prabhupada ki, gaur bhakta vindaki, gaur prabhupada ki.

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

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

So, we continue our discussion today on how to make our outreach more effective. Yesterday I discussed about the basic principle of realization, remember, a quick recap of what we discussed that how, how many of you were there yesterday? How many of you were not there yesterday? How many of you were not there today? So, yesterday the main thing we discussed was about how our outreach needs to be able to connect with people. So, we talked about how the Gita has a timely and timeless message.

And especially this particular diagram of how, Hare Krishna, we need to teach the message. We need to teach the message of scripture, but teach it in a way that the audience can also understand. Audience can also understand, that's extremely important.

So, from that context I discussed how Jiva Goswami wrote his Sanskrit and wrote about Krishna and even commented indirectly on the Vedanta Sutra through the Shastras, not directly but indirectly. And then we discussed how in today's world logic is so important. So, if you want to connect with people's interests, so, one interest is their source of authority.

What they accept as authoritative, if like one person is quoting the Bible, other is quoting the Quran, there will be no discussion. It will just be people talking past each other. So, if we are quoting Shastra and people don't accept Shastra at all, then we will not be able to persuade people.

So, Shastra needs to be explained logically. So, I discussed how pratyaksha anuman can also be used in the service of shabda. So, yesterday I discussed about logic.

Today I will move to second part. So, logic is basically an extension of anuman. Anuman is basically, we can call it guesswork or speculation, but that's a negative word.

The positive word is reasoning, inference, logic. So, it's based on analysis using data. So, today we will move forward and discuss about the other aspect that is experience.

Let's start with Bhaktivinod Thakur first. Now, if we look at the parampara, we have Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, then we have the six Goswamis, then we have the three acharyas who possess, from the first, Travelling Sankirtan Parthi, we have, after them, there is Vishwanath Chakra Thakur and Baldevidya Bhushan. So, it's like, this is in Bengal.

Bengal and Puri. The Goswamis are in Vrindavan. The three acharyas, they are disciples of Yugoswami.

They come back to Bengal. Now, this is the time when Aurangzeb rules. So, because of that, this was the time when Akbar was there.

So, Akbar was a relatively tolerant ruler and during his time, the Goswamis were able to take, re-establish Vrindavan. But during Aurangzeb's time, there was utter devastation. So, Srimas Acharya and the other two, they studied Yugoswami, but when they saw the ongoing destruction, they left Vrindavan.

And then after that, Vishwanath Chakra Thakur from Bengal, he again went to Vrindavan. So, after Aurangzeb, basically the Islamic empire more or less collapsed and then the Vishwanath Chakra Thakur led to the re-restoration of Vrindavan. Now, Baldevidya Bhushan was also in Vrindavan, he was in Jaipur.

Now, after that, a very big change happened. That after the fall of Aurangzeb, the British came in. And by the time Bhaktivinod Thakur was there, the British actually entered India, primarily the first stronghold they got was in Bengal.

And from there they spread across the world, across the country. So, now, during the times of the previous Acharyas, before Bhaktivinod Thakur, the Vedas were accepted as authority. And the question was mainly, what do the Vedas mean? What is the teaching of the Vedas? So, Shankara's followers say that it's actually Advaita Vedanta.

Madhava's followers may say that it is Dvaita Vedanta. So, like that, the Vedas were the common source of authority for everyone. The difference was, what is the meaning of the Vedas? But with the advent of the British and their bringing of the scientific method and the western mode of thinking and education, so, till here, in the previous tradition it was, what do the Vedas mean? That was the issue.

But at the time of Bhaktivinod Thakur, it was not, what is the meaning of the Vedas? Do the Vedas have any meaning at all? It is that, is there anything of value in this? So, are they meaningful? Not what is their meaning. So, that is why, although Bhaktivinod Thakur studied the previous Acharyas at his time, you know, he was also a great scholar. But he did not write a commentary on Vedanta Sutra.

Nor have the subsequent Acharyas in our tradition written a commentary on Vedanta Sutra. Why? Because the Vedanta Sutra was no longer relevant. It is, the question is not, what does the Vedanta Sutra mean? Do any of the Vedas have any meaning at all? That's why if you see Bhaktivinod Thakur's books, they take a different approach.

Now, if you read Chaitanya Shikshamrita, Arjai Madharma, they are not filled with scriptural quotations. Because the audience he is trying to reach, they are people who are educated in the western, now today when we west we are moving to America, it was the British English way of education. And the English way of education at that time, it was not so much Christian as it was rational.

So, basically, if you consider, if this is the Bhaktivinod Thakur, his main outreach happened in the late 19th century, roughly from say 1880, he departed in 1915. So, 1880 to 1905, 1910. That is the time when his main writings happened.

He wrote something in 1870 also. But some books he wrote before he was initiated. And some books he wrote after his initiation.

So, now, with respect to Bhaktivinod Thakur, if this was his time, there were different groups at that time. So, I am not, Bhaktivinod Thakur is a very, you could say, a pioneering acharya. And he had to address many different demographics.

So, I will just mention it briefly, but our focus is on preaching with realization. So, he had four different audiences. One was the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, the Gaudiya authorities at that time.

See, what happened was that for Bhaktivinod Thakur, he was born in the Shakta tradition. He was not born in the Vaishnava tradition. And that's why from the Gaudiya perspective, he was an outsider.

So, he on his own studied the, he studied various books. He studied Chaitanya Charita Amruti, he was very attracted. In fact, this is the teaching of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Gaudiya Charita, at that time, were a part of Bengali culture. But their teachings were obscured. Then, when their teachings were obscured, at that time, what does he do? How does he reach to them? So, but he, you see, first of all, he himself did not consider authority.

So, if he starts giving talks, who is going to listen to him? Because, say, somebody studies the Bhagavad Gita and says, I am going to speak on the Bhagavad Gita. So, now, he was inspired by Jagannath Babaji. But Jagannath Babaji was a avyudh kind of person.

He did not want to give initiation. And even if he gave initiation, at that time, the Gaudiya authorities were in two categories. One were the sanyasis who would mostly live like sadhus in forests or holy dhams.

And then the sanyasis, they are not like the sanyasi gurus in Iskcon right now. They are thousands of followers and they travel all over the world. It's not like that.

These were really otherworldly people. So, you could go and hear a talk from them, get some inspiration. But they did not have like a dedicated band of disciples.

They did not have any influence. The real influence was with the temple priests. That there are various temples and the temples had priests who were within families.

So, it was like a generational. So, the caste system had penetrated into Gaudiya Vaishnavism also. And so, it had become like Jati Goswami.

Somebody is born in a Goswami family, then they become the priests. So, they were the real power holders. So, because ordinary citizens, ordinary people, you know, if they want to get their daughter, they want to have marriage in their family, they want to have the name giving of their child, they will go to the temple priests.

If some sadhu is visiting, fine, they will take their blessings. But the temple priests were their main authorities. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, he had to get himself legitimized from them.

So, that is why he, although he was inspired by Jagannath Babaji, he took initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami. The Bipin Bihari Goswami was a very influential priest and leader. Now, he took initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami, but Bipin Bihari Goswami was a very strong exponent of the idea that only brahmanas can be teachers and gurus.

Only brahmana, those born in brahmana family, it was the idea of hereditary caste system. That's why later on you may have heard about the debate on brahmana and Vaishnava, which Bhaktivinod Thakur fought. Now, what we have often not known is that the person who was the main leader on the brahmana side was actually Bipin Bihari Goswami.

That he was the guru of Bhaktivinod Thakur. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, through his deeksha, he got validation. That he is, now Bhaktivinod Thakur said, I cannot challenge my guru.

So, he told Bhaktivinod Thakur, you go and debate with him. So, now that was one audience he needed connection with. Now, there were the general Bengali masses.

Now, these were very much under Sahajiya influence. So, for them, he wrote songs. So, they are more sentimental, they like songs and his songs, he was able to reach out to them.

