Churning the Bhagavatam – Dashavatara 10 – Kalki – The Monk’s Podcast 123 with Krishna Kshetra Maharaj

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Thank you for joining once again.

As ever, it is my pleasure to be with you. It's been a very devotionally enriching series of reflections on the Dashavataras and today we come to the last. Of course, whether this will be the last of this series or we go on to discuss something about Krishna, you can decide later.

But it's been a wonderful journey. I mean I've had many podcasts, but this is the longest series we have had. So, I'm grateful for your making yourself available and sharing your wisdom for so long, for so many months.

It's been a nice opportunity for me to think about, to reflect, to remember Krishna in this way, in all the avatars. So, it's all been for my benefit. That's your kindness, Maharaj.

So, shall we, I thought you usually started with the prayer to the avatar. Would you like to do that? That's how we start. Okay.

Yes, we have from Sri Dashavatarastotra of Srila Jaya Dev Goswami. This is verse number 10. Okay.

And the translation I have here. O Keshava, O Lord of the universe, O Lord Hari, who have assumed the form of Kalki, all glories to you. You appear like a comet, Dhumakhetu, and carry a terrifying sword, Karvalam, for bringing about the annihilation of the wicked barbarian men at the end of the Kali Yuga.

So one of the thoughts I had when we look at these verses, at one level almost all the avatars, there is some amount of disruption and destruction. There's some disruption of the cosmic order that is there and then to correct that disruption, some amount of destruction is involved. So it's a in one sense here, but here it's more of whereas there are specific people who are destroyed like Ravan or Hiranyakashipu or in the case of Parashuram, the Kshatriyas, here it seems to be the largest number of people.

It's not like one villain is there or it's not even one category of human beings who is a villain. Of course you can say that Nileksha Nivaha is one category, but that's like a much bigger category than say the Kshatriyas who were, Jallabhaman would have described that, who had become abusive. Well, yes, and at the same time, I just looked in Canto 12.

This is chapter two verses. It's several verses. It's verses 12 through 16.

Maybe I just read the whole translation. By the time the age of Kali ends, the bodies of all creatures will be greatly reduced in size, and the religious principles of followers of Varnashrama will be ruined. The path of the Vedas will be completely forgotten in human society and so-called religion will be mostly atheistic.

The kings will mostly be thieves. The occupations of men will be stealing, lying, and needless violence. And all the social classes will be reduced to the lowest level of shudras.

Cows will be like goats. Spiritual hermitages will be no different from mundane houses, and family ties will extend no further than the immediate bonds of marriage. Most plants and herbs will be tiny, and all trees will appear like dwarf shami trees.

Clouds will be full of lightning. Homes will be devoid of piety, and all human beings will have become like arses. At that time, the Supreme Personality of Godhead will appear on the earth, acting with the power of pure spiritual goodness.

He will rescue eternal religion. I'm just reading still, Bhagavatam, verse 18. Lord Kalki will appear in the home of the most eminent brahmana of Shambhala village, the great soul Vishnu Yasha.

Okay, here it is, verse 20. Lord Kalki, the Lord of the universe, will mount his swift horse Devadatta and, sword in hand, travel over the earth, exhibiting his eight mystic opulences and eight special qualities of Godhead, displaying his unequalled effulgence and riding with great speed. He will kill, by the millions, those thieves who have dared dress as kings.

Okay, so it's not pure genocide. Okay, it's interesting that there are the millions of kings, or millions will impersonate as kings. So, yeah, it's quite a large number.

Yeah, Kothisha, Dasyam, and Nripalinga, they are dressed like kings. It seems in the scriptures the word king is often used in a, somewhat inclusive sense. For example, Jarasandha, he seems to have imprisoned thousands of kings.

Yes. So, it could be that there could be like small units, small areas and their heads could also be called as kings. Yes.

Nanda Maharaj is called also, he's not technically a king, but he's also called as a king. Still, so that's quite specific. So, in a sense, it's like Parshuram.

Parshuram was also killing the oppressors. He was killing kshatriyas. Yeah.

It seems like kshatriyas are the ones who are the big troublemakers. Because also, in Dvaraka, at the end of Krishna's pastimes, what does he do? He arranges for this grand self-destruction of the kshatriyas of Dvaraka. Because he anticipates, unless they are removed from the earth, they're going to cause trouble.

So, better… He's doing some proactive… Correct. What's the other word they use in warfare now? Preemptive. Preemptive, yeah.

He's doing some preemptive strike to minimise the damage of his own departure. Because he's come to re-establish religious principles. He doesn't want those religious principles to get destroyed immediately by his own people.

It also indicates how vulnerable human existence is to evil or to vice. That as soon as the Lord departs, or even among his own associates, that tendency towards abuse of power and vice can come in. Yes, especially in this age.

Yeah, that's true. It seems to be the case. Yeah, so, Kalki is finishing up.

And as I understand, he's also beginning the next age. He's commencing the Satya or Krita Yuga. And so, he's… Which is interesting, because we understand that in Satya Yuga, there are no… There are no need of kings anymore.

Isn't it? Because everyone… Yeah, everybody is almost like a Brahminical disposition. Everyone's a Paramahamsa. Oh, yeah.

Paramahamsa, yeah. So, they don't need anyone to control them. Now, we live in an age where there is ever-increasing need of control.

And yet, humans become more and more out of control to the point… Well, this, of course, brings in one of the… Brings in the form of government that we've seen a lot of in the last century, namely totalitarianism. That people feel that there's danger everywhere, and so they accept a totalitarian ruler in order to at least get some modicum of peace, supposedly, or hopefully, to get some peace. But of course, what happens is the totalitarian rulers make war against other totalitarian rulers, and then everyone suffers.

You know, recently, Maharaj, I've been thinking about this, that, you know, it's like, say, monarchy, one of the oppositions to it is that because it can easily become a totalitarian form of government, and then democracy is what is thought of as a solution. And in today's world, we could say it is a reasonable solution. But ultimately, even within democracy, there is no system to prevent totalitarian mentality coming upon in some individuals.

And unless that inside out, that inner changes, at least there is a training and facility for that, any form of government can be subverted to be made into totalitarian. Yes, therefore, there is need for Brahmins, and a culture, a brahminical culture. And this is so much lacking, so much, there's not even an idea, you can say, of brahminical culture.

The closest we have, in modern society, to brahminical culture is the, you can say, the academic world. But of course, the academic world tends to be governed largely by rajaguna, in which everyone is striving to maintain their positions and advance their positions. The whole world of science is also the same.

So a real sattvic, pramanical or brahminical culture, we hardly see it. And therefore, also people are disturbed, because there's no direction, there's no sense of purpose. That's true.

So, in principle, how would the presence of brahmanas actually change the way a government is administered? I mean, we understand in principle that the brahmanas should, the kshatriyas should subordinate themselves to the brahmanas. But how do you think that would happen? Is it simply by the wisdom that those who are administrators or rulers will be impressed? Because in general, decisions in the world are taken, decisions in terms of managing the world are not really taken always by, on the grounds of principles or even of wisdom. It's more on the grounds of what will work in the interests of the expediency.

Not experience, but expediency. Yeah, expediency. Well, what do we read in Bhagavatam? We see there are sages and the sages are respected by the kings, but they're also respected by by people in general.

And this would be also an impetus for kings, for leaders, to listen to the sages. We have some of that, of course. We have, what are they called? Influencers.

