How to understand scriptural promises part 1

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you.
With faith. Abhiksham. Repeatedly.
Achyut. To the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Priya.
Dear. Cheshtitam. Activities.
Bhavet. Develops. Bhakti.
Devotion. Bhakti. Sorry.
Bhavet. Develops. Bhakti.
Devotion. Bhagwati. Unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Yaya. By which. Syat.
Must be. Klesh. Of miseries.
Sankshayaha. Complete diminution. Translation and purport by His Divine Grace S.C. Bhaktivedanta Swamishla Prabhupada.
Translation. Anyone who hears the narration of Dhruv Maharaj and who repeatedly tries with faith and devotion to understand his pure character attains the pure devotional platform and executes pure devotional service. By such activities one can diminish the three-fold miserable conditions of material life.
Purport. Here the word Achyutpriya is very significant. Dhruv Maharaj’s character and reputation are great because he is very dear to Achyuta, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
As the pastimes and activities of the Supreme Lord are pleasing to hear, hearing about his activities about his devotees who are very dear to the Supreme Person is also pleasing and potent. If one simply reads over and over again about Dhruv Maharaj by hearing and reading this chapter one can attain the highest perfection of life in any way he desires. Most importantly he gets this chance to become a great devotee.
To become a great devotee means to finish all miserable conditions of materialistic life. Om Jnanati Mirandasya Jnananjani Shalakaya Chakshurundam Yena Dasmai Shri Gurave Namaha Nama Om Vishnupadaya Krishna Prishtaya Bhutale Shreemate Bhaktivedanta Swami Ithinamine Namaste Saraswati Devi Gauravani Pracharine Nirvishesha Srinivadi Pashcha Tidesha Tarine Vancha Kalpataru Vyascha Kripa Sindhu Vyavacha Atithaam Pavanibhyo Vaishnavibhyo Namo Namaha Jai Shri Krishna Chaitanya Prabhu Nityananda Shri Advaita Gadadhara Shri Vasadhi Gauravakta Vrinda Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna I’m grateful to be here with all of you today and we’re discussing about the phala shruti of the Shreemad Bhagavatam here, specifically about Dhruva pastime so today broadly I’ll talk about the topic of promises in scripture and how to understand these promises in a how to understand this promises in a holistic way, you could say so broadly speaking let’s look first at the verse and I’ll come back to the so it is saying the whole Bhagavatam is about hearing this Parikshit Maharaj who is hearing from Shukde Goswami it is the sage of Namisharanya who are hearing from Shukde Goswami and time and time again the Bhagavatam emphasises the potency of hearing so in fact the whole Bhagavatam is about the power of sound it is about the power of sound to curse the main story of the Bhagavatam begins with sound in the sense that Parikshit Maharaj is cursed and that curse leads to him being about to die in seven days and then he deals with that by taking shelter of the Bhagavatam and then he hears about Krishna so that is also sound so here Shuddha Etach this if we hear Shraddhaya Abhikshanam Shraddhaya means with faith Abhikshanam repeatedly if one hears the story repeatedly and faithfully Achyut Priyacheshtitam so what is the story about it is essentially about the glorious activities of Achyuta of Achyuta Krishna Achyuta is Krishna and Achyuta Priya is one who is dear to Krishna that is one who is the here the devotees are dear to Krishna so here the point being made is that it is about Krishna’s devotee in this particular context it is Achyut Priyacheshtitam it is his activity so the activities of Dhruva and what happens in this particular context with respect to these activities it is said that these activities if we hear then what will happen is something very special Bhaved Bhaktir Bhagwati Bhaved what will result by that is Bhakti will result Bhagwati unto the Supreme Lord and Yaya Syat Klesh Sankshaya and when Bhakti results what is the what is the value of Bhakti manifesting or we could not a value we could say that it’s almost like the side product of Bhakti manifesting that is that the Klesha the distresses of material existence Sankshaya they will all end so in this sense this verse is actually giving us a very we could say tangible demonstration of the very process of the Bhagavatam so let’s explain this so here we have the very process of Bhagavatam refers to that Bhagavatam is something which is spoken and Bhagavatam is all about the power of sound as I mentioned sorry some of the screen is not getting shared so if you consider the Bhagavatam is all about as I mentioned it is the power of sound which is going to be discussed over here so we have in the Bhagavatam here this verse is saying hearing will lead to Bhakti and Bhakti will be lead to freedom from distress and we all at one level want freedom from distress right now the pandemic is slowly ending that cause many hardships we want the pandemic to end so that is that could be one level of freedom from distress and what is the process