Everything is complicated. If you don't find this focal point, Krsna, then you can't really get a grip on anything. People try, people have different ideas, people go in different directions, and in the end everyone knows that they die. Everyone dies. Everything dies, everything disappears. We have a lot of dynasties and empires that were big and famous, and people still talk about the Roman Empire and so on, Aztecs, Incas, but they are no longer around. Nothing is left. But humans continue to live, animals continue to live, plants continue to live. And if you don't have this focal point, if you don't know Krsna, then existence becomes meaningless. It is said that there are only two people who can be truly happy, and that is a completely self-realized person, and a person who doesn't understand anything at all. Everyone in between suffers from anxiety. There is anxiety, there is frustration, there is depression. And then people say: "We shouldn't be so negative, it will probably be fine anyway." I gave classes for a while at the Hare Krsna center one or two evenings a month or something like that. And we talked about this fact that you can't be happy without being connected to Krsna, the material world is full of suffering anyway. But someone said: "But I am happy." And I didn't have a good answer to that, so I asked him, and he said: "It depends on your standards. Depends on your standards."
I had a job once where there was a show for couples where they talked about what is important in a relationship, what is important in the person you have a relationship with. "Common interests, making me laugh" was what someone said. And then there was a woman in the corner who said: "Make me laugh, make me laugh! Anyway, I can choose someone who doesn't drink heavily and doesn't beat me." Okay. But that is a very low bar, really. So in the material world, naturally you could say that we have a roof over our heads, we have food to eat, that's good. It's better than not having a roof over your head or something to eat. But something that everything in this material world has is this time factor. Whatever is there will disappear. That was also a question I asked sometime: how can one understand this thing about the time factor? What is time really? How is Krsna's time? Time is the only thing we cannot influence. Whatever is in the material world will change. It wasn't long ago that it was us sitting around as these young brahmacāris sitting in the corner making garlands. Now we are really old. And those of you who are young have probably never seen us as anything other than old. We have always been old. But that is the time factor. And as soon as you enter another stage in time, in a family, suddenly you have small children, and then you adjust your whole existence to these small children, how they should eat and sleep and so on. And then suddenly... I have a lot of uninteresting points from my own life, but I remember I had a big stroller, and on the lower tray of the stroller I always kept extra clothes, because the children fell into puddles or spilled things on themselves and so on. Then I had a realization: I haven't touched that bag of extra clothes for six months. They are bigger now. We went to Mayapur, and we took a cheap trip so we had a stopover in Romania for eight hours or something like that. What could they have been, two and four? No, they couldn't be... two and four or something like that anyway. We stayed... no, they weren't that at all by the way, they were eight and six. And I was used to them being tiny. We stayed there for eight hours, we arrived, we took a taxi to Mayapur, there was a huge queue. In those days the office was in the Long Building, there sat a devotee who kept track of absolutely everything and gave us keys. But I was last in line and I got my key. And then I thought: what do I do first, do I take the children to the room first or do I take the bags to the room first? And the children just walked, so I thought: "Oh, now they are at a different age, now they are at a different age." It's like that all the time. Whatever you have learned to accept as "this is how it is", suddenly it's not like that anymore. We used to have a rotary dial phone. These aren't the most important things, but it just shows that if you try to take shelter in material nature, it doesn't work. Because as soon as you have understood something, know about something, and gotten a grip on something, it has changed. And the major changes are naturally birth and death. Now it is becoming more and more common that people you have known for many years are gone now, we don't know where they are anymore. And children, sweet little lumps sitting there smiling, we don't know where they come from. And that is not natural, it's not natural for the soul. But at the same time in the material world, that's how it works. And it's interesting, because we have science, and Prabhupada criticizes science very, very much. Because they say: "Yes, but we have come this far, soon we will reach that far." If you are going to pay me for something you buy from me and you give me a check post-dated to the future, we don't know if there will be money in the future, we don't trust it. We don't trust that science will solve all these problems. There is a group of people nowadays doing some kind of lifetime maxing. They live in such a way that they believe they will be able to live several hundred years. They are convinced that if they avoid this and do that... The question is how you enjoy your life then, if you don't eat anything, just work out. But in the end they will die, it cannot be avoided. Everyone who is born will die. Everyone who eats must go to the toilet, as Prabhupada says. Everyone who wakes up must fall asleep again. It is Krsna's energy, this invincible force, nothing can be done about it. If you believe that, if you set up something thinking it will last forever... I suppose when we started Almvik we built a nice kitchen that was supposed to be forever, and now it is just ruins. Now nothing is left of it. So if you can understand that this point you cannot see is like a living person you meet: what makes them alive is the soul, and you cannot see the soul, but you can see the symptoms of the soul. I just saw a funny little thing, an adult person said to a child: "How can you believe in God? You can't see Him." "Do you have any intelligence?" "Yes," he said. "I don't think so, because I can't see it." There is a lot we cannot see. But that is why we understand from Bhagavatam that the soul is behind all living entities, and the soul behind the world, behind everything, is Krsna. And it is so fascinating, it's not just that he sat somewhere on a cloud and said: "Now we will have earth and water and air", and like that, but it is described quite thoroughly, though first you have to change how you view the world. I have these subjects...
