Appreciating Krishna’s opulences, using his opulence of knowledge as an example – Hindi

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

So thank you very much Nayan Maharaj for joining today. It's an honor to have your association online. I have been running this Monks Podcast for the last several months.

And basically I started this because I found that a forum where devotees can discuss issues rather than just have one directional classes that stimulates the audience in a different way. And of course, this was excuse for me to get the association of senior devotees also. So this is watched mainly in India.

I'm based in India and I travel across the world. I spend about six months in America usually, traveling and doing some outreach over there. So since I have read about you, read your articles and books and heard your classes, it's a great honor for me to have you on this podcast.

And today I was thinking, since you have been a part of ISKCON's history, you also studied the history of religions. I have heard your classes on world religions also. So I was thinking we could talk about Krishna consciousness in a broader historical context.

Now how in the Western world, how Eastern spirituality became appealing, how Krishna consciousness also was a part of it and where things stand right now. So it is more like a history of ideas in Krishna consciousness. Is that? Yes.

Yeah, that's fine. Yes, thank you. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, okay. I think if I may, I'm going to walk this back a little bit because if we read Mahabharata or Bhagavatam, these great classics, we find that in India there was a different notion of religion than we are used to now in the modern times. And so perhaps, I was just talking about this yesterday, we did the class with South America and I was explaining in Spanish, now I'm doing English.

But if you look at ancient India and probably the best sustained picture we have of ancient India in terms of a lot of information about a specific historical period rather than jumping to different yugas and different situations, but a sustained historical window, that of course would be Mahabharata. And of course, the two great itihasas, the two great historical epics of India are Mahabharata and Ramayana. In the case of Ramayana, it takes place much earlier than Mahabharata.

So we're not getting as good a picture, let's say, of something, well, let's say Mahabharata is much closer to our yuga, to our historical period. And also, the Ramayana does not claim to be or is not trying to be a general history of India. Whereas Mahabharata, as the very name indicates, is a history of great Bharata.

And we look at Bharata, South Asia, because of course, we're talking about regions, certainly including modern Pakistan and including parts of Afghanistan and so on. And so we're looking at South Asia, there is less information or less events take place, let's say, in South India below the Vindhya Hills, although some things take place there, but not as much. So we're really getting a sustained, detailed look at North and Central India.

Or Mahabharata, I mean, including certainly Pakistan and including what is now today Nepal and so on, and even parts of Afghanistan. So we look at that culture, therefore, I'm referring to Mahabharata because I think it gives us a very clear picture of what they understood as religion. There's a very different notion of what religion is.

And so I'd like to maybe as a preface to our discussion. In what sense is it different, like not practicing rituals or what is the sense of religion in the Mahabharata? Not in that sense. They actually don't do rituals in the Mahabharata.

Most, I mean, not very much, they mostly, it's actually analogous to science. They do what we would call rituals, but what they're really doing in their fire sacrifices, in the mantras and so on, it's really much more analogous to what we call science. It's not identical to modern science, but it's in many ways analogous to, almost in some ways more analogous than what we call religion today.

So the first point I want to make is that it's remarkable that in the Mahabharata, we do not see really anything like a religious institution. If you think about it, we take for granted today religions like Hinduism is a religion, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, other smaller groups, we take that as that's a religion. There's, and they have institutions, they have, you know, it's like, I'm a Muslim or I'm a Christian or I'm a Hindu, whatever.

And there are institutions with hierarchies and so on. So you don't really find corporate religion in that sense. I mean, think about the Mahabharata.

There are no institutions, there are no officers or officials who are responsible, let's say like the Pope, or, and so on. So now in Islam, although they say they don't have a formal priesthood, but they really do. And so if you look at India, for example, I think we can compare it to, well, there's a few reasons why you don't find institutional religion.

There are several reasons. One is that they don't have religious wars. They don't fight over religion.

There's a much more cosmopolitan, much more mature attitude toward religion, which goes back to the Rig Veda, where it said that, A comes in, even though there's one ultimate truth, different sages invoke it in different ways, like through different names. So if you look at the history of India, going all the way back as far as we can go, and certainly beyond the horizon of normal historiography, they're not fanatical. There's a very cosmopolitan, wise view that, and this view of religion going back thousands of years, this mature understanding, and I'll explain a little later these terms, but we find philosophical monotheism rather than tribal monotheism as we find in the Middle East.

And frankly, the three religions that come from the Middle East, we find a tribal monotheism where my God can beat up your God, and this is the real God, and you've got something less. So this stands in stark contrast to the philosophical, not tribal monotheism that you find in the Indo-European civilization. You find it certainly in India probably in its most, I would say, philosophically advanced and culturally advanced form, but also you find it in the Greco-Roman world.

Because we're talking about the Indo-European civilization, and we know by linguistic analysis, we know that it's obvious that there was, going way back into prehistory, an Indo-European civilization. And so this Indo-European civilization is actually the only civilization in the world, both in India and in the West, that independently developed comprehensive, systematic, philosophical systems. So that, for example, in China, you have wisdom traditions like Confucius or Tao and so on.