for that you could say okay take medication take vaccination or just improve your immunity become healthier whatever it is you follow a particular process it leads to a particular result so here I want to talk about is a three different levels first is the Bhagavatam is both demonstration of the power of hearing the power of hearing and a resource for experiencing the power of hearing what do I mean by this the Bhagavatam is a demonstration of the power of hearing means that in the Bhagavatam there are many stories of people who are so for example Maharaj himself what happens to him is that he becomes liberated by the power of hearing so in that sense Bhagavatam is a demonstration of the power of hearing and then it is also a resource for experiencing the power of hearing how is that that means if we hear if we to hear about Krishna Bhagavatam contains many stories so in that sense you can say that the Bhagavatam plays a double role it first demonstrates how it works through its storyline and then those very stories which are contained within the storyline also enable us to experience its potency so so now with that if you keep that in mind what is happening in the Bhagavatam is here there is a promise being made that hearing hearing will lead to the promises freedom from misery to hearing so now if you look at the promise in one sense this promise is already demonstrated through Parikshit’s example now when I say already demonstrated is I am not saying in terms of the Bhagavatam’s internal chronology Bhagavatam is still Parikshit Maharaj’s departure will be in the 12th canto 7th chapter so that’s not what we are talking about but in terms of we as readers of the Bhagavatam who have read the Bhagavatam before we know about this and this is already demonstrated through Parikshit Maharaj and when we talk about it being demonstrated in our lives how does it get demonstrated now before we can look at how it is demonstrated in our life there is something much more fundamental to consider that is this it’s a it’s generally Bhagavatam you can say there are radically different promises in the Bhagavatam in general for most people they have to be allured toward religious activities most people need to be allured toward virtue religion virtue religion both could be translation of dharma dharma could refer to ethical conduct and dharma could refer also to the religious practises of course dharma can refer to many more things most people they need to be allured now I am specifically using the word allured over here why because if you see in the world the world allures people toward sensuality now there is a big question sometimes the media often gets a lot of bad press and the media brings out the worst impulses in people and they say that the media is with gross sensuality and violence and it corrupts people’s minds so then there are many people who are defenders of the media and what they say is that if you consider media and society so does media reflect society now normally we say the media corrupt society or reflect society now what do I mean by this is that does the media why am I using the word of media the media is filled with promises the advertising industry is all about promises buy this product and you will get you will be happy take this prozac or whatever medicine you will be always cheerful take this and you will lose weight take this and you will find an attractive partner partner will be attracted towards you rather so there are so many promises in the media so now often these promises are made in sensual terms but let’s focus on the question over here does the media corrupt society or does it reflect society that means say in the media sensuality is depicted and does that make people sensual or is it that because people are sensual this is what they are already this is what they are going to look for and if this is what they are going to look for the media has to provide them what they are looking for otherwise nobody will nobody will watch it nobody will relate with it so now like many questions this is not an or question but a and question what does that mean that it’s both ways that in many ways the media of a society reflects that society and at the same time it doesn’t just reflect society it also affects society now we are only using it here in the sense of corrupt in the negative sense we wanted to use a more neutral what would we affect society sometimes the media can affect society in a proper way in a uplifting way if you look at whether India or the West Europe if you consider in there are the genre of entertainment called the morality so those are the main form of entertainment in mediaeval Europe pre-modern Europe and they were all meant to teach people lessons in morality so this was a form of media and we could say that was meant to uplift society so it could uplift or corrupt society both could be possible but broadly in today’s world we talk in terms of media having a negative influence on society nowadays with social media coming up this problem has become even greater it has become an even more acute problem so it