Speaking with realization | Vrindavan youth preachers retreat

To see notes, click here

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Don’t worry, it will only become more difficult as you move forward.
No, I’ll try to keep it simple. If anytime you don’t understand anything, please feel free to raise your hands and clarify. And I’ll be happy to clarify.
So, I’ll speak today on the topic of, what’s the topic announced? Speaking with Realisation. So, I’ll speak about this in three broad parts. What? Why? How? So, what does speaking with realisation mean? What is realisation? And why should we speak with realisation? And then, how can we do that? So, let’s begin with the first point.
We consider the word realisation. What does realisation mean? What do you think, what does realisation mean? You don’t have any realisation about what is realisation? We all, if you had not had realisations, you would not be sharing. We have dedicated ourselves not just to practising but sharing Krishna Bhakti.
So, surely you have realisations. But what is your realisation about what is realisation? Yes? Experiences. Can you explain what kind of experiences are we talking about here? Because we all have experiences, isn’t it? You can say, you know, I attended this class, it was an experience.
I was with one devotee in America. He is a magician and a comedian. And he has a particular rasam, he is a Prabhupada disciple.
So, he came for one of my classes. And he says, at the end of it I asked, how was the class? He says, there are many wonderful classes I have attended and this was not one of them. So, then I replied and I told him, there are many wonderful appreciations of my class I have heard and this was not one of them.
So, you could say, okay, we attend a class and the class is boring. That’s also an experience. Some classes are boring.
So, what do we mean by the word experience? What do we mean by it? Experiences that deepen our faith. Good point. Anything else? Yeah, I’ll come to you.
Yes, one. Yeah. Yeah, please.
So, what we hear that we experience. Put it this way. So, what we hear that, say, when I started going to America in 2014, we had heard a lot about one of the major aspects of preaching in India is bashing the West.
And that’s a major aspect of Western civilisation is bad, India is good. And when I went to the West, I got a much broader understanding. There are many things good in the West in terms of material arrangement of things, physical logistics, very well taken care of.
But then as I started talking with people, especially Western people, the level of mental health problems, horrifying. And I realised that, okay, it’s like people may be comfortable, but they are comfortably miserable. So, that is what we have heard, we experienced.
Is that what you’re saying? Something like that? You’re saying something? Okay. Yes, please. When we hear some knowledge, when we try to apply it on a day to day basis, then after applying we get certain realisation, okay, this is the knowledge, but in practical way this is the application of that knowledge.
So by applying any knowledge we get realisation. So, okay, so you have gone to the last part of applying. How? That is the answer to that.
That’s fine. So when we hear, we apply, then we learn something. And what we learn from that, that’s what we can call as a realisation.
So in fact the same thing, that when I actually went to the West, I was able to reconcile. Because from the media, we get one picture of the West. Oh, it’s such a glamorous place, it’s such a comfortable place, high rise buildings, so much facilities.
From devotees, we hear something, oh, it’s such a degraded place. So how do you bring these two together? Is there a way, is it one right and the other is wrong? No, there is rightness to both. At a physical level, things are extraordinarily well arranged.
Not everywhere in the West, but in many parts of the West. But at a mental level, it’s incredibly broken down. So like that, basically what we hear, we apply and then we learn about it.
That’s one aspect of realisation. Anything else? We understand the knowledge when we realise it. OK, so we can say that it is, OK, you could put it here, hearing and understand.
So when we realise it, we understand it or when we understand it, we realise it, whichever way. But the point is that realisation brings some level of depth. Sometimes somebody is speaking and they can make very big, big statements, but they just don’t touch our hearts.
This person is speaking big, big things from the air, it feels like that. They don’t have any realisation of it. So I was talking with Gurujan Prabhu in Australia.
So he said when we joined ISKCON, at that time it was a particular phase in American history. So it was that they had a phase where everybody was a part of the counterculture, youth especially. A small part of the counterculture was hippies.
Counterculture means the way the culture is going, going opposite of that direction. So he said they were all like rebels. So he said we are rebels without a cause and rebels without a pause.
So our slogan was don’t trust anyone above 30. Don’t trust anyone above 30 because they are all a part of the establishment. They are all a part of the propaganda machine that is keeping us within this boring way of living.
But he said now that I have practised bhakti for 30, 40, 50 years, he said that when I hear classes, my attitude is don’t trust anyone below 40. Now of course, it doesn’t mean that a devotee can’t be preaching before their 40. But it takes some years also to gain some realisation.
We can speak some knowledge and certainly we should speak, we shouldn’t wait. But what happens is how does this knowledge should be actually applied in life? And what are the challenges when we apply it? How do we deal with those challenges? Sometimes we may speak such unrealistic things which create a lot of trouble when people try to apply it, which we ourselves will not be able to apply. That doesn’t mean they are not right.
But there is a balanced, systematic way of explaining things. So when somebody is not having realisation, then there is not much depth in what they are saying. It sounds impressive, but it doesn’t really impact people.
It does not really transform people in a constructive way. Anything else? A bunch of experiences that project a particular belief. That particular? Belief.
So experiences that project. What do you mean by project in this context? That project to a belief means, okay, this is the conclusion of that experience. By project you mean like point two or convince us about, reinforce, strengthen.
So project a particular, you could say belief, a faith, a conviction. Yes. So for example, now all of you are into youth outreach.
Now, maybe 20 years before, 30 years ago, there was hardly any youth outreach happening in our movement. But in, I think, was it 2004 when we had the big national first youth convention? 2004, I think. So that was one of the first national youth conventions we had.
