19820908 Evening Address

(Disclaimer: The following is a machine-generated transcript and may contain errors or inaccuracies. It will be reviewed and verified against the original audio soon.)

The following is a continuation of the Evening Address  given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on September 8, 1982 – in Denver, USA.

They need, of course, that special attention and they need to be preached to. The importance of being Kṛṣṇa consciousness and these other things are actually not as significant as they’re making them out to be. I must say, as Rupaul Goswami says, they ultimately decide they don’t want to be time. They want to enjoy the material world. They want to live in material nature. Then of course, there’s not much you can do. They’re going to find excuse. Even without excuse, they can go. There’s nothing tying them down but just to live with themselves, to find an excuse to blame it on someone else. I am not wrong. I just couldn’t stay there because my leader didn’t talk to me. There may be, always might be some substance, you know, in the complaint, but usually it’s exaggerated by that mentality.

Somehow you have to go that reach the soul and rekindle that determination to be Kṛṣṇa conscious. And the other problems, those things can be solved. That’s not the. They have the enthusiasm, the determination, the patience. That’s the whole advice of Upadeshamita. We should be enthusiastic, determined and impatient. Everything doesn’t happen overnight. Everything doesn’t happen exactly as we plan it to happen. We’re not the ultimate controllers. The main thing is that people have to have that. This point is a mischaitan duja. To be. To be convinced that by Kṛṣṇa Consciousness they will be successful and to be patient to just enthusiastically remain practicing.

Also Jaipur, you know, personally, like being in the moon for a number of years, I have always experienced this. This movement to be a movement that’s focused more on preaching Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. That even when you come, you tell us how, you know, if you don’t preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness, if you don’t go out and approach people and give them Kṛṣṇa Krita, you know, some prasad, you don’t give them a book, you don’t let them hear the chanting. So if the devotee doesn’t develop just preaching consciousness, you know, how can he actually develop a desire, sustain Kṛṣṇa consciousness? This thing about developing a congregational mood, or these things are actually there, but at the same time, this movement, if you really focus on a devotee who is very absorbed in this philosophy, he’s really into just giving Kṛṣṇa consciousness to everybody he sees.

So I mean, are we in a position to really think about congregational members? Maybe india, but are we in that position in America yet? I don’t know.

What is preaching if it’s not to get people to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. When Lord Caitanya was asked who is a Vaishnava. He said that anyone who chants Hare Kṛṣṇa is a Vaishnava. Then he went on to describe that there are three levels. If you think that the whole world can only be made of madhyamadhikari, then it’s going to be a long time before we make everyone Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

It’s not that I don’t mean that we don’t follow up, but I mean basically right now, in our particular society, in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, isn’t it that, you know, we try to focus so much on going out and approaching people and really like, isn’t it right now it just seems that way? I don’t know. Because I don’t know anywhere in America where devotees are actually doing it, you know, going to people’s homes and really helping them set up altars or really, you know, doing, you know, intensive congregational preaching. Most temples that I know in America, they’re simply barely focusing on just trying to get a senkatan crew together just in order to collect enough Lakshmi to run their temple. I don’t know.

I found even india, that congregational program, you know, although I promoted so much, is something which for some reason certain devotees just never fully comprehend. They all appreciate some kind, but for some reason they can’t just doesn’t just snap in their minds exactly what is the real thing about it? Generally there are certain type of thank you time devotees, book distributors, and even some of the like member preachers. For some reason they always somehow are a little bewildered by how conduit preaching goes on or what it is or what is Namat and what is the folk program. Although for me, I can’t even understand what they don’t understand exactly.

We don’t hear this kind of preaching in America. It’s just not available.

But I have found in the other perspective that there are certain kind of devotees who are very mature, who have a deep appreciation for Kṛṣṇa consciousness and who are maybe not as high powered, but who have tremendous determination and desire to see people advance in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And because they’re maybe not so high strong, they’re a little more patient in that regard, you know, that they can appreciate just like a. I mean, to be a parent you have to be very patient because the child grows so slowly. You know, take 15, 16 years and see how a woman or a man is developing. So like that. Generally we’re geared to a very kind of quick result. But I have seen that there are certain devotees like that who actually can appreciate that over a period of time, these people are actually Advancing Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

And they actually feel inspired to go out and to preach them. But up to now, because there may be lack of, as you say, lack of preaching in America because of lack of an understanding of how a program like this would work, that even if there are such devotees in the movement now that, you know, they haven’t really. We haven’t been able to locate who they are. But just like there was just like. I think that Raja Pandit is almost a unique example, is that he was the cook in Ottawa. And then somehow we got him to stay india with the temple president’s permission. And he was doing various services like membership and different things, but he was.

Trying to do temple commander and so many.

