19960802 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 6.16.9

Lecture Code: 19960802

Lecture Type: Srimad Bhagavatm

Verse: 6.16.9

Date: 2-8-1996

Place:  Bangalore_India

Transcribed By: Sadananda Krishnaprem Das

Transcribed On: Unknown

Status: Completed

19960802_Srimad_Bhagavatam.6.16.9_Bangalore_India

The following is a class given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami on August 2^nd, 1996 in Bangalore, India. The class begins with a reading from the Srimad Bhagavatam, 6^th Canto, chapter-16, verse-9.

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 6.16.9

eṣa nityo ’vyayaḥ sūkṣma
eṣa sarvāśrayaḥ svadṛk
ātmamāyā-guṇair viśvam
ātmānaṁ sṛjate prabhuḥ

Translation by His Divine Grace Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada:

The living entity is eternal and imperishable because he actually has no beginning and no end. He never takes birth or dies. He is the basic principle of all types of bodies, yet he does not belong to the bodily category. The living being is so sublime that he is equal in quality to the Supreme Lord. Nonetheless, because he is extremely small, he is prone to be illusioned by the external energy, and thus he creates various bodies for himself according to his different desires.

PURPORT (by His Divine Grace Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada):

In this verse the philosophy of acintya-bhedābheda — simultaneous oneness and difference — is described. The living entity is eternal (nitya) like the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but the difference is that the Supreme Lord is the greatest, no one being equal to or greater than Him, whereas the living entity is sūkṣma, or extremely small. The śāstra describes that the magnitude of the living entity is one ten-thousandth the size of the tip of a hair. The Supreme Lord is all-pervading (aṇḍāntara-stha-paramāṇu-cayāntara-stham). Relatively, if the living entity is accepted as the smallest, there should naturally be inquiry about the greatest. The greatest is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and the smallest is the living entity.

Another peculiar characteristic of the jīva is that he becomes covered by māyā. Ātmamāyā-guṇaiḥ: he is prone to being covered by the Supreme Lord’s illusory energy. The living entity is responsible for his conditional life in the material world, and therefore he is described as prabhu (“the master”). If he likes he can come to this material world, and if he likes he can return home, back to Godhead. Because he wanted to enjoy this material world, the Supreme Personality of Godhead gave him a material body through the agency of the material energy. As the Lord Himself says in Bhagavad-gītā (18.61):

īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ
 hṛd-deśe ’rjuna tiṣṭhati
bhrāmayan sarva-bhūtāni
 yantrārūḍhāni māyayā

“The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone’s heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy.” The Supreme Lord gives the living entity a chance to enjoy in this material world as he desires, but He openly expresses His own desire that the living entity give up all material aspirations, fully surrender unto Him and return home, back to Godhead.

The living entity is the smallest (sūkṣma). Jīva Gosvāmī says in this connection that the living entity within the body is extremely difficult for materialistic scientists to find, although we understand from authorities that the living entity is within the body. The body is different from the living entity.

* * *

Oṁ Tat Sat.

Thus ends the Bhaktivedanta Swami translation and purport, Text 9, Chapter 16, Canto 6 of the Śrīmad-Bhagavatam, King Citraketu meets the Lord.

So here, the spirit soul which has left the dead body of Citraketu… of Citraketu’s son, excuse me, and came back again at the request of the rsis, is now speaking from the platform of the spirit soul. This is the science of the self. This is amazing. The same truth is given in Bhagavad-gita,

dehino 'smin yathā dehe
kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir
dhīras tatra na muhyati

And how the atma is not changing even though the body is changing. It’s also ajo nityaḥ śāśvato 'yaṁ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre, unborn, the oldest, eternal. When the body dies the soul doesn’t die. This, truths are revealed in Bhagavad-gita here, with more details they are explained in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, but today this is one of the most guarded secrets. Everybody knows but nobody knows. People are not applying this knowledge and if you go through all the curriculum of the schools, colleges, universities, you will find one course and science of ātmā… Ātmā-vijñāna.