I just remember that now we have so many in different parts of the country. So when we had that, devotees from all over the country came. And they saw so many young people actually coming and hearing and learning and taking it up.
And then it created a sensation. And all over the country, different temples started adopting. And now there’s so many of you are there.
It’s amazing that there are so many of you at three different levels. I go to America. In all of America, we don’t have this many Brahmacharis.
So just one service at one level, we have so many devotees taking up the service. That’s amazing. So, yes.
So when we experienced, this was impactful. This was actually people, young youth are interested and they become dedicated and they can become leaders in our movement. And we started investing more and more energies.
So it is a set of experiences that help us get a particular focus in our life, a particular priority, a particular conviction about what we should do and where we should go. Any last point about realisation? A couple of yes, please. Realisation means certain things that leads us to some conclusion and removes confusion that leads to some confusion or some confusion clearing situation.
OK, so confusion is removed and conclusion is established. So nashto moha smutir lagda. So nashto moha is confusion is removed.
And sito smigata sandeha gharishe vachanam tava. That is the conclusion. I will do your will.
It’s a nice way of looking at it. When you get realisation, that happens to us. Reciprocation by the Lord.
OK, so realisation comes as a reciprocation by the Lord. Is that what you are saying? So we can say realisations is the mercy of Krishna. It is by his mercy that we get realisations.
So jnanam jnanam jnanasahitam or jnanam jnanam truptatma. In the Bhagavad Gita 6.9 Krishna says that. That when we get both of those together, then actually we move towards realisation.
That is contentment. Prabhupada talks about how theoretical knowledge is not very significant. We need to get realisation.
Yes, good. So thank you. All of this is very helpful.
Generally speaking, in spiritual life there are concepts and it’s not very easy to define the concepts. So what? Do you have your other mic? OK. So is there a generator which power will come back? OK.
You just give it to me. No need for the stand. Normally it comes back in how much time? Any idea? The projector will work on generator or no? Projector won’t work? OK.
Can you do one thing? Who was with me? Hello Prabhu. So in my suitcase is a black bag which contains a projector which works on a battery. Can you just get that? Let’s see if it works.
I don’t know if it’s charged or not. OK. So it’s not that there is any one.
Generally most spiritual concepts, it’s not that there is one definition that can completely explain that concept. It’s through different points we try to understand. So the example is given by Chaitan Chaitanya Amutha Chakha Chandraniai that the moon cannot be seen directly by a child.
So we tell the child, OK, this is a branch. This is a branch. And the moon is in between and child sees it.
So like that, when we want to understand what is realisation, broadly speaking, we can say realisation means that which is a reality, we understand and experience it to be a reality. That which is a reality. So through our experience, we recognise that it is a reality.
So, for example, the generator or this is the. OK, then we can call and tell him no need to get a projector. So what is a reality that we experience and accept as a reality? What is a reality we experience and we accept it as this is a reality.
So, for example, we may hear this word is the Khale. And yes, it is a very important philosophical point to understand. So around 2006 to 8, I had a lot of health challenges.
And I was practically in the hospital for a long time and I was not able to move much. So at that time, I decided that because I was anyway trying to understand what was wrong with my health and trying to recover. So I started studying medicine a little bit.
So at that time, I had made a resolution that and then we didn’t have Wikipedia and Internet so easily. But I said, OK, is the audio OK or is it echoing? OK. Is it OK for all of you? OK.
So I had started, I said every day I will read about a new disease. So Pallabara says this body is Ashesya Rujam Viroha. Raghupa translates this as the body is a breeding ground of unlimited diseases.
So I thought that I read about different diseases to get realisation. Then I wanted to do it for one year. I did it for six months.
I found it is just too pessimistic and dark. But when I was doing that, I started thinking that I know about some of these diseases. It’s so disconcerting, so discouraging, so sobering at one level.
But then I thought we have medical students, their whole life is centred on studying diseases. But how many of them become detached because of that? Isn’t it? How many? Not many. It’s like people will get disease, but through their disease I will come to ease.
Isn’t it? Through people’s disease I will come to financial ease. I will. So somehow it is that just that knowledge, even that experience.
We see people being sick every day, but that itself does not necessarily lead to realisation. We can understand that diseases happen and the symptoms for this disease. But the realisation in terms of becoming detached from the world or leave alone attached to Krishna, even open to Krishna, that doesn’t really come.
So it is not just experience. It is we experience and then we accept. See, the problem is that in this world, anybody who goes, say, if you consider our experience, we all have a lot of experiences.
I have written a book on reincarnation called Demystifying Reincarnation. So many times I give talks on this topic. I was in Australia and one boy came to me after a class on reincarnation.
He said, I have a very serious personal question. I said, OK. He said, you know, I’m in love with this girl and we’ve been trying to get married for the last three and a half years.
But somehow her parents are opposed. My parents are opposed. And it’s just not working out.
So now you’ve accepted it is not happening. She’s getting married to some other boy. OK.
I just hear you. I want to know. You’ve written this book on reincarnation.
I want to know what karma can I do in this lifetime so that I can get to marry him in my next life. Now we may laugh, but he was very dead earnest. When I wrote that book, I read, I had done a lot of research.
There are many Bollywood movies which talk about reincarnation. And then reincarnation is just a convenient plot twist to overcome the inconvenience of death. So maybe the hero and heroine die and the love story should not end.
So many times they come back in the exact same body looking exactly the same. So the idea is that there is the knowledge of the inevitability of death or the inevitability of the frustration of one’s particular desire. But what conclusion does one draw from it? Like why does that experience like a doctor, for example, this is not a criticism of the profession of doctors.
