19861002 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.11.30

Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

nārāyaṇaṁ namaskṛtya
naraṁ caiva narottamam
devīṁ sarasvatīṁ vyāsaṁ
tato jayam udīrayet

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
paramānanda-mādhavam śrī caitanya iśvaram

athāviśat sva-bhavanaṁ
sarva-kāmam anuttamam
prāsādā yatra patnīnāṁ
sahasrāṇi ca ṣoḍaśa

atha — thereafter; aviśat — entered; sva-bhavanam — personal palaces; sarva — all; kāmam — desires; anuttamam — perfect to the fullest extent; prāsādāḥ — palaces; yatra — where; patnīnām — of the wives numbering; sahasrāṇi — thousands; ca — over and above; ṣoḍaśa — sixteen.

Translation: Thereafter, the Lord entered His palaces, which were perfect to the fullest extent. His wives lived in them, and they numbered over sixteen thousand.

Purport Lord Kṛṣṇa had 16,108 wives, and for each and every one of them there was a fully equipped palace complete with necessary compounds and gardens. Full description of these palaces is given in the Tenth Canto. All the palaces were made of the best marble stone. They were illuminated by jewels and decorated by curtains and carpets of velvet and silk, nicely bedecked and embroidered with gold lace. The Personality of Godhead means one who is full with all power, all energy, all opulences, all beauties, all knowledge and all renunciation. Therefore, in the palaces of the Lord there was nothing wanting for fulfilling all desires of the Lord. The Lord is unlimited, and therefore His desires are also unlimited, and the supply is also unlimited. Everything being unlimited, it is concisely described here as sarva-kāmam, or full with all desirable equipment. Thus ends the Bhaktivedanta purport to text 30, chapter 11, canto 1.

So, when it is said that the Lord entered His palaces, that does not mean that He entered one palace, and then left another, another, another, in this way wandered through 16108 palaces. That when Kṛṣṇa left His chariot, then one Kṛṣṇa steps off the chariot and from that one Kṛṣṇa 16108 Kṛṣṇa… Kṛṣṇa’s forms ah…manifests and the self-same Kṛṣṇa enters into each of the 16108 palaces. Sometimes people might think, that, “well, Kṛṣṇa is just an ordinary person.”

Sometimes the Christian missionaries, when they go to India, they say, “Kṛṣṇa was a married man, He had children, He was an ordinary person. He… Why do you worship Him as God?” But they don’t understand, Kṛṣṇa was not an ordinary person, He was God Himself, but He came down onto to the earth and He acted similar to human being because human beings are made in His image, so therefore there is a similarity. But after certain point it ends. One of the things, that…..Kṛṣṇa He can unlimitedly expand Himself. Therefore He can have 16108 wives, and simultaneously He can be in each of the wive’s palaces, and He can be ah… accepting their service and reciprocating with them. So what…16000 is nothing, that is just pry……almost. I mean, that’s the actual number but it doesn’t mean that’s the limit of Kṛṣṇa’s potency. He can have millions and trillions, trillions of trillions, and unlimited number of ah… forms, each reciprocating with unlimited number of devotees, each form being fully and complete in itself.

Just as Kṛṣṇa explains into the heart of every living entity through His supersoul expansion or Garbhodakaśāyī Vishnu or Kṣīrodakaśāyī Vishnu. So, just as Kṛṣṇa is guiding every living entity, in the heart simultaneously being present in all their hearts, similarly He can also in His original form be present with all His queens, or with every devotee. But Kṛṣṇa, has His unlimited potency.

A yogi can expand himself into 10 different forms, but there is difference between a yogi expanding himself into 10 forms and Kṛṣṇa expanding Himself. When Nārada muni went, one time visiting the different palaces of Kṛṣṇa, it’s mentioned in the nectar of devotion, it’s mentioned in the nectar of devotion, he would see that in each of Kṛṣṇa's palaces, Kṛṣṇa was performing a different activity, and experiencing a different emotion. When a yogi through his mystic power expands his form into 10 forms, he is still having only one consciousness. Just like we have two hands, it appears 10 hands, it will still be one. So they are having have… he may have..the..yogi may have expanded into 10 forms through mystic power, but each ah…it’s only one..he is…one body is feeling pain, his consciousness will feel the pain, he will be feeling whatever the emotion at that time. It will be only one consciousness, that means at one given moment he can only be feeling one emotion. He may be able to see do things through the 10 different forms, but emotionally or consciously he will be only able to ah… feel one particular feeling at a time. The difference here was that each of Kṛṣṇa’s forms is totally independent of the other. Although it is the same Kṛṣṇa, one Kṛṣṇa may be laughing, one may be joking, one may be grave, one may be instructing, just they all… they are completely….

So Nārada muni was visiting each, he saw, because he has mystic power, he can also make 10 forms, but he knows that ah… this ah…through experience he knew that yogi can expand him in 10 forms but the consciousness is still one. It’s not like that one form can laugh, and others crying, they can’t feel actually different emotions at the same time. (Aside:I Can just do different things at the same time). So its like ambidextrous, each one can do something but still there is only one central processing unit, one consciousness. But in Kṛṣṇa’s case each one is a completely separate, independent form. So, Nārada muni was astonished, he could realize that Kṛṣṇa is in fact the yogeswara or the master of all yogic powers. So this gives us a little bit of an insight into some of the unlimited potencies of the Supreme personality of Godhead.

Actually the vedas, especially the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and the Bhagavad-gītā, they give us immense sources of information about the Lord. Many religious faiths admit that the Lord is omnipotent, omnipresent and so on, but if we go to ask, how is He omnipotent?, or if we say that God came down on earth 5000 years ago, they say He can’t do that, how can you say He can’t do that? He is omnipotent. Why can’t He come here? Because He is less than we’re? If a President is all powerful, does that mean he can’t visit his prison house ?

