By distributing books to people who haven’t asked for them, are we disturbing their minds, thus going against Gita 3.26?

This is an AI-generated transcript and it might not be fully accurate:

So, when the Gita says that we should not disturb others’ minds, 3.26, na buddhi-bhedam janayet, ajnanam karma-sangeenam, joshyet sarva-karmani vidwanikta-samajam. So when we go out to distribute books, no, we are not letting people live their lives comfortably, we are trying to give Krishna to them. So is that disruption? Not necessarily.

If you look at what Krishna is saying in this verse, is that there are two levels. There is a level of, the level of people who are vidwan, who are wise and who are yuktaha, they are spiritually connected. In terms of intelligence and action, vidwan and yuktaha.

And the opposite is, na buddhi-bhedam janayet, ajnanam. Ajnanam is ignorant. And there is ajnanam karma-sangeenam, so karma-sangee is attached.

So there are attached ignorant people and there are wise and connected people. So now if we to some extent are here and there is somebody who is here, now we would like people to rise to the well-connected spiritual level. But sometimes it may happen that when we want people to rise all the way up here, that may become too much for them.

It becomes too much, they try to go up and they end up going further down. So for example, say somebody is worshipping Ganesh. We tell them, oh you worship only Krishna.

And we quote Shastra and they go and talk with their relatives and they find this, Shloka says Ganesh is supreme and this is Shloka says Krishna is supreme and they say that, you know, this whole religion business is very confusing. So better I become an atheist. Then what has happened is, we have ended up doing a disservice.

So when somebody is at a particular level, we want to elevate them from that level to a higher level. If they cannot come to a higher level right away, most people are here Indians from a Hindu background more or less. So there is only one country in the world where ISKCON is officially banned and that is Singapore.

And the reason it happened is that when our devotees, first generation devotees, mostly westerners, they came to Singapore and the devotees were welcoming the people over there. The Hinduism is officially recognized religion and the Hindus were very impressed. All these western people are practicing bhakti.

They invited them to temples to give classes and there are Ayyappa temple and Ganesh temple and Kartikeya temple and in those temples our devotees started saying, oh, Alpamitasa, you are less intelligent if you are worshipping devtas. And that created such a disturbance for them. They told the government that these people are disturbing our religious faith and the government banned us.

So now, if we are going to their forum, we have to speak a message that is acceptable for them. No Hindu will say Krishna is not God. The problem is not that Krishna is God.

The problem is Krishna alone is God. Now we have to be incremental. Instead of, it’s just not proper etiquette.

If we go to somebody else’s organized forum and criticize their beliefs over there, that if they are providing us a forum, then we have to present in a way that is acceptable for them. So if I am invited to Ganesh puja kind of programs, then I glorify a lot of Ganesh, talk some life lessons from him and then I talk about how Ganesh’s signature contribution is that he offered his own task to write the Mahabharata and the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita. So this is a labor of love, this book that has been written.

So let us read that book. And when they read that book, they will get higher truths. So the point is that we need to create incremental pathways with steps.

People can get to the higher level. And different people may require a different degree of steps also. So some people may rise up, it will be Bahunam Janmanam But you will see that actually Srila Prabhupada himself, if you see among Srila Prabhupada’s followers, there were Srila Prabhupada’s disciples who just gave their life to Krishna.

They left everything and came to Krishna. But Srila Prabhupada also had life members. The life members did not become dedicated followers.

Very few of them became initiated. But they did a lot of service at that particular time. And Prabhupada created a place for them.

So that when we go for books, certainly we want to open the door for people to come to a higher level. And that’s what we do. But we don’t have to disrespect or insult their beliefs at that time.

If they have some other conception, we don’t have to criticize their conception at that particular time. We can just find some common ground and encourage them to dive deeper and end the interaction on a positive, favorable note. So to create a disturbance means what? That everybody has some worldview which makes some sense for them.

Now, it’s like somebody is very poor and they are on the streets, they are homeless, and they are having a very thin, torn, tattered kind of cloth with which they are protecting themselves from cold. And we tell them, I’ll give you this thick comforter. Just take this, throw away your tattered sheet and I’ll give you the comforter.

Now, that tattered sheet is the only relief from cold that they have experienced. If they don’t know how the comforter feels, they may not be ready for it. And if we try to pull that sheet away from them, they will fight against us with their life itself.

So whatever the worldview that a person may have, their worldview is like that cloth that is helping them make some sense of life. Giving them some protection from the chilling cold of an utterly meaningless life. So what we need to do is not pull away the cloth that is sheltering them right now.

Rather, that cloth might be there, we can put the comforter on top of it. That means give them an opportunity to experience Krishna. Give them an opportunity to understand Krishna’s wisdom.

They don’t need to confront and confound, confuse or confound them right now. There is a time that is required, but the appropriate time will come up. So don’t disturb people’s mind being that we should not act in a way that pushes people away from Krishna.

We may want to push them toward Krishna, but we push so much that we push them away from Krishna. So that is what we should not do. Thank you for that question.