You can find the Darwin and the monkey theory; you can find so many theories. You can find many things about physiology, Biology, zoology and so on, archeology, all the ogy’s but no science of the self because, of course empirical investigations the scientists have not discovered the self. It’s very difficult to discover the self by empiric means because by definition the self is not material, the self is not made of earth, air, fire, water, ether, mind, intelligence or false ego. The self is transcendental. Aparā-śakti and the parā-śakti. This is a transcendental energy. So how can you observe it by the gross energy? Light, which is an aspect of fire is a very gross element. So, you would not be able to see such a fine element, fine śakti, energy… you see.

The great rsis, they see the self by the self, and there are many self-realized souls in history, Vedic culture. In fact there are so many that it doesn’t even bother to count. So many yogis have realized paramātmā, that it would be just… a huge list to write down. Rather in the Purāṇas we see that, especially those devotees who realize the supreme soul, they are mentioned because that’s more rare. Realizing the individual soul is not that unheard of by so many yogīs and… but to realize Kṛṣṇa, that is really rare; or to realize Viṣṇu.

So Citraketu, he eventually is going to realize the supreme personality of Godhead face to face in His form as Ananta deva. That’s why the chapter is saying - King Citraketu meets the Lord. Once he became purified from his misconceptions, then he started to develop a desire to see the Lord. Quite an amazing transformation- Citraketu. On one moment he is rolling in the ground lamenting over the death of his son. He is so emotional, so sentimental, so totally bodily attached. So when his son died, even though he is the emperor, he is bawling and crying and hitting his hands and head on the ground and just like a child throwing a temper tantrum or something, just completely mad, aggrieved over losing his son, and by the mercy of Nārada and Aṅgira Muni… they had mercy on this person… and they gave him this science of the self, you see.

See, in our educational complex here we need to educate people, “Who am I?” Everyone who comes here and leave they should have a basic understanding of what is the self, what is life, what is death, and who is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and that what we should do in relation to the Lord. So sambandha and abhideya, our relationship with this material nature, with the supreme Lord, that’s the first step. And abhideya is the execution of our constitutional position. Prayojana is the supreme goal - what we are to try to attain. And of course since this is the gradual process and people may not be able to realize it all at one go. Somebody visits for an hour or two hours, we cannot expect that they will totally be able to grasp everything. It may take many, many visits. It may take months and years of practice before they can get a full grasp of it. So, the ongoing programs, training programs, courses, seminars and the whole Bhakti-vṛkṣa network of devotional branches or cells coming out from the tree of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, throughout the city of Bangalore and through the state, Karnataka. So that systematically everyone can get all of the support needed, all of the education and training needed to be able not only to understand that I am spirit soul and I am the servitor of Kṛṣṇa, but to practically execute our constitutional position if we are so inclined.

Prabhupāda could perceive that in the future this would become a very big subject in the universities, that ātmā-vijñāna should also be studied by people, should be a basic thing that people understand. Now it’s taken up as Indology, some kind of quaint folklore of ancient Indian. The believe in the higher existence. Practically in the West, because they are interested in things that are ancient and unique, they study in the universities from an academic point of view, these philosophies. Not that they believe in a single one of them. But like what do the Egyptians, what did they believe in? What did the ancient Indians, what did they believe in? In that angle of vision. Then there is also the… from the religious point of view, there is the study… Islamic studies, and then Indology or Hindu studies. But up till about twenty years ago… Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, he gave a report, he said that all of the Islamic studies was given by Christians. So they would give it from a very biased point of view… Islam this, and Islam that. So people, they had a very negative opinion about Islam because they are only hearing it from the Christian professors. So then, recently they have given out Muslims, they have got together their act, they started their own Islamic universities and they started to give degrees to Islamic scholars, and now most of the Islamic studies, professors are Muslims.

So, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja and a few others, they are promoting that we should have some Vaiṣṇava universities, Vaiṣṇava post-graduate institutes which are connected with major universities, to give degrees, PhD’s and master degrees, because there is very good scope all over the world. Every university has a seat - Indology or Eastern studies or Hinduism or something, more or less. And all the professors in those areas now who are getting old, most of them are fanatical Christians who usually completely denigrate anything valuable within Hindu culture or Vedic culture and present it from a very slanted and opinionated subjective view of their speculation. And so people after… It’s more like to reinforce that you are right to be what you are, and this is Hinduism and it’s something that we shouldn’t really, you know, “You should know about it, it’s totally not anything worth doing. We studied it and this is what it is.” Something like that.