We have public intellectuals who maybe listen to. So, the problem is, well, it comes back to a large extent to the way democracy is set up. I think there can be higher, there can be better and poorer forms of democracy.

There's what's called participatory democracy, which is not what we have generally today. Participatory democracy, as the word suggests, it involves people actually spending time and sharing in the deliberations on a small scale. And maybe this gets back to what I think Mahatma Gandhi was talking about.

He was hoping for, it was kind of hope against hope, that India would return to government, which would have its centre in the villages. So, the village Panchayat would be the place where decisions were essentially made. I mean, he also accepted what he saw as need for some sort of national government and so on.

But the idea of participatory democracy, at least in theory, is, I think, much more conducive to what Srila Prabhupada called Brahminical culture, in which you would have, you would have in the assembly of people, you would have the wise, cultured, austere, especially this would be very important, that the Brahmins are austere, they are renounced, and therefore, they're respected, they're listened to. And then on that level, we could see a real engagement of Brahminical wisdom. Interesting.

So, what we have today is exactly not like representative democracy or something like that, it's republican democracy. So, are you talking about participatory democracy more in terms of, say, a more distributed form of government, where there is a decentralised form of government, where a significant number of decisions are taken by the local administrators, and therefore, people can be more involved at that level? Local administrators, but just the citizens themselves would be more concerned and involved in decision-making. Of course, we have local governments and so on, and people do, to some extent, some people get involved.

But the extent of involvement, the numbers of people involved, and so on. In a way, I think it comes back to, again, Srila Prabhupada's idea of varnashram college, where people would be educated to be citizens and being the best that they can be according to their potentials, their qualities, and their abilities, and therefore, being happily engaged. Then, on that basis, government becomes meaningful, and it becomes liberating.

So, we don't have much of an idea of these things now, because, as we see in Shastra, things are not evolving, they are devolving, or so it seems. There's been a lot of ideas of progress over the years, over the centuries, and especially, it's interesting to see, in the latter half of the 19th century, in the West, especially, the idea of progress became a big buzzword, we say. It became a buzzword because things looked so hopeful because of the industrial revolution, because of the development of technology, which seemed to be expanding in ways unheard of prior to this.

You know, it started with, they say it started with the steam engine, and so on. And so, a lot of hope was there that we're going to now create, life is going to become easier and easier because of mechanical conveniences. What they weren't considering was that people's moral substance does not thereby improve.

And what they were also not considering is that to make all of these machines work requires energy, and that energy is coming from fossil fuels, and one thing is leading to another, and we, as we all know today, we are pretty much destroying the entire environment and changing the climate so that the likes of the storm that you just told me before we started recording in Maharashtra are taking place. So, none of that was considered. But the Brahmanical or Brahminical culture would be able to say, wait, let's stop and think about this.

How is this innovation going to help us? And it's interesting, this is maybe a footnote, I was just reading about this, an article about the Amish. You know, the Amish are these, it's a Christian… Christians who live in a very reclusive kind of way. They adopt very little technology and they stick a lot to their own rituals.

In fact, many devotees sometimes take the example of Amish or how we can establish Varanashram. I visited one Amish family about a year and a half ago together with a few devotees living near, this family lives near Gitanagari in Pennsylvania. That's where most of the Amish live, Pennsylvania.

And yeah, about 10 of us Krishna devotees came. It was all arranged in advance. They knew us from before, very nice people and very happy to answer our questions for about two hours.

And a lot of things are interesting, but the immediate point I wanted to make is that among the Amish, they have a tradition that it's not that they reject technology as such, but when a new form of technology appears, they consider it very, very carefully, whether this is going to help or if it's going to hinder them. And this consideration, as I understand, can take years and they have their elders also. They have some organisational structure and they consider everything just very carefully and they may adopt something or they may adopt it with certain restrictions.

So it's common to hear of the Amish having a telephone, but the telephone will be in a little booth that they will put out at the end of their driveway, and they'll usually have a long driveway to their house and they will use public transportation. They won't drive a car themselves, but they will hire a taxi if need be. They told us, for example, that soon they would be travelling to upstate New York for a wedding.

And how would they get there? Well, they would be taking taxis and trains and so on, that was allowed, just they won't have their own car, they will, they have their horses and buggies. And this also then, the horse and buggy culture they have determines the size of their communities. They don't have any churches, they always meet in each other's houses.

And this means that they change houses one to another each, I don't know, each week. And for someone to be a member of a particular community as opposed to another Amish community, they have to be able to come to the opposite, the furthest most house in that community by horse within two hours. So that has the effect of controlling the size of their communities.

But here's another amazing point I found. This particular family had, I don't know if it was a year before, sometime prior, they had had a fire in their chimney, which burned their roof, pretty much destroyed the roof of their house. Within 24 hours, they had a new roof on their house.

And how did that happen? All their neighbours came together and the local lumber store, which is not Amish, but which respects the Amish, they donated the lumber. And then all the neighbours came around and helped replace the roof. So they had a new roof.

So you are giving this as an example of how, even in today's world, to some extent, a community can be self-sufficient. If it is communitarian, it comes together. Yeah, they don't depend, for example, on a fire insurance company, which anyway would take weeks, if not months, to provide them replacement of the money with which then they could replace their roof.

So it's in one sense, I think Prabhupada's emphasis was on simple living. And to some extent, modern life, in its attempt to become more organised and easier, it has also become more complicated. Earlier you were mentioning this point of technological progress, and you mentioned two fallouts which were not considered.

One was ecological and the other was moral. So I was also thinking another is of psychological. That the more complexity it is, the mind becomes more and more anxious.

Oh yes, anxious and then depressed. And isn't it the world health organisation counts depression as, if not the biggest emotional problem today, one of the biggest. That's true.

I think, in fact, they say that anxiety and depression are two of the biggest problems. Yeah. And then out of that anxiety and depression, there's fear.

Of course, fear is at the very root of our material existence, as mentioned in Bhagavatam 11th canto, it all starts with turning away from the Lord and ends in fear. But that fear seems to be multiplied in modern life as we become more fragmented. In this verse that we just read, it mentions the family, the extent of the family is the immediate family, the so-called nuclear family, which means isolation, and isolation breeds fear.

And all of this is fed, also it seems to be very much the case, to be fed by globalisation, even though globalisation and the hope was that it would bring us all more together. We have to ask whether to what extent and where that's working. The thing issue is here, that if we look at specific, like the overall principles, I'm just thinking about these three things that the ecological fallout of technological progress, that is more or less undeniable now, that it has serious negative unforeseen consequences.

Now the correlation between technological progress and psychological distress, or technological progress and say moral regress, if you want to say, are those also equally causally connected? Because one of the, why I'm bringing this point is that, whereas there is this radical difference between the way time is seen, the way things are moving as seen in the modern times, where we are saying there is an arc of progress, that things are improving, and we are better than our ancestors, or we are better off than our ancestors, whichever way, that is the vision. And while in Kali Yuga, we understand that ultimately time goes cyclic. So in that sense, it's not an arc in going any direction, but at least in Kali Yuga, it's going downward.

So could it be that from external perspective, the technological progress is undeniable and it is also dazzling? So for example, right now we are just having this talk because of technological progress, this podcast. So, but could it be that this technological progress is also like a part of the Kali Yuga's illusion to make us blind to the decline that is happening, or to make most of us at least, that things, we think we are progressing, but actually in the areas that matter substantially, things are going down. And we overlook that because of the dazzle of the promise of progress.