Even if this material world is a minute fraction of the Lord’s potency, He certainly has the right… we can’t restrict Him, that He can’t come here. So they started to put, although they say that, some say that well! He is omnipotent, but they start to put so many restrictions. And then if because the vedas say, how is He omnipotent?, that He has different expansions, that one form of omni potency that you cannot expand yourself unlimitedly, and each expansion has got the same potential as the other. That is certainly ah… something that is extraordinary, that’s not something that anyone can do. So this is description, this is one of the unlimited potencies of the Lord, one of His great ah.opulences. So if we were to say this, someone would say, “Well, He is omnipotent.” He would say, “Well, this is one of His potencies.” “How can that be, I can’t believe it.” This is all very kind of a dogmatic viewpoint, but it is a proof that we cannot understand the Lord by our own speculation, by our own ah… experimentation, these are revealed knowledge where the Lord Himself in one of His other expansions called Vyāsadeva has written all the vedas and has explained about Himself. And from these explanations we can get a deeper insight into the personality of Godhead.

It’s just like people… some people just go to the movies, and they would see, you know the different movie stars, and then there are people who are really into it, they buy all this ah… movie magazines, film magazines, then they tell all about the private life of all the movie stars, and they get into that, that is kind of a crude example but they are really into it… they are really into the particular person, and then they… they wanna know all the things about the person, I mean that’s a very frivolous kind of magazines, and things like that, but it is at least in the sense that if somebody is really into some person who really wants to know about the person, then they get into all, they want to know all the details. So if a person is really into interested in God realization, then he will want to get all the information. Not only the official statements but the… behind the scene what’s really going on, and what is the, what is …how does it actually work and so on so forth, and that is actually given in this confidential literatures. But then when you get someone who just… wants to have a preconceived notion about what the definition of their definitions are then of course you get a… you get a very, you get a little class to their dogmatism. They don’t actually have an open mind, so therefore we don’t generally, we real all the secrets about the Supreme person, accept through the devotees, we consider someone comes to this temple they brave all the cultural barriers and come and listen to our classes, they must be pretty open minded and advanced people, so they are…. they are able to at least be exposed to some of these spiritual teachings.

So, this particular kind of information is something which, if someone says, “Well! Can you prove it? Can you show Kṛṣṇa’s expanding His 1000 or 16000 forms?” This is not something that Kṛṣṇa is just at beck and call that alright now put on a show. It’s not a Ringley Brothers circus, that we can just any time show, but this is something which was witnessed by great sages, by great devotees, by great spiritual masters of that time. It was recorded by ah… authorized people who are known for their impeccable honesty, and it’s been handed down through a unbroken chain of disciplic succession of spiritual masters. There is no other source of this information. If someone says, “Well I want to have some other source.”, there is no other source that we have…that’s ever been found apart from being present on the planet at that particular time. If you are not the only other process, that is the authorized, scriptures or sastras as they are handed down and explained by the authorized spiritual master.

So, one thing is that whatever quality that the Lord has, because we are the part of the Lord, we also have similar qualities. That’s why because the Lord has this desire of enjoying all kinds of eh…in fulfilling all kind of desires, that we also have the tendency. So when we, in the material world, we have the tendency to try to enjoy unlimitedly, the problem is that, this material body is not unlimited. Kṛṣṇa, His body is unlimited, because He is not material, He is transcendental. So He can expand unlimitedly, He can enjoy unlimitedly, but this body is not. Everybody even if they want to become ah… there is only a limit how much we can drink, there is a limit how much you can eat, there is a limit to how much you can have sex, there is a limit to how much you can do anything. The body is limited, and even if you take the body to its maximum limit, the mind and its aspirations are more than the body’s capacity, so then the mind is left unfulfilled.

Śrīla Prabhupāda gave the example, trying to put an ocean into a bottle. We have an ocean of desires, and the body is like a little bottle, you are trying to pack it all into one little bottle. So the ultimate result is that, you get frustrated. It simply leads to frustration, and further anxiety, but our spiritual nature, when we absorb ourselves in serving Kṛṣṇa, and kind of redirect these energies, because Kṛṣṇa is unlimited, therefore we can…. through serving Him, our unlimited desires also becomes satisfied. And when a soul is satisfied, then the soul being higher and greater than the mind and intellect, then the mind is also satiated, it’s also satisfied. When the mind is satisfied, then the body also can be controlled, it becomes peaceful.

So, the actual, only means for achieving peace in the world, is actually to engage in pure devotional service. This is explained by Caitanya Mahāprabhu, ah…”kṛṣṇa-bhakta — niṣkāma, ataeva ‘śānta’ bhukti-mukti-siddhi-kāmī — sakali ‘aśānta”, but a devotee of Kṛṣṇa, because he has no desire than serving Kṛṣṇa, he is peaceful, santa. Mukti, bhukti, siddhi, kami sakali ‘aśānta, but one who is desiring liberation, mukti kami, bhukti kami, one who is enjoying desiring all kinds of material enjoyments, or siddhi kami, one who desires this kind of yogic mystic powers, sakali ‘aśānta, they are all dissatisfied, agitated people. They are not completely peaceful. Relatively maybe one who is seeking liberation, maybe more spiritual, than someone who is seeking material enjoyment, still it’s all relative, and at the ultimate issue none of them except for the pure devotees of the Lord are actually peaceful. So, as soon as we start to desire something other than pure devotional service, immediately the symptom is, we are going to be in anxiety. The very moment we desire sense gratification, immediately we become filled with anxiety. Then the syndrome of hankering, fearing and lamentation begins. The un-fulfilment begin, everything begin, just as soon as we started to desire that I need this object of sense gratification, I need this particular non-devotional thing, whether liberation, or mystic powers or material gratification.