Not a single person by going to their courses will ever think that Hinduism is worth doing unless you are Hindu. Mostly Hindu’s would go, they probably… Develop their own doubts. So, what we want to do… ISKCON, wants to see that, in the future, all of the major universities’ professors of Vedic study will be devotees.

Of course, we will have to take people from India also, and they will have to go there and accept the 100, 60… The 20 lakhs per year salaries to be a head of the department of Indology, who… What was that… What was that? $16,000, do you know how many lakhs is that? It’s 20 lakhs, one and a half lakhs to two lakhs rupees for one-month salary.

I think if we offer that option… You see, nowadays nobody wants their son to be a Hare Kṛṣṇa devotee because they won’t be able to get the Rs. 10,000 per month job as an assistant clerk in L.I.C, well… in whatever it is, right? 5000... 3437 rupees clerk… with annexation every year. But the universities they have 30,000 starting and going up to 60,000. Lot of opportunities. 45,000 and so right now… this is totally private, not to be told to the newspapers, but they have got two very good offers. One is with the university of Berkley. There is a special theological graduate union which says, “we need this. We want the institute to the Vaiṣṇava studies to set up a seat in Vaiṣṇava degrees.” And it looks like it is going to go through, but they are just negotiating. And they making two of our devotees who have PhD’s as professors.

Simultaneously, Oxford University, when they attended some seminars on inter-faith, they had appreciated so much the Kṛṣṇa Conscious philosophy. That… in Oxford it is a very closed. You can’t get it Oxford you can’t get a seat for love of money. Even Hinduja’s have offered millions of pounds, they just… they don’t need anybody’s money… they are the top… but they themselves approached us and said, “we would like Vaiṣṇava seat, we don’t want Hinduism seat. We want Vaiṣṇava seat. This is a philosophy. Hinduism is so general. This is a philosophy. We like this.”

So now some of the devotees are negotiating with them. So, we have PhD. and special courses offered in Oxford and in university of California. And when you graduate there is list of hundreds of colleges and universities around the world ready to hire you for 20 lakhs a year. You think more students would be interested? Or they still want to be clerk for 3000?

Actually there is no shortage right now, there is glut in… but you can still get a job, I don’t say it is not an opportunity in computer programming and this and that. But what people don’t realize is the… the thing where there is a real crisis is – in India philosophy. And now the whole generation in the West from what they call the baby boomers… during the second world war when all the soldiers, they produces so many babies, naturally because they were out in the battle for 10 years,…19.43… 5 years, and they came back, so there was a lot of joyous reunions in the families and everybody was producing babies like anything. My generation, and so now there is a tremendous number of people of kind of my age, in the 40’s and the early… like that.

So what’s happened… early 50’s, most of the people believe in atma. They believe in reincarnations, they believe in these things, but there is absolutely no support and from any education from them, and nobody is presenting it in a very systematic or scientific way.

Even recently we saw that, Sadaputa Prabhu and other scientists were presented on national television, N.B.C, saying that Darwins theory, there no evidence. There is absolutely no evidence. It’s a complete theory, but there is never... in all these years, they produced any evidence and there is so much evidence to disprove it. There is no proof for it. But in India everybody thinks that Darwin Theory is like Darwin’s Law. Nobody even dreams that there is so much protests against Darwin in the West.

In fact, after they showed it to 20 million people on Prime… on T.V, there was so much request, even our book, Forbidden Archaeology, 5000 copies were sold in one week, people writing in, Now it is 15… that was the second week, they are still selling.

So what happened, I was just the… 15,000. So they are selling like hot cakes now, and what’s happening is that… then they had a popular demand, there were so many scientists writing in saying what is this? This is not scientific.” And then, you know, many people writing in, “This is fantastic. Finally getting the real truth.” And so it was a big thing, so they put it on 8 P.M on Saturday night, and everybody watches the T.V, and put again for the second time. That time they had 30 million people watching in America alone. So the students were going to the teachers, “What is the use of studying all this garbage?” (Devotees laughter.)