You have wisdom traditions, but not systematic philosophy where you systematically go over, for example, ontology, the nature of existence, and epistemology, the nature of knowledge, and logic, and political philosophy, axiology, which is sort of like the philosophy of values and so on. And so you find this as original thought only in the Indo-European system. In the Islamic world, of course, the so-called Renaissance, which is a revival of the classical world, ancient Greco-Roman world, began in the Islamic world, which at that time was much more advanced and civilized than Europe.

I mean, back then, the Islamic world was sort of cosmopolitan, and the Europeans were sort of violent terrorists. And so, but the Islamic Renaissance really was based on the rediscovery of Greco-Roman literature. I think there was a kingdom which fell, the Byzantine Empire or something, which fell, and then a lot of ancient texts were discovered.

That's when- Yeah, but this is even, yeah, yeah, it's true, but it began even many centuries before the fall of Constantinople. So, there was the discovery- One question, Maharaj. When you said tribal monotheism versus philosophical monotheism, generally, the Greco-Roman religions as well as Hinduism is thought of as polytheistic.

So, when you say philosophical monotheism, what exactly- No, that is sloppy history. And most people, if they engage in history at all, it's sloppy history. The fact is that, for example, in Plato, in the single most famous philosophical work in Western tradition is Plato's Republic.

And in Plato's Republic, he explicitly rejects polytheism. In fact, he says that Homer should not be taught in the Paideia, which was the internationally famous and prestigious Greek school curriculum. So, throughout the Roman Empire, the people who were rich or sophisticated, they would go to these Greek schools of Paideia.

And so, it was kind of like the- It's almost like, let's say, a rich family in America might send their child to Oxford or something or to Paris. And so, the centerpiece of Greek education was Homer. And Plato says that we should not study Homer because he presents this childish polytheism.

And so, Plato is arguing powerfully in favor of monotheism. And in the Greco-Roman world, there are others. There are many monotheists, but they're philosophical.

Monotheists, they're not fanatical, they're not sectarian. They just talk philosophically about one God. Polytheism was on a popular level.

I mean, even it was on a popular level, it wasn't among the philosophers or the intellectuals. They tended more often to be monotheists. And the same thing in India.

You do not find polytheism among the philosophers or the theologians. Shankara was not a polytheist. And certainly, Ramanuja and Madhwa.

And no serious philosopher in Indian history, I think, was a polytheist. Because if you're doing systematic philosophy, it's just like in science. The way science advances is you take lots of phenomena, you take lots of symptoms, or this causes that, that causes this, and you try to find a powerful underlying cause or explanation.

You know, they call it the grand unified theories. And so, in the same way, it's just the nature of rationality itself, of human reason, that you categorize. You do basically, you do two things in human reason.

You try to find categories. Let's say you see a horse, then you see another horse. But in order to do zoology or science, you've got to have the category horse.

Not this horse or that horse, but horse. And so, and then you get the category mammal. And then you get the category living thing.

And then you get the category life. And so, that's what you do. You try to find causes and effects, and you try to find ever greater in the sense of more explanatory categories.

And so, therefore, to look for a single truth that explains all truths is rationally required if you're not looking for that. If you're not looking for something like God or whatever name you use, you know, if you wanna work around your own bad childhood experiences. So, whatever, you know, whatever word doesn't trigger you, unless you're looking for an ultimate truth, you're not a rational human being.

Or you're rational up to a certain point, then you cut off, you get off the elevator, and you say that at this point, I will no longer be rational. I'm no longer looking for truth. I'm no longer looking for a greater category that explains all other categories.

And so, for example, if you look at Aristotle, Aristotle says there's a God, but he says it's logically required. Aristotle is not like a real religious guy, but he says that philosophically, it's required. And he calls God, among the different names, he calls God the unmoved mover.

Unmoved, yeah. So, because in that sense, Aristotle's giving an argument from contingency. The argument from contingency is that, as the Buddhists have noticed, if you look around the universe, everything that we can detect in the universe has a beginning and an end, is contingent to cause something else.

And so, therefore, since nothing exists independently, and everything depends upon something else, the simple question is, why does anything exist instead of nothing? Because we can do a thought experiment, and we can imagine a universe in which nothing, well, we can imagine that there's not a universe. We can imagine that nothing ever existed. So, therefore, Aristotle's reasoning that the world does exist, and therefore, there must be a non-contingent being.

There must be something that exists that does not depend on something else for its existence, and thereby, you break the infinite regress of causes and effects. As Aristotle's concerned with breaking infinite regresses in various ways. And so, my point is that, if someone is not looking for the supreme category or the supreme entity that explains all other entities and categories, then that person is simply not acting rationally.

They have given up the great human project of trying to reason one's way to higher truth. There's no rational way that one cannot look for a God, or if you don't want a religious entity, you just want a supreme cause like Aristotle, you can call it the unmoved mover, but you have to be looking for that. And so, therefore, in Greco-Roman civilization, and in India, people who were rational, who were philosophical, were not polytheists, because polytheism ultimately is not a serious explanation.