works both ways so now why am I talking about this is this similar dynamic applies in scripture also so what does it mean that if you consider scripture and society so even in most of scripture if you look at the Puranas in many of the Puranas before that even in the Vedas the Rig Veda especially the promises are actually made in sensual terms so you can go to heaven and you can drink the Soma juice a person can enjoy with the celestial damsels so there are promises made in sensual terms there is a European Indologist who came to India and he read the Rig Veda and he says this is the most materialistic religious book known to humanity why materialistic religious book because he said that basically his thoughts were that this was filled with worldly promises so some of the descriptions of heavens are quite sensual, quite graphic and you could say in many ways heaven is the ultimate materialist’s dream materialistic dream as it is described and it is not just in the Vedic tradition it is cross cultural so there are promises made in sensual terms and most of the Puranas and most of their promises are in sensual terms and as I said Rig Veda it is called the most materialistic religious book now why would why would we talk about it like why would somebody call about it like that why would the they are not just labelling it for negative purposes there is a lot of materialistic promises in about in the Rig Veda so why is it given this brings us back to the question let’s put it instead of media let’s put scripture over here does scripture affect society or does it reflect society so again we could put it that in this particular case like in many cases it’s a it’s not an answer but it’s it’s not a or answer but it’s a and answer so that means if most people in society are interested in worldly things and it’s not a matter of that’s how it is and if scripture is only going to talk about how after we renounce all worldly attachments we give up all material desires then the taste of love for Krishna that we relish will be so extraordinary then if that is what scripture would focus if scripture focusses only on if scripture promised only spiritual happiness and that too when material happiness is renounced then it would have no takers or rather very few takers so this brings us back to the same dynamic that just as in the in the media now of course you could say in media sensuality is propagated in very gross and very perverted ways in scripture it’s not like that you know the sensuality it’s in the context of dharma that the asuras and the devas both seek sensual pleasures but the devas they follow the principle of dharma to some extent to seek those pleasures and the asuras go against the promises of dharma when they’re seeking sensual pleasures but the point is if scripture promised only what spiritual happiness then it would have it would have very few takers so that’s why what happens is in one sense scripture’s purpose is to uplift society to raise people’s consciousness upwards but it cannot do that immediately people have to be attracted to scripture first so you could say this is society and this is scripture then to some extent scripture has to reflect society scripture has to reflect what people want in general and people need to see scripture as a resource for getting what they want and then when they start developing faith in scripture then scripture can provide people what they need so first scripture needs to attract people by providing them what they want once they develop trust then they can then it can provide them what they need if what they want is not provided then what happens is people just don’t come, people don’t get connected and now this is a tradition so we could say scripture providing what they want this is karmakand karmakand Krishna talks about this in the Bhagavad Gita and he doesn’t speak about it in complimentary terms he says this is how people get deluded, they get lost 2.42-44 he talks about it such people think that the sensual promises they are the core thing of scripture and there is nothing more in scripture at all but that’s wrong and then we could say bhakti or parabhakti in general spirituality that is the ultimate purpose of scripture so here we talk about Krishna says give up everything else surrender to me that parabhakti is the purpose of scripture now in one sense Narada Muni opposes this Narada Muni says that to Vyasadev that you have given only so we could say could say Bhagavatam’s focus almost single minded focus generally talk about focus as single minded only but it’s like to emphasise it so what does Narada Muni tell Vyasadev that you have already given people enough of what they want now in this book now in Bhagavatam just give them what they need so that’s why the Bhagavatam starts by saying that this is dharma projeita kaitavotra paramo nirmatsaranamstham dharma projeita means that even religion is cheating you Prabhupada translates as cheating religion dharma projeita kaitava, kaitava is cheating religion so that means cheating religion is rejected now how is this religion cheating it is not