You could go into any profession like that. And every profession introduces us to some aspect of how this world can frustrate and thwart us. But why is it that this doesn’t lead to realisation? So because what happens is we all have a variety of experiences.
So, for example. A doctor may experience the pain of disease. But the doctor will also experience the pleasure of earning or the pleasure of healing someone of disease.
So now, depending on which experience someone emphasises more, accordingly, they may think that this particular thing or this is the exception. Like, oh, this has happened, but I won’t get the disease. I won’t fall sick.
I will prosper. I will succeed. I will be happy.
OK, we have to go to the digital inputs, the digital video. OK. Maybe you can just increase the brightness.
Is there a knob there somewhere? Is it visible to all of you? Not really visible. Maybe just pull those curtains. I don’t know if that will make a difference.
OK. Is there, lift it a little bit, see if there is a brightness knob somewhere. OK, I think you can see something.
It’s not visible at all to you? Slightly visible? OK. Anyway, let’s move forward. So basically, we experience something.
But after experiencing, what aspect of the experience do we highlight? What aspect of the experience do we remember? Everybody has experiences. But having experiences alone does not make one experienced. It is learning from experiences that makes us experienced.
That is experience in the sense of becoming wise. So somebody may experience a particular situation. But what is the takeaway from that situation? What is the realisation? What they take away from that situation, that will determine whether they get a realisation or they don’t get a realisation.
So somebody may think that the pain is the standard and pleasure is there. But this is the main experience and this is the minor experience. There is so much pain in the world and suffering that is OK.
I can make some contribution and that is good. I want to make some difference. I can earn some living.
But the bigger reality is that there is suffering. On the other hand, somebody may make this as the minor experience. Oh, there is suffering.
But the main thing is I am so respected in society. I have got so many awards. I have built such a big house.
So if that is what we carry home, then what will happen? They will not get realisation. They will not get realisation. So suppose somebody is as youth preachers, even we do youth preaching only, but say if eventually you become congregation preachers and you are counselling a younger Hasta couple, and both of them are young and attractive, and say it happens that they are having a lot of differences and maybe the Mataji seeks guidance from Brahmacharya.
There have to be some boundaries. But let’s take a hypothetical situation. Then when we see the amount of differences in their life, our mind, OK, both of them are young, both of them are attractive, but still their lives have so many problems.
And this whole dream that life will be comfortable and enjoyable, this is not really, there is no substance behind it. If that is what we focus on, then we will get some realisation that will help us grow in spirituality. But the mind can be so cunning, the mind can focus on something opposite.
You see, this man is not able to give her shelter. He doesn’t understand her, but I understand her better. So if I give her shelter, she will be happy and I will also be happy.
So the mind can focus on something completely different from what should be the focus. That’s why when we go through experiences, what is it that we carry from those experiences? That’s what determines whether we get realisation or not. So what is a reality, we accept it to be a reality.
We experience it, but as to experiencing it, we accept it. Otherwise we downplay it, we deny it, we let it go, we push it to the background. So that is the first point of what is realisation.
Then what are the three parts we are going to discuss? What, why and how. So now why is realisation important? Why is speaking with realisation important? All of you mentioned already some points, but let’s try to explicitly or specifically focus on that. Why is, yes? Speaking with realisation is important, otherwise it is not reality.
Okay, there might be speculation. That’s interesting. Some people, what is one person’s realisation, that may be labelled by another person also as a speculation.
Isn’t it? So what I call as a realisation, that may be considered as speculation. So what you are saying, realisation is what will protect us from speculation. Because realisation would be same, because it’s reality.
Okay, that’s an interesting point. Will everybody have the same realisations? No. Then yes and no.
Life is achintya vedha ved. So we will talk about this with respect to realisations. If I don’t talk about this, you can remind me of it, there are universal realisations and there are individual realisations.
Like Krishna is all attractive. That is a universal realisation. But the specific aspect of Krishna that Yashodamayi finds attractive, that Radharani finds attractive, that say Subal Sakha finds attractive, it’s different.
Because they have their particular rasa. So there is an aspect of realisation that is universal. But there are aspects of realisation that are also individual.
We will elaborate on this a little bit more later. When we have realisation, we have conviction. Yes, so there is one Christian theologian, he said that the problem with the world is that the foolish people are confident and the wise people are doubtful.
So foolish people, somebody is so confident that if you just get this job your life will be successful. If you just go to America, your life will be successful. I had a maternal uncle in America.
He had his own company and he didn’t have a son. So he wanted me to come there and inherit his company. And he took many of our relatives.
And he gave them jobs in his company and got them employed. So after many years, when I started going to America, I talked with him. And after talking with him, I realised his conviction that if people from India come to America, they will be happy.
That is so great. I was wondering whether my conviction that if people go to the spiritual world they will be happy or not, whether I have that much conviction. And it’s such a zeal to somehow or the other do this, go through that loophole, do that, do that.
Somehow get people to come to America. So it’s not necessarily foolish but it’s a material thing. So we often don’t have conviction and when we have realisation then we will have conviction.
Anything else? Who has not answered till now? Strong belief system. So if we have realisation then it’s not just one conviction but we have overall belief system that is strong and that helps us to communicate with them. First of all we ourselves are well situated and then we can elevate others also.
Thank you. Yes? Sorry? Strong connection. Strong connection with what? The party whom you are speaking to.
If we have realisation, we can develop a strong connection. Yes, that’s true. We will explore this a little bit more when we go towards how to get realisation or how to speak with realisation.
Yes? Comment over here? It makes us more realistic. Okay. Having realisation makes us more realistic.