Q: The periodic table?
A: Yes. And we have elements, but in the Vedic scriptures they speak of air and fire and water and earth instead, and then people think: what, that is very medieval and old-fashioned. But when you understand their function... Fire, that is what warms us and keeps us alive, and in the spiritual world no sun or moon or electricity is needed, Prabhupada writes, which is very fascinating. They don't need power plants and they don't need water heating plants that break down. It is bright and it is warm and it is as it should be because Krsna's energy there is direct. And here everything is covered. Here everything is covered by material nature. And when we speak of chapters here, we like to talk about this sāṅkhya philosophy, as sāṅkhya means to count, to count all the elements in the world, so that the person also understands that the soul is there and the Supersoul is there. Without that, there is nothing. And that perspective wants to teach us.
It was fascinating. It talks about "remember Krsna", and it's the eleventh chapter, The Universal Form. "Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all the people."
Kālo 'smi. When they made the film about the man who invented the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer, he quoted this "Time I am", but they quoted it a bit wrong. But it is also in the tenth chapter where Krsna says: "Among subduers I am time." 10.30. And then in 33 he says: "I am also inexhaustible time." So actually three times Krsna says he is time. Time, we think: okay, we look at the clock, it's half past eight, what's the big deal. But time is what drives everything. If plants didn't grow and ripen, we wouldn't have anything to eat. So time and death, that is how you see God's presence in the world if you don't want to see him personally, then you can never avoid him. That is the thought people have: "Yes, people can believe in God, maybe there's something for them, we don't believe in God, he doesn't exist for us." But they will still die. If you build a sandcastle on the beach and then the tide comes and washes it away, there is nothing left. And that is what this existence is like if we view it with our very limited perspective. But luckily Krsna hasn't just dropped us in this world and locked the door and thrown away the key and left us to wither away here, rather Krsna is always present directly and indirectly. And it wants to teach us to see that too. But it's not just a sentimental thing: "Oh, the beautiful sunset, then I think of Krsna", but it's also one of these verses... I heard a class where someone went into this, that Krsna's illusionary energy is His beautiful smile. Then they spoke about how this world, even though it is an illusion, is very beautiful. But the next line of that verse is: "and His jaws are death". So yes, the illusionary energy appears real, and it is real in so far as it is Krsna's energy. But what we see it as is not real—that this is all of existence, that we need to take care of this, that we build whatever we want in this world according to our own endeavor and ability. But it's not like that, rather this world consists of these elements, but without Krsna's presence, which here we see in the form of time, nothing happens. It would have been just pradhāna, which is this unmanifest matter. And scientists have come so far that they talk about how at first nothing was manifested, and then there was a moment that made it so. And what is this moment? It is Krsna who sets everything in motion. But they cannot find that. It's like you can analyze the body and all the elements and all the organs and so on, but you cannot find the soul in that way, because it is something else. And that is the true reality, but we have chosen not to see it. Many in this world, most, the majority of all souls in this world have chosen to forget Krsna. It is impossible to forget Krsna, Krsna is everywhere in everything. In the spiritual world, nobody forgets Krsna. It was Uddhava who came to Vrndavana because Krsna sent him there with a message to his devotees, and especially to the gopis. And he started explaining to them: "If you remember Krsna, Krsna is there." And they say: "Our problem is not remembering