cheating in the sense that those rituals will not work and people will not get heavenly pleasures many times so this cheating is not like advertising cheating sometimes the advertised products don’t even work at all but just there is a lot of glamorisation here even if they work they are not going to satisfy the person they don’t want to satisfy the heart of the person why because we have so many desires and in general what happens to us is even if our desires are satisfied we don’t feel satisfied that is one of the ironies of life that we often think that if my desires will be satisfied I will be satisfied but the nature of the problem is that no matter how many desires are satisfied we don’t feel satisfied in spite of that that is just the nature of the mind so fulfilment of desires does not lead to fulfilment even if not just one desire many desires also I want to eat this I want to watch this I want to possess this even I want to I want to have a relationship with this person all those things these are desires and we fulfil them but the problem is things other than Krishna manifest only a drop of his oceanic attractiveness so Krishna is like an ocean everything else is like a drop Krishna talks about this in Bhagavad Gita 10.41 so what is happening here is if we get only the drop yes there is some relief some joy if you are very thirsty but for how long how long is it going to last and that’s why even if our desires are fulfilled we don’t feel fulfilled you can look back at our own lives you don’t have to look back long time maybe last 24 hours last one week what are the things we desire which worked out which didn’t work out and if those desires were more or less to some extent self-centred did the fulfilment of desires make a big difference to us at that time we might have been quite excited we wanted to eat a particular food and maybe in prasad that food turned out to be there and we were eager and we ate it and after sometime okay it’s over I didn’t feel that fulfilled so this applies, now food is a very simple desire we can say but this applies to any kind of desire other than the desire for Krishna so the Bhagavatam so in general in the Puranas I was talking about how the Puranas allure people towards sensuality so the point is that the Puranas have as contrasted with the Bhagavatam to appreciate the Bhagavatams the Puranic promises in general they are lavish worldly pleasures and if you contrast that pleasures are promised in most Puranas but here we see Bhagavatam’s promise itself is different what is Bhagavatam’s promise bhavet bhaktir bhagvati that you will get devotion for Krishna and yaya klesha sankshaya by which distress will be destroyed so that promise itself is radically different from the promises that are made in scriptures so devotion awakened and then distress destroyed klesha sankshaya so now this distress destroyed is something which we all want distress to be destroyed but most of us we don’t think about distress in terms of the ultimate distress of being in material existence or being separated from Krishna the supreme object of our love we think of distress largely in terms of the non-fulfilment of our worldly desires or the non-availability of certain comforts or things like that so we think of distress largely in material terms so the very nature of the promise of the Bhagavatam reflects the purpose of the Bhagavatam the vision of the Bhagavatam single-minded focus it’s not even promising something promising something worldly anything worldly and this is even more significant the Dhruva story is not unique to the Bhagavatam the Dhruva story Dhruva story is told in many Puranas it’s a common motif and in other Puranas the Phalashruti the Phalashruti the fruit of hearing is quite described in worldly terms you will get a great kingdom, you will attain heaven you will attain this, you will attain that but the Bhagavatam again it’s interesting the Dhruva story in some ways is different from many other stories because the narrative itself shows how Dhruva gets material success he starts with his material desires and his material desires are fulfilled so in one sense this Dhruva story is very special because it demonstrates what the scriptures are doing and Krishna can do that give people what they want and then eventually they will turn to what they need Dhruva gets material success and spiritual success both so in that sense the Bhagavatam narrative is quite clear and yet the Bhagavatam’s promise Bhagavatam’s promise is not that you will get material success Bhagavatam’s promise is only about spiritual success and it also talks before this about how what I have said the point earlier fulfilling desires does not provide fulfilment that’s what happens to Dhruva also he gets the kingdom and he feels this is nothing this is a broken piece of glass this is a broken piece of glass as compared to the jewel that is Krishna that is the lupus free lord in this case Vishnu so the extraordinary nature of the Bhagavatam itself is illustrated in this pastime the phalashruti that is described is in transcendental terms now that brings