Presenting bhakti to people with diverse natures and needs, The Monk’s Podcast 141 with Jayananda Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna, Jai Anand Prabhu.
Welcome to the Monks Podcast. It’s nice to have you here. So, we have been in touch by email for quite some time, several years now, although we didn’t meet any time.
But I think almost a decade or so, five, six years ago, we discussed about the concept of people’s values and how they shape their receptivity to Krishna Consciousness. Since then, as I have travelled across the world, I’ve realised that people are so dramatically different. And that idea of values in terms of who they are and how they see the world, that affects them enormously.
So, I thought we could discuss about that topic today, how people’s values affect their receptivity toward Krishna Consciousness or Bhakti spirituality specifically. Okay. So, maybe you could start with a little bit about your spiritual journey, how you are introduced to Krishna Consciousness, and then how you came upon the system of this idea of these values, how you stumbled upon this.
Yeah. So, my journey started when I read a book about yoga. And then a few years later, I kind of decided that I’m going to spend now a lot of time on this.
So, I started with the more like modern type of yoga, like doing asana practise, breathing practises. This was 1990s? Yeah, early 1990s. And where was this? Sweden or where? That was in Finland.
Finland. Okay. So, you have your base mostly in Europe in different places.
You’re born and brought up there. I live in Sweden. This is the third time I live in Sweden, but I spent more years in Finland than in Sweden, but travel quite much between these two countries.
Okay. So, I started with more physically orientated yoga, but I got quite interested. Oh, this is great.
So, I need to find out more about this. And then I tried out different methods of meditation. I also explored chanting, mahamantra, essentially to prove a friend of mine that he’s wrong, that this is not such a big deal.
Really? Okay. And then after that experiment, I just concluded that, oh, I just came across the best yoga method of all. So, ever since I’ve been doing that, then after my initial kind of shock that how can this be so effective? Then I wanted to find out more and started reading books about bhakti yoga.
And eventually I came to Prabhupada’s books. Oh, so you started chanting before you were introduced to Prabhupada’s books? I may have read a few sentences, but I really had no idea what I’m doing. Oh, okay.
Yeah. So, anyway, so after that, I got very much into the practise of bhakti yoga, all the while doing the hatha yoga type of practises as well. I was studying at the university at the time, but I was already losing interest in what I was studying at that time.
And then after a while, I moved into ashram. I spent, I think, five years in a full-time ashram environment in Finland, Denmark and India. After which I moved out, went back to university, changed my major to comparative religion.
Then I started a family and founded my own yoga school and like that. So I have read your book on yoga. So currently that is your main focus of both profession and outreach yoga? Yes, particularly today.
I did work full time at the university for eight years, but that stopped last year. So with research in the field of sociology of religion, where I did my PhD dissertation as well. Okay.
So you said you went back to education for comparative religion, but then you went to sociology of religion? Yeah, comparative religion is broad, so you can specialise in different ways. So I mentioned sociology of religion because then that became my specialisation in my doctoral dissertation. That’s good.
So it seems you had quite a journey. So from your ashram environment to currently do yoga, you must have interacted with a lot of people in the contemporary world, in the Western world, mainly Europe now. So how do you find their receptivity to bhakti spirituality or in general to Indian spirituality? Or what is it that attracts them and what is it that obstructs them, especially in today’s world? I think as anyone knows, yoga is hugely popular today.
They’re talking about probably hundreds of millions of practitioners around the globe. So it’s big. But bhakti, how is the popularity of bhakti and receptivity towards bhakti? My own perception is it depends very much on how it’s presented, because people are really different.
So some people are very much into group-based religion. You want to belong to a group and to follow a tradition, probably something which you were brought up with, which tends to be the mainstream in the society where you live. So that’s one approach.
And then the bhakti is found in the religion and that’s okay. But then there’s a whole other type of approach, which is emphasising individual piety more than what is going on and how much I’m part of a group or not. So my perception is that particular people who are in the yoga field, they are quite much into this individual personal practise and not so much into belonging to a group.
So these are two very distinct, distinctly different approaches to spirituality. And then just a minute. When you say that there are two distinct approaches.
So on one side, I do hear a lot that people feel there is an increasing problem of loneliness in the Western world. And one of the major reasons people want to come to a spiritual path is because they want an extended sense of belonging. They want a sense of belonging and they want to be part of a community.
So are you saying that those who want to practise individual piety are different from this demographic? Or even when they want a belonging, they want some space? Yeah, that’s how I would put it. So I think pretty much everyone has a need for belonging. But when we consider the different needs that we have, they are hierarchically arranged and the hierarchy doesn’t necessarily look similar for each person.
So for one person, the belonging might be the predominant need, whereas for another one, the need for independence might be stronger. And for the person for whom need of independence is stronger than the need of belonging to a group, conforming to the social norms is less important. So I’m not saying that there are people who don’t have a need for social interaction.
But how it manifests, like how much you are willing to give up your sense of independence, some people want to maintain that. And I don’t see that as opposed to bhakti at all. There’s a statement by Prabhupāda that Krishna consciousness movement is meant for, I don’t remember, word by word, by cultivating independently thoughtful people.
So it sounds to me like a person who has a brahminical tendency at the same time can have an interest in bhakti. But that’s just a very different kind of orientation. So this is a very interesting point.
In one sense, is it individual psychology right from birth or is it something which also grows with age? Because I’ve seen more and more that even in the brahmacharya ashram, as devotees grow older, they feel the need for a little bit more space. So when they’re 20, you can just stay together in dormitory with many others, but at 40, it becomes difficult. So is this ingrained psychophysical nature or is it something ingrained or is it something which also naturally evolves with age? I would say from a basic Vedic point of view, the psychology is formed by the saṃskāras we carry with us from previous lifetimes.
So from that point of view, because saṃskāras manifest not necessarily all at once. For instance, sexuality is a good example. It’s dormant until one comes to a certain age.
So likewise, many of the tendencies you might have may be somewhat hidden, dormant, and then they become more and more manifest as time goes on. So yogic psychology point of view to this is a little different from Western psychology. Because we are not growing up in a particular environment by accident.
It’s a result also of our karma. So karma in the form of our saṃskāras, the kind of environment where we grow up, is embedded. But from practical point of view, it might just look like it’s a good explanation that depending on how and where we grow up, our environment where we grow up does seem to affect quite much into how we become later on.
But then from Vedantic point of view, there is no contradiction because it’s based on what we did previously. So that’s part of our deep psychology. Okay.
So irrespective of how we got where we are, each of us is somewhere. And where we are shapes our receptivity to spirituality in general, specifically to bhakti spirituality. So do you feel that, so how do you think, is our presentation of bhakti more community centred, more less suited for those who want to be, need their space? So I assume you mean particularly the presentation of ISKCON in most places.
Yes. I haven’t seen that many places. My experiences are from a very limited number of places.
But whatever I have seen, it seems to me that it works very well for a particular audience. So I would not say there’s any need to change that at all. But outside of that, there could be another kind of presentation, which could be just as true to the tradition and philosophy and practises, but orientated towards a very different kind of audience.
So it seems to me that the presentation as it is done today, at least in the places what I have seen, is quite much favouring people who are into the group orientated spirituality, if you will. And as such, then I think it may be difficult for people who value independence more to grasp. That was my experience, by the way, when I opened my own yoga school in Finland nearly 20 years ago.
And then I put on my website that part of the programme I’ll be teaching bhakti yoga as well. But when I wrote that, I didn’t have any clear idea how I’m going to do that. So it wasn’t in the weekly schedule at the outset.
And then at one point, I remember within the span of one week, five different people contacted me either by phone call or by writing email that, when is this bhakti yoga going to start? And then I figured out that I guess I need to start it now. So then I started a weekly class where I was teaching people basic ideas of Bhagavad Gita and chanting and kirtan. And I’ve been doing it ever since.
And I noticed that people are really different. Some people are like really everything. They don’t have any problem going to the temple and interacting with the devotees and doing the full thing.
Whereas others, they’re very happy by doing their private practise. But then when they encounter what you would call regular devotees, it seems like there’s almost these two kinds of people don’t understand one another, almost like they are speaking a different language. Interesting.