Teachers were shocked, you know. You know, there is all… “You have not proved… why we have to study all these things, you see. So… but we need to have… actually very nicely written up books explaining. Because from the scripture, this is where this giving… Prabhupada gave that directly, you know from this to write it in the vocabulary and in the manner as scientific treatise, what is the science itself?, and backing it up and so on.

Prabhupada said that atma can be easier for the scientists to prove. May be they cannot see it, but they can observe the effect of it’s presence, because when the atma is in the body it has one thing, when it leaves the body then there is a different change, you see. But there are so much grants given by big, big industry to prove the Darwinism, but there are no grants to prove atma.

So Indian industries who want to… instead of just giving money for primary education, they should give grants to prove the basic treatises of Indian philosophy like the atma and have scientists do studies to show that there is some kind of thing in the body, which is providing the energy for the body, when that leaves the body then there is a change, various ways they could prove that. There is something in the body which the Vedas are calling as atma, and these are the symptoms given in the Veda and taking all those that and presenting it, so that for the doubting public, for the scientists and others, we can prove that there is a substance to this idea of the soul.

Christians… contemporary… the Catholics, they believe that there is a soul and conception begins.. atma or whatever is there, but they don’t have any scientific explanation, not so much like it’s given in the Vedas. So much evidence is given here, so much on the nature, this can be like a coup de tat. Just like Darwin is dominating everything. Atma-ism, atmalogy to become, you know, Krsna the main doctorine, the synthesizing science and religion for the first time in a very scientific manner. So in the future there is so much scope and so much of a bright future, but the problem of course is that while we are thinking of all these things, the general population is being day by day programmed. In the… in the future of course, we should… at least in America, we find there are some Christian channels, that the Christian have got together channels, where they present their doctrines which are God conscious to some degree, very sentimental, very sectarian in the most part. But we need also there should be also the whole channel dedicated to the Kṛṣṇa Conscious and the Vedic view point, so that people can also learn from the televisions.

In Italy and in many places, we do have a few radio stations, but now India government has opened up FM station. I don’t know whether the Bangalore project is planning to have their own radio frequency here in Bangalore? FM could cover the earlier?, I think we should think very big, you see, if we are going to make such a very big project here and people are in so much ignorance, we should just think that systematically… Might as well … this is like making a very strong statement, “We have something to say.” And then we should systematically follow up from all angles to continue to say it. And we can also integrate our programs here with the universities in the West that are sponsoring our post-graduates, and we can already have some under-graduate program, even just in… in different ways and be able to funnel people into the post-graduate program.

Various ways we can have a very big impact. Not an impact but actually change. The whole way that people think, the whole way that the society is heading. All the scientists today, it’s because of the… because of this body consciousness, the people are just thinking that they are the body. So everything is bent on consumerism, satisfying the senses and the body, it’s doomed to destroy the world, doomed. The world… simply heading towards destruction because what we are doing is creating an over-consumption, which is creating such an imbalance in nature, we are destroying the ozone layer.

You know that they had to put sunglasses on cows in South America? Because if they don’t, there is no ozone layer to protect the ultra-violet rays from coming in. The cows would go blind. The atmosphere here… we are in the middle, so we don’t feel it so much. But if you go out in the day in the sunlight for more than two hours, in the southern hemisphere you get skin cancer, and the cows are going blind, they had to put thick glasses you know, otherwise they will go blind, you know. It sounds funny, you know… But it’s just the beginning of the end. And every year the hole is getting bigger and bigger. So, when you go to Australia, they all put signs, you have to cover, you have to wear umbrella, or you have to cover, because you get skin cancer. The sun rays are coming down so hot, so direct that it is just burning.

Because the whole world is just in imbalance and people who are studying the ecology, they realize- this is not a sustainable civilization. The word now is sustainable. What is the sustainable ecological system? What is sustainable agriculture? You use agriculture using all these chemical fertilizers from… from the…. from the fossil fuels. And what’s happening? … is that it ruins the soil, it’s not sustainable, it’s an unsustainable system.

