If rains come due to kirtan, then are floods due to too much kirtan?

Question:

I was telling my friends that rains come due to kirtan and an atheist snapped back, “Now we are having too much rains, so that means you have done too much kirtans. So please stop it.” How should I respond?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
If rains are caused by yajna, then are excessive rains and excessive floods caused by yajna, yajna being too much done, excessively done? I was telling about how rains come by the performing of harinams and kirtan, and an atheist is countered and they are having so much floods, that means you have done too much kirtan, so you should cut down the kirtan now, then the rains will stop and so much inconvenience will be stopped by that.
So, how do we answer in such a situation? Answer? We should not misrepresent our profound philosophy in such a way that it may be subjected to simplistic caricatures. In today’s society, for most people who are educated in a scientific context, the idea of some people dancing and singing in some part of the world, and that producing rains from the sky, that seems like primitive, stupid mythology. It is a kind of belief that people should have rejected long ago, and they think that people who speak such things are throwbacks, our anachronisms don’t belong to modern times.
And we have to be aware of the way people think, not because we want that to change our thinking, but we have to be aware of how people think, so that we present Krishna consciousness properly. And actually, it is not so simplistic that somebody just claps some hands and speaks something and rains fall from the sky. There is a profound philosophical principle underlying all this.
That principle is the principle of cosmic governance and the harmonization of citizens with that cosmic governance. So, the form of yajna is not as important as the principle of yajna. And we should emphasize the principle, not the form.
The form can seem very simplistic, naive and unbelievable. That there are some people dancing and singing and that produces rains. But what is the principle? The principle is that there is a government in the universe, and in that government there is harmonization citizens require.
So, I have written an article on artificial rains, imaginary gains, real pains. There I have talked about how eminent scientists have also acknowledged that we cannot live without the cooperation of nature. We need it not just for our food and for our vegetables, fruits and other things, but also for lumber, also for hundreds of other necessities.
And if humanity had to pay a bill to nature, it would be astronomical. So, we are dependent on nature. And nature doesn’t work arbitrarily.
If we look at nature objectively, it’s so magnificent that has to be a superior intelligence governing it. Just as a child may think that I just turn on the tap in my house and the water comes. What is the big deal about it? Similarly, naive people may think, oh, maybe there is a tap in the clouds.
You turn on, somehow the tap turns on and the rains pour down. But, that is a very superficial understanding. It says that there is a huge organization required by which the water comes through the tap.
Similarly, there is a huge organization required by which water comes through the clouds. Science has some idea of the mechanism how this happens. But, how does not explain why.
Why does this mechanism exist at all? We know that this is how we get water supply, but why does such an arrangement have to exist at all? That is because there is a benevolent government which provides for our necessities. The how can explain that, okay, there is a river, there is a water supply system and that is how water is coming. But, why was it arranged? Because the government considers duty to provide the needs to the citizens and water is a fundamental need.
So, now when the government provides water supply, what is important is for the citizens to cooperate. And the citizens also have to give in return taxes to the government. They have to pay water tax and they have to obey the government.
So, similarly, when we live in the Universal Government, we have to obey the Universal Government. And that obedience of the Universal Government comes in the form of performing activities that are expected from the citizens. So, we are citizens of the Universal Government and we are expected to pay taxes.
The tax comes in the form of yajna. So, Krishna describes in the Bhagavad Gita from 3.10 to 3.16, the cycle of cosmic cooperation that is the engine for the functioning of the cosmos. So, we satisfy the devatas with yajna and they satisfy us by giving necessities.
And this whole system is supervised by the Supreme Lord. So, just as when citizens give their taxes to the government machinery, now citizens may not know, actually I go to this office, there is no water supply, there is no water pipe in this office, but I go and pay my taxes over here. And how does this water come from there? A child is thinking, the water is coming in my tap, why is my mother going and paying over their money? It has got nothing to do with it.
But it has everything to do with it. Now, with internet banking, we may not even have to go. So, sophistication is there.
That means that whatever happens, I just pay the taxes by one clicking of a button in my computer from my home and then the bill gets transferred and the water keeps coming. So, the system by which we pay the taxes and those get situated within the system or get accepted by the system and then the water supply continues, that system is something which a child may not understand. Similarly, exactly how by our performance of kirtans, the water supply continues is something which we, having childlike intelligence, may not be able to understand.
But we understand the principle. When we take something, we have to give something. Similarly, when we have to, when we get the universal necessities, we have to give something.
So, this is the principle and we should emphasize this principle, not the simplistic idea that just singing of kirtans produces rains. And, the important point is, not just the singing of kirtans, it is the harmonization. So, one aspect is paying taxes, the other is following the rules of the cosmic government.
So, similarly, there are the rules of the cosmic government and these involve avoiding sinful activities, avoiding harming others. So, if we are disrupting nature, if we are exploiting the forest, if we are killing our fellow living beings just for the, because we like the taste of their flesh, then we are disrupting the cosmic economy. So, just as if there are rebels in a particular part of a country, then the government may cut off the water supply over there because it doesn’t want the rebels to flourish.
Similarly, we in Kali Yuga are mostly government, citizenship of rebels against God and that’s why the supply gets disrupted. Now, in the cosmic supply, the disruption can happen in both ways. The disruption can be either too less water or it can be too much water.
So, both are disruptions and it is not that too much kirtans has caused the rains to become too much. Actually, too much rains are because we are not harmonizing with the overall cosmic government. So, when we harmonize with the government, then this will end.
And certainly, every contribution that everyone makes is important. So, every devotee who contributes to the kirtan is important. But at the same time, as I said, if a whole area is filled with rebels, then even if there are few good citizens, by proximity or by the majority of the rebels over there, the government will cut off supply for everyone.
So, even those who are spiritualists will get inconvenience at times because of the mass karma of the people in general who are living godlessly. So, certainly, devotees doing kirtan is never an excess because the devotees do kirtan for their own quota and then they do kirtan to compensate for the lack of kirtan being done by the rest of society. And kirtan indicates or kirtan is the way, the recommended way in Kali Yuga by which people can give the cosmic tax to the cosmic government.
So, we should emphasize in our presentation to new people not just the point of doing kirtans. We should emphasize the point of harmonizing with the government by paying the tax to the government and by giving up sinful activities. So, when we emphasize these principles first, then gradually people become more open-minded and then they can understand the specific forms in which those principles are implemented.
There are the universal principles and there are the specific forms. So, if we emphasize the specific forms first, the forms are alienating because, as I said, they might seem primitive, but we emphasize the principles. The principles are universal and they make sense to open-minded people.
The principle is that a citizen has to harmonize with the government and in the case of the cosmic government, when the citizens don’t harmonize, then they all suffer. How they suffer is, one way is too little rains, other is too much rains. So, even the too much rains is not because of too much yajna, but it is also because of too less yajna.
Devotees are doing kirtan, but there is a vast majority of people who are not doing the kirtans. So, actually speaking, we should be able to educate people in a way by which people understand the coherence and the profundity of the philosophy and become inspired to follow it.