Reviving love – Difference between serving Krishna and serving parents nation society

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Summary

True love is not created—it is already existing within our hearts, currently asleep and materially misdirected. Discover how shifting your focus from temporary material pursuits to spiritual awakening can bring lasting satisfaction and peace.

• Understanding Dharma vs. Sanatana Dharma: While ordinary dharma represents changeable characteristics or duties (such as nationality or career), Sanatana Dharma is our eternal, unchangeable nature: to love and serve God.

• The Universal Nature of Service: Every living being inherently expresses love through service, whether it is a mother caring for her child, an animal protecting its offspring, or humans fulfilling social obligations.

• Moving Beyond Temporary Pleasures: Material happiness and physical sensations ($chapala\ sukha$) are flickering and temporary, requiring ever-intensifying stimuli that ultimately leave the heart empty and unfulfilled.

• The Process of Bhakti (Devotional Service): True devotion bridges internal emotion and external action; even when feelings are absent, committed practice and the repetition of the holy name gradually purify the heart and awaken spiritual memory.

• Expanding the Circle of Love: Material attachments divide us into sectarian groups (like nationalities or cricket fandoms), but loving Krishna expands our circle of love to embrace all living beings universally.

• Achieving True Peace and Satisfaction: Lasting peace of mind comes not from escaping to isolated mental visualizations or temporary material comforts, but from purifying our desires and re-establishing our eternal connection with the Supreme.

Key Takeaways

• Commitment Over Impulse: True spiritual growth requires subordination of fleeting emotional impulses to higher spiritual principles, practicing commitment regardless of daily mood.

• Connect, Don’t Reject: Instead of abandoning your worldly duties, learn to connect your daily studies, career, and relationships with a higher purpose of service to the Supreme.

Full Transcription

And then we’ll continue after that. So reviving love means to bring back to life the love.
So actually love is already existing in our heart. And at present our love is from the spiritual point of view asleep. And it is materially misdirected.
So reviving love means it means that we bring back the love at a spiritual level to get awakened again. So this seminar we’ll discuss in four or five parts. So first part is that whenever we start practising any form of spirituality one of the concerns that we may have is okay there are so many different paths so many different organisations so many different teachers so many different books how can I know that what I am following is right? And if I say that what I am following is right do I mean to say that everybody else is wrong? It’s a natural question which any thoughtful person will get.
So the first point to understand is that when the Vedic scriptures talk about a path they are talking about universal truths not sectarian truths. Sectarian means that which is applicable only for one sect or one section. Universal means that which is applicable for everyone.
So what is it that is applicable for everyone? The word Dharma some people may think that okay this is a Hindu word which refers to religion but again if we go back to the roots from the etymological point of view and also we go back to the deeper philosophical perspective both ways we understand that Dharma is not a sectarian concept. The word Dharma comes from the root Dhruv that is to sustain. So Dharma means that which sustains.
Dharma is that which sustains. Actually Prabhupada explains that religion is changeable. A Muslim can become a Hindu a Christian can become a Muslim it’s possible.
But Dharma is our essential property our core characteristic that is unchangeable. So it is our defining feature our core characteristic our defining feature our essential identity actually. So to understand this concept of Dharma how it is universal let us look first at various objects in the world.
Now if I tell you tomorrow we’ll be cooking prasad with salty sugar. How can there be salty sugar? Sugar means sweet. So the defining characteristic of sugar is sweetness.
We can’t practically separate sugar from sweetness. And certainly we can’t impose saltiness on sugar. So from the point of view of Dharma sweetness is the Dharma of sugar.
So it’s an essential characteristic. Now different languages may call sugar by different names. In Hindi they may call it shakkar in Greek somebody may call it sakkar and there are different names.
That doesn’t matter. The essential object is the same and its essential characteristic is also the same. So if somebody says I was burned by a cold fire first of all how can there be a cold fire? And if it’s a cold fire how will it burn? Isn’t it? So we can’t have it’s a logical absurdity to say a cold fire.
Fire means it is warm. Hot or at least warm. So heat is a defining characteristic of fire.
That means it is its Dharma. Like that whichever objects we see they all have their defining characteristic. And that defining characteristic is Dharma.
So Dharma is the characteristic that makes an object what it is. Sweetness is what makes sugar, sugar. Heat is what makes fire, fire.
Similarly there is to the universe an order. The order of the universe the inherent order of the universe which makes the universe what it is. That is Dharma.
So Dharma at a deeper level is the underlying order which makes the universe what it is. And similarly all of us have our Dharma. So Dharma refers not to the sectarian religion that a person belongs to.
Dharma refers to our essential characteristic. Our core features. Our defining identity.
Now if I think about myself I can say I am a man. I am an Indian. I am an engineer.
I am this, I am that. It can go on like that. Now all these which we see can they be changed? They can be changed.
I am an Indian, I can become some other country’s nation. I am an engineer, I can change my profession. Nowadays there is surgery where people can change their gender also.
It is called gender bender. So in America when you have to get a driving licence normally in India you have gender, sex, male or female. So there of many states they have sex present, sex past.
Many people change their gender. So the point is that these are all external to us. These things are external to us.
Similarly our religion is external to us. A person may be a Hindu, may become a Muslim. So then what is it that remains unchanging? Actually whoever we are all of us want to love and be loved.
Wherever a person goes whether a person is an African or an Australian or a Siberian everybody wants to love and everybody wants to be loved. And loving and being loved that is expressed through service. When a mother loves the child what does the mother do? In the middle of the night the child wakes up and starts crying.
Our alarm clock rings sometimes early morning. It rings at the time when we set it on but still it bang and switch it off sometimes. Now the small baby is like an alarm clock which rings at any time it needs.
But when the mother is like, shut up! Mother will never do like that. Why? Because there is love. And as soon as the child starts crying mother will pick him up and suckle the baby, pat it, caress it, embrace it and try to pacify it.
So what is the mother doing? Waking up at the night and serving the baby. So love is expressed through service. So to love and serve is our essential dharma.
To love and to serve is our essential dharma. This is something which cannot be changed, which cannot be annihilated. It will always be there whatever we do.
Even if a person is poor today and becomes a millionaire tomorrow or a person is a millionaire today and becomes a pauper tomorrow still that person will want to love and will want to serve. That person may love and serve in different ways. When he is a pauper he may just get some kulfi for his son.
And when he is a millionaire he may get a vanilla ice cream for his son. But essentially what is he doing? He is loving his son by serving him. So love and service is an essential characteristic of all living beings.
It’s not just human beings. Even animals love their children, their offspring. What happens to them if there is a small kitten and the cat is there with the kitten.
If somebody goes near the kitten the cat will start screeching and showing her claws and her teeth. She loves the child. And because of loving the kitten the cat is protecting the kitten and thereby serving the kitten.
So love and service are our essential dharma. Now love and service don’t exist in a vacuum. Love and service there is a person who loves and there is a person who is loved.
Love and service can’t exist just in the air. So now all of us are already there as the persons who are trying to love. So in one sense one aspect of our dharma is that wherever we are we will always love and serve.
But actually the completeness of our dharma is that we find the right object for love and service. When we find the right object for love and service then we will become happy. Till that time our search for happiness will either be partially fulfilled or may stay entirely unfulfilled.
Now somebody may say that I am not serving anyone. Actually speaking when our body becomes sick how many people want to go to a hospital and get admitted? We don’t want to. But when the body becomes sick we practically have to serve the body.
The body is dysfunctional so we have to go and repair the body. And if the body has certain biological urges the urge to respond to nature now we may be doing some important activity and suddenly we are pulled in between. So what do we have to do? We have to just keep everything aside and respond to nature.
So what does it mean? It means actually we are serving even our bodies. Our body demands something we have to provide it. So all of us at that level are loving and are serving.
We can’t avoid this. This is our defining identity. And to the extent we understand this we will recognise that there is something that is an eternal Dharma.
So there is Dharma and there is Sanatana Dharma. What is the difference between Dharma and Sanatana Dharma? Dharma means that which is our nature. Sanatana Dharma refers to that which is our eternal nature.
So if I am an Indian I may think that protecting my country if some terrorists attack, if some neighbouring country attacks, that is my Dharma. That is fine. At one level it is my Dharma.
But if tomorrow I am born in some other country in my next life I will start thinking, oh that is my Dharma. To protect that particular country is my Dharma. So then this Dharma is not eternal.
This Dharma is not eternal. But Sanatana Dharma is that which will never change. And that is our nature to love and serve God.
So when we love and serve God that will give us eternal happiness. That is our Sanatana Dharma. Because we are eternal, Krishna is eternal.
And when we develop our love for Krishna then our relationship with him is eternal. So the ultimate purpose of all religions is to help us get reinstated to revive our Sanatana Dharma. To develop our love for Krishna.
And to develop our devotional service to Krishna. So now what you can do is, there are six questions given over here. So you can have around ten minutes.
And you can read these questions and write down the answers to those questions. … So we will discuss these answers now, eventually. Some people say the Dharma I follow is be good.
Don’t hurt anyone. This is good enough. No need to study all this big, big philosophy.
If this is not good enough, what do you think about that philosophy? Who would like to answer? Yes? … Okay. So their Dharma is not eternal. They have to understand that that is real Dharma.
Eternal Dharma. Any other answers? Yes? … If you enquire about God, to whom? … Yes? … … … … … … Yes. So how can we really be good to people? Because we are going to harm others unavoidably.
At least ants or other insects, other living beings too. One or two more answers? Your answer? We will come to you after. … Yes.
… … … … … … … … Not knowing, not enquiring, not relating with him. So when a son lives independent of his father, actually the father feels bad about it. Interesting point, yes.
Last point. You had some point? Oh, good point. So, just how are we going to decide what is good? To know what is good, we have to actually follow dharma.
So it is not that doing good is dharma. By dharma we will know what is good. Very interesting redefinition of terms.
So all the answers are good. One important point which we also need to keep in mind is that when we say that we should be good to others and I don’t want to harm others, I will take mine, live and let live, people say. So this sounds good, but the first point to understand is that this world or anything of this world does not belong to us.
So imagine that a gang of thieves breaks into a bank and steals away all the money from there and rushes off into the jungle. And in the jungle, the chief of the gang, he says, Gentlemen, all of us should be good to each other. Let us not be dishonest.
Let us all share this money equally. No, we should live and let live. We should all be honest with each other.
This is honesty, but is it honesty? It is honesty among thieves. So the foundation of the discussion itself is based on dishonesty. And because of that, their honesty doesn’t have much value.
When the police come and arrest him, the gang leader says, We distributed the money equally, so all of you will be punished equally. Come. Isn’t it? So the point is that everything in this world belongs to God.
And when we take the things of this world and disregard God and think that I will divide everything honestly among people around me, then ours is the honesty of thieves. Now Krishna, in the third chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, describes the cycle of cosmic interdependence. And then he says that actually God, through his representatives in nature, gives us our necessities.
And then we have to satisfy them by performing dharma, by performing sacrifices. And if one does not do that, so one who enjoys the things without offering them, one who is offering them to God, so now when we say, actually speaking, what I have is owned by me. How can taking that and enjoying that be thievery? But if we think about it seriously, say, if I was born, there is a big estate in the family in which I was born.
But that estate existed before I was born. Probably that estate existed before my father was born. The land existed before my whole dynasty was born also.
That means actually we are not the proprietors of things originally. We didn’t create the things. Our house, our estate, our possessions, these are not ours actually.
They all belong to God. So therefore, if we disregard God, then that is honesty among thieves. And that will not work.
Therefore, without bringing God into the picture, whatever we talk about being good is actually based on the platform of, not goodness, but badness. It’s based on the platform of thievery from God. And therefore, this goodness is not of much use.
That’s the first point. The second more important point also is that God is not like a policeman who wants to punish us for robbery. After all, we are his children.
But, like you made this good point, that the children cannot disregard the father. So, imagine if the father is living, and all the sons come together, and they say that, okay, we don’t need the father in the house, let us throw him out of the house, and we will divide the property among ourselves. If we are honestly dividing ourselves.
But, is that honesty? Actually, the property belongs to the father. And the father has to be acknowledged, and then the sons can divide among themselves. Then the children can share it, while acknowledging the authority and the proprietorship of the father.
So what is humanity doing? Just put God aside, and try to divide things equally. That is dishonesty. That is theory.
Along with that, another important point is, I don’t need this big big philosophy. Actually, when we don’t have big big philosophy, then we have big big phoolosophy. What is phoolosophy? Phoolosophy means the sophistry of fools.
Sophistry is false arguments, bogus arguments. So, phoolosophy. Phoolosophy is what? Everything in this world belongs to me.
This is only the modern idea, actually. That, when a man went to Antarctica, a modern man went to Antarctica, he thought, okay, I look around, there is nobody here, therefore, I plant my flag. This belongs to me now.
So, various countries all over the world have gone to Antarctica, and they said, this part of Antarctica belongs to me. This part of Antarctica belongs to me. So, it’s like, if somebody comes into this room and looks around, nobody is here, therefore, this room belongs to me.