So, we are in a world of dissatisfied people, it’s good for the democratic system, to see that their Governments roll, because no government can ever perpetually satisfy their citizens, because the citizens are by nature going to always be dissatisfied as long as they are not God conscious. Their senses will never be satisfied, even if you give everything that a person wants, after a short time they will become bored and want something else. So the unlimited demands of the senses, they cannot be gratified like that perpetually. There is always going to be a point where, un-fulfilment is there. So the solution, both socially as well as nationally, internationally, individually, is that people have to be directed along the path of Kṛṣṇa consciousness or the path of God realization. Unless at least they ah… a good section or some section of the intelligentsia, are trying to actually achieve God consciousness as the goal of life, unless that…that goal has been the highest standard, absolute standard in society, whether everyone tries, at least it is accepted as a standard by the section of intelligent people. So, therefore that has an effect on the entire society. It’s not at all possible to see that ah… to make things peaceful.

When people are trying to achieve self-realization, God realization, when they are trying to become God conscious, Kṛṣṇa conscious, then automatically those people become peaceful, and others can see that, “Well, those people are peaceful”, and it starts to set up a whole new structure of values. Without that absolute value of serving Kṛṣṇa for His satisfaction… satisfaction, then everything else becomes valueless.

For instance, someone may say “Well”, I mean there is no…there is no, without… unless you have absolute value, everything becomes just completely fluid and speculative”. Like one year they will say that, “Well, we shouldn’t allow any mercy killing”, the next year they say, “Well, we should allow”, and then this like someone mentioned in the Ford of school system that…or, oh…it was in India school system. One time they did… one time they said that, “alright, we won’t have any co-educational classes because ah… of the various problems here and there”, then they said, “Well no, now it’s the modern times, we should have co-ed”, then we had co-ed. Then after having co-ed, then there was…there were problems, so then they again divided, then after dividing, then there was again some political pressure that, “No, this is archiac”, and then, so it’s like that (Guru Mahārāj laughs) you know it’s completely, because they don’t know what to base it on, there is no avage[Not Clear 22:50], it is simply based upon public whim and things are always changing from one to the next, so that just like one crude example, but there are so many examples, individual, in our lives.

How things are completely bewildered, unless we able to know that what to base our decisions upon; So the ultimate consideration, the ultimate ah… absolute value is that everything should be done for the satisfaction of God, satisfaction of Kṛṣṇa, and if that is fulfilled, then everything else becomes automatically perfect, it automatically falls into place. Unfortunately, nobody has the desire… that for so many people think that God is dead. So many people don’t have any understanding about spiritual values at all, and if someone does have values, they don’t have the personal strength to implement them, or they just don’t care, due to sheer material attachment and weakness.

So under this environment of hypocrisy and spiritual lacuna, there is a need for an injection of spiritual energy into the society. There is a need for some kind of an extraordinary revival, or rejuvenation, and that is what Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu has brought 500 years ago, this process of chanting,

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

That by the widespread propagation of the congregational chanting of the Hare Kṛṣṇa maha-mantra, that actually people’s consciousness becomes purified, and they are able to see that there are… there is a purpose to life and that ah.. they are able to get the inner strength to live according to that absolute standard, they are able to conquer over the hypocrisy and the quarrelling by properly chanting and hearing, and as a result they also become peaceful, they become satisfied.

So people they object to this, they don’t want that people should be satisfied, just like in Russia, in India when ah… when the press releases came from America, that there were various ah… ah… seminars in Washington and press releases about ah… 30 devotees who got arrested in Russia, for practicing Kṛṣṇa consciousness, so that time ah… in…in ah… response to that, Russia, they ah… printed various ah… press ah…releases in India, India being one of their close friends, and one of the things that ah… they said, was that the Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees in Russia were arrested, because they were politically apathetic, and because they were ah… practicing things against the ideology of Marxism, and then the purport was given, because they are practicing God consciousness, and Marxist said that there is no God, that was against Marxism. And it said because they are politically apathetic, that means that they were self-satisfied, so they weren’t all gung ho for their whole economic revolution. Everybody has to work, you know day and night for nothing. The people are instead, they just did their duty. They weren’t trouble makers, they weren’t political, they better… they just chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, and just you know doing what they had to do just to get by, and they went into their whole ah… you know, propaganda machine. So because of that they are arrested, because…not because they are trouble makers, not because they are… they are terrorist or because they are ah… ah… politically ah… doing anything opposition... they said that they are political apathetic. In other words, they don’t have any ah… enthusiasm for all their propagandas. So because of that they get arrested. You know in other words, if you are not gung ho into their, you know complete mental speculation thing, you got to be put into jail. If you just… because you are self-satisfied by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, there are many where these people become self-satisfied.

In fact, in India, there was another book called… another paper called the sangram… Jana sangram, which means the revolution of the people, and they publish that, “don’t think that this Hare Kṛṣṇa movement is a sectarian movement of just Hindus or Christians or Muslims. This is far more dangerous than that. So what they are preaching is a type of universal theism. They are saying, “oṁ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṁ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate”, they quoted the Sanskrit “ they are saying that there is one Absolute spiritual reality which is above all material temporal realities, and not only that, they are saying, “īśāvāsyam idam sarvaṁ yat kiñca jagatyāṁ jagat”, that He is the ultimate controller and proprietor of everything, not the state, not the Government, and then everyone has to serve that Supreme entity and accept what they get from Him as their just do. If this philosophy is allowed to spread throughout the world, then our class struggle and communist revolution will be a failure. They must be stopped at all cost.”

People write in the newspaper, and recently the Information Secretary of the Russian consulate in Calcutta, he came to say that, “why do you have to preach this message of Caitanya Mahāprabhu? If you preach Rama Kṛṣṇa-ism, if you preach impersonalism, we don’t mind. Why do you have to preach this ah… this ah… chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa and this personal concept of rea… this is… this is… we do not approve of this”, as if you know[Guru Mahārāja gestures sarcastic], we want their approval. He is trying to convince our Local President that you should stop preaching the message of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, this is very dangerous for us. We don’t anti-Russian or anti-American or approve of anybody for that matter.