Krsna, our problem is that we cannot forget him." And that is the natural state of the soul. But because the souls had that desire, Krsna gave permission, and he created facilities for it as well. And so we have been here for a while. And maybe we have grown a bit tired of it. And then it's good both that one gets tired of the material world and also that one gets the opportunity to learn something about how everything is connected. And we have only just begun to talk about that. So everything you see, everything that is amazing... Prabhupada says it somewhere when talking about a gramophone, that when he was little he thought a little man sat in the box singing. And one might believe that if one doesn't know how things work. And it's also funny when they say: "But what you cannot see, what you cannot touch, what you cannot prove, how can you believe in it?" But it's about knowledge too. If you have a glass of water and place a spoon in it, and look at the spoon, it looks as if it bends at the water's surface, and when you take it out it's straight again. There you can see it bending, but you know that's not true because you have knowledge of how light refracts differently in air and in water and so on. So even if we cannot see Krsna in front of us all the time, we can hear about how everything is connected and how everything rests on Krsna directly and indirectly. And that is our tattva foundation. Before we go out into these... We shouldn't imitate the pure devotees who cry and roll on the ground. We read in Caitanya about different stages of life. First he was a chubby little child who confused people and delighted them at the same time, made his mother speak philosophy, made these thieves go full circle and bring him home again. And then he was young and smart and a scholar and liked to discuss and argue, and then he started the saṅkīrtana movement, and everyone was there and everyone participated and so on. And then at the end in Caitanya-caritāmṛta you hear how he just falls into this ecstasy. And it's not that we just read about it and imitate it and lie on the beach rolling in the sand. But we handle the whole, what do you say, spect-
Q: Spectrum.
A: Yes. And we have access to it. We have access to this knowledge, we have access to hearing about his pastimes. And we know that
jīver 'svarūpa' haya — kṛṣṇera 'nitya-dāsa'
The eternal nature of the soul is to be a servant of Krsna. And then when we start serving Krsna, while we are still a bit conditioned by this world, we learn all kinds of things so that we don't make a lot of mistakes, we learn these regulative principles. I was asked that question by... I don't keep in touch with many people I knew before I joined this movement, but I met one of my old friends in Gothenburg, and she said: "It's so little fun and games, all those rules and all that." I said: "As for me, I am extremely grateful to know what makes things work or not work. If my priority is spiritual development, it is extremely beneficial to know that drugs and meat-eating and sex and gambling... Gambling is something that will get in the way of my priority. If I didn't know that, it would be much harder for me."
So there we have one level, and then we have all these finer details... What is it, 64 offenses in Deity worship, and it's not that we start with that, but we start as Rupa Gosvami says, fanning the spark. When people come for the first time, we don't scold them for holding their knees while sitting in the temple room. But after a while it's good to know that things are such and such. So when you look at things with this vision, when you see that Krsna has started these universes for our sake, and naturally also because it is enjoyable. Līlās are going on all the time, there are the eternal līlās in the spiritual world, there are the eternal līlās that come here and manifest, and we have it described that every pastime is eternal, because it is always taking place somewhere in the universe.
Somewhere Mother Yashoda is sitting and looking into Krsna's mouth and seeing all the universes. Somewhere people are sitting in the arena watching as these... what are their names, the ones who fight with Krsna and Balarama?
Q (Janeshvara d): Cāṇūra and Muṣṭika.