In our day-to-day idealism, we understand it’s absurd, but that is the way we deal with nature. There is nobody around who is claiming proprietorship, I think it’s mine. So, actually, the resources of nature don’t belong to us.
And therefore, the attempt to divide those resources equally, without bringing God into picture, is thievery. And beyond that, as we pointed out, this is not eternal. What does it mean? Okay, even if I divide things honestly among myself, what happens is, we will continue to suffer in the cycle of birth and death, even if I am honest.
Why? Because, as long as I love the temporary, I have to stay in the temporary world. Only when I love the eternal, can I go to the eternal world. So, okay, if I divide everything honestly among all my friends, relatives, whatever, but still, my love is for the temporary things.
I love my estate, I love my property, I love my possessions. And then, okay, next life I will be born again to try to get those possessions. So, at one level, it is going to give us bad karma.
At another level, it is not going to help us fulfil the mission of eternal life, human life, which is to attain eternal existence. Okay. My next question.
So, first was, be good, do good philosophy. Now, we will talk about nationalism. So, Bhagat says, serving the motherland is the highest dharma and after he studies, he wants to join the social service movement that works for developing India.
He gets wild whenever India loses cricket match with Pakistan and spends hours arguing with friends how India is always superior. When you invite him to come to Bhagavad Gita classes, he says, religion and God are distractions to patriotism and national development. How will you inspire him to follow the supreme dharma? Yes.
His question. He is, you know, serving the motherland because and I think in cricket match, generally India loses the match. He started arguing.
This is a frustration in him. And out of the frustration, he is arguing with the people around him. So, again, the patriotic service to the patriotic team is, gives the frustration.
And the leader dharma is Sanatan dharma, which is the eternal service. So, which is not sectarian. Which is not sectarian.
Because we are dharma, we are in the country, it is our dharma. So, there is no question of… Okay. Good point, sir.
You made two different points. First is that, rather than serving the motherland, you should serve the owner of the motherland and the supreme ruler. Second point is, serving the motherland just makes us frustrated, sooner or later.
It doesn’t satisfy us, truly. Yes? Who has not answered till now? Yes, please. We’ll come back to you.
When I understand, that actually I am not the body, I am the soul. So, this national service of the nation is based on my body as identification. If I understand I am the soul, then I will practise Sanatana Dharma.
Yes? Who has not answered till now? Okay, yeah. Yes, good point. So, we can talk about the transitory nature of our body identification.
Therefore, seek something more permanent. Yes, thank you. Okay, so patriotism and national development are for developing Krishna Consciousness.
How do we develop that? Good point. Yeah, so by studying Bhagavad Gita, a person will develop Krishna Consciousness. But how will that take… So, we will talk about how Krishna Consciousness spread all over the world.
And that is also, in one sense, spreading India’s glory. Is that what you are saying? Okay, that’s a good point. Yes, we’ll come to that.
Dharma is not changeable. So, therefore, find out that which is not changeable and serve accordingly. Very good.
Yes, thank you. I was told you are serving great people. Thank you so much.
Please, explain that to me, with your great insight. Explain to people whom we are serving now. In our next life, if we have one animal, then they will slaughter us.
Quite an insightful thought. So, it’s a good point. I think nationalism is certainly at one level much higher than just selfish career persons.
This person is certainly elevated. At the same time, if you think about nation, you know, the idea of nation, India as a nation, in the Indian map, it was carved out in 1947. And the symbol of the flag, the tricolour, that was made by Bankimchandra Chatterjee and others at the start of the century, 20th century, late 19th century, start of 20th century.
The conception of India as we know it geographically, is only a recent phenomenon. If we had been living 500 years ago, there might have been something called Aryavarta, the land of the Aryans. But that conception was much more broad and deeper, broader and deeper than the concept of nationality.
In fact, if you look at world history, the whole concept of nation states is a very recent phenomenon. It’s only just before the 18th, 19th century onwards that the whole concept of nation states started coming up. Earlier it was like, there was a king and he had his empire.
Every state, king had his empire. So, the whole concept of nationality is a recent concoction. What we call our nationality is not something which has been eternally existing.
The land which is made in making India was eternal. But calling it India, that is a relatively recent conception. So, that’s why the first concept of nationhood itself is not eternal.
Not to speak of our relationship with the nation. Sometimes they have this whole picture of Bharat Mata. And they sometimes show on a tiger, they show Durga Devi, and Durga Devi, somebody like Durga Devi with hair and everything, and they show the tricolour in her hands.
Now, the tricolour came 100 years ago. How do you have Durga Devi hair in tricolour? So, what is happening is, that is a bodily activity that people try to make it into religious activity. Well, okay, taking care of one’s country is fine.
It’s not wrong. But there’s nothing religious about it. There’s nothing spiritual about it.
Spiritual means that it is connected with the soul. Religious means that it is connected with God. So, taking care of one’s country, that is noble, but that has got nothing to do with spirituality, per se.
That’s the first point. The second point is, as some of you mentioned, that our relationship with our country is temporary. It’s very temporary.
And, no matter how much we try to serve our country, ultimately the country is an impersonal, sort of dead object. Prabhupada would give the example of Gandhiji. So, Gandhiji served India throughout his life.
And he worked so hard to get independence for India. He worked so hard to try to do the whole thing by peaceful, non-violent means. But at the end, what happened? An Indian only killed him.
So, what happened? His service, at the end, Gandhi’s secretary said that actually, he was the saddest man that I have ever seen. Because he did not want partition, and partition happened. And eventually, so neither was he happy, nor were the people to whom he was trying to serve were happy.
So, at a material level, if you think about it, actually speaking, service to the nation is more elevated, but it doesn’t really bring much happiness. I had a friend who was also a nationalist, and he was also a sort of social service worker. So, he used to go to small villages near our college.
I was studying in Pune at that time, CIT. And he would go and give, sort of teach the children in the teaching ways, teach mathematics, so the children would become educated. And while he was doing that, the children told him that, you know, in our home, my father drinks, and then he goes mad, and he comes and beats everyone.
They started talking with the father, and soon that became his focus. They were getting people off addictions, off alcohol. And he worked very hard.
Almost for one and a half years he went, and almost like twenty-five, thirty people in that village, he got them off alcohol. That was a big success. But then the elections came.
When the elections came, the local politician brought three truckfuls of alcohol, alcohol bottles. And he said, you know, those who vote for me, I’ll give this to you. And then after that, when he went there, the whole village practically was, you know, people were lying drunk everywhere.
And then he realised that, I was trying to serve nation, I was trying to serve my fellow nationals, but what is the use of it? What happened eventually? I tried to help them, but they couldn’t take my help, they couldn’t benefit from my help. They again went back to their same self-harming ways. So at that time he felt that, actually if I had to benefit people, they must be able to get some higher happiness in life.
Without getting a higher happiness, what to speak of me benefiting them, they will harm themselves. And so much will be lost by it. So much energy will be lost, so much power will be lost, so much money will be lost.
That’s when he was introduced to Krishna Consciousness, and he realised that actually, if somebody becomes a devotee, such a person becomes a productive member of the nation. Otherwise, people are just taking national resources. So many people, if you see, there are so many different kinds of addicts.
And they are just burdens on the national economy. It’s draining the national resources. So, what happens is if somebody becomes a spiritualist, then his material needs become lesser and lesser, he doesn’t have any damaging habits, and he can offer a lot of service to the world, to the society, to the nation, to the world.
So, Srila Prabhupada was once giving a lecture in Mumbai. That time, we have a temple in Juhu. So he was addressing people who were coming to that place.
The temple had not yet been built. So he was telling that, you know, I have gone all over the world, and people are so interested in the message of the Bhagavad Gita. But all of you, instead of learning this message and sharing this message to the world, you think that I am very busy, fighting to enter the locals and go and work in some mills and earn a living.
And you say, you don’t have time for Bhagavad Gita. But, if you are crying, at that time, you know, it was 20-30 years after Pakistan. You are saying that India lost Pakistan because we lost a part, because of because of partition.
He said, if you study Bhagavad Gita, share Bhagavad Gita, the whole world will become Hindustan. It’s not that we want to convert everyone to our religion. But the point is, it’s a universal message.
So if at all we want to glorify India, what is India? What is India? Is it India, its trains, its cars? India is ultimately its culture, its heritage, its spirituality. So spirituality is India’s unique heritage. So if India shares its spiritual wisdom with the world, then India can do the best service to the world.
India can also develop technology, India can also develop software, India can do other things. But there are so many other countries doing that. But India’s unique selling point in the world would be its spirituality.
So, at one level we understand that I have no relationship with my country India, because I am a soul. And I just happened to be born in this country. But even if I have some love for my country, the best way I can serve my countrymen and the best way I can glorify my country is by sharing spiritual wisdom.
So I made two points. One is, if you want to benefit our fellow nationals, by giving them Krishna Consciousness, we can benefit them. If you want to glorify India throughout the world, by sharing spiritual wisdom, we can glorify them.
So India all over the world is known as the sort of spiritually most sacred place in the world. People from all over the world come to India. In India, there is tourism.
A major part of the tourism in India is spiritual tourism. It’s spiritual tourism. So, that’s why, actually if at all we want to glorify India, if we have any Arashtra brain, we don’t have to give it up.
But we can spiritualise it. So serve India by sharing, assimilating and sharing its spiritual wisdom. Now if we look at India, cricket is not even an Indian game.
Cricket was a game that was played by Britishers and they brought it to India and now Indians have become so mad after this game. And India is not a, again, it’s not a cricket crazy country. India is an international cricket crazy country.
If a, what is the difference between the two? If a person performs even a triple century in Devdhar Trophy or Ranji Trophy, it doesn’t come in the news also. But, if somebody scores one good performance in an international match, it comes everywhere in the news. So, what is the difference? See, Indians are basically, why are Indians so mad after cricket? Because India is a nation which is seeking a respectable identity in the world order.
We want to be respectable in the world’s eyes. And somehow we think cricket is one way to become respected. Our country can thrash another country.
Hell yeah, we are so great. Mera Bharat Mahan. But actually, by winning a cricket world cup, you say Mera Bharat Mahan, but that cricket is not an Indian sport.
So, how will it make Bharat Mahan? And even if you want to glorify India in the world, actually most countries in the world don’t even know cricket. Isn’t it? America, they only know baseball. They don’t even know cricket.
So, if, instead of becoming mad after a foreign sport, which we have sort of become mad after, if we truly want to assert our national identity, if India takes its spiritual heritage and shares that with the world, we can truly benefit the world and we can truly glorify India. So, otherwise, this whole process, nowadays, in cricket there is so much match fixing that is happening. Therefore, actually, are these people really interested in serving and glorifying their country? Some of them might be, some of them may not be, we can’t say.
So, the whole, see sports is not bad. Cricket is also not necessarily bad. But the idea is putting so much emotional commotion over one particular sport, that is just misdirection of our mental energy.
So, actually, if you see, technically speaking, cricket has got very little to do with India’s national identity, national culture, truly speaking. But somehow people are attracted to it. if you want to inspire them to follow Supreme Dharma, what we can tell them is, yes, express your love for the country by sharing the country’s heritage with the world.
When Srila Prabhupada had gone to London, at that time, one reporter came to him and said, Swamiji, why have you come here? He was a little flippant. Flippant means disrespectful. We Britishers ruled you for more than 200 years, practically speaking.
What can you teach us? So, Srila Prabhupada replied, when you Britishers came to India, you plundered India of all her wealth. But, you forgot to take India’s greatest treasure. I have come to give you what you forgot to take.
That is the spiritual wisdom of India. So, that is the true glory of India. And Srila Prabhupada went there.
Actually speaking, the kind of success that Srila Prabhupada’s spiritual message received is remarkable. In just 11 years, he wrote over 70 books, travelled around the globe 14 times, built 108 temples in various parts of the world, and inspired thousands and thousands of people to become selfless servants of God and humanity. So, this is the potency of true spirituality as the unique selling point of India.
So, if at all you want to glorify India, let us glorify India by assimilating and disseminating its spiritual culture. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Rajesh argues that he worships the photo of his mother and father.
He says that that is good enough. In fact, he says, mother and father are our first God. Why bother about anyone else? What do you feel about his understanding? How will you inspire him to follow the Supreme Dharma? Yes.
These parents change, that parent is eternal. Yes? … Krishna, yes. So, at body level we have parents, but at spiritual level Krishna is eternal father and he can give a much greater love.
Yes, one or two answers more? … … Yes. So, this is the relationship between parents is important. Guru is even more important because he helps to establish the eternal relationship with God.
Yes. … … … … So, you should try to connect them also with Krishna. Good point.
This is a very delicate issue and we need to understand it carefully. See, all of us have two kinds of relationship. One is horizontal relationship and the other is vertical relationship.
Vertical relationship is with Krishna. Horizontal relationship is with all other living beings. Some living beings may be our parents, some may be our grandparents, some may be in the future our sons and grandsons, our brothers and cousins.