Not only that, if we look at polytheisms around the world, including, well, Greco-Roman world, just all over the world, you find these polytheisms. What we find is that practically none of them assert that the gods are the original cause. Practically all these monotheism, polytheisms, practically all the polytheisms assert that above this community of gods or goddesses, there is another higher cause, which actually explains things.

And so, even the polytheists didn't really believe that they were giving a serious explanation of where everything comes from. So that's why. Yes, Master.

Yes, Master, then, would it? As people, because the mass of people, they're not looking for philosophical truth, they're looking for money, they want grandma to get healthy again, they want to defeat their enemies, they have very worldly desires, and therefore, they really don't care about ultimate philosophical truth. They just wanna know who exists out in our world, here in the physical world, who has the power to give me what I want. And so, because, in fact, there is a cosmic administration, it's just natural.

There's a cosmic administration. There are, in Sanskrit, they're called devas. And so, and even in Sanskrit, we even get names in other languages, like, for example, Jupiter.

We have the word deva, or divya, like deva, like heaven. And so, the root form in Sanskrit is dyu, D-U-Y-U, and then, of course, Peter is father, so Jupiter means father of heaven. Oh, okay.

So therefore, people, ordinary people are not philosophers, are not transcendentalists, are not looking for ultimate truth. They just wanna get by, and therefore, they negotiate with whoever can give them what they want. Okay.

That's where you get polytheism. What was the basis for the sense of unified identity? Was it acceptance of the Vedas? Because, they didn't accept the Vedas. Yes, we'll get back to that point.

In the Mahabharata, it's based on shared culture, and everyone accepts the Vedas as powerful, even the Asuras. The Asuras always have their hired Brahmins. Jarasandha, he had his Brahmins.

They all have their Brahmins, and that gets back to the point about science, because the yajna, or the yajna, however you pronounce it, is science. I'll tell you the basis of the Vedic science, in my view, having studied it. Is that, first of all, you have an amazing ontological fact.

Ontological being the nature of existence itself. Yeah. That is, because as Krishna, and because Krishna, as he explains many times in the Gita, Krishna is everywhere, within everything, and everything is within Krishna.

What that means is, in terms of physics, is that every point, and a point, you know, technically is the smallest location, every point in the universe is within every other point in the universe. So just think about that for a moment. Every point in the universe is within every other point in the universe, through Krishna.

Now, that being the case, there is absolute interconnectivity of all points in the universe. And so if you can somehow or other plug into that, when you are at any point in the universe, you are actually at every point in the universe. I mean, as you can see, there are all kinds of possibilities here, technologically.

That's how yogic mystic powers came about, when they could access higher dimensions. In fact, I'm talking about the nature of the universe, why these things are possible. Okay.

Now, here's another point. It's just like if you have a computer screen, you have icons. The icons can be connected in various ways to physical objects in the world.

For example, you can click on an icon and a bomb can go off somewhere. You can click on an icon, you can do remote surgery. Now they have, you can do remote surgery because what you see on the screen represents, in other words, you have a micro cosmic icon that represents a macro cosmic object.

Yeah. Now, actually, the way to understand Vedic sacrifice is that the arena, the sacrificial arena was a computer screen. Interesting.

So that, yeah, so that, so that, for example, I mean, scholars, what they do know, they don't understand all of this, is that in Vedic culture, when you're, first of all, there were two categories of sacrifices. One was the domestic, the griha. There's a Vedic literature called griha sutras.

So like domestic sutras or home sutras. And those were sacrifices that the higher castes would just do at home, like daily Agnihotra and so on. But then you have the Shota sutras.

And these were sort of like great state events. It's just like, for example, there are certain things that only a state, a political state can afford to do, like have an army, or provide electricity to everyone or things like that. So there were these, what in Harvard they used to call solemn rites, where they would have these great events, these great sacrifices, which were also, by the way, an important part of the Vedic economy.

Because if you look, for example, at great Swayamvaras, or Ashwamedha, just all these great Vedic sacrifices, or great weddings, the kings would distribute very generous charity to the people that need it. And there were two classes that needed charity, poor people, people who were sort of involuntarily poor, and Shudras, and Brahmins who were voluntarily poor. And actually, it's just like, for example, when a Brahmin came through Varnavata, not Varnavata, Ekadakra, where the Pandavas were hiding, incognito, after the House of Lack, Brahmin said to them, you know, there's going to be a great yajna, there's going to be a great event, Draupadi Swayamvara.

And so why don't you go there? And you could, and so, yeah. But what's interesting is that Brahmins, if you read the Mahabharata, Brahmins from all around, from all around the country were going there because that was their economic basis. Because at those great events, there would be a very generous distribution of wealth, cows, and clothes, and jewels.

And that's how these people live. So these great events, these great sacrifices play an important role in the national economy. But also at these sacrifices, in the sacrificial arena, you have three fires, that's very well known.

And so you'd have a fire to offer to the gods, a fire for the forefathers, and then a fire for this world. And so for what you actually wanted to happen in this world. And so these fires were like computer screens, but the icons were not pictures, they were sounds.