Yes, the play of maya. Right? In this age, Prabhupada's translation, of course, the word manda can just mean slow or bad, but Prabhupada translates quarrelsome. Quarrelsome, lazy, misguided, and always disturbed.

So the advance of technology could be feeding those qualities, or loss of qualities. It could be accelerating them. On the other hand, it is hard to say, if someone walks in and takes away our computers, we will probably protest.

We won't say, oh, thank you, Prabhu, you're blessing me. I'll be able to recover my deeper qualities. We'll say, no, no, no, give me back my computer.

They actually become extensions of our senses. That's a beautiful word, extensions of our senses. If we consider our senses as tools for getting things done or doing things, then our devices become extensions of those tools.

I remember I was visiting, I was travelling with one of our senior sannyasis, and we came to a particular place, and the hosts were asking, Maharaj, what all do you need? I'm a simple sannyasi. You don't have to arrange anything for me except prasad and Wi-Fi. Yes.

Yeah, that's how it is. Just give me prasad and Wi-Fi. What, no Wi-Fi? No, I can't stay here.

As for causality, one can try to analyse. Of course, it's easy for us to say, on the other hand, maybe we should be a little more cautious. We like to shake our heads and say Kali Yuga is advancing.

We can also look at good qualities of good people. We can look at intelligence of intelligent people. There are so many intelligent, wise people, thoughtful people, creative people.

They're there. For me, the question is why those good, intelligent, virtuous, qualified, creative people are not effectively bringing up the rest of society. Or put it another way.

Here's another true confession. Sometimes I'm looking at some video on YouTube, generally devotional, but sometimes some informational thing or whatever. Sometimes I listen to Baroque lute music, for example.

I find it very soothing and enriching. It's like it's been said, this is our Western shanayi music and Prabhupada approved of shanayi music. There you'll see with YouTube, there's two buttons.

One is with thumbs up and the other is thumbs down, like and not like. I'm always amazed that anyone would push the not like button for these things. It's like, what's wrong with those people? Here's something just utterly, I mean, it's at least sattva, sattva guna.

It's uplifting. It's nice. I think if more people would listen to Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach, if more people would listen to classical Indian raga, I think we'd have a better world.

But then you'll find people who press the no button. I don't like it. What's wrong with them? It's true.

It's a significant question. I think Prabhupada in the 14th chapter, the three modes purport, I think verse 16 or 17, he says that previously the mode of goodness was considered as the sign of advancement. Whereas today, the mode of passion is considered a sign of advancement.

So, I think that is, it is not just a change in, you could say change in demographics because in one sense the number of brahmanas are always going to be minority. But at least what is the aspirational value, what is considered to be of value, that was relatively speaking in the mode of goodness. If you consider even say America's founding fathers or many of the independence freedom fighters in India, they were people who had a substantial level of character and they lived their lives significantly in what, not entirely, but significantly in what we could call as the mode of goodness.

But it's difficult to say that about most leaders in today's world. And not just leaders, but even most, you could say, cultural influencers in any way. Yeah, that's how it is.

So, then from mode of goodness to mode of passion to mode of ignorance, yes, it goes. That's in the Bhagavad Gita, it also, how does the verse go? And that's in 14th chapter. They're always churning like this and they seem to be going at different speeds on different levels.

One can think of the air atmosphere, you can often see that different levels of cloud formations are moving at different speeds. That's interesting, yeah, okay. So, it is said, and I learned this recently, that the different kalpas will be predominated by different modes of nature.

And therefore, the different Puranas, because Srila Jiva Goswami is explaining in his Tattva Sandarbha, why he excludes, why he's going to focus entirely on the Srimad Bhagavatam, because the other Puranas are dealing with or are predominating or are associated with the different modes of nature, whereas the Bhagavatam is Shuddhasattva, it's beyond. So, it has to do, the different Puranas are associated then with different kalpas. Oh, okay.

But the general point I was making was that the modes of nature are constantly shifting one into the other. And so, mode of goodness to mode of passion, to mode of ignorance, and out of mode of ignorance may come mode of goodness. How out of ignorance? I think in a cyclic sense? In a cyclical sense, yeah.

So, the end of Kali Yuga, we can say, is dominated by mode of ignorance. And then, Kalki comes, and then Sattva Guna with the age of, with Satya Yuga. Now, you, maybe I can bring up another subject though, unless you want to pursue that more, but I'm thinking about, you brought up the point about there being lots of destruction associated with the avatars, right? And we see this with Kalki, we see it in, we see it with Parashurama in large numbers, and then with others, we see more focused Nrsingadev, he kills a few soldiers, but it's mainly Hiranyakashipu and so on.

I think with Matsya, there is no killing at all. It's just destruction in terms of like property destruction, you could say. Yeah, there's property destruction.

So, I was thinking about, actually I was reading. Vamana, there is no destruction at all, isn't it? In one sense? Vamana is simply stretching out his feet, isn't it? The Bali Maharaj doesn't put a resistance, when his associates try to put a resistance, they have quickly beaten back and then Bali Maharaj themselves asked him to, himself asked them to step down. So, there's no, in that sense, bloodshed over there.

Yes, but Bali's, we could say his pride is subdued. Oh, okay, beautiful. That's something like Lord Chaitanya, he doesn't kill miscreants, he kills the miscreant desires in the heart.

Right. So, but what I was thinking about, and I also read an interesting article on this, that in the Mahabharata, how does the Mahabharata begin? It begins with, excuse me, a Sharpa Sattva, a sacrifice of the snakes. So, it's a kind of annihilation programme that goes on, it's like a cosmic vacuum cleaner.

Cosmic vacuum cleaner, okay. Caused by mantra of the Brahmins, who call these snakes together and burn them up in the fire. And of course, the whole thing is stopped eventually by this Brahmin, what was his name? Astika, I think.

Yeah. Who manages to bring it to a stop. But the point is, it's a kind of genocide.

It's a snake genocide that goes on. And if we're thinking in terms of environmental protection, this story, this narrative, then may lead us to think about another case of environmental destruction in the Mahabharata, namely, the burning of the Khandava forest. Yeah, that is quite a graphic description of destruction.

Indeed, and it's been something that many have discussed, because it seems so strange. What is going on there? Agni says, I'm hungry. Right? And Arjuna and Krishna say, okay, well, we're gonna make sure that Indra does not prevent you from having your meal, which is the Khandava forest.

And so, how does it go? Sorry, Arjuna and Krishna, with their bows and arrows, prevent Indra from stopping the fire. And not only that, and this is the shocking part, they prevent any of the animals in the forest from escaping the forest. That was quite disturbing to read at one level.

Till now, of course, I don't know how well we can explain this. But it does seem that the forest was like the domain of evil beings, or demoniac beings were descended, or in their case, ascended to the earth, in the garb of humans, or in the garb of animals. Ah, okay.

It sounds like a good explanation. Yes, I thought of this in two, three different ways, because I'm currently working on a book on the Mahabharata, more like an application kind of book, Mahabharata Wisdom for Daily Life, or Life Lessons from the Mahabharata, something like that. So, one of the things here is that there is this narrative in the Bhagavatam also of the Prachetas, destroying trees.