So, you know, you’re highlighting a different point over here. I have also noticed that the challenge of outreach in the West is becoming increasingly evident because our demographics are in the West, especially in America, are becoming quite homogeneously Indian. So there is a matter of concern.
But often the issue of concern is said to be cultural, that we present ourselves as say Indian culture or Vedic culture or whatever word we use for it. So you are saying that apart from the cultural factors, there could be psychological factors with respect to individual, would you use the word values or orientation or nature, whatever you use. So our presentation is geared for a particular kind of people.
Yes. So I was experiencing this firsthand when I was doing my own small scale outreach. I was noticing that there’s something that I don’t have any problem personally interacting in both worlds because I’ve been doing it since day one.
So I feel at home in the what you would call normal contemporary yoga world. And then I feel at home in the temple environment. So I can interact with both groups.
But I can see that it seems that sometimes it just doesn’t match. And why is that? And I was wondering about that. And when I started doing my PhD work, then I came across a possible explanation, which is exactly related to what you just said, that people’s psychological profiles are just really different.
And it’s not that there’s one wrong and one right profile, but they are just different and based on the profile, then one is attracted to different kind of environment and presentation and how the spirituality manifests in terms of setting and personal interactions and maybe institutional or non-institutional or hierarchical or more equal and like that. So, you know, this brings us to a more fundamental question. The way I grew up in spirituality, in bhakti, it was almost like independence was considered to be a dirty word.
In fact, it is our desire for independence that has brought us to the material world. That is what will keep us in the material world. But then over time, I realised that it is Krishna who has given us free will.
So the free will is not the problem. It is the misuse of the free will that is the problem. And each of us, if we have free will, we will also naturally use it according to our individuality.
So then I learned about, even in the devotee circle, I learned about the differentiation between autonomy and independence. If we want to use words which are, say, because sometimes in a particular tradition, particular words get a negative connotation. And once you start using those words, then it becomes disconcerting.
Yeah. So that a personal sense of autonomy is something which is required for every individual. And I’ve seen also devotees that if they are always depending on someone else for instructions about how to grow or what to do, and if their guide goes away or the guide is inaccessible, and then they just feel completely lost.
It’s like the end of their spiritual life. So I also noticed that there can be unhealthy level of dependence also. Yes.
So you’re saying, if I understand right, that for people who, so there can be different people who require different levels of independence or different levels of autonomy, if you want to use that word. And our presentation is geared more towards people who don’t have a high need for autonomy. Is that what you’re saying? Maybe that’s part of it.
Because when I read Prabhupada’s books and commentaries, so I come across both kinds of statements. There’s a lot of emphasis on free will. I did my master’s work about the wheel of time in the theology of Hare Krishna movement.
And the basic idea about the wheel of time is that time is all-powerful, and you, practically speaking, eternally rotate within the cycle of birth and death, whether it’s on an individual level or then you can take societal level. Societies go through cycles, and then there’s yuga cycles, cosmic cycles, Brahma’s life, Maha Vishnu is breathing in and out. So everything is mind-blowing.
And within that frame, when we consider how Srila Prabhupada presents our position towards time, what I found out, he’s emphasising very much both individual agency, one should really take charge of one’s own spiritual evolution, and then also societal level, he’s talking a lot about the need to do something positive, to change the world towards the better, rather than just waiting for the yuga cycle to turn to the next. And then even in the most largest scale of cycle, the Brahma’s day, we find this that Lord Brahma is taking birth as Haridas Thakura and making further spiritual advancement, if you will. I hope I’m not offending Lord Brahma by saying this, but arguably taking part in Mahaprabhu’s pastimes is a very fortunate situation.
Anyway, so it came across in many places that rather than just waiting for the time to take its course, Srila Prabhupada is emphasising quite much that we need to do something about it, whether it’s about our personal spiritual advancement or about changing the world. So when I read it, I find both kinds of statements. But I think there might be something about it, at least when I started my own ashram experience back then.
At that time, giving up one’s independent thinking was very much emphasised, like one should not speculate, one should just accept whatever the higher authority is telling you to do, which then brings with it the problem, what if there are more than one authority giving contradictory instructions or what if the authority is giving an instruction which is not in accordance with Shastra and these kind of things. So it seems that one cannot really ever totally evade the responsibility of using one’s own intellect. True.
So even the cosmic cycle, you say that, I never thought of it from that perspective that although it’s Kali Yuga, it’s age of degradation, but still we have Lord Chaitanya descending to this age and he is, in one sense, providing us facility to counter the default trends of the age. So in that sense, even his very descent is a testimony to the presence of human agency. So if there were no human agency, then even the Lord couldn’t do anything if we didn’t have anything.
So that’s a good point. So let’s, I have also recognised independent, Prabhupada also made statement like he wanted devotees to be independently thoughtful. So we could say that some people need more space, some people need less space.
In fact, I also read that in the Upanishadic spirituality, in one sense was more individual based in the sense that the sages, they would wander from place to place and most of the sages would be usually alone. It was more of when Buddhism started coming in, that Buddhism, one of the principles of Buddhism was Sangham Sharanam Gacchami, that take shelter of the Sangha, the association. So from that point, the communal monkhood or communal, we are talking about celibacy, or renunciation, the communal monkhood started, communal renunciation started coming up more and more.
Then that came back to the Hindu tradition and Shankaracharya formed the Akhadas. So, and then of course in the modern Vaishnavism, we have had more of communal or ashram centred spirituality. So we do see in the Vedic texts, sometimes there are sages, a sage has one’s own hermitage, even if the sage is a celibate or is married and their hermitage seems to be quite isolated at one place.
And there are others, like Vyasadev, his hermitage seems to be quite isolated at one place. But it is described that when Vishwamitra, or before he is Vishwamitra, before he is a king, when Kaushik, he goes to meet Valmiki. Valmiki is the head of the ashram.
And he is the chief priest or hermit or whatever. And there are many others with him. So it seems that even in Ram’s journey through the forest, he meets different sages.
And some sages are living in a large community of sages. And some sages, Sarbhag, Sarbhang and Dikshna, they are all alone. And they are practising their spirituality.
So it seems both are there. Bhardwaj is a sage who seems to have a lot of associates with him. But others seem to be alone.
So it seems that both are there as precedent in the tradition. Yeah, so it seems like it’s bona fide that there are different kinds of people living in spiritually elevated circles. I was just reading Katha Upanisad recently.
And what I found amazing is when Nachiketa first speaks back to his father for a good reason. But anyway, that’s already something. And then father donates him to death.
Now he’s waiting for Yamaraja to come back. I don’t know where he is, but he’s not there. So he needs to sit and wait for a couple of days.
And then suddenly Yamaraja is like, okay, so how can I pacify you? Can I offer you some boons? And then he’s asking his famous questions. And then Yamaraja is trying to talk him out of it. Like, okay, the third question is that’s something like he’s testing him.
But finally, he’s saying that a teacher who has a student like you, I’m just speaking in my own words, is very fortunate. In other words, he has a one-to-one discussion between teacher and student. And teacher is having very much appreciation to the fact that the student is coming up with these very difficult and brilliant questions.
So it really doesn’t sound like an authoritarian system where somebody said, this is what you should do and don’t argue back. But rather the mutual appreciation about the good spiritually elevating this person. True.
So when we talk about, when we talk about this discussion, you know, there might be certain amount of geographical issues also. India is a highly populated country. So in Bhagavad Gita I think he was the first person who started a mission or like organised structure.
And many of his were in cities. So even from a perspective of organising a new movement, at least initially a more community centred spirituality would be more easily organisable. So maybe it is that over a period of time a tradition naturally evolves into giving space, into having some, having space for people who need their own space.
While also having those who can work with the organisation and be in its centre in a literal sense or a physical sense. Yes, I think both are needed. Definitely.
So I’m not suggesting at all to close down the ashrams or community based programmes. Just that there could be so many other programmes. There probably are.
In fact, I know there are many other kinds of programmes, but because there are so many, many kinds of different people and everyone should, in my opinion, at least to have a chance to practise spirituality approach. Krishna developed bhakti in whatever way is most suitable for them rather than trying to fit everyone in the same pattern. So, yeah.