us to some practical issues for our lives say what promises can we make in terms of if somebody is practising bhakti what promises can we make if can we say that you chant Hare Krishna and you will become wealthy or you come and hear the Bhagavatam class everyday and your sickness will go away or you come and do deity worship to Krishna everyday and your marital problems will be solved can we make promises like that there are promises like that quite often in scripture especially in the other Puranas not in the Bhagavatam so now you know one way we can say is that somehow or the other fix the mind on Krishna if you take that principle anyway people come to Krishna they will get purified and getting them to Krishna is what is required and in one sense this is demonstrated it’s not specifically chanting but Dhruva what he does is he does bhakti and he gets fabulous wealth now there is an interesting question over here so is this something which is universally going to happen to everyone when you practise bhakti and you will become wealthy well some people may some people may not you can’t be sure about this because everybody has their own karma Krishna has this plan for everyone so what promises can we make to allure people now again the word allure has a negative connotation a word with a positive connotation if you want to use we can say attract to attract Krishna what promises can we make now if say if we go to Denver University and tell that you start chanting Hare Krishna because you develop love for Krishna first of all they will ask who is Krishna and why should I love him what is the value of love for Krishna and the first time I heard I heard about ISKCON when I was in engineering college and I heard about ISKCON ok what is ISKCON International Society for Krishna Consciousness so my first question was consciousness is a scientific word Krishna is a religious deity so what is this Krishna Consciousness and why do you need International Society for that which is the name it just couldn’t register in me so of course still devotees made very rational and attractive presentation of Krishna that’s how he is attracted so generally speaking if we go and tell people come practise our process you will become Krishna Conscious what is Krishna Consciousness how is it relevant for me so now we may say but should we hide what we are doing no it’s not a matter of hiding can we say that ok you will become wealthy or you will find if you chant Hare Krishna you will find a good partner or you will become wealthy or whatever well that we might be going too far we are not like Narada Muni we cannot ensure that the lord himself will take the responsibility of ensuring that our word comes true so there is a process and there is a result so if you focus on the process then the results are likely to come so for example we may say to students that by chanting or by practising bhakti will your grades improve well we can say that by practising bhakti if you practise bhakti if you learn to manage your mind so if you say bhakti practise will it lead to grades improvement well that might be too much to promise but we can say that bhakti practise will lead you to greater self mastery better concentration deeper self awareness and then all these will help you to be successful in life we may have a different meaning of successful but even in worldly terms if a person has deeper self awareness not just in terms of I am not the body I am the soul but self awareness in terms of what are my talents, what are my interests what am I doing because the world is pressuring me to do it what am I doing because this is what I am attracted to, this is what I feel driven to if a person has better concentration versus greater self mastery so self mastery generally mean that they don’t waste their time in unnecessary partying and all kinds of sensual activity, better concentration means when they are sitting down for study then that they are able to focus better so then all these will lead to better success in life, at least we can say greater probability of success and in that sense it’s not that bhakti practise doesn’t provide material happiness but rather than saying that it provides material pleasure we can say that at a material level also the bhakti practise will provide a better life, it may not necessarily be in terms of more wealth more sensual pleasures but these alone don’t comprise even material happiness or material good life a person who has a person who has the physical charms to attract many many people, they may just attract a lot of people with whom they titillate themselves but they may have no deep meaningful relationships and even from material point of view they are not really having a very satisfying life so bhakti can provide a materially better life, materially better life doesn’t mean having better material things but necessarily better in terms of worldly worldly prizes or worldly glamour but a more even materially functional, materially harmonious a materially fulfilling life you can say that is possible now can we make promises like this that is a