It’s true but it’s like saying having more money makes us more wealthy. It’s the same thing essentially. When we have realisation we become more grounded.
It’s true. We are more realistic in what we speak, how we help people grow. I remember one example of how not to preach.
So I was in Pune, one boy came, one young. He was not a semi-devotee. He came to meet me.
He was in tears. He said, I am never going to come to this temple again. I said, what happened? He said, my mother passed away and I came to the temple.
He was close to me. I was in the media department at that time. So I used to meet him.
He said, you are not available. I had gone out. He said, I met some other devotee.
I told him, your mother passed away. And he told me, your mother passed away? He said, tomorrow your father will pass away. The day after tomorrow your brother will pass away.
After that your sister will pass away. Your friends will pass away. Everybody is going to pass away.
Ultimately we are all alone in this world. Now, that may be true, but that is not what they need at that time. They have to speak what somebody needs.
Somebody is like, sometimes there are two aspects of preaching. If somebody is high up, if we are here and somebody is flying high in the sky, then we need to bring them down. So if somebody is high up, unrealistic, we bring them down.
So sometimes here we may have to speak something which is heavy, something which is sharp words, that needs to be spoken. But if somebody is already halfway down, somebody is already, so here somebody is, you could say here a person is complacent, then we need to bring them to the ground, we need to ground them. But if somebody is already discouraged and then we speak heavy, we don’t ground them, we bury them.
And that’s not very helpful. That’s not at all helpful in fact. So there are times definitely, if somebody is at this level, when they are discouraged, we need to speak something which lifts them up.
We need to encourage them. So basically when we are preaching, it is we comfort the afflicted and we afflict the comforted. If somebody is high up, we bring them down.
If somebody is down, we need to encourage them, we need to solace them. So preaching has these two aspects. Is this visible to all of you or not? It’s interesting.
It’s not visible for me from here. So it’s like we afflict the comforted. That if somebody is high up in the world, overall very proud, very happy, very comfortable, then afflict them, bring them to the reality.
But then we also have to comfort the afflicted. The Bhagavad Mithra Canto says that one who travels around the world, reassuring everyone of safety through the shelter of the Lord, that person becomes very dear to the Lord. So it depends.
It makes a more realistic means. We understand where people are at and we elevate them accordingly. Anything else? Why speak with realisation? Realisation helps us to speak what is appropriate and mature.
So to the extent we are realised, we understand where people are at and where we can take them up from there. So in general, realisation, all that you said, I’ll just try to summarise it in a few words. Realisation at one level brings authenticity.
Our Shastra knowledge, that can bring authority and that is important. But we can’t just be quoting authority. We also need to have authenticity.
So speaking with realisation brings authenticity. This is something which you have experienced. This is something which you have gone through.
You know some things from this and then you are speaking it. So it brings authenticity. See authority means that this is from Bhagavad Gita.
This is from Bhagavad Gita. This is not just my concoction, my speculation. That’s authority.
This is our authority. But authenticity means this is what I have experienced. This is what I have realised.
So the difference between authority and authenticity is, authority is about the source. Authenticity is about the medium. The source is important but the medium is also important.
That some people when they speak, they may speak a very simple class. But it touches our heart. Some people may quote a lot of shuras, lot of different points and you may be impressed by their knowledge but it doesn’t really touch our heart.
It doesn’t necessarily inspire us to take to bhakti. So authenticity is more about it’s coming from our heart and it goes to the heart of the other person. That’s authenticity.
So it has authenticity. As I mentioned there is appropriateness and there is an appeal. It’s appealing that when somebody speaks authentically, somebody speaks with realisation, there is a significant appeal to it that is often lacking when somebody speaks superficially.
So we could go into this further but let’s focus on the last and the most important part of the session. How do we speak with realisation? So Shrila Prabhupada himself in the first canto, in the Narad Vyasa Samvad gives an explanation of this. What does speaking with realisation mean? He says there is the knowledge of scripture and he says there are the interests of the audience.
So he says speaking with realisation means we don’t extort something unauthentic from the scripture. But we take that section from scripture and we focus on finding how scripture can be presented in a way that is interesting for the audience. What is of interest to the audience? Say if we go to a college programme, one time programme, we say okay today I will speak how Ajit Teveda is best known as Vishishtadvaita.
Now it may be very much based on a scripture or tradition but is that of any interest to the audience? No, that’s not of any interest to the audience, isn’t it? So on the other hand if somebody goes to a college, they say okay now I will tell you how you can study so that you can go to America. That may be of interest to people but there is nothing of scripture in it, isn’t it? So we have to find out what is of interest to the audience and what is scripture message and where do the two intersect. So when we do that, that is when we are speaking with realisation.
You want to say something Prabhu? So this is the Naradaya Samvat Prabhupada talks about it. Now to speak in a way that is interesting for the audience. Now it’s important when we say interest, people can have many different interests.
We don’t have to speak about every single one of their interests. We can’t and we shouldn’t. But those of their interests that we can connect with Krishna.
For example, when we go for a one-time programme, we try to speak of something which is more practically related with their concerns. How students can improve their concentration or how we can have more positive thoughts or how we can apply spiritual wisdom for better decision-making or whatever. Something which is relevant to their immediate concerns.
So it is important that we be able to understand the audience’s concerns and then once we understand the concerns of the audience, Interests is one word, there is an acronym NICE, which should be nice to people. You know what is NICE? Needs, Interests, Concerns and Expectations. So in general, it’s important to understand these.