For the short range you make an immediate profit, in the long range you ruin the soil. There is already millions of hectares, according to a recent report, in India which is been ruined. And also in Germany and so many places. So we have already a food crisis and if we go on ruining our soil it’s not the solution. So they are looking for sustainable agriculture for sustainable cities which works, which is very difficult.

So Kṛṣṇa consciousness gives a philosophy which is sustainable. This present philosophy of life in the world is not sustainable. You can’t live that way and actually be happy. And actually you have a world which is balanced. If everybody is simply trying to get as much sense gratification as they can thinking they are the body, then you create such an imbalance in nature, that you destroy the world. And this is what’s happening, and since they… they don’t, since that’s what everybody believes we are the body, and everybody feels the goal of life if to consume as much sense gratification as you can, and worry about the aftermath later. You see the big signs in all the cities- “Special Clinic for Skin Disease, Venereal Disease, Sex Disease, and Incurable Disease” It was on that was on that Ratha route in Hyderabad, the big clinic. And people there, they do so many things trying to get sense gratification, that they simply dig themselves in their own grave. Because this is not the way human life was meant to live.

Of course other people predict, well they are going to get so competitive, they are they are going to blow each other up and that will… that’s the other alternative. You just have a huge war, everybody kills other off and then after that you start all over again and then people, they do things a bit more natural, because everything is destroyed. The more… the less catastrophic way of doing it is people have a whole new vision and they understand that, “I am not the body, I am a atma”, you create a whole new paradigm or a whole new way of living where… which is the basic way of … Hindu way of life, the Vedic way of life- simple living, high thinking. We have a more spiritual… naturally things balance out. Actually the Indians are natural for this. Every Indian who goes to the Gulf, they all save tons of money and built their flats over here, right? Everyone else who goes there, spend so much money, but usually the Indians they save, they don’t spend too much, you know they … they are quite good about that. Only a few are going to all the night clubs and everything, and you know, not that there are not that… there’s not many night clubs anyway in the Gulf. So… but this is where the Indians are very good all over. They have that nature because it’s the part of our culture here, but the problem here is that gradually we are getting taken away by Western influence. And in the West… rather the Indian influence should go to the West. That’s what I was presenting last night, and that can come through various ways. But first of all in India we had to make a very strong statement. And we tried in Bombay, but I think that they are doing their efforts to Bombay and good luck to them. But we should… we should really make the statement here in Bangalore, because this is also more traditional. South India is more traditional. And this is a little smaller. So it’s more manageable. And here we have a very big project which is …. and Bangalore is not so spread out yet. And in this we have the blessing of Kṛṣṇa and Balarama and Udupi and also so many acharyas. So here as far as modern city in India becoming more Kṛṣṇa Conscious, it seems that Bangalore has the biggest opportunity.

And this type of philosophy, that we are the atma, is the basis for a sustainable civilization… a sustainable culture. Something that can work. We have to do it now because otherwise it’s… it’s not even a question. I mean we have a market like that, we are just marketing, “Give money and go to Vaikuntha.” Things like that. Any way you are going to leave this world soon and you won’t have anything. You can leave the whole mess behind you.” But that will attract a few people, the older generation. But the new generation they want to see what you are doing for the world. In fact, everybody wants to see that, and what they don’t understand is that to create a sustainable world this spiritual orientation is absolutely essential, to systematically educate people on this basic philosophy of life is absolutely essential. Without it, it does not work. Then Western consumerism is going to be the only alternative and that is destroying everything. You ask any of the experts in the world on ecology and everything and they will all tell you that the way this civilization is going today is hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. Greenhouse effect, melting of the cap in the Arctic region, the ozone layer, the destruction of the rain forest, the depletion of oxygen and so on an so forth, it just goes on. That is the hopeless situation, but they don’t have any solution. So now recently they figured, “We hope, we cannot convince people anymore to live in the country, they will come into the cities. So actually may be big cities are not so bad, specially one’s like Calcutta. And I couldn’t figure out why they say that exactly. I have to study more, but they say that, “Well, because everybody lives in the street, so they are kind of energy conservative.” And they don’t know what they are doing, they are just, you know, going from… hopeless, hopeless.