A: Cāṇūra. And they are affected in different ways. Krsna lifts Govardhana Hill and the cows and men want to help with their sticks. And that is going on everywhere somewhere. And everyone is participating and everyone travels with Krsna, it's like a traveling roadshow at the same time as all... So this perspective of understanding how everything can go on at once, maybe you can't fully take it in. But at the same time it is quite obvious that God is unlimited. He does whatever he wants in this world, in the spiritual world and so on. And we can do whatever we want up to a limited point. We can choose to surrender in loving service to Krsna and we can choose to avoid him. And if we choose to avoid him, we still have free will, but we become very limited in our senses and our karma. So we have some kind of underlying desire to enjoy separately from Krsna, and this manifests in different ways depending on which senses this present body consists of. And then when you have made this free choice, it's not as if... If you make the free choice to go out and murder someone, you don't have the free choice to avoid prison. Rather, if you do something, you get those consequences too. And that is good to understand and good to know. And at the same time we don't just sit and make bulleted lists of how the material world works, but we hear about Krsna, we feel Krsna. Oh, excuse me! We take shelter of the devotees and we get to engage in being a servant of the servant of the servant of Krsna. And that is the eternal reality. But as I said, the more you read Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the more you understand these things, the less bewildered you become. Because it happens in our local religions... I wasn't there, but as one understands from history, to begin with people did something because they were told to do it, so they followed the religion. And then people started thinking and tried to get good answers. And it's very difficult to read the Bible and get good answers when confronted with the scientific way of thinking and looking and researching and so on. Bhāgavatam, there still needs to be a certain adjustment, but it's not like that. Janu had, before he met the devotees, been involved with the Mormons. He had a period when he was quite depressed and felt that life had no meaning, and then some nice Mormons came and knocked on his door. And he started hanging out with them and was seduced by their stuff. But then came a time when he had questions: "How does this work? How is that? Why is it like this? What is this?" And they just went: "No, no, no, you can't question that, you just have to believe it." There are very few things in our philosophy you just have to believe. When we come to rasa, it's not that scientific anymore, but its foundation is scientific. The foundation of this love develops into some kind of... or Radha scolding a bee or a bumblebee. It fits into the framework of what we understand about how rasa works, even if we might not directly analyze it in that way. But we can analyze tattva and we can get this help not to be bewildered by the material world, not to be bewildered by people who have a lot of ideas and theories and so on. And that is a wonderful gift, isn't it? You can't do like what was his name, the dig-vijaya we had here? It's not that we can go on a tour and defeat people in argument and make them surrender. People don't do that, nobody does that. But for our own part, we have this stable foundation in philosophy. And when people have gotten a little taste because the devotees are merciful and go out with harināma, go out with books, saṅkīrtana, go out with prasādam, so that the soul awakens a little bit to life. When people then come and have honest questions, then there are answers. Then there is philosophy that goes deep. Then we can base our existence on Bhagavad-gītā, so we actually never really need to be bewildered. Then maybe people who are very, very philosophically inclined still have a certain desire to find contradictions and discuss and dig into all kinds of scriptures that nobody has ever heard of before to prove what they feel. But the point is that Prabhupāda says "Krishna consciousness is simple for the simple". And then we have this philosophy that allows us to put doubts on the shelf because most of it connects, and so we can focus on Krsna consciousness. And that is also kṛṣṇa-kathā. These are things that are spoken about. We have three kinds of kṛṣṇa-kathā. We have kathā that is about Krsna, we have kathā spoken by Krsna, and Kapila is an incarnation so when he speaks about his philosophy it is kṛṣṇa-kathā. And then we have kathā when we speak about our service. When we discuss how... "Was there a car parked crookedly in the corridor? Yes, because someone for some reason due to their devotional service parked a car crookedly in the corridor", and then that discussion is also kṛṣṇa-kathā. So this is where we are, we are surrounded by kṛṣṇa-kathā, and all we need to do is follow along. And luckily we have devotees around us, because if you don't have devotees around you, it's very difficult to hold onto this. I know when I was young, suddenly everyone was a vegetarian, and then a few years later nobody was a vegetarian anymore, because there was no stability in it. But when you come here and we have pañca-tattva, we would never think the thought that They wouldn't be vegetarian, we would never think the thought of eating something we cannot offer to Them. And then everything becomes very uncomplicated. I don't know. I haven't prepared at all as I said, but these are rewarding and strengthening verses. Material nature is not just material, it is also Krsna's energy, and we understand it in such a way that we come closer to Krsna. Yes, I made an attempt. Maybe there is something to add, any questions, any comments?
Q (Janeshvara d): You brought up this example with the Mormons, that they said one just has to accept. Actually there is quite a lot in Krsna consciousness too that one just has to accept. For example, what the spiritual world looks like and that Mahā-Viṣṇu, from his skin pores come the universes and so on. There are very many things for which there are no empirical...
