The Monk’s Podcast 48 with Bhakti Vinoda Swami – The Indian outreach landscape

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

Hare Krishna, Bhaktivinoda Maharaj, thank you very much for joining today for the Monks Podcast. Hare Krishna, it’s my great pleasure to be here with you, a very seasoned interviewer and a very seasoned person who has got a wide range of information, knowledge and a very good writer, maybe one of the best I’ve seen in ISKCON. So I’m very happy to be here with you, trying to share a few thoughts.

Thank you for those kind words. I have not had much interactions with you, but whenever I’ve heard your classes within Mayapur or in Perth or other places, I can see scholarship, practicality, as well as serious spirituality, all coming together in your classes. And during our personal interactions, your warmth, your depth, and also the breadth of your vision.

Especially I had talked with so many devotees that when we met in Perth, you told me how I think, was it in New Orleans, you were there and you had to do the Sunday feast, but you said that there were many Western people outside and you decided not to do the Sunday feast, but you decided to just sit and talk with people. So that is amazing. So you’re concerned more with reaching out to people whom we can’t normally reach out to, not just giving classes.

So, Maharaj, today, yeah, please, you’re saying something, Maharaj? Yeah. It’s been my desire to actually explore new venues of outreach and preaching, especially when I travel outside of India. So that’s the experience I think I related to you.

Oh yeah. Thank you, Maharaj. I said, that’s the last we met, I think in Perth.

Yes. Yes, that’s true. Yes, Maharaj.

So it’s nice to see you again here on this virtual arrangement. So Maharaj, today I was thinking we could discuss broadly about outreach, maybe we could start with India, since both of us are from India and now we are also considering traveling and reaching out to the broader world, but can you share about how your outreach started in India and how it has expanded your experience in leading outreach in India over the years? Well, it’s a long checkered history, actually. My interest in outreach peaked to quite some extent at the times when in India, the preaching took a different turn.

Mostly I was saddled with a lot of regular institutional responsibilities and I was eking out my preaching living, I should say, by making small sorties into areas that I liked very much to do. You have always been in Coimbatore, Maharaj, or you have been with various places? I have been traveling quite a bit all over south, I have not been much to the north of India so much, but except for places, I mean, when I go for some other meetings or some things, but I do travel outside of India and I have been traveling in south of India. I have got one sort of a base in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and also in Kerala.

That way, Kerala is a very challenging and interesting place to perform outreach. Yeah I have heard about it. Yeah, it’s a potpourri of people who are communists.

The only other communist state in India apart from West Bengal and the most highly literate state in India. And then you have a wide variety of mix of religions, very strong Christian community and a very strong Hindu community that is mostly impersonalists and Mayavadis and descendants of Shankaracharya. Then you have a quite strong Muslim community.

In fact, the Hindus are slowly turning out to be like a minority very soon maybe. So it’s a very interesting place. Interesting as a euphemism probably? Yeah, it’s got the highest suicide rates in India and the biggest guzzlers of alcohol and I think some of the biggest consumers of meat.

You have a whole lot of mix of things. So I thought Bangalore was the suicide capital, Bangalore might be as a city, but as a state it might be Kerala. Yeah, I addressed a whole suicide, what do you call a workshop on a seminar once.

And there I was shown the whole statistics showing how Kerala is the number one state in suicide rate. So many things like that. Of course, your question was Indian outreach, what I remember from the history is that much of India was, I think, struggling a bit to express itself in terms of ISKCON’s teachings.

And I think things started changing a bit when these big temples came up, especially in Bangalore, we had this Hare Krishna Hill come up. And before that itself preaching started, a few years before that preaching started taking an upturn. This was 1993? Somewhere on, I think that temple was inaugurated somewhere in 1997 or 1996.

And you were introduced? I was initiated into ISKCON in 1983. And we were the first group of devotees coming together to the Bombay temple. I was maybe working in briefly, my brief stint in Bombay, at that time we were visiting the Juhu temple, along with a few other students from IIT Mumbai.

And we were just visiting. So, was he there on top of that? No, he was the next batch. He was the next batch.

This was other personalities. And that’s how I got introduced to ISKCON. And I found it very fascinating.

The type of the temple and the ambience and the atmosphere and the kirtan looked very different from a regular traditional temple that I’ve been to. So, that’s how my… Yeah, it was more the ambience than the philosophy that attracted you? Well, I got attracted to the philosophy first, but I’m saying this was the first impact to see something very different. And then I remember Sridhar Maharaj would call us and give us some goodies, nice prasadam and give us a big huge TV screen to watch videos of Prabhupada and all that attracted me.

It was, you know, a different experience. And that’s how my first experience started was to Juhu temple. And then after that, I was back in South India.

So you are originally from South India? I am originally from South India. I am from Tamil Nadu. Okay.

I am Tamil speaking, but in Kerala, they call us, you know, Ayyars, Tamil speaking Palakkad Ayyars. Okay. Yeah.

That means some amount of spirituality must have been in your family also, isn’t it? I am from a Smatha Brahmin family. Okay. Yes.

So quite pious and religious and all the puja and all that stuff going on at home regularly. More oriented towards Smatha Brahmin type of atmosphere. Yeah.

So for me, Vaishnavism was a very different type of discovery. Okay. But however, like you said, preaching in India took a turn that I actually witnessed and there were good models coming up.

One was the model coming up in Chowpatty that they had a class preaching. I understood that from Chaitanya Charita Amrita and many places that there are two types of preaching. One is class and one is mass.

I think Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s movement as I understand is a mass movement. And in Chaitanya Charita Amrita, Prabhupada mentions that Nityananda Prabhu, he did the mass preaching and Lord Chaitanya himself took it upon himself to do the class preaching. He, you know, gave that information to Rupa Goswami, to Sanatana Goswami, to Sarvabhattacharya and he had this class preaching that he handled himself.

And we understand, as I understand, I think that our preaching is broadly classified into mass and class. But I would say our movement is a class, I mean, our movement is a mass movement. And maybe the class of people are expected to mastermind it, think about how to spread it among the mass of people.

That’s how Lord Chaitanya planned the whole thing. So I would say that a lot of the preaching that was going on in India was mass preaching. And we were able to affect those type of people who were not like much, what should I say, exposed to some of the fine philosophical content of our scriptural studies.

But the more we carried on into colleges and to intellectual people and others, gradually our preaching changed a lot. That’s my take on it. Yes, my general take on it.

Yes, that’s true. This class and mass is quite a prominent feature of Lord Chaitanya’s outreach and Prabhupada’s purpose also. I thought a metaphor for this.

It’s something like in spirituality, there is philosophy and there is culture. So I sometimes compare this to be to like science and technology. So technology is widely used by people.

So almost everybody uses the internet now, but not many people know how the internet works. What is the technique? What is the science behind it? And as long as the internet is working, then we don’t even need the scientists in a sense. But when it stops working, that’s when the scientists become very important.

So philosophy, sorry, culture is like technology. That means if the culture is going on, people have a tradition, people have a culture of visiting the temples and practicing and celebrating festivals. It goes on.

But as modernity started spreading, people started questioning the culture more and more. And that’s where the need for philosophy comes up. Now, why should we do this? And then that’s where we actually need, need thoughtful people.

As I said, class, we need to preach to classes and then the classes can actually take the message forward. You see that when Prabhupada was preaching in India, he got, we could say he got a significant number of life members and they were very pious and sometimes very, very generous in their contributions, but not many of them were very philosophical. So that, in fact, what attracted me to Krishna Consciousness was the philosophy.

I had never seen such systematic philosophical answers and, you know, if, but we ourselves, if we, if we have not focused on that strength, you know, when we build the temples and then people started coming and then we started having philosophical education being provided. That’s how we were able to reach the classes. And I think that is ISKCON’s distinct strength.

Now, we have philosophy and that gives a rationale for the culture. So without that, the culture starts getting, starts dwindling or start getting rejected or even derided. So any thoughts on this metaphor? Well, that’s a nice analogy you gave about technology and science.

In one sense, science, the flip side of it is science has, you know, not made much progress, but technology has made a lot of progress. But in the same way, philosophy, some, some, you know, took a back burner and the, you know, culture aspect of it, because if you look into India, I gave some time back, I gave a session for tourism students in Kerala. And when I asked them to define how do you market Kerala, they spoke about Bharatanatyam, they spoke about architecture of the temples, they spoke about this and that, and they didn’t speak anything about philosophy and spirituality, you know, and then I had introduced basic philosophy right from I’m not the body and Bhagavad Gita and stuff like that.

And I told them this is real wealth and it is marketable. So it’s something like that, you know. So I think ISKCON provided a great, yeah, ISKCON contributed to a great extent to explaining to the wider, you know, religious people, especially the Hindus, Christians and Muslims and others also, that there is a foundational, wonderful premise, philosophical premise to why we believe in God and who is that God, who are we, what are these interrelationships and where do we live this world, this sort of a tripartite relationship between God, man and the world we live in.

That’s a great contribution of Prabhupada and that I think is very interesting to many as a fundamental understanding of a philosophy of religion. That’s beautiful. That I think was very interesting for many.

Yes, Maharaj. There’s one point I would like to explore, respond to what you’re saying. I read about some survey in America, what is people’s perception of India? So they often think of yoga.