Now, his biggest, most lasting outreach, like today most of you are talking about who he took deeksha from, why he took deeksha from. No, you may have heard about Bhaktivinod Thakur, you never heard about this. Because this was not really, it is not a timeless thing.

It was a timely, it was a strategic thing required. But his biggest outreach was to what is called at that time the Bhadraloka. The Bhadraloka were the English educated people.

So, to reach out to these people, for them, they were a complex mess. Some of them had converted to Christianity, some of them were attracted by the west. It happened in Britain, that this time Britain was also undergoing a lot of turmoil.

Like yesterday I mentioned, America is the most religious country in the west. But it's not that simple. In America, there are two main political parties.

And one is the Republicans are much more conservative and religious. They can say they are religious or they at least nominally support religion. And the Democrats are highly liberal and quite anti-religion.

So, like that, in Britain also there are two parties, the Tory party and the Labour party. The names were different at that time. So, one party was very protestant Christian.

And they said that if we have got the rule of India, then this is given to us by Jesus and we should use it to convert Indians to spread the light of Jesus, light of the Bible to these ignorant heathens. Now, the other party, they were saying that actually we want to remove the darkness of Christianity from Britain itself. Why should we be spreading it in? Why should we be spreading it in other countries? So, they were more rationalist kind of parties.

So, now, depending on who would be in power, in India, Christian outreach would be either funded and supported by the government or it would be checked by the government. Now, of course, all this happened after 1857. Before that the East India Company was there.

That was different. After 1857, the British government took the power officially in its own hands. Before that it was under a private company.

But why am I discussing all this? The point is that although their agenda about Christianity was opposite, but both, the religious party and the rationalist party, both were united in the criticism of Hinduism. Because Christians considered Hinduism as a religion from the devil and the rationalists considered that this is a superstitious, outdated, irrational belief system. So, both were united in their criticism of Hinduism.

And now, at that time, Bhaktivinod Thakur, the educated people who were there in India, who were working in the British government, they were influenced by these British ideas. And what happened? India had been ruled for almost 700 years under various Islamic rulers. There was not one Islamic ruler.

There were different rulers there. Delhi Sultanate was there, the Mughals were the longest, but many others were there at different times. But what had happened was that although Islam had gained political superiority, even political dominance to some extent, Islam was never seen as an intellectual threat.

It was never seen as even an intellectual competitor. So, even during the times of our Acharyas, whether it is Ramacharya or Bhatibhya Bhushan, none of them considered necessary to write any books critiquing Islam. Because the lifestyle and the values and the culture was such that, okay, these people may have more power than us.

And lot of people were converted by force. But it was not considered an intellectual threat. So, there was not much intellectual engagement required.

But when the West came to India, when colonialism came to India, it was not just a political dominating power. Much more than that, it was an intellectual threat. Why? It was an intellectual threat because the, what, you know, when in the history of the world has it happened that so small a number of people have ruled so large a country for so many decades.

At least, many Muslims, Roman invaders, they came to India. Some like Tughlaq and others, they were plunderers. But Babar and others, they came and made India their home.

So, they settled over here. But for most British officers, British people who worked with the British government, for them, the posting in India was like posting in Andaman Nicobar or something like that for them. They felt that the posting was a punishment.

They considered India to be a hot country filled with diseases and people who were stupid and blind and irrational. So, basically, very few British people made India their home. So, their purpose was basically, they wanted that India has to be managed but we won't have so many British people to come and manage India.

So, they needed Indians to voluntarily submit to them. Now, this was not unprecedented. Even under the Islamic rule also, there were lots of Indians who were working under the Islamic rule.

So, for example, Shivaji Maharaj is a famous ruler from Maharashtra and he built the Maratha empire. Now, when he was arrested, A. Afzal Khan, Shahistakhan both tried to arrest him and he managed to elude them. But then after that, it was Jai Singh too.

He was a Rajput king who actually arrested Shivaji Maharaj. Because he was working under Aurangzeb. So, the idea that Indians working under the foreign rulers was not unprecedented.

But here, that was primarily political agreement. But basically, under the British rule, what happened was that they educated Indians. And Indians started getting attracted.

So, it was very impressive that the West had so much technology. And the advancement of science and technology was very impressive. And beyond that there was a rational approach which they doubted.

And that seemed also very attractive. So, lots of Indians were getting attracted seeing that the British educational system or the British knowledge system and it's true from historical perspective that 200-300 years before the British colonial rule or around that. Now, Britain did attract, like places also have like a mass karma.

So, it seems Britain had a karma by which very very intelligent people whether Newton, Galileo and all those scientists, they were all born at that place. And they all led to the advancement of science. So, Indians were captivated by that.

So, that's why when Bhaktivinod Thakur started speaking, his primary focus was in this audience. And for these he wrote Chaitanya Shiksha Amrita, he wrote Jaiva Dharma, he wrote Krishna Samhita. He wrote various books like these.

And he was, Prabhupada calls Bhaktivinod Thakur as the founder of the modern day Krishna consciousness movement. Not founder, sorry, he was the father. The father of the modern day Krishna consciousness movement.

So, Bhaktivinod Thakur was the first in our tradition who focused on rationally presenting bhakti. Now, in the first essay, like he himself has a spiritual journey. He was born in Shakta family.

And he was not exactly a devout Shakta. In his childhood he says that when he had to go out and he would feel afraid, his grandmother told him that, his grandparents would chant the name of Ram. He said, I would chant the name of Ram and I would start feeling, my fear would go away.

So, he was fascinated by it. So, over a period of time, as he became established in the British government, then he started writing books to reach out to the contemporary audiences. So, for him the contemporary audiences that most of his books focused on was these educated Bhadralokas.

And his focus was on both rationality and experience. Reasoning, logic and experience. One of the first books that he wrote, it was actually a speech he gave to his friends.

And that is called the Bhagwat, the essay. It was about his theology, his philosophy and his teachings. So, when he spoke on the Bhagwatam, the Bhagwatam was known to Bengali people at that time.

So, his essay, which was later published, in those times people would often read speeches. Now also politicians read speeches, but often it doesn't appear as if they are reading. They have these, what do you call it, screen, screen board like that, you know, which in front of them, they are spread all over and it looks as if they are speaking spontaneously but just reading the script from there.

Teleprompter. Teleprompter, sorry. Screen board teleprompter.

So, but at that time he read out his speech and then later he refined it and published it. So, he talked about that for the understanding the Bhagwatam, what would be the obstacles and how to address the obstacles. So, he says, there are three main obstacles.

Doctor, what do you know? He says, when I was growing up, when I studied, I also considered the Bhagwatam to be like a primitive book with no value. And I read the books of western philosophers as I attracted them. But over the years, my understanding has changed.

And then he starts sharing his eye history. So, if we consider the Bhagwatam and the Bhadraloka audience. So, he says, three main obstacles are the biggest at that time was its cosmology, its chronology and its morality.

So, now cosmology and chronology can be put together. But the chronology that there is Satyuga for, there is Satyuga of thousands and thousands and thousands. Kalyuga is this long.

Now at that time the western dating system of the earth had come up. And the idea that these yugas could be so long that people could live for hundreds upon hundreds and thousands of years. This seemed irrational.

Then again the idea that there could be oceans of milk and all the things that are described in the Bhagwatam. That and especially the idea of hellish places where people burn, that was quite difficult. And with respect to the morality, at that time, see the British, they had critiqued Hinduism and generally what happens is, if a boxing match is going on, then both players are throwing punches.

And then when they are throwing punches, you hit the other person. And when you hit the other person, the other person winces slightly. And you know, oh, that person is injured over here already.

Maybe there is a pre-existing wound. Then they will what? Hit where it hurts. So, the British, especially now I am talking about the British as the colonialists, but not the British colonialists, even the rationalists, they found that among all the targets within Hinduism, they found two targets to be the strongest to hit.

This is in terms of the objects of worship. In terms of cultural practices, they attack Sati. Especially Sati was a strong target of attack.

Then there was the caste system and primarily untouchability within it. But we are not talking about cultural practices. We are talking about the teachings.