A: Yes, but the philosophy behind how it connects, that you can understand, that Krsna is the Origin. He has a spiritual existence where we belong. That can be described. Then exactly why Krsna is blue or why Mahā-Viṣṇu lies on Ananta Śeṣa, but these are still things that... What does Prabhupāda say about it? "Both blind-following and absurd inquiry are condemned." You reach a point where it's no longer about important doubts. But understanding that everything comes from God, understanding that He has His own existence, that is quite natural. And then exactly how it is structured and so on. And then that He has given us this world. I think about it sometimes, the Christian creation story, that God thought, now we will create a world. What did He do before then? That isn't clear. And then you are born into this world and then you must believe, otherwise you end up in hell. It is so terribly shortened, it lacks context. But this description of creation and the spiritual world, of course you can't prove it in that way, but it connects. It hangs together. If God is a person, then of course He has an existence somewhere. And we can also see, this world is temporary, God is eternal, the soul is eternal. Prabhupāda says in this verse, from childhood to...
A: ...youth to old age, that the soul moves and it will move on. Then you don't have to believe in it, especially not when you are steeped in our worldview, this Western secular worldview, then it's difficult. But you can ask, when did this happen? Well, Brahmā is about 50 years old now. That was about 156 billion years ago. I calculated it yesterday, I will have forgotten it next week. A bit over 156 billion years ago this particular universe was created. And it's not random like why has God created that and why should we fast on Saturday, or whatever it is you do when following the Sabbath, rather it hangs together. Then if you don't want to understand it, because much more depends on that, if you don't want to see a God in the world, that is also part of the material world. You cannot prove God's existence, you can indicate it, and then we accept the Vedas as the ultimate authority, that's how it is. But you can ask quite a lot of questions before you come to that which cannot be questioned.
Q: It's also quite often that you can see within for example the māyāvāda stream, within philosophy in Uppsala, realizing that consciousness, what it is within evolution, that a consciousness must always be connected with a person, I mean...
A: Yes, and consciousness is very, very difficult to analyze, because in some way, you can break down matter, you can follow its path, you can find atoms. But consciousness, it just is there. And the thought that it appears at a certain stage, well, why? If you look at it as a story you were taught, much like how in the past people taught children stories from the Bible when they were small, now they are taught that "yes, but there was a primordial soup or a primordial lump and then there was a big bang and it exploded and suddenly it developed". And you have heard that, and so you accept that "yes, that must be right". But if you poke at that a little bit... Because the theory of evolution claims that every step must have a value in itself. When you bake a cake, the dough stage doesn't need to have value in itself, rather it's that it will become a cake in the end, because it's a conscious act we are doing. But if you go from evolution to these small single-celled things that have no eyes to having an eye, the intermediate stage when there is no eye and an eye, what function does that serve? It's impossible to even imagine, optic nerves and this globe and this lens and all of that. What is the intermediate stage? People are so used to the Christian questioning of evolution that they take for granted that everyone who doesn't believe in evolution is stupid. Because there it's "yes, but God did it". But here they see element by element, layer by layer. But if you don't want to believe in it, you won't believe in it. But if you have an honest desire to understand Krsna and this trust in Krsna grows and grows, then we have this philosophical foundation that makes... There are people who just love Krsna and need no philosophy. I don't remember where I read it, but I know someone referred to it in a class, that the gopīs don't sit down and study philosophy. But if someone comes with an aśāstric idea, they can cut it down like this, just because it's automatically included. I think sometimes it would be nice to study Sanskrit. I can't study Sanskrit when I'm almost 70, and if you die you think "yes, I want to finish my Sanskrit", so you are born again. In the spiritual world you automatically understand Sanskrit. A pure devotee has access... And they say that too, a pure devotee knows everything. And then someone asked Prabhupāda "do you know how many windows there are in the Empire State Building?". And Prabhupāda said "don't be ridiculous". The spiritual master knows what Krsna wants him to know. A pure devotee knows what Krsna wants him to know, but because there is no barrier of false ego, it is much more direct. So naturally, the soul's, the person's sincerity and purity mean a huge deal. And I couldn't argue with this woman about whether she was happy. What should I say? She was homeless, you see. She and her husband were homeless, and they came to Govinda's and ate. Sometimes they hadn't slept for weeks.