So true. And so that means, so what does this mean practically that such people may not want to say come for a regular Sunday programme, may not want to come for a regular morning programme, may themselves be serious spiritually, but they may not be serious in terms of what might be considered or what are often considered as parameters of spiritual seriousness or spiritual commitment. Well, if social visibility is considered the parameter, then not.
But OK, one of the things I came across when I was doing my thesis was because I was studying non-religiousness, people who are non-religious who are even opposed to religion in an organised setting. And then I read a lot of literature on that atheistic arguments and then counter arguments. So one of the points that is coming across from the atheistic side is that religion is related to being judgemental towards those who don’t belong to your group.
And sometimes in the extreme cases, even leading to violent encounters between those who believe differently and so on. So this is the argument that look, religion is the source of judgement or at least is correlated with judgement. So meaning religion is bad.
We need to get rid of it. So then there are good scholars who have taken this challenge seriously and see what social science actually teaches us on this topic. And it turns out that these two very different or basically two distinct orientations towards religion and one is group based and one is orientated towards individual piety.
So one person could, in fact, be both. These are not mutually exclusive, but when we take large numbers of people, then it turns out that some people are more tilting to this side and others to this side. And according to all the studies that have been done, there is no correlation with judgemental attitudes with the individual piety orientation.
And it kind of makes sense, because if your point is that your primary motivation for becoming religious or spiritual is to belong to a group, then to me it makes perfect sense that then you feel your group is best. And those who belong to another group may challenge the safety or the position of your group. Whereas if somebody’s identity and basic motivation is my private practise, then shouldn’t really bother me or him or her what the other person is doing, because it’s not about to which group I belong.
So you are saying in one sense, encouraging spirituality, which is not so group identities, a group centre can also decrease, you could say, intergroup conflicts or intergroup prejudices. When you said there is no correlation means, but then no correlation between what? Yeah, so there is a correlation. If spirituality is primarily based on group belonging, then there is a correlation with judgemental attitudes towards those who don’t belong to the group.
That makes common sense in one, that makes obvious sense. Yeah. OK, OK.
So it’s a common sense point, but the atheistic argument is that all religion is bad and then the need arises, hey, let’s make a distinction. There are different kinds of religion, religiosities and spiritualities. And they are not all the same.
Yeah, so now. So even those who are what you’re saying that individual piety and group group piety, is this more or less similar to the frame of introverts and extroverts? And I think the first person talk about them or is it something different? It would be tempting to look at it from that point of view. But I have to say, I don’t know.
I don’t know if they are related or not. Since why I’m raising this doubt is because I know many people who have very serious personal sadhana and who are not into belonging to a group, but they don’t come across as very introvert at all. They could be very outgoing, but still valuing their personal independence and their primary practise is very private.
So. Truth be told, I don’t know the answer to this question. It would be something which would certainly be interesting to spend 10 years studying full time.
Oh, God. OK, so it’s not so introversion and extroversion are more related with how we relate with people or how many people can we relate with introverts. Introverts, they also like people, but they want, the idea is they want people to interact with people in moderation.
And with some interruption, with some space in between. Whereas extroverts want to interact more and more with people. So that frame is more in terms of interaction with people, whereas this you are saying is more in terms of spiritual practise per se.
It need not be in terms of the way people interact with each other. No, exactly. It’s how you view spirituality.
So I don’t know if you have heard about this distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity. But extrinsic religiosity means that you are interested in religion because of the things that it provides. It provides you friends, maybe safety.
Maybe you get food, whatever. Maybe you get social position because of being religious. Doesn’t mean that you are not, you don’t have a spiritual interest, but it just seems that the other things are more important.
So you are basically doing religion because of the other things that it gives you. So that’s extrinsic religiosity. So intrinsic is the opposite of that.
You are doing religion spiritually for its own sake, because you want to find God. You want to realise yourself. You want to do the right thing no matter what.
And you want to follow the sacred texts because they are sacred. Not because if I behave in this way, then I get the appreciation from others. So when we keep this distinction in mind that it’s possible to approach spiritual and religion from extrinsic reasons and intrinsic reasons, then a group-based orientation would be more related to the extrinsic.
Now, you know, this seems to go into an uncomfortable zone. Because we say that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu came to teach Sankirtan. And he actually himself went and encouraged others to go out and dance in public.
So within this categorisation, would that be called an extrinsic spirituality? Of course, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also had very intense personal sadhana as we see in his Antya Leela especially. So, but it does seem externally manifesting one’s spirituality seems to be a significant part of our tradition. Yes, and I would never say that Sankirtan, you know, congregational chanting the holy names would be extrinsic.
That’s the most intrinsic thing in existence. I think that’s the deepest level of establishing communion between the individual soul and the Supreme. My point was that if you are doing Sankirtan primarily because you think you get social points out of it, that’s what I’m talking about.
I’m not talking about participating in Kirtan per se, but why you are doing it. So the why, the extrinsic reason would be that the primary reason for you to go to a Kirtan and sing together with others is not because you like Kirtan. And it’s not because you like glorifying the Supreme Lord together with others.
But because you feel that this is my way of getting the sense of belonging and acceptance from others. You see the difference? You could do basically the same thing. You could do your private practise or you could do a group based practise.
But the reasons for you to do it could be totally different in both cases. So this brings me back to my experience. Let’s come back to this point, you know.
So I appreciate the extrinsic and intrinsic spirituality. We definitely would like to go toward intrinsic spirituality. In fact, these words, the very way the words are phrased is that we don’t need extrinsic self-worth.
We should cultivate intrinsic self-worth. So intrinsic is generally better. But I’m uncomfortable with the implication that, say, a community based spirituality is intrinsically extrinsic, if I may put it that way.
So I don’t think that is your implication, isn’t it? No, it’s not. My perception is that people have different kinds of needs. And it seems to me that it doesn’t matter what your primary so-called material needs are.
Then those can be dovetailed in spirituality. So I find it fascinating that in Bhagavad Gita, the one chapter which is mostly focused on really the most private kind of practise, namely the sixth chapter, which is talking about the Ashtanga Yoga. So that’s the chapter where you find verses 16 and 17, which seem to be talking about that one cannot be successful in this very private and personal project without taking into full consideration all of one’s so-called material needs.
OK, so it’s interesting. So normally that verse is used to talk about regulating our needs. But what you’re saying is that it also includes not too little and not too much.
Too little would be that I have a sense of belonging to a group. And if I totally neglect that in the name of spiritual, let’s take some yoga books and they tell me that I should live alone in a cave. And what if I have a real need for social interaction? So then that would be too little for that person.
Makes sense. So now is there any analysis of the demographic? Is it like 50-50% is both or is it in general people who want community-based spirituality are relatively larger in number and people who want individual-based spirituality? What are the words you use, shorthand words for these two? I think I used group-orientated contra personal piety-orientated. Group-orientated versus personal piety-orientated.
When you use the word piety, you’re using that not in the sense of religious piety, you’re using it in the sense of personal practise. So I have to say that these studies are primarily done with Abrahamic religions. So it would be interesting to see how it works with Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism.
But the point is valid because the argument is also raised. When you say these studies, are you referring to any particular studies and the studies which talk about people having these two kinds of natures? Is that what you’re talking about? I was talking about the response to the atheistic argument that religion seems to automatically correlate or mean that one is judgemental towards those who don’t belong to one’s group. Okay.
And then that argument is raised within a conversation which is primarily based on religion and theism means Abrahamic religion, Abrahamic theism. It’s not always spelled out that clearly, but when you read the books of the new atheist authors like Dawkins and Hitchens and Sam Harris, by the way, I’m not recommending anyone to read them. But if you happen to have that kind of interest, which I had because I was doing my PhD on that field, then it seems very much the argumentation is based on what’s wrong with Christianity and Islam and Judaism.
And even though it’s oftentimes framed as all religion, but when you study in depth the arguments, it nearly always seems like the basic specimen. What it means to be religious is Christianity and Islam primarily. So when the argument that religion is correlated with judgemental attitudes and what to speak of violent behaviour, then I think it’s defensible that the response to that comes by studying the same Abrahamic religions.