So, they found Krishna and Kali to be the two gods that they could hit the most. So, they said, how can anyone worship a god who is so brutal? A god who wears a necklace of skulls? What kind of monstrous beings would even imagine such a god? And so, they targeted Kali for the apparent brutality and they targeted Krishna for the immorality. The idea that what kind of perverse people would actually celebrate the immorality of someone? So, now these were formidable obstacles at that time as they are today.

So, Bhaktivinod Thakur systematically addresses these ideas. I am not going to get into the specifics of how he addresses them. But the point is that, so, none of these obstacles, you will see, when he is talking about the obstacles, he is not talking about Advaita Vedanta.

He is not talking about what had been traditionally the focus of the Vaishnavacharyas. Because that was not relevant. Now, when we came to Srila Prabhupada's time, so, it's interesting when Bhaktivinod Thakur sent his disciples to the West.

He told them, present themselves as the messengers of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who had come to teach the message of love of God. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur often compared Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to Jesus. That's why Jesus had a teaching of love of God.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also taught love of God. And then he presented it that way to some extent. Now, by the time of Srila Prabhupada, things had changed.

India was on the verge of gaining independence. The independence movement had become very powerful. And the independence movement had to a large extent been able to unite Indians.

So, what had happened? Now, I am speaking a lot of information. If it is not clear, we will have time for question answers. But what I am trying to do over here, if all the information seems overwhelming, don't worry.

You will get overwhelmed even more after this. But the point is, the information is not as important as specific as, the point is, acharyas are teaching according to time, place, circumstance. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, he focused on the point that we are presenting the message of love of God.

Now, by the time of Srila Prabhupada, things had changed. The Indian independence movement, by that time had become substantially influential. India had even got independence when Prabhupada went abroad.

So, now, one of the biggest problems for the Indian independence fighters was that in India, there were so many religious faiths. So many religious faiths means there was Shaivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism and all that. So, it was very difficult to unite everyone.

So, that's why, while the Bhagavad Gita was an important book, previously also, like Prasthantraya Bhagavad Gita was important. But the Bhagavad Gita was not the book of the masses. You would have Katha on the Bhagavad, Bhagavad Katha you would have, Ram Katha you would have.

Generally, most people would not have Mahabharata Katha because the Mahabharata was seen as a book of war and violence. So, people were, there was a little scepticism about it. But still, Mahabharata characters were well known.

But it was not that Bhagavad Gita Parvachan would happen widely. Because Bhagavad Gita is a difficult book to understand. It is complicated.

So, but what happened was the Indian independence fighters, they felt that the Bhagavad Gita is the most convenient book to unite Indians. And just like the Christians had their Bible, only one book, which could be, this is our book's teaching. So, the Bhagavad Gita became very important.

Now, Prabhupada made the Bhagavad Gita the basis of his outreach. The book that Prabhupada wanted to most widely distribute was Bhagavad Gita. So, the idea of Bhagavad Gita was to unify Indians.

And in order to unify Indians, primarily Hindus, what they did was, almost all the commentators, see everybody, they are approaching from particular perspective. Whether it is Aurobindo or whether it is, before it is Swami Vivekananda, or whether it is Mahatma Gandhi, or it is Bal Gangadhar Tilak. All of them, they are, what they did for the country, it is, in their way, it is valuable, invaluable we can say.

But for them, they were not primarily spiritualists. They were, they had a spiritual dimension to their life, but their primary focus was national awakening, national activism. So, for them the Bhagavad Gita was a tool for that.

So, they significantly downplayed or even denied the devotional element within the Bhagavad Gita. Because the devotional element would make the Bhagavad Gita sectarian. Because if we say we have to worship Krishna, that is the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, then what happens? Why only Krishna? Why not this devta and why not that devta and why not that devta? So, I was in America and… Now, one devotee showed me a cartoon.

This is an American boy, American college student or school student is asking this Indian co-student, why do you people, why do you guys worship so many gods? This Indian boy thinks and just, we like to keep backups. So, the idea of worshipping many deities is, is very confusing and people come up with their own explanations. So, the Gita, as it was presented during the Indian independence struggle, it significantly downplayed Krishna and it's definitely downplayed bhakti to Krishna.

So, Prabhupada, it is, Prabhupada made the Bhagavad Gita the basis of his outreach. The Bhagavad Gita had become immensely influential in India and in the West also to a significant degree. And then I went for Ralph Waldo Emerson and others had also read the Bhagavad Gita.

They had been attracted by it. So, Prabhupada made the Bhagavad Gita the basis. But in this Bhagavad Gita, Prabhupada systematically emphasized what had been de-emphasized by the other commentators.

Or sometimes people say that Prabhupada in every comment, every purport is bringing bhakti. Sometimes the, there is no bhakti in the verses where Prabhupada is bringing bhakti. And yes, that's a valid observation.

But the important thing is Prabhupada is not denying the Bhagavad Gita. Prabhupada may translate Karma Yoga as Bhakti Yoga, but Prabhupada gives us the original Sanskrit. And Prabhupada lets us read what is happening.

So, what is Prabhupada actually doing? The Bhagavad Gita is clearly bhakti conclusive. That means at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna gives various parts and he says, that sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam sarva-dharman parityajya. So, the Bhagavad Gita is bhakti conclusive.

So, what Prabhupada does is, what the conclusion of the Gita is, he gives throughout the Gita. So, even when Krishna is talking about Karma Yoga, he is talking about Gyan Yoga, Prabhupada says, these processes are not so practical today. We should focus on practicing bhakti.

So, Prabhupada is not denying the teaching of the Gita. He is giving us the Sanskrit, but he is ensuring that we don't get confused by giving us the conclusion throughout. So, what in many ways Prabhupada is, while giving the timeless message, he is also giving a timely emphasis.

Because the contemporary commentators had substantially downplayed the devotional dimension of the Gita, Prabhupada is emphasizing this more and more. So, to go back to our earlier point, that in our tradition, you see that Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Bhaktisahastra Thakur did not even bother to write a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Bhaktivinoda Thakur wrote two commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, but they are not so much commentaries as, they are Bengali translations of the commentaries of Vishwachandra Thakur and Baldevidya Bhushan, and with some small notes from his side.

They are not elaborate commentaries. So, at the time of Srila Prabhupada, he wanted to present the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. But what had happened, at his time, the Gita, let's put it this way, the Gita is a part of our tradition and the Gita was also relevant for people today.

So, Prabhupada took the Gita and he presented the Gita. He gave a devotional presentation of the Gita. So, we could go further and discuss, you know, Prabhupada could have commented on many many books.

Prabhupada commented on the, after Gita, he commented on the Bhagavatam. Then he commented on Chaitanya Charita Amrit. Prabhupada said, I would like to comment on the Ramayana also, I would like to comment on the Mahabharata also.

But he did not have the time. So, how it was that? See, there are, just to illustrate this point, there is a broad Vedic teaching. Prabhupada in one sense, in the main books that he commented on, there is Vedic, there is Vaishnava and there is Gaudiya Vaishnava.

So, it's like a funnel. So, if we move it upwards, so, Prabhupada gave us the broad Vedic teachings through his Gita. Prabhupada gave the broad Vaishnava teachings through his Bhagavatam.

And Prabhupada gave the Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings through his Chaitanya Charita Amrit. So, in this way, Prabhupada took us on a whole pathway. And Prabhupada is very very clear in his focus that although he is an acharya in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, in the Bhagavad Gita, the entire Bhagavad Gita, Prabhupada mentions Radharani only once.

You know where he mentions? In the introduction when he is reciting the prayer, Tapta Kancha Raghav Rangi Radhe Vrindavan Vishwa. So, that's the only place. Throughout the Gita, there is no mention of Radharani at all.

Why? Because Prabhupada is focused on foundational teachings. That's what he does to the Bhagavad Gita. Then in the Bhagavatam, the focus is not just on the broad Vedic teachings.