But actually under the pressure of the temple management, even he almost had a nervous breakdown because Māyā, of course, no small temple. So then we started this congregational program. And what was amazing was as he started just going out and meeting the people and encouraging to take up this chanting and that. And then as he started to. Because he’s dealing with. It’s like wholesale. In other words, ecommercation is much greater than any than devotees. As you work in it, you gradually have hundreds and hundreds of people you’re dealing with. They write you letters. You go and visit them now and then you organize programs. You may only see them once in a couple months or a month, or may have a communication once in two weeks. In an India context, maybe in America, phones have been working.

But so over this period of time, you see that by this personal relationship again, India personal relationships are very strong. So he’s a cripple. He has polio from birth. His leg is. One leg is smaller than the other. So when he goes out and sees the people sometimes walking five miles to their village and they see that how this person cares so much for me. He’s not asking me for any money. He doesn’t want anything off me. He’s coming to give to help me. Even they’re not very interested. Some of them just out of sheer respect that this person has got more guts than I got.

He got more care about me than.

I even have about myself, that they just open up to him. And even the one person I initiated said that the only reason that I become to this stage because I was in complete Mayan nonsense and I wasn’t really very interested was simply because Raja Panda would never let me drift away. And you know, but so he’s like developed now. He’s got so many people. You know, he was like a very humble devotee, but he has this like all his main quality is he got this determination. And once he realized the whole concept, it’s like a whole philosophy. If you read Bhaktivi notes, it’s there in Prabhupāda’s books.

But people don’t, you know, they don’t.

They kind of read over those parts. Just like when you read every time you read the Gītā, you get it. You read a new thing once you start, if you start reading again. And looking from this point, you will find that. That all Prabhupāda’s books are filled with congregational preaching. But because no one ever, you know, like in the third canto, there’s a point where he said, there’s no reason why every family in every society of every country of the world cannot chant Hare Kṛṣṇa every day in their life at their house. There’s so many quotes like that. Prabhupāda says, you know, dictating. Before I went to India, he happened to call me over in Los Angeles and told me that don’t think that everybody’s going to live in our temples. Just how the sky blue. He just said it.

He said that our temples are disliked as the churches. They have our devotees living in the temples. Those are like priests. They’re like ministers of religion. But there will be so many people living and having regular jobs who will have small temples in the house and come to the temple and be trained and gain association and strength. And this is how our movement is.

Going to develop in the future.

But I forgot about it until, like, 1977 or so, when I started got into this whole thing. I didn’t really click a bell until later on. So it’s just a certain kind of determination that a devotee has. You know, the philosophy. You like to talk to people. You have the patience to just tolerate their inefficiencies and try to just find the one little spark that you can fan. Just like the way Prophet came first in America and he just, you know, the people were. I mean, you know, the first devotees, the different first devotees that came, they were. A lot of them, you know, were really in Māyā.

They were smoking in the temple and everything. The Prabhupāda just patiently kind of got them over that.

I remember that even in Montreal, there was one devotee, one box that was there, was addicted to smoking probably. So he’d go out in the back fire escape and smoke eight cigarettes a day. But then after the next week, it had to go down to six, then four, two. But it’s like living in a Temple, just go out in a fire escape, you know, and then light up a cigarette. Because in those days Prabhupāda was trying to encourage people little more. Well now we have a cut off, you know, if a guy says well I can’t give up, I got two cigarettes a day. But in the material world to completely stop and then come is really tough without any association because everybody want, you know. So I remember in a long time ago there was discussion on halfway houses.

For people that were like that.

But I don’t think I ever got off the ground. So now, you know, it’s really. Kaakta standard has come up to a very high standard. But the Karmī standard is going down and down day by day. So then there’s a huge gap. Unless the person is really fortunate, it’s hard for them. It gets harder and harder as time goes along. The devotees guys are becoming more steady, more strict. Match the temples, they’re getting cleaner, more regulated, more fired up in many ways. But then one hand, you know.

Like even Indians, they come immediately.

They’re impressed that even india there’s no temples as together as the Iskcon temples in the west or india. But then it makes it that much. Although one hand it’s inspiring for people when they come. But then for a lot of people it’s just a very big gap for them to bridge. Just a question. I have written about a 15 page pamphlet for the web, how to set up a congregational program. And I have just the last dictation I gave that this web draft was given me two days ago. And I chance to go over it just so that devotees in the west.

Right from the basics, you know, like.

If you want to set up a program, what are things you could use.

Like a desk, you know.

How to collect names, what to do with the names when you get them, just to get like this seeds for thought, you know. And it may seem to be like, you know, just, you know, just take out, just take it from the point, you know, zero up. So if you’re interested but you find it, there will be some. A lot of mothers I think could also get into that kind of a preaching. And in the west the facilities are a lot better than India. In India even Raghapan doesn’t speak Bengali. They write to him in English. He has the clerk that translates it, writes him in Bengali. He has a clerk translated in English. He reads in English, writes the answer in English. It is retranslated in Bengali and sent out.