But then it is also said that the Prachetas, that the trees had, they had overgrown, they had their own jurisdiction, they had extended, they had gone beyond the jurisdiction, and they are preventing irrigation and preventing human habitation also. So, now, in beating them back, there was some excess, and then there was cosmic intervention to stop, stop the Prachetas also. But it seems that this idea we have in the Isha Upanishad, the kota, tena tyaktena bhunjita.

So, what exactly is the kota for whom, that may be a matter of negotiation, because in the same Mahabharata, there is a description in the Vanaparva, that when the Pandavas are living at one place for a long time, for several years, Vyasadeva comes to them and tells them that, no, better you should move from here, because if you stay here for too long, then that will disrupt the ecology of this place. That's interesting. Yeah.

I bet it didn't use the word ecology. Of course. You know, after I used the word, I thought of, I was thinking, what word did I read in the Mahabharata? I don't remember that.

I think what he says over there is that, because at that time, Kshatriyas would also hunt. So, if you hunt, the animal population will decrease here or something like that. That was the concern that you're going to kill off all the deer, and then there's going to be another problem.

Yeah. That's interesting, the idea of apportionment of, what was the word you used? Quota. Getting the quota.

Yeah. Getting the right balance. This, of course, is the ongoing struggle of, well, we could say conditioned life and the sense of scarcity, isn't it? The spiritual world, there's no scarcity.

But we may say there's no scarcity because nobody takes more than what they need. Yes. Sometimes I wonder that in recognising the need to protect the environment and in recognising that we humans have disrupted the environment, we sometimes may start looking at the environment with rose-tinted eyes, because it's not that nature in its pristine state is always benevolent.

It is both benevolent and, we do not want to use the word malevolent, because say when lions and tigers and snakes kill, they don't have any evil, that they're just biologically functioning according to their bodily drives. But the fact is, at one level, when we humans were attempting to progress, it was not that there were some evil people who actually wanted to disrupt the environment. In one sense, we were also trying to just find better ways to survive amid all the disruptions that come through the environment.

So, maybe if we consider the environment is a part of the material world, so there'll be good and there'll be bad, both in it. So, like for those devotees who actually go and start living in a rural place, if we completely cut ourselves off from all modern technologies, it's not that easy to live. It is not just because we are conditioned to technology, intrinsically there are difficulties.

There will be so many, indeed. On the other side, it's been written by one scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says, the time of there being wildlife, in the sense of wild areas, he says it's no longer the case.

There is no more wild on this planet. Why? Because of how humans have affected everything. Anyway, we're getting into a whole other subject, but I wanted to continue with Mahabharata.

We have this kind of mass destruction in the beginning, and then we have another. The main mass destruction is the Battle of Kurukshetra, which is said to kill hundreds of millions of people. And before the battle, what happens in Krishna's and Arjuna's dialogue, Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, Arjuna asks Krishna to show his universal form.

And what does he do? He shows, basically shows the whole battlefield being swallowed up. And it seems like more than just the battlefield. He's kind of consuming the world.

And then, of course, Arjuna asks him, so who are you actually? And he says, I am time and I'm come to destroy everything. And then there's a third major destruction in the Mahabharata at the end, and that is the destruction of Dvaraka. Dvaraka becomes overwhelmed by what today we would call a tsunami.

There's this absolute destruction, over flooding, permanent destruction of Dvaraka, prior to which everyone, most everyone ran away, they escaped. And before that, of course, before Krishna arranged the destruction of the Kshatriyas. But the point, the point.

So, was it before or after? I mean, it doesn't matter really. But I thought that all of them were destroyed and then Arjuna barely got the wives of Krishna out. And then other ladies out and then Arjuna looks back and sees that Dvaraka is being taken by the ocean.

Yeah, yeah, like that. But I'm saying that the, at Prabhasakshetra, that destruction goes, it must be before, no? Where the Kshatriyas fight with each other in a drunken brawl. Yeah.

Anyway, as you said, it doesn't matter. The point is, there's, the Mahabharata is very much about major destructions. And I think a question for me comes, as you said, associating avatars with destruction.

And avatars are avatars of Vishnu. And Vishnu is the Lord of maintenance. So, it seems that for there to be, for there to be maintenance, there has to be destruction.

There's creation, there's maintenance and destruction. And so, the final destruction, right? There's four kinds of pralaya. It's mentioned in the 12th canto, there's a chapter on that, that there's naimittika pralaya, there's prakritika pralaya, there's nitya pralaya, and there's atyantika pralaya.

And it seems that, yeah, it's the way the material world works. There needs to be destruction for there to be, in a sense, made space for more creation and therefore maintenance. And therefore, for facility for the Lord as avatars to appear.

Because otherwise, we wouldn't have any reason for the Lord to appear. And he wouldn't have any reason to appear. And therefore, we wouldn't, as Queen Kunti says, we wouldn't have anything to talk about.

Because the main thing to talk about is Krishna's, Krishna's appearances, Krishna's leela. In one sense, in modern psychology, they often talk about chaos and order. And constantly there is this, or too much order can be a problem because it constricts, but too much chaos can also be a problem.

So, in one sense, we can say that this Krishna's dharma samstha panarthaya comes back to establish dharma. So, he is that requires destruction of the forces that are causing a dharma. Otherwise, sometimes some forces can just be regulated, but if something can't be regulated, then destruction is the only way.

So, yeah, there's that, you can say, very purposeful destruction. But then nitya pralaya means the constant, you can say, self-destruction of nature. That our bodies are disintegrating as we speak, our cells are dying, the buildings that we are sitting inside of are becoming destroyed gradually.

They're disintegrating gradually, and we don't see it, but it's happening. So, that destruction is also there. In this context, can we just go into the four pralayas that you mentioned? So, atyantika is the ultimate, where the soul becomes liberated from worldly existence.

Nitya is the constant. So, when the Lord comes and destroys, would that fall in naimittika category? How would you place naimittika and prakritika in this framework of analysis? My understanding is from that, which chapter is it? In 12th Canto, that the naimittika and prakritika are simply the routine destructions that go on at the time of the naimittika, is when Brahma goes to sleep, and the prakritika is when Lord Brahma's life comes to an end. So, these are cosmic cycles.

We could say they're like the seasons, and from that perspective, we can say also the cycles of the yugas are just that. They are sort of natural rotations of cyclical time, which are involving destruction and also creation. And then atyantika, well, again, nitya is just a natural falling up.

It's, what's the word? Entropy, I guess. Yeah, would refer to entropy that nitya pralaya is essentially, it's the way material energy works. So, in one sense, when the Lord comes, in one of our earlier podcasts, you had used the word the divine disruptor.

So, when the Lord causes some destruction, that's not a part of the natural cycles. It's, you could say, supernatural or transcendental. And then if humans cause some destruction, probably that is, from our perspective, it may be huge, but from the perspective of the broader history of the universe, maybe it's not that bad.

Yeah, I've been wondering about that. Just the last couple of weeks, we say not that bad. And specifically, I'm wondering, excuse me, about this in the context of what is called species extinction.

Extinction, yeah. And I mentioned this because just a few days ago, I've been asked by a couple of scholars to write an article for a book they're publishing on the subject of species extinction. And they mentioned in their invitation that it's calculated now that species are disappearing at the rate of approximately one every 30 minutes.

Really? That's shocking. And yeah, and that we are already down 70% of whatever the number of species has been, I don't know, 200 years ago or whatever. So, down 70% means 30% is remaining or 30% has gone down? No, 30% is remaining.