Q: That was Indra, right?
A: Yes.
Q: He was cursed to become a pig.
A: Yes, and so he lived there with his little pig family, his pig piglets. And then Brahmā came and said: "Okay, that's enough now, you can come back home, you can come home to heaven, let's end this pig life." "But I can't leave, I have my family here, I have my responsibility, my wife and my children." And then the farmer came out and put them on the block and chopped their heads off. "Okay, maybe this wasn't such a good place after all."
Yes, no, it's true. You can't answer all detailed questions, especially not those that lie quite far away, but you can confirm the philosophical basis for believing in this, to a person who is genuinely interested in it.
Q: That was a very important foundation for understanding anything. That you... Like Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, he said that you have to accept Krsna's inconceivable potency, the unimaginable, otherwise it doesn't work.
A: No, that's true. But I just mean that it's easier to get there when you have a philosophy that hangs together. I remember before I met the devotees, trying to talk to religious people, and maybe I hadn't met the right religious people. Sure, there are theologians within the different traditions. Prabhupāda doesn't criticize the religions in themselves, it's not that what is written in the religions is wrong, but it's like having a small phrasebook. If you are traveling you have "Can you show me the way to the train station?", "Can I order potatoes?". What is written there isn't wrong, but the whole dictionary isn't included. But in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam everything is included.
Q: What you're saying about the philosophy hanging together, that was what was so wonderfully nice when I joined. When they talked with a priest like that, you could confirm the whole philosophy in just one conversation and get an answer. Because everything hangs together. It's completely logical, everything.
Q: If you describe the universe, it must be, for example, string theory... String theory quotes, everything... If you take away the string, then everything falls apart. And so it is also in bhagavat-realization, I think that when everything hangs together...
A: No. And things that you just take for granted, that we live in a democracy where there are human rights. And then we look at the race they are running in the US now, Donald Trump says "No, but these dictators, they do a much better job. I should work more like them." Naturally that's not what proves or disproves anything, but it is so restful to be able to have a philosophy you can rely on, the more you hear, the more you read. And then we have people who are impatient. I remember long ago at Korsnäs Mörby, when we had some young brahmacārīs sitting and trying to analyze and philosophize in some way to find something new and exciting. That is also a level that is not completely pure. But if you just continue to study these books with an honest endeavor to serve Krsna and develop your devotional service, you will find this... Maybe it's niṣṭhā we're talking about, when you are satisfied, a faith strong enough that you are satisfied. You can still develop, but... It's perhaps not entirely unlikely that you get there.
Q: When Menander Hani-Mani was here, during rehearsals he had several times classes on epistemology like this. I don't know, I think it's called epistemology in Swedish. It's how you know what you know, something like that...
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes.
Q: It's a bit hard to understand anyway, but this idea that I've understood is very good: how do you know that what you know is true?
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes.
Q: And then one thing was precisely this, our books and the scriptures. That many things you can see that before, for example, science existed, for example about how the child develops in the mother's womb, it is described in Bhagavatam. And also with space and so many things that can be confirmed afterwards.
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes.
Q: So there are many such things that partly fit into at least the same line of thought or can be confirmed as well. I don't know that many examples, but still.
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes.
Q: So in that way, you can strengthen your faith in what is written in the scriptures. And if something, that is, if many things in the scriptures are correct, then everything should be correct as well. Therefore, even though there are things like Mahā-Viṣṇu and things that seem to be very acintya, hard to understand,
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes.
Q: then you can put your faith instead in those things that cannot be, well, verified as easily perhaps.
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes.
Q: As the books say, we are born and we die, aging and disease, that's something that isn't so hard perhaps.
A (Labangalatika dd): It's not so hard.
Q: And we have set up like this, the three different qualities we can see as well like this. Yes, some can categorize, it's just a way of categorizing things.
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes.
Q: So those things we can confirm, but then the other things that can't be, those you can put your faith in.