And so, yes, the mantras and individual words. And that's why you see in, if you look at the Itihasa literature, Mahabharata, Ramayan, or the Puranas, Itihasa Puranam Cha Panchamaveda Utsate, which are said to be the fifth Veda. What's interesting is the power is in the idea.

Just like, for example, when Prabhupada does his Bhagavatam, he says, I'm sorry, but English is not my first language, and he's translating from Sanskrit. None of that matters, because the power is in the basic idea. If you understand the idea, that's why you can have so many Mahabharatas.

You can have so many Mahabharatas, because if you basically understand the story, it's the story, it's the idea. Whereas in the Vedas, in the Karmakanda Vedas, the power is not in the idea. And that's why they're knowing, the power was in the actual sound, because the sound was science.

And therefore you have that famous case given in the Bhagavatam, where- Yeah, where Tvashta wants to perform a sacrifice to produce a powerful being who will kill Indra. But now, what happened is, that he was supposed to chant Indra's Shatru. Indra's Shatru, an accent Shatru, which means I'm producing the mortal enemy of Indra.

In other words, he was supposed to, by pronouncing Indra's Shatru, it's a taparusha compound, which means that, anyway, oblique semantic relation, and I won't go into all the grammar. But what it means is, that it stands for Indrasya Shatru, that to produce a being who is the Shatru, mortal enemy of Indra. In other words, will kill Indra.

But due to an attention, he said Indra's Shatru, instead of Indra's Shatru. So Indra's Shatru, with that accent, it becomes a karmadarya compound, which just means, anyway, I won't go into all the technical grammatical language, but it means Indra will be the mortal enemy of this person. Yes.

And therefore, Indra will kill him. So just by misplacing one accent, it's like, for example, let's say you're building a rocket. And of course, it has all kinds of computer stuff in it.

And let's say you just make one little mistake, instead of taking off, it explodes, right? I mean, in the real world, you could make one, and so therefore, the Vedic sacrifices were a physical science. Then that's why I said the concept of religion, because just like nowadays, people, most, they call it religion. You could call it Hinduism or Christianity, but what are people actually praying for? Most people are not approaching it as a transcendental spiritual thing.

They just want something. And therefore, if you just want something, why not just do science? And that's what people did. So back then, the Brahmins didn't think they were doing religion when they performed sacrifices.

They were scientists. If you have a group of scientists working in a laboratory, it's not religion, it's science. And so most of the Brahmins were not doing religion, they were doing science.

It's amazing. Yeah, so in a sense, Karmakanda was more like science because Karmakanda does the same thing what science does. And Prabhupada was- Karmakanda is not about religion.

It's just like when you do science, modern science, they only work with the entities that they're aware of. They're not aware of devas. And therefore, they're not aware of all these things.

They're not aware of higher powers. Therefore, they're doing a gross material science. Although, what we find is that now with the quantum mechanics headache, you know, the wave and the particle and spooky action at a distance and everything, because the universe is not merely gross physical things, they've got a problem.

It's just like, for example, let's say you're a little child and your parents are rich and they own a big estate, let's say hundreds of acres. And so as a child, you think that your parents' property is the world because you're a child. And as far as you know, there's no limit.

It's just, you know, as far as you can walk in any direction, it's your parents, it's your family property. But as you get older and maybe you get a car, you realize, no, there are fences around our property and most of the world is beyond this. And that's what's happening to quantum mechanics.

Science is growing up a bit and they're realizing that the physical world is just one little part of reality. Hmm. And so the difference between the Vedic science and the modern science is that the Vedic science, they were aware of a much larger portion of the universe.

So that's why we can also have Brahmanas who are serving Asuras. They were not concerned with ultimate reality. Kim Jong-un, you know, that crazy person in North Korea, he has scientists.

Every murderous tyrant has a scientist. That's a provocative example, but I think, yeah, that's true. So look at Kangsa.

Yeah. I mean, these are Asuras. If you take, if you take, like Jarasandha, Kangsa, Shishupal, I mean, they all had their scientists.

Yes. Ravana had his Yathudhanas. What's that? Ravana had his Yathudhanas.

The Brahmins, there's Raman. The point is, they don't have Brahmins because at night they sit down and, you know, eat puris and drink hot milk and hear about the soul. I mean, you know, that's not what they're doing.

Okay. Although it's interesting because in the Bhagavatam, when Kangsa was, even Kangsa sometimes in the Bhagavatam sometimes talks about the soul. And so, so the point is that- But it's more for utilitarian purposes.

He just wants to get off the hook. Entirely. It's not mostly, it's entirely for utilitarian purposes.

Yeah. Okay. So the Brahmins were the scientists.

And most, and so the number, because look at it this way. Let me give you one example from the Bhagavatam, which I meditated on, because I'm doing Mahabharata. As we know, in the 10th canto, Dasamaskanda, Bhagavata Dasamaskanda, the 10th canto of the Bhagavatam, when Kangsa and his evil ministers, when they find out that actually the Devas have come and they're sending their Anshas, they're sending their incarnations, like the Pandavas were incarnations of demigods.

