Nama Om Vishnu paadaaya..
Hari Haraya Naama Krishna …
Nitai Gauranga, Nitai Gauranga
Jaya Rasabehrai Rsabehrari Radhe
Jaya Lalita Visaka, jaya Lalita Visaka
Jaya Sita Ram Laksman Bhakta Hanuman
Mukham karoti…

So today we had a busy day. In the morning from 9 to 11 there was BBT emergency meeting. 11 to 1 there was initiations. Then from 5 to 7 there was a meeting with one of the candidates to be our architect for the TOVP west wing which is the Exhibits and Planetarium. Then I had to give second initiation to some devotees and some devotees wanted a last interview before they left. In between there was prasadam, bathing and other things. So it was a day of rest but it was a very busy day! I want to welcome all the doctors who are present, student doctors. Doctor learns how to recover the body. Krsna describes in the Bhagavad-gita that the body is a machine made of material energy. Yantra rudani mayaya. So we want the doctors also to have knowledge of consciousness and the soul. The Vedas tell us that the Supreme Being is supremely conscious. Swetasvatara Upanishad says cetanas cetanana naam, nityo nityanam, eko bahunam yo vidadati kaman – that there is a supreme conscious entity, amongst all the eternal entities, He is the Supreme. He is the one who maintains everyone else. So we are as spirit souls and our quality is to be conscious. This four walls, chairs, they are not conscious. We are conscious. When we leave the body, the body is no longer conscious. So the spirit soul’s quality is to be eternal and conscious. So when we leave the body, we take another birth again and that body gains consciousness. So to understand the nature of life, is to understand how everything comes from consciousness of the Supreme Being who is also the supreme conscious entity. In this material world, the modern theories are that matter produces consciousness but there is no such evidence. Although fiction stories tell us about Frankenstein, actually no one ever did that. Even Prabhupada said forget making a human, make a mosquito! Even though there is a study that a one cell creature is so complex that it is inconceivable that how such a complex one cell entity can come along by some accident. What to speak of a human being who is made of complex, millions of cells. So a great thing Einstein said that by studying the universe and seeing how everything is so systematic, that there must be some intelligence behind this. So we are making in Mayapur the exhibition building where we are also getting inputs from various devotee scientists and the system is that we take people to understand how the Vedas are very good science and teaching us how the universe is constructed and how it works. So the doctors know about the body. We want them also to be doctors of the soul. To know how the soul works and how this material world works. Like when you buy a simple thing like a Sony tape recorder, you get a manual how it works. So the universe is given and the manual are the Vedas. How the universe works? How the law of karma works? How the different aspects of material life are? In the third canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam, Devahuti is instructed by her son, Kapila dev, not the movie star or the cricket player, that is the original Kapiladev! I don’t know how many of you have read the 3rd canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. It is sankya yoga, in Sanskrit slokas it tells how the human embryo is developed. One day, three days, seven days, two weeks, I don’t know when was this understood by the modern science,? One century ago or two? This was given in the Vedas five thousand years ago in Sanskrit. How the embryo is developed and the consciousness comes in the body. And many other details. Many of which are beyond our scope of perception. We may personally experience it but scientists are not able to see it yet. But this explained in the Vedas. So it is good to know side by side, what is observable and what are the Vedic truths. The Vedas tell us things, some of them we are able to see and many things are beyond our perception. When the British were in charge of India and the Christian missionaries wanted to convert all the Indians, they said they had difficulty because of the brahmins. And people believed the brahmins. So they were thinking what strategy to use to influence all the Indians. So Max Mueller, he decided to learn Sanskrit. He translated the Vedas but he would use words which in English were bad words! Like for the deities, instead of saying – for the worshipable deities, he would say idols. In English, in western nomenclature, an idol is a false thing. But since the Indians don’t know western culture, they would say oh, I went to the temple and worshipped the idols. When a westerner hears that he would think, oh, idol worship! That is sacrilegious. So like that instead of saying puranas which means history, he translated it as a myth, which means some fiction. So like this they purposely mistranslated the books hoping they would influence the Indians. But it didn’t really have a full effect, only partial. But many Indians think that they puranas are myths. But actually the puranas give us the history of the universe. They give us much information about the universe that we live in. It tells that there are entities living in every planet. But the entities may be in different dimension and planes. They may have unique kind of environmental or ecological system. Like in the sun planet it says that the entities have fiery bodies. So this is something we have no idea about. There are also different kinds of entities like yakshas, gandarvas and siddhas, and heavenly beings, apsaras, so many kinds. So all these things seem very different for the westerners. But I came across a book, All the Angles of the Christian Books. There were 18 thousand angels, different kinds. They say, children angels. We have the four Kumaras. So like that there are many things they actually match up, they just use different nomenclature. We say devas, they say angels – same thing. They have angels who are in charge of the universe, angels who are associates of the Supreme Person. We call the associates of the Supreme Lord as paarshadas. They call them a type of angel. Actually there is only one God and He is worshipped in different means, different methods, but it is the same Lord. Our belief is that whether you call Him Allah, God or Iswara, the Supreme Lord is one. But He has many associates, many different forms. Like we have the Matsya avatar and how He carried one of the Manus who had all different animals. And the Christians or the Jews they say that it was Noah and he was in a boat with different animals. So if someone studies they will find a lot of things which are similar. So Prabhupada said we don’t convert people, we convince them. By convincing we understand that we are meant to serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Devotional service is the actual purpose of life. And we are in this material world for some reason or other we didn’t want to serve the Supreme Lord. So by chanting the holy names, our natural inclination to serve the Lord increases. So we should popularize chanting, chanting of Tukaram had people chanting the holy name. He said that he was inspired by Lord Caitanya and also said he was initiated by Him. So today, people are so much absorbed in different material things. Prabhupada wanted us to just add Krsna and all the material things are like so many zeros. If you put one before the zero it become ten, hundred, thousand or lac. But how many zeros you have? Put one in front. We have to add Krsna in the front and then all the zeros will become valuable. So Lord Caitanya made our process very simple. He said, bolo Krsna, bhajo Krsna, koro Krsna sika. Chant Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. Bhajo Krsna, serve and worship Krsna. Koro Krsna, read the teachings of Lord Krsna. It means Bhagavad-gita spoken by Krsna and Srimad Bhagavatam which is spoken about Krsna. Haribol! Gauuuuuuuranga! Gauuuuuuuuranga! Gauuuuuuuuuranga! Haribol! Any questions? If you write the questions it will be nice. Please see if there are any questions on the internet?