So there may be some hierarchy, some may be older, some may be younger. But from the point of view of Krishna, they are all his children. So in that sense, all of us are of one family.
So our relationship with everyone else is a horizontal relationship. And our relationship with Krishna alone is a vertical relationship. So now, actually, these horizontal relationships are there in every species of life.
Even a cat, I said, has a kitten. A bird has her birdlets. So the affection at the level of horizontal relationships is there in every species.
What makes human species special is that we can develop a vertical relationship. We can develop a vertical relationship only in the human species. Now that doesn’t mean that we reject the horizontal relationships.
The ideal human society is that in which the horizontal relationships strengthen the vertical relationship. The ideal human society is one in which the horizontal relationships strengthen the vertical relationship. That means, say, the mother and father are devotees of God.
And then the mother and father go to a temple and sometimes we see in the temple, the father comes and boasts before the deities. And the son looks, what is the father doing? He also boasts about it. He looks at him, what is the father doing? Father is getting up.
He also gets up. So what happens is, by obeying the father, the son is also going closer to Krishna. So, now there is a saying, matru deva bhava pitru deva bhava.
But still, what does it mean that it is not in deva matra bhava, deva pitra bhava? What does it say? The mother are God, the father are God. It is not that God is mother, God is father. That means God is a foundational reality and the mother and the father, to the extent that they represent him, to the extent that they connect us with him, then they are also God for us.
In the sense, they are representatives of God. So if the parents are taking us closer to God, then serving those parents, that horizontal relationship will strengthen our vertical relationship. So, that’s how the ideal human society should be.
Now, if there is no vertical relationship, there is only horizontal relationship, then actually there is not much difference between that relationship in the human species and the relationship in the animal species. Sri Prabhupada explains in the book Second Chance that the love of the parents for their offspring, the love of the parents for their offspring is natural and necessary, but it is not spiritual. The love of the parents for their offspring, it is natural and it is necessary, but it is not spiritual.
A simple example, there is a weaver bird, there are many birds like that, so weaver bird, if you study their lives, it is like a perfect family, perfect planned family. So, when the she-bird is going to lay eggs, so both the birds search around and then they find some tree with a hollow in it and then both of them come together and they start covering the hollow properly with mud and straw and then the she-bird goes inside and she lies over there and then they cover it properly so that no predators will come and attack the she-bird when she is about to deliver the eggs. And then the he-bird goes around all the time and gets some grains and some worms and things like that and gives it to the weaver bird.
So, it drops it from the hole and he eats it. Then, as the eggs are given out, then she sits on the eggs and hatches the eggs and then after that, the birdlets come out. And at that time, the father-bird has to work very hard because he has to feed not only the mother-bird but also the other birdlets.
And the father-bird works harder and harder and harder. And then as the other birdlets need more and more food, then the father-bird tells the mother-bird, this is too much, you also have to take a job now, come. So, then they break open the nest, the hollow which is covered by the mud and everything and then both of them seal it.
And then both of them start flying and both of them get food for their offspring. And inside, some eggs hatch first, some eggs hatch later. So, the eggs which hatch earlier, those birdlets are bigger.
The other birdlets are smaller. So, whenever the mother-bird and the father-bird drop some food from outside, the bigger birdlets get it first. Because they are bigger, so they can reach out and get it.
But amazingly, inside the nest, these bigger birdlets, they take the food and give it to their baby birdlets. They don’t take it themselves. So, we will see such sharing and caring, even in the bird species.
It’s ennobling to hear about it. But is it spiritual? No. It’s a family culture which is there based on the bio-body.
So, now, so Prabhupada said it’s natural and necessary. Natural means by nature’s own arrangement, whenever any species gives birth to its offspring, then the affection for the offspring is automatically created in the minds of the parents by nature. So, it’s natural.
And it is necessary. Without that, the offspring would not be able to survive. The offspring would not be able to go through the perilous phase of infancy and childhood.
But it is not spiritual. So, now the mother may say, I carried you in my womb for 9 months and I fed you my breast milk. Yes, certainly she did that.
But at the same time, did the mother produce the breast milk herself? Actually, when a woman becomes pregnant, automatically the same God, who sends a soul into her womb, sends milk in her breasts. She doesn’t do anything special to produce the milk at that time. Certainly, she is an instrument for providing the milk, but she hasn’t produced the milk.
And she may carry the child in the womb also, but she also doesn’t know exactly how the child gets nourished. God has created a system. Therefore, certainly, we don’t disrespect or neglect or minimise the role of our parents.
But if our idea of relationships ends with our parents, then our intelligence is no more evolved than that of the animals, because the animals are doing that. Therefore, if there is only horizontal relationship, then that is, unfortunately, as ignorant as the level of the animals. So, therefore, as devotees, as intelligent human beings, we need to recognise that we have to develop our vertical relationship.
And that is what makes us human. And then while developing our vertical relationship, we also balance our horizontal relationship. We don’t neglect our parents.
We take care of them also according to our capacities. But the vertical relationship is important. And as it may be pointed out that actually, if we neglect our vertical relationship and take care just of our parents at a material level, then how long can we take care of them? Eventually, all of us are temporary.
We may die young or they may die old. Ultimately, that relationship is going to end. And then whatever we have done for them is over at that time.
But if we become devotees, if we become connected with Krishna, then through us, they also develop their vertical relationship with Krishna. And in the Srimad Bhagavatam, it is described that if a son becomes a devotee, that 21 generations of that family will become purified. They will get the chance for liberation.
So, if we don’t connect ourselves with Krishna, at best, we can do some material benefit for them. Sometimes we may not be able to do that also. Because material life is such that we really can’t be sure that we will be able to benefit them.
Because even if I have a lot of money, if somebody gets a terrible disease, it can be incurable with all the money also. So, at a material level, we may or may not be able to benefit them. But if we become devotees, at a devotional level, we can offer them the supreme benefit.
So, therefore, actually, we need to balance the two. And learning that balance is something which all of us, we learn by practise, by association, by guidance from our mentors and our counsellors. But we shouldn’t get stuck only at the level of bodily relationships.
Because that would be unfortunate, that would be ignorant, and that would be short-sighted. Yes, you had a question? So, your question has two parts. One is that even in remote villages, people seem to have some conception of God.
That indicates the conception of God is ingrained within human beings. So, do animals, might animals also similarly have some conception of God also? So, yes. Why there are different Gods also? Okay, why is there different, that’s your question, not the animal’s question.
Okay. So, first of all, God is not a matter of DNA. Because DNA is a matter of the body.
I understand your point, I’m just clarifying technically. Now, the modern idea is to ascribe everything to DNA. But actually, DNA is just a part of the physical body.
Beyond the physical body is the mind, beyond the mind is the soul. And the soul has an eternal hunger for God, eternal, immortal longing for God. And that longing will be expressed wherever that person is.
Wherever that person is, it will be expressed. Now, this itself, the very fact that wherever people go, you’ll find that people will always have some conception of some entity higher than us. That indicates that the search for God, the urge for God is universal within us.
It’s universal within human beings. Now, why is it different? Because the level of awareness is different. See, our connection with God develops in two ways.
One way is by our own seeking. Okay, I can see this big world and obviously, I didn’t create the world, I didn’t create myself also. So, the world existed before me and it probably had a creator.
So, by our searching, we can move towards God and we can try to come up with some conception of what God might be. And the very fact that we are trying to come up with a conception of God indicates that the search for God is universal. But because the human mind is finite and God is infinite, our finite conceptions cannot give us an accurate understanding of the infinite, God.
And that’s why that conception gets distorted and reflected in different ways in different people’s minds. So, one is the human searching for God and the second is God reaching out to humans. So, God reaches out to humans through scriptures.
So, when we learn about God through scriptures, then we get a clear, coherent understanding of God. So, the Vedic scriptures describe that Krishna is the Supreme Personality of God. So, basically, the conception of God can be clearly understood when it is coming down from Him through the downward revelation.
But when the conception of God is conceived through our upward speculation, then we will generally go off-target. Because we are finite, God is infinite. And that is why different people get different conceptions.
So, that’s why our search for God needs to be coupled with God reaching out to us. Then, when we receive knowledge of God from the scriptures, then there will be no different conceptions. In fact, whatever different conceptions people have, you will find that all those conceptions are reconciled in the supreme synthesis in the conception of Krishna as God.
So, people have certain expectations, certain conceptions, certain notions about God and Krishna as God will fulfil all those conceptions and will fulfil something more than that. Why do we say that only we are correct? We are not saying we only are correct. It’s like different people are trying to climb up the top of a mountain and reach its summit.
So, various religions, various thinkers, various spiritual teachers, they are all climbing up the same mountain. So, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, all these different religions are pathways to climb up the same mountain. And as the seekers are climbing up that same mountain, different people look up at the summit and describe what they see at the summit.
So, depending on how high they have climbed up, depending on how clearly they have perceived, depending on how well they are able to express, they arrive at certain conceptions of God. So, if you look at the core understanding, all the religions will tell that God is all powerful, all the religions will say that God is beautiful, all the religions will say that God is wise, all the religions will say that God is famous, all the religions will say that God is wealthy, all the religions will say that God is detached, God is renounced. These are the six opulences of Krishna.
So, before we look at Krishna as a person, we need to understand Krishna as a principle. A principle is that he is the source of everything, he is the reservoir of all six opulences, he is the absolute truth. So, what happens if we approach Krishna as a person first without understanding the position? Then we start thinking Krishna is our God and other people have their God.
So, that is a wrong way to approach things. But first we understand the position, we understand the philosophy. There is a source of everything, there is a supreme being who is the source of all qualities, that is the absolute truth, everything is dependent on him and that absolute truth is Krishna.
So, first understand the specific concept of God. So, we are not at all saying that our own conception is right. No.
There is one God and that God has revealed himself differently to different people. So, to the extent that he has revealed people, they are attracted to him. So, now, if you see that way, in the Bible it is said that God is bluish in colour.
Now, how God is a bluish colour, they don’t know about that. It is clearly mentioned in the Old Testament that God has a bluish complexion. So, now, if you look at the Quran, if you look at the Bible, if you look at the Old Testament, now, there is actually no positive knowledge of God given over there.
The Quran is largely the words of God spoken to Mohammed. But there are, you should do this and you will get this, you should do this and get this, you should not do this. There is no positive knowledge about God.
God is telling, do this, don’t do this. There is no positive knowledge about God there. Similarly, in the Old Testament, New Testament, you study, there is no positive knowledge about God.
Now, the Christians and Muslims try to deal with this problem, this limitation by saying that, oh, there is no positive knowledge about God because God is unknowable to us. Well, if God is unknowable, then he will become unloveable also. If we don’t know somebody, how can we love somebody? So, actually speaking, those revelations are given according to time, place, circumstance and according to what is given, there are people who have developed devotion to God accordingly.
So, Srila Prabhupada would give this objective qualifications or objective designations of God. Do you, if you meet a Christian, do you believe God is beautiful? So, obviously. Do you believe God is powerful? Yes, obviously.
So, there are six opulences. So, now, if I say that, okay, Mr. XYZ is the Prime Minister of India. So, we say, okay, I know that the Prime Minister has these powers.
The Prime Minister is in the Indian Army in March, immediately the Indian Army will march. So, he says, shoot the atomic missiles towards China, immediately they will shot, whatever. He has those powers.
So, now, if I say, okay, this is the person, these are the powers which are expected of the Prime Minister. And this is the person who has those powers. So, here are the attributes of God.
I said the six opulences. These are universal features which all religions will agree upon. God is beautiful, God is strong, God is wise, God is wealthy.
And, okay, here is the person, Krishna, who has those six opulences. So, therefore, now, Srila Prabhupada had a simple question. When Srila Prabhupada went to America, at that time, the Christians asked him, Swami, what is your opinion about Jesus Christ? Prabhupada said, Jesus is our Guru.
Surprised, what do you mean? He said that Jesus laid down his life for the service of God. So, he has so much love for God. Therefore, he is our Guru.
Then, does that mean that what you are teaching is the same as what Jesus taught? Prabhupada said, yes, essentially yes. Then, why have you come here? We are already teaching Jesus’ message. Prabhupada said, no, you are not teaching Jesus’ message.
Jesus said, thou shalt not kill, and hence thou shalt not house us. And then, they had their continued discussion. Another time, Srila Prabhupada asked, so, then he said, see, Jesus said, I am the son, and I have come from the father.
Jesus is saying, I am the son, and Krishna is saying, I am the father of all living beings. So, Krishna is the father who has sent Jesus. He said, no, no, no, Krishna is a Hindu God.
Okay, if somebody argues like that, you can say, okay, fine. Actually, Jesus has said, I have come from a father. And then, the father is described in the Bhagavad Gita as Krishna.
So, if you don’t accept Krishna as God, you provide a better conception of God. Here, there are the qualities of God, powerful, beautiful, wealthy, knowledge wise. You present as a better conception of God.