And Krishna himself is coming. That's, and so what do the advisors advise them? They say, when they heard that Krishna's taking birth, that you should, we'll kill all the newborn, all the male babies born in the last 10 days. And we have to kill the Brahmins.

Brahmins? Who are helping Vishnu. Yeah, it's in the Bhagavatam, the suras. And it's even in the Mahabharata.

But now here's my point. In fact, they didn't kill the Brahmins and why would they kill Brahmins? You have to think about that, why? So also because the Brahmins around the universe, why just kill the Brahmins on earth? Why would that, how can they destroy Vishnu by killing Brahmins on one little planet? What's the connection? So I really stopped to think about this. And I think that Krishna, I think I understand what they meant.

First of all, not all Brahmins were Vaishnavas. In fact, Krishna says in the Gita that yoga nasta parantava, the spiritual science has been lost. And we know from the Mahabharata that when Krishna came, most of the Brahmins, or many of the Brahmins were not worshiping him.

But still, why would you kill Brahmins? How does Krishna, how does Vishnu lose power if you kill Brahmins? I think there's an obvious answer in the minds of the Asuras. I was trying to figure out what do they mean? The Asuras who were advising Kamsa were actually very modern. They had the same philosophy as atheists, in science, they were actually atheist scientists.

Because in their mind, and this is also, it's a type of Mimamsaka philosophy. Is, I mean, think back in the minds of the Mimamsakas who are obsessed with performing Vedic rituals to go to heaven, the slogan, the motto of the Karma Mimamsa group is swarga kamo yajeta. Swarga kamo, one who desires swarga, heaven, yajeta, must offer sacrifice.

And so in their minds, because I actually took a class on the Mimamsas at Harvard by Krishna's range. So for the Mimamsaka school or Karma Mimamsa, the power, and this is very modern actually, they're actually very modern. The power is in the mechanism.

There is no God who controls it. And even if there are Devas or Vishnu, whatever, the Mimamsas are sort of like, what's the word, obsessively categorical. They categorize everything.

They're very, you can see these are people that later in Indian history, became technologists or computer tech. So they're very extremely categorical. And they categorize the gods, Devas or Vishnu, as just paraphernalia.

It's like in the same category as something like a little cup to hold water. It's just paraphernalia. If you're doing a sacrifice, you need paraphernalia.

And one paraphernalia is the names of the Devas. It's just part of the mechanism. Somehow those particular phonemes, those particular sounds just are part of the machine.

That's all. Otherwise the gods have no power and they're not interesting. So the Asuras were actually, they were physicalists.

They believe, not exactly modern physics, but they believe the power is in the mechanism. That somehow or other, the universe exists in such a way. It's like if you're a scientist, let's say there's a law of gravity, there's this, there's that, there's Einstein, space time, whatever it is, who knows why, that's not our job.

We just know that's the way the universe is. And so therefore, if you wanna create bombs, if you wanna create technology, if you wanna create a better smartphone, you just use the universe as it is. It's a mechanism.

You learn how the things work and where does it come from? We don't know, we don't care. We're just using the laws of nature as they exist. That was the view of Johnson and his ministers.

It's simply the way the universe is that when you perform a Vedic sacrifice, when you chant certain mantras, it unleashes power in the universe. No interest in why. And so therefore, from their point of view, when the Brahmins worship Vishnu, the Vaishnav Brahmins, they didn't wanna kill other Brahmins.

The Vaishnav Brahmins are building this high-tech thing, which is the Vedic sacrifice, which generates power and they are channeling that power into Vishnu. So Vishnu is not empowering the Brahmins, they are empowering him. Oh, okay.

So they're putting Vishnu in the same material world with its mechanical sources of power. And they think, okay, so it's like one country would destroy the nuclear reactor. So one country might destroy the weapons of another country.

So like that, they're thinking we'll destroy the yajnas that- If you're the head of a country and you tell your scientists, build me a bomb, let's say Iran, those fanatics and fanatical leaders of Iran, they tell their scientists, build us a bomb. We want missiles. We need accurate long-range missiles.

And so from their point of view, or let's say for so America or Israel, let's say they'll try to get rid of those scientists. Because the leaders, the religious fanatical leaders of Iran, they're not giving power to the scientists. The scientists are giving powerful weapons to the leaders.

So if you get rid of the scientists, the leaders all have military power. So that's how they understood the relationship between the Brahmins and Vishnu. Vishnu is a politician.

The Brahmins are scientists. They are feeding into Vishnu this tremendous power of the yajna, which has its own power. It's just the way the universe is.

That you just do certain things, certain technology, it just generates power. And then the Brahmins are channeling this power into Vishnu. So if you kill the Brahmins, it's like you kill the nuclear scientists in Iran, they won't have bombs.

Yeah, that makes sense. So Maharaj, you're saying that this kind of performance of yajna was the unifying sense of, was the unifier for broad Indian culture? Or what was it at that time? It's just like nowadays, whether you're a Hindu or Christian or Jew, you go to a dentist. Okay.

Because it's just science. Okay. And so these sacrifices were just science.

