Relevance of Krishna’s descent – TEMPLE acronym – Janmashtami special

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, today, we will discuss about the relevance of the appearance of Krishna in this world in terms of an acronym. So, T-E-M-P-L-E, Temple.
This is an acronym which is the basis of one of my books, Why Do We Need a Temple? And it talks about the social relevance or the social contributions that a temple makes to the world. We will take that same acronym but we will in today’s class, on the occasion of Janmashtami, analyse it in a different way. People often ask that okay, even if God exists and even if God descends to this world, how does that benefit us? How does it matter to us? So, of course, there are some religious traditions which say that God cannot descend to this world only.
For example, there is one religious teacher who argues that if God is truly omniscient, he knows everything, then to know his creation, to know, he does not have to descend to this world. Just as a maker, he does not have to enter into the product which he has made to know that product. So, that is true.
Nowhere in the Bhagavad Gita or in the Vedic traditions, it is said that God descends to this world to know the world. No, he already knows the world. He descends to the world not so that he can know the world but so that we can know the purpose of the world.
So, God’s descent is not for his enlightenment. He is already omniscient. God’s descent is for our enlightenment.
So, now, we will try, this is one way of looking at it. So, what all does God’s descent to this world offer us? We will talk in terms of the Akronan temple and we will look at some pastimes which reflect on this theme of how when Krishna manifests, people are benefited. So, T-E-M-P-L.
Let’s start with T. Tranquilly. Tranquilly. In the Bhagavatam, it is said the defining characteristic of this age of Kali is Upadrutaha.
Upadrutaha means disturbed, very disturbed, incessantly disturbed. There are different kinds of addictions that people have. There is even, there is, there was alcoholics anonymous, there is now something like gluttons anonymous where people are addicted to eating.
There are sexaholics anonymous, people who are addicted to sex, workaholics anonymous. There is one kind of agitation, one kind of addiction that is agitation addiction. Agitation addiction means that people just can’t, people can’t tolerate inactivity.
They say that many people, it is said that most people speak because they find speech more tolerable than silence. So, when, because when we may be physically silent but our mind is screaming, yelling, shouting, goading, munching, grunting. So, Upadrutaha, the mind is in various ways disturbed, constantly disturbed.
In one sense, disturbance is natural because the world around us is a disturbing place. There are many things which can and many things which actually go wrong in this world. So, in such a situation, for example now, in today’s world, although there is increasing comfort at the physical level, especially in the western, in the westernised world, still there is increasing anxiety at the mental level.
In general, people in the first world have more anxiety and anxiety related disorders than people in the third world or people in the developing world. So, Upadrutaha, it’s one of the defining characteristics of this contemporary age. One way we can know whether a place has become modernised or not.
People think that modernisation means there will be cars, there will be satellite communication towers, there will be skyscrapers, there will be disantanas. All these can be signs of modernisation. But one of the most consistent correlators of modernisation is stress.
Wherever modernisation is reached, often stress is reached over there. So, in such an age, when there is anxiety, agitation, addiction, that means, if things are made peaceful, people often find peacefulness as boring and they want some sort of stimulation. More often than not, people use their devices, certainly various devices, various facilities, apps and those devices, they can be used for constructive work.
But more often than not, people use such devices primarily for titillation, to play games and often that involves agitating the mind in the hope of getting some pleasure, squeezing some pleasure. So, in such a world of anxiety, upadrutaha, in such a world of disturbed mind, the Lord’s manifestation frees us from disturbance. How is that? Just as whenever there is a storm, it is said that at its centre, the storm has a calm.
It is called the eye of the storm. The eye of the storm means the central part of a storm is peaceful. Although all around it, the air is moving rapidly, even violently or destructively, but still at its very centre, at what is called its eye, the storm is peaceful.
So, like that, Krishna is the very centre, the pivot of our existence. Krishna says that we are all his parts. That means he is the whole and we are his parts.
So, he is the centre of our being. So, this verse in the 9th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita says that he is the be-all and end-all of our existence. When we understand it and when our consciousness becomes rested in him, just as the storm has a calm at its eye, like that, we find calm at our very core.