He spends Five days on the road and then two days he comes back, becomes the Māyāpur, and one day to Calcutta. And then he gets all of his mail that already was translated, reads it, writes the reply, gives it back, it’s out again, you know, like that. And despite just by keeping touch with the people, by having a personal relationship, they know that person, that he’s able to get a lot of service out of them. We have never asked anyone to be a member of the Namhad. Generally. We never. We never. We personally don’t even, you know, I mean, we have never made any propaganda. Our only propaganda is through our existing Namhad preachers. Because there’s so many. They’re making so many other people. We engage them in preaching.

You see, the whole thing is that the first time, you know, Bhagavadamira is a book distributor. He could never understand Namha until I explained to him, until he went down and realized that Ragha Panda just sent in the scores for his. Rādhākṛṣṇa is calling up that he did 600 medium books and 8,000 pamphlets last week, some of his newspapers. Because what Ragha Pandit has done is now each of his Namhad groups, he has one person as a book agent. And they take from him on consignment a certain amount of books. They have to build up credit. He sets them up with 20 rupee credit and then they take that amount of. They take the credit to 20 rupees of books. They sell the books, send them back the money, then they get the next books. Then after they increase their credit rating.

So some of them are distributing 500 newspapers a week, every fortnight. And over the whole thing, Bhagavad Aveda started that. He got into it at a certain point. Now he’s in South India helping with the same program. He said how actually in this way, thousands of books can be distributed. I was discussing with Śrīla Rameshwar that if you have a congregation, if you just have them now, we’re giving books to people, you know, to temples, to one bak each or something like those that have book credit. But instead, if you have a congregation and you give the more advanced members there, say, five books a week or 10 books a month or whatever they want, just voluntary, for a cheap rate. And let them sell it to their friends or give it to their friend and pay for it themselves, whatever they want.

But they have, like a quota. They have to give out that many books and they have to pay you this much money. They volunteer themselves. In this way, you say 100 people and they’re doing 10 books, 1,000 books a month. And the people that get those books are going to read them because it was given by someone they know. They need a whole month, four or five books, even 100 people, congregation is nothing. You can build up a lot of people and in a very low key way, but a lot of literature can go out over a period of time. So but it takes, as you say, you know, it takes to get people up to the point where they’re going to give out books. May take like a year in some cases somewhere.

Like we NAMHA, we have right now 10,000 people in the NAMHA, 500 centers, average of 20 each. So 10,000 active people. Of the 10,000 people say everybody’s supposed to chant one round a day, but say actually 5,000 are actually doing it. And then of those people who chant actually four rounds a day and have become vegetarian, there may only be 500 and actually initiated people. I only initiated maximum, maybe total number is maybe 25. But there’s a number of people training, ready for initiation. But in any given year, 15, 12, 10, 20, whatever, no more than that. Because for them outside, we make them one year, they have to be following steadily for one year.

Because six months, you know, it’s not.

Really long enough when you’re at marriage with a devotees. So it’s not that we reduce the standard of the devotees. The devotees rather in the eyes of these people, become very advanced. We train them to see the devotees as being ministers of religion, as being priests, as being Brahmanas, as being advanced souls and then that they should be humble, but at the same time allowing them to feel that they are part of the movement, that they have a part to play, that they’re connected and that by doing this they’re benefiting spiritually and that also they’re benefiting with the movement, that they have a relationship. So I don’t see why the same thing cannot be done in the West. We’re doing it in South America. It’s just a question of, I mean, I have been pushing in South America. So they’re all my disciples.

So they do it and they’re getting fantastic results. We got chief of police, we got professors in the university, we got everybody chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. So of course North America, they always say, well, they’re more pious in South America.

But.

The point, it might be a tough one not to crack, but we have to crack it sooner or later. It’s really just a question of one devotee. This is not a Thing that you take a dozen men, just one devotee, who can somehow capture the idea of it. True devotees, if they just, you know, get it. Read the things about Namhata, about folk preaching, about congregation preaching. The different quotes by Prabhupāda Bhaktivi Nathakur said that there is no preaching which is more effective or something like that. Or there’s no greater preacher than Nama. He had his own, you know, like he was. He wrote a number of things that the greatest welfare work for the people.

In the original manifesto, Vaiava Vishwa, Vaiava Mahasabha, the Universal Congress of Vaiavism written by Jīva Goswami, this congregational preaching is one of the stages for world Kṛṣṇa conscious conquest. It’s an original manifesto by Jīva Gosvm.

You can’t get around it.

