​Learning to lose our faith in illusion

​Youth meeting at ISKCON, Juhu

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, I will connect you to today’s meeting and I will be speaking on the topic of how to lose our faith in illusion. Yes, that is important.
Along with that is the opposite track of losing our faith in things that are not connected with Krishna, in illusion. I’ll take this in three parts. First part, I’ll talk about some examples of how we have faith in illusion right now.
What I mean by that, having faith in illusion. Secondly, I’ll talk about some factors that cause this faith in illusion, that increase our faith in illusion. And thirdly, I’ll talk about how we can counter this faith in illusion by replacing it with faith in Krishna.
If we look at today’s world, advertisements are probably among the most visible markers of today’s culture. And interestingly enough, when I went to both Australia and America last year and this year, the first thing that struck me is the advertisements in the roads are much more aggressive and intrusive in India than elsewhere. So, the billboards especially are more glaring, more intrusive, more frequent and more blatant.
So, when I enquired with the devotees there, I looked into some writings analysing, advertising and social media, I found out the reason for this, which I’ll talk about a little later. But many of the advertisements, if we look beyond their high tech presentations, the glamorous people who do those advertisements, and all the huge appeal in it, if we look at the content, often this content is a huge call for faith. So, consider there was a few years ago, actually, I was on the airport going abroad.
And at that time, I saw on the, I was standing in the check-in queue, I saw over a video where this advertisement was going on. And this was of a popular Bollywood star. There’s a young man who was walking on the road.
And there’s some girls walking along, but not one girl was noticing him. And then this Bollywood star comes along and all the girls start screaming and rushing and hugging him and kissing him. And this poor boy is looking lost, feeling I’m neglected.
And then that Bollywood star comes along and hugs him, you want to know my secret? And then what is that secret? He says it is some shampoo, fair and handsome, something like that. So, so when he says this, his voice is very good. And then he goes home and apply the shampoo.
And next time he comes back, all the girls they squeal at him and rush and hug him and kiss him. Now, this advertisement is actually an insult to both male and female intelligence. Nowadays, women are quite aggressive about their rights, that they should not, they should be given all equal rights because they are supposed to be equally intelligent.
But to say, to depict that a woman will fall for a man just because he’s applied some shampoo, that is an insult to female intelligence. And to expect that men will believe such fairy tales, that is an insult to male intelligence. So many of the advertisements, if we see the extent of the promise that they make, it is absurd.
It is absurd. It is, if you have a running nose or a headache or sinus, some medical advertisements, they show if you take that, take that pill, and it is not only that your running nose will stop running, but you will start running with joy. That is just taking one pill will solve all the problems of life.
So, the advertisements themselves demonstrate a significant level of, a significant expectation that people will believe what they see. And actually speaking, I remember many companies, often their advertising budget is more than their production budget. Whatever is the amount they spend on producing the product, much more they spend on marketing it.
And this fact indicates that marketing works. That means that if people are shown the same thing again and again and again and again, then they start believing it. Hitler poisoned the whole of Germany during the around 10 years that he was ruling Germany against Jews, against gipsies, and against practically the rest of the whole world with the idea that the Nazis, they are the original Aryans, and they were the race from which the whole world had generated originally.
And now, they were meant to rule the whole world. All the other races were degenerated races, and they needed to be removed. Now, this had no basis in history.
And this has no basis in practical military strength. It’s just no way Germany would conquer the whole world. But people just believed it.
And they either watched on or they actively participated in the heartless killing of 12 million people. 12 million people were killed in the Holocaust, 6 million Jews, and 6 million others. And all this Hitler had a functional slogan.
What are the slogans? He says, speak a lie, loud enough, bold enough, and long enough. And people will believe it to be the truth. Speak a lie, loud enough, long enough, and bold enough.
The Bhagavatam in the 12th canto, when talking about the predictions of Kali Yuga, describes one characteristic of Kali Yuga is satyatvam dharshtyam eva hi. Dharshtya is audacity and satya is truth. So, the audacious will be considered truthful.
Anyone who can be audacious in speaking whatever they want to speak, if they speak it, people will believe it. So, I talked about this in two ways, from the way, from the perspective of receivers of the propaganda and from the promoters of the propaganda, that there is this understanding, the same thing is told again and again, no matter how counter factual it is, no matter how absurd it is from the point of view of factual accuracy, still people will believe it. And today, if you consider the way advertisements work, there is a whole systematic and extremely intelligent way of influencing people’s minds.