That's what I understand. So, we like to say, oh, well, there are and always have been and always will be 8,400,000 species. And if a species disappears from this planet, we can be sure they are somewhere else.

So, the dinosaurs are marching around somewhere else, we don't know where. So, okay, who are we to say that that's not the case, right? We take it from Shastra and so on, although I don't think Shastra explicitly says you'll find all these species somewhere else. But my point is that you were saying maybe it's not so bad from a higher perspective, from a cosmic perspective.

And yet, it seems like it is really bad. What's happening? We're destroying on this planet, even if we say they're going to some other planet, but what are we doing? Sorry to get us back to environmental concerns, but I'm thinking about this a lot now. What are we actually doing and what are we doing to stop ourselves from the destruction we're doing? That's true.

And maybe this raises a question, do we need an environment avatar to come and stop us? That's a beautiful environmental avatar, yeah. So, then I just appreciate this point that the extent of destruction has been is shocking and the more I read the statistics, the more alarming it becomes. When I said it's not significant or it may not be that big, I only meant it in the sense that if we consider in the big picture of the kind of destruction that nature itself can bring about in its own course, what we humans can do does seem to be not that much, what one storm can do.

Of course, we can say that what one storm can do, we humans can also do by our weapons of mass destruction. And just adding to your point, the last century was the most destructive century in at least recorded human history as per modern historical records. According to that World Watch Institute, they said something like the number of people killed in wars and murders in the last century is actually seven times more than the number of people killed in the previous 19th centuries combined together.

Yeah. And that's primarily because of, I'm not blaming technology for it, but because we had the technological tools to destroy each other. So, the destruction was far more.

And of course, there were ideological motivations and brainwashing of people. Yes. And Prabhupada says, speaking of the technological side of that, Prabhupada said once, when they have the weapons, they will use them sooner or later.

If we have the atomic bomb, we will use it eventually. Yes. And that's, you know, in one sense, now the theory of whether this COVID started because of a lab leak, that theory is now related to conspiracy theory, but now it is gaining at least, if not acceptability, but at least it is being considered.

So, that also indicates that if we develop some research or if we develop something destructive, it will get used, if not intentionally, sometimes it may get used unintentionally also. So, you know, going back to ecology, I just read this, you talking about species get disappearing. It seems right now there is like a mice epidemic in Australia and mice are overrunning everywhere.

And it's like people's homes, on their farms and everywhere in many parts of Australia. And one reason they are saying is that they somehow, because of some reason, they eliminated a lot of cats from the outdoors. Oh, it's like, it might be a simplistic explanation, but that's certainly one part of the explanation being given.

So, sometimes the elimination of some species may not seem to be consequential for us, but sometimes it can turn out to be consequential in a catastrophic way. Yeah. Yeah.

That's, I mean, that's seen again and again, that you cannot anticipate what the consequence is going to be of a particular manipulation of the environment. Yeah. So, just going back to your point of what you're saying that the power of human agency in, so, you know, these three factors are there.

There is this, we call it as Jiva, Prakriti and Bhagwan, Aishwara, the soul, nature and the divine. So, now, if you consider nature, these four types of pralaya basically refer to what is brought by nature itself. Right.

And then beyond that, so, we humans can cause some destruction and when the Lord comes, he can also orchestrate some destruction. Yeah. So, if we humans, going back to that point, you said, in one sense, the gadgets are like extensions of our senses.

So, if people would fight with fists, but now they can fight with machine guns or missiles or whatever else. So, then the Jiva's destructive capacity is also increased substantially because of technological power, because we can do constructive work also. But the point I was making is that this whole idea of technological progress and the whole idea of regress that is described in the Bhagavatam.

So, for example, Bhagavatam says people's heights will decrease and things like that. Now, Kalki said it will come with a sword. Now, of course, we could say that his sword is like a high-tech sword with a laser.

It has some celestial powers. A laser sword. Yeah.

In the past, they were using weapons like bows and arrows, but the arrows seem to have far greater power and even precision than some of our missiles. Yes. Ashwatthama could target Uttara's womb without without hurting Uttara.

Yeah. Specifically. So, but the point I was making through all this is the predictions that are given in the Bhagavatam, in principle, we can see them true, seem manifesting in other things getting worse.

But in specific, we don't see some of them manifesting till now. Things seem to go in opposite direction. And like I said, technology seems to advancing.

Hardly anyone will fight with swords now. But on the other side, some of the things that are described over there, we seem to have far exceeded that. Like people's, what you read over there, people's attachment will be only to their families and won't exist.

People's concern will not extend beyond the families. And in today's world, if somebody actually takes care of the family, that itself is laudable. People are not able to do even that.

So, these predictions, how do we see all of them? We seem to have overshot some of them, and we seem to go in opposite direction from some of them. It's overshot. We're laughing, but we should be crying.

How to see indeed. Yeah, we are urged to see through the with Shastra Chakshu, isn't it? To see things through the perspective of Shastra. And then things happen which don't seem to fit one way or another with Shastra.

So, you mentioned before these three principles, Ishvara, Prakriti, and Jiva. Jiva is karma, we can say. And then you related that to destruction.

And it occurred to me, now human destruction has reached a point where, because now they talk about the Anthropocene, geological time is measured in very long periods of time, but now they're speaking of the Anthropocene as a layer over the planet Earth of how humans are affecting the world on the level of nature in ways that have never been there before. And so, we reach a point where human destruction is causing Prakriti or Nitya destruction at a rate never before seen. Sorry, can you repeat? How could a human factor? Collectively, the human species, this is the idea of what they're calling the Anthropocene, which is becoming more and more accepted.

It was a recent idea. But now it seems even geologists are accepting, yeah, you could call this the Anthropocene. And someone has even marked as a year when it started, namely 1950, which is the year I was born.

Okay. Why was it? Because of the appearance of certain chemicals as a result of human activity. Anyway, so the point is that collectively, human beings are now affecting nature to such an extent that, and the fear is that it's going to become irreversible.

That's why they're saying, if we increase the atmospheric temperature beyond 1.5 degrees centigrade, that's it. There's no going back. There's a term for it, but it's going to be self-perpetuating, more and more destructive, more and more disturbed.

And of course, nature eventually is going to balance itself out with or without humans on this planet. That's true. Yeah.

Maybe we should look a little, I have before me now, chapter two of canto 12, the symptoms of Kali Yuga. So it may be interesting to look at some of these. Yes.

In the very beginning, it says, shishuka uvaca tatas canurinam dharma satyam socyam samadaya kalena balena rajanam ksatyayur balam smrtih Then, O King, religion, truthfulness, cleanliness, tolerance, mercy, duration of life, physical strength and memory will all diminish day by day because of the powerful influence of the age of Kali. Religion, truthfulness, cleanliness, tolerance, mercy. These include, of course, the pillars of religion as we understand them, which are maintained by the observance of regulative principles.

Much generally is just ignored and not understood. Even in India today, where we understand the principle of daya, of mercifulness, is maintained by avoiding meat eating, for example. Now the estimate is that the percentage of people in India keeping a diet, a vegetarian or vegan diet, has gone down to 18%.

Oh, okay. I didn't know that. That's still the highest in the world as far as I know.