Question: Rasapriya Gopika, Hare Krsna guru maharaj, thank you very much for your class even in this busy schedule. How can we understand having deities in our dreams, whether it would real or just our mental speculation?

Guru maharaj: How we have deities in our dreams? Well, usually if the dream portrays something which is reasonable, then usually it is true or has some value. One day Saci mata had a dream and told Lord Caitanya that she had a dream that she went into the temple in her dream. And saw Nitai and Gaura sitting down, ready to eat. Then Nityananda went after her and said FEED ME, I AM HUNGRY! So she asked Gauranga, what does this mean? He said, well, maybe it means that we should invite Nityananda over for lunch! Ha! So I will go and get Nityananda, you can cook for lunch. So then Lord Caitanya went out to get Lord Nityananda. He was on the other side of the Ganges, playing with some children. He said, Nitai! Nitai! So Nityananda swam over and He said, you were going to take lunch with us today. So then They were walking together and Lord Caitanya said, “no funny business!” Nityananda said “I don’t do any funny business, You don’t do any funny business!” So the two were laughing and talking. So then they went to the house of mother Saci. They were seated next to the temple and mother Saci was so excited that she put down three banana leaves but there were only two people! So she was a little excited! And she went back and got some prasadam. Served on the plate. Then she went back to get more prasadam. She came back and Gaura Nitai were not seated there any more. Instead it was Krsna and Balaram, and she saw and fainted. Lord Caitanya came and mother Saci was there. Lord Gauranga asked, mother, mother, what is the matter? She woke up. She looked around. Saw Gaura Nitai, then she ran into the room and locked the door and wouldn’t talk to anyone for the rest of the day! Ha! So was that dream or real? So if they eat a lot of pizza late at night, they have a dream of pizzas. Maybe because they ate too much late at night. But if you have dream that you are worshipping the deities, then it might be alright. You can ask your diksa or siksa guru, what the dream means. Haribol! Are there any more questions! Oh!

Question: Hare Krsna guru maharaj dandavat pranam, Guru maharaj said: Blessings! Some matajis of Bhakti Vrksa they are coming regularly since three years. But not able to give up onion, garlic, tea, egg but not able to do 16 rounds. How can I help them?

