How to spiritually reach people who aren’t receptive to hearing Krishna’s glories?

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Transcript

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A person is not ready to accept Krishna’s greatness. A person is talented, but doesn’t accept that my talent has come from Krishna. And should we speak about Krishna to them? And will it be also offensive to speak Krishna’s glories to those who are faithless? Yeah, it’s a valid question.
One of the defining characteristics of Srila Prabhupada’s approach to outreach was not focused on Krishna. Although society was an international society for Krishna consciousness, Prabhupada focused on Atmatattu. Prabhupada’s focus was Who are you? And even when, if we see, Prabhupada would say, strongly discourage and disapprove sense gratification.
But his focus was not that sense gratification is sinful. His focus was, that is not the way to real happiness. Because you are a spiritual being, material things cannot give you happiness.
So, although Prabhupada was giving the message of bhakti, his focus, at least in initial stages, was not on Bhagwan. It was on Atmatattu. Understanding who are you.
So, you know, rather than, because yes, initially, especially in today’s times, when there is, there is at least in some parts of the world, in America and Europe increasingly, there is not just atheism, there is aggressive atheism. There are people who are aggressively campaigning against God. Of course, the God they are campaigning on is the Judeo-Christian God, which is significantly different from the Bhagavatam understanding of God.
But still, the point is, speaking about God Krishna’s glories to new people can be counterproductive. So, when we are preaching, preaching is basically like fighting a war. So, when we are fighting a war, we can’t go with a stereotype plan.
We have to find out which weapon will work where. So, for some people, it is the, if they already have piety and they already have some faith in God, then understanding how wonderful Krishna is, that can enhance their devotion. But if people are coming from a platform of skepticism or faithlessness, then making them simply ask existential questions.
Who are you? So, the, see, atheism, what is its end result? Ultimately, within the atheistic world view, the story of the universe is everything came from nothing because of nothing. Isn’t it? Originally there was nothing. Somehow from that nothing, something happened to that nothing because of nothing.
And because of nothing happening to nothing because of something, I don’t know if you understand it, doesn’t matter, because of nothing happening to nothing because of something, everything came about. And not only did everything come about, everything came about in an orderly way. Now, science, if we see, is nothing more than a search for meaning.
Newton saw the fruit falling. Now, he saw the fruit falling. Millions of people before him saw the fruit falling.
They picked it up and ate it. Newton asked the question, why did this fall? Now, what does this question, now we may say, oh, he was so intelligent, he asked this question, why did the fruit fall? But actually, his question itself, the question itself, not the answer, the question, why did it fall, reflects an assumption that there is a reason why things happen, that there is some order in the universe which we can discover. So the question comes up, where does this order come from? Now, why should there be an order in the universe? Science discovers the laws of nature, but why are there laws in nature? Why does the, this is a little philosophical point, but if it is understood, it is a very convincing point.
See, ultimately, if nature is just as atheists like to say, stardust come alive. We have the stardust which has come alive somehow. So, then why is the stardust which is floating around moving with such precision of mathematical order, f is equal to gm1 m2 upon r square, why is there so much precision in nature? And further if we see, if we see in the maths, maths is what, if we look again from a purely atheistic world view, maths is just a conception in my brain.
And what is the conception in my brain? My brain is simply made of neurochemicals. So, conception in my brain is simply the electrochemical state of the brain cells. So, why does the electrochemical state of brain cells that have just stardust come alive, why does that correlate with the behavior of particles in the outer world? So, why is there anything to make sense of? So, atheists may say that your conception of God doesn’t make sense.
Religion, your rituals don’t make sense. But then, within the atheistic world view, nothing makes sense. Nothing makes sense.
Why should anything make sense at all? Why should we even try to make sense of anything? Actually, atheists try to make sense of things. So, the whole idea is a materialistic world view means we are looking for small islets of meaning while drowning in an ocean of meaninglessness. Everything is meaningless, but within that, oh, E is equal to MC square.
Everything is meaningless, within that S is equal to GM1M2 upon R square. Now, why do we look for meaning and small finds, small little droplets of meaning here and there? Overall, everything is ultimately meaningless. So, we look for meaning because there is a transcendental side to ourselves which is beyond the meaninglessness that characterizes matter.
And that is the spiritual dhatu, Atma dhatu. So, if we guide them philosophically rather than directly speaking about the glories of Krishna, then they may be more inclined to accept things. And, as far as the offense is concerned, in general, rather than worrying whether we are committing offenses, the important thing is whether we are helping people come close to Krishna.
So, if we present things to people that they are not in a position to accept, then, in that way, we are actually creating obstacles for them coming closer to Krishna. That is also an offense. So, if we find that some people are averse to hearing about Krishna’s glories, we can speak of other things by which we can bring them closer to the message of Krishna Bhakti.
And eventually, when they start understanding and appreciating that, then they will appreciate Krishna’s glories also. So, we have to present things in a way that people are attracted, not alienated.