In one sense, I mean, we are not… we are actually working on behalf of Kṛṣṇa, we see He is the ultimate proprietor, not America or Russia or anyone else, these are temporary designations over particular parts of the world. We want to see one united world. We know it is not going to happen simply due to some kind of material formula. One united world could happen due to a God consciousness. Could happen…can happen, and has happened in the past due to this type of a spiritual concept of life. Unfortunately this America is dedicated to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, but unfortunately here in America due to various sectarian viewpoints many times we meet with ah… opposition from people, just on the dogmatic belief, and although our devotees are struggling, maybe even against some of the things which those people, even with their dogmatic beliefs they cherish most dearly, and our devotees have to suffer for depending those same principles due to some very ah… sectarian viewpoint they are not able to see that, “Well, we are standing for, it’s actually essence of all religious people.”

So unfortunately for the ah… representatives of Maya, we are not about to stop preaching the message of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, our dedicated to preaching His message, we are going to continue preaching His message, at all cost. And apart from our collective responsibility, as the International Society for Kṛṣṇa consciousness, every devotee should realize that individually they have each... the mandate, the responsibility, handed down through the disciplic succession to them, to spread this Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over the world, to every person. Because we may not be individually capable and because it was the desire of our previous ācāryas that we should cooperate and do it collectively, and because Prabhupāda has given us this International society for Kṛṣṇa consciousness, as some…as a… as a platform, or as a mechanism for… for doing that, therefore, for all these reasons to satisfy the previous ācāryas, we are working together in this way. But apart from that each one of us has got an individual responsibility.

No matter what happens in the future, say that in the future there is a world wars and ah… and there is no more communication in the world, you know, Kṛṣṇa forbid that negative things happen to the devotees, but ah… you cannot say that it may not happen. We may be all ah… unable to communicate with each other, we may not be able to phone up our spiritual master or he may not be able to fly in and see the disciples, still each one of us is individually responsible to the best of our abilities to spread this consciousness, and to ah…enlighten people with this ah… spiritual message. No matter, it just says one scenario, there is unlimited things that could happen, so we should all know that we are individually responsible, we are also of course collectively responsible.

There is no other purpose, this is our particular service given down. So just like Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, He assigned Nityananda Prabhu, “ You go to Bengal, and You preach, and Nityananda prabhu, He went, He established the Namahatta, He was preaching from door to door, He was sending His preachers everywhere, He had ah… different ah… ah… centres of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, in Srikando, one of… there you had Raghunandan Thakur, Chiranjiv, you have the various devotees who were there. Then you had other place like… where Haridas Thakur, he… there was one ah…what’s the name of that village?, ah… not Haridaspur, but there is another place….. ah… ha… I just have..It just passed in my mind. There is a place where I went and visited there. There’s a beautiful temple there, Radha Govinda and Lord Caitanya, and there is a… ah… little shrine for Lord ah… Hari… rather for Haridas Thakur, ah… Kulina gram, in Kulina gram there that Satya…Sathyaraj ah… was the head devotee there when Satyapati Khan or Satya Khan, and there they got everybody chanting.

Normally they are religious people, they are pious people, they are businessmen and the… the…you know, normal worker, but they even got the people who were the kind of the aboriginal type people who used to as a living herd pigs around through the peoples ah… open air toilets to eat the remnants there, and they were just herd the pig, and those people are considered like, quite like gypsies or something kind of like, socially almost outcaste people. They got those people chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, they have been herding their pigs chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. Everyone was Kṛṣṇa conscious in that place. They were very…..so deeply rooted was the preaching work of Lord Nityananda. That is why today in the village you find that in Bengal and in Orissa, in every village there is at least one Hare Kṛṣṇa kirtan group of 8,10,15 people, and every year they have 24 hour kirtan, yajnas, and at least 24 hour… at least once in a year, and many of them meet ah… every week, and in some village they have even three, four, upto five kirtan groups going on.

So you consider how intensively Lord Nityananda had spread this message, every village had a kirtan group. They went from village to village, from town to town, from house to house, teaching, preaching, convincing the people to take up the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa. Some people themselves became pure, teachers they became spiritual masters, they would follow all the regulative principles. Some people, they were just still herding the pig, but still they were chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, and they hoped that eventually they could become Kṛṣṇa conscious. Those people may not as long as they had that profession have been spiritual masters, but they were still considered at least at one level that they were devotees. So this is our objective to have this type of a vast preaching that everyone in society eventually can chant the holy names of God. If they don’t want to chant the names of Hare Kṛṣṇa, let them chant the names of Lord Jesus, or Allah or some other name if they have more faith in those names, but let the entire world be filled with the vibrations of the holy names of the Lord.

What is the use of standing in the street corner, telling people you are all going to hell and things like that. Why not just sing the names of…of Christ, they want to spread the holy vibration, why come out with negative vibration, why not at least sing hymns or something and put a positive vibration in the air. This is recommended by Caitanya Mahāprabhu that people should sing the glories of the Lord. The world is already filled with negative vibrations. There are so many things.

So this movement is to turn around that complete negative vibration through a very ah… humble appeal but a very enthusiastic appeal to everyone to take up the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, and if you see how Nityananda prabhu and His associates and the previous ācāryas following after Him, how they systematically spread this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement everywhere. So even now, although after 500 years, you may not have you know, that kind of there was a not a strict organization as such, and ah… af…in ah.. for a couple hundred years there was a kind of a period where, there weren’t any… very prominent leaders, there…but they are just good devotees who kept the thing going but they were a vast ah… deep grass root establishment of this chanting.