In the Krishna Nila, after Krishna departs from the world, Arjuna is heartbroken. Somehow he pulls himself together and does the various duties of performing the final rites of the associates of Krishna and then he returns back to Yudhishthira, trudging dejectedly back and he informs Yudhishthira about what has happened. He is devastated and as he is feeling devastated, at that time, he remembers Krishna and that actually increases agitation because he feels great separation from Krishna.
But then, he remembers Krishna’s words, Krishna’s message, the Bhagavad Gita and as he meditates in the verses of the Bhagavad Gita, he meditates in the wisdom of the Gita, he starts feeling calm, he starts feeling peaceful, he starts feeling relieved and in that way, he transcends the misery. So, tranquilly is what we experience when Krishna manifests in our heart and when Krishna descends in this world, he grants tranquilly to those who take shelter of him at that time but he also becomes pastime and shares wisdom which can grant tranquilly to anyone and everyone throughout history. Kunti Malani says that Shravana smarana arhani karishan itike chana He says that bhavesmin klishyamananam avidya kamakarmabhi bhavasmin In this world, klishyamananam, everybody is suffering from various kleshas and one such klesha is of course anxiety, upadrata so such klesha comes from avidya kamakarpabhi when such klesha comes, if we hear about Krishna our heart becomes attracted to Krishna our consciousness moves to our core and thus we become relieved of misery so tranquilly is what Krishna’s appearance can bestow in our life Temple E E is education there are different kinds of education there is at one level when a student who is coming from a simple cultural background comes to a college and then some seniors tell them tell that student we will teach you how to drink what to drink how to drink how to smoke, how to take drugs how to watch nonsense on the internet now someone may say oh this is when you do these things then you become a man then you grow, that way also we call it education but that is education which causes destruction that is not education that education causes degradation not elevation so the word education when we use it in today’s world we often use it for acquiring some kind of academic or technical education which enables us to move closer towards getting financial strength financial independence so for example if somebody has got a degree from IIT or doesn’t got a degree from IIM then we say that oh this person is very well educated now often this sort of education doesn’t lead it may enable us to earn some money but it doesn’t bring about any real transformation in our lives one of my friends is in IIM and he says that much of their training is in a significant part of their training is about bloating their bio-data some small thing that they may have done and they will bloat it up so for example if in the college mess there is somebody has kept a tap on and it’s dripping a few drops of water so they stop the return of the water tap and then they say in their profile they will add oh I am a water conservation activist who saved one million millilitres of water and does help decrease the problem of climate change and water loss by 0.000003 one percent so often today’s education is not about really becoming better but it is about portraying oneself as better than what one is it’s a lot about bragging that kind of education is not what will truly make us happy because when we add layers of things that are not there around us it says a person is not a doctor somehow that person can claim to be a doctor maybe get some certificate from somewhere pay someone but then when the crunch comes then actually the person has to do an operation all the external ostentation will not help that person is pretending to be a surgeon and doesn’t have surgery skills then at that time at the time of crunch there will be total disaster so that person will turn out to be a failure similarly the knowledge that we acquire by adding externals upon ourselves that knowledge will not help us when the crunch comes that knowledge will not enable us to become elevated when we are in trouble for that kind of elevation we need a higher knowledge so material knowledge is often about adding stuff adding information to our head or adding letters to our name plates but a spiritual knowledge is not about adding stuff it is about removing stuff all the layers of misidentification that are there around us spiritual knowledge removes that misidentification and thus enables us to become situated in our true identity and once we are situated in our true identity we can move onwards towards acting with integrity and getting satisfaction so when Krishna descends it is said in the Bhagavad Gita means this is the highest of knowledge king of knowledge and it is most confidential knowledge so Krishna comes to give this knowledge to Arjuna specifically in the Bhagavad Gita but through Arjuna to all of us in the Mahabharata the knowledge in general is valuable, any kind of knowledge has value but the knowledge that actually enables us to fulfil the purpose of our life that is most valuable so in the Mahabharata during the Kurukshetra war there was a warrior named Bhagadatta who was himself a formidable warrior and further he had a very ferocious elephant carrier named Supratika and Supratika was a giant elephant and he was so powerful that he could practically crush horses and chariots under its feet under his feet so he had wreaked havoc in the Pandava camp and Arjuna was determined to check him so Arjuna was fighting fiercely and at one particular point Bhagadatta discharged an arrow a deadly arrow so