serious question when Prabhupada was asked about this, Prabhupada talked about chanting is meant for developing love for Krishna so nowadays we talk about chanting for if you chant you will have peace of mind you will have better concentration you will be free from distress so now we present this in some ways what we are doing is we are following the Vedic approach of giving people what they want so that they will take what they need so it’s not wrong it becomes wrong when we we promise something which is completely different from what we are going to deliver so for example this is called as bait and switch say bait and switch means that we provide something as a attraction like a bait fish is caught by a bait so we provide something as a present something and to attract and then offer something entirely different so one devotee was giving his example he is a scientific researcher so he said that if we are saying that we are Krishna conscious of science and we have scientific research institute for example we have the bhakti institute or scientific forums also if we don’t do scientific research and we say actually all this conference and everything is just to get scientists to come and then when they come we will tell them to take prasad, look at the deities and chant the holy names he said that is bait and switch it’s like we say that there is a big hotel over here and people come to the hotel and when they ask for food actually we have no food over here we call this a hotel only because we want to tell you how you should eat well so actually it only vegetarian food that is offered to Krishna and take that food then you will be healthy and happy so hotel that offers no food but only preaching about food now that would be bait and switch why? so it’s not bait and switch if the hotel offers food and then in a non-threatening appealing way they tell also about what is special about this food or what are the ethics around food eating so if what is promised is not offered at all and then something else is offered then that becomes bait and switch so if what is promised is offered and something more is also offered then that’s not bait and switch that’s like a natural progression we are happy to provide people what they want and then we provide them what they need and in one sense Dhruv Maharaj story demonstrates this narrative that provide somebody what Dhruv Maharaj gets what he wants and then he says what I wanted is not what I really wanted at a deeper level, what really fulfilled me and then he starts connecting with Krishna so for us now Prabhupada now if you consider even Prabhupada used not exactly bait and switch but the approach of say from wants to needs in India for example when Prabhupada was speaking to a businessman in India he would say that I went to America with just 40 rupees and now I have temples worth 40 crore rupees so crore is of course an Indian denomination but it’s from an Indian perspective it’s a huge amount and then Prabhupada says it’s great doing business with Krishna or with Krishna or for Krishna whatever I am paraphrasing over here not to double quotes just see how advantageous it is to do business with Krishna you also build a temple for Krishna now what is Prabhupada doing by this is this Karmakand no it is not why because if you see when Prabhupada had this programme of life members in India so life members they would get something they would give money they would get something material and spiritual both material in terms of the way Prabhupada promised when the Juhu temple was being built and other temples in Juhu was at that time one of the grandest temples in India at large and if you see during the British if you look at the Indian architectural history during the British times hardly any temples were built and the post independence times slowly it started Prabhupada and Iskcon were one of the pioneers in building big temples now many Hindu, Vedic, Indic organisations build big temples but Prabhupada built his grand temples and these temples were expected to have guest houses so Prabhupada said whichever part of the world you go to we have a temple there and you can stay in a guest house over there so Prabhupada offered them something material you can stay for three days as a life member in a particular temple and then if they became life members what he would do is they would get Prabhupada’s books Prabhupada’s books would go to their homes and then maybe devotees would go connect with them on their birthdays and give them prasad and talk about Krishna so Prabhupada had that calibrated approach so he saw if you consider between 1960s and 1960s before Prabhupada went to America and 1970s when he came back from America it was not that Indian mind suddenly changed so I’ll conclude with this point and then if there are any comments or questions we can discuss them quickly so what I can is if you consider Prabhupada in India we know that in India Prabhupada didn’t get much success although he preached for 40 years so in 1960s before he went abroad Prabhupada’s message was not his message didn’t appeal much to