As India is still receptive to direct devotional preaching and Prabhupada emphasized that, shouldn’t that be our emphasis too?

Preaching because in India there is a lot of scope for direct preaching and Prabhupada was focused on that. Yes, that would be naturally the focus of the mainstream institution.
And along with that, there are also scopes for other kinds of preaching. Prabhupada was not against that. When George Harrison, initially when he came, he thought that I’ll also have to become a Shiva Nayanar devotee.
But Prabhupada told him, keep your singing, continue your singing and you’ll write songs about Krishna. Similarly, who was the tennis player? Peter Barmash. So Prabhupada told him, in his books he did not write anything about spirituality directly or Krishna directly.
He focused on vegetarianism and sattva guna. So Prabhupada, where there was a facility for doing that, Prabhupada encouraged devotees to do that also. So our devotees are favourable people.
So I don’t think it has to be this or that. The mainstream institution, the main Krishna conscious movement’s focus will be on direct preaching. But then there are devotees, every devotee is an individual.
And individuals will have their own inspiration. You know, one definition of fanaticism is to impose our definition of success on everyone else. It is to impose our definition of success on everyone else.
And this can be not just in literal sense, in a very, somebody may think, you know, Buddhist institution is always the way, Prabhupada encouraged Buddhism so much. Anybody who is not into Buddhism, that person is useless. No, it’s not like that.
So many other services also are important. Some devotees may be inspired more to do sort of systematic educational training. Or some devotees may be inspired more towards deity worship.
Just as we can have, even within directly devotional activities, different definitions of success. Deity worship, or temple construction, or book distribution, or weekly program and community congregation development. These are all directly devotional activities, but they are all different definitions of success.
Just as we can have different definitions of success within the devotional framework, similarly we can have other definitions of success also. So, some devotees, for example, in the future, we want to have a say in the way the broad society is moving. So, if we in the future have a devotee writer.
Now, ideally speaking, our traditional conception would be that devotee writer means, she will write only about Krishna. But then, how many people are interested in reading directly only about Krishna? Well, there are some people, but not many. On the other hand, if some devotee has talent for writing, and that devotee writes secular writings, and along with that devotional writings also.
And suppose that writer becomes very famous, or reasonably famous, in the secular world also. And then that person, who is respectable in the secular world, writes something devotional. That will reach out to a large number of people.
So, now that definition of success, of becoming successful in the world, and then using that success for preaching Krishna consciousness, that may not seem to be a directly devotional definition of success. But that can also be very valuable. So, that means, what I am trying to say is that, see, if we consider, earlier I gave the example of pyramid.
Now, let us take another example of a circle. There are concentric circles. So, generally, people have the idea that, you know, if we have a circle of devotees.
So, anybody inside the circle is a devotee. He or she is a devotee. Anybody is outside, they are Maya.
So, those who are in the circle, they are devotees. Those who are outside the circle, they are demons. That is a simplistic assumption.
But we understand that, you know, it is not just one circle. It is actually, we could say, there are a set of concentric circles. Even, we could now, if see, Bhagavatam is having such an honest, self-critical attitude, that it analyzes bhakti within the three modes.
So, we may say, anybody who is inside the circle is a bhakta. But Bhagavatam says, there can be bhaktas in goodness, bhaktas in passion and bhaktas in ignorance. And sometimes, you know, if there are some devotees who are extremely quarrelsome, we may feel, you know, my non-devotee friends are better to get along with.
So, it may happen like that. Why? Because we cannot just apply a paint of devotion and whitewash anyone immediately. That whitewashing will happen, but it will take time.
So, we cannot just have a simplistic circle that everybody’s inside is in good and everybody outside is bad. No, there can be set of circles. And so, there can be people who are practicing Krishna consciousness seriously.
And there are other people who appreciate Krishna consciousness, but don’t practice it so much. There are other people who appreciate broad Vedic culture. I practice it.
There are other people who appreciate, but don’t practice it. So, we, especially I was a part of this communications, we do interfaith work. So, we define this in three circles.
We call it intra-religious, inter-religious and exo-religious. Intra-religious means the direct preaching of Krishna consciousness culminating in Gaudiya Vishnu. That’s what we do through our institutions.
Then there is inter-religious. That means promote broad values of God consciousness. So, Prabhupada wrote a letter to Pope John Paul II and he said, we should unite to check the spread of atheism.
That’s inter-religious. And then there is exo-religious. Exo-religious means broad human values.
Honesty, compassion, even if people are not religious, if the society has these values, that’s good. So, if some organization is promoting that, can’t we work with them? We can work. So, the point is that we can have definitions of success in each of these circles.
We can have definitions of success in intra-religious, within inter-religious and within exo-religious. So, all of them. For example, several years ago, there was a scientist Stephen Hawking.
He wrote a book, The Grand Design, in which he said that this design is so grand, the universe is such a grand design, it does not have a God. It does not require a design. So, at that time, Times of India, they decided to do a series of articles on it.
And they wanted the reactions of various scientists about it and also various religions. Now, what happened is, they asked somebody from Christianity, I think they asked the father of the Catholic Church. Now, when they wanted to ask somebody in Hinduism, some devotees may say, we ISKCON are not Hindu.
But you know, devotees have to market now, if we say we are not Hindu, who will care for us. But in this case, what happened, they found out in Mumbai, among the Hindu organizations, which is the most intellectual, which is the most representative, which has a lot of influence. And they decided, it’s the Times of India, they decided to ISKCON.
And then ISKCON, they contacted ISKCON Chowpatty, and asked, what is your view? And then Chowpatty was asked me, and then I did a quick review of the book, and then I gave a comment. And then that was published in the paper. So, this is what Christianity says about it.
So, some father over there, then there is some, what Islam says about it. And what Hindus say about it, they put ISKCON over there. So, now, just the fact that ISKCON has come, ISKCON name has come and ISKCON is seen respectably in the world as a representative of the broad Hindu religion, that itself is a success.
Now, it’s not that by reading that people are becoming devotees. But this is an example of inter-religious success. So, if we become representatives, so, in one sense, you know, initially, our movement’s definition of success was that people drop out of society.
And come into the society of devotees. Even grahasthas were living within the society, within, in the temples. Even after Prabhupada, part of 1980 or some survey was done.
So, 93% of ISKCON devotees were living inside the temples at that time. But now, if you see, more than 97% of devotees are living outside the temples. So, we cannot just simply apply that definition of success, that the world doesn’t matter to us, just drop inside the temple, and that is successful.
That’s what devote, directly devotional activities, what they will do is, they will bring people from outside the world to the temple. But along with that, many people will stay outside in the world, and we should be able to give them at least a positive conception about Krishna. So, if they, if this sort of activities are activities where they may be acting at exo-religious level or inter-religious level, and we are giving people appreciation for Krishna, that is avjnana-sukrti, that will also help them to practice bhakti.
So, we don’t have to impose a definition of success on anyone. As devotees feel inspired, they can practice. And overall, because Prabhupada’s emphasis has been clear, the main energy of the Krishna Consciousness Movement will focus on direct preaching.
But along with that, individual devotees, as per their inspiration, they may do other forms of preaching also, and that is also good. Even if that does not look like preaching, but still, that is also creating a positive appreciation of Krishna Consciousness, and that is also good. So, there is no need to say this or this, and Prabhupada has built up a house which is big enough to have this and this, and that also.
Many things we can have, many ways of serving Krishna. Thank you very much.