So Srila Prabhupāda said that we have, you know, simultaneously want to preach to the intelligentsia, to the scientist, to the philosophers, to the PHDs and so on because if they are convinced, so many others would be convinced, and simultaneously, we want to also, we have our grass root program, where you want all the people in every town and village to take up the chanting everywhere, because in many cases some of the so called intellectuals may not be sincere, they may be hypoc…hypocrites. So even though you may honestly tell them something, if they themselves aren’t sincere then how can you convince them?, and it is said, “You can wake up a person who is asleep, but you cannot wake up someone who is awake pretending he is asleep.” If someone knows that what you are saying is right, but due to some kind of motive they are, they don’t want to admit it, and that kind of person you can’t convince, because they are already convinced but due to some attachment, due to some hypocrisy they are refusing to accept, even though in their consciousness, they know what he is saying is right, “but if I admit then no one will be following my sectarian vision, no one will be following my particular viewpoint, then my position in society would be compromised.” That kind of person, how can you convince? If he is a real scientist, if he is a real open minded person, and then if he… then you can discuss, he will…he may oppose, he may say, “no, I don’t accept.”, we welcome that.

Formerly Lord Jesus once said, “You give me some hot water, you give me some cold water, but luke warm water I spit out.” You give me some one who opposes, if they are sincerely opposing, then we can discuss, we can come to a proper conclusion, or you give someone who is actually convinced than enthusiastic. You get someone who is totally…actually doesn’t have any kind of opinion, or doesn’t… just trying to avoid the… considering the whole thing, or they know that they are wrong but they just trying to maintain that vision due to some kind of ah… dogmatism, those people are totally useless for actually achieving a better world or a unified world. They are people who are actually against any actual harmony, on a real sense. They are exposed as self-centred people, when they are not actually willing to ah… discuss everything in an open manner.

So, here we see that when Kṛṣṇa was present, that there was a unification, and we want to bring back that kind of unification by bringing back Kṛṣṇa. So how we can bring back Kṛṣṇa in this age, is by bringing His holy name into the universe, because there is no difference between God and His holy name. So when that vibration of the Lord’s name is pervasive everywhere, then automatically by His presence, then there can actually be that kind of a spiritual harmony or unification in the world, (Aside: Oh! ……unification has become a bad word now). The spiritual purification will take effect, that we should tell people about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, we should practice Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and this way we should try to bring people to the shelter of Kṛṣṇa. Actually everybody is a part of Kṛṣṇa, they are all eternal spirit souls, they are part of the Supreme soul, they are not ah… the material body. And people, they can come to that awareness, by participating in this chanting and Kṛṣṇa conscious process of… we hope that we can get the cooperation of the sober minded people.

It’s not… just like last night we were chanting in the French quarter, and some person with ah.. yellow, green, blue hair with his face coloured in different ways having parties, we don’t mind that, but he started coming up and swearing and saying, “You people are blank blank..., out of your mind, out of your.(Guru Mahārāj laughs), you know it’s relative I guess, who is out of whose mind? But ah… ,he couldn’t comprehend (Guru Mahārāj laughs), but actually we have a purpose, and you see he has a purpose too, he wants to enjoy and it’s quite alright, but ah… we can’t understand that his purpose for what it is, and we are not envious of him, but unfortunately, he ah… , he can’t understand what our purpose is, and because of that he is envious of us. So therefore, we invite people, “come here, know what our philosophy is, try to understand, at least whether you want to practice it yourself or whether this is appropriate for you in your life, that’s up to you to decide, but at least you can appreciate that we are not totally out of our mind, that we actually have a higher purpose, we are trying to fulfil, and that purpose is something which are any sober minded person should be able to appreciate, it’s a noble purpose, it’s from our point of view the most noble purpose, and something which certainly is not going to hurt anyone, which is only going to help everyone. The only people that might be hurt in the long run, are those people who are trying to simply maintain a artificial status quo based upon some form of ah… violence or exploitation or some form of ah… artificial life standard. Those people may of course see that in the future due to establishing a kind of a peaceful situation in the world, those type of ah… horrible situations wouldn’t be tolerated anymore, but I don’t think that any sober minded person would object to that.

Certainly the new moral kind of revival, which is happening at least in the western countries, should be able to accommodate the particular puristic viewpoint of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, and I thank everyone for participating in this missionary activity of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s movement. Actually we are Lord Caitanya’s movement, Sankirtan movement, Prabhupāda has brought this to the West, Prabhupāda is ah.. the empowered energy of ah… Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and he has brought this ah… message here to the western countries, and by practicing it one can still, to this day experience the same sublime mercy, of Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda

hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare
hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare

Any questions?

Yes:

ah… that you are saying, primary purpose is for Kṛṣṇa to descend and seek pleasure, because ah…somehow or another disciplic succession is broken.

I didn’t say that, but it has been said in the past.

yea. Certainly, did they know whether or not that disciplic succession was broken because of [Not very clear 45.33] because spirituality was lost somewhere.

No it is a question of, after some time, when people start to give their own interpretations and becomes confused, people don’t know really what’s the proper interpretation, what is the proper explanation. So, just like if we have 10 people, and then you start of saying, “You know, they do this in some high school classes and things, you start of here, 50 people in the room, and they line up and one person says something, and then the next person, and then by the time he gets to the end of the room, its like its different.

So as long as some self-realized spiritual master are handing down the message, very conscientiously then it remains intact, and it can be… before there was no written scripture to verify with, people didn’t bother to write the scripture, but after… say after 40 million years, and Kṛṣṇa came before 40 million years ago, I mean that’s a like a pretty good air factor. I mean, if every 40 million years you have to come to straighten things up, it’s not too bad. So but Kṛṣṇa Himself came 40 million years before, but ah… few other incarnations would come earlier, they come say every, so many thousand years, generally speaking, and so He came and somehow what happens sometimes, there may be the pure message still intact, but there may be various offshoots and various other philosophies, they gradually take more of a prominence, and then they are saying “Well, we have the right understanding, and you are not the correct.”, and so then there may be still the correct understanding present on the earth, but it may be like ah…ah…overshadowed by so many other diverse ah… mutations.