Guru maharaj: Well every person is an individual project. And so I don’t like to say that one thing will work for everyone. But generally we find that if we encourage them that they are chanting 4 rounds, tell them how 4 rounds equals to 25 lacs or 2.5 million names of Krsna in a year Then they feel so afraid if you are going to say something to them. YOU ARE SO FALLEN! YOU ONLY CHANT FOUR ROUNDS? But when you tell them, you chant 2.5 million a year, they will say oh, really! I will chant eight rounds! One thing is that encourage them, whatever they are doing, and then they can do more. And everybody wants appreciation, encouragement. There is one Bengali lady, she was very attached to eating fish. And every time in the lecture they would say how bad it is to eat fish. She thought, oh this is not for me! And it would go over her head! But in the Bhakti Vrksa we have a system of everybody saying their realizations, they read the Bhagavad Gita where it basically says, you are what you eat. That if you eat fish, you may become a cat in your next life! So when it was time to tell her realization, she said, I don’t want to be a cat! From today I give up eating fish! So sometimes people have to come to their own realization but if you find that many people are attached to eating onions, then you can have a class oriented into that direction. How in every temple in India, Siva, Durga, Ganesh, nobody you offer onions. What to speak of the Visnu temples! No kind of non veg is allowed because onions, the history from the puranas is that they come from the dead body of the cow. And so eating onion is like getting karma of killing a cow. Something like that. But even in Google, if you look up onion, they did a study and found that onion is very bad for health. So material scientists and spiritualists all are against onion and garlic. But how you approach it in the Bhakti Vrksa you have to be very subtle. And let people come to their realizations. We are not vegetarians we are Krsnatarians. We want to offer things to Krsna and take His prasadam. So eggs are the embryo of the chicken and eggs, onions, garlic, such things, you cannot offer to Krsna. And if you cannot eat prasadam then what is the use. So we have a host of questions, we will answer quick. Don’t take any more questions.

Question: How to enhance the quality and concentration towards reading scriptures like Srimad Bhagavatam?

Guru maharaj: How much concentration do you have? Gradually like your muscles, you can build up your strength, your concentration. Some people can read for one hour, some can, read whatever you can at that time. And then read again at some other time or read so much from this book, so much from that book, so that you like to build up your concentration to an hour to two hours a day. So Prabhupada told me to get initiated I should read the Bhagavad-gita ten times. So I still have the Gita, 1,2,3,4, cross, 1,2,2,4, cross, ten times! I request candidates for initiation, to read Bhagavad-gita twice. And first canto once of Srimad Bhagavatam. Yesterday someone asked me, I have been chanting for 16 years, I want to take initiation, but I have not read the Bhagavad-gita once, but I will read it in one month, give me initiation now please. In 16 years they have not read the Bhagavad-gita once, and if I give them initiation, in one month they will read it! I used to believe that. Not anymore! Like they give postdated cheques. So I request, please read first. One doctor said he was illiterate and he wanted to take the illiterate test. But how can a doctor be illiterate? He said, well, I am spiritually illiterate! No excuse!

Question: Acute sensitivity to people and situation, could this be an obstacle to Krsna consciousness?

Guru maharaj: Yes. Next question. Being overly sensitive we want to please guru and Krishna. We are not trying to run a popularity contest. Some people may not be satisfied. Today our architect candidate, he said that scientists, they always criticize, we should reach the general public. Prabhupada also said that scientists always criticize. So we want to reach the general public.

Question: Sometimes we are unable to complete chanting and during the day we complete while travelling or engaged in some activity. So how can we chant actively in such passionate atmosphere? Thank you Ramahari das.

Guru maharaj: kirtaniya sada harihi. We should always chant. Of course in the morning it is considered as saatvic, mode of goodness. So it is easier to chant. But we have to also chant when it is not saatvic. So because we don’t know when our end will come. And if we only chant one time, we may leave our body some other time. So we should learn how to chant all the time. We may chant our rounds in the morning but there is no limit to how much we chant. So other times we can also chant.

Question: Hare Krishna maharaj, dandavat pranam: Kindly enlighten devotees who are single sons how can they be determined to become brahmachari and stay brahmachari whole life and serve?

Guru maharaj: There is in the 8th canto the history of Gajendra moksha. There the king of the elephants Gajendra, was fighting with the king of the crocodiles. And he was in the water. So the crocodile is an animal of the water and elephant is the animal of the land. So eventually in this long tug of war, the crocodile seemed to be winning out because he was in his elements but the elephant was not. In the purport, Prabhupada says that some people are stronger in the pravritti marg, dovetailing the material enjoyment. And some people are stronger in the nivritti marg in the renunciation. So first of all see what is your nature. And if your nature is to be renounced, then it is very easy to be in the brahmachari life. If your nature is pravritti then you may want to be a brahmachari for some time, to get some sense control habits and then enter into grihasta dharma being a little more controlled. So Prabhupada was once giving an example about knowledge and realized knowledge. He says that you hear married life is complicated. That is knowledge. You get married, that is real life knowledge. But we see that Prabhupada said also that our ladies are not ordinary ladies. Because they are Krsna conscious. So some people would be better off with a Krsna conscious life partner and some people will be better off in brahmachari ashram. So see what your strong point is and stay in that situation. There are certain advantages to both, depends on what your nature is. If you can be peaceful, be renounced, then you can give all your time to Krsna consciousness. If you cannot be peaceful in that situation, then if you marry a Krsna conscious lady, together you may be able to do devotional service. And so that is also very auspicious. So we don’t want to present things negatively. Both ways can be auspicious. If you are doing it to serve Krsna but if you have some other motives and you don’t realize them, then don’t blame Krsna.

Transcribed by Jayaraseshwari devi dasi
24 April 2019