They think of, when it was asked, what is your idea of literature or wisdom from India? So it was not the Bhagavad Gita. It is not even the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It was the Kama Sutra.

That’s interesting. So somehow the wisdom aspect, India is seen as a land of spirituality, no doubt, but still the wisdom aspect is not stressed even in the international vision of India. I want to speak of Indian vision itself.

Yeah. Also, you made this example of tripod. That’s interesting.

So I think this is 13th chapter, that is Jiva, Ishwar and Prakriti. So you’re saying that the relationship between the three is what our philosophy provides. Yeah.

Basically the Bhagavad Gita philosophy is about who are you, who is God, what is this world and what are the interrelationships, what, you know, the self about God and about the world we live in. And of course, there are other things like where the other world, the spiritual situation, et cetera. But these are foundational aspects of inquiry of reality.

Yes. Which almost all religions are supposed to answer. And the Vedic literature has got that rich wealth.

But somehow you see, like you said, that their practice, the cultural portion of it, and it has become so ritualistic and it has led to other things like casteism and other types of repercussions from not having practice based on a foundation philosophy. Right. Over a period of time, it has become that way.

And I think Iskcon’s contribution, Prabhupada’s contribution is that reawakening everybody to the foundational, fundamental understanding of reality, the philosophy of reality. Yes. Yeah, this is, so considering the history of our movement, as you said, of our outreach specifically, this philosophy, which, so you’re saying that when we started stressing the philosophy in our outreach, we also started attracting a particular class of people.

Yeah. And that’s how we could say that our outreach, we could say that it grew like a geometric progression because we attracted people who themselves could teach it to others. Exactly.

Yeah. I think, especially with all the youth programs, like you’ve started in yourself and Aditya Sharma and Pune, we attracted a little intelligent class of people, students, especially who started examining the philosophy and considering it to be very interesting because it gave them explanations scientifically about many things that they always wanted to know in the back of their mind. They always had these questions and they were answered.

So I think that was like the turning point when preaching took off in a different way. That’s interesting. I was also thinking from a sociological perspective, India started moving towards, the middle class started bargaining from the 1990s onwards.

Now India had the liberalization and if you look at the sheer number of people in the middle class, they have grown enormously. And since 1990s, it’s almost like a 200 or 300% growth in the number of people in the middle class. So, and if we see many of the people who do come to our movement, we have always had people who are life patrons and the people who are business people.

But when most educated people go into something like software and other competitive fields and could have a certain level of say material prosperity also leads to a different kind of problems where people start feeling a need for spirituality as we present it. So where there are educated answers to questions, there is also a space where there is systematic spiritual practice. And then there is, we have a sadhana, we have regulated worship.

So in a sense, could it be that say our disciplined approach to spirituality appealed also to people who themselves, to be successful in the competitive world of India. In any career, people also need a certain level of discipline. So could it be that that also contributed at the broader sociological context of India? Yeah, I think that’s an interesting point.

Because most of India’s history, especially Hinduism is a little dabbling of it on, you know, temple visits and rituals and whole sorts of performances that did not go very deep. That didn’t really go very deep. And like you said that… What didn’t go very deep? Because I said that it didn’t go deep into philosophy.

Most of, in many places, in common following, in the mass following, I mean. People who are mostly thinking it to be a ritualistic performance going to temples, attending festivals, observing certain vows and expecting some results for the betterment in their life, etc. But we came in with the whole, like you said, the disciplined practical performance sadhana and putting into practice the understanding and the philosophy.

And we actually gave an experience, an experience of practice of the philosophy. Like there’s a famous quote of Prabhupada saying, philosophy is good, great, but greater than philosophy is the practice of philosophy. And I think that sums up his whole, you know, crafting of the movement and the philosophy and the practice of it.

Finally, giving is an experience. So I think that attracted many. Here is a philosophy that works and here is a philosophy that explains many things I always wanted to know.

And this is a discipline. And if we perform that in a particular way, we have an experience. And that experience sort of takes us closer to our understanding of a reality.

And in this way, it became like a possible way of satisfying your queries by a practice and getting an experience. Yes. So I think that is interesting.

Prabhupada has not given us a process that is only philosophy heavy or philosophy intensive. He’s also given us a practice of it, which you have described very nicely as sadhana. And then he has also given us a goal which we can move towards using the practice and the philosophy, or which is like the end of the, you know, practice.

It leads us to an experience which is promised. Yes, that’s it. So all this is like a nice system.

And in this world, mostly people achieve success through all these type of models. You have your life, you work hard, you study hard, then you get a good job, you work it out and then you climb up the ladder of your success. And then you’re able to amass money and then you have assets and properties and then you experience good life.

That model is there in people’s head. And I think there’s a similar model offered by Prabhupada’s movement in terms of spiritual life and experience. You know, since you brought this idea of a model, I thought of, I was going to bring this up later, but broadly I thought about the interaction between spiritual life and material life in three distant ways.

One is rejection. Second is complementation. And third is improvement.

That material life is temporary, you reject it and practice spiritual life. Second is material life is fine. But if you want meaning, if you want fulfillment, you need to have spiritual life.

And thirdly is your spiritual life will improve your material life. So rejection, complementation and improvement. So ISKCON traditionally operated in the first model only.

And Prabhupada’s initial disciples, if you see in America, they just, they had already rejected material life and they took up spiritual life. And most of popular spirituality is in this third area. Say all those leaders who are known as big spiritual leaders, they basically tell how you can succeed more, how you can have better relationships.

There is yoga for health. Even there is yoga for better sex, which is of course very gross. But, but the idea is that, you know, we as a movement started with this model, that rejection.

And that was a bit too much for Indians to accept. So when Prabhupada came back to India, there’s a lot of appreciation of Prabhupada as the guru of Westerners. And a lot of people supported Prabhupada, but actually very few, if any, actually became committed followers.

So it was, my understanding, my thinking is that it was more of a, a nationalistic cultural pride than a spiritual commitment. And possibly because, because, you know, our first generation’s ethos was that to become a devotee means you reject your life and you come to move into the temple and none of the life members who already had their lives and careers and families, they’re likely to give that up. So then over the years, probably we also have, you could say moved from the rejection to the complementation model to some extent.

Wherein, yes, of course, I would say, I would like your comments on this. To some extent, we had a significant explosion in the Brahmachari ashram, which we could say is a manifestation of the rejection model. But then we also have had a significant spreading in the congregation also.

And even some of our, say, anti-material rhetoric, anti-grahastha rhetoric, anti-material rhetoric. I’m seeing in the last maybe decade, it has been toned down. So, and now this is with respect to practice, but even ideologically, my understanding is that initially we were quite critical of every form of spirituality other than Krishna consciousness.

There were devotees who even, I remember I was told that there were devotees who went and challenged Madhava Vaishnavas. Why don’t you accept Chaitanya Mahaprabhu? And we just were maybe too exclusivist. And almost all the leaders in our movement, because the first generation leaders who have become significantly successful, they are not that confrontational in their approach.

They give deference to the existing culture and the existing practices. And they encourage people to build on that. Any thoughts on this, Maran? Oh, very interesting observation.

Well, I would say that like you said initially, the rejection model, maybe that’s the type of model that could have been easily workable in a place like America at that point of time in the history when there were a lot of dissatisfied, dissentient youth. And there was a lot of, you know, what do you call, confusion in their lives. So Prabhupada offered an alternative life and he was willing to accommodate them.

And somehow it so happened that they were able to easily reject and come because also in the West, they don’t have much of a family structure, a cultural background structure, et cetera. So they could take that leap. Because they had nothing to lose as such.

But that same model, like you said, when it came to India, Prabhupada was very much aware of it. He was, you know, like you said, was not so easily able to get people to join him full. And he was not marketing that either.

He knew that in India, there was a very strong cultural background. There was a family structure and people were very safe. They had all the emotional requirements nicely catered to.

They had security. They had this whole cultural family background stuff going on. So they wouldn’t really give up that so easily and come up unless they had some special situation wherein it was necessary for them to, you know, jump in and experience something different.

So I think only those type of people who were either philosophically inclined or they found it very fascinating or didn’t have so much of a family background, etc., etc., where the people in India who would have opted to have joined Prabhupada fully. That’s why I think the Indian people coming and joining full time was very less. It was not so prevalent.

But then the model in India Prabhupada’s Krishna conscious model in India slowly became nicely fused in with the cultural structure. And that’s when the congregation preaching took off very nicely and hats off to some of our leaders who boldly stepped into the congregation. You’ll be very surprised to know that when I got initiated, I was told by one disciple of Prabhupada, if you’re not going to join full time, there’s no need to get initiated.

You can just chant Hare Krishna and be the way you are. You’re a nice person and you’re interested in Krishna consciousness. Because if you get initiated, you must actually join full time.

It really stuck in my head. And this was the type of instruction that was being given at those times. Like you’re right, I just want to reflect your thought on it.

But those were the early days. And it didn’t fly very well with most people. So when I joined the movement, like I was like one of the few who made a very bold decision to get off from a nice family because I am from a large family.

I have five brothers and two, I have five sisters and two brothers. We are eight of us. So for me to make the change was like internally also sometimes a little difficult.