They have already the six go. We’re just following the six Goswami. They have already chalked the whole thing out. And why I called it the Namhat india was because Prabhupāda repeatedly told me that will you try to please your spiritual master and to please the previous spiritual masters? This is the secret to success. As much as possible, you follow your spiritual master’s order and also try to satisfy the desires of the previous Acharyas. Then he gave the example that Bhaktivedinotakur Bhakti, that Jagannātha Babaji found the birthplace of Lord Caitanya with Bhaktivinoda built the temple there, the first little temple. He begged door to door, tried to develop the Mayavur Dharma. Then Bharti Siddhānta built a big temple and further developed it. And he said, now I am also trying to develop. So in this way, I am very grateful for all of you who are also developing it.

We try to carry on so this principle. We take it out that Dr. Vinod predicted there would be an organization for spreading worldwide consciousness. At the same time, his particular contribution was this congregational preaching. But because it didn’t have the central organization, because it was, you know what happened. If you have a congregation without the central organization, then the congregations gradually they fall away. So I have come to the personal realization that the whole secret of success for.

Congregation is preaching is to have a.

Very strong Kṛṣṇa conscious temple.

And that’s the whole base of operations.

Unless you have that, there’s no question.

Unless you have a temple, there’s no question of congregation. You have to have a strong temple. And then from that they get energy, they get feeding. I asked Prabhupāda about engaging people in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And he said that bring them to our temple, train them up for some time and then send them back to make their family and their neighbors Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

So you have to have a temple.

Where the highest standards are maintained so.

They can come and get the inspiration.

Get the seed of bhakti. And then if they can’t stay here permanently, then at least they can water it. And then the devotees help to organize their affairs so that they can regularly water. I know that St. Louis has the.

Congregational program just they built up from their restaurant. So many people come there to take food, to take prasad.

A number of them will become actually devotees. The one taxi driver and others, just because they’re coming and eating prashads, having association like without an organized, you know, formal program.

Of course.

Now I think he was mentioned they have some formal programs. Yeah.

What we’re doing now, we’re doing hari nams on the weekends. Then as the weather gets, well, it’s actually effective. And now when the weather gets colder in the winter, then we’re going to be doing more programs than some of our congregational members.

Sir.

Doctor tell me he had like 200.

Congregational members or something.

Yeah.

And then I noticed a couple of them were actually now devotees.

So that builds out. I think he’s giving a lot of.

Credit to that restaurant helped to build it up. And of course, the hurry down, mother. Of course, I never expected St. Louis to do something before Denver.

He didn’t.

We have got 300.

They got 300.

How many do you send?

You know, it’s like automatic.

You get a lot of people on your mailing list. There’s only a certain percentage of those that actually reciprocate. So it’s automatic congregational program. You know, they end up, you know.

The main problem we have is they.

Always keep reciprocating with the people. You know, naturally you get a little more rest with somebody, but then they don’t make the allowance. You know, that’s always a problem you have, but that happens is that, you.

Know, naturally some will take it up.

More seriously, but then the thing is to use them to train up others to help others.

I was interested in Kṛṣṇa consciousness for some years, but I didn’t join, become a member of anything until last September, about a year ago. And I knew at the time that, you know, sometime I was going to become an devotee. But I didn’t know when I was putting it off. And when I joined that I had no idea that they would actually write me letters back.

And I did.

I was almost stunned. You know, they wrote me a two page letter and I told him, you know, after a few months went by and Kṛṣṇa took my job away from me and some other things happened. I decided I was going to go ahead and go to a temple. So they really helped me, you know, that’s when it became the hardest. My body was really saying, no, don’t go do something. I was thinking, what else can I do? Anything. Because I thought I better figure it out now because I don’t want to go to the temple and then figure it out. I want to go through everything now. So I wrote, I kept writing them, they kept writing me and really helped me. No, from LA.

Membership program from la.

And it just, it really made me feel like, you know, there really is somebody out there, you know, take care of me. It’s real, there’s real people who. So when I told them I was.

You know, I decided to come to.

Denver, they were just really excited. You know, I finally, when I went to LA Rock Yacht, I got to.

Meet these people and it was a.

Really exciting program as far as I was concerned. And now they want me to write some letters. You know, write. They have a new publication just coming out of a newsletter now for their members they didn’t have before. And they want me to write something and try to, you know, tell other members that, you know, this is a process that can really help you if you really want to become a book.

What’s your name?

B.

We found that people in the material world, they really appreciate a letter much more than anything actually when we get.

Letters here from different, various people, we usually respond pretty quickly.

I got this suas another thing that helped me so much. I said, well, I think I will go to Denver. I went to New McDonald’s, some other places and I decided for various reasons I was going to try Denver. And I wrote a letter just Temple President Denver and I got the beautiful two page letter. Really inspiring from.

I think it is a question of economy. In other words, the government wants to.

Cut down on their budget so they.