as that arrow spread towards Arjuna now Arjuna sometimes when some arrows would come towards him he would either counter the arrows with his own arrows or if he was focused on his own plan of attack then sometimes he would just neglect the enemy’s arrows because he knew even if those arrows come and hit, I have got a armour which is very strong, which is impenetrable and those arrows will not hurt me so in this particular case Arjuna was bent on his own line of attack and that’s why he neglected that arrow which was charging towards him and as that arrow was now Bhagadatta being an elephant was at a higher altitude than Krishna and Krishna and Arjuna moved so his arrow was falling from above to below Arjuna was shooting his arrow up towards Bhagadatta because they were some distance away but still the elephant’s height was an advantage for Bhagadatta so as that arrow was falling down on Arjuna Krishna suddenly jumped up rose up and took the arrow full on his head full on his chest and as everyone watched and gasped in amazement the arrow turned into a garland as it fell around Krishna’s neck and then Arjuna asked Krishna why did you injure me? if I had been injured then as a charioteer it would have been right for you to try to save me but when I am not injured when I am in full possession of my attantins why did you intervene like this? so Krishna told Arjuna that particular weapon which Bhagadatta had sent that is the Vaishnava astra it is a weapon which is given to Bhagadatta by his mother Bhumidevi and she had received it from me millennia ago she pacified me with prayers and that weapon is so powerful that you can kill even the devatas what to speak of you and because it was my weapon being a Vaishnava weapon so I therefore had it when it fell on my body it did not hurt me otherwise it would have surely killed you if it had hit you at that time Arjuna realised how without his knowing also Krishna had arranged for his protection now in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says to Arjuna that one characteristic of knowledge is janma-mrtyu-jara-avyadhi dukkha-doshana-darshanam to see the repetition of birth, old age disease and death as the dukkha-dosha as the fault of this world now quite often in the world when we are living we have our own plans oh I am going to do this, I am going to achieve this I am going to go here, I am going to get this and all along the arrow of death is charging towards us the arrow of old age, disease, death this is charging towards us and although at a background level of theoretical information we know yes I am I am going to die but we don’t think about it there is a famous thinker I knew throughout my life that I was going to die but throughout my life I also believed that I would be an exception that I would be an exception Woody Allen is an American comedian so he said I am not afraid of death it’s just that when it comes I don’t want to be there it doesn’t work like that because I had a Greek philosopher long ago he said that as long as I am here death will not be here when death is here I will not be here therefore I will never die so this sort of people try to do different kinds of world jugglery to try to escape the reality of death but just like the Vaishnavastra was coming towards Arjuna and nothing could have saved him except for Krishna similarly death is relentlessly coming towards us and when we recognise the reality that we are going to die by Krishna’s mercy when he hears this so he gives us spiritual knowledge which tells us not just that we are going to die but which actually becomes like a barrier, a barricade a protector, an armour between us and death once we understand our spiritual identity then death becomes an event which happens to our body not to us it’s like if a person is in a particular city say if I am in Mumbai right now and say a bomb explodes in some part of Mumbai naturally as a resident of Mumbai I will be concerned where has the bomb exploded but a bomb exploding in some part of Mumbai is not the same as a bomb exploding and tearing me apart so because there is a difference between although I am in Mumbai there is a difference between me and Mumbai similarly Krishna explains that the soul is like sitting in a body of nine gates in the city of nine gates which is the body so when Krishna blesses us with spiritual knowledge and we become educated in the spiritual knowledge that Krishna gives us then it creates a distance between us and the body and so death becomes not an event which happens to us it becomes an event which happens to our body so earlier we think the bomb is going to explode and kill me but then we understand the bomb of death is not going to kill me it is going to destroy my body and I am different from my body understanding this we can protect ourselves from the inevitable trauma of death event of death is inevitable but that trauma can be minimised by Krishna’s grace just as Krishna protected Arjuna from Bhagavata’s Vaishnavastu similarly he can protect us from the Amogha Druk from the infallible arrow of death by giving us the knowledge that raises our consciousness above the body level to the spiritual level T.E.M.M is medication medication we could also say meditation meditation is the ultimate medication researchers have found that one famous doctor he said the whole art of medical treatment is nothing but entertaining the patient while the placebo has its effect that means placebo is something which is actually not a medicine but the patient is taught to believe it is a medicine sometimes people or some patients are hypochondriac hypochondriac means they pretend to be sick in order to gain attention oh I am having pain in my stomach, I