So if we consider, let’s take Prabhupada’s example also, how to present things in a way that is interesting for the audience. If we see Shrila Prabhupada’s life, when did Shrila Prabhupada appear? 1896. When did he meet his Guru Maharaj? 1922.
When did he go to America? 1965. When did he depart from the world? 1977. So now if we consider broadly, we can say that Prabhupada’s outreach, it had three phases.
One was in India, actually you can say here, it started more or less from 42 or 45, when in the Second World War time it’s Prabhupada started riding back to Godhead. Then Prabhupada from 65 to 70 focused on the West. Mostly in the West only he was.
68 he came back briefly and he went back again. Now from 70 to 71, Prabhupada was in India. And you could say this is India 1, India 2. After that Prabhupada was travelling abroad, but Prabhupada was mostly based in India.
He made his base in India. Now if we look at each of these phases of Shrila Prabhupada’s life and we’ll try to see a little bit how Prabhupada functioned. Now when Prabhupada was in India, Prabhupada tried a lot of things.
So, can you guess what this is? This is a map of India. So Prabhupada was born and brought up in Kolkata. And then he actually did his business in three distinct places.
One was in Mumbai, he had his business and then he went to Prayag. Now if you consider, I’ve talked with one of my devotee friends who has done his PhD in Industry, basically pre-independence history of India that period. So actually, people didn’t travel so much at that time.
If somebody had a government job, then they would be transferred. But then everything is provided by the government at that time. You have quarters and you have facilities, your job is clear.
But for somebody to relocate their entire business and relocate the entire family, that is not easy. So Prabhupada did that. Three different places he tried his business.
It just didn’t work for various reasons. And then at that time, what was Prabhupada’s motivation? He was thinking that I can earn money and financially support my Guru Guru Maharaj mission. When that didn’t work, then he started focussing on preaching directly.
He started Back to World magazine. There are multiple things that Prabhupada tried. He tried Back to World magazine himself, printing and distributing himself.
Then he stayed in one of his Godbrother’s ashram and tried to run their magazine and tried to expand that. That didn’t work very well. Then he tried to start the League of Devotees in Jhansi.
That didn’t work so well. Then he was in Delhi, Mumbai, various places, trying to find some speaking engagements, trying to write something, talk with people. But then he decided to stay in Vrindavan and he wrote the Bhagavad Gita.
So basically when Prabhupada was doing all these things, he was observing and he was not getting much success. Now Prabhupada, when he was not getting success, there was no success in the phase in India I we are looking at. So Prabhupada could have thought about various reasons for the lack of success.
Now one reason we can obviously say is that Prabhupada was focussing on English outreach. And even now if you consider, the local language outreach is so much bigger than Indian outreach. But at that time in the 1960s when Prabhupada was speaking in English, there were not so many people who were educated in English.
So just the choice of language itself limited the number of people who could come. Then beyond that Prabhupada didn’t have any institutional support. Prabhupada didn’t have funds to finance himself much.
Prabhupada got funds here and there but Prabhupada didn’t have followers. Prabhupada could have thought of various reasons why he was not getting success. And then depending on how one analyses, okay what is the reason I am not getting success and what should I do about it? So some preachers may analyse, okay I am speaking in this language, so I am not getting success, so I will speak to another language.
Or I am preaching to this demographic, this group of people, they are not interested, so I will speak to some other group of people. Some people say, okay I give classes, my classes are very serious, I will start telling some jokes, I will bring some humour. So depending on what we analyse as the cause, we come to a particular solution.
So what did Prabhupada analyse to be the cause that he was not getting success? Sorry, yeah. His Guru wanted him to teach him lessons. Okay, his Guru wanted him to teach him lessons, that’s true.
But that was what we are trying to say. See, we cannot really know in Acharya’s mind what is going on. But from the actions we can arrive at certain inferences.
So yes, what you are saying is true, but Prabhupada also observed certain things. So which sort of became his realisation of his Guru Maharaj’s instruction. His Guru Maharaj had given instructions to preach in the West.
But what was his realisation? At that time Indians were following… Yes, Indians are infatuated by the West. So Indians are infatuated by the West. It’s interesting how things worked out.
India, the Congress government chose to ally with the USSR when the Cold War happened. But although the government chose to ally with the USSR, Russia never became the land of the dreams for India. No Indians really thought, oh I want to go to Russia.
The West still remained the land of the dreams. And over a period of time from UK it shifted to America. After Second World War America became much more influential, became the sole superpower.
So anyway, the point is that Prabhupada analysed that. He didn’t think okay I should speak in some other language. He wanted to reach the educated people and he saw Indians in general are infatuated by the West.
But now you could say that if you consider Indians being uninterested in spirituality. Now this is not really true. India has always been a very religious country.
And even now India is quite religious. No doubt about it. But what was it that India for them it’s like bhakti is or bhakti or puja this is one part of life.
And something which I do which I feel good. I was in America after this Ram Mandir there is a lot of cultural self-awareness among Indians. So many Indians are trying to find answers to questions.
And they sometimes come up with very entertaining answers. One devotee in America showed me a cartoon. He said this an American college student is asking an Indian college student, why do you people worship so many gods? And the Indian replies, we like to keep backups.
So the idea is that people don’t have answers. And they try to come up with their own answers. So it is not that even during their time it is what are the Indians were not interested in? Philosophical spirituality.
Like Prabhupada is not a Kathakar primarily. So even at that time if you look at 1960s, 1970s, there were many big gurus at that time. And they had thousands and thousands of followers.
Like even now there are gurus who have followers. And we can’t say all of them are just concocted people. Some of them may be really telling Katha also nicely.