And in that setting, it turns out that you can separate these two distinctly different kind of approaches towards being religious. So one person, the personal piety would mean that for that person, how religion is manifest is one is spending a lot of time in prayer, maybe reading the Bible or Koran and stuff like that. And for the other person, I’m a little bit exaggerating now, but it would mean something like going to the church on Sunday because everyone else is there.
Oh, OK. True. So you could also say that even within the Christianity and Christianity, also a little bit of a mystic tradition of people who the mystic sages, the desert masters.
And so they have that side. Sorry. Yes, it has that side.
So it does seem that there has throughout history across traditions, there have been some people who have practised spirituality more in isolation. And so, isn’t it to some extent natural for an organisation to cater more to those who need the organisation? Yes, of course. It’s totally natural.
So then that would mean that all that we can do as that naturally those who want a group kind of spirituality, they will be the people who would be, who would even want to grow up in positions of institutional leadership and they would want to be visible. It could be because of intrinsic spirituality also. It doesn’t have to be extrinsic.
But what could be done is that those who feel the need for practising a more secluded kind of spirituality, they shouldn’t be made to feel guilty. Yeah, I would agree. And also, the argument should go both ways.
Because sometimes I can see also the opposite phenomenon in the yoga world that everyone is doing their own practise. And then they are coming together and together saying how they are not into organised religion and how bad it is and how bad their experience with it were. And then I would like to add as a scholar of religion that, but you know what, it’s very good for some people.
Some people really feel nourished in that kind of environment. So just the fact that you are not into it doesn’t mean that it’s not good for anyone. Superb.
Yeah, good point. Very good point. You know, this is one of the challenges of being liberal, that sometimes those people who are liberal are very illiberal toward those who are not liberal.
I want, I am going to be non-judgemental and I become very judgemental toward anyone who is not non-judgemental. Yeah, exactly. It’s a very good balancing point.
And if we consider even from the point of your history, religion as a social phenomenon wouldn’t have survived if it had not nourished people in some way. So the very fact that when I’m talking about religion, I’m talking about as a group phenomenon. So whether it is the huge cathedrals in Catholicism, in Christendom or whether the temples and the holy places in India, it has survived because it was providing some nourishment to people.
Oh, definitely. And most of all, I think it nourishes the soul. And when the soul gets nourished, then one tends to feel good about it.
It doesn’t matter how you interpret it. You might interpret it as, oh, I just saw a very beautiful religious building or I heard a very beautiful religious song. And even a totally atheistic or agnostic person might appreciate those experiences.
But what about if it’s the case that the reason for feeling nourished is because it nourishes one on the deepest possible level. So I find it fascinating because in my study, I studied non-religious activists, people who are into organisations who take the public role of criticising or taking a critical stance towards the position of religion in society. So amongst those people, I could find very different orientations.
Just as amongst religious people, we can find different orientations. So I wanted to find out whether it’s possible to find something similar amongst those who reject religion. And sure enough, one of the main three groups that I discovered was what I call experientially spiritual non-religious people, which is like in terms of beliefs, they tend to reject religious beliefs, at least those that they know of, which means basically Christianity.
So despite that, I spoke to many people who recounted very nourishing, inspiring experiences in a religious setting, like being in church, hearing religious music, admiring the architecture, doing meditation, doing yoga. Just that this intellectual framework, that’s what we are going to reject. But experientially, it seems to be okay.
Whereas then there are other non-religious who just reject everything. They are not into experiences. It’s all bad.
But there’s a segment with quite much into the experiential side to it, which just makes me think that maybe it’s because the self somehow gets nourished in the deepest possible level. Anyway, it’s amazing. I saw once, I lived through and read the whole book.
I saw at the airport a book called Religion for Atheists. So the premise of that book was that religion provides certain psychological and emotional supports and even social supports that atheism itself can’t provide. So in that sense, in one sense, actually if you look at history also, in the French Revolution happened.
French Revolution was not just political, it was aggressively atheistic also. But then they created, I think, a temple to the reason. So they, in a sense, replicated the rituals.
Even I think in communism, they would make statues of Lenin. And they had so many statues which were eventually melted away and used as metal after communism fell. Yeah, today there are not many, but there are some Atheist Sunday services where people congregate and sing songs together.
Can we have the good things of religion without religion kind of thing? It’s fascinating. It’s a very real need. So that’s one point which I find also interesting.
Like, okay, if anyone says that here’s a list of things where we can say that religion is bad, then it’s okay. But then you cannot disregard the list where religion is good. It tends to be very one-sided when somebody is raising this kind of critical point.
So it’s true, religiosity brings many benefits. And so sometimes one could argue it’s good to be religious, even if you don’t want to be religious in many ways, just because of the material benefits that it provides. There is a book called Handbook of Religion and Health, which I think was published by Cambridge.
And they have documented about 3000 published studies across the world. It is a mega, what they call meta-study, compilation of all these studies. And they talked about physical health parameters and religious affiliation, not affiliation, but commitment.
It’s not just somebody says I’m a Christian, but they go to a church. So every week or something like that. And physical health parameters and mental health parameters.
And they found a remarkably positive correlation that those who were religiously committed, they would, they suffered less from depression and stress and suicidal urges and addiction and even less chances of heart attacks, faster recovery from strokes and heart attacks. And overall, it seemed that they lived about 11 years longer than their atheist counterparts. So that author, I think I read this book, one of the authors who quotes is Patrick Glenn, he says that if a Sigmund Freud has said that religion is an illusion, then it is an illusion we should all desire to be, just for the sake of our physical and emotional health, mental health.
So that’s interesting. Just going back to your another point before you move ahead, that somebody may be rationally very averse to religion, but experientially they may be drawn to its forms. That’s what you said.
So this also made this, this also actually has resonated with me that, that sometimes we overemphasise people’s intellectual conceptions or even their beliefs, because people are multidimensional. And we might say this person is a Mayavadi, this person is a, but they might have some impersonalist ideas, but that is not the core of their spirituality. They may just be as happy in a Krishna temple as they might be in a Advaitic meditation centre.
And happy means they are actually feeling some spiritual connect. So I had thought of this in terms of ideological conceptions, but it can go further even in terms of beliefs. So then what to speak of, so the whole idea is we cannot reduce spirituality to any one parameter.
It need not be ideological, intellectual conceptions, it need not be beliefs, and it certainly need not be one’s attraction or one’s presence or absence in say communal settings. Yeah, exactly. Spirituality is definitely multidimensional.
And even if you want to study it sociologically, then to limit it into only the domain of beliefs doesn’t do justice to it at all. So, one should minimally consider at least the beliefs, but then also practise, meaning what one actually does. And then third, belonging.
So who one is hanging out with, if one is formally affiliated in a group, or even if you’re not formally affiliated, but in a survey, you would say, okay, but I’m Hindu and or I’m Muslim, so that you have an identity. So, all of these are part of spirituality, but they are different dimensions. So, sometimes, particularly when we are talking about conversion, I don’t know why is it so important to emphasise the conversion.
I suspect it has something to do with the Christian emphasis, and Islam is also an emphasis on conversion, that you need to have the right kind of beliefs and ideas, so that you are a true Christian or true whatever. But then, when we consider South Asian spirituality, well, at least it seems to me that there’s much more about what one does. And I’m not saying beliefs are not important.
They are, but they don’t tell the whole story. And particularly when we are talking about transformation, deep transformation in our worldviews, and these are very demanding processes. So, the intellectual part of us could really be the last part of us that gets it.
Everything else is already transformed. I’m already doing this practise. I’m already hanging out with these people.
I’m already eating prasadam. And then, finally, the Buddha realises, wait a minute, I’m in the process of becoming a devotee of Krishna. It could be that way.
And if that is the case, then I don’t really see a point for a person like that to emphasise that first you need to verbalise your commitment before you can do anything else. Verbalise your commitment. Yeah, it’s a good way of putting it.
So, in general, if you see, Hinduism is, Hinduism, if you look at it from a historical perspective, it was quite decentralised or diffused. There is no one founder. There is no one sacred text that is accepted by everyone.
There is no one historical date from which it can be said to have begun. So, in that sense, so we are not, when you are talking about conversion, we are talking more in terms of externalised or verbalised profession of one’s faith. Yeah.
So, that is not. So, yeah. So, you talk about three components.