What Prabhupada has offered the world is actually hope, because with the spiritual orientation you can do everything. People can adjust their lifestyle a lot, if they have a different vision of life and if they can have basic comfort they will be satisfied. But if you are not in the Kṛṣṇa Conscious point of view, basic comforts are not enough, you have to have the latest two-in-one, three-in-one, four-in-one, whatever, how many one you can get! Multisystem, multichannel, you know, you have to have the latest. In fact, our devotees they were never buying any tape recorder because… in Japan. Because as soon as the new one came out, then immediately everyone threw the old one into the garbage and brought the latest one. So brand new, they are working perfectly, six-month-old tape recorder, but because it was not the latest model they throw it. You can just pick it out of the garbage, working order… everything, you see.

Now it is not like that because now financial crunch. Once the Yen crashed then everybody started to think, “Oh, wait a minute. The latest model is not so important, money is important, survival is important.”

Now there is 500 or 1000 people living in the subway in little card-board boxes in Tokyo. They are called the “box people”. (Devotees laughter). And you know who feeds them? The Hare Kṛṣṇa’s…. Haribol (everyone). We are famous in Tokyo. We are the only ones who go there and regularly feed them, and they appreciate. Whenever we come they all say Hare Kṛṣṇa, because in this capitalistic system those who don’t make it, there is no… there is no mercy on them, they have no mercy in the very capitalistic places. There is no, you know… I mean in some places more socialistic they provide, but in these places they don’t do provide, and so they have nowhere to go. They didn’t pay… they can’t…they lost their job, there was restructuration, computerization, and something, and no job and no ability to pay the rent, and where do they go? So they go end up in the boxes. It’s not a sustainable culture. So what we are talking… when we talk here… I am just bringing this because we talk about atma and sometime people think, “Ok, that’s great.”, but then as we walk out of the room…. we need to know we are not the body, we need to understand we are the atma, we are Kṛṣṇa conscious and we need to understand how this is actually the solution to the world’s problems. And we need to convince all the people who we are preaching to, that why they need to support this project, this is not simply cultural, it’s not simply religious. It’s educational and it is more than educational, it’s survival of our total human race.

Bangalore can actually… beginning of saving the whole of India, and the whole of the world. We can show how to have a sustainable civilization with a proper balance. Prabhupada said, “Use Western technology and use Indian philosophy. Together with a proper balance you can have a sustainable civilization, you can have a situation that works.”

People need a little economic development, and you know, India standard of economy, we are not putting that forward as the world standard should be. Because India used to be the… in the really greatest standard. You look into the history, you go to the Humpy and see what was the Vijayanagara kingdom. They were coming… Columbus was trying to get to Vijayanagara, he was trying to get to Karnataka. This one was the richest and most prosperous place in the entire world 500 years ago. But he thought that the short route would go all the way to the West and come around, the world was round, you come around and you reach India, and when he got and he saw Sand Domingo or Caribbean islands, he thought that, “I reached it! I reached India, there it is Karnataka, but it wasn’t Karnataka, it was San Domingo or some other… it was America. He was a bit further round than he had calculated. Then really figured it out how far it was around, he was just going there without any instruments and going and going, finally saw land, that’s why they call the red … the natives of America, they call them Indians, because at first that’s what they thought they were, that was India. They say India… now we say they are red-Indians and the Indian-Indians. But this was… when you read… I was reading the historical thing… from Italy and from different places, they came and they were seeing the Vijaynagara kingdom and they were buying the spices and things.

You know one kilo of peppers in those days was worth more than its weight in gold. And this was the place of pepper, silk, all the gold, all the riches, you see, but after 1000 years of Mughal rule and after 200 years… Moghuls, Prabhupada said they didn’t destroy India so much because Mughals settle down here, they…they stayed here, they didn’t ship it out anywhere, so whatever the wealth was, it stayed in India, it just went from the Hindu kings to the Moghul kings as far as the royalty, but everyone was still prosperous, more or less.

But it was the British 200 years, they already lost America and they saw what happened to the South America, so they didn’t want any of their British people settle down in India, because they thought then they will declare independence from us. So they just had the viceroy and they had rotational I.C.S officers and they kept shipping all the money from India back to England. So basically you have been drained out for 200 years until, you know, and practically when they gave up there was like a crisp left. This is the big problem.