They may be devoted to the Bhagavatam. But Prabhupada’s way of philosophical spirituality to appeal to educated Indians, that no one was there. So Indians not being interested in philosophical spirituality.
And you can say the Indians infatuated by the West. So we could say Indians infatuated by the West. This is also very true.
I talk with devotees in Africa and often they say that all over the world we have travelled and there is no country as racist as India. They say that Indians have such a condemnation for the dark skin and the dark complexion. Now I told you this is not necessarily true.
You may have had some experience. But that whole point of being infatuated by white skin and conversely Raga and Dresha. So attraction towards the fair skin, white skin and aversion towards the dark skin.
That is something which is there. It is nothing to do with Indian culture or Indian philosophy. It’s just something which is presently there right now.
But we could say both of these are simply Maya. Isn’t it? Being not interested in spirituality is Maya. Being infatuated by white skin is Maya.
But what was Prabhupada’s expertise? Prabhupada decided to use one form of Maya to counter another form of Maya. Isn’t it? So like we use a thorn to take out another thorn. So Prabhupada went to America.
I won’t go into Prabhupada’s American outreach so much now. He went there and then because we are focussing on Indian outreach, let’s focus on India. He went to America and he was extraordinarily successful.
He had people become devotees and he came back. In 1968 he came back with 2-3 disciples. But in 1970 he came back with busloads of disciples.
And wherever he went and he did Harinam, Sankirtan and everything. It was sensational. And now it’s interesting if you consider between 1960s and 1970s, India didn’t really change much.
It was not that Indians became interested in philosophical spirituality. That Indians becoming interested in philosophical spirituality started in the late 80s. Around 86, 87, 88, that’s the time when say Dayamudra Prabhupada, Samudra Maharaj, Dayaram Prabhu, all these devotees started coming and then Radhe Shyam Prabhu, Gaurang Prabhu and then subsequent generation of devotees in 1990s.
Many of us went to 1996, 1995. So basically Indians taking up Krishna Consciousness seriously, it happened in the late 1980s. One lecture of Prabhupada is saying that this movement is from India and I am the only Indian in this movement.
So the thing is that although Prabhupada came back to India, it was not that Indian mind had suddenly changed. So it was not that Indians suddenly became interested in philosophical spirituality. So what did Prabhupada do? It was, if you see, speaking with realisation means, we consider what is the message of scripture and what is the interest of the audience.
So if you look at what attracted people, Indians, before Prabhupada, there were a few other gurus, there was at least half a dozen to a dozen other gurus from India who had gone to the west and they had had some success. But Prabhupada was the only person who focused on cultural spirituality. Not just philosophical spirituality but cultural spirituality.
See when Bhakti Sahasra Thakur, he did not emphasise cultural spirituality so much. You may have seen the pictures, he even went to Radha Kund and gave a lecture in Radha Kund wearing shirt pattern. And when his disciples went to America in the UK, they went wearing western clothes.
And Bhakti Sahasra Thakur himself, he was with the consent and with the information of Bhakti Sahasra Thakur. So they wanted to present themselves in a particular way and feature a particular demographic. Prabhupada emphasised cultural spirituality and that’s why when western people came back to India, what happened was stunning.
For western people to see, for Indians to see westerners wearing Jyoti Kurta and saree, that was incredible. There is an editorial in Times of India, a part of it is published in Leelamati, there is this reporter, he is saying that these westerners, they ruled India for so long but now they are adopting our culture. They are saying this is cultural conquest of India by India of the west.
What happened is Islam had been ruling India for almost 600-700 years. But Islam while it was politically superior, politically it had gained more power, but no one in India considered Islam to be intellectually superior. Islam was not even an intellectual competitor to the Vedic wisdom, not with respect to Islam over here, just the way it was perceived in India.
But when the westerners came to India, they had the rational approach, they had technology, they were seen by many Indians as intellectually superior. Not just technologically superior, not just superior in this way but intellectually superior. So that’s why western people taking up Bhakti, that was extraordinary and Prabhupada tapped back.
So it was, what was the, if you consider Indians and Shastra or you could say specifically Prabhupada’s focus in Shastra was Bhakti. So what Prabhupada focused on was the interest of Indians and the west. It was basically what you can call as the cultural national pride.
That the cultural national pride of Indians. Our culture is so great that even western people are adopting it. And this Swami, he is the person who has done that.
This Swami must be so great. You see, at that time there was such a sensation created. One day one of my friends is writing a book on the sociological impact of Prabhupada’s outreach in India.
As I said, not many Indians became dedicated disciples. So he showed me a picture. There is a lawyer in Mumbai.
So in his nameplate, in the LLB, this, this, that, and below that, ISKCON life member. So at that time ISKCON had become such a prestigious name. Oh, I am a life member of ISKCON.
So that was the amount of sensation that was created. Now because the Indian government was highly socialist and Indian government did not want religion to spread so much, that’s why the Indian government tried to create this whole propaganda that ISKCON devotees are CIA members and they tried to discredit us. So various things happened.
It was a complicated time. But the point I am making is, if you see Prabhupada’s lectures in India, he is speaking philosophy, but in between what he talks and especially in one-to-one discussions with people, with well-wishers, what he is talking, he is saying, in one Hindi lecture, he says that, yeh Bhagavad Gita ke liye duniya mein bahut market hai. Yeh India, yeh Bharat ka wisdom hai, yeh Bharat ka gyaar hai.
Bharatiyon ko yeh duniyavan leke jaake dena chahiye. Par yeh durdasha hai ki Bharat mein mein pardesh se log laane padh rahe hain yeh Bhagavad Gita sikhane ki. So the whole pitch was, now you could say, Bhagavad Gita is transcendental.
