Is it ok for devotees to give motivational classes without mentioning Krishna at all?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so sometimes devotees give long classes but don’t mention Krishna at all you want to focus on motivational talks there are two perspectives to it I will give both perspectives and then I will try to offer a balance one perspective is that we are here to knowledge about Krishna, it’s a Krishna consciousness movement and if we don’t tell people about Krishna then what are we doing in this movement so we should tell people about Krishna and that’s how we will attract people Prabhupada also explicitly named this movement as Krishna consciousness, not just generating God consciousness also so we should speak about Krishna and otherwise we are not really doing benefit to people, we are not representing our tradition that’s one perspective the other perspective is that the people who are directly interested in personal spirituality in a personal absolute truth in some God like Krishna are very few in today’s world even when Prabhupada came to America in 1960s actually it was a very unusual period in American history not in American western history you could say the hippie movement, the counterculture this lasted for 10-12 years and the kind of enormous interest in eastern mystical spirituality that was there it’s not there, now people are interested in yoga people are interested in meditation but not in the kind of spirituality which resembles religion very much so the idea is that, the other perspective is that we give people what they need or what they feel they need so that they become receptive to us and then we can give them Krishna if we just give them Krishna they will feel this is not for me and they will go away so we give them what they feel they need that is motivational talks and by that we make them receptive, we make them appreciative and then when we give them Krishna they will take it so this approach also has merit because if you consider traditionally the brahmanas would do karmakanda and the brahmanas would do bhakti karmakanda is material religiosity it is religious practices that provide material results oh there is a drought over here ok let’s do this fire sacrifice rains will come we are not able to conceive a child do this yagya and then you get a child so people want to see results here and now so in the past it was like a continuum the same brahmanas who would give people material results would also tell about spiritual knowledge and that’s how people would take the material results develop faith and come towards spiritual knowledge so now today people are not so much interested in in physical results if I can’t conceive I just go to an anacologist and do something something like that most people what they want is mental some inspiration, some motivation in fact in many of these big churches in America there is an article in New York Times that God has been rebranded traditionally God was the cosmic supplier oh father thou art in heaven give us our daily bread in fact now one Christian group they say oh father thou art in heaven give us our daily peas so they have rebranded God not as a cosmic supplier but as a cosmic therapist you go to God and you will become peaceful because peace is what people want so now if that is what people want and if we give that to them they become more receptive now the problem with this is that unless there is a well defined channel by which you can get people from that motivation, motivational level to spiritual level if that is not there then what happens we just become another of a whole panel of motivational speakers and because motivational speakers can become popular then more and more people may start doing that devotees may start doing that and may not speak about Krishna at all so there is a danger the danger of sticking only to Krishna is that we may not reach many people the danger of speaking about motivation is that we may not connect people with Krishna so there has to be in my understanding at least that this has to be seen as a specialized service that might be done by a few people in few places so there are forums where say now I am an engineer by profession and I speak on science and spirituality so once I was invited to a talk on science and spirituality and after that one student asked so what is your religion so I said that here I am speaking on science and spirituality now everyone may have their own faith if you want to know about that you can talk with me privately afterwards here let’s talk about science and spirituality so after that both the professor over there and the HOD over there both of them appreciated this this was our fear that we don’t want our university to be used as a podium for proselytizing some religion so the answer you gave was very good now if somebody comes to a temple and asks me what is your religion if I give the same answer I am doing a disservice over there isn’t it so in certain forums if the expectation is a particular thing then we have to deliver that expectation otherwise there is no need to go to those forums so those who can speak accordingly they can go to those forums so this is a specialized service where we may speak about other topics where say somebody is a scientific preacher now somebody may read hundreds of books to write one scientific book and in their talks there may be no Krishna directly over there but they may just talk about consciousness and consciousness as a non-material source that is also one way of preaching and they are also reaching a particular audience which would not be reached otherwise but everybody should not try to do that now what happens with scientific outreach people understand science is not easy it will require a lot of hard work I can’t do it but in motivational talks anybody can think I can do it and they start doing it then that can become a trend which can be unhealthy so if some devotees with a proper purpose and plan use this as a means for connecting people with Krishna then that is fine so there are two broad aspects of outreach one is we get people to Krishna and the other is we get Krishna to people so when we get people to Krishna that’s like getting them to the temples then at that time we need to have proper Krishna bhakti presented to them but when we are getting Krishna to people at that time we may have to get him or give him in a way that they will find relevant for them so it can be done by a few devotees who want to specialize in that service and they do it under the guidance of some seniors who know what they are doing and who can monitor and mentor them then we can reach to a large number of people I have seen that those devotees who do motivational talks they open doors which would otherwise never be open for devotees and those people who appreciate them oh and you are from this movement you start appreciating that movement also and then that kind of favorable perception of the movement is good but we don’t want reduction of the movement to that we want favorable perception but if you think people start saying this is what our movement is about then it will be a problem so that’s some kind of balance if it is done cautiously shall we stop here