am having headache I am having this pain that way they feel unloved they feel lonely, they feel neglected and they think that by pretending to be sick I will gain attention so now for doctors often see through such hypochondria of their patients and then they don’t want to put unnecessary chemicals into the patient’s body so sometimes they give pills which are essentially sugar pills they look like medicines but they are sugar pills and strangely enough not only hypochondriacs feel better by taking such medicines they are not actually medicines but even people who are sick if they are given placebos they feel better they often get cured so how does this happen? because the body has its own healing mechanism and that healing mechanism is choked as long as we feel that I am not being treated that I am being neglected I am sick but once we feel that I am being treated then just that feeling that I am being treated that releases the choking in the body’s immune system and the body’s actual healing mechanism starts healing us so what the doctor is saying is that much of treatment is essentially the removal of is just entertaining the patient while the placebo has its effect so like that the point of this example is to underscore the potency of thoughts thoughts are also things and these are things which affect us which can have real effects on us so in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna Krishna talks about how he is the supreme pure among all pure things he is talking about even in the Vishnu Sasana so he is the most pure among all pure things and meditation meditation means that meditation means that which heals meditation means thinking about higher spiritual reality or higher reality so when we talk about meditation that means as I mentioned in the foregoing analysis that our thoughts can heal us and meditation essentially means directing our thoughts in healing avenues we should think of those things which are healing for us so in the Bhagavad Gita there is the story of Kubja now Kubja goes in the Christian tradition often there are stories of miraculous healings so Jesus went to a leper and touched a leper and that person’s leprosy went away or Jesus went and touched a leper and that person became alive these are called as faith healing or miraculous healing healing miracles so now Krishna he demonstrates a kind of healing miracle when Kubja who is also called as Sri Vikra who is bent in three places her body is distorted she is not at all attractive and Krishna touches her and lifts her up and just by his touch she cures her even the most sometimes some surgeons are such good surgeons that they say oh this person there is magic in this person’s hand whenever that person operates person brings life to people who would otherwise be condemned to sickness or even death but even the best surgeon cannot cure just by touch actually there has to be opening of the body there has to be use of scalpels there has to be use of stitches all that is required for healing but Krishna does the ultimate miracle what does he do Kubja’s body is distorted and Krishna just touches her chin and he lifts her up and not only does she become erect from her hunchback position but she also becomes beautiful and not only does her features change from distorted to beautiful but also her attitude changes from self-centred to enlightened she is treated and healed internally she becomes purified, she becomes devoted to the lord this is meditation meditation so initially she was something like a society woman who had now become old women who live by selling their bodies when their bodies grow old then they are literally left to do nothing the only thing which has given them some identity some livelihood some sense of attractiveness and that is lost what can they do so Kubja had been a society girl and she has become old now and she has lost her bodily beauty in fact to lose one’s bodily beauty itself is nightmarish for a beautiful person but not only to lose one’s attractiveness but to actually get features which correlate with ugliness when a person is considered not just not attractive it is usually considered quite unattractive so from that situation from there Krishna transformed her and made her beautiful not just externally but also internally so in our heart there are many contaminating desires and Krishna is the one who purifies us from all sinful desires that no sin can act on him rather he acts on sin and he eliminates sin that is meditation medication so when Krishna descends to this world he performs wonderful pastimes and through meditating on his pastimes chanting his holy name beholding his deity that enables us to in this way heal ourselves internally so next is purification now meditation medication and purification are related at one level they are identical but rather they are similar and they are progressive for example there are health specialists who say that health or sickness are not like digital conditions I am healthy or I am sick they are more like analogue progressions there is a continuum on which a person may be healthy or that person may be sick which are the two extremes but in between there are stages where the person is bordering on sickness so for example there are some people who they can be obese for years and decades but despite being obese they actually never suffer from bad health so if you look at their cholesterol, if you look at their blood pressure they may have all bodily parameters to be fine and yet they are obese so then some people try to infer from such findings that actually obesity is not such a serious matter obesity doesn’t cause sickness so why bother about obesity but the fact is that such people they