And so anyone that wanted something, it's like, let's say you want to take a trip. If you're a Hindu or a Christian or a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Jew, you fly on a recognized airline because they have the technology. Yeah.

So if you are an Asura 5,000 years ago, you need scientists. How can you run a government if you don't have scientists? Okay. It wasn't about religion.

It was not about religion. Even when all these Asuras, let's say worship Lord Shiva in order to get different boons or the power or whatever power, they're not interested in Lord Shiva. It's just like, for example, let's say there's some country that has nuclear weapons.

Let's say Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And so some other country wants it. So I'll just go there and give them billions of dollars and they will accidentally lose some of their formulas and it'll end up in our pocket.

And so it's the same thing. Basically, you just go and bribe Lord Shiva or you give him money or you give him worship and then he'll give us powers. It's just commerce.

You just buy what you want and the sacrifice is the technology. You have to think of any sacrifices as like playing the cultural role of computers. Okay.

So then we could almost call these as secular in the sense that although there's some worship, but it does not, the object was not the worship. Not religious. Okay.

So then- When Jayadratha worshiped Shiva to get the power to keep the Pandavas out of the Kuruvyuha, the military formation. Yeah, Chakravyuha. They had no religious interest in Shiva.

Okay. That's not religion. They were just acquiring power.

It's not religious. So then was there no religious unifier at that time for people? So, because you talked about philosophical monotheism. Ironically, the culture of the Mahabharata, the society, the Indian society in Mahabharata is not that religious.

Because if you look at it, if you look at it in the Mahabharata, which is a corrupt text also, by the way, as Madhva, Sripad Madhvacharya says that. So it's a corrupt text, but still everyone in the Mahabharata really just wants to go to Indra Loka or Swarga. In other words, it's just like, let's say people in India now, there are many people who would like to get an American green card, isn't it? I mean, if you walk down the street in India, just giving out American green cards.

There'd be a stampede. There'd be a riot for that. Yes.

Yeah. So what people want in the Mahabharata basically is a green card for Indra Loka. So Maharaj, if we don't call that as religion, then almost all of Christianity and all of Islam, we can't even call that as religion, isn't it? Because there also people are aspiring for heaven.

And there also it is not so, maybe there are few people who are aspiring for pure love. Say, if you want, you could call it, you certainly wouldn't call it spiritual. Although what you find is in every religion, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, there are some spiritual people.

Yes, of course. There are people who really are interested in cultivating love for God. Let's look in the dictionary about what the word religious means.

Okay, it's related to religion. So let's just look up religion then. The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God.

You see, but it's not a good religion. You see, that religion, that definition is based on, it's based on drawing a distinction between that which is empirical, non-empirical. You could say the Devas are not empirical in the ordinary sense, although they are empirical, because there is a process to see them.

And so basically that's a definition of religion and the definition of science are coming out of the cultural values of a materialistic society, especially a society in which intellectual life is controlled by unreligious materialists. And so therefore, I'm gonna go back to the definition of religion, because you can say religion is a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. Example, consumerism is the new religion.

And so therefore, you see, what they don't distinguish the dictionary because it's materialistic dictionary, is that some people are religious in the sense that they actually want to realize their own soul, become aware of their own soul, and they want to go to a spiritual realm or live a spiritual life. Some people have recourse to Devas, demigods, or supreme God, or some supreme power, just because they want material things, or they want to go to some material heaven. So you can call it religious, and it is called religion, but there's no real interest in spiritual life.

And that's why nowadays, people make this somewhat sarcastic distinction between religious and spiritual. Yes, spiritual, but not religious, they say. So then even in the Mahabharata's time, say Krishna consciousness, was it also quite rare? Because in Bhagavatam also we have, muktanapam siddhanam, rasude narayana parayana sudurlubha prashantatma, kotishvapi mahamune, that among millions, there is one devoted to the Lord.

So Krishna consciousness, even in those times was quite rare. People were, so when you talked earlier about philosophical monotheism, was that primarily among the intellectual elites, and people themselves in general were doing their own worship? Was it like that? Yeah, to some extent. For example, there are stories where Krishna's traveling, he'll come to a city.

What was that city? My God, I'm so rusty. It's a city where… Shrutadeva and Bahulasva he meets, that one? Yeah, yeah, where were they? Where's the city that Janaka was from, King Janaka? Mithila, Mithila. Yeah, Mithila.

So, Krishna will come to a city, and in that city, there are some very good devotees, a few. I mean, Krishna, it's interesting because also, it's described when Krishna is going from Gujarat from Dwaraka to Hastinapur or Indraprastha, that the roads are lined with people, they want to see Krishna. So, Krishna definitely was a super rock star.

I mean, when he appeared, Krishna was… And people knew, a lot of people knew that he's not an ordinary human being, but then again, it's a time when demigods would come and Asuras would come, and so there was a lot more interplanetary commerce. It was not like the world we live in. So, most people knew Krishna's not just a human being.

I mean, only the most foolish people thought that. So, just, but you can be, so to say, oh, he's not just a human being, or she's not, that's like, okay. There's like a number of people like that.