Till the turn of the 20th century, actually today, advertisements are so common, so ubiquitous, ubiquitous means practically everywhere in the world, we may not be able to conceive that around 200 to 300 years ago, before the industrial revolution took place, there were no advertisements at all. The only advertising was some roadsellers going along the road shouting, do you want some juice, do you want some fruits, do you want this, do you want that, that is all. So, after the mass production of goods started, then the marketing of the goods became a big industry and that required advertising.
But till the turn of the 20th century, most advertisements focused on the functional value of the product, what this product will do for you. So, if somebody wants a car, you can move fast, you can move smoothly, you can move conveniently. So, basically, the functional utility of the product was described while advertising.
Then around the turn of the 20th century and thereafter, one of the most influential, of course, in many ways negatively influential, one of the most influential thinkers was a psychologist Sigmund Freud. He is called by many as the father of modern psychology, especially of a branch of psychology called psychotherapy. So, he had this theory that people have two sides, a rational side and an irrational side or an emotional side.
And he said, actually, these two sides are not equally distributed. The rational faculty is like a small canoe. Canoe is not even a boat.
Canoe is basically a set of log of woods which are joined together from which anyone can fall off into a river or a water body, whichever it is. So, the rational faculty is like the canoe. And the irrational passions, they are like a vast wild ocean with huge waves in it.
And people may purport, people may intend to act rationally. But if the irrational passions are aroused, then the rationality will be thrown aside and people will act in ways that they themselves will wonder afterwards, how did I do that? So, if we consider this point from the Vedic perspective, the canoe of rationality is like sattva guna, the mode of goodness. And the ocean of irrational passions, that is like rajo guna and tamo guna.
So, when Prabhupada, when he went to America, when he saw the American coastline, so, the first thing he said is, he did not talk about, oh, how impressive the skyscrapers are, how fast these cars are. He said, rajas tamo gunera sabaiyachal. All these people are covered by the modes of passion and ignorance.
So, now, his point was that we can, Sigmund Freud s point is a valid point, was that although we may educate people, appeal to their rational intelligence, but if their irrational passions are aroused, then they will be swamped by those passions and they will act irrationally. Now, he spoke with ideas primarily as a cautionary note. He explained because he spoke this soon after the First World War took place.
And at that time, it was practically the biggest war in recent history. And his mania, the way the war took place, kind of plot on that happened. And he said that, this is why do wars happen like this? Why do people just go mad and kill each other in millions? This is because of that issue of irrational passions.
Now, these irrational, this idea that people’s irrational passions are stronger than their rational intelligence, that was picked up by the advertising industry. They felt that if we want people to buy our products, then if we tell them just the functional utilities of the product, then what are we doing? We are appealing to their rational intelligence. But if we can trigger their emotions, we can trigger their passions, then we can captivate them far more forcefully.
And one of the most dramatic and disastrous demonstrations of this power of advertising channel for activating people’s irrational passions took place in 1929. And it was orchestrated by the tobacco industry. By the end of the 1920s, the tobacco industry had more or less reached a peak in its marketing, in its selling of products.
Especially in America, all the young men who had enough money to smoke, were already smoking. And at that time, because of the effect, the influence of big business on the scientific research universities, the harmful effects of tobacco had been suppressed. So, people thought of tobacco, of smoking cigarettes, especially as a fashion statement.
So, now, this was a fashion statement primarily for men. And at that time, when they were facing the saturation of their market, the tobacco industry had a brainwave. They said, 50% of humanity is not smoking.
So, how to get women to smoke? At that time, smoking a cigarette was seen as essentially a masculine symbol. So, the cultural taboos were also there against smoking for women. So, how do you get women to smoke? So, they have the American Independence Day parade, on Broadway in New York as well as other places.
So, during the parade in 1929, the tobacco giants, they got some of the most popular female icons of those times, Bollywood actresses, singers, musicians, and other such people. They had all of them marching along in this parade. And at the most visible points in the parade, they all flipped out from their purses, long thin cigarettes, sleekly designed to appear distinctively different from the male cigarettes.
And they all lit it and started smoking. And literally dozens and dozens of the biggest VIPs were all smoking. And it was such a photogenic opportunity.
Everybody was capturing with the media. And these female icons were told, what are you doing? Says, we are lighting the torches of freedom. Now, that was the time when the suffragette movement was gaining momentum.