Cut down their spending. They try to get more efficiency. The number of people that you’re meeting in the airports that you’re meeting in different places that are getting our books that are coming to the temple.

It’s just like when you have, you.

Know, tightening up the machine so that there’s less leaks. There’s so many people that probably could have become Devotees or could have engaged in more stuff. But because, you know, where we have got the particular. Just like when we have sifters, when they make stone chips, they take big boulders and they break them down and then they have sifters. And so the sifters set at, you know, 2 inches. So then all the big chunks are kept and everything 2 inches and below goes through. Then you set it for another height and you know, other then when you have the fine sift, then, you know, hardly anything goes through. It’s like right now we just want the really big catches and all the fine stuff is going through.

But with it, there’s a lot of things that go through that a lot of poor people that sift through that were actually 1.9 inches. A little bit of cultivation that could have also come. But we haven’t reduced our sifter a little bit. But then you reduce it, then you’re going to get a few other people that you give some energy to but may not reciprocate. But along with it, you get a lot of people, you get some people that will reciprocate. So it’s just a question of, as you say, you have a person that can do it, or if you have a little bit of attention, then you’re going to definitely. I haven’t found any preaching that a person does that you don’t get any response. You know, any reward for Kṛṣṇa doesn’t let preaching efforts go unrewarded.

And I like when I was asked to speak in Washington, but I actually declined because I didn’t have much time and I wanted to rather just start to speak with some of the American people, which is what I was doing in Los Angeles, just talking to a lot of people. And I found out, just like there was a young boy, girl who came up to see me, maybe 20 or 23 years old or some. And then, you know, they were talking. Oh yeah, we really like meditation and everything, you know, but really don’t know how to do it and this and that, you know, what is. But it seems like, you know, groovy thing or whatever, you know.

But they were, you know, they were.

A little, you know, inexperienced and frivolous and everything, but those kind of people were actually quite favorable that having a program of willis and he just chant for 10, 29 minutes in your house every day, Hare Kṛṣṇa. And you keep a contact with our address here, you write us and then tell us how things are going and then we will help you along the stages as you’re going through the different levels of spiritual development. And I am sure that those people would have. That program would have signed up and said, sure, taken a mantra card and given a name and address for being corresponded with. And they would have started chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa because they were into it. And I met a lot of people like that. We don’t have a program.

I think that we’re actually missing out on a lot of people who would be devotees and who would, even if not full time devotees, would actually be active supporters of our movement. And I know that the people who are like politically conscious, they would, you.

Know, you wouldn’t have to take so.

Many people to the law courts to get spaces in the airports. If you had like a 10% minority in Denver who were chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and if they saw that the Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees preaching was being hampered because, you know, they were, you know, they would vote for this representative or even, you know, Even, not even 10%, even a small percent, they would analyze immediately how many percent are going to vote for me if I harass them and how many are going to vote if I leave them alone.

And just by building up that type of, even just a vague, you know, like a basic congregation of favorable people who you could influence if and who could, you know, write the congressman and stuff, you can find that, you know, a lot of things can be done without going to court just by political influence. And that’s how everything’s happening india is because we have like a kind of a silent majority behind us. The communists tried to come down on us once and then now immediately there was such a public reaction against it and the hall of local people. I took out a 25,000 person march in protest against their persecution. And after that, you see, the communist leader had come over and told the Mohammedans that we’re going to change this.

Māyāpur Chandra Day mandir into animal hospital.

We’re going to drive out all these tadus. And then they attacked us because they.

Thought they had the political backing.

And then, you know, when they got a little buckshot in the behind, that cooled them off a little bit. But when the politicians saw that, you know, we had 25,000 people marching and, you know, in this big procession, the guy came over and said, I never said anything like that.

Someone misquoted me. I was saying that if you build a hospital here, I will provide you free.

Land from the government.

Completely.

They start singing a different tune. Our Navy Stir first tried to stop us.

They told the villagers that the CIA.

They’Re politically motivated, the Villagers got up and said, we don’t want to hear any vaiava apparatus, any offenses to the vai. And they walked away. And the communists were sitting there. Now the communists are. Some of them are active Nam Hutta preachers and members. Some of the people used to be communist workers. They have become non hunter preachers now just because of, you know, you can’t beat them, right?

Join me.

Because they’re not really communist, you know, move. They don’t have no, any philosophy. It’s like in Red China or something. When they ever have a May Day, then everybody has to work without pay. Everyone takes extra day off, you know, anything. They make an excuse to do less work and get more money. They will do it whatever name you give it. So.

Just for the security of the.