But I was excited about the philosophy of Krishna consciousness and I wanted to give my life for Prabhupada’s movement. But I had to settle and patch up a lot of things. So that’s why I’m saying the question that you have raised is something that I have experienced.

I took a very bold jump. I was in a very good job. You know, I was a design engineer in a very big company and I was drawing some good amount and everything was fine.

And somehow I got attracted to the philosophy and I made this jump. Of course, I didn’t turn back after that. But what you said is very, very relevant.

You see Prabhupada’s mandate to come back to something more foundational. Prabhupada’s mandate given to him by his guru was to preach in the Western world is very interesting. Yes.

So Prabhupada was all the time concerned about going to the Western world outside of India to preach. He did start the movement in India officially registered at League of Devotees and everything but it really didn’t take off. Yeah.

And he was he had this in his heart and he made his final historical journey to the West and then it took off. And he was very grateful to the devotees in the West especially in America those first people who came and helped him immensely to spread the movement and everything together. So and then he came to India with that.

He spoke about bringing his dancing white elephants and attracting the Indian people. So he had a totally different strategy when he came back to India after his trip to the West. He had a much greater experience of how to market Krishna Consciousness in a different domain and he came with a greater experience to India and he had his devotees from America preach openly in the stage and everything and the Indians got really attracted.

He really attracted. So his mandate was Western preaching. So quite often when we have these discussions about how India has has got a very huge chunk of the preaching all over the world.

I know once the GBC chairman in our national meeting said you know 80% of the preaching in the world goes on in India in terms of temples in terms of devotees in terms of festivals in terms of you know properties and you name it because it is the culture of the land and the Prabhupada said it’s like a huge elephant. You know Prabhupada used the word that India is a dead elephant but it’s still useful because you can take the tusk you can take that you can take this and lose it. So in one sense the mandate was Western preaching.

Quite often I think that India preaching is easy outreach is easy in India because people can instantly relate to it. They just get the philosophical portion of it straight and they can immediately understand the rest of it because of the cultural background that still exists. That’s true.

So in India the results can come lying down. People donate to you people donate monies properties and they are very excited about the festivals you have they’re very excited about Iskcon temples and they wholeheartedly support. So I would say that we have awakened a sleeping giant and it’s coming on very nicely and so we don’t really need to put creative effort like Prabhupada did when he went to the West to actually pitch the whole outreach.

It comes in naturally so in India the success is quite natural. But I would say that sometimes when you make this comparison between India and the West and we say that we are in the West we are not able to really preach to the locals to Westerners and we are going for the low-hanging fruits. The Indians are the ones who are coming in easily and making up the bulk of the congregation and the outreach and everything.

I think in India also we are going for the low-hanging fruit because we are not employing any particular strategy or anything which if we did maybe we will get much better results in terms of the class of people and the mass that we can reach. We are taking it lying down sometimes if you employ a little bit of strategy which we have done in certain places like you have done with the youth in Pune and you know with the class congregation you have in Chowpatty and some other places here and there. I think that we will reach mass and class in a more strategic way.

But coming back to the point that the mandate of Prabhupada is to preach in the given to Prabhupada is to preach in the Western world. I would think that as an Indian sannyasi when I travel to the West my mind is always working on this because when I go to the West I get to preach a lot of Indians in the congregation. That’s true.

And I always thought that am I coming so far away just to preach to the you know Indians or would I like to actually have the taste of preaching to the locals I mean the Westerners which is something that I was very interested in doing. But over a period of time I understood that the whole Indian yatra should also technically and what you call otherwise back up the Western preaching because that is a mandate of Prabhupada. He wanted to preach all over the world, carry Krishna consciousness all over the world.

So sometimes I don’t think we should rest on our laurels in India. I think that India should wake up and do exactly what Prabhupada wanted us to do is to preach in the rest of the world. When I go outside as an Indian sannyasi I always feel that I want a chance to preach to the Westerners.

In his purport to he gives a very brilliant purport he said I am one Indian who came to the West to do this. What will happen if everybody takes this seriously? We can make the whole world you know Krishna conscious. So the larger understanding is that every one of us including everybody in India the machinery we have and the whole setup and resource we have should be focused towards giving Krishna consciousness to the rest of the world.

And Indians particularly should help that because it’s the mandate of Prabhupada. That’s how he started the movement. So in India it’s sort of less work to awaken the preaching.

Now of course things are changing a bit because of social media and everybody being connected globally instantly and cultures trans-cultural imports and all these happening within the flick of a you know finger. Maybe things are slowly changing in a different way but then India has got this great wealth which Prabhupada has triggered off and I think there’s a huge amount of opportunities waiting for people. And the situation in the world outside is also like that we are hungry for getting this information.

Yes, Manoj. Right? Actually, yes. This is this was one thing I think which which connected us quite well because both of us have that concern and even we could say passion for reaching out to Westerners when we met in Perth.

Yes. And that’s true. So you maybe we could today complete our discussion on just analyzing the Indian scenario and maybe we could have a separate discussion on what we as Indians could do to contribute to the West.

That’s a very important subject and I think it will require some time. Yeah. Just a couple of points to reflect on what you said.

The difference between say outreach in India and in the West. I sometimes put it that in the West we have to create faith whereas in India we simply have to remove intellectual obstacles to the natural faith that is there. Yes.

There is a piety. There is already a faith but people because of education because of the mainstream media and culture they have some misconceptions. Why do you worship stones or this or stone images or whatever.

So if you just remove those misconceptions it’s it just grows naturally. In the West also people have natural there are people who have natural piety and natural faith but those people will go to the native religion of that place. Those people will go probably to Christianity or whatever.

Those who come to us are usually people who are serious explorers and so reaching them requires slowly creating faith in them even in the very basics. So it’s much more it requires a lot more effort and the second point you mentioned about this in India also we are going toward the low-hanging fruit that is very striking and so true. I feel that I am one of the editors for Back to Godhead both international and India Indian and we are desperately short of good quality articles.

Now at one time I used to think that you see I joined in I was in 1996 I joined in 98 and for the first 10 10 years of my life I was doing active college preaching but I was almost completely disconnected from the world. I think for the first 10 years I never even read a newspaper. There’s no net access or anything.