There was a perception that, oh, women have been controlled by men for so many centuries. And now women are becoming free. They are exerting their rights.
And by triggering that emotional passion for freedom, within less than half a decade, literally millions of women started smoking. It was only after a decade or so that the harmful effects of smoking started becoming public. And then especially the harmful effects for women, and all the more so the harmful effects of women who are pregnant of smoking, and they smoke while pregnancy, on them as well as on their babies, all that became public later on.
By that time, literally millions had been hooked up. So by triggering people’s passion for women’s passion for freedom, the obvious rational question, how does lighting a cigarette lead to freedom? That was just swept aside. Nobody asked that question.
We may say, how is how can somebody be so absent? Oh, okay, if you want to smoke, say that there is some pleasure in smoking, what pleasure is there, God knows. But even if there is some pleasure to call cigarette smoking as a torch of freedom, it is by no stretch of imagination is it reality. But somehow, because it is brought about an emotional connection.
So people just ripped away, especially women were ripped away by that, swept away by that emotion. So today, the advertising industry works largely on these subliminal messages. Subliminal means below the surface, sublime is above, subliminal is below.
So in communication, the advertisements are showing some things. But while they are showing some things, there are 100 other details, which are very carefully customised. So as to attract people’s minds and to get them to purchase, to purchase things.
So actually, there is coming to our topic, there is a very systematic multi-billion dollar attempt to increase our faith in industry. So now it is not that everybody who’s in this industry is a dirty bad guy with a sinister agenda. No, they themselves may not realise what they are part of.
And in some cases, advertisements can be good if it makes people aware of certain services that are useful for them. But in many cases, advertisements are meant primarily for triggering desires among people. Now a slogan in advertising is that who is a good advertiser? One who can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.
That means that the evil genius of advertising is to make us feel that we need more than our life, the things that we don’t need at all. So many products that are made, they are made in such a way there is brand obsolescence. So a brand is produced and before that brand, people just when the brand is produced, it is marketed.
See, every time a company makes a brand, whether it is a cell phone, whether it is a car or whether it is a TV or whatever gadget is it, within six months or one year or two years, they bring something with great bigger features. And then they sell that. And then after six months or after one year, they sell a new product.
Now, if all the money that they spent in promoting a particular brand, if they use it all in doing research, they could get one brand out with all the features that are going to get out in the next 10 years. But they won’t do that. Because this brand obsolescence means the whole consumer economy runs on the fuel of customer dissatisfaction.
The whole consumer economy would stop if the consumers became satisfied. So, the consumer dissatisfaction is essential for this consumer economy to run. Now, the consumer economy is only one part of the economy.
And it is today one of the most visible parts of the economy and it runs on consumer dissatisfaction. And the whole purpose of advertisement is in one sense to create dissatisfaction, to create dissatisfaction. So, people’s life story today can be in many ways summarised in just three words, WWS.
What is W? First W is work, eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, 14 hours, 16 hours, work, work, work. And then after we come back from work, we are tired, we are bored, we are frustrated, we want some relief. So, then turn on TV, watch, watch, watch.
Now, if you watch a TV, if there is a three-hour movie that is produced. Now, whatever is the budget, whatever the money that is spent for a three-hour movie, within that three-hour movie, there might be just some 10 advertisements each of this of one minute or maybe 20 advertisements. Actually speaking, if you see the money that is spent on those 20 advertisements each of one minute, the total 20 minutes, that is often several times more than the money that is spent for the three-hour movie.
Why? Because the movie is largely meant to be watched for entertainment. But the advertisements, they are meant to get people to do something, buy this. So, what happens when we watch, when we watch movies, when we watch TV programmes, usually they show people with lots of wealth, lots of gadgets, they show people who look very good and all these trigger desires.
And oh, they show that watch, they show that mobile, they show that car, I want to purchase that. So, from watch, what happens when you watch, you get so many desires. So, then you have to shop, shop.
Now, when you go for shop, now when people go for shopping, actually, there is a whole form of addiction called as shopaholism. So, shopaholism means people are rich. So, my friend Hari Parshad Prabhu.
Prabhu, would you like to speak something? So, Hari Parshad Prabhu is a Sanskrit scholar. And can you get one more chair? You can speak something after a few minutes. Please.
I just saw your address. Okay. No, if you are going to stay, you can speak for a few minutes.
If you have to leave then. I will be here for a few minutes. No, please come.
