​Why are only engineering students attracted to ISKCON?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
why are engineering students more attracted to ISCON than other students it is from a very limited perspective that we may say that engineering students are attracted it is only in India and it is only in colleges in India where we are doing college teaching in Australia or America quite often there are students from the humanities who are attracted more especially students who are interested in yoga or engineering or eastern music often they come for our programs so firstly it is not an absolute principle but it is true in the immediate context we find that more engineering students come that is for various reasons one is that many of the devotee preachers who started youth preaching they themselves were from an engineering background so they studied Krishna Consciousness from an engineering perspective they present Krishna Consciousness from an engineering perspective so naturally people who are engineers they get attracted so it is not that you will not find any youth center only engineers are allowed everyone else is banned it is not like that if students are interested they come another point is that in today’s education system the social values are such that engineering and medicine are the most glamorous careers and many of the intelligent students they go to engineering and medicine and even the Bhagavad Gita says that Krishna tells Arjuna evam paramparapraptam imam rajya rishyam that the important point is I gave this knowledge to the saintly kings rajya rishyam so Krishna could have given the knowledge of Bhagavad Gita to anyone but he chose to give that knowledge to a person who has influence, a saintly king the king understands spiritual knowledge and lives spiritual knowledge and creates systems for sharing spiritual knowledge and bringing people to a level called spiritual knowledge that will be much more influential so like that engineering students do have a significant amount of influence in today’s society because many of the intelligent students they do become engineers and if they understand this knowledge and they share this knowledge they can benefit a large number of people in society so it is not that only engineers students are there there are devotees who are doctors who also become, there are people who are doctors who become devotees and there are programs happening in medical colleges also in Mumbai there is a whole devotee run hospital it is not that that hospital is staffed by engineers it is staffed by doctors doctors have become devotees but as far as at a particular time at a particular place from the specific context because in today’s time the preachers were mostly engineers because today many intelligent students become engineers that’s how there are engineers who are attracted but if any of you feel inspired as you become devotees to share in bhakti in other forums that’s perfectly fine there are many many forums where Krishna’s message can be shared and if it has been found that engineering students can understand this better because they have logical brain and then they can connect with it easier a particular kind of philosophical presentation we are attracted to engineers for humanities students a different kind of presentation is required for rural people a different kind of presentation is required so different devotees may specialize in different kinds of presentations and at different times some may be more successful than others and that’s how it may appear as a at a particular time a particular number of students a particular kind of people come the most like in 1960s and 70s some people thought that ISKCON means hippies ISKCON they think that ISKCON means people who take drugs or people who used to take drugs no actually devotees have long way of drugs and even hippies also probably in 1962 or 66 to around 1969 or 70 that hippies were probably there after that as the movement spread in various parts of the world and the counter culture went down other kind of people also started coming to the movement so at the present phase in ISKCON’s history yes there may seem to be a larger number of engineering students but that is not due to any bias from anyone that is just working out sociological factors right now but everyone is welcome to the movement including engineers