In those religions, there is no other conception of God. So, if you believe in God, and you don’t have a conception of God, if some other tradition has a conception of God, why are you not open minded to accept it? Suppose there is a student who wants to study computer science. Say, he is in Pune, he is studying in MIT college.
He is very interested in computer science, and he studies computer science to a particular level in his college. And then, he finds that, okay, if I want to study more computer science, I can study it in MIT in America. So then, what will he think? No, no, no.
I will study only that computer science which is taught in my college. I will not go to any other college to study. Will a student say like that? A student will say, I am interested in computer science.
The college is a means by which I learn computer science. I am grateful to the college, no doubt. But I am not attached to the college.
I am not bound to the college. Am I interested in the subject? So, wherever I will get knowledge about the subject, I will take that. So, similarly, Prabhupada said, are you interested in religion or are you interested in God? So, if you say that, okay, Krishna as God is not talked about in our religion, that means you are so narrow minded that you are interested only in religion and not in God.
So, if God has revealed himself more in some other tradition, why not be open minded and take that? So, it is the revelation of God is not the monopoly of one particular section of humanity. The revelation of God is the gift of God to all of humanity. And that gift may come a little here, that gift may come more over here, and that gift may come somewhere more, something more somewhere else.
So, a true seeker of God, he will see, if you want to develop love for God, wherever there is knowledge of God, he will take that and he will enrich his devotion to God. So, we are not at all of that opinion saying that our own conception is right. All that we are saying is, all the different religions are paths to God and all of the religions talk about God, but God has revealed himself more in the Vedic tradition than anywhere else.
And if you are the true seeker of God, then take the revelation and benefit yourself, increase your devotion to God by that. Does it answer your question? Okay. So, any other questions about this as such? A karma yogi uses his dash.
Yes? Body, very good. How many of you got it right? Oh, good. Karma yogi, karma idol, body.
A jnana yogi uses his dash, mind or brain, mind is fine, to speculate about God. Ashtang yogi uses his dash to meditate on God. What do you think? Actually, it is, a jnana yogi uses his intelligence to speculate about God.
Ashtang yogi uses his mind to meditate on God. A bhakti yogi engages everything in Krishna’s service, everything in Krishna’s service. So, dash, dash and dash, all three are eternal.
God, soul and supreme dharma, yes, that is bhakti, that is our relationship with him, all three are eternal. Okay. God, soul and supreme dharma, all three are eternal.
Lord Krishna says, sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam sharanam vraja. Does it mean that one has to give up one’s parents, nation, job and all other engagements and be only a Hare Krishna devotee 24 hours a day without doing anything else? Excellent, you understand. So, what does giving up all other religions and serving Krishna mean practically for us? Have you written the answer? Yes.
Whatever we are doing, do it for Krishna. Correct. Good.
Any other points? Yes. We must perform the jobs for which we are sent here. How do we know which is the job that we are facing? Parents, etc.
Okay. It’s not that we have been sent to do these things. It is we who have chosen to come here.
It’s not that these responsibilities are something which God has given us. The soul wanted to enjoy separate from Krishna, so the soul came here. But it’s true, in principle what you are saying.
So, the basic defining understanding of bhakti is that we don’t reject the world, we connect the world. We don’t reject the world, we connect the world with God. So, we don’t reject the world for God, we connect the world with God.
So, the path of jnana, the path of renunciation is I want to go towards Krishna, so run away from the world to go towards Krishna. But the path of bhakti is no, look through the world to Krishna, connect the world to Krishna. That is the path of bhakti.
And how do we do that? In the various activities that we do. Suppose you say whatever we do, do it for Krishna. Now that is in principle correct, but still it is not that everything that we are doing can be done for Krishna.
Suppose a person is slaughtering cows, can he slaughter cows? Krishna, you are Gopal, so I will kill your cows for you. He cannot do that, isn’t it? So, it is not that everything can be done for Krishna. The various activities that we do in our life, we can classify them into three broad categories.
One is devotional, second is sinful, and the third is connectable. So, devotional activities are chanting, studying scriptures, associating with devotees, doing puja, doing arati, these are devotional activities. So, they are those activities which directly connect us with Krishna.
And there are sinful activities, meat-eating, gambling, intoxication, illicit sex, these very strongly disconnect us from Krishna. So, the essence of bhakti will be that we do these activities directly connect us with Krishna, we allocate some time specifically for doing these activities so that we stay connected with Krishna, and we give up the activities which disconnect us from Krishna. And then there are many other activities in our life.
Our studies are there, our family is there, and our various other obligations, expectations might be there. So, those we connect with Krishna. They are connectable.
They are connectable. Say, in the future, if you get married, then you can have a devotee wife, and you can have a home where you can have an altar, and you can practise spiritual life at your home also. Those are activities which are connectable.
But that connectable activities can take place only when there is a connection with Krishna. So, only when I give some time for chanting, I give some time for studying scriptures, for associating with devotees, then my connection with Krishna is established. And once my connection with Krishna is established, then other activities that I am doing, I can also connect them with Krishna.
So, when Krishna says, sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam sharanam vraja, give up all varieties of religion and surrender to me. So, how do I surrender? Surrender doesn’t mean that I have to give up everything else I don’t. That means, surrender means that I do everything for Krishna’s sake.
And those activities which cannot be done for Krishna’s sake, I put them aside. I give them up. So, as students, your study is something which you can do for Krishna’s sake.
If you become good students, then you can actually show the world that people think that just because somebody becomes spiritual, that person becomes good for nothing in the world. Then show how you are a devotee, and you can do as good or better than your non-devotee friends. That way, you will bring glory to Krishna while you are studying.
And if you do your studies well in the future, you can get a good job, and then your career will be stable. Then you will have a respectable position in society. And then if you practise Krishna consciousness, share Krishna consciousness with others, you can attract so many people to Krishna’s lotus feet.
So, therefore, practically we applied by first connecting ourselves with Krishna by doing some devotional activities, and then connecting our remaining activities with Krishna through doing them in the mood of service. So, now, we will discuss about how the supreme dharma is to develop love for God. Now, people think there are different kinds of dharma.
There may be, but there is the highest dharma. So, this is a verse from the Srimad Bhagavatam. You can repeat this after me.
This is on your left page, please. Savai Pumsam Parodharmo Yato Bhakti Radhoksha Je Ahai Tukiya Pratihata Yaiyatma Suprasidati Savai Pumsam. Pumsam means human being.
Parodharmo, the supreme, the highest occupational duty, highest religion. Yato Bhakti Radhoksha Je. By that, that by which bhakti is performed.
The Supreme Lord Radhoksha Je, who is beyond hindrance. What kind of bhakti? Ahai Tukiya Pratihata. Unmotivated, uninterrupted.
Pure love, pure devotional service. Yaiyatma Suprasidati. By that, the heart becomes satisfied.
By that, one becomes deeply and fully satisfied. So, this is the ultimate teaching of all religions. Now, Moses started in Judaism.
We have ten commandments and the most important among those commandments is, Thou shalt love thy Lord with all thy soul, all thy heart and all thy might. That is love God. When Jesus was asked among the commandments, which is the most important? He said, this is the commandment.
Love God. Now, the very word Islam means surrender. And surrender is based on love.
So, Islam also talks about loving God. So, all the religions ultimately aim for helping people to develop love for God. And they are all helping people to climb up that same mountain.
And they may have certain features which are slightly different. Certain external rituals may be different. But the test, the test of a religion is that how much I have developed love for God.
How much I have climbed up that mountain and become devoted to God. That will make a person truly happy. So, now, whenever we do any activities in the world, the test of these activities is, how much am I going closer to love for God? Say, if I am going by a car from here to Mumbai.
Now, if I am going in the car towards Mumbai, I know my goal is Mumbai. And say, I have a device, some magnetic device, something like that, which gives me a metre of how far I am from Mumbai. For example, say, there are road marks on the stone.
Mumbai, 35 km away. Mumbai, 45 km away. Mumbai, 25 km away.
So, now, if I want to go to Mumbai, and if somebody is telling me, this is the road to Mumbai, then as I am moving along the road, what should happen? The distance landmarks, they should keep decreasing. They should keep decreasing. If I am going along the road towards Mumbai, if it was, I started off, it was 35 km.
Then after one hour, if I am travelling, and I find it is 350 km. Then I think I am going in the wrong direction, or something is wrong seriously over here. So, after one hour, it should become maybe 10 km, 15 km.
So, the first word says, okay, what is the goal? The ultimate goal is, going back to Mumbai, you have to develop love for God. The next word that is given over here tells us that, whatever we do, the test of its success is, that it is taking us closer to God. If I say, my duty is to take care of my nation, my duty is to take care of my family, my duty is to be good to others, the test of its success is, is it taking us closer to God? If it is not, then we are just going on a detour, or we are going on a U-turn.
So, what does the next word say over here? Dharma Svanushtita Pumsam Vishwaksena Kathasuya Nodhpada Yad Yadhirathim Shrama Evahi Kevalam So, this is a very powerful verse. Dharma Svanushtita, Svanushtita means according to our particular position. Whatever dharma we do, perform, human beings perform, Pumsam, Vishwaksena is the name of the Supreme Lord.
So, that Supreme Lord, His Katha, His pastimes, His activities, Prati, our attraction to that Lord, hearing about Him, knowing about Him, loving Him, that should increase. And by doing our dharma, Nodhpada Yad Yadhirathim, if my love for Him is not increasing, then even the dharma that I do, what is it? Shrama Evahi Kevalam It is just a waste of time. So, that means now there are two points over here.
There is one supreme dharma which is the goal, and then there are certain activities which take me towards that dharma. For example, the ultimate goal of our dharma is to develop love for Krishna. Chanting Hare Krishna is our dharma by which we will develop love for Krishna.
So, like that some people may say, okay, serving nation is also my dharma. But then we have to see whether this activity which I call my dharma, Dharma Sanukta, does it lead to Rati for the Lord? If it doesn’t, so if I am going on a road, if somebody tells me this is going to take you to Mumbai, and if I go along and all the time the distance always says 35 kilometres only. Technically, I am just going around and around Mumbai, I am not going towards Mumbai.
So, if my Rati towards the Lord is not being developed, then what I am doing is actually a waste of time. Even if it is said to be religious, it is not going to help me anyway. And therefore, now there is a list of so many great devotees who are given over there, Allah Maharaj, Dhruv Maharaj, Ambarish Maharaj, who all were doing their worldly duties.
They were not just doing ordinary worldly duties, they were kings. And a king means huge amount of responsibilities are there. But while doing their worldly duties, they were also practising God Consciousness.
They were completely devoted to God. And everything that they were doing, they were doing for the sake of the Lord. So now, we will have a break.
How many of you would like to have a break now? Or you would like to have a break after 10 minutes, 15-20 minutes more? See, we will be ending this session by around 12.45. We are on page 6, right? Page 3 we have completed. So, we have almost 13 pages more to go. We may not go at the same speed, we will go a little faster.
So, would you like to have a break now for 5-10 minutes and then we will reassemble again? So, 5 minutes you can take a break. 10 minutes or 5 minutes? 10 minutes. Ok, 10 minutes you can take a break and come back.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. What is your name? My name is Krishna.
What is your name? My name is Krishna. What is your name? My name is Krishna. What is your name? My name is Krishna.
What is your name? My name is Krishna. My name is Krishna. What is your name? My name is Krishna.
What is your name? My name is Krishna. What is your name? My name is Krishna. Is there anyone calling them? Very nice.
So, we have covered most of the concepts that are going to come later also. So, we will go little fast now. and some of the questions that may be repeated slightly, we will leave that as an exercise for you, which you can do later.
We are not going to cover the full booklet and all its exercises in the allocated time. We will discuss everything that is there in it, but some of the exercises we will skip, some of the exercises we will do now. So, we will skip the next exercise now.
This is about Sannyas and Grani. It’s a simple exercise. And, now moving forward.
So, there is the word Bhakti, which all of us talk about, we have heard about it. Now, we are trying to practise Bhakti. Now, what exactly is Bhakti? Bhakti, is it a feeling, or is there something to it more than a feeling? Certainly, at the highest level, we want to develop love for Krishna.
And we can say love is a feeling. But, love is not just a feeling. Love is also an action.
Even if you look at it grammatically, love is both a verb and a noun. To love someone, and to feel love for someone. To love is a verb, and to feel love, that love is a noun.
So, love is both a verb and a noun. That means, love is both an emotion and an action. So, there is the emotion of love, and there is the action of love.
So, when the child is crying, the mother feels concern. And that concern is an expression of love, that is the emotion. But, that concern is expressed through action.
The mother will pick up the child, and caress the child, and fondle the child, and pacify it. So, that means, love has these two aspects. There is the emotion, and there is the action.
And, both of them are integral parts of love. Actually, both of them have a symbiotic relationship. Symbiotic means, both of them nourish each other.