Can I sit here? No, no, no, please get a chair. Please get a chair. So nice to see you.
I didn’t know you were here. So, Hari Parshad Prabhu is a Sanskrit scholar. He is also a Sanskrit poet.
He writes poetry in Sanskrit. And he is one of my very close friends. And also he is, so I am, earlier I was introduced as a, as a questions answerer.
So, he is the answerer of my questions. So, he is also a very extensive researcher. And he is actually connected with Juhu Temple itself.
This is the place where he was introduced to Krishna Consciousness. And this is where he comes regularly and his classes also. Please.
Slightly higher than. Doesn’t matter. So, I am speaking on the topic of how to lose our faith in illusion.
So, I will just continue that. Do you remember where I was? Shopaholism. Shopaholism.
So, shopaholism is a compulsive urge to shop. There is, people just feel that, just, oh, I want to buy that, I want to buy that, I want to buy that. So, in the past, we had grocery shops, where we go with a list.
Look, I want this, I want this, I want this. And then the people just give it to us. They take it out from that shop, this corner, that corner and give it to us.
But now we have supermarkets, where instead of somebody just giving out, we walk through it. Now, when we walk through it means, we can see one product, but we can see a hundred other products, which we had, which we had not planned to purchase at all. Maybe I can take this also.
Maybe I can take that also. And then, you can’t carry, oh, we’ll give you a trolley. Oh, I don’t have money.
Oh, you can have a credit card. So, what happens is, shopping becomes an addiction. It’s a shop till you drop.
So, overall, it’s shop, shop, shop. Now, what happens when you shop, you can’t shop for free. So, you need to earn.
And earning means, you do work. So, then it comes to work more and work more. And after you do work more, you’re more tired.
And they come back and watch more TV. And they watch more TV and they get more desires. And when they get more desires, they shop more.
So, it is work, watch, shop. These are practically the main defining activities of people’s life. How do they spend their primary time, even when they’re at home with their family? Now, they are united in illusion.
They’re unitedly sitting together watching some form of illusion that is being depicted on the digital screen. Of course, nowadays, people are not even united in illusion. That is, people fight.
No, I want to watch this programme. I want to watch that programme. I want to watch that programme.
And people sometimes have, you know, their own TVs. So, three, four people have three, four different TVs. One of my friends, he had gone to America and he had another American friend who was very wealthy.
So, he told, he went to his friend’s house and brought his friend, his sister, his mother and his father. They had four rooms and they had four TVs. And curiously, all four of them were watching the same programme.
But on separate TVs. So, the whole idea is that people get consumed by illusion. So, work, watch, shop, WWS, World Wide Stupidity.
So, this is how, actually, there is a systematic propaganda to increase our faith in illusion. Normally, we use the word faith in terms of something higher, something God or scripture. But every single activity requires faith.
So, I often explain, people ask, what is faith? So, the Bhagavad Gita defines faith as Shraddha Mayo Vyam Purusha, Yoish Shraddha Saevasa. In 17.3, it says that we are made of our faith, Shraddha Mayo Vyam Purusha and Yoish Shraddha Saevasa. As is your faith, so you will become.
So, faith is the substance of our being. Our faith is who we are, and our faith determines what we will become. So, every single person has faith.
And what we have faith in, that determines who we will become. So, if we have faith that, say, drinking will make me happy, that happiness lies at the bottom of a bottle of alcohol. So, that’s what, when we phrase it this way, it seems absurd.
It seems laughable. But actually, when the irrational passions are triggered, this sort of rational thinking doesn’t come into the picture. And this gets, yes, I drink this, I drink that.
And suppose, a person is addicted to drinking. And that person thinks, actually, last time I took some cheap wine. That didn’t give me pleasure.
Tomorrow, I’ll take some expensive whisky. That will give me pleasure. Or I’ll take champagne.
That will give me pleasure. Or, now, this notion is, if we again think from the rational perspective, this idea is like, see, the craving for any desire. We may not be alcoholics, but we have our own cravings, whatever they are.
The craving for a desire, the craving for some object, that makes us think that if I get that object, I’ll become happy. But, actually, that dissatisfaction is caused by our own psychological disposition. Krishna describes in the Bhagavad Gita in the 14th chapter, the 11th verse, the 12th verse, he says that greed is a characteristic of the mode of passion.
This means that as long as we are in the mode of passion, we will be greedy. What we have, what we don’t have doesn’t matter. I think that because, you know, actually, he’s not my friend, he’s my rival.