What would it have been maybe 100 years ago? We don't know because we don't have statistics from then, but very possibly twice that or maybe more, but it's down to 18% in India. In Kali Yuga, wealth alone will be considered the sign of a man's good birth, proper behaviour and fine qualities, and law and justice will be applied only on the basis of one's power. Avahi.

Men and women will live together merely because of superficial attraction, and success in business will depend on deceit. Womanliness and manliness will be judged according to one's expertise in sex, and a man will be known as a brahmana just by his wearing a thread. Dampatya abhiruchir hetur.

It's interesting the way the translation is done. They will live together merely, they are not saying they will marry based on superficial attractions. Dampatya technically refers to marriage, isn't it? Husband and wife.

Husband and wife, yeah. But, mayayonivaharike. So, we do see, would you like to go over almost all of them or at least some of them? It's up to you.

I mean, what I was thinking is that certainly some things we can clearly see coming out true. So, if we want to talk about Kalki, in one sense, there's not much information about Kalki himself. Right, because he hasn't appeared yet.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, of course, I think the way we discuss about Buddha also, you know, we didn't go more into the, in one sense, we could say in last time we had a discussion of comparatives. So, it was more of, we didn't focus on Buddha as the consequence of the appearance of Buddha in today's world.

So, similarly, this Kalki, it seems we are discussing more the setting that will lead to the appearance of Kalki. Because the Bhagavatam also focusses on that more. And then this is the problem that Kalki will solve.

So, I think most of the predictions are that way quite clear. It does raise another question though. Yeah, I think.

And that is because we understand Kalki comes at the end of the age of Kali. And the general principle of the avatars is that they come when there's some disturbance and there's a need for reestablishing religion. And we may, someone may, it begs the question, why don't we have more avatars coming more frequently? Why do we have to wait 400 and something thousand years for an avatar to come? And this leads me to mention, it's been at some time since I read, so I'm not completely sure which of the Kachavaha kings, but I'm thinking it's Jai Singh, Sawai Jai Singh II, identified himself as Kalki avatar.

Oh, it seems that, it seems to be like almost a pastime of many so-called religious leaders to identify themselves as Kalki or at least it is their followers activity. And many of the Indian spiritual leaders who are claimed to be God or whose followers claim to be God, they often have stories about how they were born in so-and-so village. And actually in the past, this village was known as Sambhala and their parents had this name.

But then the father also had this name and this is referring to, they do a lot of activities. Actually, my father's name was Vishnu Yasha. And suddenly there's lots of Vishnu Yashas everywhere.

True. But my question is, why so infrequent the avatars? And on the other side, it is said that the number of avatars are are countless. Yeah, that's a, well, one you could say a convenient answer is that Krishna is always with us as the holy name in Kali Yuga.

But it really doesn't exactly address the question what you're saying. Kali Kaale Nama Rupe Krishna Avatar, that is there, is always with us. But what are your thoughts about it? Well, one thought is that one of the categories of avatar is Shakti Yavesha.

And in fact, I just read it. It's in Laghu Bhagavad Tamarita that Kalki Avatar is a Shakti Yavesha Avatar. But one point about Shakti Yavesha, the concept, the category, it really opens, it opens wide open as far as I see the possibilities.

Anyone who shows some special power may be considered Shakti Yavesha. And that's why I think we like to say that Srila Prabhupada is Shakti Yavesha. We all feel he is indeed especially empowered.

That's interesting. So, in one sense, at least in the human imagination, human cultural imagination, the role of human agency has become far more in modern times than in previous ages. I think that started happening from the time of Renaissance, where it was that we are not just meant to, the world is not just a place where you cross through to get to a better life in the next world.

But the world is a place to be explored, to be learned from, to be enriched, to be depicted through art, to be developed through technology. So, if human agency in general is given much more importance in Kali Yuga, then it also stands to reason that human agency would be also used for spiritual purposes more. Oh, this sounds very hopeful.

So, that means we can have more Shakti Yavesha avatars coming. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's what, yes.

Okay. And I just thought of it the first time, but because we were discussing earlier, but it also is true that Dharma was maintained throughout history, not just by the periodic appearance of the Lord, but there was also order to society and that order was maintained by human agents, isn't it? So, of course, now whether they are all to be called Shakti Yavesha avatars, because the list of Shakti Yavesha avatars seems to be more indicative than conclusive, than like exhaustive. Right.

So, in some ways, in the Vedic tradition, this boundary between human and divine, it is a little porous. It's very porous, not just a little porous, I would say it's very porous. Oh, really? And in that way, it's quite the opposite of the Abrahamic traditions, because in the Abrahamic traditions, there's a, you can say, a complete absence of any intermediate position.

Well, that's also not true. They have angels and so on, but they're all kind of invisible beings. But basically, you have God and you have humans, and then you have all the different animals.

And therefore, the idea in Christianity, which draws from the Jewish tradition, which was anticipating a Messiah, right? The Messiah, the Saviour was gonna be a political figure in the Jewish tradition who is going to come and set everything right in their world, because they were constantly persecuted. So then when Jesus came along and he was identified by his followers as the Messiah, it kind of stuck. But that was also, as I understand, maybe it's oversimplifying, that's why he was crucified, he was killed, because the Jews said, no, no, no, he's not the Messiah.

He's, you know, the Messiah we're expecting is gonna be carrying a sword, and he's gonna be riding on a horse. I mean, I think they were anticipating Kalki, actually. That's funny, okay.

So then, you know, Christianity, and then the theology developed in Christianity that he is the Messiah, and he is the one and only incarnation. And therefore, he's the one and only via media between God and humans. That was the idea, which is completely opposite from the Indian understanding, Indian, let's call it the Sanatana Dharma understanding, that there's a, between human and divine is a whole spectrum of possibility.

So, I think Islam took this a little further, and then they say that associating anything with Allah is Shirk, and then that leads to a, that is considered to be blasphemy of the highest order. So, the porosity of the human divine, while it, on one side, it can lead to confusion about who is our ontological status of a particular spiritual leader, but it also actually makes the divine much more accessible. Yeah, isn't it? So, yes, it makes a sense, it gives a sense that the Lord is is very much involved in the world, that he gives, for some time, he gives one or another or several of his opulences to empower someone to do something important for balancing Dharma.

And so, it facilitates a sense of the, yeah, accessibility and therefore the reality of God. How is accessibility related with reality? The more we access, the more we get faith that he's real? Yeah, the more, the more accessible the Lord is, the easier it is to, easier it is to acknowledge his existence. The Lord is Bhagavan, so, aishvaryasya samagrasya viryasya yasashriya, all the opulences, when they manifest in extraordinary, to an extraordinary degree, then we can appreciate.

And, however, that can be misused, and therefore, Prabhupada spoke so strongly, you know, about the Bhagavan on every street corner, everybody's claiming to be Bhagavan. Yeah, Bhagavan on every street corner. It is a provocatively graphic image of how easy it has become for people to claim that they are, their leader is God.

And now, just backtracking a little bit, so this, you're talking about the king Mansingh, Sai Mansingh claiming to be Kalki. Sabai Jai Singh. Sabai Jai Singh.

So, claiming to be Kalki, was that, were you going to make some specific point by that, or you're just giving example of how that long before Kali Yuga has ended, people are claiming to be Kalki who has come? Yeah, we're generally understanding Kalki hasn't come, and he won't come for a very long time. And I just find it intriguing that here we have a king from the 18th century saying, that's me. And this ties in, from what I read, with his, he did have a concern for dharma.