So then at that time I used to think that at that time also I was writing I used to think that maybe Indians naturally aren’t that good at English they aren’t that good at writing but from maybe 2011 I started my spiritual master told me to learn western outreach so I started broadening my reading so I noticed that if I read Indian newspapers Indian Indian magazines there are thoughtful people they are intelligent they articulate although they may not be spiritual but we are not attracting that kind of people even in IITs even now I have done programs in many IITs and I’ve connected closely with the students very talented very dedicated but they are not they are not independently thoughtful kind of people so those IIT students say who come to our programs there’s no mistaking as I said their talent and their dedication but they’re not really very good at English if I compare the kind of articles they would write to I’d ask some of them to get the IIT magazines you know every university has its own magazines and I saw the articles were very very good in a mundane sense but good so somehow our presentation is attracting intelligent people but not intellectual people intelligent means I could say more like IQ high IQ if you get attract engineering medical students they all have high IQ but by intellectual I mean those who really analyze think present so I like to add to that here sorry for intervening you see like you mentioned your visit to all these premium institutions and how you felt intelligent but not intellectual that’s a very interesting statement but you see the trend in education in India especially after the post-industrial revolution effect is that most of the people and the education system is trained towards people becoming professionals of the type like engineers lawyers doctors and that type of education is what was very prevalent most most popular and very few people went for the humanities and philosophy and of the other type and that in the western world you see a lot of people opt for doing the things that they like to do little philosophical and everything they learn philosophy the arts sciences and this and that they move that way and their profession comes out of what they like that’s true largely but in India it looks like from the influence of the Britishers and the type of modernization that they have had done prosperity and forward going means becoming an engineer and the doctor or some of these things and there were a whole lot of intelligent people making a beeline for these type of things without inquiring about the rich heritage they have and the philosophy and the understanding of reality and everything they abandoned a lot of that and went this way I think that’s partly the reason why you have intelligent people engaging their intelligence and something which is not really very intelligent towards meeting the end of life but abandoning their intellectual resource and abandoning their intellectual landscape and the tradition and everything and opting for something very narrow that’s the type of conditioning the Britishers had on the great culture of India maybe It’s beautifully put intelligent people using their intelligence for something not very intelligent in fact this was my experience I did my electronics and telecommunications engineering and probably I would have been more suited for a science career than a technology career but anyway in my fourth year one of my professors told me that in a class that the most extensive use is the 1990s the most extensive use of electronics engineering is in the manufacture of TVs and when I heard that I was so disillusioned I thought I’m using my brain just to make idiot boxes to make people idiots I don’t want to do this so of course technology is used for many other purposes but that’s your point I agree with your point entirely and also that point of the educational impact this was for many years a puzzle for me that our philosophy which we have got from our previous generations is profound if I objectively read the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads and if I read the Bible or the Quran no disrespect intended to those texts but there is not much philosophy in those texts in our tradition we have a lot of philosophy but if I look at the contemporary literature say if I read a letter read an editorial of Times of India and if I read an editorial of New York Times I find there is a huge difference in the Times of India editorial both may be mundane but still the analysis the depth the language they are almost sophomoric quite quite simplistic New York Times has a lot more depth so I realized I was puzzled why is it like that and even if you take God debate India existence of God is not a big issue in the West it’s a big issue so many books are written pro and con and that the level of arguments are also quite much deeper than what we have in India so then I was puzzled why this happened but after I started going abroad and I was staying with grahastha devotees interacting with their kids learning what they learn so I found that even although we sometimes condemn western education actually the children learn a lot of critical thinking so they have to read a book and then they have to write even in the primary school and secondary school they read books and they have to write a review of the book what was good what was not good in it and that I I was I went to probably among the better universities and schools in India but I had no exposure like that so I think as you said education was meant to make people in a sense perform but perform as you could say as order carriers not so much as visionaries and that applies in the intellectual domain also any thoughts on this Mahesh? Yeah yes that’s that’s exactly that’s why I said that the philosophical inquiry and all that stuff that everybody needs to have and can get catered to especially in India you have this you have all that ready but somehow that was given a thumb down and prosperity going forward and progress was all you know indicated to be something else so a choice of most of the students was move towards that definition of progress but they had all along a huge ocean lying next to them of the Vedic culture and the philosophy not to say that in India philosophical discussions did not happen to the depth that’s happening in the West today but it’s happening in the West today in contemporary society according to the issues prevailing cumulatively over a period of time and they’re dealing with those issues of science you know rationality and issues social issues and all those things with the type of religion that they had which like you rightly said did not have so such deep or foundational imports to it so they’re not able to answer it from that platform of philosophy that they have for them religion doesn’t mean Hinduism and Vedic religion for them religion means Christianity mostly in the Western world most of so for them to answer the questions and issues that are coming up with the type of philosophy of religion that they have is very difficult but from this point of view from the Vedic philosophy point of view there’s a good chance that we’ll answer those you know questions provided you understand here the Vedic premise also so my point is that earlier in the Vedic philosophy you have all sorts of people out of the six darshanas you have you know Kanada, Kapila all of them a lot of them are atheistic philosophies but they have very strong arguments strong arguments and it was open and all embracing and very broad to you know that’s the reason why the Vedic philosophy is open for any type of thought any type of construct to find a space there so that type of a platform to give up that type of a platform inquiry into the absolute into reality and all those things and going for you know becoming an engineer or something you really close yourself down somewhat and turn a blind eye to everything else that you know so that’s a lot of foolishness that was perpetrated foolishness perpetrated on a whole wonderful populace that is actually intelligent so Prabhupada speaks a lot about the degradation of culture in India brought out by the Britishers and as you know Britishers did more damage with than the Mughals the Mughals were all mostly sense gratifiers and they had dance and good architecture and drink and they were happy with that but the Britishers did come down and really work down towards the culture of India and break it down and introduce a totally new concept and I think the education moved in that direction and still is moving in that direction to a great extent that’s why ISKCON coming in and showing what’s the real philosophical basis of Hinduism and what’s the nuts and bolts of it has had a good impact on many intelligent youngsters it’s a discovery for them that’s very true right you know this is a good good historical angle to it see the Islamic invaders they destroyed temples but they were never intellectual challengers yeah whereas when the British came because they had science and special technology with them so they posed an intellectual threat they didn’t destroy temples but they often destroyed the faith that made Indians go to the temples very subtle yeah and deeper and finer aspects yeah far more wide-ranging in a sense that impact has you know taken a deep toll of many of Indians and their understanding of religion and philosophy so I think that’s why the education system is also like that and that’s where ISKCON’s and Prabhupada’s teachings come in as a breath of fresh air and throwing light on real issues of life and reorienting everybody towards the great wealth of Krishna Consciousness yes earlier you mentioned this point that you know the big temples came up like the Bangalore temple and before so Prabhupada also if you consider in India his primary emphasis seems to have been on building big temples so in the observe in your historical observation over the last say four decades how much do you think the big temples have say that say played a substantial role in in expanding our outreach because in one sense my understanding is you know Giriraj Maharaj has just recently completed almost a 800 page book on the Juhu temple Prabhupada told him to write it so he had asked me to review it I went through it’s a beautiful book it describes Prabhupada’s dedication and it seems that Prabhupada had a great vision of how that temple would become like a base from which our outreach would go far and wide now but to put it on the other side there’s one devotee one Prabhupada disciple who’s based in Juhu he told me that at one time we were so understaffed that we we would go to the railway stations and tell people who are sleeping on the stations you know why are you sleeping here you come and stay in the temple we’ll provide you food and you do some service so we were getting we had that kind of people so he was appreciating the kind of the caliber of people we are coming now so so just how do you see the role of big temples in in the expansion of our outreach well definitely a temple plays a powerful role in attracting people and ISKCON temples have got a very unique place in the hearts of many people they like it they like to visit the temples are very well kept the deity worship is very good compared to many other temples it’s clean and the atmosphere is nice you can learn something you can take home something important Prabhupada’s temples are educational institutions wherever the temples are really giving out Krishna consciousness knowledge and training people and doing the job properly then the temple is very useful and can produce a lot of good results but wherever the temples are not able to perform according to what Prabhupada designed and crafted the temples for that is in terms of bringing Krishna consciousness to people and affecting a change in their life permanently and them becoming devotees of Krishna and having a better understanding of reality and life and the goal of life and everything if it is not able to do that then you know it becomes a burden to the few people who are managing it so we need people who have the proper vision to use these tools to achieve what is the final product if you look at ourselves as a corporation or as like an enterprise that’s working what is our final product we should work towards that and sometimes in certain places temples are not required to produce that final product and sometimes it is required to do that so we have to you know gauge these things accordingly and if you look at it now in this digital world temples are not so much required because all our temples under lockdown are shut off but every one of us is very active online and maybe contacting and reaching far greater number of people than we would do having a brick mortar temple or whatever right so these are when you define a temple in our mind immediately it crops up that we have to have a structure physically and everything but that’s also changing a little bit now because people are congregating online and we may not be able to do everything that we do in a temple but things are changing so similarly if we can utilize the temple for what we really want to gain as a goal then it’s perfectly all right but the problem is sometimes we don’t because of shortage of manpower or people unwilling to do that type of a service committed having less number of people who do that type of a committed service and many such associated difficulties funding and everything everything together but still temples have played a great role in India especially ISKCON temples great great what? load great role yeah bringing good amount of spiritual sucker you know people who are interested and who are coming to the temple for something so if a temple has got that type of ambience then it attracts those people more and more and it may build around that so temples are very important in India and in India people go to temples and it’s a place where you can meet people and it provides you a place where you can show your wares or rather exhibit what you are your books your philosophy your practice your congregation and the lifestyles and