Okay. And so that wasn't, that alone did not make you God or even close to being God. You could not be a human being, and that's what the Asuras were banking on.

That's what they were, they're thinking, okay, Krishna's very powerful. The Asuras, they knew Krishna wasn't a human, but we're not humans either, because they were actually Asuras, and so they felt that Krishna was just a living being who had acquired a lot of power because of these obnoxious Brahmins that are channeling the yajna shakti into Krishna. So, so religion, if merely believing in something supernatural, then you could say Harry Potter is a religion, or you could say, you know, the people, witches and warlocks, you know, they're, it's a religion.

So anything's a religion, any type. Star Wars is filled with supernatural elements also. So almost everything is fictional.

Yeah, well, Star Wars, I think Star Wars, the idea is it's just much more advanced material. It's a much more advanced material technology. But something which is, if you compare Star Wars to Lord of the Rings, in Lord of the Rings, it's a completely different kind of technology.

It's magic or Harry Potter. So you could say Harry Potter is a religion because it's belief in supernatural things, things which are beyond. So, but ultimately, you could say about the magic in Harry Potter, you could speak about the advanced technology in the fictional Star Wars.

You could talk about religion. You could just say that religion just means that people appeal to or are depending on certain forms of reality or technology that we don't know about at the present time. And yet that's too broad for religion because, see, the dictionary definition is not very good.

The belief in worship of a superhuman controlling power. But if you believe in some kind of science fiction worldview, there's some higher beings who are not human and are controlling us, is that really a religion? It says especially a personal god or gods, but that's not necessary for the definition. You can be a particular system.

You see, they call it faith and worship. But what if you have faith that there's some planet with these higher beings are superhuman, but it's not religion. And so the definition is not, it's not a great definition.

And let's say you honor because the word puja in Sanskrit means worship, it also means honor. And if you're trying to get power from something, you know, if you're trying to make a deal with a rich person, you worship, you honor the person, you take them out for a meal, you praise them. So it's, you know, we honor people to close business deals.

We honor people to get admitted to prestigious universities. So we honor people for a lot of things. So if you have a combination of honoring and the person is not just a human, then according to the dictionary, you have a religion, but that's much too broad.

And it just, it doesn't really get at what we often mean by religious. Okay. So, Maharaj, the topic we were discussing was Krishna consciousness and historical context.

So then you explained quite beautifully about how at the time of Mahabharata, how things were and how in the contemporary things changed because of say the installation of monism. So even at that time- No, no, actually I would say, no, no, not because of monism, because of tribal monism. Because of tribal monism.

Yeah. So for example, you have these fanatical religions, most basically coming from the Middle East, where they say this is the only way everyone should do this. I mean, if you look at the history of Islam, you look at the history of Christianity, it's this very aggressive militaristic spreading of their religion.

And clearly with the understanding that we're better than everyone else. And if you don't have our religion, you don't really, even though you could say there are countervailing statements in the Quran or the New Testament that you could take to indicate, well, other people also are in touch with God. But in practice, very militaristic, if you look at Indian history, where Hindus were often second class citizens in their own country.

And so, or the idea of this really cute little charming practice of destroying the sacred places of the people you conquer and putting a church or a mosque there. And I mean, you go to a country, you invade it in the name of God, as if God wants you to kill and subjugate these people. They have sacred places in their religion, you desecrate their sacred places and you put your own church or mosque there.

So, therefore, I say tribal monotheism. Tribal monotheism. There was monotheism in the Greco-Roman world.

There was monotheism in India. It's just, but it's not recognized as such because they didn't kill each other. Okay.

So, now Krishna consciousness, if you consider in the Mahabharata time also was relatively rare. So then in today's world, also we have people practicing, but then can we really expect that it will become like a mass practice or? Like a world dharma? Yeah. Or do we expect? Doesn't hurt.

Doesn't hurt to try. I mean, I think that there will always be plurality of religion. And of course, obviously, let's say there was a world where Krishna, in fact, we know, if you look at Indian history, one thing I found very remarkable, I taught the history of Indian religion, which was really just Indian history at the University of Florida, of course.

And it was just remarkable how, because India, of course, just were many kingdoms back then. And so it was remarkable how very often when you had a state in India, whether it was Maharashtra or, just all these different parts of India, where there was a Hindu ruler, it seemed like normally, not always, but normally, there would be equal rights for everyone. But when you had a Muslim ruler, there wasn't equal rights for everyone.

And so it was, it was an academic book I was reading, but there was a real contrast between the attitude of Hindu leaders and the attitude of Muslim leaders, a lot of the time, in terms of how they treated people outside their own religion. Of course, it's not every time, it's not everywhere, but still there was no question that was the tendency. Okay.

Yeah, well, there is a lot of historical revisionism going on where often Islam is painted in a more charitable light and the secretion of Hinduism is right. Yeah, because there's an assumption, which is very strong nowadays in general, and that is things may be, ultimately just things of science or scholarship, like ethnic groups, races, the Muslims in India. And so the point is, if a particular, even though it may be an empirical area, if a particular view in your mind will lead to immoral acts, then you change the history, or even to explore the science is evil.