Movement in the long run, you need that type of a broad foundation of people that are favorable. That’s the best pr. So it has, you know, like you can look at any level, there’s nothing but good. Simply have to keep everything in the proper perspective. I feel that book distributors will be more enlivened if they feel that they need a favorable person. And thank your time, they know they’re going to be cultivated. There will be more enlightening to them. It’s not how the book distributors are doing their front line work, but this is like the, you know, one thing is you take over the country, right when you’re attacking and then you have the retrenchment like when the Russians, you know, when the Germans moved in.

Then you beat the army.

Then after that you have to run the whole administration. You have to like, you know, it’s the whole martial law, this, that the whole thing, it’s like, well, you know, the one thing is just presenting the philosophy and the other thing is actually getting the people to accept, to actually practice and understand Kṛṣṇa consciousness and how it relates to them in a more direct way. Just like the second stage of progress. Then after that, then you can think about Varnashram programs. You think about special universities for devotees, for people like that where they can learn special Kṛṣṇa conscious things and even regular academic things. Just like the Brigham Young University, we can have our own Kṛṣṇa conscious type of university where they can get material knowledge. At the same time it will be based upon Kṛṣṇa conscious programs.

Varnashram College, like Prabhupāda Wanted or Varnashram University, you can only do that if you have a big, you know, that caliber of devotee. Many of them.

So happened gradually, can’t help it.

Happen, it’s already there.

Every temple has got, as you say.

Hundreds of congregation already. It’s just a question of having a program to kind of categorize them, what level they’re at. I brought this up at New Vrindavan that we have.

We basically have three level favorable people.

Our associate members of folk, and then anyone who’s chanting one round and doing some other little service, keeping in touch, they’re a full fledged member of folk, contributing something every month. Then those who have four rounds and vegetarian and following some other principles, they’re league of devotees. Then from there you take them up to actually taking first initiation. So that way everyone, the next rung is always within Greek reach. And bhakti party said, yes, this is good. We just have to keep the standard.

Of the devotees protected.

They can’t reduce their standard. So perfectly agree with. That’s the whole strength.

So that seems like the philosophy that other groups are falling on. So many stars are not interested in moons.

Right? Well, that’s the thing is that we’re interested in the moons, but then because we see that the other, you know, the stars are going off to the other people. So then, you know, the moon has a way of just keeping everything, you know, under focus. We want that the other, we want to call them stars, that they’re kept within the orbit of Kṛṣṇa so that they can be developed into moons, so that they don’t become, you know, Rahus and Ketus trying to eclipse the moon. That’s why we can’t.

We have our standard.

And I frankly tell them that the.

Devotees means you’re going to go back to Godhead. If you just stick with it, you’re going, this is your last life.

And if you’re a legal devotee or folk member, there’s no guarantee that this is your last life. Unless you accept initiation.

There’s no guarantee.

But you are guaranteed a better life, heavenly planets or good life in the next birth. At least if you enchant one round a day, you’re pretty well guaranteed that you’re not going to become animal, but you’re not guaranteed you’re going to get liberation. Something, that’s what you know, just tell it like it is. And that way people, they appreciate well, that person is more determined that way. They’re a lot more sincere a lot of times than some of the devotees who, as you said, you know, my leader didn’t talk to me enough, you know, he didn’t pat me on the back or this one didn’t, you know, give me the third Japan or something, whatever. And then they leave, right? In a sense, in the end, they become envious against devotees while the other people are still in a humble mood.

So some of them may actually go back to garden. But that person that, you know, soured and everything like that, his likelihood of going back is much less. Well, he has no likelihood of going back at all until he becomes Kaanthus. The siddha try to build in with him a feeling of relationship and also a humility. Not that they think that they have already made it. That’s what all the bogus groups do india. They give them a cheap initiation and they think that I am already in and they’re eating fish and they’re doing all nonsense. The whole thing is that to make them feel part of the movement at the same time that they have the humility to understand that they’re on this, you know, not.

They got a long way to go, that they’re not actually up to the real standard, but they’re just, you know, on the way, on the road. That’s what all the bogus groups do. They just immediately tell, you’re great, you know, you’re Mishay. The Rajnis have given our sannyasis and the people are popped out completely. They’re just completely sensitive fires. He calls them sanyasis. Nyasi means renunciation. They don’t renounce anything.

The Indians, they just had one Indian Paramahamsa Satyananda. Have you ever heard of him? He was here. It was the Indians visiting the Indians. They were giving. He was giving darshan indian houses. And he’d have Western people and, you know, 50 or 60 people like that. And me and Saru J. I asked him. We came a little late. So I asked him, what is this yoga that you’re teaching? What is the goal of the yoga.

You want to encourage?

No, I said, what is the goal? And he wouldn’t even answer me. He said, india, we don’t answer these kind of questions.

So I have been india four years.

He says, you don’t know anything.

You’re a layman.

So I quoted a verse from Bhagavad Gītā and he said, you don’t understand what this means. I said, I don’t mean this is what Kṛṣṇa is saying. If anybody just walked up and left.