So, when the emotion of love is there, that emotion of love stimulates the action of love. When the mother feels love, she wants to take care of the child who is crying, and pick him up, and caress him, and fondle him. And when she does that, what happens by that? Her love for the child increases.
So, the emotion of love stimulates the action of love. The action of love stimulates the emotion of love. In this way, there is a symbiotic relationship between the emotion and the action.
And, in India, many people think that bhakti is a emotion. Bhaa hona chahiye hrudayne. There should be a feeling in the heart.
Yes, there should be a feeling in the heart, but that feeling is not something that will automatically, suddenly emerge. There is a process by which that feeling is awakened. And that process has certain external actions to it.
That’s why Srila Prabhupada translated bhakti not just as devotion, but as devotional service. So, the devotion aspect indicates the emotion, and the service aspect indicates the action. So, devotion is what we feel internally.
Service is what we do externally. And the service that we do externally, that will nourish the emotion internally, and the devotion internally. And the devotion that we feel internally, that will inspire us to do more service.
So, an example, say, kirtan is going on. And at that time, we may feel, yes, this kirtan is so wonderful. We feel devotion in the heart, so we want to dance and sing for Krishna’s pleasure.
And as we dance and sing, we experience greater ecstasy. And what happens is, so there is a devotion in the heart, that leads to the action of dancing, and when the action of dancing is there, that further nourishes the devotion. Now, sometimes, I may not feel the devotion at all.
But still, if I do the action, still if I do the action, gradually that action will stimulate the devotion. So, especially when we are doing our chanting Hare Krishna Mahamantra, when we are doing japa, we may not feel devotion at that time. We feel this is just like a paradigm.
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Just I am uttering the sound again and again and again. What is happening by this? Actually, it is not just a repetition.
What is happening, even if we try to chant the names devotionally, we try to have a prayerful mood while chanting, but even if it is not there, the repetition of the holy name is itself purifying us. It is itself awakening us. We were originally in the spiritual world and we have fallen in the spiritual world.
So, just as, say, somebody falls from a mountain. Somebody is going in a truck or a car in a mountain and, say, the car falls off. Then, someone jumps out of the car and before the car explodes, he is falling freely and he falls on some sand dune.
So, he doesn’t die, but he falls unconscious. And then he comes back to consciousness. And there are some tribals living in that valley, at the bottom of the mountain.
And they come and say, Where did this person come from? And then they sprinkle some water on him and he comes back to consciousness. When he comes back to consciousness, they ask him, What is your name? My name is… My name is… I don’t remember my name! I don’t remember my name! So, what has happened? He has got a blow on his head and he has got amnesia. He has got amnesia.
So, because of the amnesia, he has forgotten his name. Then, say, this person, this young man who has fallen from the top of a mountain, he is, say, a millionaire’s son. And then his father comes searching for him.
Where is my son gone? And he comes along and his father says, Oh, my son, come! I am so happy to see you. So, now, all this while, this son has been living among the tribals. And the tribals ask, What is your name? I don’t know my name.
Okay, no problem. We will give you a name. We will give you a name.
We will give you a role. We will give you a goal. It’s okay.
You know, you become a woodcutter. And you cut wood and bring the logs every day. And every day he goes there.
He beats the trees and cuts down the wood and brings the logs. Now, he is doing this every day. And as he is doing this, his arms are paining, his back is aching.
He is a millionaire’s son. He didn’t have to carry wood, carry logs and break wood. But he has to do that because he has forgotten his identity.
So, now, as he is doing this every day, if he keeps doing this for month after month after month, for a period of time, he is starting, I am the woodcutter. Isn’t it? So, at that time, his father comes over there. Father says, Oh, my dear son, I am so happy to see you are still alive.
Father? Who father? I don’t know any father. He says, I am a woodcutter here. So, like that, Krishna comes from the spiritual world.
Oh, my dear son, Sarva-dhanvār-prakṛti-mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja. Come back to me. Why should I come back to you? I am happy here.
So, like that, we are following the spiritual world. We have forgotten Krishna. So, then, what does the father do? The father realises, Oh, my son, I have lost his memory.
And the father will come along and, My dear son, do you remember this watch? Do you remember this pen? Do you remember this handset? Do you remember this cap? Kuch yaad aaraha hai. Slowly he starts remembering. So, see, when a person has forgotten, how is the memory revived? It is by stimulus.
Stimulus of the past life that has been forgotten. And as the stimulus is given more and more and more, gradually the memory starts coming up. So, like that, we have forgotten Krishna now.
So, when we chant Hare Krishna, what are we doing? We are giving ourselves stimulus of the past memory. So, the life of love that we had with Krishna is forgotten. But every time we are remembering Krishna, we may not feel ecstasy immediately.
But what is happening? Our memory is awakening. Memory is awakening. Memory is awakening.
So, as the memory awakens more and more, now, this child, he slowly starts remembering, Ah, this is my pen. This is my watch. This is my handset.
Oh, you are my father! And he embraces him. So, how it works is, the memory is getting awakened slowly, slowly, slowly. But at one particular point, the realisation awakens.
Ah, yes, things become clear. It’s just like every morning when the sun rises. The sun rises gradually.
Slowly the sun is going up, up, up, up. But, at one time we are looking in the morning, it’s dark. And after sometime we look, Oh, it’s light now.
So, the sun rises gradually, but the realisation that the sun has risen is sudden. Like that, every day we chant the holy name, our awakening of love is happening. But every day we chant the holy name, we do not realise it.
But as we keep chanting, we are getting purified, we are getting spiritually awakened. And at one point, Oh, yes, this is my lord, the lord of my life. I am Krishna’s part and parcel.
Krishna is my lord. I am his beloved. We have an eternal life of love.
That’s how it will awaken to us. So, at our stage, whether we feel the devotion or not, we do the service. So, we chant the holy names, even when we don’t feel devotion, and we feel the devotion, that’s wonderful.
We come to the devotee association, we practise Krishna consciousness, and gradually, the emotions will awaken, and they will stabilise. So, therefore, there is a process for developing this love. The process for awakening this love.
And in this world, right now, we are directing our love to various things of the world. So, actually, everybody, no matter how powerful the person may be, he also has to serve. Bill Gates may be among the wealthiest person in the world, but then he has to sign contracts.
And when he signs contracts, he tells his clients, OK, I will provide this product by this much time. And what is he doing? He is serving them by meeting their deadline. Isn’t it? And if he is not able to serve them, then he will feel like there is some extra money he will have to pay, some fine he will have to pay, and he will lose the contract.
So, the point is, no matter how big a person becomes in this world, he has to serve. Because serving is our nature. So, whom we serve, that is important.
So, that’s why, once we theoretically, intellectually understand that serving Krishna is the highest reality of my life. Once I understand that, that is my highest goal. So, I will serve Krishna, even if I don’t feel like serving Him right now.
Even if I don’t feel like serving Him, I will serve Him. And gradually, by the action, the emotion will come. So, we, what do we do at our level? We commit ourselves to the action irrespective of the emotion.
And by the commitment to the action, the emotion slowly becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. And then the action becomes more joyful. Action becomes more spontaneous.
So, this is how our love develops. So, basically, spiritual life is a life of expansion of selflessness. It’s an increase in selflessness.
When a small baby is there, this baby is entirely selfish. He starts crying in the middle of the night. Why? I am suffering.
Why should I not cry? Everybody should wake up and pay their attention to me. As soon as the food is there, I want to eat it first. So, as the child grows up, what happens? He starts thinking, Hey, I am not the only person in the universe.
And the whole universe doesn’t exist to serve me. There are other people also existing. And I also have to take care of them.
And then the same child, he says, Father, give me chocolate. Father, give me this. Father, give me that.
As he grows up further, he starts understanding, the father doesn’t exist to serve me. I also exist to serve him. So, gradually, what happens? As we grow up, our love expands.
And expansion of love means we understand that I am not just meant to take, but I am also to give. And to give to more and more people. So, initially, I may think I want for myself.
Then I may say I want my family. And some people may say, OK, as the circle of love expands, OK, I am a Tamilian. So, even if I am in Maharashtra, I will find a Tamilian society.
And then, if any other Tamilian has some problem, I will go and help that person. So, what is happening? My love is expanding from my family to my state. Or my race.
Then I say, if I go from India to America, then there if I meet an Indian, Oh, I met an Indian. We will feel so happy to meet him. In India, we meet an Indian.
So many Indians are there everywhere. So, what does happen basically? That actually, the love, circle of love, gradually expands. So, now, as the circle of love expands, what happens is, some people are included, some people are excluded.
If I love Indians, that means I don’t love non-Indians. But, when our love, circle of love, expands to loving Krishna, then when we love Krishna, at that time we understand that everybody is related to Krishna. Because everybody is related to Krishna, everybody is a beloved child of Krishna.
So, then we start loving everyone. We start loving everyone. So, that is how, we shouldn’t think that loving Krishna is a sectarian, some religious commitment, some religious activity.
Actually, when we, when our circle of love expands to its maximum diameter, at that time we will love Krishna. So, at that time, when we love Krishna, we will love all living beings with that. That’s how, when, here, the main thing we discussed is, how the emotion, the action, they stimulate each other.
So, now here, below that, we will, skip this exercise, but I will explain this eleventh part over here, eleventh question. See, we don’t have a white board here. Anyway, all of you have this, isn’t it? So, there are, our emotions can go towards Krishna or they can go towards Maya.
What is Maya? Maya means, prateyartham yat pratiyet na pratiyet chatmani tam vidyalatmano maya pathabhaso yatha tamaha In the second canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, it is described, third canto it is described, that Maya means, to see anything separate from Krishna. To see anything separate from Krishna is Maya. So, if we love Krishna, then we are in bhakti consciousness, in Krishna consciousness.
But when we see anything separate from Krishna and are attracted to that, then we are in Maya. So, what should, as bhaktas, what do we want to do? We want to become detached from Maya and we want to become attached to Krishna. But materialistic people, what are they? They are attached to Maya and detached from Krishna.
They don’t care for Krishna. God exists or doesn’t exist. This world exists and I want to enjoy it.
So, these are the two main categories of people. Those who love Krishna and they are, there is a yes to Krishna, no to Maya. And no to Krishna, yes to Maya.
But apart from that, there are two more categories of people. So, one of them are impersonalists. Impersonalists, they become detached from this world.
Oh, this world is all Maya, I have to go beyond this world. But when they go beyond this world, they think that beyond this world is just one light and I have to go and merge in this light. Now, this idea arises because they don’t know that there is an eternal object of love.
They think that whenever I love anybody or anything in this world, it’s temporary, it causes me frustration. Therefore, I will not love anyone. And without loving anyone, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, I’ll be peaceful.
Now, peacefulness is in its own way helpful. It’s okay. It’s okay.
Okay. So, see, some of you felt sometime that just leave me alone. How many of you felt like that sometime? People are coming and troubling you.
Just leave me alone. How many of you have felt that sometime? Just leave me alone. Now, we will tell that sometime to some people.
But imagine if people take that seriously and leave us alone for all the rest of eternity. No, you told me to leave me alone. I will never talk with you again.
And not only that person, everybody says they will not talk with you. Hey, no, don’t leave me alone. Come back, come back, come back, isn’t it? So, how it is that leave me alone may be a temporary relief when there is too much pressure on us, too much expectation, too much tension.
But that is not our heart’s deepest desire. Our heart’s deepest desire is to love and be loved. But when there is too much pressure, too much expectation, too much misunderstanding, leave me alone temporarily.
So, what happens is, these impersonalists, their feeling is, okay, if I love anybody, anything in this world, I get frustrated. So, leave me alone. They say, leave me alone spiritually.
So, okay. They say, leave me alone to the people of this world. But they say to God also, you are going to leave me alone.
So, what happens is, they become detached, they say no to maya, and they say no to God also. So, that is an overreaction. She is detached from the world, but she is not detached from God.
We become detached from the world and we take shelter in God. So, these are mayavadis. So, this is, this is the same point over here.
This is over there, the same table I am going. Yes. So, yes to Krishna, no to maya.
That is type of person, which is a devotee. No to Krishna, yes to maya, and sense gratifier. No to Krishna, yes to maya.
That is who? Last category, sense gratifier. You can see that over there? Sense gratifier, last category. Sense gratifier means, he says, I don’t want Krishna, and I want to enjoy this world.
I want to enjoy my senses. No, that is, you have to match the pairs over there. It is not given as it is.
So, I am just explaining what you have to match the pairs over there. And then, now we talked about, same person is here, no to Krishna, and no to maya. They are impersonalists.
And then there is a category of people, who say yes to Krishna and yes to maya also. They are the sahajiyas. So, what is the sahajiya? Sahajiya means, they take everything very sahaj.
Very easy, take it easy. You don’t have to follow any rules and regulations. Just, nothing else is needed.
They feel like that. But what happens to such people? They will say that, oh yes, if Krishna is performing some pastimes, then they will clap, and they will cry, and they will laugh, and they will feel like there is so much devotion they have. So, if they are hearing Mahabharata, they see how Abhimanyu fought so heroically, and Abhimanyu was killed so brutally.