Indians now in 1970s when he came back even then it was his intrinsic message still didn’t appeal much his intrinsic message in terms of pure devotion to Krishna and committed practise of bhakti that didn’t still appeal much that’s why we’ll see in our movement there are not, although Prabhupada from 1970s to 1977 spent a huge amount of time in India but still we don’t have many Indian disciples of Srila Prabhupada because India was just not ready at that time India was still too obsessed with politics, too crippled by poverty, too enamoured by progress but his intrinsic message didn’t appeal much but its extrinsic effect appealed that means as Prabhupada said he brought the dancing white elephant that he had western people who had become his disciples he had centres across the world that was an appeal and Prabhupada used that so you could say in one sense what Prabhupada did was Prabhupada it appealed to the cultural nationalism of Indians, in other words nationalism sometimes has negative connotation but in this case Prabhupada used it of Indians, our Indian culture is being spread all over the world people all over the world are taking this up so we were colonised and now we are going to, we are they are taking up our culture, those who dominated us so it was that which appealed and Prabhupada accepted that, Prabhupada accommodated that Prabhupada engaged that and we see a generation later well now we will have to go into the complex dimensions of India’s change, how India culturally changed after liberalisation 1990s and what happened as younger Indians became educated and India became westernised so from the 1980s, late 1980s onwards actually Krishna consciousness movement exploded in India if Prabhupada had not set the foundation if Prabhupada had insisted that anybody who wants to come to him, they have to change 16th round, follow 4 regular principles then at that time hardly any Indians were ready for that so Prabhupada what he did was he accommodated them and 20-30 years down the line we see that India is flourishing there are hundreds and thousands of devotees and almost all major metropolitan cities in India so Prabhupada in one sense in his preaching in India is demonstrating how things worked with Dhruv Maharaj with Dhruv Maharaj what he did was Narad Muni gave him material things first and then after giving material things Narad Muni gave him spiritual things similarly Prabhupada said oh you have cultural interest, you have worldly interest yes, come to Krishna you will be able to make India great I am sorry to use that word, make America great is very politically polarising sound byte Prabhupada didn’t use make India great literally but the point was Prabhupada took what was available and then he elevated it and he didn’t live to see that elevation but he lived on through his followers so Narad Muni could have said to Dhruv Maharaj at that time if you are not ready to be a pure devotee, get lost I am only here to teach pure devotional service if you compare the Prabhupada-Narad Muni parallel see Narad Muni we can say Narad Muni’s versatility was a person who can do many things or versatility, flexibility let’s use the word versatility right now so Narad Muni told Vyasadev speak only about pure devotional service speak only Shuddha Bhakti but when that same Narad Muni he instructed Dhruva in what you could say Mishra Bhakti he did not teach Mishra Bhakti literally but he knew Narad Muni Dhruva had no interest in Shuddha Bhakti so engaged engaged his material motivations in Bhakti so what Narad Muni did was what in one sense Prabhupada also did Prabhupada taught pure devotional service in his books but Prabhupada engaged the material motivation in the cultural nationalism and the results came up wonderfully in the long run so that is Prabhupada following in the footsteps of Narad Muni in engaging people according to their nature, their level and we too appreciate Prabhupada and carry on Prabhupada’s mission we can also pray for that multi capacity to be versatile capacity to be multifarious or multi strategic having different strategies for different people and to gradually elevate them from where they are to a step higher and ultimately Dhruva Maharaj attained life’s supreme perfection and that way if people get connected in Bhakti they will eventually attain life’s supreme perfection so I’ll summarise what I spoke today broadly we discussed the theme of scriptural promises and in that scriptural promises I discussed about broadly three themes within scriptural promises first is that how promises are everywhere in one sense even the culture makes promises and in the culture it has to make promises about what people want and then culture I talked about movies and advertisement and things like that and media they make promises of what people want and then eventually they might give people what they need but here what happens is with respect to may I put it so we talked about we could say that just like media so scripture it gives people what they want and yet Bhagavatam is different Bhagavatam gives people what they need in the