So, Vedic teachings are that we are not our physical side, we are the soul. The soul transmigrates. That ultimately we need to practice yoga to grow spiritually.

The Bhagavatam is much more a Vaishnava book. Focus on bhakti. Focus on hearing about Krishna, remembering Krishna.

And then after that, when we go to the Gaudiya Vaishnava, Chaitanya Charita Amrit about specifically Mahaprabhu's teachings, our particular tradition. So, Prabhupada has given us a fairly comprehensive way of growing. So, he has given someone for people who are interested in broad Vedic teachings, something for those who are interested in Vaishnava teachings, those who are interested in Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings.

So, these could be different groups of people or this could be the same seeker moving forward. Both ways. So, that brings us to the main part of the talk today.

I won't spend too much time on this. I want to have time for question and answers. That, see, the world has been changing rapidly.

And yesterday I think regarding the question of the moon, that point came up. So, Prabhupada primarily preached between 66 and 77. So, of course, he preached before that in India.

But the Krishna conscious movement primarily spread during that time. And that was the time when the outreach was most effective. And now, say, we are in 2026 now.

So, what has happened during this time? Roughly, it is difficult to state the exact time, but till around 2000, this was what is called as the modern age. And after the 2000s, it is what is called as the postmodern age. Now, sometimes we still use the word modern for postmodern also.

But what is it? In modern times, science, logic, rationality, this was considered very important. This was the source of authority for the masses. That is something scientific.

So, every religious tradition tried to prove that. Oh, the Bible is scientific. The Quran is scientific.

The Bhagavad Gita is scientific. The Dhammapada is scientific. That is the Buddhist book.

So, everybody tried to prove how our teachings are scientific. But over a period of time, so, what happened is that slowly that while today also science is very much valued, but science is valued today more for the technological utilities it provides. Science is not necessarily seen as the source of truth and wisdom.

That there is a big difference. That science can make our life more comfortable and science can tell us what is true. So, there was in the age of, in the modern age, there was a lot of hope and expectation that by science, by rationality, we will understand what is true and what is false.

But repeatedly it happened that science, while definitely we are not here critiquing technology or science for that matter. But the idea that science can help us arbitrate what is true, what is real, that has more or less lost the grip on the mainstream mind. For many reasons, starting from the Second World War itself.

See, the start of the Second World War and the end of the Second World War. That was a spectacular triumph for technology and a disastrous defeat for science. That how spectacular triumph for technology because air warfare became very very big.

And actually Hitler's Germany was very technologically advanced. That's how they were able to succeed. But then eventually two atom bombs being dropped by America, it just ended the war fully.

So, America eventually became more technologically advanced. So, it was a big success for technology. But in terms of science, see, Hitler, one of his reasonings for claiming that the Germans, the Nazis should rule the whole world was that he had adapted the Darwinian theory of evolution and he had adapted it to the idea called social Darwinism.

So, just as there are different species and some species are fit and some species are unfit. So, there was this idea that within human beings also the different races are there. And some are fitter and some are unfit.

So, he considered the Germans are the fittest. And the gypsies and others are all unfit. So, I mean, it is no laughing matter.

During his times, he started by all people, for example, who were physically handicapped. He first had all of them castrated so that they will not reproduce. Then similarly people who were mentally retarded, he had all of them castrated.

Then after that he said, you know, they should not reproduce, why should they even live? So, he had them systematically killed. Then he had the gypsies killed. Then he had the Jews killed.

So, his idea was that these are all unfit and anyway by nature's rules they will die. So, he says, now that we are advanced in technology, what nature will do gradually, we can help nature do faster. So, I am not blaming Darwin's theory of evolution for Hitler's Nazi ideology.

It's too simplistic. People get their ideas from many sources. But this idea of racial supremacy, they definitely had some basis in the idea of, like Darwin's idea was struggle, Darwin's survival of the fittest, the struggle for existence.

Hitler's autobiography was Mein Kampf, that is, my struggle. So, how science can lead to radicalization, that was horrendously demonstrated. When science can lead to radicalization is different from saying science causes radicalization.

They are two very different things. But similarly, when Einstein, he suggested to the American Prime Minister that you should develop nuclear weapons, he was concerned that Hitler might develop it. But when the atom bombs were actually used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the devastation it caused, that caused an irreparable scar on the human mind.

And during the Cold War, there was constant fear that humanity might destroy itself. So, the lure of technology as being the source of all good and more that science can make human beings better, science can guide human beings towards the truth, all that went down. The beyond that and the theory of relativity developed and then quantum physics came up.

So, another thing that came up was that we started understanding that reality is too complex to be explained by any one model, even if it be a scientific model. So, what do I mean by this? That, a simple explanation is that whatever is reality, each theory is like a map of the reality. And the map helps us to navigate the reality, but the map is not the reality.

So, when Newton developed his idea of the clockwork universe, the Newton's laws of physics came up, then they thought that this Newton's laws are actually describing reality. But then as they found that at the subatomic level, the motion of the particles were not following Newton's laws. Huge objects moving at the space of light, they didn't seem to be following Newton's laws.

So, other theories had to come up. That's how quantum physics and relativity came up. But the idea is that reality could be explained by science with some model.

That started getting challenged and countered. So, now most people understand that science offers maps to reality. And the maps are useful, the maps are valuable.

But those maps are not final. That what science may propose today, this is how things are. Tomorrow it may say something different.

And tomorrow the evidence may falsify it. So, that is why, in the postmodern world, the biggest source of authority became experience. What do I mean by experience? That if something works for me, if something benefits me, if something makes me feel better, then I am going to try it out and I am going to use it.

So, this is how spirituality and religion both have grown. When I had first gone to Australia in 2014, I had been invited to interfaith conference. And the topic of the conference was, why has God not died till now? Now, what does that mean? That since the Friedrich Nietzsche almost 100 years before had predicted the idea that God is dead.

So, their idea was that as science progresses, as rationality increases, more and more people will realize that the idea of God is so stupid and irrational. How can anyone believe in this? And people will give up that belief. But that has not happened.

Yes, atheism has increased. But across the world, there has been a significant resurgence in religion. In India, we see a resurgence in religion.

Hinduism in the Middle East, there is a resurgence, fundamentalism is there, but there is a resurgence in religion. Africa is quite aggressively religious. America also, there is a resurgence.

South America, huge resurgence. After communism fell in Soviet Russia, Russia is aggressively religious. Specific religion might be different.

But the point is, its religion has had remarkable, not a stain powered, but resurgence. So, people thought, yeah, this religion stuff is irrational. How can anyone believe in the idea that some Christian group claimed that the earth is 5000 years old.

How can anyone be so stupid as to believe this? Thousands and thousands of people are young earth creationists. They believe that. So, what happened is that through the practice of religion or spirituality, people experience something that science cannot predict.

See, technology can provide entertainment. But it is religion that provides peace of mind. Technology cannot provide peace of mind.

The mind is agitated and we watch some movies and we forget the agitation of the mind. But it's not that watching a movie makes us peaceful. After the movie is over, all the agitations of the mind come back again.

So, a sense of peace, a sense of connectedness, a sense of community. Basically, it is the sense of managing emotions and feeling overall positive about oneself, about life. That is what religion provides.

And now some people say, I am not religious, I am spiritual. That's okay. We can discuss that separately.

But the point is that even people who do not want to be religious, they want to be spiritual. And they may say religious means, okay, they identify certain activities as religious. Many big companies, when I go to America, if I go to Silicon Valley, most companies there are open to monks coming and giving spiritual talks.

Salesforce has a meditation corner in their main building in San Jose. Why? Because they find that their employers are stressed and actually doing some kind of meditation, some kind of mindfulness, some kind of mantra chanting. It calms people.

So, yoga has become immensely popular across the world. Not because some groundbreaking research papers were published which shows how yoga is beneficial. Some research has come.

But it is primarily because of experience. People had incurable back pain and started doing yoga and their back pain went away. So, what has happened is, in the postmodern times, the biggest authority is not science, it is experience.