He has got that new cell phone. I don’t have that. And that’s why I’m dissatisfied.
Even if I get that cell phone, the passionate mind will find something else to be dissatisfied about. It will not allow us to stay satisfied. So, here the point is, our faith in illusion means that we think that pleasure lies out there somewhere.
And what we think out there, that thing may change. I get this, but something else comes up, something else comes up, something else comes up, and that’s how we stay, we stay consumed by illusion. And the way to come out of this, as I said, faith is the essence of our being.
And the way to question and to reduce our faith in illusion is to direct our faith somewhere else. Now, the faith in Krishna and faith in Krishna’s message, it comes when we hear that message in the association of those who have faith in that message. But while hearing it in their association also, Krishna is saying that, bhogeshwarakasaktanam tayaparikchitsam yavasayatmikabhuti samadhau navidhiyate.
In 2.44, he says that even if we are on the spiritual path, if we are too infatuated by worldly pleasures and by hopes of worldly opulence, bhoganeshwarya, then that fix in intelligence doesn’t come. That focus on Krishna doesn’t come. When the focus on Krishna doesn’t come, then we can’t experience the higher happiness of Krishna.
So, to give an example of this, suppose a mother finds that her baby is sick. And when the mother finds that the baby is sick, she takes the baby to a doctor. And the doctor now examines the baby, but gives the prescription not to the baby, gives the prescription to the mother.
And tells her to take this medicine, this medicine tomorrow afternoon. And then the doctor and the mother and the baby leave the hospital. So, now, making sure that the child takes the medicine is the mother’s responsibility.
If the mother just takes the medicine out of the bottle and puts it near the mother’s baby’s mouth, and the baby shakes a bit, looking here, looking there, and doesn’t take the medicine, all the medicine spills on the face and goes down, the mother thinks, I have done my duty, I have given the medicine. Like this, the mother may give a medicine for a whole year, and the child will still stay sick. So, the mother has to catch hold of the child’s face and make sure that the medicine goes inside.
So, in this metaphor, the doctor is like the guru. The restless child is like the monk. The intelligence is like the mother.
And the remembrance of Krishna is the medicine. Pivam manah Shri Krishna Divya Akshidam. Kulshikar Maharaj in the Mahabharata also says that, O mind, please drink the medicine of the holy name.
So, this is a medicine, but he says, who has to drink it? The mind has to drink it. Because the mind is sick. And who will make the mind drink it? It is the middle ages.
Evam buddhe parambudhva samsthavyatmanamatma. In the Gita 3.4, Krishna says that, with your intelligence, evam buddhe parambudhva, understand, know, samsthavyatmanamatma, know that you are spiritual and therefore situate yourself in the spiritual path. So, the intelligence is very important.
And so, when we come in the association of devotees, and when we hear about Krishna, at that time, the devotees or the spiritual master, they are not going to be there with us 24 hours. They are going to be there with us for some time. And at that time, what they speak is to be heard by the intelligence.
And with that understanding and conviction, the intelligence has to make sure that the mind takes the medicine. That means when we study scripture, when we chant the holy names, when you take darshan of the deities, when you do Krishna conscious activities, if we do them as just rituals to be done with, then the remembrance of Krishna and the experience of Krishna doesn’t happen. And then we feel, oh, let this get over, other things are more enjoyable.
I just want to finish this off and do the other things. So, I may be reading scripture, but if my mind is wandering here and there, so it’s like the mother is putting the medicine, but the child’s mouth is not there with you. The medicine doesn’t go inside.
So, in the practise of Krishna bhakti, to the extent we absorb ourselves in Krishna, whatever we do, we were able to do a bhakti, we chant a few rounds, we chant four rounds, we were able to come to the temple once a week, once a fortnight, come to the association of devotees once a week or twice a week or whatever, once in a fortnight, whatever, whatever opportunity we have for connection with Krishna, if we absorb ourselves in that, if we don’t let ourselves be distracted at that time, now the distraction will be there. But it is not necessary that we have to be distracted. It’s like the child is going to be restless.
Child may not want to take the medicine, but the mother has the capacity to hold the child tightly and make sure that the medicine goes in the child’s mouth. So, like that, our mind is going to be restless. yato yato nishchati manas chanchalamastiram tatas tato niyam yaitar atmanyeho shanaye In 6.26, Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, wherever and whenever the mind wanders, bring it back under the control of the self.