So the Indians have culturally been defeated, and they think that this… I was with a Chief Minister… the late Chief Minister, Hiteshwar Saikia, he was giving a lecture in one of the programs in North, in Assam and he was telling, “So I want to welcome all of you are Alpine people, I am a Mongoloid, I have come from, you know…” He gave this whole theory of how all the people from Northern India were coming from the Alps. So they are Alpinos.

The whole, you know, kind of Darwin and the common popular archeological idea that everybody came from the Alps. They have not found any civilization in the Alps yet, but that’s a detail that we can work out later. And they, all these theories… and even our big, big politicians, they all think that India was settled by… they all take the Western point of view, Max Muller and all these speculations. They don’t take the Vedic point of view, that this was where the civilization began and from here people went to the Alps. That’s why the language in the Europe and India is the same, not because Europeans came and settled here but because from India they went there. And the very high class north Indian Brahmanas and the ksatriyas, they are the lighter complexion, when you go there is no sun anyway… that… They also intermix with the tribal people there, and that’s why you got all those different races. But basically, it was when Parasurama drove the ksatriyas out, they all started fleeing. And they went to Egypt and all these places and then they settled down. And we got all these Western civilizations, which only they can record back to 5000 years. But Parsurama is more than 10,000 years ago. Long time ago.

So this is our Indian point of view, but nobody is presenting our Indian archeology idea, nobody believes it you know, followers of the Vedas, the pandits, but… all education is totally westernized in India. So we need to make a very strong statement and then by public pressure we can also… and by academic and by research and science and various ways, we can change the educational system and help “atmalogy” and have actually, be more Vedic oriented understanding of the world history, which matches up with the latest discoveries that people are making.

So we have a very big… there is a huge, I mean, we can actually change the whole way that the world is thinking, we can make a very big, we can actually see the whole world getting delivered. It requires you know tremendous dedication and everyone playing their part, whether it’s just preaching in a (Indistinct) or whether it’s collecting support for the project, whether it is creating the overall plan, it’s… it’s a very big scope, and the worst thing is, we should never fight amongst our… each other, we should not waste any of our energy in any kind of conflicts, party-ism. The whole world is… it needs this so bad, and so few places in the world where we have that kind of public support we can get here in Bangalore. You can actually make a strong statement, and people are…Bangalore is kind of on the international map now because of all the computerization… Even in America, you never see Bombay mentioned, except if there is a riot, but Bangalore, because IBM and everything is here, you educationally see that something is happening. At least it is in the financial pages… they put it.

 So, from Bangalore we can… we can really make the world wide revolutionary offer to Srila Prabhupada.… Hari Bol! (everyone)

Srila Prabhupada ki…………………..Jay (everyone)

Kṛṣṇa Balarama Mandir ki………..Jay (everyone)

Bangalore ISKCON yatra ki……………Jay (everyone)

Nitai Gaura Premanande……………Jay (everyone)

Any questions?

Yes, Prasanna Caitanya Das…

That’s what called the ahankara, that’s what the ahankara is because the atma is so suksma, therefore in order to have the interface. The interface also has to be subtle, the gross elements are not able to interface with the subtlest energy, the soul, so that’s why there is the sukshma sarir or the subtle body – maan, buddhi and ahankara and the interlinking cable. Somehow the interlinking is the ahankara by which the atma can receive the information from the subtle body, and the subtle body is getting if from the gross body.

So that’s what the ahankara does, that’s what allows the atma to enter into this like… it’s like putting on the goggles of virtual reality. And now you are seeing through this… this virtual reality thing. The ahankara is what allows the atma to identify with the body and see the body from the driver’s seat point of view, even though if it is actually aloof. Just like in the computer games now, you could be blowing up your, you can have your virtual body there with your virtual machine gun and blow up all the virtual demons that are attacking you and you can be totally blown up on the screen but the fortunate thing about it is that your body in the seat there is still alive. (Guru Maharaja laughs)

How many times you get killed in computer games?, I have never played this computer games because I was not born when they were... in my childhood I was not, but I have seen children blowing each other up there. And of course parents don’t mind because the body is still intact, but we don’t know what happens to their mind of course, it’s going through all these violence and the things like that. But there is some mechanical interfa… and people get so much into it right? I mean after a while they are buzzing around and playing and doing all kind of things in those virtual situations. But the problem is right now that the computers that use the virtual reality are not big enough to give very realistic vision, but they are gradually getting better and better and better, and they are… and the small screen they can do, but 360 degree requires such a big database of information and a lot of programming, but people are working and working and working at it. And the technology that they use for slight stimulation, now they’re using it for a recreation.