If something works for me, then I want to try it out. And similarly, if, don't tell me what is right, tell me how this works for you. If your story sounds authentic to me, I will accept it.

And I follow it. So, experience has become a huge adjudicator. Now, experience in many ways is pratyaksha.

Within science itself, pratyaksha and anumal are two distinct schools of thought. They are called empiricism and rationalism. And there have been fights among empiricism and rationalism in science also.

So, like that is pratyaksha more important, anumal more important. So, many times, when people do some meditational practice, people do something spiritual, they join a particular group. Now, from a logical perspective, the beliefs of that particular group might seem completely irrational.

And people say, how can anyone believe this? How can anyone follow this? But, you know, people have not come to that particular group because of logic. They have come because of experience. And enabling people to have a positive experience is very important.

Mr. Prabhupada, yes, he was quite sharp in his logic and sometimes you see his conversations and his talks. He has very sharp logical answers. But Prabhupada was actually a person who was very warm and loving.

And he was able to win people's hearts. So, he was able to give people a warm, uplifting experience. And while Prabhupada did talk about the four regulatory principles, that was not the emphasis, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this.

The overall emphasis, the experience that was there with Prabhupada, Prabhupada presented Krishna Consciousness not as a set of rules. It was Krishna Consciousness actually adventure in the service of God. An adventure in the service of God.

So, the hippies, they like to do crazy things. But the upper man doing crazy things, they would get into trouble. But even among the crazy things they would do, like in the western culture, every culture dancing is seen as a celebration.

But in the western culture, they would not dance on the streets. The police would come and arrest them. But Prabhupada started the Rathyatra festival and now they were dancing on the streets.

And the police were not arresting them, the police were escorting them. So, Prabhupada actually made Krishna Consciousness exciting, adventurous. So, the rules were there and the rules are difficult to follow at times.

But that was not the focus of Sri Prabhupada. So, for us, when we are ourselves practicing bhakti and we are sharing bhakti with others, it is this dynamic experiential aspect of Krishna Consciousness which is extremely important. So, whether it is we come and do kirtans, we go for yatras, or we hear classes.

Yes, there is a philosophical component of classes. But there is an experiential component of coming together in the association. So, that experience.

Now, how do we facilitate helping people to have that experience? When Prabhupada came to Mayapur, he said that we can sit under the tree and we can chant. But when people come over here, we want them to have a positive experience. People who are not particularly conditioned, they can see the spirituality of Mayapur and be attracted.

But people who are more particularly conditioned, for them they need to experience, they can't tolerate too much physical discomfort. Otherwise, they will not be able to connect with the spirituality. So, for us, that means pratyaksha and anubhav.

The experience and the logic, both are important. Now, Radhan Maharaj wrote the journey home book. That is, he is sharing his experience of a spiritual journey.

And many reasons why he wrote that book. But one of the things is that, see you cannot argue, you can argue with a person's logic. You cannot argue with a person's experience.

What do you mean you cannot argue with a person's experience? If somebody says, you know, I had lost my, somebody says that I had lost my child and I was in great depression and I went to the temple and I heard classes, I read the Bhagavad Gita and I found a difference. So, you are lying. You don't know.

You cannot argue with experience. Experience is not the ultimate authority. So, somebody may say, I drink alcohol and I feel good.

So, I experience good. But then, that experience temporarily is good but afterwards it leads to lot of negative experiences also. But the idea is, the experience has its own persuasive power.

And in the bhakti tradition, it was largely about giving experiences to people. So, whether it was a kirtan, like around Ayodhya, another place, Varanasi, there is a Ram Tatha. So, people come and they see the Ram Leela being enacted.

And the idea is, while the Ram Leela is being enacted, people experience some of that emotions. In India in 1950, the first Ramayan movie was made. And when it was released in the theatre, at that time, it was 1958, so actually when Lord Ram appeared, all the people in the movie theatres got up and offered obeisances to Lord Ram.

And I was in 1980s, Ramayan was on TV series. So, when Lord Ram would appear, people would be waiting with their aarti plates and when Lord Ram would appear, they would do aarti of the tea. So, the idea is, you may say this is superstitious or this is irrational but it is an indication that people were getting so immersed in that experience.

And that immersive experience transformed people. Now, today if you see the Ramayan series, Ramayan Sagar, from technological perspective it is not very high quality. But now we have so much advanced technology but from the experiential perspective, people felt uplifted, people felt connected.

So, offering that experience to people is very important. So, that's why one of the aspects of youth culture is we have youth centre where we come and stay together. Why we stay? We can come and hear classes.

But when we stay together, we experience bhakti in association. When we go to yatras, we experience bhakti in association. Whether it is song, dance, drama, music, movies, all these are ways we experience the culture.

That we experience Krishna through the culture of bhakti. So, I will conclude with one last metaphor over here that see there is science and there is technology. Now, what do I mean by science and technology? I am putting them as two different circles because science is more about theory.

It is about the nature of reality. Technology is about the application. So, the number of people who understand the science behind say the internet or the science behind AI, they are few.

The number of people who use the internet, number of people who use AI are far far more. So, similarly, there is philosophy and there is culture. The philosophy appeals to the reason.

Yesterday what I talked about is logic. And the culture gives experience. So, through both of these, the outreach happens.

Now, while logic is important. Now, am I saying the culture is irrational? No, that's not what I am saying. I am not saying that culture is irrational.

I am not saying technology is unscientific. What I am saying is just as most people do not know how technology works, but still they use technology. Similarly, most people who are attracted by the culture, they don't know the philosophy behind it.

But just as if a gadget stops working, somebody needs to know the science to make sure that it works properly. If a phone starts exploding, how do you stop the phone from exploding? Somebody has to know how to do that. So, like that, the culture, what is behind that culture? Some people need to know that.

If that is not known, then the culture can start exploding. That means, the culture can be misused, misapplied, exploited. So, for us, when we are trying to do outreach, there is a philosophy and there is a culture.

The classes that we give are the philosophy. But how we conduct ourselves apart from that, how we connect with people, how we care for people, that is the culture. And when philosophy and culture both come together, that's where there is a transformative spirituality, where Krishna is experienced.

When we say, ye na ke na prakaare na mana krishna nivesha ye, that means that at different times, whatever way a person's mind and heart are attracted towards Krishna, we facilitate that. So, generally, for most people, there is a logical side and we need to appeal to the logical side. For many people, for a majority of people, the experiential side is more important.

And we need to be able to provide good experiences. So, it's a combination of both. But the exact component, how much would be the logic, how much would be the experience, that varies from person to person.

That varies from situation to situation. But the idea is, according to one's interests, when we present bhakti wisdom, our outreach can be more effective. So, I will summarize what I discussed today.

I talked about three main points. The first point was, I focused on Bhaktivinod Thakur's context. That how, this was lot of information here, how basically during his time what happened? Are the Vedas meaningful? Not what is the meaning, do they have any meaning at all? That was the question.

There is a radical change in context. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, his challenge was to present the Vedic wisdom to in a rational way. So, while presenting it rationally, he discussed about the cosmology, the chronology, the morality of the Bhagavatam and he presented it accordingly.

We also talked about the demographics he was trying to reach. How he had established authority among the traditional Gauri Vaishnavas. How among the masses for them he wrote songs.

So, then I discussed about how during Shila Prabhupada's time, Shila Prabhupada's teaching or Shila Prabhupada's context was that Shila Prabhupada, he according to Deshkala Patra, he emphasized the Gita as the basis of the Vedic teachings. Gita had become very influential and he made the Gita the foundation of his teaching. With the Bhagavatam, he gave the Vaishnava teaching.

And through the Chaitanya Charita Amrit, he gave the Gauriya Vaishnava teaching. And in this way, Prabhupada reached out to a large number of people. So, Shila Prabhupada presented bhakti in a way that was progressive as well as expansive.

Progressive means the same seeker can move from the basic Vedic teaching to Gauriya Vaishnava teachings. And expansive means if somebody is already at a Vaishnava level, somebody is already at a Gauriya Vaishnava level, Prabhupada offers them something also. And then we consider today's context.