One is one’s beliefs, one’s practises. And what are the third thing you said? Third was? Belonging, the social component. So, you’re differentiating practises from belonging.
Yes. Okay. Okay.
I think, yeah, that’s true. So, in our context, we could say we study the Bhagavad Gita and we accept the teachings of the Gita, practise the chanting. Belonging is say we go regularly for the Sunday programmes or whatever.
Like that. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. You see, when we study country wise, how spirituality and religion takes place in different countries. So, I live in Sweden now.
And according to some studies, this is at least one of the least religious countries in the world. Because when you go out and interview people and what are your beliefs, and it turns out that the first thing you hear is not exactly what is written in the Bible. But at the same time, more than 50% of the population are members of the Church of Sweden.
So, my question is, what do you make out of that? Why are they members of the church if they don’t believe in any of its teachings? So, the point being that in Sweden, if you only analyse religiosity in terms of beliefs, and disregard the perhaps equally important sense of belonging. And it turns out that more than half the people, population still feels it’s important to belong to the predominant religious institution in the country. So, it leaves out the very important components of the picture.
So, let me re-articulate what you said is that. So, if people are asked about their personal beliefs, a large number of people may say that they are atheists. But more than 50% people, they say they are affiliated with the church or they actually go to the church.
That belonging, how do we quantify or assess that belonging? Oh, it’s a formal membership. Oh, so the formal membership. Okay.
Okay. Yeah. That’s interesting.
So, I’m not saying that, I don’t, it’s going too far to say that half of the Swedes are atheists. Because atheism, to be an atheist, that’s also a question of identity. So, there are quite a, most people who don’t believe in God don’t want to identify as atheists, because they think it’s as an identity tag is too heavy, too negative or something.
Oh, really? Even now, even in the Western world also? Yes. Oh, okay. So, basically, you can go to any place and study how many people don’t believe in God.
That number is much bigger than those who say, I am an atheist. Okay. So, that is because people fear that atheists will be judged and persecuted.
Or is it just that, I also heard this, that nowadays there is this tendency for people called nuns, that I don’t want to be identified with the religion, but I don’t want to be identified with atheism also. I think they have another word used for this, apatheism, that I just don’t care for all this business. Yeah, that’s a good word.
Yeah. Interesting. By the way, interestingly enough, then there’s always a small percentage of atheists who do believe in God.
Really? Yeah. Why would they call themselves atheists then? Probably because they want to differentiate themselves from the predominant form of religion in that society. So, I don’t believe in that God, but I believe in some kind of impersonal divinity or something like that.
It’s a small percentage, but it is there. It’s discovered every time when you study the group of people who self-identify as atheists, then what it means to them not to believe in God usually means a very specific kind of God. For most of them, it does mean that no gods, but for some, it means that they are rejecting a particular conception, but not necessarily all of them.
So, once you go from this broad taxonomical categories down to individual psychologies, things become quite, you could say, either puzzlingly complex or fascinatingly complex. Yeah, people are really fascinating and complex entities. True.
So now, so basically, till now we discussed about this aspect of the group and individual. And I feel that even within our movement, slowly, at least there are some people who are recognising that those who want their own space, it’s not, if somebody doesn’t come to the temple, that doesn’t mean that they have fallen in Maya. If somebody doesn’t, so it’s also that recognition is gradually coming.
So I would say there are some healthy changes happening. And do you see that happening in your part of the ISKCON world also, or it’s a slow process? The particular place, I live in Anvik village. It’s a village of devotees.
And this is, I don’t know, this is a particularly wonderful place. So here the mood is very accepting and welcoming and accommodating. So I don’t know if it’s representative of this corner of the world at large.
Yeah. Happy to hear this. Yeah.
So now, are there any other categories also that are these kind of nuanced factors that may affect people’s receptivity towards bhakti spirituality? One is, of course, the group and individual orientations. Are there any other factors that you also observed? Yes. One thing that I observed is, I mean, I observed it first without really understanding what’s going on.
But later on, when I studied the sociology of religion, I discovered a possible explanation. So one, one, one interesting distinction is distinction between material and post material values. So material values means material.
So when I use the same as spiritual or what does it mean post material? This is not a very common word I heard. Yeah, go ahead, please. Yeah.
So first with values. Yeah. When I’m talking about values in terms of social psychological motivating factors, I’m not really saying I’m not really speaking about what people might verbalise that my value is this or that.
But they are more like on the subconscious level felt needs. So material values put me that material things are important. One has a need for safety and need for regular employment and need for economical stability, stuff like that.
Now, who doesn’t? The thing is here that once those needs are satisfied, meaning if one grew up in a safe environment with, I’m not saying necessarily wealthy, but your needs, basic needs were fulfilled. You had clothes, you had food, you had enough of everything. Then that opens the door for emphasising something else, being interested in something else as a primary thing in your life.
So it seems like when we are talking about large groups of people on individual level, anything could happen. But when we’re talking about like on society level, then it seems like as long as there’s a lack in terms of basic material necessities, then that will be the primary focus. So Western world has undergone what’s sometimes called a silent revolution.
It’s silent because nobody started screaming and shouting. There was intergenerational change in values. So after the war, after the Second World War, material values were predominant.
But when those people grew up and started families and were economically well off, their children grew up in a total different kind of environment where the basic needs were already like that was not an issue. Which means that they are much more into this self exploration, finding one’s own what is important for me rather than first thinking, where will I get food into the table? So post material doesn’t necessarily mean spiritual. It just means that you are not primarily concerned about your material necessities.
Fascinating. And I also read about this, that nowadays when people look for jobs, especially in the Western world, they’re not just looking to get the highest paying job. They also want to know what will give me job satisfaction, what will help me do something meaningful in life.
That’s an indicator of post material values. Yes. Besides, I would say it’s also an indicator that varnasama dharma is a correct perception of reality, because one part of it is one will be happy when one is acting according to one’s nature.
And studies show that it’s really bad for mental health to be unemployed because you are not fulfilling your need to do something meaningful. But even worse than that is to do a work which you hate. So it means that even if you get.
Yeah. My general understanding was that say the idle mind is a devil’s workshop. So better do something than nothing.
But what you’re saying, especially if your job you hate, that’s worse than no job, is it? Yeah. The point being that, of course, if the option is that I’m going hungry, then it’s obviously better to do something which you don’t necessarily like in order to get food into your table. But once the basic needs are met, then after a certain point, getting like 10 times more salary will not be enough to compensate the fact that you are doing something which you don’t love.
Wow. Yeah. You know, you can also see that when I also interact with people, you can see some people are passionate about their professions, not passionate in the rajasic kind of way, passionate in the sense that they love what they’re doing.
And then some people for them, it’s OK. They don’t hate it, but it’s just their chore for them. It’s just like another thing.
It’s a thing I have to do in my life. So we could say that somebody who is passionate about their profession, they have been fortunate enough to find a profession that broadly aligns with their swadharma. Exactly.
That’s how I tend to look at it. It’s a very fortunate situation. And it’s very unfortunate if it turns the other way around, that you are constantly doing something which is totally at odds with your own nature.
OK. So that could also be one reason, say, why a traditional Christian spirituality, which to some extent was fear based, that God will punish you if you don’t obey him or God will provide you if you obey him. That whole fear, desire kind of thing that will become irrelevant because that is no longer the primary concern of people.
Yeah, exactly. So when the focus is on fulfilling material values, then it makes sense to promote religion that this is a means to get rid of suffering or this is a good way of generating wealth. So Krishna is listing four kinds of people who approach him.
So one way of reading it, there could be a dividing line between material and post-material values in that list. Really? Artho and Artharthi, that is stressed and the needy, they are material. And inquisitive and intellectual, the Jnanis, the Jigyasu, they are beautiful.
It’s not a one to one match, but I’m just throwing this idea that at least as long as you’re primarily doing religion and spirituality because you are suffering, then that’s definitely in the realm of material values. So the point coming back to outreach and how to present spirituality, Krishna consciousness, bhakti to new people, then I find this is very important to take into consideration. So if you’re speaking to an audience who is primarily interested in post-material values and all of your speech is about that, this is the only way of getting rid of suffering, then people are like, what’s he talking about? Because I’m not suffering.