So, when Abhimanyu is killed, they start crying tears, oh, how tragically Abhimanyu was killed. And on television, Mahabharata gets over, then they change the channel, there is a cricket match going on. And cricket is going on, Sachin Tendulkar swings his bat, and gets clean bowled.
They start crying their own. So, what happens? So, for them, they have material emotions also, and they have spiritual emotions also. So, they are, actually, if one has spiritual emotion, bhakti, pareeshana bhava, virakti, ranyatra cha, if there is bhakti, there will be experience of God, pareeshana bhava.
And when there is experience of God, that experience of God is so satisfying, that one feels I don’t need any other emotion, virakti, ranyatra cha, one becomes detached from other things. So, that is not happening, that means the emotion is superficial. So, we want to come to this category.
We want to say yes to Krishna, and no to Maya. So, in order to understand this further, let’s look at the concept of rasa. Now, what is this rasa? Rasa, generally we hear the word rasa in terms of aam rasa, ganna rasa, isn’t it? Mango juice, lemon juice, or sugarcane juice, that is the idea of rasa.
But rasa here means emotional experience within the heart, a mellow, emotional experience within the heart. So, different objects create different emotional experiences. That means, say, if Indians see a ice hockey match, many of us may not even know what is ice hockey, and how it is played, and where is the goal, and how the goal is it.
So, what will happen? Because we have no relationship with that. Maybe some people are ice hockey fans, and they are just jumping and asking, what is happening? So, because there is no relationship, so there is no emotion over it. So, if you want to experience emotional relationship with anything, there has to be some relationship with that.
But in material life, even if we develop a relationship, the emotion from that thing is temporary. The emotion that comes from any object, whether it be sport, or whether it be movies, or whether it be some entertainment programme, the emotions are temporary. Now, when we have an emotional experience in connection with Krishna, that emotional experience is eternal.
So, that is the bhakti rasa, that is the eternal rasa that can go on forever. All other rasas, all other emotional experiences are temporary. And because they are temporary, a person doesn’t stay on in that same rasa for very long.
See, different people have very different rasas. Some people like to collect butterflies. They just keep collecting butterflies.
And they have like a mini butterfly exhibition in their house itself. There are other people who like to collect snakes. Snakes are so dangerous.
What is there in collecting snakes? But actually, they get some rasa in that. So, different people get their emotional experience in different ways. So, how it works is that based on what they find attractive, they will do that.
But, even if they get some emotional experience in that, it is temporary. It doesn’t satisfy the heart. Normally, what is the rasa that people get? Say, a man gets married.
He has a wife. He has children. He has a job.
He has a career. He has a pristine society. And then, that drives him on.
He says, yes. When I go to social gatherings, I can show people. I have this car.
I have this bungalow. This is my family. Then, that is the rasa that drives him on.
But, the problem with this rasa is, when he grows old, he gets sick. Then, he cannot continue his job. He gets tired, and the company says, now you may retire.
So, he cannot continue his job and have his pristine society for very long. Even if he says that, okay, it’s my own company. I can continue till my death.
But still, what happens? When he dies, he loses everything. So, we can get some emotional fulfilment from material things also. But, it doesn’t satisfy us very deeply.
And secondly, it is temporary. It does not endure. So, Srila Prabhupada talks about two rasas.
Bhakti rasa and mundane rasa, material rasa. So, bhakti rasa is that which is connected with Krishna, that is eternal. Mundane rasa, there can be many different types of enjoyment that may be there.
But, none of them can last. And none of them can fulfil. They are not lasting, they are not fulfilling.
And because of that, people keep changing. Bhoga and tyaga. Bhoga and tyaga.
That means, say, people want to work extremely hard. Say, they are working in a software company. Sometimes, 12 hours, 14 hours they have to work.
More than that also sometimes. And they work for 4-5 days. And at the end of the day, on Friday evening, it’s waiting.
When is it? 6 o’clock. So, run out of office. In the next 2 days, just fling and enjoy.
Why? Because they are working at one level. And by working, they think, yes, I will have big career. I will get rewards.
I will get promotions. I will get paid. I will get raised in my salary.
And they get some rasa in that. But that doesn’t endure. Then they, I just want to, the urge to splurge.
Splurge means, spend money wastefully. The urge to splurge. They just spend money on anything and everything and try to get some pleasure to that.
So then, Saturday, Sunday, it gets over and they think, 2 days are over. Again, it is fine. I have to go back again and do the work.
They don’t feel like going. But then, if I don’t go, then what will happen to my job? What will happen to my prestige? What will happen to my salary? I have to go and work. So, what happens is, these rasas are all temporary.
None of them last. So, the bhoga is one rasa, tyaga is another rasa. At one level, I want to enjoy and I just want to give up the enjoyment.
So, what is happening? The mind sometimes likes something and the same thing that the mind likes today, the next day the mind will say, this is terrible. You know, this time, India won the World Cup. But last year, when India got knocked out early, what happened? People, you know, they put garland of chappals on the cricketers.
Isn’t it? Sometimes they even burn the effigies of some cricketers. And after that, India won the T20 World Cup and there was a procession of people from both sides to welcome them. And they came from the airport to the Wankhede Stadium.
So, what is happening here? One realises there is ups and downs. Sometimes the same object we like, some other time the same object is so terrible. So, India won the World Cup and people are so happy.
Actually, according to some statistics, after India won the World Cup, Indians drank something like 12 million litres of liquor. Can you imagine? So, it’s horrible at one level. But that was very celebrated.
And after that, what happened? India is getting beaten and beaten, one after another, after another. This too, that too. And people are thinking, what is this? Captain throw out this.
Captain throw out this. Change this. Change that.
So, at the material level, nothing is stable. Nothing lasts. That’s why the same thing that gives happiness after a few days, same thing is so terrible.
Get rid of it. That’s how it is in material life. But in spiritual life, the rasa is eternal.
It keeps continuing. Not only continuing, it keeps increasing. So, material life, it is called as chapala sukha.
Chapala means flickering, temporary. So, actually speaking, the happiness of material life is largely in the imagination. The happiness of material life is largely in the imagination.
We imagine something to be pleasant. And to the extent we can imagine it to be pleasant, to that extent we get pleasure. If I don’t imagine something to be pleasant, then there is no pleasure in it.
Suppose somebody is playing a cricket match and there are spectators watching the cricket match. And then somebody swings the ball and then it goes across the boundary and falls. Now, a person doesn’t know what is a sixer, he doesn’t know anything about cricket, he says, what is happening? Because there is no stimulation of the imagination over there, whatever happens, isn’t there any pleasure over there? Now, we have set up rules in such a way that we imagine things in a particular way.
And when that happens, then we say, there is pleasure. So actually the pleasure is not really in the activity. If you see some small children, sometimes when the relatives meet the child and they want to have some fun with the child, so what they do? They start tickling the child.
They start tickling and the child starts laughing. Now, when the child is laughing, is he happy? What do you think? Is he happy? Well, you can say that he is laughing, so you can call it one kind of happiness, but that is also real happiness. If that were happiness, if happiness was so easy to get that just by tickling you could get happiness, then all of us can have our own perpetual tickling machine.
Isn’t it? And all of us can be happy for the rest of our lives. Happiness is not so simple. So yes, there may be a physical stimulus and there may be a bodily response, but that is not happiness.
So similarly, in the material world, whatever people call pleasure, that is just a physical stimulus and a bodily response. the fragrance of some gulab jamun comes in my nose. Immediately my mouth starts watering.
So now what is happening? A physical stimulus is coming in and a bodily response is coming out. A man sees a good looking woman. The sight goes into the eyes and immediately the body starts secreting some hormones.
The person starts feeling excited. But how is an adult getting turned on by seeing a woman different from a child laughing when he is tickled? Actually both are essentially the same. Because both are bodily responses to a physical stimulus.
And both have nothing to do with the real person, the soul. The soul is not stimulated when the body is attracted to a female form or when a person is laughing when he is tickling. So all these are superficial experiences.
They have nothing to do with the real you, the real me. They are just bodily stimuli leading to bodily reactions. That’s why this may give us some titillation, but it doesn’t satisfy the heart.
It doesn’t satisfy the heart. It just makes people feel empty and bored. That’s why you will see, these bodily stimuli that are there, over a period of time, they have to become more and more severe.
Like say, if you saw the movies 50, 30, 40, 50 years ago, at that time, the violence would mean some that would be the fighting. But now, if people want to go to the movies, it’s boring now. There is a big building and somebody comes along, boom, bomb explodes.
It’s fun. Why? Because what has happened, actually, these physical sensations, they are superficial. So after some time, they start becoming boring.
And that’s why we want more severe physical sensations. Like if you see, classical music was there. That is one level of physical sensation.
But that stimulates the deeper levels of our being. But when people become more and more superficial, then, what music do they mean? Bang, bang, boom, boom, done, done. This is some music.
People want more gross stimuli. If you look at cricket, maybe 15, 20, 30 years ago, the main form of cricket was 5-day cricket. But now, people say, 5-day cricket, tuku, tuku, tuku, it’s going on so long, so boring it is.
So then, we want some action. So we have 1-day cricket. And 1-day cricket has been going on for 10, 15, 20 years.
This is also boring. We want T20 now. And then you have T20 cricket.
And actually, all the players are not so exciting. All exciting players in one team. So we have IPL going on.
So then we have IPL, and then we have some Champions League, and this league, and that league. So what is happening? Basically, when we try to get pleasure only through sensations, then over a period of time, the sensations have to become more and more intense, more bombastic, only when there is some pleasure. Otherwise, the pleasure is not there.
So, material pleasure that comes only by sensations, that doesn’t fulfil. Actually, in material life, when people say there is enjoyment, what is enjoyment? What is people’s idea of enjoyment? If I can just forget the misery of life, either the misery of life, or the boredom of life. I can forget that, then it’s fun.
That is their idea. But that is not really happiness. That is just removal of the negative.
The positive is connecting with God, connecting with Krishna. That will give us deeper and deeper happiness. It’s not that, when you start chanting Hare Krishna, as you practise Krishna consciousness for one year, two years, three years, you chant Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.
After ten years, you find it boring. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. It’s not that you have to increase the decibel level to get some emotion.
It’s not like that. Actually, what will happen is, the connection with Krishna will increase more and more. And, you will experience greater and greater emotion in relationship with Krishna.
So, this Chapala Sukha that is there, Chapala Sukha is flickering happiness. It is the happiness that comes from sensations. And, this happiness doesn’t last for long.
So, I talk at one level of physical pleasure. So, there are different kinds of pleasures. So, what are the pleasures? So, here you come to page eight.
There are physical pleasures, mental pleasures, intellectual pleasures, egoistic pleasures, and spiritual pleasures. So, physical means there is a pleasure at the level of the body. Mental is at the level of the mind.
I imagine something. Oh, this is very nice. I’ll enjoy this.
Intellectual is, we do some brain-teasing activity and then we get some pleasure by that. Egoistic is, I have done something. Do you understand who I am? You understood who I am now? See what I have done.
Egoistic pleasure. And, spiritual happiness is in connection with Krishna. So, now, let us look at this.
So, actually, on the left you will see a list. So, Brahmananda. That is which pleasure? Sorry, on the right you will see.
That is spiritual pleasure. Watching cricket on TV? No, but there is no material on this side. There are… Ah, it is not physical.
It is mental. Why? Why is it mental? Because we are not doing anything. We are not doing anything.
We are only imagining. So, it is mental. Just like, in a movie, a hero and a heroine are dancing and embracing.
People start whistling. Why they are whistling? Actually, they are imagining if I would be there, it would be so nice. What is happening? They are physically doing nothing, but the pleasure is only in the mind.
It is in the imagination. That is mental pleasure. Receiving a call letter from MIT, USA for MS? Ok.
Why do you feel it is egoistic? Physical. No, no. Ok.
We will keep this. We will come back to this later because it seems that the conceptions are not so clear. Gulab jamun eating? Physical.
Correct. Presenting a paper in a conference in Germany? Ok. Going to Germany, you can say it is physical pleasure.
But largely, primarily, it will be what? Yes, I write a paper. I go and so many people hear what I am going to speak. So, it is primarily intellectual.
There is pride also in it. But centrally, the activity of presenting a paper is intellectual pleasure. Playing chess? Intellectual pleasure.
Sex pleasure? Physical pleasure. Solving a complex mathematical problem? Intellectual pleasure. Good.
Connecting others to Krishna consciousness? Spiritual pleasure. Playing football? Physical pleasure. Melodious movie song? Mental.
Yes, it sounds nice. Titillates my mind. Feeding a hungry dog? Spiritual.
If you give prasad, it is spiritual. Mental. Mental means that which makes me feel good.
That is mental. A love letter from fiancé on birthday? Mental. Bhajanananda? That is spiritual.
That is higher than Brahmananda. Dreaming about job in Microsoft company? Dreaming. Dreaming is a function of what? Mind.