may be for a few years healthy despite their obesity but in the long run obesity will have its effects and the health will get spoiled so based on our parameters of health we may say that person is healthy right now but just the fact that the person is obese will indicate that some parameters of health are offline so rather than seeing health and sickness as one zero stage that you are here or here we understand that we are on a continuum and we can be moving towards sickness or we can be moving towards health or we can be stagnating somewhere in between so like that same way with respect to when we talk about purification it is more of a positive motion towards our inner spiritual nature whereas when we talk about medication it’s more of an elimination of the negative or rather let’s put it another way that if a person is infected by some disease then the person is offered some germs are there the person is offered some antibiotics by which the germs are removed now if somebody has got say TB now there is a phase of treatment when after taking that much treatment it is said that the person now the germs are removed but that does not mean that the person can immediately start acting like in a normal way as one was acting earlier because even after the infection is removed there is a period of convalescence convalescence means that the body has no infection but the body has not regained its normal health so if it is a situation the body needs to be healed in terms of not removal of infection but in terms of restoration of strength restoration of immunity and that takes time so when we are talking about medication we are talking about removal of impurities of lust, anger, greed whereas when we are talking about purification in this context we are talking about elevation to our pure spiritual nature so for example if a person is at this continuum a person can move to this continuum that means the person is at a negative level of reality at a point of sickness then not only can devotion make a bad person good but devotion can also make a good person the best that one can be so that is purification and that is illustrated through a very dramatic pastime in the Srimad Bhagavatam wherein the normal hierarchy in terms of purity and piety that is inverted in the 23rd chapter of the 10th Canto is the pastime of the Yajic Brahmins so these are they are not bad people they are religious people, they are virtuous people, they are cultured people and they are performing they are doing the sacred activities they are doing sacrifices and by doing such sacrifices what happens? they start teaching that what is the that is all, doing sacrifices is all that they need to do and then Krishna sends his Krishna and Krishna sends his cowherd boyfriends to tell them we are all hungry please provide some food and these Brahmins completely neglect Krishna and then Krishna when his friends come back rejected Krishna sends his friends again to the wives of those Brahmins and then those wives they come back and they are delighted to hear that Krishna has come and Krishna is asking for food and they take huge quantity of food and rush out to Krishna and only when later the Brahmins are performing the Yajna at that time the Devatas come and Devatas chastise them saying that you are performing this Yajna to ultimately please Vishnu but that Vishnu his original manifestation is present with Krishna and Krishna came to you and you are appeasing the Devatas who are far far away in heavens and you are inviting them to come and take food from you but when God is himself coming who is the ultimate object of sacrifice and he is asking you for food you are not giving that you turn a deaf ear to him what will Vishnu do? and then the Brahmins realise they are greatly stupid aham sarva yajnanam bhokta chatrabhure vicha matumabhijananti tatve na kishchavantite aham sarva yajnanam I am the ultimate beneficiary of all sacrifices bhokta chatrabhure vicha that I am the enjoyer I am the master and those who do not understand this they are ruined they will fall away tatve na kishchavantite they will fall away that’s what happens but the wonderful thing is that because the Brahmins are connected with their wives and their wives take shelter of Krishna and are blessed by Krishna then atleast because of that the Brahmins recognise their mistake and they repent their mistake and through that gradually they rise towards rise from religious piety towards devotion so Krishna’s descent to this world is to make us pure so purity does not mean freedom from say lust, anger, greed but purity also means freedom from anything that keeps us away from Krishna even if it be something seemingly pious such as the attachment to doing sacrifices well so that is the purifying potency of Krishna when Krishna descends in this world he does not allow us to settle for anything less than the best that means the paradox of the human condition is that the heart longs for meal but the belly settles for pudding that means that the heart longs for meal, we all understand what is the ultimate purpose of life why do I exist, why does the world exist we have big philosophical questions sometimes we get them and we start thinking, we have to think about this maybe we have to find answers to this but then as we are thinking about it somebody comes and gives us pudding somebody gives some sweet to eat we eat that sweet and we go to sleep and we forget all our questions so the heart longs for meal but the belly settles for pudding so what happens is that we settle for trivial things and we forget consequential things in the process but when Krishna manifests in this world and he manifests in our heart then he purifies us and one of