And then you try to make an argument. You just don’t see it. You are suffering.
And why not emphasise that spiritual life can be an adventure? Because that’s what suppose the person or the audience is primarily interested in finding something exciting in life because the basic material needs are fulfilled. That’s amazing. So you could say that at one level, the world is always Dukkha layer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Dukkha is equally evident for everyone and is equal in the same forms.
So for somebody who is starving or is worried about the next meal or is worried about the next political attack, which may devastate their village or their country. So for them, it’s a very different category of experience than for somebody who’s living in a peaceful environment with a good job, with a good family. Yeah.
Because in one case, it’s extremely, extremely tangible. And in another case, it’s much more subtle. So for somebody who is basically materially happy, then the argument could be raised that when we are talking about suffering, that this material world is a place of suffering.
Then one is to explain that there are different kinds of suffering and happiness is another kind of suffering because material happiness is temporary and it’s much less intense than a spiritual happiness. Okay. True.
It could also be said that at that stage, at the stage of post material values, a person’s primary priority may not simply be, we could say, or we could tell them their concern is not so much of avoiding misery, but then they may be seeking pleasure, but there could be levels of pleasure. There could be more meaningful pleasures, more, as you said, adventurous pleasures. And yeah, you know, in New Zealand, I gave a class and there I, one of the concluding sentences I spoke is that, that if we pull ourselves together, our mind and senses are pulling us all in different directions.
It just spontaneously came out. If we could all put our mind and senses together and focus on one thing, then there is just imagine how much more we can achieve in life, how much better we can become. And discovering that, discovering what all, how good we can become, how much good we can do by putting ourselves together, that could be our life’s greatest adventure.
And several people came after that and spoke, that was the most memorable part of the talk for them. So I never thought about it that way. Yeah.
In one sense, from a material perspective, New Zealand is considered to be a reasonably comfortable country. I think that applies to most of the Western world. So, yeah.
So telling them that they are Dukhaalayam and even telling them, emphasising you are not the body or the soul, it just doesn’t resonate so much. So it’s beautiful. So again, are you saying that ISKCON’s presentation of Bhakti spirituality is more for people with material values, not post material values? Because Prabhupada’s first candidates or first people who got attracted to hippies, I think they would be the quintessential example of people driven by post material values, isn’t it? Yes.
Correct. So, yeah. So is our presentation already not geared for toward them? Or how did Prabhupada’s presentation attract them if it was not geared for post material values? Capturing the attention in very many different ways.
It almost doesn’t matter what you are interested in. There’s something for you. So.
But to me, it seems that one of the examples that we could learn from him is the ability to go to a foreign, different environment and make a presentation and somehow make it in a way that captures the attention of that particular audience in a way that works. So all I’m saying is that whoever is doing outreach needs to consider the audience, what kind of audience it is. So I would really not want to make a general statement about the style of outreach, how ISKCON is doing it, because I don’t really know.
I have seen only a very limited part of it. I think that’s a fairly good point. Let’s focus on not what we are doing right or wrong, but we could focus more on what, in one sense, we could do to best reach the audience that exists right now in the world.
Yes. So one point you made about reaching people with post material values is that we don’t focus on material miseries so much or the miserable nature of the world as on the adventurous or exploratory nature of spirituality. Yes.
So we can get into specifics about what kind of things we are talking about when we are talking about post material values. So let me list just a few. So one thing is stimulation.
So you want to have an exciting life. Then there’s another one, which is about self-direction. The need for autonomy, as you put it, can then be related to action.
I want to do my own thing independently. Or autonomy of thought is very important for one to develop one’s own ideas. Then you have the whole universalism segment.
It’s very important for one to be tolerant towards others, even if they have a different viewpoint. Another one would be concern for nature. So there are all sorts of things which fall within the realm of post material values.
In other words, when you are no longer primarily concerned about how will I survive the next year, then it turns out that there are quite a few things which could be interesting. So emphasising the spiritual life as an adventure would probably be the right thing to do for somebody who is into stimulation, that is looking for an exciting life. But then you could have a more brahminical kind of person who is into intellectual work, like a philosopher type.
And then you could just give a class on Upanishads. My God, you know, one thing struck me as you’re speaking, that this could be an entirely unexplored dimension of service attitude. If you’re really serving our audience, that serving our audience begins with, or one important part of serving our audience is to understand what their needs are, and then find out which aspect of Krishna consciousness will serve their purpose.
If you just consider Krishna Consciousness in a one zero package, Krishna Consciousness means hear classes, come to that morning programme, distribute books, go on Harinam. And we presented a whole package. Some people may be very comfortable with one aspect of the package and very uncomfortable with another aspect of the package.
Exactly. And the good news is, whatever I have seen, like Bhakti Yoga as it takes, as it’s presented in the form of Krishna Consciousness, what I have seen, nothing compares to that. It’s really like one stop shopping solution.
I mean, there’s nothing in the realm of spiritual life that you cannot address. And while all the while fully following the tradition, just consider the philosophy is so broad. I haven’t seen anything like that anywhere else.
So you’re saying that actually we have a one stop solution that you could say it is not a one size fit all solution, but it can be a one stop solution. Yeah, I would like to see it as a like a huge shopping centre with like seven, eight billion different shops. So every person has their own personal shop, but they are all owned by Krishna.
Beautiful. So I’m not saying I’m not suggesting my idea is not that we should or anyone should like trying to make compromise that it’s OK to sustain your material desires forever. But I think there are two points.
One is just how to capture the attention. And the second is the basic psychophysical nature, which if it changes, it changes really slowly. So the underlying psychological motivational profiles that we have, these tend to change really slowly.
So it’s not really constructive to try to change the person to fit in to an existing programme if it’s not a match, but rather keep that programme, but create another one for that profile. And this would, it would be significantly challenging if we are very organised and institutionalised. So it would mean, it could also mean we may need smaller communities or smaller groups of devotees coming together where people get to know each other better and you can have more custom fit things for people.
So, and this could go on in parallel with big temples and huge programmes because that also serves a need for some people. But forcing everyone to fit into a profile and saying that if somebody doesn’t fit into that profile, that then they have no, making them feel guilty and then practically making them go away from Krishna, that is not at all essential. Yeah.
Okay. Beautiful. You know, just going back a little bit, you said that people who are at almost diverse philosophical, diverse personal needs could be fulfilled.
And then you made this point about worldly desires. So when you talk about post material, it is not that people with post material, they don’t, it’s not that they don’t have material desires. It is just that concern with material needs does not dominate their minds or that does not primarily determine the life decisions.
Yeah. They have different kinds of material needs. Okay.
Yeah. In one sense. No.
And it seems to me that when you consider this underlying psychological profiles, everything can be expressed within the three modes. So, for instance, you could be security orientated, like conforming to group norms, feeling safe, having the basic needs fulfilled. That could be your primary issue, but you could still do it in a perfectly sattvic way and integrate that into a full dose of spiritual life.
But then another person who is more like post materially orientated, that person could totally do it in a very tamasic way. Let me seek stimulation and fill in the blanks. Or like you could seek stimulation in a very tamasic way or in a very sattvic way or rajasic way.
Beautiful. So many teachers giving different viewpoints on the same topic, sometimes disagreeing with one another in a harmonious way that you could just totally get into the world of developing your independent thought all the while fully following the tradition as well and being totally sattvic and spiritual in all sorts of ways. But then another person might also have the need for autonomous thinking and then just direct that into, I don’t know what, like how to commit crime very creatively.
Oh, okay. This is interesting. It’s almost like when we talk about a psychophysical nature, you can almost say that there are two layers to it.
There is one layer is like the set of tools we get by, as you said in the beginning, our past samskaras and everything, by past karma. And the second is the disposition by which we use those tools. So in one sense you could, we may not call such a person a Kshatriya, but a Kshatriya could also be in the mode of ignorance where a person is very violent, brutal.
So technically may not be a Kshatriya, but say Hitler was a Kshatriya, but he was completely in Tamoguna. So now, I don’t know, we can call a Brahmana in Tamoguna, an intellectual who goes about rationalising sense gratification and rationalising anti-spiritual values. We might say that there is an aspect of, there is just Tamasic.