Mental. Correct. Mental pleasure.
Chatting with friends? Mental. Chatting with friends. Good.
So, chanting with friends will be what? Spiritual. That is good. So, chatting with friends, the activity itself is physical.
Visiting and chatting with friends. So, you can call it physical pleasure. But depending on what you are chatting, if you are talking about some complex subject which you are studying, then that might be intellectual.
Or you are just chatting about some movie that you saw. It might become mental. But if you are just chatting, it is primarily physical pleasure.
Planning and organising youth camp like Spruti? Yes. Here, you might be doing physical activity. But still, actually, it is for a spiritual purpose.
So, it is spiritual. Now, going back, you have seen your call letter from MIT? So, what would that be? See, in general, we cannot, it is not a watertight division that this pleasure is only in this category. The same thing can be, say, if somebody watches a cricket match and he sees the team winning, that person will start dancing after that.
So, you can say that physical pleasure is also there. But it is primarily the mental conception that, oh, I am this country and this team represents my country. And, because this team has won, so I have won.
Because this team is great, so I am great. Therefore, that is mental primarily. So, that way, if you see, you have seen your call letter from MIT, USA for MS. Now, have I got anything right now at that moment? Right now, I have not gone.
I have not gone to America. So, there is no physical pleasure. No? So, actually, we will just eliminate it.
Is there spiritual pleasure? Obviously not. There is nothing in it. Then, is it egoistic? A, if I am going and showing everyone else, I got a call letter from America, then I can say it is egoistic.
But just receiving it, now, I may have done some studies earlier because of which I cracked the exam and I got it. So, if it was the study that I did and I cracked a problem, I might have been intellectual. But just receiving the letter, what is the pleasure over there? Mental.
I imagine, oh, I will fly to America and I will be in a big university and this and that and that and that. So, that is mental pleasure. So, now, if you look at these pleasures, apart from the spiritual pleasures, all of them are temporary.
None of them will last for too long. You play chess, okay, there is some pleasure while playing, but after that it is over. And after playing chess, if it doesn’t mean then there is some misery also over there.
Therefore, none of the pleasures are permanent. They are all temporary. Okay, good question.
Brahmananda means that God has three aspects. There is Krishna who is Bhagavan, who is the supreme person. There is the sun, then there is the sun globe and then sun rays.
Sun rays are spreading everywhere. The sun is localised in one place and then sun, the predominating is the sun god. So, like that there is Krishna who is Bhagavan, then there is Paramatma who is the expression of Krishna and there is the Brahmajyoti, the rays of Krishna which spread everywhere.
So, these three are the aspects of the same absolute truth. There is one absolute truth and these three are aspects of that. So, Bhagavan is the highest.
So, some people instead of doing bhakti to Krishna, they think, I will get liberated and I will emerge in Brahman. I want to enter into that light. People say like that.
So, these are the impersonalists. They say, I don’t want to go and serve Krishna but I don’t want to stay in this world also. They want to be in a zero state, not negative, not positive also.
So, actually that is spiritual happiness but that is lower than devotional happiness because there is no joy of love. There is only peace. Shanti, shanti, shanti, shanti.
So, there is some happiness there. Taiteyya Upanishad talks about different levels of happiness and Brahmananda has a high level of happiness as compared to this worldly happiness. But still, beyond that is the happiness of devotional service.
So, it is the happiness of thinking that I have entered into God. I have become one with God. Actually, we can never become one with God because we are separate from God.
We are His parts and parcels. mamai paamsha jeeva loke jeeva murtaha sanatana. We are His amsa sanatana.
In 15.7 the Bhagavad Gita says that Krishna but we can think that I have become one with Krishna. So, that conception that I have become one with Krishna is called as Brahmananda. Any other questions? So, now we can do the remaining exercises later.
We will just move forward now. So, we discussed briefly about how, why can I not feel any love for Krishna right now? Because that love is covered, just like a magnet and iron filing. And iron filing is naturally attracted to a magnet.
But if the iron filing has got a coating of rust on it then what happens? Although it is natural for the iron filing to be attracted to the magnet, as long as the coating of rust is there, it will not be attracted. But when the coating of rust is removed, it doesn’t mean at that time some new attraction to the magnet is developed. No, the attraction was originally there, but it was covered.
It was obscure. So, when the rust is removed, then the attraction becomes awakened. Similarly, with respect to Krishna, we have a natural attraction to Krishna.
But, presently it is covered. In the third chapter, 38th verse of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says that āvṛtaṁ, āvṛtaṁ means covered. So, it gives different examples of how the soul becomes covered.
And the soul is not able to perceive Krishna or perceive even his own spiritual nature and develop love for Krishna. So, if rust is there on the iron, what do we have to do? Brush it, remove the rust. We follow a process to remove the rust.
And as the rust is removed, naturally, the iron will get attracted to the magnet. Similarly, we just have to purify ourselves. Lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, illusion, they are like the rust on the soul.
And because of this rust on the soul, the soul is not now attracted to Krishna. But, if this rust is removed, then the love for Krishna will be awakened. It is not created.
It is simply awakened. That’s why the topic I mentioned is reviving. It is not acquiring.
It is reviving love. So, a child naturally has the ability to walk. The parent has trained the child to walk.
The parent has trained the child to walk. The groundnut already has oil in it. If the groundnut did not have oil in it, no matter how much somebody would grind and paste and do whatever, the oil will not come out.
On the other hand, if oil were there and everything, then I can just crush a stone and get oil out of it. If I crush an ordinary stone, oil doesn’t come out. So, similarly, love for Krishna is already there in our hearts.
And all that we have to do is awaken it now. Awaken it. So, the process for awakening is what we are doing now, what all of you did.
Wake up early in the morning, chant Hare Krishna, practise Krishna Consciousness, associate with devotees. This will help us awaken our love for Krishna. And, see, sometimes people say, if I don’t feel any happiness, if I don’t feel any bhakti, then why should I practise this Krishna Consciousness? Actually, you see, in material life, relationships depend on commitment.
No relationship can develop without commitment. If a man and a woman get married to each other and, say, the wife tells the husband, today I don’t feel like cooking, I won’t cook today. One day is okay, two days is okay.
After two days the husband will say, I don’t feel like earning, I want to go to office. If everybody starts acting based on feelings, then there will be no family life left over there. If the mother, the child starts crying in the morning, and the mother says, I don’t feel like waking up today, you keep crying only.
So, actually speaking, relationships require commitment. If you want any relationship to develop, there has to be commitment. And what does the word commitment mean? Commitment means that I will do it whether I feel like doing it or not.
That is the meaning of commitment. So, now, at home, the parents and the family members may do it because of a sense of duty. In school, in college, when we go, sometimes we may not feel like studying.
But then, we understand. I have committed to do this course. I have to become an engineer.
That’s how I’ll get a career. So there, the commitment comes because maybe we can feel a sense of duty to our parents because the parents have spent so much money to admit me in college. Or, it may be because of a compassion.
Because of ambition. Yes, I want to become an engineer. I want to do something.
So, essentially, whether it is motivated by a sense of duty or it is motivated by a sense of ambition. See, commitment means to subordinate impulse to principle. Impulse means what? I feel like doing it.
I don’t feel like doing it. That is impulse. But to subordinate means to bring down.
To put it below. To subordinate impulse to principle. That is commitment.
So, when we do commitment like that, when we show Krishna that I am serious about my relationship with you, and when that happens, then our relationship with Krishna will grow very nicely for a period of time. So, now, Prabhupada quotes over here. This is going to the next part now.
He says that actually speaking, at a material level, there are some dharmas all over the world people will say you should not be dishonest. That is a universal dharma. So, like that, that is a material dharma, but a universal principle we talk about.
And if somebody is cheating, then that is dishonest. Similarly, a universal principle of God consciousness is what? It elevates people. So, the purpose of religion is what? To change people from being lovers of matter to becoming lovers of God.
That is the ultimate purpose of religion. So, now, we will do the exercise on page 18. Before that, just a quick overview of the concept that is talked about before that.
So, now, see, we can progress in two ways. We can progress materially. Now, I have a simple handset of a cell phone, I will get a complex cell phone.
I have a small house, I will get a big house. I have a simple bike, I will get a big car. All this is material progress.
That is fine at one level, but that does not satisfy the heart. That is temporary. That is going to be taken away after some time.
And actually, all material progress brings with it certain problems. If I have a car, it causes road congestion, it causes pollution, it takes so much expenditure. And then, every material comfort, every material progress comes with its own problems.
On the other hand, if we progress spiritually, what happens is, we develop love for Krishna. That does not create any problems for anyone. That only brings a secure spiritual happiness.
So, it is said that material progress heals in retail and kills in wholesale. What does it mean? Material progress heals in retail, it benefits some people, but kills in wholesale. Now, how does this work? How many people in the world can afford a car? 100%? Obviously not.
Maybe in a country like India, it might be only 1 or 2%. Maybe in America, it will be 10%, 20%, 30%, whatever. But still, when a car drives on the road, it emits polluted air.
How many percent people have to breathe the polluted air? 100%. What does it mean? This material progress benefits few, but harms all. It benefits few, but harms all.
And actually, this is not just with respect to air pollution. There are so many big consumer industries which make luxury products for wealthy people. But then, they send effluents into the river.
Poisonous, toxic effluents go into the river. And then, all the people have to drink that polluted water. Or have to pay for purified water.
So, the luxuries go to a few people, but the miseries go for everyone. So, material progress, it may benefit a few people, but it harms everyone. That’s why material progress heals in retail, kills in wholesale.
Some benefits may be there, but there are much more problems that come through it. That’s why Martin Luther King said, that what is the situation of modern society? He says, we have guided missiles and misguided men. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
So now, you can read this in three minutes. We don’t have much time. Just look at the exercise, and think about it, and just do what is told over there.
This is 18th, this is page 11. Some statements may be fully correct, some are wrong. And if they are wrong, you strike off or insert something to make it correct.
Page 11. Finished? Finished? Okay, one more minute. Who all are not finished till now? Everybody has finished? Okay.
So, first statement. Hawk can eat halwa. He is not destined to eat stool.
Our standard of material comfort is already settled up based on our destiny. Yes, he has transferred the statement. Last part, is it correct? Our standard of material comfort is already settled up based on our destiny.
Yes, that is correct. Because, according to the kind of body that we get, certain things that we find pleasurable, certain things we don’t find pleasurable. So, a cockroach is attracted to a female cockroach.
Now, if we look, we can’t even notice which is male or which is female. Isn’t it? But, for a male cockroach, the female cockroach is a beauty queen for him. So, what happens is, that particular conception is the pleasure for him.
So, according to the body, certain objects are pleasurable. So, that is determined by the body that we have. If you think you can win, you can win.
There are no other factors that decide my victory. If you think you can win, you may win. There are many other factors.
What are the other factors? Destiny is there. See, now, our endeavour does play a part, but it is not final. Our endeavour is only one part of the whole thing.
Our actual business is to become materially secure by doing our duties to home and office with commitment and dedication. Is it correct? No. It is how is to become? It is to become spiritually advanced by to Krishna.
Krishna with commitment and dedication. So, whatever is talked about for worldly activities, we have to redirect that towards Krishna. Advancing in spiritual life is not progress.
Increasing bodily comfort is a sign of progress. Correct? How are you corrected then? Yes. Correct.
Good. So, now, when you talk about bhakti, so, now, you can go back to that page. We are basically discussing the meaning of this word, which we recited on page 3. Middle of page 3, there is a word.
We will recite this word once again and then we will discuss its meaning. Repeat after me. So, here the verse is talking about Parodharma, the supreme religion.
And, here, God is addressed by a very interesting word. Adhokshaja. Adhokshaja means Aksha is eyes.
Akshaja is that which is born of the eyes. Adhakshaja means who is beyond the range of the eyes. So, Krishna is invisible to us right now.
We can’t see him. Although we can’t see him, we can experience him. By bhakti, we can experience him in our hearts.
So, it is, in one sense, easy to love somebody whom we can see. I can see my nation. I can see my family.
I can see, say, some hero. It’s easy to love him. But, how can we love somebody who is beyond our senses? That is because, by bhakti, we can experience him.
So, that lord whom we love, then we can attain that eternal destination. So, what kind of bhakti should be? Ahaituki apratihata. Ahaituki means unmotivated.
And apratihata means uninterrupted. Unmotivated means I am not serving Krishna so that I can gain something from him. One time, a person went to God.
And he said, for example, God, I have taken this lottery ticket. It is for one crore. So, I’ll do a deal with you.
If I win the lottery, I’ll give you 50 lakh. So, then, he waited. After one week, the result came out.
When the result came out, he saw that his name was there on the prize list. I’m jumping in joy. And I looked carefully, and he realised his name was on the second, not first.
So, he had not got one crore. He had got 50 lakh. It is scratching his head.
And then he went to the temple and he said, Oh, God, you are so clever. You took your hisa before only. You took your baat before only.