the ways in which the purification manifests is that we can no longer be satisfied with anything other than Krishna that whatever we have it does not satisfy us if it is not connected with Krishna and in this way we stay dissatisfied till we come towards Krishna so purification doesn’t just mean freedom from all desires other than Krishna that is the ultimate level of purification but purification at a preliminary level also means that the inability to be satisfied with anything other than Krishna so hence we get the higher taste of Krishna Bhakti although we cannot be pure in terms of all other desires being absent but we become pure in the sense that no other desires can satisfy us that is Krishna’s mercy that he does not allow us to settle for anything less than the best then P-E-M-P-L-E L is love Krishna’s love for his devotees and all of us are actually his potential devotees so this love manifests in various ways and one of the sweetest ways it manifests is the way he protects his devotees in the and this principle that Krishna expresses his love for his devotees is so endearingly put in the Mahabodham especially in the Gopal Champu described that Krishna sends secret messages to the devotees in Raja he sends messages to Indra and Yashoda he sends messages to the Gopas and he sends messages to the Gopis the call of beauty is preventing Krishna from going to Vrindavan or inviting the Rajavasis to come to him but in spite of it all Krishna desires to have contact with them and he wants to express his love for them so what does he do? He sends a message to the Gopis stating that Oh Gopis I am longing for your association I remember the way we performed pastimes in the forest groves of Vrindavan and hoping that we will soon be united and that we will perform similar pastimes again I am personally watering the creepers and the gardens in Dwarka just so that when you come there will be a beautiful setting for our gardens so I am making gardens where flowers will be there and I can offer the flowers to you there will be saplings over there there will be creepers over there and there will be a very soothing setting for us so in this way Krishna expresses his longing his loving longing for his devotees and the Gopis hear this message they shed tears of love and they tell Krishna Oh Krishna you have promised us that you will come back to Vrindavan and we are longing when will you return Oh Krishna when will you return and awaiting your return we are also sprinkling the flower bearing trees with water, the shrubs as they are growing we pour water on them hoping that they will grow nicely and when there are flowers then we will make garlands for you and adorn you with garlands but on one side from the sprinklers we pour some water on them and on the other side that water which is cooling which nourishes the creepers but while thinking of you we become overwhelmed with sorrow with heart breaking agony and hot tears of agony rush from our eyes and these hot tears they fall on the creepers that we are trying to water and because of the heat of those tears those creepers wither away so Krishna although we are longing for you just as our heart is withering away our gardens are also withering away nothing can live without you neither the environment around us nor the heart within us everything is withering away in separation from you Krishna please return and return soon so such is the ecstatic extraordinary and exalted love between Krishna and his devotees and what we see in this world is that underlying most forms of entertainment is this longing for love that means that underlying most forms of worldly whether they are novels or they are movies they are all talking about love how can we experience love, how can we relish love and that longing of love which underlines and defines all of us that longing for love can attain fulfilment can attain perfection when it is directed towards Krishna Krishna descends to this world to reveal not only his all attractiveness but also to reveal to us his world of love his transcendental abode where endless ecstatic pastimes are being performed so in that sense Krishna Leela is both the trailer and the train trailer means just like there is a movie sometimes before the movie is shown a brief trailer, whether the movie is 3 hours a 3 minute trailer will be shown and the 3 minute trailer is meant to attract people to watch the movie watch the full show so like that Krishna Leela is like a trailer and this trailer is meant to attract our hearts and thereby to inspire us to watch the full movie of Krishna Leela to raise our consciousness to spiritual world and to enter into his pastimes of unending love so Krishna Leela is one level the trailer but it is also the trail trail means that Krishna Leela enables us to become purified to become elevated this hearing Krishna Leela itself is the path by which we can attain Krishna Shute Kshita Patha Shute Kshita Patha means Shuta Kshita by the path of the ears Patha is path Shuta Kshita through the path of the ears our eyes can see normally our eyes are here the ears are here how can I see through the ears this is talking about spiritual perception not just physical perception when we hear through our ears that sound vibration of Krishna’s pastimes that purifies us as we discussed but further it also raises our consciousness to spiritual level and the attractional soul for him is awakened and with that activated spiritual perception coming from love I can be known by Bhakti in fact this verse corresponds in compliments and compliments what was told earlier in the verse with which we began this talk those who know me in truth those who know my appearance and activities in truth they