They are teaching Tamasic teaching. They are spreading Tamasic values and Tamasic teachings. It’s fascinating.
So… What do you think about Jarasandha? Good example, imprisoning so many kings and planning to slaughter them to gain power. That’s clearly Tamasic. That really sounds like not a Sattvic kind of thing you would do.
Imprison 20,000 kings and then plan to perform the greatest human sacrifice in the history. True, perfectly true. So, that’s what when I went to the universities in America, I started going.
The first thing that struck to me from an Indian conservative Brahmachari background is that many people were dressed in such scanty clothes. But after that initial shock or agitation subsided, then it struck me that in some ways, I was more obsessed with their dress than they were with each other’s dresses. It was just a part of their life and some people who I would think by their very dress, they seem to be so, it is not just females alone, male, female, everyone.
I would think that they would be thinking of nothing except sense gratification. But sometimes during the class or during the talk, they would ask some of the most thoughtful questions. So, in that sense, we cannot presume.
So, somebody might be involved in sense gratification, assuming based on the way they are dressing. But even then they might be having questions about spirituality, they might be on a spiritual quest also. Yes.
So, now are there, you talked about two, three things, you talked about tolerance, about love for nature. So, are these what you are listing as postmodern values or not post material values? Post material, yeah. Okay.
I shifted the framework now from one scholar to another, but basically, yes. Okay. So, is there a list like that or what is relevant for us as devotees? I think love for nature, we can very easily, not very easily, but we can cater for it by talking about the environmental aspect of Bhoomi Devi and how our culture, just focus on Krishna himself is an eco-friendly God.
He lives close to nature. Yeah. I am in Goa, the eco-village where the major part of the appeal is the environmentally friendly living.
Yes, exactly. But really, when I look at, it doesn’t matter what profile one might have, I cannot really see that there wouldn’t be a way to spiritualise that, to dedicate that into Krishna’s service. I mean, isn’t that the central idea about yukta, vairagya, using what one has rather than trying to deny what one has first? I don’t know, maybe I’m totally lost, but it seems to me that, okay, it seems that some of the values are clearly more sattvic by their nature.
It’s interesting, now you’re using the word yukta-vairagya, the term, normally we talk of it in terms of external things. You can use technology, you can use cars and planes in Krishna’s service. But if you have the yukta-vairagya approach to even our personal character types or personal profiles and personal, what would be the word, endowments? Since our mind and samskaras, they are just as much part of prakriti as a hammer or a computer.
Beautiful. Yeah. Isn’t it? Just because they’re internal to us doesn’t mean they’re still part of prakriti.
Yeah, they’re not part of the soul. They’re external to the self. So, if we explore this dimension of serving people’s needs or providing those aspects of bhakti spirituality, which address their needs.
So, do we envision that people who connect this way will eventually adopt the full programme or some people may never adopt that? Yeah, I think it doesn’t matter what kind of presentation you have. Some people will adopt and more people will not adopt. If you follow Krishna’s statistics, it’s like, how much is it? Like one out of a million who goes all the way.
But the point is, the way I see it is, the important task is to figure out how to help a particular person take that person’s next step. Rather than thinking that how I can help this person to go all the way within the next three years. But focus on what’s the next step for that person and help that person to take that next step.
That’s usually not so difficult to figure out. So, once we start focussing on going all the way, then they feel too pressured and also feel disappointed if they’re not going all the way. In one sense, Bhaktivinoda Thakur at one place said that humility means to have no expectation from others.
So, that could be something which could apply in our outreach also. Don’t expect too much from people. Just let them take their steps.
The teacher or the outreacher obviously needs to have the vision what it means to go all the way. So that you can always help. Wherever somebody is, you can always try to help to elevate that person from where that person is.
And because people are in different places in their spiritual evolution, then you cannot really offer the same recipe for everyone. You know, I try to do some poetic or rhyming kind of translations of some Gita verses. I write in the Gita every day on gita.india.com. So, 4.11 where Krishna says, as all people surrender to me, I reward them.
Everybody is on my path. So, I had phrased it as, from your place, at your pace, access my grace. So, from your place at your pace.
I had just written it and I had talked about how Krishna allows himself to be accessible for those who are karma yogis, for those who are jnana yogis, for those who are ashtanga yogis. In fact, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita shows pathways for all of them to come to him. He doesn’t say that only bhakti yogis can come to him.
But what our discussion has revealed is that those pathways can actually expand far far more in terms of reaching out to people. That has been my perception, by the way. Because I’ve been teaching yoga and also part of that has been training teachers, people who want to start teaching.
And usually that group of people are much more receptive to philosophy and meditation and sattvic lifestyle than your general yogi. So, a few years ago, I started and finally systematically teach in Bhagavad Gita. Previously, I thought it’s like somehow, I don’t know, I felt it’s maybe too difficult.
But then I took the challenge and I have seen that it’s really important because it’s so easy to conceptualise spiritual practises. It’s something that is happening in a particular place, in a particular time. Maybe it’s asana practise or maybe it’s a mantra meditation, whatever it is.
But this is my spiritual practise and what I do the rest of the time is something else. Just seems to me that Bhagavad Gita is all about answering that question. What should I do throughout the day and even outside of my private spiritual practise? So, it’s very important.
And there are so many different approaches to different kinds of people. Okay. I’m just trying to connect what you said.
When you’re reaching out to teachers, those are yoga teachers, teaching yoga, especially. So, you found that they were more interested and more receptive than the average yoga practitioners to some extent. Was that what you’re saying? Or because I just didn’t connect.
So, you said one point was about you try to teach yoga. Then you start teaching philosophy, you start teaching Bhagavad Gita. So, how do you connect that with compartmentalisation? Yeah, I discovered that Bhagavad Gita is, as you said, it’s so broad.
It presents so many different tools. So, there are many different kinds of people. And the unifying factor might be that they agree that it’s important to have a daily spiritual practise.
But what do you do outside of that? To go all the way in spiritual life requires that ultimately you need to fill in all of your 24 hours a day. And so Bhagavad Gita gives almost unlimited, at least 700 different ideas about how to go about it. That’s beautiful.
Does it make sense? Yeah, perfect. In fact, here we could put it this way, that although in Krishna Consciousness, we do say that one should be always spiritual. And the idea was that, previously the idea was that you move into the temple and 24 hours you will be spiritual.
Because you will always be serving Krishna. But that is not practically possible or sustainable for most people. And then if we want people who are living in the world to move towards a more, to be more constantly spiritual, then we will have to in one sense expand the conception of spirituality for them.
It’s not that we are expanding, it’s rather we will have to show them a more expansive conception of spirituality. And that is there in the Gita itself. Yes.
Arjuna is not a full time devotee living in the temple. He is a person in the world. He is very busy as a responsible king.
Yeah, I get the feeling that one of his first arguments is, would it perhaps be better to be a full time devotee living in the temple? And then Krishna is saying, no, stay in the battlefield. Don’t do that. Oh, that’s beautiful.
That’s true. In one sense, the Gita is categorically against world renunciation. Isn’t it? It is.
It doesn’t condemn the path of renunciation, but it does categorically emphasise that the path of engagement in the world is much more preferable. Yeah. And you could also say that if you see in today’s world, even monks are engaged with the world.
Like I am on technology with you right now. So in one sense, it’s not so much about the paths, but it’s more about the roles that we are playing according to our dispositions. Yes.
Yes. So, you know, we have seen a very, maybe one last question and then we can conclude. Do you recommend devotees to read some books to understand the psychological profile of different people or just interacting with them and just listening to them helps us understand where they are coming from and what they would need? Yeah, I would not recommend to anyone to get into the academic study of sociology of religion.
It just happened to be my particular occupation and I found it interesting. But I think the basic ideas can be understood just by listening through this podcast and there’s no need to dwell deeper into that. At the same time, I think it might be good if some devotees who have that kind of inclination would specialise on that and they could then give consultation to others who don’t have time and interest to spend weeks and months and years studying it.
But the basic ideas are quite simple and I think just by interacting with people on a regular basis, one will notice what works and what doesn’t. Yeah. So just in one sense, you could say that transforming our interaction with people from like talking to them instead of that talking with them.