So, what is he trying to do? He is trying to cheat God over you. So, first you try to do business with… people try to do business with God. And when they do business with God, then their whole mentality is what? In business, everybody wants to get as much as possible from the other and give as less as possible to other.
Just like when people go to a shopping mall. If you go to a grocer or some other shopkeeper, the shopkeeper wants to charge as much money as possible and give as less products as possible. So, like that, people, when they do bhakti, at the level of business, they want to give as less to God and get as much as possible from Him.
So, this is not a hate cooking. This is motivated bhakti. So, I had gone to Kashi.
There is a big temple of Hanumanji over there. So, there some people were singing. I was interested in seeing what they were singing.
So, they were singing, tum to ho baal brahmachari, mujhe dedo ek nari. So, the idea is that this is purely motivated worship. That is, we are just going to God to get what we want from Him.
But aahai tukki means that we go to God simply for His pleasure. When Srila Prabhupada went to America, there is a beautiful prayer that he wrote when he was on the Jalabhuta. Jalabhuta was the ship by which he went.
And as he was going to America, I can try to visualise the situation. He is an old man, 69 years old. He has only 40 rupees, which are practically not convertible into America at that time.
Only 1 dollar or something like that. He doesn’t know anyone in America. And he is going to tell people that you should devote yourself to Krishna.
And people have never even heard of Krishna. So, and along the way he gets a heart attack. Not one, two heart attacks he gets.
So, what will at such a time a person pray to God? And most people will say, God, please protect my health and please… Swami! Things for ourselves we may ask. But what is Srila Prabhupada in his prayer asking? He is saying, my dear Lord, please make my words understandable to them. They are all your children, but they have been covered by ignorance now.
Please let my words awaken them to their true understanding. And if you have some plan for me, my dear Lord, make me dance according to your plan. Make me dance.
Make me dance. So, he didn’t ask anything for himself. All that he asked is, my dear Lord, please make me an instrument of your compassion.
Let me become a vehicle of your love. Now, this is ahaitukhi, unmotivated. And apratihata.
Apratihata means uninterrupted. So, interrupted means what? That, okay, if I go to God for something, if I go to God, God, I want good marks in my exam. So, when I get my good marks, then, thank you God, bye-bye.
So, what happens? It ends over there. Or if I don’t get marks in my exam, God, you don’t exist only. Then again, there is an interruption.
We don’t do bhakti. But here we understand that actually my relationship with God is for loving Him, for serving Him, for pleasing Him. Therefore, whatever happens in my life, I will continue to serve Him, I will continue to please Him.
So, eventually, Prabhupada was doing his business. Now, earlier he was a pharmacist and he had a fairly good business. But, at one particular time, one of his business partners, he sort of did some dishonest things and the whole business got collapsed.
And what Sri Prabhupada had worked throughout his life, he just lost everything. And actually Sri Prabhupada was using the money that he was getting from his business to help in preaching. He was giving a lot of donations and he was trying to help in preaching.
Now, at one particular point, just one day, everything that he was having almost practically got lost. So, entirely it got lost. So, what was Sri Prabhupada’s reaction? Sri Prabhupada, he could have started blaming Krishna.
I did so much for you and you are doing this to me. I won’t worship you anymore. What was his reaction? There is a beautiful verse in the Srimad Bhagavatam.
So, actually there it is described that when Krishna shows a special mercy on somebody, Krishna takes away everything but him from that person. And what happens? That person has no one to depend upon except Krishna alone. So then, when such situations come, when there are some problems in our life, at that time, if we give up our bhakti, that means we are never pure hearted.
Actually, pure hearted bhakti means it will be unmotivated and uninterrupted. Even if there is reason to give up, we will not give up. Because Krishna, I love you.
That is the level of love that will completely satisfy our heart. So, we all aspire for that level of love. And when we achieve that, then nothing of this world can disturb us.
All of us will be eternally happy. So, there is a spell in the blanket which you can do later. So now, people want peace of mind.
But peace of mind, actually, how will it come? Sometimes people say, okay, I want peace of mind. before I was introduced to ISKCON, I had gone to some spiritual organisation. They say, you want peace of mind? Okay.
I’ll give you experience of peace of mind. So, close your eyes. This is what that spiritual teacher told us.
Close your eyes. Imagine that you are on the banks of a river. The river is flowing smoothly.
In the background, you can see a lofty mountain. Clouds are settling on the mountain. Birds are chirping in the sky.
The breeze is whistling through the ears. You can feel the soft sand on your hands. The fragrance of flowers is entering into your eyes.
Your muscles are relaxing. You are feeling peaceful. Peaceful.
Peaceful. So, now, some people may actually feel peaceful by this. And yes, by visualising you feel peaceful.
But actually, what causes agitation of the mind is our own uncontrolled desires. Okay, I may visualise and become peaceful. But then, if I am greedy, as soon as I see somebody has a better car than me, or if I am lusty, as soon as a person sees a good-looking woman, he’ll get lusty.
So, what causes our agitation of mind is not just the situation we are in, but the desire that we have. So, as long as we love temporary things, what does lust mean? Lust means we love the temporary forms. Greed means we love the temporary objects.
So, as long as we love the temporary, our mind will always be agitated. But when we start loving the eternal, in all situations we can keep loving the eternal and our mind will become truly peaceful and joyful. So, as long as we have any self-centred desire, I want this, I want this, I want that, it will always keep us agitated.
So, the peace of mind will not just come by going to a peaceful circumstance or visualising a peaceful situation. It will come by purifying our desires, by redirecting our love from impure, worldly things to the pure Lord Sri Krishna. At that time, we’ll become truly happy.
And what happens is that when we try to love Krishna, then Krishna reciprocates by entering our heart and flooding our heart with happiness. So, Krishna is attracted only by bhakti. He is not attracted by anything else of this world.
So, all of us have an eternal relationship with Krishna in the spiritual world. Later on, we’ll discuss more about the spiritual world, but here two points I would just like to say that all of us have our own swaroopa. Swaroopa means our own form in the spiritual world.
And all of us have our own eternal relationship with Krishna in a particular rasa. And that is where we’ll experience supreme happiness. So, life in this world is to be orientated in such a way that gradually we become purified and revive our love for Krishna.
So, as students, we’ll do our studies. In future, we may have our jobs. But along with that, we allocate quality time for Krishna as much as possible, stay regularly in the association of devotees.
And then, even while being in this world, we can become purified and we can develop love for Krishna. And when we develop that love for Krishna, then wherever we go, we can be happy. Because that love for Krishna is inside us.
And inside us, wherever we go, that’s where we’ll be happy. Because that is Krishna consciousness, our own internal innate possession. Just like a wealthy person, he can enjoy wherever he goes because he has money.
But still, the money cannot provide everything. But bhakti is the ultimate wealth. When a devotee has bhakti, wherever he goes, he will be constantly happy.
So I’ll conclude with one story. How bhakti can bring happiness anywhere and everywhere. So, you know, devotees are preaching all over the world.
So one of the places where devotees go and preach is also in jails. So now, India has a big jail in Tihar. And now, a few years ago, they have started a Tihar youth jail also.
A separate jail for youths. Why? Because they felt that if the youths are mixed with ordinary prisoners, many of the prisoners are very hardened prisoners. And by mixing with those prisoners, youth also gets spoiled.
So that bad association works over there for them. So therefore, they said, we will put the youths in a separate jail. So our devotees were invited to this jail to give a lecture to these youths.
Now these youths, and the youths are normally rebellious. And they think, who is this sadhu has come? We are not going to hear this. They have no interest.
But still anyway, they were in the jail, so they were forced to come and they said. So when this devotee came, the first sentence that he spoke, all the students clapped on hearing, all these young people, they clapped on hearing the first sentence. And then they all heard the lecture very nicely.
And when there was kirtan, they all danced and sang in the kirtan. And what was that first sentence that he spoke? All of you are not offenders. He says, we are offenders because we did not give you the message of Krishna before.
So nobody has spoken like that to them. Everybody is blaming them. You are this, you are this, you are this, you are that.
But here, they saw here the person with compassion. He is not blaming us. He is wanting to assist us.
And then, eventually, when the devotees are doing kirtan, the kirtan became so ecstatic that all the prisoners were dancing and the policemen also started dancing with the prisoners. And then the devotees were on the stage at the pandal. They also jumped down and started dancing with the prisoners.
So there was the Inspector General of Police. He also jumped down and started dancing. So the prisoners and the jailers and the devotees were all dancing ecstatically.
So then, there is a beautiful book written by a devotee. It is called Holy Jail. Holy Jail is, the cover is the jail bars are there.
Two hands are coming out of it. There is a Bhagavad Gita and a picture of Krishna in it. So this is a book which talks about the transformation that is happening in the lives of prisoners in various parts of the world.
So, in this particular case, this particular prisoner, this jail in charge, he said that actually, you know, we have been in this jail and this jail is a miserable place. But here, in the jail, when we had the kirtan, all these people were, these prisoners were so happy. He said, you know, he told the devotees that you come here regularly.
And, so then, there is a big jail. So in that jail, there was a small Ram temple. It was completely neglected.
When the devotees started coming, then they started telling, you know, actually, if you want to become devotees, then you should be serious, you should make commitments. So then what happened? This Ram temple, that became a centre where all those prisoners who wanted to become devotees, they started coming together. And now, in that jail, there are 21 prisoners who are all chanting 16 rounds.
They wake up in the morning, early morning, 4-4, they take a bath, they do Mangalarati, they have 16 rounds. And every morning, they read Bhagavatam together for one hour also. And then by 9 o’clock, they take their food and then they go for their work in the prison.
So, actually speaking, Krishna Consciousness can transform anyone and everyone. So, at external level, a person may be a criminal, a person may be in the jail, but ultimately, that person is a soul. And the soul has a relationship with Krishna.
So, whichever part of the world a person may be in, whichever social category he may be in, the soul can develop a relationship with Krishna. There is a supreme joy in that relationship. So, thank you very much.
Are there any questions? Yes, sir. Who decides our relationship with Krishna? Who decides our relationship with Krishna? That is eternal. So, when we go back, it is our choice or our decision will naturally gravitate to our original inclination.
That means, our free will and our original position, they will naturally harmonise. So, it’s not that something will be imposed on us. It is something which we naturally choose according to what was our original eternal nature.
So, the Swarupa that we have, which we had originally, which we regained, that will be what will be our natural choice because that is what will make us most happy. Thank you very much. Thank you.
So, now you can just relax for a few minutes and then the last programme will be the announcements, prize distribution. That will be in the auditorium. So, after five minutes, you can come there.
Thank you. Why did the Pandavas perform Shiva puja? Because the Pandavas are kings and they are also setting an example for other human beings because they are in the Vedic Dharma. So, puja for the Devatas is not banned.
It is not something that is wrong. They are setting an example for others. And if you see, that way, worship of Shiva is not something which is wrong.
What the Pandavas are setting an example is that if a person is living in this world, especially in the Vedic times, then he has to follow Dharma. That’s why they do the puja. But they don’t consider Shiva to be Supreme Lord.
They understand that Krishna is Supreme Lord. If Krishna is Supreme Lord, then wouldn’t it be neglecting the other gods? Will you be neglecting other gods? Not necessarily. For example, in Jagannath Puri, where Jagannath is worshipped.
But there is Parvati and Shiva also. So what is done is, if you understand Parvati and Shiva are devotees, the temple was originally there. So then how the tradition is that the bhoka that is offered to Jagannath, that prasada is offered to Parvati and Shiva also.
And then some sort of puja is done for them also. They are also taken care of. So we don’t neglect them, but we don’t mistake their position.
Why was Hanuman on Arjuna’s chariot? Because that had been the request of Bhima. Bhima had gone up the mountain. At that time, Bhima and Hanuman had met.
So he had requested Hanuman at that time that, you please bless us when we are going to fight the final war. Then he said, yes. My lord will be there as Krishna.
So I will be there on the chariot of Arjuna. And I will, I can fight and kill all the Kauravas alone. But that is not what the lord would want me to do.
Because he wants you to do the service. So I will assist you by my presence and by my screams. I will scream in such a way that I will cause terror in the hearts of the enemies.
So how it was, Arjuna had a standard. See, every Kshatriya has his own flag. So his flag was a symbol of a monkey.
That flag’s monkey symbol was there. But at the time of the war, Hanuman entered into that monkey symbol. That monkey symbol was always there.
It became alive at that time. It was like that. What is the difference between Shiva and Sadashiva? Shiva and Sadashiva? Sadashiva, he is eternal, first of all.
That’s the name Sadashiva indicates. Secondly, he exists in his abode called Kailash, which is at the border of the material and spiritual world. He is Sadashiva.
And there are other aspects of Shiva also. The word Shiva can refer to that Sadashiva also. The word Shiva can refer to also his manifestations that are there in this world.
So there are 11 Rudras who are there. They exist within the world and they function as destroyers. So they are not eternal.
Therefore, sometimes the word Shiva can refer to that eternal Shiva. Sometimes we can refer to the manifestation of material world.