Because ultimately, if you believe that the consequences of certain views, empirical views, the consequences will be immoral, then to hold those views, even if they are empirically, let's say you can make empirical arguments for them, to hold those views is itself evil. And the evil of those views is not really based on whether they're objectively true or not, because even to study it is considered bad. But rather you have to hold the views a priori because they're necessary views to hold in order to ensure that very bad, very immoral acts aren't committed.

So therefore it's saying that, it's interesting, it's subordinating any type of, even the very notion of empirically studying something is rejected in favor of a metaphysical principle that we want certain kinds of equality and justice, and certain views, regardless of what the science says about it, cannot be enunciated because they lead to immoral behavior. And even immoral is defined subjectively. Say for example, because there is a fear of Islamophobia, so anything critical about Islam will not be spoken.

And that will be deleted from history also, or at least revised. Yeah, so the actual history is irrelevant. History does not have its own integrity.

History should not be studied for its own sake to find out what actually happened. You write history only to promote certain moral values, not to find out what actually happened. So is this the influence of the left, Maharaj, or how is this ideology coming of that? Idea should be- I said it's the influence of whoever has intellectual power.

When the right has power, they want to write history. So I mean, let's say, who could get a job as a history professor when Hitler was in charge of Germany? Okay. And so I'd say, when you have passionate people in power, whatever moral views they espouse, they demand that history be told in favor of those views.

And to have leaders who are actually objective and just sort of academically neutral, that happens sometimes. It's just like, so historic, you know, it's funny, the Marxist intellectuals in India, it's so funny, they're so absurd, because what they conveniently don't look at is that Marxists murdered between 10 and 20 times more people than Hitler. According to the Russian archives, state archives, Stalin killed about 40 million people.

And then Mao killed as many or more. You have the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, you have little Fidel Castro turning the whole island of Cuba into a prison, a prison, prison island, and killing a machine gunning in the back, anyone that just tries to sail a boat to some other place. And so, and then you have in Marx, by the way, and people say, well, no, they just didn't understand Marx.

Oh no, they did. I looked it up. And actually you find in Engels and Marx a very clear justification of genocide.

Because they are sort of in the pseudo, in the pseudo, kind of pseudo social science of their age, because science has gone way, way, way beyond what they were. So it's sort of like the crude social science of their time. They believed, I mean, they actually, Marxism is based sort of on this sociological determinism.

The idea that people don't have that much free will, unless I guess you're Karl Marx. And people in general tend, their views tend to be shaped by the social structures and economic structures that they live under. And so therefore they say, I think Engels wrote this in 1849, that you may have to just eliminate entire social classes.

So another word for that, a direct synonym of that would be genocide. Let's say, for example, you have a country where there are 20 million capitalists. You'd have to liquidate all of them.

You have to kill all 20 million of them because they are sustaining economic and social and political structures, which force people deterministically, which is to believe certain things. So, and that's why when Marxist got power, that's exactly what they did. They started killing millions of people because you have to eliminate whole segments of society.

So the fact that this unscientific genocidal monstrosity, you still find intellectuals supporting it. In India also, isn't it? It's just, it's one of the wonders of the world that these people actually think they're intellectuals. Yeah, it's horrible.

You know, there is, for example, even China, Muslims are being persecuted and there are millions of Muslims who are in those pre-doctrination, carry education camps as they call them. But a few incidents in India, and there is a huge outrage or a huge, so- Well, there is actually international outrage of the Uyghurs. A lot of people talk about that.

So, but still, yeah. Anyway, I guess I, we've talked a long time and we can continue in another discussion. Yes, Maharaj.

Thank you. I'll just try to summarize. It was a wonderful discussion.

You know, I will, if you would like to add something in the summary, then we talked on the topic of Krishna Consciousness in Historical Context. So you started by how there was no institutions in the time of the Mahabharata. And then- Not as we have nowadays.

Not as we have institutionalized religion, as we have it. So we talked about how there was philosophical monotheism. At a popular level, there were different kinds of worship.

And then we elaborately discussed about polytheism and monotheism. How the search for religion, reason means search for some broad unifying categories. Ultimately, you're culminating in God or some ultimate reality.

And then you talked about how religion, especially in terms of the Karmakanda worship was more like science rather than anything metaphysical. And Hinduism in modern times, as it has been constructed, is based on a very historical understanding where monism was used as a political tool for unifying. And that led to almost like a destruction of Vaishnavism, which was the most prominent expression of devotion or spirituality in India.

And that's why our acharyas were quite vehemently critical. And then later on, we talked about, towards the conclusion, how there is this tribal monotheism has been very destructive. But there is, like Krishna Consciousness, there's always the opportunity for us to share it.

And thank you very much, Maharaj, for this wonderful discussion. As I feel so many balls which were going on in my head, even so many points were connecting. And especially the explanation of why they were, demons were trying to kill the Brahmins also.

That was quite amazing. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for hosting me. Thank you, humble obeisance. Hare Krishna.

Hare Krishna.