One of the first teachings of Bhagavad Gita is that you are not an Indian. Isn’t it? If you are not the body, you are not an Indian also. But this is Yukta Vairagya.
So speaking according to the interests of people. So to understand philosophy, to appreciate philosophy, it requires a particular level of financial stability, it requires a level of educational evolution, whatever factors. So those factors came in the late 80s, early 90s.
But what Prabhupada did was, in his Indian outreach, Prabhupada did three main things. He had western disciples as the face of the movement, which attracted people. Second was, Prabhupada focused on building big temples.
Why? Because that would also catch the imagination. Oh it’s a big grand temple. This is an international organisation and it’s building grand temples.
Now so many other groups have built temples and some of them may have built temples bigger than us also. But if you look at the, I recently saw one book on the, the topic was more like the rejuvenation of religious architecture in India. And there they attribute Prabhupada as one of the pioneers in that.
They say ISKCON is what actually in the modern times, not just in holy places building temples, but building temples everywhere, grand temples. ISKCON is one of the pioneers in that. So Prabhupada did that second thing.
Why? Again, to attract Indians. Indians may not be ready to become devotees at that time, but he didn’t reject them. So it’s like at that time we had, Prabhupada had two main demographic of followers.
One were his western disciples. Most of them were full time. And then there was Indian life members.
So now these were, these were not really, they never become committed, not never, very few of them became committed initiated followers. But they did a lot of service. And Prabhupada presented Krishna Consciousness in a way that could trigger their imagination.
He made a Nilangam, there was this big sadhu sangha programme where different groups of sadhus had come and Prabhupada only spoke for 10-15 minutes and Prabhupada just got his disciples to come and do kirtans. And just seeing that, you know, there were western men, western women dancing and there was even, there was this small girl Saraswati dancing on the street. That just, Prabhupada says, you know, there is no need for me to speak.
You have seen this for yourself. This is the transformation. So what was Prabhupada doing? Understanding the interest of the audience and presenting Krishna Consciousness according to the interest.
Now when, I have read a lot of the letters that Prabhupada wrote to disciples and I have talked with non-disciples, to life members and I have talked with many of the devotees, many of Prabhupada’s disciples, who were there with Prabhupada when he interacted with life members. And Prabhupada in his interactions hardly ever pushes them. What time are you waking up in the morning? How many rounds are you chanting? He saw that they were not at that level of becoming serious sadhakas.
He didn’t reject them. But he engaged them to speaking according to realisations. Now for us, what is happening is, most of our movement is somewhere in between.
We have congregation, we have brahmacharis. Now I am putting the brahmacharis here, not on the same level as the western disciples. For one main reason is, for us, it is not that much of a radical shift as it was for westerns.
For many of them, many of our practises just didn’t make sense. I was in New Zealand and I was about to start a class, the kirtan got over and then, as slowly as I was spending time in the west, I realised why western people need some separate outreach facility. Like for our youth, we need separate outreach facility apart from the main temple.
So there was this very dignified looking western woman, around 40-45, probably she was executing some big company, something like that, the way she dressed. I was just sitting behind and she had come for the kirtans. Can I ask you something? She said, yes.
She said, when you blow that conch, why do all of you kiss the floor? When we do dandavan pranam, there is no comprehension of that. Why do you kiss the floor? So people had no comprehension of what is going on. So for them it was a very radical change.
For us it is not that radical change. But for all of us, when we are trying to share Krishna Bhakti, we try to understand our audience. And as per we understand our audience, then we present Krishna Bhakti in a way that can relate with them.
So this, we understand scripture, we understand our audience. Both is important. And to the extent we do both, so I will conclude with one last point about how can we define this area of intersection.
That at one level, it is that we follow our leaders. You know, Yudhavutra has become very widespread, fairly successful. And there is already a pattern that has been set up and that works very well.
At the same time, things will change. For example, one big change is social media now. So 20 years ago, there was practically no social media.
Now, there is practically no one without social media. It’s Yana, Isha, Sarva, Bhoota now. It’s almost completely opposite.
So now, yes, we can tell people don’t get caught in social media, don’t get caught in the internet. Well, that is true. We have to follow.
But while following, we also ourselves need to analyse that, okay, is this working? Like say, a youth preaching started in Pune. And there is going to a particular set of audiences. But now when I spend some time in North India, I’ve done some, I’ve met some youth.
It’s different and I’ve talked with devotees. There are some adaptations done to the kind of, maybe you have it in Hindi at times, maybe you have a certain less philosophy or more of this or more of that. We analyse so that we can adapt.
Okay, this is the audience over here. How can we reach this audience? So we want to follow, but we want to surrender with our intelligence. Okay, this is a purpose.
How can I fulfil the purpose? You know, there are these three levels of these followers. The third class, second class and first class. So we can say there is the instruction and there is the intent of instruction.
The third class doesn’t follow the instruction, doesn’t understand the intent of instruction. The second class follows the instruction but doesn’t really understand the intent of the instruction. This is what I was told to do.
This is what I am. That’s all there is to it. But the first class may or may not follow the instruction, but understand the intent.
And based on that intent, adorned so that the instruction can be, the purpose of the instruction can be perfect. Prabhupada was in, Prabhupada’s followers, Prabhupada Guru told him to preach in the western world. And Prabhupada did that.
Around 70-71, there was a couple of lectures of Prabhupada where he is telling his disciples. He says, my Guru Maharaj told me to preach in the west, I have done that. I did it in my service to my Guru Maharaj.