So, then Kṛṣṇa comes and then He just ah..very ah… authoritatively, being the Supreme authority, He gets what is the absolute version. So like everyone accepts Bhagavad-gītā, whether they are Sankaracharya, where all the Indian great sages, philosophers, they all accept Bhagavad-gītā as the absolute authority. And now of course in a…. despite thousand years, there are many interpretations of the Bhagavad-gītā, even in English there is something like 400 different translations. So therefore, Caitanya Mahāprabhu, Kṛṣṇa came as Lord Caitanya, that already enough of… enough of talk because everybody is giving their… but He practically showed. This is what the perfect implementation of the essence of Bhagavad-gītā is. So actions speak louder than the words.

So we can follow, we mean, you can say something, and then after sometime you can interpret that, and just like people have made the law, and then if you see all the court cases about all the lawyers, and how they interpret one law and put it to the Supreme court. Different… have…have law, gets those words get dissected and twisted and squeezed and it's amazing how many inferences and meanings and things that come out of one, which may be the lawmakers, that was a simple thing, but then . after they get through the law judicial system, it goes to a tremendous kind of ah…thing, so spiritual life, we have law books, we have our scriptures, which are the basic reference material but sometimes in the explanations of that or, just like a spiritual master may even give an explanation, then his disciples, they give different explanations on his explanations, they may sometimes go a little bit off in different ways. So what… one time we asked Prabhupāda a question and then he said that, “Well, that somebody says you say this, somebody says you say that, what is actually said, well people may say, I say this or I say that but look what I am doing, I am doing this.” So then? Which… which is the… what have I really saying that. So, actions are very, you know, very definitive, very you… they are historical, they are written down there, there are something which is less ah… confusing. So Lord Caitanya, he showed, he chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa, He counted how many rounds He was chanting, He ate Kṛṣṇa prasadam, and those historical examples, and the other historical examples of great devotees have been recorded in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and then recently for Lord Caitanya in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, and these are ah… form a very…a very vivid visual example of how we ah… can implement these devotional things.

So therefore it is said that now as a reference we can use the direct injunctions of the holy sastras or scriptures, and as well as the lives of great devotees, their actions form a ah… precedence or a evidence on what should be done. So Kṛṣṇa came as Caitanya Mahāprabhu to show how to practice the teachings of the Bhagavad-gītā through His own personal. He didn’t write volumes of books, He only wrote eight verses, and He said the same books that Kṛṣṇa spoke are applicable, you read the Bhagavad-gītā, you read the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and then His own life, He showed the example how to implement that. So He didn’t have to write again. The same books are applicable but the problem was various people were giving their own interpretation on how to implement it. So then Lord Caitanya, the Supreme authority came and He just showed, “ This is the ultimate perfection of implementing these sacred teachings.

Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Yes

ah… [inaudible 51:44]

Generally we avoid categorizing people by groups. Any form of total hedonism is certainly a demoniac kind of stand… consciousness or value. In the term that…but we preach to individuals, the individual souls, with their individual problems and attachments, and…and each individual has got their own karmas and their own attachments, and their own amount of desire for achieving perfection in life for self-realization, and accordingly we have to preach to certain individual. There may be an individual, just because he is heterosexual or homosexual, or that you know whatever, that… that doesn’t mean that, that person could become a devotee, because everybody who is a heterosexual become a devotee, we haven’t found that, or that everybody that’s homosexual, they won’t become devotees we haven’t found that. So we are really preaching to the spirit soul, and these things are all superficial contaminations which has come over them.

Certainly that’s some more, that’s another kind of a tamasic attachment which is more unnatural, and ah… it’s something which has to be dealt with something which has ah… become more of a problem for preachers, that you get people who are woman haters, and men haters, women who are men-haters, and men who are women-haters, and men who are men lovers, and all on the basis of physical attachment, and all these things are… are perverted ah…spiritual, in a… from a spiritual point of view they are not… they are not going to help anybody advance in spiritual life. We have to get above this whole bodily concept of life, and ah…naturally where we need certain amount of sense gratification, so there are formulas where those can be legitimized.

Unfortunately, ah… the way that ah… unfortunately for the I mean the, homosexuals the only scriptural authorized way of dovetailing sex life is to have a child. I don’t know if they have come up with any way of ah..having children through homosexual relations, but….so therefore it requires a heterosexual ah… union through marriage and then having a child to legitimize, on a spiritual platform, having sexual, in other words to have sex without karma. Otherwise you can have sex, but you have karma, and you have to suffer and enjoy the reactions for what the person’s doing. So we are dealing with absolute factors. We are dealing with whatever person does, they have to take the reaction. You are doing this activity, you are going to get reaction.

We don’t want people to suffer. We want to save them from suffering. So when people are on that type of totally bodily platform, and when they are simply doing things in a very selfish way, then they are going to have to suffer in a very personal way, and we don’t want that. But it’s their choice, we can’t force them, we can only provide them the information, we can provide them ways of overcoming that. So even if a person is a demon, there is hope for them in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but we may individual preacher, may not have the strength to be able to preach to a down and out demon. But that you encounter that, whether whatever person’s sexual habits may be, or whatever their social habits may be, or their drinking habits may be, or whatever their habits may be, when you preaching to them whether they listen to you or whether they are very offensive. If they are offensive, when you are trying to explain to them, then…we avoid the general the madhyama-adhikārī will avoid trying to preach to someone who is out and out offensive, doesn’t want to hear what you are saying. He is holding his ear you know, it’s like… it’s just like ah… saying a kind of criticism or blasphemy in a very vehement way, then in many cases the ah… ah… a madhyama-adhikārī preacher will not take the risk, because by preaching to that person, that person is saying offensive things, their suffer… their future hope of becoming God conscious is ah… curtailed due to this type of offenses.