And previous verse, he said, do this with your intelligence. shanayi shanayi rupame buddhya vritti gurudaya, buddhya vritti gurudaya, sustained by conviction. And this is what we, when we come for any programme, we come for camps, at that time we will be here, we need to carry this with us.
We will come and we will experience something wonderful. But after we go back, we feel, I’ll conclude with one point. One devotee just asked me a question on my website.
He said, sometimes when we go for yatras, when we go for camps, we feel so blissful. Don’t feel any agitation because of lust, because of greed, because of anger, we feel so wonderful. But after we come back, you know, we feel as if everything has gone back to square one.
So is it that we advance and when we go to yatra, then we regress back when we again come back from yatras? What is actually happening? So it is not that we are advancing and regressing. It is just that in the association of devotees, there is a spiritual momentum, which takes us further than where we actually are, and which gives us an advanced glimpse, a glimpse of what lies in advance for us. And that glimpse will no longer be there when that additional momentum is not there.
But in that association, whatever we experience, if we cherish that, yes, this makes so much sense, this is so wonderful. But this is how I want to be in my life. If we cherish those memories, and remember that if I keep practising bhakti, this is how my life will be.
It is not like that right now. And it is not likely to change overnight. But I want to advance.
This is what will come to me. With that we move forward. So I will talk about how we develop our faith in Krishna.
There are many, many aspects to this. But pertinent with our discussion about the focus on the search for pleasure, if we cherish the devotional memories that we have, whatever spiritual experiences we have had, whatever moments of illumination, insight we have had. So basically our spiritual experiences, when we talk about it, they can be in terms of emotions.
Sometimes just in some, when we’re dancing in some kirtan, when we see some darshan, when we hear some sweet bhajans or whatever, at that time we feel an emotional heart, we feel something very wonderful. Or sometimes we read some verse, sometimes we hear some class and it’s like a lightning bolt hits and illuminates us. So it can be the spiritual experiences at our level, they can be either in terms of spiritual emotions or they can be in terms of spiritual insights.
Whichever they may be, if we cherish them, we maybe remember them by writing them down. Or in other ways, we cultivate that memory. And then later on, when we feel down, at that time, we go back and remember that.
You see, our mind does this instinctively for sense gratification. Instinctively, if somebody’s watching TV, and then they find the programme so boring. And the mind doesn’t let us at that time think, I just throw away this TV, or throw away this remote and get lost.
No, last time you saw that programme that was very boring. And then maybe I’ll just search one more channel, I’ll search one more channel, one more channel. Or maybe if I’m surfing some websites, maybe one more site, one more site, maybe I’ll find something interesting, maybe I’ll find something good, maybe I’ll find something good.
And in that way, most of the time in TV channels, browsing or web surfing, the excitement is more in the search than in the capture. Because actually, there’s nothing much to capture. But just the hope, maybe something more will come, something more will come.
So, whatever little pleasure we may experience in the past, the mind just goes back to that, and thinks that pleasure will come. Now, actually, again, if we experience with our, if we evaluate with our rational intelligence, we’ll find that whatever pleasure the mind is getting so excited about, in the past you had enjoyed. In the past also, it was not all that enjoyable.
But the mind is saying, Oh, it was so enjoyable at that time, maybe now I’ll enjoy again. And in that way, we get caught more and more. So, what the mind does instinctively, with respect to worldly pleasures, we need to do conscientiously with respect to spiritual pleasures.
So, that cultivation of memory, cultivation of those memories, recollection of those experiences, those insights, that will give us the conviction, yes, this is not just the right thing to do, it’s the best thing to do. And that way, if we pursue Krishna consciousness, if we pursue the path of bhakti, we will march onwards steadily. And as Bhagavad Gita says, joyfully perform.
So, actually, Prabhupada would say, chant Hare Krishna and be happy. Now, sometimes we may think that this is causal. You chant Hare Krishna and you will become happy.
Yes, there is a causal statement over there. But it is also a parallel statement. That means, these are there are two instructions, chant Hare Krishna and be happy.
It is not that it is not that just by chanting Hare Krishna, automatically one will become happy. Yes, we will become happy, but it will take time. Till that time, what do we have to do? We have to cultivate happiness, cultivate satisfaction.