So it shows how the mind can adapt and pretty soon you just think, after a while you will think, “I am this virtual body whatever the computer has created for you. That’s what happens to the atma, who is also able to identify with this gross body. It doesn’t matter, the gross body could be a human body, male body, female body, can be ant body. I mean here it says that, in the purport, how the entities create different bodies, isn’t it? What kind of desire they have to create body of a cockroach? And some of this little insects. I mean just look. I mean you really desired that. They got what they wanted. What kind of desire they had eh…? And that’s where we are headed. This our civilization… where, putting all those atmas that we have here, if they don’t develop their God consciousness, they are heading Kṛṣṇa’s says, “I sent them back in demoniac species, back to a cockroach.” You know the cockroach are pretty fortunate, in the temple they get so much mahā prasāda. (Devotees laughter).

This was a recent thing happened. One psychologist who was treating people by taking them in hypnotism, back to the previous life and then finding what was the trauma that happened in the previous life that was causing this life’s problem. It was quite a common, not very common, but it’s quite common in the West now that many of the modern psychologists use regression as a therapy when they cannot find the reason for various type of paranoia in the present life or different problems, and so some of them do it even for various things.

So this one scientist, a psychologist, was taking back a person in his previous life and then found that in the previous life the person was… said, “What are you?”, and usually they say you know, “I am a man, I am a woman, I am in this place, I am in that place, I am in France, I am in Germany, I am in something.” I mean there is so much evidence to reincarnation that anyone that is just exposed, they had to believe that’s it is true.

In fact even some Christian priests now, they have given up, not in India, they are still fighting. I mean in other places, they have given up, they don’t even say there is no reincarnation, they say, “Well, there may be reincarnation, but anyway Jesus gave us that too.” And they have a way of… still need Jesus to be saved from reincarnation.” They have just adapted their preaching, but that’s how much it has been accepted. Like in California, 99% of everybody believe in reincarnation, you know 95… you can’t, it’s just like you know, to say there is no reincarnation is like people, “What yuga are you from? You are from the dark ages.” But this… everyone knows we came from human, because all regression always show human. But this one scientist, he was… there was a psychologist, he was regression the person and the person said, “well I am in a kind of bird body with big wings, and I am flying around and I am going to different flowers.” Basically he was a butterfly or some kind of a fly, some flying insect, and the psychologist was amazed, “I never heard of… before human how they came up from insect to human, that is unheard of, such a gap is there, you know.” They have their own theories about… so what happened the last… before you left your body, and so the person is saying, “Well, I was flying and there was the building and on the top of the building there was this kind of a dome and, you know, some, you know…” Described, basically it was... could understand that it was a temple or a religious structure because of the… “And so I went into the building, and there was the some statues standing on in a raised place. And from the statues you could tell there was some kind of a… see it appeared to be Viṣṇu temple of some sort, and then said that there was a plate of fruit and things in front of this statues. So I flew there and I started to eat, and suddenly there somebody came out and ph… killed me!” (Devotees laughter)

“Somebody, you know…”

So the psychologist said, “What does this mean? It’s like a big mystery and kind of …” And then he comes to the Hare Kṛṣṇa temple and sees the statues and the fruit plate, offering and the whole… and the dome, and then you know finds out and figures out that what happened was because this insect had come and eaten the prasadam. When the insect takes prasadam, the next birth you get human birth. Otherwise you have to go through the whole 84 lakh species, you know, whatever’s left you know. But by prasadam they got immediately human birth. And that psychologist then realized how great it is to worship Kṛṣṇa. He became a devotee…

Hari bol (everyone)

You get humans, they go back to God…

Transcribed by: Sadanananda Kṛṣṇaprem Das (JPS)