convince people to take up Krishna consciousness or convince people to accept this type of lifestyle and the benefits accruing from it so that’s an important place you know after observing several temples say in India as well as abroad I thought of two terms I would like your feedback on this if there’s a inside out approach to temple building and outside in approach so outside in approach means that first of all I appreciate your point that temples are vital and in fact from my understanding Prabhupada made big temples as the distinctive feature of our movement in the broad religious you could say panoply that is there in India so as you said not only magnificent temples but extraordinary cleanliness beautiful deity worship so these are all distinctive I remember Gopal Krishna Maharaj once told me that he went to Jaipur somewhere and then Jaipur is the place where they make deities so he said that there they had one of the Jaipur deity makers he had a notice written over there ISKCON deities made here so he was promoting himself that way now deities are so beautiful you can get that kind of product here so our temples are distinctive but this inside out and outside in what I meant by that is that if we build a community and then build a temple then we have the human resources available for say doing for doing outreach to the temple but if we first focus on building the temple so inside out means we have a community inside and then the temple comes up the outside in is where we build a temple and then we seek to get devotees then the challenge My question to you is the question is if you can already build a community why do you need a temple? Because the community is big and we want to make it bigger like I can say from my experience in Nappune because the community can be utilized again the community can use the temple for outreach or the community needs the temple and my question is a counter question to you if you’re able to build a community without a temple then why do you actually opt to have a temple? Because the end product is that we want people to take up Krishna consciousness we want to build a community of devotees okay my question is at the end why did you have to? Yeah I understand your question say that okay let me give two examples say I spent most of my early brahmachari life in Nasik sorry in Pune then I was in Mumbai Belgao for some time now of course I travel most of the time so in Pune what I saw was there was a very small temple but because there were educated devotees and there were lots of programs happening so the outreach expanded and now there’s a wonderful big temple so we already had a community and then there is a big temple in contrast I was in a temple in America now of course there’s a lot of history what happened in America and that could be separate subject but I was talking and they have many deities elaborate deity worship and one of the devotees over there he’s from India and he went there and then he had a great desire for outreach but he told me that he did a calculation of how much time they have a limited number of devotees how is their time spent so he said that in my observation we are almost like spending the proportion of time on deity worship versus the proportion of time on outreach it’s 25 to 1 so we are spending 25 hours on deity worship and one hour on outreach so I thought that Prabhupada would never want something like this Prabhupada wanted a temple temple not for the temple itself temple for outreach so sometimes when we have so when we have big temples without a sufficiently big enough community then we become very we could say internally consumed in just trying to maintain the temple and then we also seem to come off as very utilitarian when people come to temple first thing that happens is somebody asks solicits donations from them instead of actually offering them something spiritual so I remember when I first went to Vrindavan I was I was in white and as soon as I entered the temple I had gone to the part of the Vrindavan Parikrama with Radhanath Maharaj but I had come a little later than everyone else so as soon as I came in the first thing is somebody called me and said can you do some donation and I was quite disillusioned by that then I told him that okay I’m a Brahmin I’m Brahmachari I said I just joined and he says oh okay then he just you know he just lost interest in me and just went and I just turned to someone else so that what I meant is that if we have a big temple and we don’t have devotees then we tend to become either too self we become too self-obsessed self-consumed so that’s my experience now regarding your question about if you already have a community then why do we need a temple that’s a very good question so maybe as I said that because the community is so big so we need a bigger temple but so you are saying if I understand right is that only when we have a big temple we have people coming in and then through those people coming in we can build a big community we can build a community no I’m not I’m not exactly saying that that’s the only way it should happen but I’m just throwing in this question for a little more dialogue and deeper understanding because I think that we distribute books we build temples then we have devotees as an outcome our outcome where like I mentioned to you any cooperation in enterprise our final outcome is that we want people of faith in Krishna in keeping with the definition of faith-based organizations that we are sometimes called I would say derogatory expression to say that you guys are faith-based organizations in the setup that we have especially in the dialogues I think when you use the word devotion faith has a little Christian connotation you want people to have devotion for Krishna that’s the final product building up the faith of people towards Krishna I mean God the absolute truth and everything to put it in more secular terms so that’s the reason and whatever tools that we use our tool is mainly Harinam Sankirtan and the books of Prabhupada to bring people’s faith up and everything but in a place like India where temple is temple culture is very common and very prevalent if you also have that temple within the other temples that people have various different organizations then your marketing is very good and people will also come to you and you can show them what you have so in that sense temples are very important in India no doubt but coming back to a point of we are doing all these things our final end product is people of faith which means devotees so sometimes like each of these tools which Prabhupada has given us how do we use them temples how we use them books and book distribution how do we use them do we distribute books I’m asking a very bold question do we distribute books for the sake of distributing books only period and having numbers or do we distribute books for the sake of affecting people changing their heart and actually having them come to become Krishna conscious people and then carry your book further to others to distribute them there is a very subtle thing I’m saying book distribution should not be stopped it’s our main way of you know communicating to people this great philosophy especially among the literate class of people it should not be stopped but we should not do ritualistic book distribution we should simply not distribute books for the sake of distribution of books I know people are going to say no no no Prabhupada wanted books to be distributed anyway but Prabhupada wanted books to be distributed anyway because he knew each one of these books are going to affect people but what’s happening with if I ask you if you have distributed 500 million pieces of literature what percentage of the books were actually read it’s a very interesting thing to note because we’re talking about you know bringing in people and increasing their faith what percentage of the books actually get read because I’m selling a product I want it to be used and I want you to tell others that I’ve used this it’s wonderful you should get it but we are distributing books but I don’t think a great percentage of the books that we distribute are read it’s up to us to actually look into this so and quite often I get the answer that no the books Prabhupada set up bombs they will actually you know explode and over a period of time so I said what stops you from detonating the bomb right now as you distribute the books let the explosion happen right away and then it’ll you know spread like nothing we don’t have to wait it’s not a time bomb by default that it is you know made to have to go off and some particular time in the future so value-aided book distribution to achieve our end if we do times have changed a lot so and people have changed also so what you need to do to give this information in terms of book distribution you need to do so in the same way temples also what is the temple there for? use that for that end and if you need to change things in the temple you need to change just like I’m saying change the book distribution methodologies or you know how you would actually look at it so that you get the desired result if I say if I distribute a Bhagavad Gita because I started doing that in my area I thought about this a lot I was also incidentally chairing the outreach strategic planning team of the GBC I was a chair of the outreach committee for a long time in fact even now over a period of time it’s become a little inactive and maybe almost inactive nowadays but at that time we had a lot of these exercises and discussions so value-aided book distribution would mean that I make the man help the man to read the book and get a take a peek into it and taste it a little bit and aid his reading then he would become a person who would read understand practice and start distributing this knowledge more so we start creating people who are book distributors rather than taking the whole burden on myself only to distribute books day in and day out that’s true and I don’t I’m making a very subtle point I just creating book distributors by giving them value-aided you know facility through the books introducing the content of the books and then increasing the book distribution exponentially because each one of them will love this book and the content and want to give it to others you know you’re igniting a different type of book distribution not that only you have to go day by day and approach people on the streets every day and keep doing it but if you do it in such a way that each one of them who took a book is introduced to the content of the book and becomes a distributor of the content of the book and the book it’s great for you so that’s the way we look at book distribution and like you’re talking about temples temples also we should utilize them and nicely fabricate the outreach strategy in that to attract people to Krishna consciousness dynamically then temples are always good I think it is in the way we use these tools or the way we have gravitated to usage of these tools that we need to look into the tools in themselves are you know very potent this is a beautiful understanding that they are tools and in some ways it is quite radical because you are maybe questioning some of what is like received wisdom but to put it in a scriptural context also two three thoughts I had that one is one of the things that can actually disrupt bhakti is Niyamagraha and Niyamagraha is following the letter one meaning of Niyamagraha is following the letter of the law while forgetting the purpose so in some ways both in book distribution and in temple construction sometimes we may get so caught in doing it that we forget the purpose and the essential purpose in my understanding yes of course what is that is Shraddha people are doing them faith so that they move toward Krishna what our movement can offer distinctively is Satsang is actually association of people either they may not be pure devotees but at least they are serious seriously devoted and sometimes we get so caught in building a temple and maintaining a temple that we are not able to give association to people sometimes we are so caught in distributing books that our focus is more on making the person buy the book then giving them a positive perception of devotees so that they will want to come to a temple or even if they come to a temple there is no one to talk with them so I think that is it’s actually vital that we able to all these are ways in which people can get the association of devotees and through that from there they will another scriptural context I thought of putting is Kanishka to Madhyama what takes the Kanishka to the Madhyama is the association of devotees and now whether we build temples where people come and in some ways it’s a matter of pride for our movement that many of our temples are on India’s tourism map not just spiritual tourism but even generic tourism map that magnificent our temples are but at the same time we don’t want just people to come as tourists we want them to move forward and what will take them forward is not just the architecture or the beauty it is primarily the association of devotees and that’s what I meant earlier with the inside out approach that we need to have devotees who can use these resources properly and those devotee and somehow we this is another point which related I was talking with one senior Prabhupada disciple and he said that Prabhupada was very much into numbers in how many books who distributed how many books were distributed so he said that this was Prabhupada’s way of channeling our passion we were all very young at that time and we had passion and Prabhupada channeled it by urging us to have constructive competition of how many books were distributed but somehow we may have got too caught in those numbers itself and then we forget the purpose the purpose is not just to distribute books the purpose is actually to develop relationships and thereby get people to come closer to Krishna so one problem in Niyamagraha is that we get caught in so we had this definition of success how many temples we built how many books were distributed and how many devotees we