But if a person, he maybe a favourable, maybe you know, not envious of Kṛṣṇa, just maybe addicted to certain kind of pleasures in a material platform, and if they are willing to hear Kṛṣṇa conscious… if they… if they are favourable to it ah… then generally people who are just very attached to sense gratification, lot of time they become envious of Kṛṣṇa, lot of time they are… they don’t want to hear. I don’t know the statistics on that. We got… someone could do something, I won’t like to sit on the Vyasasan and make some kind of absolute statement.

But in general we find that, people who are more absorbed in gross sense gratification, of a very selfish nature, may tend to be more offensive, but this is a very un… that’s a very unscientific opinion, and so that maybe my personal experience, but I couldn’t say that, that’s an absolute fact. But in any case, there… since there are exceptions, and since there are so many people who are open to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, ir-regardless of their personal habits and likings and disliking’s, whether sexual or social or whatever. Therefore we offer it to everyone.

But if it comes to giving advice, certainly we don’t think it’s a very pious thing or a very appropriate thing for advancing in spiritual life. We don’t recommend any kind of ah… unlimited sense gratification without ah.. dovetailing it in some spiritual way, because it’s going to produce a karmic reaction, which is going to be further entangling. So for that reason, maybe we are not always super popular with certain sectors of ah… public or what can we do, because the truth is the truth. We have to go on presenting what the truth is. So if you find that someone is offensive, then you can… then generally it’s recommended to avoid preaching to that person. Sometimes a powerful preacher may take a risk, on the hope that they will be able to eventually convince the person. But then if they don’t, and the person just that commits offences and it ends there, then you are responsible for having ah…implemented that person in offenses. Generally we avoid that kind of ah… risk.

Yes, Mother!

[inaudible 59:04].

When I say demoniac…. No, in the Bhagavad-gītā, there is a description that there are two natures of human beings, divine nature and a demoniac nature, that there are human beings or people in the world who ... as a nature they…they are by nature wanting to do good to others, they like to be clean, they like to be… they do things in a… in a… they have a certain pious kind of an outlook. They basically believe in God, and they believe in a kind of a higher value, higher order value system, then there is another sect…ah, class of people who have ah…. Who live by another set of values, that there is no ultimate reality, that therefore there is no ultimate value of good or bad, the real value is to get ahead in the world or to be happy, by.. to get what you want, to enjoy the things you… at any cost, and if it means that you kill your enemies to do it, or you, whatever takes then…that’s quite alright because there is no oth… there is no ultimate truth, there is no God, there is no ultimate judgment or any kind of ultimate value structure, so just simply whatever will get you ahead, to achieve whatever you want to achieve, that’s the ul… that’s the real thing, that is considered demoniac value of life. So that type of demoniac nature is very prominent in the modern world, that there are people who have that as their value in life. There are people like that in the world, and some people who may say they believe in God, but in their personal dealings they actually act in a way which is not representative of a God conscious person, but is more representative of a person who is a demoniac, or doesn’t believe in God or doesn’t believe in these higher values, doesn’t believe in ah…those things.

Now this is described in Bhagavad-gītā, and one of the latter chapters, the divine and demoniac qualities, and you could read that said in the Bhagavad-gītā and the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, these texts we are reading from, in most of the cases they avoid allegorical or symbolic examples, they speak in a very precise, systematic, you could say scientific ah… applied spiritual knowledge. So, symbolic representations like devil or things like that. They are not, they are generally… we don’t find such thing, they are individuals who are at different times considered to be demons, because they openly defy the existence of God, and they try to de-subjugate people, or due to the… and consider their ultimate authority, and then this kind of the powers of good and evil. so God is actually neutral, I mean they are also His children, even the demoniac people are His children, and the…the.. those who say there is no God, they are still His children, they ar… (Guru Mahārāj laughs) still because He speaks, and those who say that we accept you. So in this world, both the demoniac and the godly people, they all want certain amount of material facilities. Nobody is like a pure lover of God.

The godly people are praying, “God, give us our daily bread, give us our things.” and the demoniac people say that, “I don’t need God’s help because there is no God. I want to work and whatever I work on, when I get that from my own sweat”, so the difference is that, the Kṛṣṇa conscious movement is showing that… that more than a piety in the world of being a good person and trying to believing in God, that there is something that is higher than that, which is actually to be a…a pure servitor of God. To actually not serve God, say “just give me my daily bread, or give me what I need”, but actually, to serve Him and love Him for the sake of ah… His satisfaction, and then depend upon His ah….mercy, wherever is needed. That this is actually more fulfilling, it did did… what it does is that it establishes a personal relationship between us and the Supreme person in a very intimate and confidential level. It’s like a difference in being an employee and being their son of the proprietor.

When we actually surrender and become ah… a confidential servitor of the Lord, then we are actually established as a member of His, you can say family or in a more intimate level, and the other kind of fallen sons, they are in a more of a either business relationship or they believe in serving God but for a… they want some reciprocation for that, they want some direct ah… benefit for that. And then you have some who just are complete ah… rebellious, they don’t ah… they don’t want any of it, I mean they don’t believe in God, so He reciprocates with him and he doesn’t ah… he doesn’t interfere in their ah… in their own life, but they have to take the reactions to whatever they doing, they have to take the karmas.

So, but as far as like a devil or a particular entity who is ah… we don’t find that there is any equal or greater person to the Supreme Lord, and ah… He has got no such ah… competitor as such, but ah… that seems to be more of an allegorical, we don’t know exactly, no in the vedas, there is no such ah…prominent figure, there are many little figures who came up in prominence in different times and they oppose the supremacy of the Lord, but they were… they were subsequently defeated in various ways.