He says, now I want to preach in India and you assist me in this, just as I assisted my Guru Maharaj. Now did this mean that Prabhupada had no desire to preach in the, Prabhupada had his own desire, independent of his Guru Maharaj’s desire? No, not at all. What Prabhupada was doing was, he understood that, okay, he had travelled across the world, he had preached there, it created vibrant centres, but he recognised that the global movement would need a foundation and that foundation was in India.
So he didn’t just want to literally follow the instruction alone, go to the west and do some classes and come back. No, he wanted to go, he wanted to actually create a global movement. And that’s why Prabhupada decided to focus on India.
And he said to his western disciples, you share Krishna Bhakti in the west and I will come there and visit there intermittently. So Prabhupada understood the instruction but he also understood the intent behind the instruction. So when we are following, we are also analysing.
Analysing not just to defy or to reject, but to see what is the impact. And then after we follow, we analyse, then we basically, we resolve. When we do this, then our outreach can go far.
By resolve means, okay, this is what really works. This has a significant impact. And different devotees based on their own personal nature, their area of service, their inspiration, they may take different areas.
Somebody may focus more on going to a remote place and doing, starting a centre over there. Somebody may say, in our temples only so many people are coming. Let’s see how we can attract the people in the temples.
This is one dramatic thing that has happened that somehow coming to temples has become cool among the youth now. It is like, I come to the temple and I want to take a selfie that I visited the temple. So it is so many people are coming, not just in India, it’s in the west also, when I went to Canada, I went to Australia, our temples are full of young Indians coming.
So that’s a huge, that this particular young people on their own coming to the temples, this was not there 20 years ago. Now, what do we do for them? How do we cultivate them? There is a particular niche over there. And now education is also a huge complex.
So, I conclude here, I said I will conclude at any point, but how new areas can be found. Each of us, if you are following, but you are also analysing, by resolve, I am not talking about conflict resolution. I am talking resolving that is a new year resolution.
Resolve means do with conviction, when we are speaking, when we follow, we analyse, we can resolve it. This is where I have been given some gifts, this is where I have some interest, this is the area of service I can go. Then each one of us can play our part, a significant part in Krishna’s plan.
We are all, we know this 15.7, what are the words, 15.7, MUMMY, MUMMY, SHOW, JEEVA, LOKI. We are Krishna’s parts and eternally we are Krishna’s parts. We are always parts of Krishna.
What does that mean practically? That say if somebody is selected in the Indian National Cricket Team, if they are a part of the Indian Cricket Team, that means they have a part in the cricket team. That part, they might be a spinner, they might be a pass bowler, they might be opening batsman, they might be a middle order batsman, they have a part. So they talk with the team management, they see the match situation, they understand their own skills, they develop and discover their skills and then they play their role.
So like that we are all parts of Krishna. That means we always have parts in Krishna’s plan. If we are parts of Krishna, we have parts in Krishna’s plan.
And each one of us, when we try to understand, try to gain realisation, then in Prabhupada’s big vision, in Krishna’s big vision, we always have a small part, a big part, whatever it is. We play our part and by that we will come closer to Krishna and we will take others closer to Krishna. So I’ll summarise what we discussed today.
Our topic was speaking with realisation and within that I spoke about three broad points. The first was what is realisation? So many of you gave various points about realisation. So that which is a reality, we understand and accept it to be a reality.
So it is not just having experience, but learning from experience. We may all have many experiences, when I talk about the doctors, we may have some experiences which can confirm the knowledge of scripture. Some experiences may seem to challenge the knowledge of scripture.
In the sense that I said, if somebody goes to the restroom, it is so comfortable. Was I told what was told wrong? Which part of the experience do we focus on? So if we downplay some and highlight some, then we may or may not get realisation. So what realisation is, that which is a reality, we accept it.
And why realisation? It helps us preach with greater conviction. I said we are more authentic, authentic means something comes from our heart and it goes to the heart. We are more appropriate.
We know what to speak to whom and then we are more appealing, we can connect with audiences better. Now these are not necessarily all the reasons, these are just a summary of the reasons. And how to speak, we discussed that.
This key diagram, if you forget everything, just remember this one, that there is scripture and there is the interest of the audience. So how do we find the intersection between what is the message of scripture and what are our interests? If we find the intersection, then we can speak with realisation. I used Shila Prabhupada’s example, Shila Prabhupada in India, in the second time, it was not that India had become interested in philosophical spirituality, but Prabhupada focused there on the cultural national pride, that, oh, this is our culture and western people are taking it.
This Swamiji has made them take it. So Prabhupada used that as a way to engage people, even when they were not ready to take to bhakti. And for us, to gain realisation, we talked about three things, we go for, F was follow.
So there is a path given to us, we follow that, by following, we analyse. This is what will make us actively, first class, we not just follow the instruction, but we understand the intent behind the instruction. And then finally, we resolve, okay, this is what I can do.
This is my part. We all have a part in Krishna’s plan, we try to find out our part. This way Krishna can empower each one of us to have an impact on our own hearts and the hearts of many others.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna! Thank you so much, Prabhupada, for a wonderful session. I mean, the best part was how you took this topic to glorify the mission of Shri Prabhupada and his teachings also.
So my mind could really feel the heat at some point, I was even sweating. And probably like, we can allow the audience to ask one question because we have the next session. So, one question.
No, no. Okay, sure. So, we request all the audience in the room.
Thank you very much, Dr. Prabhupada. The key! The key! The key! The key! The key! Sure. So, Hare Krishna, we would like to really thank you for coming to this very important session.
I hope you enjoyed it.