made so somehow how many devotees we made that had been a little overlooked and sometimes even devotees making it is also something it could be sometimes a little external okay this person has become taken initiation now just forget that person and move on to somebody else so the ongoing transformation of heart and the elevation of consciousness toward Krishna that we might overlook that’s the point that’s the point the point is that you see Prabhupada when he started the movement he had the daunting task of introducing Krishna consciousness in a total foreign place and he did it he had a strategy he said I have hatched a transcendental plot and he had a strategy he had a very you know clean idea of how to get what he wanted he’s a genius so he did that and he did he did it without any resources he didn’t even have money to pay the rent of the place that he took first but he had a very great dynamism and his outreach effectually all that you put together is very good and he didn’t have a temple and everything over a period of time even in the west for a long time they don’t have some great temples or anything but Krishna consciousness has got its own value in a place like India of course there is value and there is facility for building a big temple and there are donors and everything together we can utilize all these things and you know really do something amazing all these sources provided we utilize them to the best extent sometimes I feel that we’re not utilizing our great looking temples to the fullest extent to yield the type of results that they can yield huge structures and huge things like you said that it’s like a tourist place lots of people coming and just go like a mall but I don’t know how much we are affecting the people because that is the purpose so although you may have big temples and lots of people visit them and you get lots of donations and they become famous they are tourist spots everything but what we need to really measure and I’m not against measuring against numbers in terms of number of books and of what we really measure how many people’s faith have we affected how many hearts we have changed that will be the real measure that will be the most important number not only number of books and number of people who visited but also how many people’s hearts were changed how many started chanting the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra or seriously read Bhagavad Gita or seriously took up Krishna Consciousness that’s the number I think is most important to measure not that we shouldn’t measure the other numbers yes that’s also an indication a very good indication of the type of people who are coming to you and the market you have and everything but I call it the conversion ratio whatever outreach you do whatever impact you create you may create a great impact but what’s your conversion how many of those people whom you impacted are you able to convert to people of faith in Krishna Consciousness I would measure every every outreach activity in terms of that whether it’s book distribution or it is opening a big temple and anything that’s some number that we should keep in our mind to exactly measure our effectiveness yes I think I’m making a point that most marketing people would speak about yeah actually you know where they coming down to brass tacks what did I really get what’s my profit in Krishna Consciousness we are not measuring profit in terms of the monies we have the properties we have sometimes we tend to think that way but our real property is devotees and I’ll go a little further and say devotees with faith in the words of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita in the words of Prabhupada in the Bhagavatam and progressing honing it down further and further what is outreach it’s devotees with deep commitment and faith in Krishna Consciousness that’s our final product isn’t it yes beautifully Maharaj this the word conversion ratio is a little provocative because but for want of a better word at this yeah I understand I’m just saying into fruit yeah there’s a nice saying something like that it’s a bring the grains home bring the harvest home that is you have planted seeds you have plowed the land you have prepared the place you’ve planted you’ve grown you’re watered you have you know done a lot of things and finally please bring the harvest home get the product home so somehow in our whole Prabhupada did that in his you can see in his very effective preaching he would get the produce home and he would say this for my enjoyment I cultivated it belongs to me to put it in a very very you know blunt way but sometimes we have all these grand temples and everything and I think we’ve done a great Ratha Yatra festival we’ve done a great program but I like to measure at the end of it how many people have been affected they have broadcast preaching Ratha Yatra is like broadcast preaching you know they come out and they say similarly our temples are also broadcast preaching but our focus should actually be towards like you said developing relationships with people and actually gradually influencing them with Krishna consciousness and the practice of it and making their faith grow that’s the end product it’s so true I think Prabhupada also said that in his Bhagavata introduction that if one person becomes a pure devotee I’ll consider my endeavor successful so even if your devotee is a long way away but at least some progress in that direction that is what is vital it’s like a big pyramid I would say that the base of the pyramid is all the people whom we contact and all the people who come to our places of worship then many of them appreciate and then we go to the next level of people who actually start liking us and come regularly then after some time there are those who actually start following some of the principles we tell them worship Tulasi offer your food at home and take prasadam chant a round of Krishna you know Mahamantra and then bring on Sundays or something then you reach a higher portion of the whole pyramid then gradually their commitment increases at the apex of the pyramid you have people who are committed to Krishna consciousness thinking that this is my life I want to achieve this I want love of Krishna I want bhakti becoming a bhakti yogi they have confirmed it and the rest is like details to work out you know whether you are a grahastha or a brahmachari or this or that and how you will achieve it in that particular ambience and circumstances so the whole lot of this thing is called outreach even people not only at the apex should be focused on we should focus on everybody who comes there and have them up a notch have them go up and facilitating the entire travel up the pyramid to the apex is what the temple should do so you have people in our congregations who are very simple and they practice Krishna consciousness in their house and that’s like a very good way of telling them to do it but there may be some others who are single men who think that I would rather be full-time doing this because it’s so attractive there are very few between this and that you have a whole lot of others also so catering to all of them at various levels is what a temple can do and you have a big community around it and people are at various levels of the pyramid and they appreciate that they are traveling up the pyramid and they are facilitated to travel up and they like to do it so in this way you have effective outreach using the temple yes this pyramid metaphor is beautiful I feel that in the early days a metaphor might have been more like a it’s like a enclave surrounded by a boat where we have insiders and outsiders and there was a very strong we-they mentality you know we are devotees and they are non-devotees and we have various words which we often use with a derogatory sense to refer to them also so to some extent a more mature vision of outreach which is also reflective of the broader way in which it was in the Vedic tradition even if people were not devoted to the lord they were at least worshipping some devatas and that is also appreciated so in that similar sense so if we have that pyramid kind of approach then it means the two things one is that if somebody wants to go all the way up we provide them that facility but somebody just wants to take a few steps up we provide them that facility and give them acceptance also so that would be very we could say very multi-faceted outreach or multi-level outreach and we can actually have a huge impact in India by that approach rather than the we-they kind of approach yes Maharaj see that’s how the Hindus will fit in in all their you know that big variety of things that they do right from demigod worship to you know some other type of worship and also Hinduism is like a whole lot of potpourri of so many things together now yeah but if you throw a net like this we accommodate all of them somewhere the other because of the Hinduism forward in them and we like to embrace that and take that momentum in India preaching should be we take that momentum we relate with all sorts of Hindus all sorts of people and it’s our duty to lead them towards the crux the philosophy of Krishna consciousness which is the conclusion of the Shastras which is conclusion of the Bhagavad Gita the Bhagavad and everything which means that like you rightly said we’re all embracing seeing this all embracing effort even the Christians and the Muslims all get very interested in community and all embracing approach that we have a place for everybody somewhere so that they can render some service to Krishna directly indirectly and somehow in the net of Krishna consciousness and they can move up I think that’s the type of thing Prabhupada wanted to do he had time for all sorts of people and he always thought of something to engage this person in Krishna consciousness it’s a very very dynamic and very resourceful way of giving people Krishna consciousness sorry just to continue Devamrat Maharaj told me something very striking he said that he had his brother he’s very well educated he’s from Yale his brother was also a prominent lawyer and he gave his brother some books and he invited him to go to the temple and his brother went to the temple and he said I’m a lawyer and I can I can help you in some ways and whoever was there in the temple generally in the West we are not able to get people who are well established in society to even come to a temple there’s more people on the fringes who come so whoever was in the temple they said actually we already have our lawyer we don’t need anyone and then he just went away and he never came back to a temple after that so Maharaj was telling that even if you have no need for him create some service and give him some service connect him if he’s already come so connect him in some way so somehow I think the approach of one zero either you are a devotee or you’re non-devotee we need to go beyond that like one zero paradigm and accept that people will be at different levels and we appreciate them and we engage them that’s a binary it’s not only binary thinking devotee, non-devotee exactly black, white I think I call that Dwango Moha oh really that’s brilliant you have to be thinking I don’t know how to use the right word but it has to be completely integrated thinking everybody has a place in Krishna consciousness and you have to proper set you know rack your brains where I can fit in this person how I will engage this person and have him move up the ladder move up the pyramid that is the real thing that people should be trained in it’s not that you know I don’t know how to engage you I mean sorry then it’s a failure yeah so I think Prabhupada once said that this Krishna consciousness movement has been practically invented by me so he said that the responsibility of spiritual master is to find ways and means to help the disciple fix the mind on Krishna so similarly we also have to somehow come up with creative ways to engage people and I think that could be the basic purpose of our movement to engage people and to encourage them to rise now how far they rise up that is up to their free will but at least we provide them that facility yes Maharaj Maharaj I think we have planned for one and a half hours I don’t want to extend your time too much are you okay continue for some time more should we summarize and wind up how are you placed I am okay you can okay then maybe just some two three questions I’ll ask related with what we’ve discussed till now and at least to some extent the Indian outreach will be able to conclude yeah so with respect to temples and book distribution we talked about this I mentioned earlier also the confrontational non-confrontational approaches that so you also brought that up in the actual outreach say how much do you find a confrontational approach either essential or beneficial you know for example I grew up I was attracted by the scientific presentation of Krishna consciousness and then I also read about say for example evolution and I read about the problems with it and I found it quite impressive that we have issues like this but over a period of time as I have read more more of science I find that evolution is a very complex issue and sometimes our our refutation what we call as refutations are quite simplistic and when I have talked with western devotees in the west especially evolution is not a big issue in the west but I’m giving that example that I have found that evolution itself doesn’t stop anyone from coming to bhakti but our criticizing evolution stops them from coming to bhakti so now how they in their mind reconcile evolution and and our philosophy that is something which each devotee finds their own way I know devotees who are who are doctorates in evolution and that’s their daily profession and still they are initiated devotees and they’re practicing so they have their ways of reconciling but so what I found is that sometimes something which is not an obstacle we perceive it as an obstacle and then we criticize it and that criticism makes us seem sectarian and that sect that perception of sectarianism becomes an obstacle so in the west