can attain me and how can we know him in truth that Krishna tells over here we can know him in truth through Bhakti so essentially what Krishna is telling if we correlate these two points is that by Bhakti we can know him and we can attain him so love is not just love is not just the goal of knowledge love itself is the highest knowledge that means it is not that after getting knowledge we attain love but the state of loving itself demonstrates the highest knowledge so that is love and then Krishna sends to this world and reveals his pastimes invites us to enter this world of love and lastly he is in the world of Bhakti the wonderful thing about Bhakti is that it is not world rejecting spirituality it is rather world redirecting spirituality we don’t reject the world but rather we connect the world with the lord and by engagement in Krishna we come out of engagement in matter engagement and encagement cage is like a bird is trapped in a cage so encage means to trap something in a cage so right now we are all encaged in material existence and engagement will free us from engagement actually it is the easiest way to free us from engagement why? because in 3.5 Bhagavad Gita Krishna said without doing anything you cannot exist forever so one moment so that’s why to be inactive is extremely impossible for us and Bhakti rather than asking for us to do something impossible Bhakti engages us encourages us to become active with a spiritual purpose so rather than renunciation of work Bhakti teaches us renunciation in work renunciation in work means that we work but with a spirit of unselfishness rather than working for our own aggrandisement we work for Krishna’s glorification Arjuna he was sometimes people have this idea that if you just if you become a devotee you just be constantly chanting Hare Krishna Hare Krishna what practical thing are you doing for the world but if you see Arjuna he was not just chanting yes he had time for his but then he laboured tirelessly to become an excellent archer it was not that his archery skills were just dropped from the sky into his laps yes he had some innate talent but what transformed his talent into achievement was his commitment talent transforms into achievement through commitment and what was Arjuna’s commitment that day and night as an archery student he would practise archery till he would become perfect till he would become excellent till he became peerless so peerless means he did not have anyone who was equal he just excelled everyone else so here we as sadhakas we may not have that kind of extraordinary excellence in archery or any other field but at our level we can engage ourselves whatever it is that we are doing for Krishna we try to do it well we try to excel not so that the purpose of excelling is not that we prove to the world how great I am but the purpose of excelling is to help broadcast to the world how glorious Krishna is how glorious my lord is we act to the best of our capacity to share the glory of our beloved lord with the world and actually speaking even if we don’t succeed whether because we don’t have any special talent or because we somehow are not able to transform the talent into achievement but even if neither happens still just the fact of staying engaged in Krishna’s service will keep us satisfied so there is satisfaction in staying connected with Krishna ultimately we want our heart to be connected with Krishna but in our existence there are multiple levels there is the heart, there is the head and there are the hands and in the practise of bhakti we should stay engaged in Krishna at one or all levels one or many or all levels the best is if our heart is absorbed in Krishna mayyeva manadatsva may buddhim nivesaya nivesisyasi mayyeva pataudham na samshaya so Krishna says that mayyeva manadatsva in that fix your consciousness on me in this way you will live in me but if you can’t do that then you Krishna says if you can’t do that then you practise sadhana bhakti to fix your consciousness on me that means if your heart cannot be resting in me then sadhana bhakti usually means that we use our intelligence in sadhana bhakti the impetus for practising bhakti is the instruction of the guru and guru’s instruction usually appeals to our intelligence guru tells us do this don’t do this so best is if our heart is offered to Krishna then our head and our hands will automatically be offered to Krishna but somehow if our heart is not there at least let our head be there that means we keep intellectually sharp even if this doesn’t feel good right now to me but right now because my feelings are impure so they are unreliable so let me stay fixed in bhakti at the level of the head and gradually so Krishna says by using our intelligence we constitute ourselves on the spiritual platform and that way we can attain victory and sometimes even the head even if our intelligence is not active at that time we are not able to think clearly because of whatever at least at the level of the hands that means at the less keep physically engaged even if we don’t feel like doing anything we just push ourselves put ourselves in devotee association put ourselves in some service just start doing something and we don’t have to do something high profile if we are not feeling good, if we are not feeling clear you start doing something once you start doing something there is some level of connection with Krishna it is established and gradually their connection will move to the level of the head and it will move to the level of the heart it’s like if we don’t feel attracted to scripture and we don’t even feel like intellectually stimulated with the need to study scripture but still we just go and sit in a class and