And that concern, we are familiar with, to the extent that he was calling these assemblies, where Shilabala David Yabushana came to defend the position of the Gaudiya Vaishnavas against the position of other Vaishnavas who were criticising the Gaudiya Vaishnavas for their practises and their presence and so on. And all of this was facilitated by the king. He was concerned, and he was specifically concerned about the subject of Parakhiya versus Svakhiyabhava, because in his kingdom, there were apparently those who were misusing the idea of Parakhiya understanding, Parakhiyabhava, in ways which were promoting a dharma.

And so with that concern, or as part of his concern, he was apparently identifying himself with Kalki, the avatar who comes to correct and to reestablish dharma. So, I don't know if that means he was also claiming we are now at the end of the age of Kali. I don't know if he was saying now we're going to usher in the age of the Satya or Krita Yuga.

I don't know. So, it's interesting the way you're putting it, that it was not, you could say, a concealed power grab. And by claiming to be God, Kalki, it was not exactly that he was trying.

Maybe that was a part of his motive. We don't know. But there was also a concern for dharma.

So, it's even the claim of a particular leader to be an incarnation of the divinity, that could be out of good intentions also. Yeah, it could be a pious motivation. True.

So, now when we say Kalki comes, Kalki is described as the 10th avatar, then we discussed earlier that this list of 10 is not necessarily a exhaustive list. But do we have something like, are all these 10 avatars in one Divya Yuga, you can say, or one cycle of any kind? Now, of course, we know Krishna appears only once. And even if we say Balram, Balram is unlikely to appear without Krishna.

I just read that, I think it's in Laghu Bhagavad Tamrita, that it gives a list of 8 out of the 10 avatars as appearing within our Vaivasvata Manu period. Okay. So, there are 14 Manus in one day of Brahma.

And there are 1,000 Yuga cycles, is that right? I always mix these things up. Yeah. Which suggests that it's not so often that these main avatars, if we call them main avatars, are appearing.

Okay. So, this doesn't necessarily, the 10 doesn't refer to any cycle from Satya to Kali or like within one day of Brahma or something like that necessarily. It seems not, no.

Okay. So, is there any a common thread that is there within these avatars that Jayadeva Goswami seems to have selected these 10? We don't have any insight. Of course, it's not only Jayadeva Goswami, the other sources are the Shavataras.

But why this 10 list? Is there any particular pattern or particular rationale that you are aware of? Well, perhaps we can take a hint from Jayadeva Goswami's 11th verse, which goes, Shri Jayadeva Kaveri Ramuritam Udaram Shrinu Sukhadam Shubhadam Bhavasaram Keshava Drtta Dasa Veda Rupa Jaya Jagadisha Hare. And the translation is, O Keshava, O Lord of the universe, O Lord Hari, who have assumed these 10 different forms of incarnation, all glories to you. O readers, please hear this hymn of the poet Jayadeva, which is most excellent, an awarder of happiness, a bestower of auspiciousness, and is the best thing in this dark world.

Best thing in this dark world. Okay. Yes, bhavasaram.

Bhava means material world, saram means essence. So, he seems to feel that these 10 are a kind of essence of the avatars. More than that, I would not be able to say.

But I think it's also interesting that where does this song, this Dasa Avatara Stotra appear? It appears in the beginning as a kind of introduction to his Gita Govinda. And as we know, the Gita Govinda is describing Radha Krishna Leela, very intimate Leela. And I think we can say safely enough that it's quite different mood from this Dasa Avatara Stotra.

Yes. But we may want to say also that the Dasa Avatara Stotra is setting the scene in the sense that these 10 avatars are establishing dharma and re-establishing dharma. And on the platform, the foundation of dharma is where he is now singing his Gita Govinda.

So that if someone is saying, oh, this Gita Govinda is adharmic, because some may say that, because it does deal, it's kind of, much of it sounds quite worldly, it's been said. And at the same time, we understand it's fully spiritual because it's Radha and Krishna. It's the eternal dalliance of Radha and Krishna.

It's fully spiritual. So he's saying, this is dharma. Don't think it's not dharma.

I would see it that way. And how do we know it's dharma? Because we first of all offer our respects to all of the avatars of the Lord, these 10 avatars who establish what is dharma. Why would one do that if one were now going to go on and write a poem that's about adharma? That wouldn't make sense.

Okay. So in one sense, in the Rasa Panchadhyay, the description that this is not mundane, in my sense, comes at the end. They say, those who hear about this, their lusty desires will decrease and love for them will increase.

So that clearly indicates that this is not about lust. Otherwise, how those desires increase. So in contrast with that, Jaydev Goswami here puts that in the beginning.

Yeah, we can say like that. Maybe not in contrast. Does he have something at the end also? I don't remember.

Oh, I don't know. Yeah. Okay.

So, but so you could say that here through all these avatars, which demonstrate the Lord's power and greatness through that, and they all come to establish dharma. Then when you talk about this sweetness of the Lord, that also is setting up the scene for the first describing this, for describing the sweetness by first depicting the greatness of that Lord also. Yeah.

So then from his perspective, Krishna cannot be one of the avatars because it is about Krishna who has come as all these. And Krishna is all about Madhurya, not Aishwarya. Yes.

Yeah. That's interesting. I don't think we discussed this when we discussed Balram.

So if all the avatars are about Aishwarya, is Balram a little bit more Aishwarya than Krishna? Well, if we think of, yeah, if we think of Balram's pastimes as a whole, and his tattva in relation to Krishna, we can say he's much more about opulence. He's creating all the facility for Krishna to have his pastimes. Oh, that's beautiful.

Yeah. That's one of his eternal functions also. Yeah.

That he is providing. So he's using his opulence for Krishna to manifest his sweet pastimes. Exactly.

And on that sweet note, perhaps you can do your famous overview of what we've discussed. Yes, I'll try. So today we discussed about Kalki avatar and we started by first the prayer.

So then I mentioned that is this indiscriminate killing. So you quoted from the Bhagavatam that it's actually killing of the millions of kings, people who were dressed as kings and who were tyrants or who were abusers of power. And then the citizens after that, they were relieved.

So it is not, it is later on, you use the word purposeful destruction, not indiscriminate. So then in that connection, I think a significant part of our discussion was about deterioration, destruction. So you read several prophecies about Kali Yuga.

And then so we talked about how while the Bhagavatam says that the moral arc is going down, modern society consider that the art that actually society is progressing. So this idea of progress is from the 18th, 19th century is roughly the steam engine onwards. It started catching the cultural imagination of people and then while we were progressing, we didn't realise that it was not going to lead to moral progress.

And we didn't at all realise that it's going to lead to ecological, not just rigorous, but it's something like apocalypse. So several points on fossil fuels being used for all the devices. And then that led to a discussion on how we humans are disrupting the ecology in various ways.

And so you've talked about how maybe we need a environmental avatar of the Lord also in the future to set things in order. And so we discussed about the four kinds of pralaya in that context. And this, I like the correlation between entropy and Nitya Pralaya, that it's a constant self-destruction and of nature that is there.

So that's like the tendency within physics or science as described as the tendency of things to deteriorate, of a system to move towards greater disorder. So beyond what nature does, there is human agency and there is divine agency. So when the Lord comes and he does some destruction, that's a fun category.