especially if you if you criticize evolution then we are associated with right right wing science rejecting kind of religious religious fanatic extremists so by the same token in India India already is a very religious country and we usually have say two targets for criticism one is Advaitavad and other is the worship of the devatas so even for these two I I have I tried to use non-judgmental words I don’t like to use the word Mayavad because somehow we do use it with a very judgmental tone and I also am not very comfortable with the word demigods because it seems to come off as pejorative so I used with Indian audiences I simply use the word devatas so but these two we do often criticize them but have you seen these two actually being major obstacles for people to come to Krishna or is it that our criticism does more harm than good so is it something similar to what evolution is in the west well that’s a very good question what I would like to say a little comment on evolution and the topic of evolution maybe is very relevant in the western world again because of the religious background there with Christianity and everything together that’s something that needs to be contested in the western world and for western-minded thinking etc but like you rightly said we let sleeping dogs lie it is an issue maybe but in India I wouldn’t want to discuss evolution it need not be need not be discussed but sometimes we land up discussing this within you know in a presentation and we you know wake up a sleeping dog unnecessarily especially with an Indian audience you could very well like you said be talking something about impersonalistic idea of the absolute truth or a personal idea of the truth and things like that if at all somebody had a little inclination towards western thinking it’s the way you present many of the things that Prabhupada said he spoke about in terms of western preaching he attacked Darwinism materialism he spoke about scientists very strongly in some places but at the same time highly in other places about scientists so all these things are to do with I told you his mandate was to preach in the western world and the predominant issues always have been Darwinism because Darwinism is definitely deeply atheistic and all that we can say if you examine it very deeply it’s hitting at the base at the foundation of belief and faith in God if you analyze it I will just qualify this a little bit and this will be a big subject in itself there are a number of influential Christian thinkers who have also propagated theistic evolution and instead of this is a big discussion and I won’t go into it but I just make this point that what I put it is that instead of saying that Darwinism is atheistic what I say is that Darwinism is a very powerful tool in the hands of atheists so Darwin himself was not an atheist but it has been used extensively by atheists to propagate atheism so Darwinism is a scientific theory so in other words the way that most of the world understands Darwin’s proposal is only heard from the mouth of atheists yes that’s true okay what we have popularly or mostly learned about Darwinism is that which came out of the mouth of atheistic yes that’s what I think you’re trying to say yes I talk about evolution that evolution as say observed phenomena like say you have a small apple becoming big or you have a small dog and a big dog that’s observed evidence then there is inferred mechanism that evolution of the inferred mechanism refers to one species changing into another so with the first there is no need to doubt it it’s it’s observed second it’s an inference and the mainstream scientific community accepts it there are some scientists who oppose it but the third is Darwinism as an all-explaining ideology that which explains the origin of consciousness Prabhupada’s main argument is life comes from life life doesn’t come from matter and that life comes from matter is not a Darwinian proposal Darwin himself said that the creator breathed the first life and then afterwards other things came so I think my our problem is primarily with the third that all-explaining ideology and this is how it is portrayed in the mainstream culture although that’s not how it is if you go into the serious study of Darwinism all that the science can tell us is evolution as observed phenomena and evolution as the inferred mechanism science doesn’t talk about evolution as ideology that is what atheists talk about and Prabhupada’s critique was also there is an elaborate conversation of Prabhupada with Shamsundar Prabhu in the Veda ways and an abridged version of that comes in the dialectic spiritualism book and even more abridged is what we have in life comes from life book so in the elaborate conversation when Shamsundar Prabhu gives the evidence they found this kind of fossil so Prabhupada doesn’t dismiss that Prabhupada explains it okay it could have happened like this it could have happened like this so I don’t think we have any quarrel with the first the second the jury is open but Prabhupada’s main issue was there’s a quote of Prabhupada where he says that we are not against the scientist’s spirit of knowing we are against their atheism so that’s what I was saying about evolution okay that’s interesting yeah when evolution is used to propagate atheism then it is a problem but evolution itself is non-theistic is it neither talks about God for or against but mainstream perception through the media is that evolution is atheistic but intrinsically it is not yeah anyway that’s my reading of my reading of evolution may not be so deep but I’m just speaking about the popular understanding generally the way they look at it but you have made a very good analysis of it deeply that’s interesting but what I’m trying to say is that in the context of the western world that is very important but in India you don’t have to really speak about Darwin’s theory so much because it’s not the uppermost thing in their mind in terms of like you rightly said the uppermost thing in their mind may be demigod worship an impersonalistic idea of you know something Advaita or whatever and that is coming in tradition in their own tradition in their minds so maybe we could very subtly bring in the personal aspect even without talking about I don’t like I preach in Kerala I don’t really confront the you know other Advaita people so much because they can really bring out arguments and they can quote from the scripture from here and there and maybe we won’t be so good at it unless you’re a real scholar and very well read and you can sit and talk these things to such a great extent but we are interested in bulk of the people are actually simple they are not like very much interested in arguing out many of these things to the hilt but they have a basic understanding and they would like to up their understanding and I think a positive presentation of Krishna consciousness without being too confrontational will do a lot of preaching this section which you’re calling or talking about the intellectual people in India especially they are not like the whole range yamu people they are a thin section I think especially to do with Advaitavada and you know other type of demigod worship maybe a little more you know broader but Advaitavada and all that you don’t need to really confront them too much most people are happy with the simple philosophical presentation and the basics of Bhagavad Gita and introducing them to Harinam and the practice and sadhana so I think we should sidestep sometimes what Prabhupada did in confronting scientists and confronting Mayavadis and confronting that this very boldly is for us to understand what things are as they are but we have to use these things according time place and circumstance strategically and like I said don’t have to say certain things which are not required in certain places people directly quote Prabhupada and his strong statements and get into the mood and with learned people educated people scientifically oriented people and all of them who are actually very sensitive and they have their opinions and they’re intelligent people we don’t need to you know push this on them right in the beginning that’s what I mean I mean to say that they have to be very sensitively handled and if you did not know the topic very much it’s better to refer to somebody else and if you need to know it and if you have the capacity to know it to study it up and speak about it in a manner that is encouraging to the other person that he has his point of view and I know this much about it and I have this angle and this angle and having a healthy discussion that sometimes is lacking you know having giving people their you know freedom to think the way they have been thinking and they have acclimatized themselves and then expressing your point of view that’s what’s the meaning of a dialogue you should not be confrontational Chand Kazi and Lord Chaitanya had a dialogue dialogue in most of the places Lord Chaitanya had that dialogue the Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya he had a dialogue he was so patient that for seven days he sat down and heard Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya’s interpretation of the whole Vedas and then he very mildly proposed when was he was asked what’s your opinion he very mildly proposed and started a dialogue he crept into him so I think dialogues are very important people like to have a dialogue wherein their position is not threatened and we are able to present our whole proposal in a nice way with due respect to you also and your point of view but to go around saying I’m holier than thou and you know to go around saying that my point of views you know supersedes yours and that too without being properly prepared with the subject matter of the person who’s sitting in front of you and what he knows etc will put us in a very bad and quite often I’ve seen sometimes these things happening and I think you know does not at all handle properly educated learned people scientists and all of them they definitely Prabhupada treated them in a very different way he encouraged them to bring out their point of view and he gave his point of view and they always left feeling good that they were heard and they were considered and I don’t have to accept your point of view but I came to learn something about your point of view which is a good step that you had them listen to you and you heard them I think this is how Lord Chaitanya would discuss with the Chankasi Chankasi will give his idea of cow killing it’s mentioned in the scriptures and Lord Chaitanya will say no this is the real import and this is real purport to that this is how you should understand that this is a dialogue our devotees should learn to dialogue because that is the method that Lord Chaitanya adopted I don’t see Lord Chaitanya anyway confronting any Mayavadi or very boldly sitting and arguing with them out or something most of the situations were dialogues it’s beautiful one of this dialogue part there is a difference between talking with people and talking to people or worse still talking down to people so for most of us most devotees the idea is the only reason I am talking with non-devotees is to talk to them or talk down to them and it would be interesting to see if we had if we put together all of Prabhupada’s conversations with intellectuals whatever we had I don’t remember anywhere Prabhupada using judgmental words like fools or assholes in those conversations at all I could do a search but I don’t think Prabhupada did that very much in his private conversations but those private conversations are being made public now and they go out of context and they have a detrimental effect on the outreach that’s why I’m saying how to use Prabhupada’s words and private conversations and you see Prabhupada wrote a lot of things in his books also that were very heavy statements but in his behavior with people he was very smooth and very cultured and very accommodative you know he would write these things in the night in the morning he would be very good to the same people whom he is writing about he would talk come take you’re so nice you’re that you’re this and everything and then he will have them read his books over a period of time and they will come to know this man is a man who’s written these things but he is already entered in my heart and he is the way he has presented it makes it very convincing to him and the way he has conducted himself you know I’m willing to accept that you know there are ways of convincing people so Prabhupada was very good he could do all these things and still come away with a good victorious you know what do you call result by you know affecting that person so that’s that’s an interesting thing but paying paying proper respect to people after all these scientists and thinkers they’re all Gyanis of one type and they are important because they have got intelligence and they think they have intellectual capacity and they are very important because it’s class preaching that we can do to them and if you can somehow have them have them intellectually chew these you know proposals something wonderful may come out of them you know that’s the best we can expect that’s the best we can expect this also I think that two kinds of people those who are say committed to some other path if somebody is a committed Advaitavadi or it’s like a completely committed worshipper of the devatas then it’s very unlikely that they are going to come to us but our confrontational words is only going to make them reject us as biased and it’s going to really make very strong hard feelings and the other hand most people even if they may be born in a particular family which was worshipping a particular devata or was was Advaitavadi most people in my understanding are maybe an under Advaitic influence they’re not Advaitavadis and quite often because of whatever was there in their whatever they learned from their priest or their guru or their family that’s what actually opens them to explore spirituality and then they come to us because of that so and then because in a sense they’re open to spirituality wherever