hear or just take a book and start reading and as we start reading we will find that just the act of studying will enable us we will find something which just makes sense, which is so striking and by that, that one connection will inspire us and then we will move onwards and we will get gradually absorb more and more love so Krishna descends to this world to give us transcendental engagement that means that he one manifestation as his avatar which he came thousands of years ago but that is not the only manifestation of Krishna he manifests as a deity he manifests as a scripture, he manifests as a holy name he manifests in so many ways by which we can connect ourselves with him, we can stay engaged in him and thus by staying engaged we can become by that engagement free from material engagement such is the mercy of Krishna when he descends to this world so to summarise, we started by talking about how when we talk about Krishna’s descent in this world, we need to understand what is its relevance to me ok, Krishna came, so many thousands of years ago, so many great kings may have come and gone, how does it make a difference but Krishna is very different from any king or anyone like that and the relevance of his past of his descent, we discussed in terms of temple, tea is tranquilly thoughts of other people cannot give us the kind of stability and mental shelter as thoughts of Krishna can give us so Krishna comes to offer us that shelter stress is the most consistent correlator, predictor and marker of modernisation of the world of the spreading of materialistic culture not just modernisation but spreading of materialism and just as a storm at its core and the eye remains calm so like that, Krishna helps us to connect with our core our soul and the inner nature of the soul to love and serve Krishna and thereby he enables us to stay calm even amidst disturbing situations this tranquilly then E is education the real education is not that which adds things from extra outside to us because those things which are added they will not help us when the crunch comes just like when Arjuna was about to be killed by the Vaishnava the knowledge that helped him was not his knowledge of how to counter different weapons not the knowledge that he had a great armour but it was Krishna’s knowledge that this was an unstoppable weapon which no one except Krishna could stop so the knowledge that truly helped, that truly matters is the knowledge that brings out the best within us brings out our inner spiritual potential so we are all, from the moment of our birth itself, an arrow of death has been shot and it is speeding towards us but we are caught in our plans and not knowing not thinking that we have to do anything to counter it but if we take shelter of Krishna and just as Krishna protected that arrow protected Arjuna from that arrow Krishna protects us he raises our consciousness to a spiritual level by which death becomes not an event that happens to us but it happens to the bodily shell around us and we rise free from death trauma M means medication, meditation we talked in that about how people’s thoughts often affect their health and placebo effect it works because people feel that they are being healed and that activates their inner healing mechanisms so like that we also have within ourselves Krishna and our connection with Krishna which has the capacity to bring about spiritual healing and by dwelling on Krishna externally, by fixing our consciousness on Krishna through external stimuli we activate our inner spiritual healing mechanism and as we become free from the attachments which causes bondage and misery then purification even after a person has become free from disease that does not mean that the person has become healthy because after the removal of germs there is recuperation or convalescence as it is said so like that we don’t always want to be free from impure desires, we want to be filled with pure desires so the Yakti Pramana pastime we discussed about how they had no impure desires in terms of they didn’t have lust, anger, greed but they did not have the pure desire to serve Krishna which their wives had and so the manifestation of Krishna especially if it is understood through the association of devotees then that purifies us, filling us with the longing to connect with him and that longing will eventually purify us so even if we are not fully pure right now still if we keep practising Bhakti we will become purified and the magic of Bhakti is that it will not let us settle for anything less than the best and that way we will keep moving onwards to Krishna and then L is Love we discussed how love is the innermost longing of our heart and Krishna is the ultimate object for our love and we discussed about the intense loving pastimes between Krishna and his Gopis how both are remembering each other in separation and thus through that recollection are experiencing the most intimate union and then we discussed engagement, how engagement frees us from engagement and Bhakti is a part of sensory spirituality, Krishna manifests in various ways by which we can practically connect with him stay engaged in our relationship with him and we discussed how the engagement that is offered by Krishna is at various levels at the heart, the head and the hands so even if our heart and head are not there at least your hands can be there at least we keep the hands physically engaged and by that we will be intellectually stimulated and ultimately we will also be with spiritual emotion activated and engaged in Bhakti so Krishna comes to this world to elevate us to this level of the highest purification and liberation Thank you very much Krishna Bhagwan Thank you Krishna