So, we discussed how the world has changed for various reasons. So, especially post 2000, it was modern, pre-modern, that is science was important, logic was important. But after that it became primarily post-modern.

Now, post-modern means that the idea that science itself comes up with many different theories like maps and there is no one exclusive, exhaustive, expansive theory that explains everything. So, therefore, rather than relying on science as the arbiter of reality, people turn towards experience. So, when experience something is experienced as good, and good means not just sentimentally I take alcohol and feel good, but actually my emotions become more settled.

I feel more peaceful. I feel more connected with the universe. I feel that my life has some higher purpose.

So, that sense, that is what people are seeking. And within our tradition, we discuss how there is science and technology like that there is philosophy and culture. So, the philosophy helps us to see the logic, the culture helps us to get the experience.

And we all need both, but depending on particular context and particular people, logic may need to be emphasized, experience may need to be emphasized. And that way what we are presenting is Shastra, but we present it in a way that logic appeals to the head, the experience trunk appeals to the heart, the emotional, rational side, emotional side and that is how people get attracted. Thank you very much.

Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, please. It's nice of you and your practice to say that they want to be spiritual but they don't want to be religious.

And it's your role also to say that we are teaching spirituality, we are not teaching Hinduism. So, but the thing is that like, you want to say like that, but people may argue that whatever you are doing, you are worshipping the Hindu God, you are reading the Hindu scriptures. So, like how we can answer to the masters when they ask this question that you are saying that you are not teaching Hinduism.

Okay. So, this question, how do we answer people, say are you, you are teaching Hinduism, you are not teaching Hinduism. See, there are different focuses at different points.

So, there is what Jiva Goswami uses the terminology, Shankaracharya uses originally, that is paramarthik and vyavaharik. Paramarthik is transcendental, vyavaharik is practical, operational, you can say. So, from a paramarthik perspective, we are souls, we are not our physical bodies.

But say if I go to America, at immigration they ask me, from which country are you? I cannot say I am a soul from the spiritual world. Isn't it? The immigration authority will say, if you are a soul, my sole goal is to get you out of the country. So, our vyavaharik identity is important.

Isn't it? So, I was talking about, you know, we get some western people to come to India. We take westerners on a tour of India. They want to go to Rishikesh and Vrindavan and other places.

So, many times they, most of the people come from a yoga background and many of them are females. So, they ask, you teach that you are not the body or the soul. But there is one, there is one American Matheishi said that, you know, it is only when I started practicing bhakti, I am constantly reminded that I am a body.

Because I am a female. That I am taught that I am not the body. But in the west, I was never, you know, okay, I am a female, I am doing a lot in my life.

But I am constantly reminded, you are a woman, you can't do this. You are a man, you should do this. So much rigid separation between men and women.

So, if you are really the body and you are really the soul and not the body, why do you need such rigid separation? Act at the level of the soul. The point is that to realize that we are the soul, we have to see what identity is conducive for us and what identity is not conducive. So, biologically, psychologically, the male-female attraction is very strong.

And if we are not cautious, then that identification will overwhelm us so much that we will not be able to function at a spiritual level. That's why some amount of gender separation is required. So, why I give these two examples.

Krishna himself tells Arjuna that, he says that you are the soul. Technically, Krishna does not say you are not the body. Krishna says that you are what is within the body.

But immediately after that in 2.14, Krishna uses two describers. That is Matarasparshastu, Kaunteya, Tamasthikshasva, Bharata. Both Kaunteya and Bharata are body-based designations.

Isn't it? Kunti, he is the son of Kunti. That's his body. His soul is not the son of Kunti.

Isn't it? His soul has not descended in the Bharata dynasty. Isn't it? So, why is Krishna using a body-based identifier immediately after telling that actually your identity is beyond the body? That's because, Prabhupada explains the purport that if a body-based identity can inspire us to act spiritually, to act responsibly. You are born to a great mother.

You are born in a great dynasty. Therefore, act in a responsible way even if it is difficult. So, why am I talking about all this? That the Vyavaharik identity, the practical operational identity, which identity to emphasize when and which identity to de-emphasize when.

So, for example, that male-female, that gender identity we will emphasize. So that we don't want to get caught in the body. But, if there is a caste discrimination, we will de-emphasize that identity.

When all of you are coming and sitting here, nobody asks you which caste are you from. Why? Because that is the identity that is not going to increase our bodily function. So, when Prabhupada was bringing all this to the point of Hinduism, that we are Krishna devotees, we are practicing the path of love of Krishna, that is our transcendent identity.

But, from a Vyavaharik perspective, from an operational perspective, we are Hindus. So, if you want to be classified, like Vrindavan as being a part of the spiritual world, is not in the material world. But, if you want to put it on the map of the world, we are not going to put it in Pakistan or China.

Isn't it? It is not in the material world, but it is in India. How is that possible? Isn't it? So, that's the Vyavaharik perspective. So, like that, from a Vyavaharik perspective, we are Hindus.

And I don't think we should deny that. So, there was a certain amount of negativity and sectarianism associated with religion. And religion focuses primarily on faith and believe this.

But Prabhupada's presentation of Krishna Consciousness was not so much believe this. It was experience this. It was in practice this and see the experience, experience the transformation that happens in your own life.

So, from that perspective, what Prabhupada presented was actually not religion as people thought it to be. So, ISKCON has a communications ministry and it has released a statement saying that we are, ISKCON is a monotheistic tradition within the broad family of traditions known as Hinduism. So, we acknowledge that we are Hindus.

But that's not all that we are. So, I think there is no need to negate or reject that identity. So, for example, if Islamic extremists attack us, if we tell them we are not Hindus, they say, you are the most Hindus that are there among Hindus.

Isn't it? Because of our dress, because of our shikha, tilak or whatever. So, if we are going to need protection, who are going to protect us? Will we have Kshatriyas? Maybe we will have in the future. But if right now we do not have, we need protection.

So, we can't dis-identify. See, that's why there is a difference between emphasizing a spiritual identity and rejecting a material identity. That when we have that pastime of Chitra Ketu, his son says when he is called like which mother, which father.

But when is he saying it? After that child has died. And the child is on the next life journey. So, at that time, the child has had many many, the soul has had many many lives.

And he is asking which mother, which father. You know, if we are right now in a relationship, we can't tell our parents which mother, which father. I have so many mothers, so many fathers.

No, right now, that vyavaharika identity is important. When Krishna meets Vasudev for the first time, what does Krishna say? That a child is meant to bring joy to the parent, but because of me, you suffered so much pain. Even before my birth, so many of my siblings were killed because of me.

So, he says, please forgive me for all the pain I have caused you. And I will try to serve you and bring joy to you. So, we have to recognize the importance of the vyavaharika identity also.

Any other questions or comments? Correct, yeah. True. Is there a systematic way? I don't think we can have a, because experience itself is subjective.

But, say for example, we have beautiful paintings in our temple. That's art. It gives an uplifting aesthetic experience.

The deities are decorated nicely. That gives an aesthetic experience. So, broadly you can say that when people come to Krishna, they come for different reasons.

There could be many, but we could put them in four broad categories. One is that people come for social reasons. Social means they want to hang out with good people.

So, this is one of the main reasons why Indians outside India often become more religious than Indians in India. Because what happens, Indians outside India, initially they may want to have fun. Oh, there is so much freedom and enjoyment over here.

But, after sometime, maybe once they get married, they have children. Say, you know, we want our children to grow up with our values. So, we want like-minded people.

In the Middle East, we have, if you go to UAE, Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I think within one hour distance. But each of these places, they have their own separate Sunday programs.

Abu Dhabi has about 500 people coming for its Sunday program. Then Sharjah has about 1000 people coming. Dubai has, Sharjah has about another 500 people.

Dubai has about 1000 people coming. And these are all Indians. Muslims come over there, obviously.

But why are they coming? Because they want to hang out with like-minded people. So, some people come for social reasons. Modern society can be very democratic.