Atho vayi kavayo nityam bhaktin paramaya mudha vasudeve bhagvati kurvanti atma prasadine. In the Bhagavatam, second canto, in 23rd verse of the first chapter, first canto, second chapter, 23rd verse, it says that. Therefore, Atho vayi kavayo nityam, the great sages, from a long, long time, nityam, eternal, bhaktin paramaya mudha, they perform bhakti very joyfully.
Bhaktin paramaya mudha vasudeve bhagvati, unto that Lord Vasudev, kurvanti atma prasadine, that which gives pleasure to the Atma. So here, it is saying that they perform joyfully the bhakti that gives joy. So is joy in the process or is it in the product? It is in both.
But in the product, of course, it is full, mature, rich, but in the process, sometimes there will be joy, sometimes there will be no joy. But at that time, we have to push ourselves onwards. We are grateful, we are joyful for the fact, not that I am joyful now, but for the fact that I am on the path to joyfulness.
Just like a patient who has been in great pain and has now got a medicine, which works, by which the pain has decreased significantly, but not entirely. So even when there are relapses of pain, at that time, the patient remembers. It is not that at that time, when I am feeling pain, I can laugh and be cheerful.
But at the very least, I can still be grateful. I had such a terrible disease, at least I know what the cure is and I am on the path to recovery. So like that, chant Hare Krishna and be happy means, we chant Hare Krishna and cultivate happiness, knowing that even if I don’t feel happy right now, I am on the path to happiness.
So if we are, if we give in to the dissatisfaction, which comes from the faith in illusion, then our faith in reality will not develop and when the faith in reality doesn’t develop, then we can’t march onwards towards Krishna. So by the practise of bhakti, if we focus on Krishna, then our faith in the reality, faith in Krishna will develop and by that, the faith in illusion will be increasingly and irreversibly dissipated. So by regular practise of bhakti, especially by regular hearing, bhakti becomes established in the heart, Srila Prabhupada translated as, as an irrevocable fact.
So that comes by the gradual practise of bhakti. And although that may seem very far away, if you just keep practising now, it will happen gradually. So I will summarise, I spoke in three main points about how we have faith in illusion, what increases our faith in illusion and how we can counter that faith.
So for how we have faith in illusion, I talked about the fair and handsome eye, there is an insult to both male and female intelligence. And then with respect to how our faith in illusion increases, I talked about Freud’s analysis of the rationality being like a small canon and the irrational passions being like a vast turbulent ocean. That’s like sattva gunas influence being very tiny below the wild influence of vraja gunas and tamogas.
And so whereas in the 19th century, advertisements focused on appealing to people’s rational intelligence, this product is so useful, this can do this, this can do that. But in the 20th century, the advertisements focused on triggering people’s irrational passions. And I give the example of the torch of freedom campaign, where women were induced to smoke, by making them believe that smoking was lighting the torch of freedom.
So similarly, many advertisements today actually trigger the irrational passions enormously. And I talked about how for many companies, the production budget is less than the promotion budget and the advertising. So they have this brand obsolescence plan, so that they can keep the customers dissatisfied.
And the customer dissatisfaction becomes the driving fuel for the consumer economy. And we discussed WWS. What is WWS? Work, Watch and Shop.
And then we can conclude it. We talked about how the faith in illusion can be countered by developing faith in Krishna. And faith in Krishna comes by using our intelligence to focus our mind in the process of bhakti.
Just as the medicine which is given by the doctor, it has to be taken by the child, which has to be ensured by the mother. So the mother is like the intelligence, the mind is like the child. And for developing our faith in Krishna, specifically with respect to this experiential context, we discussed how whatever intellectual insights we have, or whatever emotional experiences we have, both of them, we can treasure.
What the mind does instinctively for gratificatory memories, we need to do conscientiously for devotional memories. And by doing that, we will get the inspiration to move on even in our low times. Yes, this is the experience that lies ahead of me.
Even if I’m not experiencing it now, I experienced something higher earlier. And I will experience in the future if I can see. So chant Hare Krishna, I’m happy, happy.
It’s not just a causal instruction. It is also a parallel instruction. Not just one instruction, but two instructions.
That because a person may not be cured, but the person at least is on the path to your recovery with the proper treatment, person will be joyful about that. Similarly, even if we have problems, even if our desires seem to come back, even if impurities come in, just stay happy that yes, I am on the path to purification, I am on the path of satisfaction. And that will keep us joyfully engaged in bhakti.
And thus we can progress and increase our faith in Krishna and gradually destroy our faith in those things that are separate from Krishna that increase our emotions. So thank you very much.