they get it this is what I have experienced this is what I knew but this I’m open to it and and what has brought them to us if we criticize that itself then it completely shuts them down exactly so it’s and it’s not that just because they have some Advaitic influence it’s not that they are not likely to explore bhakti they may explore bhakti and if if they don’t find us sectarian if they don’t find us attacking what they presently believe or consider sacred then they will explore more and in many ways I think in three main ways I feel we offer more than many other organizations one is we offer quite systematic philosophical education we offer a program of very very sound sadhana and we also offer a lot of cultural social interpersonal engagement many temples are that way quite inactive just go to the priest for some ritual so we can offer people so much more and then within that the particular philosophical conflict confrontational point that is there that just gets sidelined automatically it doesn’t really matter so much for them so sometimes just in trying to win that battle we may end up losing the war winning the battle of trying to prove that your viewpoint is wrong we end up losing the war of getting the person to come closer to Krishna very true very true they have to be very sensitive to that especially when you do class preaching or if you’re able to do that you have to be very accommodative and very tolerant towards another person’s opinion you see especially even in this in this generation of people they don’t like to be like you said spoken to from top down they don’t like to hear you because everybody has got a skewed up opinion about religion because of religious history especially in the west and also in India to some extent casteism and all that stuff together they have got you know a certain idea and they don’t like to be told you know I am right you are wrong with that type of an attitude the scripture says this therefore it is right and you follow this nowadays I think the youngsters that type of a dialogue that type of interaction doesn’t fly very well I can start sensing that amongst the newer generation yes so even to them you can’t talk like you know do this because it says in the Bhagavad Gita so I do this because I am saying so I am a sanyasi and I am a saffron clothed monk you know that doesn’t work much nowadays but what you need to do is to actually fold your sleeves and get friendly with them and engage them and then gradually have them ask questions on their own and then you know sort of give them input sensitively yes so you are right that these things are to be observed very much you see this is what I mean by the postmodern climate it may not be so prevalent some people may think in India but I think because of social media and all the stuff that we have people get to see all these things very fast and they invite them and sometimes inculcate them and they actually speak it out although they don’t have that type of an experience fully but you know they tend to become leftist very easily nowadays it’s like a more attractive thing to be speaking something different from a parent’s spoke and man’s and my you know other ancestors think you call that iconoclastic attitudes coughing at the tradition it seems to be some sort of and you have all this stand-up comedy and these guys speaking about characters from Aabharata speaking about Draupadi Kunti and all that in a very derogatory fashion and there are all sorts of people sitting and laughing at the jokes I don’t know what to call this but that’s a dangerous climate and in that type of climate if you go and tell them that Bhagavad Gita is like this and like that you follow this it’s not going to fly it’s not going to fly so I mean the type of intrusion that western ideas and thoughts have made into into the Indian atmosphere in the ambience because of they having appreciation for western culture other aspects of western culture and because of that appreciation they looking at our tradition and the great Indian tradition in this way is something that needs strategy and proper approach to address it’s very sensitive yes Manoj that’s true I think I think I’m making a subtle point I don’t know how to put it across but I hope you understand yeah you know in many ways today we can’t presume authority we have to earn authority and exactly as you said just because we are we are monks or we are saffron or even if we are just representing a special tradition we don’t have any authority just because of that it is maybe by our culture behavior by our rational presentation we slowly need to earn first not even authority first we need to earn credibility and then authority will come that so then so I think some statements where we offer where Prabhupada is offering like sudden and clear judgment that he is speaking to those who have accepted his authority Prabhupada offers strong judgments about certain issues that’s to his disciples who have accepted his authority and for in today’s world we actually earning that authority it takes a lot of effort and sometimes some people may just presume it and that completely backfires so I think many people a joy in like what is the phrase in English in exposing the there is a phrase like somebody who has feet of clay in pulling the in showing pulling down authority so having a non-confrontational attitude wherein we respect people for who they are and then gradually elevate them that is the only approach that is likely to work in today’s times this has been a very satisfying and illuminating discussion would you like to speak something concluding or I can try to summarize what we discussed so please summarize and then I’ll say a few words okay yes so we tried to discuss about the history of outreach in India and then you started by talking about your experiences in how you were introduced and how you saw outreach taking a different turn in the 1990s with the establishment not just of big temples but also of reaching to the classes educated kind of people then our main discussion today was about why or how we have become significantly successful in the last two decades as compared to before that so I think we discussed three four factors one was that we ourselves started focusing on doing educational outreach which was which is actually our distinctive strength and by that we started attracting thoughtful people who could spread it further and secondly also India’s socio-economic changes made people more receptive toward the kind of spirituality that we are presenting where the expanding middle class they deal with the stresses and the disorder dislocation of urban life they found our spirituality quite good and third was that also as our devotees started going toward a more non-confrontational approach so earlier we had that becoming a devotee means moving into the temple and it was more I talked about rejection complementation and improvement so earlier it was more of a rejection approach and that worked in the west because the people there had already rejected material life but in India you give your own example of how because you were in a big family it took some effort to come out of that so we we have now moved toward a complementation where we have lots of congregation devotees and they are also nourished and engaged and this accommodating the congregation has enabled our movement to spread significantly and India is like the powerhouse we also mentioned that as Indians we have a responsibility to carry on Prabhupada’s mission in the west also then we discussed about in India how successful are we right now so we discussed about how temples can be very powerful tools for outreach if they are used properly that means when people come to the temple there is someone to talk with them and connect people to Krishna and same with books also we distribute books but that is not an end in itself it is to help people appreciate devotees and then come closer to Krishna so the inside out and the outside in approach and then you mentioned about with respect to our philosophy how we can offer the pyramid the soul, God and material nature how their connection can be offered and then that knowledge and that practice not just philosophy and its practice you mentioned the phrase value-aided book distribution or value-added book distribution so that was quite striking and then with respect to our outreach we need to look at the conversion ratio that we distribute books we build temples but we don’t just want people to come as tourists so what resources are we offering and that pyramid example is beautiful at the bottom are people whom we reach then who appreciate then who start practicing something and then they become committed so outreach is not one zero like insider and outsider but it is more progressive so we need to engage and elevate everyone and I think we concluded with non-confrontational approach in philosophical presentations like say whether it’s evolution in the west or people’s previous spiritual affiliations those don’t obstruct people as much as our criticism of those obstacles so in the postmodern ethos we need to be sensitive especially with people who are thoughtful so we have attracted intelligent people but we haven’t attracted intellectual people and if you want to attract them then if you are more sensitive and respectful to people where they are then our outreach can expand substantially any other points or any wonderful wonderful wonderful summary I mean how did you remember all these things in a train good following and memory well I wanted to say that one thing is books submission then temples then we make devotees but I think the challenge now is to sustenance of the devotees giving them care building a community and having them inside a big family of a community that seems to be the focus nowadays the temples should turn into communities I was asking a question from a community you said to a temple and I’m saying that for temples to survive they should be having a supportive community wherein the people who are dedicating themselves fully find their place securely and they can sort of settle down yeah I am you know I find myself as a square peg in a square hole I can find my square hole I’m a square peg that type of this thing because a lot of them even if they are professionals they come inside they can’t get proper engagement and therefore they stay away we have to create that ambience and that whole atmosphere to sustain those people who have climbed the pyramid and come to the apex you know and not to be disappointed because at the apex the disappointment is extremely excruciating having gone to the apex it’s like you know thrown between the devil and the deep sea having come this far so it’s highly important that if you don’t have this sustenance sustainability of the devotees and that ambience and that atmosphere so I think the entire circuit will be closed when we are able to provide that type of high-level care not only care for your emotional stuff and other things care on a level wherein you are very well placed and you have found your place like I said a square brick in the square hole maybe that will complete the whole temple structure that will complete the whole preaching in India because India can afford that type of an atmosphere friendly family of people that you can afford it here better than in the rest you can create that easier here so I think that’s a great advantage and in India we should move towards creating huge communities and now that in this Covid situation we can also learn that we should have you know auxiliary supporting structure of a farm and sustenance of a different type and everything so the scope is so huge in India and you can go through a lot of things and achieve all those things that Prabhupada mentioned and making use of the culture of the land and the great tradition in history so Indian preaching has got a lot to do apart from what I said that supporting the whole world’s preaching also so it’s a big mandate that we can take on ourselves in India and move towards it is exciting and of course there are challenges and my own learning and understanding is you know still progressing I wouldn’t say that I’ve caught the you know bull by the horns yet but it’s a developing thing it’s in flux because the world India is changing very rapidly and therefore we also have also have to change our preaching strategies and move ahead with great you know intelligent discussions and strategies forward it’s the need of the hour so I thank you very much for this dialogue you brought out some very interesting analogies and you know extracts from Prabhupada’s life history and the history of our movement which I thought was very striking to me especially the one you said about Darwin that the atheistic people are using Darwin’s whole theory to explain something that they would like to that was a very striking point and many such things so thank you very much for the opportunity for me to say a few things I don’t feel that I’ve said everything that I would want to say but maybe that’s a more or less you should come in the future and sometime we can continue this dialogue in future sometime Maharaj on some other subjects this is a very interesting it’s a very interesting dialogue on outreach and how Wisconsin should present itself to the world outside especially in India and I you know I’ll be interested in exploring that further with you as very seasoned gentleman who has been exposed to many different types of preaching atmospheres and outreach atmospheres and I’m sure that I will also learn a lot like I’ve done today thank you very much for calling me in I’m sorry I actually came today with a little busy schedule in the head from the morning I was thinking whether I’ll be able to be present but I thought of sort of settled in after some time to the topic it took me some time to settle down but I hope that many profound thoughts as well as lot of contemporary sharing of your experiences personal as well as extended in the scorn world I felt it was a very illuminating discussion Maharaj thank you very much for your time and your wisdom