Now, some people come for cultural reasons. Cultural reasons means, you know, okay, I grew up going to a temple. I like the vibes of a temple.

So, they come for cultural reasons. I want to, I want my children to see the Arteen, see the deities. You want to go there and the cultural reasons are there.

Now, some people come for psychological or emotional reasons. Some people come for rational or philosophical reasons. So, psychological reasons means what? That people want to feel peaceful, people want to feel calm.

Now, actually and philosophical is people have questions. I want answers to my questions in life. So, now each of these is quite distinct.

So, for example, if somebody comes for a psychological reason. Now, what happened? Actually, Prabhupada was one of the first person who introduced Kirtan in the West. But, now Kirtan has become a big genre in the West.

But ISKCON has fallen behind. There are many other people who do Kirtans. And there are people who they have like Kirtan concerts.

And people pay to go and sit in the Kirtan. And what about he, you know, he does Kirtan concerts and people pay may be 50 dollars to 100 dollars just to go for attending a one hour Kirtan. So, now, but ISKCON people are slowly entering into it.

What happened was when people go for Kirtans, they want peaceful, serene, uplifting experience. It's like if you are interested in classical music, not the rock music, the classical music is like Beethoven or something like that. It's very serene, uplifting.

So, what happened? Our Kirtans are not peaceful. They are ecstatic. Now, sometimes we have these vampers.

You know, for somebody who is an insider, it's ecstatic. But for somebody who is not an insider, it just seems too noisy. So, what happened was our cultural Kirtans do not appeal to people who are coming for psychological reasons.

So, that's why there are some Kirtans where people just, there are, so, for example, our main temple, many temples just started that. We have Shayan Aarti, which is very peaceful and gentle. Radha Bhavan temple is in Mumbai.

Shayan Aarti is at 9 o'clock and Gaur Aarti is at 7 o'clock. There are, both Aartis are well attended but Shayan Aarti, people, it's like crowded completely. So, I was talking to some people, saying at the end of the day, this helps me to decompress.

Yes, come and you participate in this Kirtan, I feel peaceful, then I go back home. So, people who come for psychological and cultural reasons can be very different. Sometimes culture can seem noisy and not very peaceful.

Similarly, people who come for social and cultural reasons can be completely opposite. A cultural reason means, okay, if I want to go to the temple, I will wear dhoti kurta, if I have my family, children, we all wear traditional clothes, we put tilak and we go. Somebody is coming for a social reason, they are feeling lonely, they are feeling lost.

So, if somebody comes for a social reason, and I remember this one devotee told me that, he is a devotee kid, he went to America and he went to a particular temple. He said he was, he had just gone to America and he was feeling, he was feeling lost over there, getting college admission. He went to the temple and the first thing they asked him in the temple is, why are you not wearing tilak? He felt so disgusted, he said, everybody is judging me over here and I come here to get acceptance and belonging.

They are judging, I don't want to come here again. So, then there are specialized western outreach centers where they are not so big on culture, external cultural aspects. So, he said, he felt much more accepted and welcomed over there.

So, those who come for a social reason and those who come for a cultural reason, they can be quite opposite. Social reason means, I want to talk with people, I want people to understand me, not judge me. Now, as soon as culture comes in, judgment comes in immediately.

If you are following a particular culture, how well are you following that culture? Isn't it? It comes in immediately. Why are you wearing these clothes? Why are you not wearing that clothes? So, it is important that we understand why a person is coming. Somebody comes for philosophical reasons.

So, among these four, you can guess which reason I came? Yeah, I know philosophy. So, other aspects were attractive, but philosophical was the most attractive for me. So, now for such people, you know, okay, the aarti and the kirtan and all that is fine, but the class is not important.

Who is giving the class? What is the content of the class? So, one of the most frustrating things for me when I was growing in bhakti was this concept of achintya. Because what happened, I felt that, you know, whenever a speaker does not have an answer to a question, they say it is achintya. You know, it just, the English word is, it's intellectual cop-out or it's intellectual escapism.

So, then actually I talked to devotees who are serious Gaudiya scholars. And then I actually studied Jiyu Goswami's work. So, achintya is a very specific concept.

He says that when scripture has made some statements or rather scripture has made two statements which cannot be easily reconciled. That time for two scriptural statements that don't make sense logically, that is the point for using achintya. So, God has form, God does not have form.

Scripture has both kind of statements. How do we reconcile it? By achintya. But we often use it for anything and everything.

And so, you know, this kind of, so, when I would not get satisfactory answers to questions, I would be disturbed. And then when I would still, you know, this did not make sense. So, when I would tell that to some senior devotees, they would say, why are you taking it so seriously? The class was so nice.

There are so many other good points in the class. So, first I was disturbed and then I was disturbed and they were not disturbed. So, the idea is that what will give a person that good experience depends on what they are seeking.

And that is one of the big reasons why our outreach in the West among Westerners has gone down. Because it's gone in the West has become predominantly filled with Indians now. And the more Indians come, the more Indians come for experiencing Indian culture there.

And the more they come for experiencing Indian culture, then Westerners feel, oh, this is just a Indian group. And I don't want to come over there. So, it becomes difficult.

One devotee told me that, he was, he is a Western devotee, he said that, you know, his girlfriend brought him to the temple for the first time. They came together in the same car. But when I came to the temple, it's all that men and women sit separately.

So, he said that, you know, he had been to a church. In the church, the whole family sits together. In fact, they joke that often the church is the only time the family sits together.

But the thing is, he said, I just couldn't understand the talk. I couldn't understand the, what was happening. I didn't understand the aarti.

I didn't understand anything. From the Western perspective, you know, much of our culture can seem weird. I was in Australia and I was supposed to attend a feast class and probably Western audience was there in the temple.

So, one middle-aged Australian woman, she came and she said, can I ask you a question? I said, yeah. She says, when that shell is blown, why do you people kiss the floor? So, when we offer dandavat pranam on Ashtang Brahma, what is happening? Why do you kiss the floor? So, he said that, I told my girlfriend, I am never going to come to this temple. So, then she took him to a Western outreach center where primarily Western people come and there they don't impose any gender separation.

You know, people can say it the way they want. So, that's when I started feeling that I could connect, I could understand. So, what will attract people depends on what will give people a positive experience between what they are looking and what is obstructing them from getting what they are looking.

That's why Deshe Kaala Patra is so important. Any last question? Anyone else? You can come back to me if you don't mind. Thank you so much.

So, what's coming next? Because you showed a complete picture, timeline, what is going to be the most important for all of us as devotees. Just out of curiosity. In future, what is going to be the most important? We can't really say because the world is changing so fast now.

In many ways, in the past 200 years, the world changed faster than what it changed in the past 2000 years. In the past 20 years, the world changed faster than the past 200 years. And you can say in the past 2 years, it has changed faster than the past 20 years.

So, with AI coming up, things are drastically changing. So, what will be most effective? I think things will have to look at as things evolve. So, one thing in our tradition is we understand that Krishna is time.

So, if you understand Kalos, Krishna says, I am time. What that means is that when we are adapting to the times, it's not just that, oh, you know, these times, this is Kali Yuga and people are so ignorant. That's why we have to do these things.

No. It is how is Krishna manifesting as time? And how can I serve Krishna as He manifests as time? So, for us, we don't consider history. Simply as a sense of mundane events.

Very much in our philosophy, history is what? It is his story. History is his story. So, of course, there are some feminists who are arguing that the name of the subject should be changed from history to her story.

And they say, why his story? It should be her story. But… So, but the point I am making is that we have to learn. As times change, we observe the times and we learn.

So, one of the things that is definitely happening is as loneliness is increasing, as societies are changing, structures are changing. So, what to emphasize and what to de-emphasize? Hmm. I think probably… So, what is it? One observation was like when AI is doing many things and what I was doing yesterday may not be relevant today.

So, after some point of time, we feel what's the purpose actually? What I am actually supposed to do? The kind of… I think that is a challenge. Ultimately, there is a means of living and there is a meaning of living. The means of living will change drastically.