And overall there is a…one of the energies of the Lord, which ah… is… has the function, of keeping the conditioned souls in their place in the material world, so long as the person is not fixed in pure devotion or ah… to the Lord, so long as they want an independent existence, then the material nature keeps them to various attachments, keeps them in a no-exit position, where they cannot come out of the material world, that their material attachments keep them bound into the material world, so that way they don’t disturb anything in the spiritual world. They are not allowed to go there. When a person becomes harmon… harmony with the Lord’s desires, then he can go back to the spiritual world, and take up his eternal activities there. So long as that rebellious attitude is there, then they are given a opportunity to work off their desires here in the material world.

So sometimes the maya or the material nature’s characteristic of…of cheating the living entities and keeping them in bondage through various ploys and illusions and ah… methodologies, that is sometimes considered as kind of a satanic or devil… devil or something like that. Not exactly but to some extent there is a kind of a correlation. We would consider that… that illusory potency is representing that kind of a malefic obstacle for progress in spiritual life, but once a person becomes Kṛṣṇa conscious, there is really nothing to fear, even from that maya because ah… one is able to transcend those influences.

I don’t know, it’s pretty maybe technical. Could you follow?)

Yea. [inaudible 01:07:20]

Well they are demoniac! The demoniac souls, they are the people who have developed a demoniac attitude. It’s just a question of more or less semantics, whether you want to be in that devilism or whether they just have developed the demoniac attitude, that there are two types of mentalities in the world, there is the godly mentality and there is the demoniac mentality. So those people have developed a demoniac mentality.

[inaudible 01:08:00]

They may be born with it. (Guru Mahārāja laughs), and they may have had it from their previous birth. And they may be…they may be locked into that kind of mentality from many births. But they could be purified from that, if they would somehow chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, but generally those kind of people are not very interested in chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, but in some cases they do chant, then they are able to also be rectified. It’s not an eternal condition of the soul. It’s a… it’s a mentality which develops as a conditioning or covering of the soul. So if they remain in that attitude for an extended period of human birth, then they can go back into the animal kingdom, and they become snakes or other kind of envious creatures, and anyone they see they bite them. Like a snake doesn’t gain anything by biting someone, it’s not like you have to step on a snake to bite, just walk by, it will just bite you. It’s envious. Scorpion doesn’t…. can’t eat you, bite you anyway. Just if you are lying down, sleeping, a scorpion come and bite you just for the sake of biting you off, doesn’t eat you. So there are certain envious creatures, so people who are very demoniac, then they take birth in the future as snakes or scorpions, and then they can (Guru Mahārāja laughs), and in this way they have an attitude in their natural habitat, go around and bite people (laughter) So we are trying to…..why they are here as human beings doing little harinam and holy name of Kṛṣṇa, or they get some prasadam, may be they can be saved from that kind of a future damnation, future hellish situation.

Is there any, should we go on with questions or go on with ah…. Deity greeting)

[inaudible 01:09:58]

I might have to not stay for a Guru puja because of the packing. I am ah… see that thing was ah… actually I said that I probably wouldn’t be able to come here in the West at all, during the winter month. This year normally I come in between December and ah… March, for 30 days, make it 10 day tour of South America and have two week tour of North America. Five days in transit, over the oceans to and from India, because I…my permanent residence is in Sridham Mayapur, spiritual world, but this year because we are having the 500th anniversary celebrations of Lord Caitanya, we are having a big festival on March, where there are many preparations more than normal, which ah… I am the co-chairman of that, so I have to be almost every week spend a few days in Mayapur to make certain policy decisions and designs, and simultaneously there is a Gaur Parikrama or a preaching tour of Bangladesh, of all the holy places of Lord Caitanya, in all the places, the whole entire country of Bangladesh, there are about 20 million devotees of Lord Caitanya there, non-Muslim people there, who are basically devoted to Lord Caitanya, so we are preaching there, and then simultaneously we are having also the pada-yatra, which has 6,000 kilometres, about 4000 miles and just coming, now it’s going to reach Calcutta, reach Calcutta, it’s going to reach tomorrow, but I won’t even be able to be with the pada-yatra when it is in Calcutta. I am going to straight from here to, back to Bangladesh, to Pundrik Vidyanidhis birthplace, he was as I mentioned the guru of Gadadhara, and he appears on the 13th of 3 days. So I have to be there for a function, we are expecting a 100,000 people to come there, and If I don’t go there, would just…they would just become totally stunned and, private I can’t describe it what the other organizers do if I wasn’t there.

Because ah… devotee’s requested me that, if I could come for the marigoo , and see the preaching potential, in the sankirtan they would be enlightened in that, I thought that well if I come maybe I will get some ideas for how to better dovetail this festive occasion and New Orleans in the future, and discuss things with Vrikodar prabhu, Nanda nath and other leaders, preachers. So I kind of just came, everyone was just astonished that …in the middle of all these things that I fly to America for 4 days and flying right back, but ah… because of somehow I had a four day period, which I seem like a break away but I couldn’t stay longer, otherwise there would…. It’s like… very hard for me to just leave when there are so many devotees I could be discussing with so many different wonderful preaching opportunities here. Because of the 500th anniversary there is a very ah… I feel it’s a greater responsibility that I have to fulfil, so I will…intending to come very shortly after the Mayapur festival here to the West in April and May, beginning of June and ah…spend ah… maybe 60-70 days here in the West, and then go back for the Calcutta Rath-yatra, maybe the panihati festival, in Panihati after the panihati festival in Atlanta. So, that’s basically the reason why I have to go so quickly at this time. So, I hope I’ll be pardoned for coming and going so quickly.

Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Acaryapada ki Jaya!