You call this bluff.

I had a dream like that where Śrīla Prabhupāda. We went to see Sa and he said, now we’re going to call us bluff. PR called us bluff. And he also walked off like that in the dream.

It.

(Side B of the Cassette)

Real innovative, culture conscious philosophy because they will be more sincere about it also in most cases. So the cheaters. And the cheaters, they want a cheap guru, so they want some cheap religion, not the absolute truth. So they got a guru who puts on a big dome but doesn’t actually have any gold, doesn’t have any faces, just bluff. He knows how to cut the profile. No connection with Kṛṣṇa. Yeah. Simple question. What is the goal of your yoga? We don’t answer these questions. What does that mean? What is the goal of your system? We don’t answer these questions. The goal, what else do you talk about? It’s very surprising. All the people turn against it. You guys, why don’t you let go of your false egos? I said, what does, what, why don’t you let go of your ego? I said, what does ego mean?

Well, it means, you know, you should let go of your being. I said if you let go of your ego, your being, then you’re nothing. You can’t get rid of your ego. They can’t understand anything. They want to be nothing. This, they want to be. This is they all want to just. This is their way of committing suicide. It’s like non violent suicide. Instead of going out, jumping off the building, going with a bang. They want to fade out, drift off into sleep and just don’t wake up. I saw a girl on Harm the other day who was into some sort of meditation on the light. And she said, I am looking forward to death so I can join the light. I like Buddha. There’s a, there’s a Thai folk star. Hey, read the fight late at night.

You know for me to tell you a Thai poke. Sure. Wait for this. Anyway, it’s a long story. Just tell you the synopsis. I mean it’s a little bit hedonistic. It starts off that there was some, there was a great princess and she got married to some prince who became the king and he went out hunting and then somehow some other prince came from some other place. He felt attracted to her. Then they had a little bit of relation and then the other one and this one. And it was like a whole like going on this big love story.

This is their folks story how they’re going on through all these different things and then how it even went to a rebirth and somehow they got together again and this thing went on and then finally they got so completely, you know, as we say in English, it’s kind of toasted. They got so completely in this whole relationship. They got so frustrated when they just realized, the two princes realized how this other queen, this princess, whatever, was, you know, completely just one against the other. And then she got frustrated for some other reason. And then they died. They put birth as stars, and then they twinkled for a little while, and then they went out and became Buddhas. And that was the perfection.

The first they went through a whole complete Bogart thing where they went to every conceivable, you know, just going through all the different boga relationships, until finally they got so frustrated, so disgusted that then they renounced. And then their ultimate peak of the renunciation was when they just faded out. They just decided they lost their will to live, to exist, and they became nonentities. That was the possession. That’s Buddhist philosophy. They’re ideas, you know, enjoy until you’re completely filled up. Get frustrated, become a renounced person. And if you get a little tired, go back again. Like there. Being a monk means you have to be a monk for at least generally three weeks at a time. When you’re a monk, there has sick rules. No illicit sex and no alcohol. But it used to be also no meat.

But now if they beg and they give me, they can eat that. Even though there’s a thick sect of Buddhists that still are vegetarian. But most of them accept whatever they get in the pot. So they do that for a while, and then, you know, if they don’t feel. If they feel like enjoying again, they give up their ropes. It’s a great offense to commit any breaking of the oath while you’re a monk, but there’s nothing wrong with stopping being a monk, going out. Within that story, this queen, at one point, her husband went out in the forest and left something and then thought she was. He was dead. Then she became a nun. She was a nun for a while. And then the other. The other boy, that was the other one that had some heat because he couldn’t live with her.

He had become a monk. Then they were a nun and monk and they met each other. They took off the robes. This was the whole thing that was going on. Bull got tagged, bull got dragged, the whole thing. And then finally the ultimate thing was there so completely. They saw the futility of it all that they went out and that was the end of the thing. That’s the end. So this is, you know, this is what these people know, just to fade out, join with the light. It’s like you can just see how it’s the same as Buddhist philosophy, and they don’t really have any understanding of spiritual life. They’re just based in the material aspect. They’re completely materialist. No spiritual concept at all. No understanding of God or understanding of spiritual concepts.

The Buddhists, you know, there’s no light here, they just added the light and there they take out, you know, just turn off the light. When I read that gave me a little insight. Could never really pick up what was Buddhism before you go through this whole thing and the end of the story is turn off the light. That’s it. There were two stars twinkling in the sky. And one day you looked, they no longer twinkled, they went out. So this is, you know, Buddhism has this completely a terrible situation that they want to actually. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. It’s simply meant for materialists who don’t understand anything about spiritual life.