sense that in this particular sense Bhagavatam’s promise is that it will get pure devotion but still if we talk about this the book Bhagavatam it teaches that it talks about how it will give people what they need but it also demonstrates stories like Dhruvas where there is a progression then we talked about how what can we promise and we discussed about how Narada Muni we look at Narada Muni we look at Prabhupada and we look at our presentation of chanting or mantra meditation that we can give people what they want to lead them to what they need so Prabhupada did this with his life members in India he engaged their cultural nationalism and we also do that when dealing with students we are talking about how chanting can improve your concentration, your self mastery, your self awareness so we don’t use bait and switch if we promise one thing and deliver completely different thing that is inappropriate but if we don’t tell people if we don’t talk anything about what people need or seek or desire then they will have no interest so there has to be this very very subtle and sophisticated we could say approach to get people toward Krishna by helping them, by alluring them or attracting them in a way that takes them toward Krishna eventually thank you very much Hare Krishna so are there any reflections or questions Hare Krishna thank you so much Hare Krishna I was thinking of how Prabhupada was encouraging everyone stay high forever chant, dance, take prasadam and so certainly that generation they were attracted to those kind of things you know and the drug culture and everything and Prabhupada didn’t give false promises he told them about what is the real high the real consciousness but the way he would explain everything it was very attractive to them and it was catchy and so thank you so much Prabhu, I was just wondering if you had any other examples like that Prabhupada used the word stay high forever that is typical you could say drug users language being used expertly by Prabhupada and even in darshanarthi Prabhupada has the deities themselves are you could say they are they are transcendental but for many people they can seem very Indian, religious sectarian so Prabhupada has deities traditionally dressed and then Prabhupada has this music Govindamadi Purusham which is sung in a very contemporary way with George Harrison’s production house making it so so Prabhupada that captivates people even some people can’t relate with deities they can relate with the the music so Prabhupada was quite expert in as Prabhupada said old wine and new water so he was able to present things that way that’s one example that comes to mind thank you any other reflections or questions so guys we have time tomorrow we can discuss tomorrow also Hi Krishna just appreciating the topic that you chose and yeah I’m really thinking about how we present our in outreach how are we presenting and packaging what we’re what we’re giving what we’re offering and it seems like it seems like devotees too they in their own vision of Krishna consciousness it can look differently from different angles look different from different angles so it can be sort of presented in different ways and so and it seems like it can be presented in different ways that are actually true to what it is without doing like a bait and switch without actually falsely promising something but yes definitely so say for example we teach yoga now if we just say we have yoga school and we don’t teach yoga at all and tell people to chant Krishna that would be bait and switch but if we teach yoga and then we say yoga is best done with sound vibration and we teach kirtan also over there we talk about how yoga is in its deepest sense is meant to connect to the divine and we talk about bhakti yoga I think that is not at all bait and switch that is a natural progression so people want peace of mind people want even if we say that people who practise yoga are very bodily conscious they want to look more attractive they just want to improve their looks they want to improve their fitness things like that but they could do that by many other means they could do they could do plastic surgery they could take botox they could do so many things but if they are doing yoga that means they are already ready to do something sattvic yoga itself is relatively sattvic so you can take them further it just requires some level of thought and openness and it’s possible, definitely it’s possible and I appreciate too how you were showing how the scriptures they are like an expression of Krishna’s compassion where he is actually sort of sweeping everyone up in a as much as he can however he can and it reminded me just of varnashram dharma too it’s like that, it’s designed the scriptures are designed a certain way that varnashram dharma is designed in a certain way to actually bring as many people at different levels keep them progressively going up in their consciousness yeah that is true that’s the ultimate purpose of the varnashram dharma yeah thank you thank you very much so we’ll continue, see you tomorrow again shloka shloka shloka shloka