And we souls, we humans can also do some destruction. And we discussed about some destruction of, or maybe broadly, attitudes to environment in the Mahabharata. So there is the Khandava destruction, which could possibly be because the animals populating there were evil beings come from lower planets.

There is also the destruction of the Kurukshetra war and there is the destruction of Dwarka. And before that, you mentioned, there is also the Sarpa Yajna, Sarpa Satta. Sarpa Satta.

Yeah. So that is, it's almost like genocide of snakes and astigas stop it. So now you gave that example, the Kurukshetra killing was required in one sense because dharma and Krishna arranging the destruction in Dwarka was like, what is this? Pre-emptive strike, we could say.

So that after his departure, his powerful relatives and family members wouldn't misuse that power. So that led to the discussion about how we humans seem to be so vulnerable to vice and evil and even in the Lord's time and especially more in Kali Yuga now. So in Kali Yuga, how bad is the human agency to destroy? So you might think it's not significant, but it is huge.

You quoted several statistics that like one species is disappearing every 30 minutes. That is shocking. And that India is the top most vegetarian country in the world.

But even there, it is barely 18% or something like that. People are vegetarian now. And also another stats you mentioned was that now we have only 30% of the biodiversity of the species that were existing before.

And while that might just seem to be like maybe just a fact of interest for people with the environment. But it's, it can be a pressing concern when one species gets imbalanced, like say the mice epidemic in Australia. And then, so the way we are harming the ecology, use as this Anthropocene that we may have entered a geological age where the human influence on the environment has become so substantial and so severe that an age has been named for that.

And there is a chance that, there is a possibility that if the temperature of the goes beyond a particular point, it may be irreversible. So what can we do about it? That was, if human agency can affect the universe in a bigger negative way, then maybe human agency can affect it positively also. The Lord, when he comes, he just destroys in order to restore order.

So the destruction is that way purposeful. But in Kalyuga, why is he not coming so often? One reason could be that he is, he is there as the holy name. Another is maybe he wants human agents to work on his behalf and Prabhupada is considered as a Shaktyavisha avatar.

So that's where we talked about the difference between the porous human divine boundaries in the Vedic tradition, whereas the rigid in the Abrahamic traditions. It's interesting you said how maybe the Messiah that they were predict, they were hoping for was actually Kalki. And they, so with respect to this porosity of the human divine, there is greater accessibility, there is greater chance to realise the reality of the divine and then ultimately to love the divine.

But the danger is like Prabhupada said that there can be, there is a Bhagawan on every street corner. So that, but now when some people claim to be God, it might not be because of nefarious intentions also. Like Devir Singh, he was very concerned about Dharma.

He had all these assemblies to determine the authenticity of Parkirasa and yet he was the 18th century king who claimed to be, who claimed to be incarnation of Kalki. And then also we discussed a little bit about the nature of the predictions that are described. So we went through some of the predictions and they do seem to be happening.

So while technological progress is there, but if we consider technologically like the extension of our senses, then maybe we are just, this technological progress is a part of Kali's delusion. So that all the moral regress that is happening, all the spiritual degradation that is happening, all the environmental degradation that is happening, all the psychological challenges that are coming up. You mentioned about anxiety and fear, both of them, no, fear and depression or anxiety and depression.

So those are all increasing. So we also talked about how Brahmanas are so important and if Brahmanas were existing, then they, say for example, maybe Brahmanas could have thought in a more farsighted way about the consequences of certain adoptings of technologies. Yeah, we talked about the Amish.

Yeah, Amish, I was mentioning that. But how, it's not that they are against, they don't, it's not that they reject technology, but they would think very deeply about how technology is likely to affect them. And then they very carefully accept certain things.

They may have phones, but outdoors, they may use vehicles, but they don't own vehicles, they use them for travelling. And they have a communitarian system where, if say one barn is burnt or something like that, people immediately come within, you said 24 hours, it has restored, much better than a modern insurance system. And I think in that connection, you mentioned also that maybe a participatory form of democracy could be better.

That we discussed because we're talking about how, when the Lord comes, he comes to destroy kings who have become abusive of power. And out of the fear of such authoritarian or dictatorial rulers, we have democracy, but we don't have a mechanism to actually prevent authoritarian mentality from coming in people. And to prevent that, we need trained Brahmanas.

And also, if overall the world could come to a higher, at least to some mode of goodness, then things could improve. Say, people heard more Sattvic music, people appreciated Satva Guna more. So, we may have progressed in the sense, one sense, but the definition of progress has become aligned more with passion than with goodness.

Yes. And that is, that's in itself a problem. But, so Kalki is going to come in the future at the end of Kali Yuga.

But we can say that there are some signs, there are some signs of the Lord acting through, through Prabhupada and through devotees. Lord Chaitanya. Lord Chaitanya, of course, himself coming.

And there is this, we didn't mention this, I think that there's a prophecy of a golden age also within Kali Yuga. Yes. That's some sort of prophecy is there, golden age.

And of course, we haven't talked about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as the avatari, the source of all avatars, not just the Yuga avatar. But that's our hope. I think that's our understanding, isn't it? Yes.

And of course, towards the end, we discuss about Krishna, how he's talking about this greatness and about the dharma, dharmic purpose of the avatars. So, to, as a prelude to show that Jaydev Goswami is showing that these are the, the, these, that this poem, which might seem somewhat sensual or adharmic, it is not to be seen like that. So, we can relish the sweetness of the Lord and in terms of, so we can say that the Chauthars are describing Aishwarya and Balram is providing the Aishwarya for the Madhuri Lila of Krishna and Krishna is demonstrating the Madhuriya.

So, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, I was just thinking, just to conclude this theme, can we relate Chaitanya Mahaprabhu anyway with the environmental avatar that you are mentioning? Did Chaitanya Mahaprabhu do anything about? I have to think about that. I have to, I don't know, that might get me started on a whole other tangent. Maybe we should take it up another time.

Thank you very much. It's been a wonderful journey. Thank you.

It's been a wonderful journey. I like this kind of churning of Krishna Gita and so on. I think it's very nice.

And I think devotees like too, isn't it? People are listening in. In one sense, we did something like a, the Chauthars, whenever the pastimes are discussed in the classes, it's more of a, you could say, a traditional devotional kind of analysis, which is also important, relishable. But what we also did was more of a, you could say, a contemporary analysis, if I may use that word.

We're sort of in a more relaxed way. Our purpose is not to come to some preconceived conclusion. I think we're just in a sort of open-ended way we're exploring.

And for me, it's all part of the spirit of what Prabhupada called discussing the Bhagavatam from all angles of vision. He wanted to encourage, sometimes he would say, discuss the Bhagavatam threadbare. Threadbare, okay.

The Bhagavatam is huge. To discuss it threadbare would take years. At least in one lecture, he said, you can spend one month on every single verse.

And then he said, how long will that take you? In effect, he said, do the math. And I think he was inspired by the fact that his Guru Maharaj, Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Thakur, spent a month on verse number 111. At Radha Kund, he gave lectures every day on verse 111.

And Prabhupada is saying, actually, you can do that with any verse in the Bhagavatam. Yes, man. It's a beautiful thought too.

There's so much to churn in the Bhagavatam. We did some churning. But we did Dashavatar in ten sessions.

But one verse can be churned so much. Thank you for giving this glimpse of the nectar available through churning, Maharaj. So now let's see if we come up with another series.

Yes, surely. We'll plan that out. Thank you very much.

Thank you.