And therefore we’re just warned not even to, you know, understand somehow they make some jugglery to adjust it in their minds, but actually even to understand a little, to try, you know, to try to relate with that is so dangerous because it puts one into such a negative mood that it’s actually impossible then to make a positive spiritual progress. So Lord, he warned us not at all to, you know, listen to the teachings of these impersonalists because it can actually do the greatest harm. It can destroy our progress in spiritual life because they create in such a type of negative force for actual spiritual progress, just a desire for self annihilation that the mind becomes completely against Kṛṣṇa consciousness, against real spiritual progress.

It looks like everyone should turn the lights up so they can rest and wake up tomorrow morning, continue the devotional service. The devotees don’t sleep, they just read. But doing more service. Fearful. My body is fearful, very fearful, like a big dark pit falling at me. Of course we don’t ever annihilate, I mean even emerge in the light. Then again, finally they will come back in the material world. The Buddhas, they don’t actually, they just. What they do is their material body goes with the prādhān, not the mahatat but the prādhān, the unmanifested material energy. And then they can they their false ego. But they don’t realize their spiritual eternality. They just identify with that material energy. And so they can’t maintain there very long. And even in that state sometimes they take on subtle forms.

Then that’s why the people still can sometimes communicate with the Buddhas. So it’s a whole different. Most of the people, they don’t understand at all what’s going on preaching in these countries. Thailand is a whole different thing, much different than India. We’re just starting to relate with the people now. Śrīla Rameshwar has some very nice tied to Thai books, hoping one day they will help come at least for a short time and try to make some more Thai Devonians. The Thai people are very respectful to monks. Two hundred years ago, the people there were Vaishnavas. There are many Vishnu temples. The capital city of Thailand was called Ayodhya. And the kings are all Rāma. Rāma 1, Rāma 2, Rāma 3. And the national drama of Thailand is the Ramayan. But the king rewrote it to adjust a little bit of Thai culture.

It’s about 80, 90% raid on and about 10%. He added a little bit of Angkor. Watts Anchor was in Cambodia, but it’s very connected. I mean, it was once one country when the French took over Vietnam, then Thailand gave them Cambodian, Laos and a treaty that they wouldn’t attack Thailand. Thailand in the past thousand years has never been conquered by another country, never been under foreign rule. Thai means free land. But it’s mainly through political expertise as much as military. So they have all these Vishnu temples, Vishnu deities. In fact, in my briefcase I have a picture of a thai Vishnu deity 200 years ago. And the original name is Siam, but it’s actually pronounced Sham. And india, all the ancient mammoths describe it as Shammadesh, the land of Kṛṣṇa. Sham.

Of course they say, well, they say Shamma, that it’s a very green land, it’s very luscious and ophthalmic, so dark. But the Hindus know it as the land of Kṛṣṇa or Sham. And Burma is known as Brahmadesh. And even now in Oregon and Bengali maps, and I don’t know about Hindi, maybe Hindi also it says Osamides, Bangladesh. These were all under, originally under Vedic culture as well as Indonesia. Yeah, whenever we approach black people from the airport, they’re always very favorable. I mean, tell them what these are some of the ancient writings of India. They. Oh, like Brahma. They actually know Thailand. Everybody worships Brahma. We went, we met one monk who was there for 13 years. He was from England and then he said, and he’s now a Thai Buddhist, but he’s from England.

He told us that Thai Buddhism, if you look at it compared to an ocean, the Buddhism of the waves on the top of the ocean and the rest of the depth of the water is all Hinduism. They worship Brahma, they worship Shiva, they worship Vishnu, they worship Buddha as a deity they do Aarti to him, they pray to him. Everything is just. There’s two paths of Buddhism, the Mahayana and Mahajana. This is the path where they worship Buddha and they follow strictly the rituals and everything. But the general people, they have as much faith in Brahma. There are some people, they do all night dancing for Brahma to get special blessing and they do Pujas. Just now the government paid to have a Vishnu installed because Vishnu was the protecting deity of the Bangkok city.

So we’re trying to popularize the worship of Kṛṣṇa deities there in Bangkok and in Thailand. We feel that will be a way of introducing Kṛṣṇa consciousness is that they will take more easy truths like Prabhupāda suggested to Parari and to Dhananjaya, give them a deity and they pray whatever they want. They can get can Hare Kṛṣṇa and offer incense to the deity. We’re going to introduce them that people like to do that. Ask for anything else. When will you come back again? Don’t want to bore you. Well, I definitely. I mean I come twice here to the west. Once in May or June and once in, you know, anywhere between August and October. The next time I will be in North America till the 15th of September.

Then I am going to South America and then I will be coming back to the New Orleans Laatra and then back to India. So definitely I can come back next June, May. Some of those boys by that time will be warm enough maybe have to rent a swimming pool. If you’re in gym. Do you like rent a swimming pool for middle of the day, private, you know, we know that it’s a swimming pool. There’s hard anybody.