Yeah. That itself will help us understand them better. Yeah, having a conversation, learning to know the people and hearing what needs they have doesn’t mean we have to say that, yeah, I have a need to be drunk every Friday.
Okay, so you can hear it doesn’t mean you have to accept that that’s a good thing. But to hear and understand another person doesn’t really work if you at the outset already start by first giving a two hour speech that this is what you need to understand before we can have a conversation. Okay, that’s true.
In one sense, I met a devotee, I interacted with a devotee recently. He is very inspired. He is trying to research the one year Prabhupada was in America before his con started.
Oh. And he wants to, so there is a, Prabhupada stayed at Sally Agarwal’s place initially for one month and her reflections, Sally and Gopal Agarwal, she said that Swamiji was interested in everything American. You know, how the washing machine worked, how the vacuum cleaner worked, how we did this, how we did that.
So this devotee told me that I realised, I was wondering why is Prabhupada so interested in these things. Prabhupada didn’t come from America to learn how, come from India to America to learn how a vacuum cleaner works. But his understanding was that Prabhupada was trying to understand how American people think and function.
Yeah. And then he would be able to connect with them. So that’s why he said that that one year, what Prabhupada did during that one year, if you could meet more people and talk with them and learn from them, it could actually infuse our outreach with a more of a learning mood than a teaching mood.
Yeah. So, you know, that’s what he’s doing is echoing what you have shared over here. This is beautiful.
So should I try to summarise what we discussed or would you like to add some concluding words before or after? No, I’m happy to hear your summary. Okay. So today we discussed about broadly the topic of understanding people’s needs to share spirituality effectively with them.
And you talked about your experiences first as a spiritual seeker. Then how you found bhakti or mantra chanting which you tried to disprove turned out to be the best, most potent form of meditation for you. And then you lived in an ashram.
Now you are a yoga teacher. You did your academic studies also in sociology of religion. So based on that, I think we discussed two broad themes.
One is the group orientated spirituality and more of personal piety. Yeah. That is the first broad theme.
And people, there are people who for some people, they’re just not comfortable with the group orientated spirituality. And then they can be very serious. They can have strong spiritual sadhana.
But they would like to do it privately. And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re introverts. They may want to be with people and they’re comfortable with people.
But with respect to the spirituality, they want to be private. So it seems, we look back at our traditions also, that there are sages who lived in communal hermitages and others who lived alone. And in that connection, we also talked about the theme of independence.
That some people need, have a greater need for autonomy and others may have, may not have that much of a need. So Katha Upanishad, the question between the discussion there, whether the teacher appreciates, Oh, you’re asking such good and tough questions. That indicates an appreciation of, we could say, independent thoughtfulness of asking hard questions.
Not just accepting the authority for everything from the authority. So within bhakti, we have facility and usually the organisation would be a facility for people who, people whose need for autonomy is much lesser. And for, you could say, those who would not be comfortable with that situation, maybe a little bit on the borders of the organisational setup.
And this often, from our spiritual perspective, philosophical perspective, understand this comes from the samskaras. So we all bring a particular kind of psychological nature, we could say, orientation, which may become manifest at a particular time, just like sexual desires. They are there in small children also, but they become manifest at puberty.
So they may manifest at different times. And then with respect to this, rather than saying that we need to change anything, but rather those who don’t fit into the group orientated spirituality, that doesn’t mean that they should be made to feel guilty or rejected. And they can be given their own space to practise also.
And we talk about that somebody might be a part of group orientated spirituality because their values are extrinsic. That means they want to increase by attending like, by being present at a social roll call, they want to get some social prestige, you could say, or at least social worth. So that might not be a very healthy motive for spirituality.
But that doesn’t mean that everybody who is doing that is seeking extrinsic. So you made this good point that there are atheists who may also be drawn toward religion as an experience. And so people are complex and they have multiple dimensions.
And for some people, their intelligence may be the last part which comes towards spirituality. So they also can be given some pathways and atheists who say all of religion is bad, all of religion fosters dependence or fosters animosity or hatred toward others. But they are, they are oversimplifying what is a complex phenomena.
And this ethos of having a dislike or aversion towards others is more in those who identify with spirituality as group centred and less in those who are, those who have the personal piety as a value, less driving value. Then we discussed also about the practise of presenting spirituality in terms of post material values. So for those who are suffering because of the lack of basic material needs, the idea of the world being a distressful place can register.
But for those who have had sufficient comforts, sufficient basic needs, like you said, the world has gone a silent revolution. So then the material needs are not a primary concern. Then we have to spend a lot of time trying to prove to them that their experience of the world is wrong.
That they are actually unhappy when they feel that I am not unhappy. So instead of that, we try to present it how that spirituality can be an adventure. So if somebody wants exploration, then spirituality can be presented as an adventure.
And there is abundant scope for that. So in this, there are different aspects of this post material values. You said some somebody might be more intellectual in their aspects of philosophy that can be presented.
So there could be somebody who wants tolerance or love of nature. Those aspects could be highlighted. So we could say that our tradition is like a, you could say, it’s like a big supermall with almost 8 million, 8 billion shops, as many as there are human beings.
And everybody can be given, everybody can find what they need. So it is rather than simply trying to get everyone to fit into one programme. We try to understand their profile and then make a programme for them or present that part of our programme, which will serve their need.
And some people may eventually come toward the full programme and some people may not. But that is what will happen in every path. Even people who come for a direct, like a temple programme, thousand people may come for Janmashtami.
But maybe 10 or 5 may become devotees in the conventional sense of the word. So that funnelling effect will be everywhere. And then we discussed about how, Shri Prabhu, that this could be actually a part of service attitude.
And as we learn to have a conversation with people rather than simply giving a discourse, then we don’t need to necessarily read specialised psychological books. But we could just focus on understanding people by talking with them. And then we can address their needs better.
So anything you want to add, Prabhu? Anything important that I missed out or you want to conclude something? Yes. One thing came to my mind now that I heard your very comprehensive summary, was that the psychological profiles go both ways. So one aspect is to think about the needs of the audience or the student.
But the other one is, I think, equally important, is one who is in the role of teacher. We can also not, I think, successfully pass beyond our own profile. We would naturally feel more comfortable making a presentation which we find inspiring us.
Do you see what I mean? Okay. So I think it’s a natural match that the teacher or preacher would find a way to make a successful presentation or create a successful programme, which is tailored to the needs of people who have somewhat similar, or at least not totally opposite kind of profile or nature. Okay.
So I think you mentioned that initially also that it is that it’s not just for attracting people, catching people’s initial attention, but also in terms of helping them understand their subhava so that they can sustain their practise. So that can apply to us also. We are trying to share.
I think that’s so true. Like some devotees may become very successful in the age of social media. It’s so easy to compare whose posts or whose videos or whose talks get how many views, how many downloads.
And one may start thinking that I have to become like that person to be successful. But their nature might be different. So we have to find out how best we can be.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So in one sense, it’s also you could call this almost something like a enlightened selfishness that in the sense that I understand what will serve my need, what form of outreach will serve my need.
And then some people will be attracted to that. So I’m selfish in the sense that I am doing outreach according to my way, according to what works with my nature. But it’s enlightened in the sense that actually it is helping me rise and I’m also helping some people rise.
But if I try to become, if we try to do outreach in a way that is not compatible with who we are, then that is what Krishna says, don’t follow another dharma, even if it is good looking. Follow your own dharma. Yeah, that was basically my point that because I have discovered in my own work and teaching that if it ever works, those cases when it works, when it seems that people kind of grasp something and take something home and take up the practise is because I was just doing it the way I felt natural with.
And whenever I try to, you know, play somebody else and give a presentation where I don’t feel at home, then somehow I think in a subtle way it comes across that who is he trying to be and why is he saying something which he doesn’t believe in? Yeah, that’s true. In one sense, another thing, another post, I don’t know whether it is a post material value. People are very, people value integrity a lot.
Integrity in the sense that or you could say authenticity. If they see that you are not really being natural or you are just keeping a, what do you say, building an image of yourself to attract and that puts off thoughtful people. Yeah, true.
Wonderful. So nice talking with you. Thank you very much for sharing your time, your wisdom and your experiences.
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.