Now, there is a lot of AI alarmism that because of AI, our people's jobs will go away. Well, I think yes and no. If you see throughout the history of technology, when the printing press came up, at that time the Catholic Church was strongly against the printing press.

Why? Because they said if printing press is there, the Bible will be printed widely. If the Bible is printed widely, then people will read the Bible on their own. If people read the Bible on their own, then they will not need the priests to explain the Bible to them.

That was one of the main reasons why Catholic and Protestants split. Protestants said that everybody has a right to read the Bible and understand it in their own way. The Catholic Church said no.

The Bible is to be learned through the priests, the clergy as they call it, who are the teachers of the Bible. So, did Christianity implode and get destroyed because of that? Did pastors and preachers become unemployed because of that? No, the way of teaching changed. So, through every technology, changes happen substantially.

So, definitely what happens is that technology does not replace people, but technology replaces the people who refuse to work with technology. So, if somebody is going to hand write books and somebody else write books on a computer, then the person who is writing books on a computer will definitely supersede the person who is hand writing books. So, we also have to learn that.

So, I think how to use AI, that is also like AI prompt engineering itself is becoming a huge field now. So, we will have to find out the means of living. But the meaning of living, ultimately the soul longs for Krishna.

The soul longs for enduring meaning in life. That longing for meaning is not going to change. That longing for meaning is something which has always been there and which will always be there.

So, technology will be used by people in sattva, by people in rajas, by people in tamas. So, AI for example, the internet led to a huge access of pornography that you can say in tamas. But through the internet, people came up with things like Wikipedia, where there is a free body of knowledge available.

It is not only free for everyone to use, it is prepared entirely by volunteers. Now, we may say it has a left wing bias or whatever. But the point is that who would do something like this? There are people in sattva guna.

And there are people in sattva guna who are doing this. So, AI will also be like that. There are people in sattva guna will use AI for sattvic purposes.

People in dhaja guna will use AI for rajasic purposes. People in tamo guna will use AI for tamasic purposes. So, many Christian theologians, especially in the field of analytical philosophy, have worked very strongly over almost decades to give rational arguments for the existence of God.

So, there was this famous atheist. He had an argument with AI, does God exist or not? And what happened was, he gave various traditional atheistic reasons for the non-existence of God. And AI responded again and again and again.

And by the end of it, he angrily said, are you saying God exists? So, he basically, he wanted to say how can AI be so stupid? He says, yes, if you consider the verdict of logic and evidence, you can say that, you cannot deny the point that God exists. And he published it as if to say how AI is biased. A long text was there.

But the result was the opposite. Because AI had made very systematic arguments. And people who read it said, wow! This is like AI is proving the existence of God now.

So, I think knowledge and technology depends on how we use it. So, we have to learn to use it. And technology cannot get people from tamo guna to sattva guna.

So, technology will not… Of course, somebody in sattva guna can quickly go to tamo guna through technology. Like somebody in the temple, if they want to go to a bar or a brothel, they have to physically go from one place to another. But with technology, what happens? In one browser window, you might be hearing a Bhagavatam class.

Another browser window, just people can change and they can go to a porn site or something like that. So, shifting from one guna to another guna becomes very easy. And because of the human vulnerability, going to the lower modes will become much easier.

So, we will always need spirituality to raise human consciousness towards a higher level. But ultimately, technology, no matter what all it provides, it's superficial. Many times, especially outside India, when I travel, parents are asking, our children are addicted to their phones.

What can we do? So, often people become very dark and gloomy and pessimistic about it. No, you should be asking a different question. That when the phones provide us so much stimulation, so much entertainment, so much updates, why is it that everyone is not addicted to their phones 24 hours a day? Because ultimately, there is a part inside us to understand this is superficial.

There has to be something more in life. So, that basic search for meaning, that no AI, no technology can eradicate that. And that search for meaning will ultimately inspire people to use technology in sattva and beyond sattva towards spirituality.

We will stop here. Any last question? So, thank you very much. Okay.

Last question. What is my measure of success? I asked my spiritual master Radha Hanuman about this. He says, I have always been more of an educator than a cultivator.

Cultivator is if you stay at one place, you connect with people. My main stress is basically, give knowledge and let people decide how much they want to practice, how they want to practice. So, I asked Maharaj about this.

Maharaj laughed and said, if you are invited again, you are successful. Then I said, why Maharaj, that is like a very baseline level of success. That means if you are not invited again, it will cause so much damage that people don't want you to be.

So, Maharaj said that there are different ways of measuring success. So, it is that in the tradition, there were two kinds of sages. There were city dwelling sages and there were forest dwelling sages.

So, the city dwelling sages would live in the, like Vasishtha Muni was a city dwelling sage in the Ramayana. Vishwamitra is a forest dwelling sage. So, the city dwelling sages, they are more associated with the institution.

So, they work very closely with the king. They are still brahmanas, but they work very closely with the king. The forest dwelling sages, so they are concerned with the king's initiatives.

Okay, I am going to attack and conquer this kingdom. Let us do this yagya for this purpose. I want to do this particular thing.

How do I go about doing this? So, the city dwelling sages, they focus much more on tangible measurable results. Now, the forest dwelling sages, they don't focus on that. For a city dwelling sage for example, it will be that if you are doing the yagya for the king's prosperity.

Then does the king's kingdom expand? Does the king's royal treasury increase? That's what is concerned about. But the forest dwelling sages, they are not concerned if they are living in a forest. Okay, now I had a hermitage with five people, now I have a hermitage with 500 people.

If they wanted 500 people, they would go to the city. The reason why they go to the forest is they want seclusion. So, the idea is that there are, even within the tradition, the forest dwelling sages, the city dwelling sages, they have different definitions of success.

So, some forest dwelling sages may also have lots of disciples. Like Valmiki's ashram was a big ashram. But in the Ramayana itself, there are other sages like he means, Lord Ram means Agastya Muni, Lord Ram means Vaishampayan.

These sages don't have that big hermitage. So, for the forest dwelling sages, it's more that they are there to share wisdom. If somebody comes and receives wisdom from them, that's wonderful.

If they don't, that's also fine. So, for me, primarily, for me, the books that I write and especially, I am writing books for a mainstream audience. That means, through mainstream publishers you reach out books to people who would not normally go to a temple and buy books from them.

Because they see that as religious literature. See generally, people who are thinkers, who are thoughtful, sattvic people generally. For them, when you go out in the streets and distribute books, then they think you are propagandists.

You have an agenda and like political party, they spread their pamphlets. So, we can still reach people. But people who are thinkers, they don't like books being given to them.

So, let me go and find books where books are available. So, me reaching out to the mainstream audience, writing books in a language and in a presentation style that can reach out to people who would not necessarily come to a temple to buy a book. That is one of my main focuses.

And so, you could say that it's what I offer is more of like descriptive spirituality than prescriptive spirituality. Prescriptive is, okay, you change this many rounds, then you start this morning program, then this is how you go spiritually. That is prescriptive, do this, do this, do this.

What I focus is more on descriptive spirituality. That this is what it is, this is what this book teaches, this is what the Bhagavad Gita teaches. This is how it can be applied.

Now, how much you want to apply it, how much you want to be benefited by applying it, that's up to them. So, I think, like yesterday I said there are different definitions of success. So, for me to, it's almost like to present spirituality to people who are put off by the religious aspect of spirituality.

That is what I am trying to do. And it's more like self-paced spirituality. You can practice it at whatever pace you want.

So, I am still learning how to reach out to a broader audience, what kind of topics to write on. So, one of my books, Gita for the CEO, that is quite well in the, it's national bestseller, is quite well in the mainstream market. And I have got quite a few invitations in companies to come and do talks over there.

But then, do we have a cultivation network? I am not looking for that. But eventually, as our movement expands, you know, cultivation networks for different demographics will build on their own. And then we can actually reach out to people in different ways.

But that's my current focus. Thank you very much. Shloka prabhupada ki, gaur bhakta vindaki, gaur prabhupada ki.