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes. And then we also have the other level, this realization, which might not be something where we speak directly to Krsna face to face. But I remember when I came to the temple at the HLP center in Gothenburg and sat in these classes, and it was like bhakta classes and someone sat in class and said that in the material world, you cannot become happy by satisfying the senses. But when you please Krsna through your service, you can directly feel happiness from within. And I walked around there with a broom in the temple and experienced that I felt happiness from within, which I normally don't experience in contact with a broom, like. And that is also something, that one's consciousness is lifted when you go all in for this, like. And that is also a realization that might not be complete, but which takes one quite far. Along with the fact that it's not just something you have to believe in, as I think if we were to read the Vedic scriptures without Prabhupada's purports: "He has no hands, but he grabs everything. And he has no feet, but he runs." Like, it's hard to get a grip on that. Even Bhagavad-gita can be hard to grasp without purports. But once you have gotten this entry point, there is very much that, partly as you say, can be confirmed by looking around and using your common sense, and partly things that are confirmed in another way, like. That if you were to read a book about some boys who were out in the woods playing and playing leapfrog, but when we read about Krsna we directly become happy. And that is also something very special. When we read this, we all know how it ends. We know how Mahābhārata ends. We know how all pastimes in the scriptures end. But we don't tire of reading them anyway, because they have this quality that touches the soul. And that is also something that strengthens our faith.
A (Labangalatika dd): But right, if your sister said something about science being this and that, and I said something about the Vedic scriptures being this and that, so I said something and she said about science: "I say, but science, they change their minds all the time." Eventually maybe they will reach this as well, who knows, like. And people are so used to the religion they deal with being the Bible, which doesn't give much to hold onto, like. Try reading the Old Testament—I mean, I have managed once when I tried to get through the Old Testament. I actually didn't succeed. But the creation story, it's just like, what do you say, shorthand, it's just very, very abbreviated. Yes, it seems that the Bible's creation story goes in the same order as the Vedic one. But it gives nothing to relate to, like. And then people are so used to being the kind of people who don't know anything. But we know something, even if we don't know everything. Most devotees maybe haven't deep-dived into the fifth canto because it's difficult. But at the same time, it's very liberating to see that it's there. Someone has done this. Maybe I don't need to do it, but someone has done this. So. Yes, but we succeeded. Can I get a few comments, please? That's a period.
Q: But I don't know how it ends with Indra as a pig.
A (Labangalatika dd): I can't promise where that story comes from. It's a story I've heard in class. He received a curse. Indra, a devotee serving Krsna, like, he was given the trust to be king of heaven, or the heavenly planets, but he does crazy things, like. And then he gets cursed. He had kidnapped some wife of some sage who cursed him: "Now you are so attached to your genitals, I curse you, your body will be covered with them." And then they came and asked, can't we remove that curse? But you can soften it a little bit. It can be eyes instead. They are still body openings, but a bit less gross. So this story, exactly what happened, I only have this part left. He received a curse to descend as a pig. And then, for example, this brahmana...
Q: Did he go back or did he...
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes, yes, he came back. He came back. It was temporary.
Q: Yes.
A (Labangalatika dd): It happened another time too, right? He hides at the bottom of some lake, either that or they have... As I said, I shouldn't talk about something I don't even remember. But it's the same with someone getting angry that this is very important for the whole world and he hides somewhere and then they have to find him. I don't remember. But it's not that he disappears and there is a new Indra, rather he comes back again.
Q: But it shows that even a demigod attitude...
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes. Yes.
Q: Yes.
A (Labangalatika dd): But someone who has a slightly higher standard, we wouldn't be happy there.
Q: No.
A (Labangalatika dd): But he was.
Q: No others happy...
A (Labangalatika dd): Relatively happy until time showed itself in the form of death around him, then he realized that no, this was apparently just illusion. Like this girl who said: "I am happy."
Q: Yes.
A (Labangalatika dd): Yes. And they were so sweet. They came and took prasadam, and they had their bag and tried to sleep at the central station, but it didn't work because the guards came and woke them up at regular intervals so they couldn't sleep at the central station, like. I don't know how it went for them. I think one of them got a job at a newspaper. I hope it went well for them. They came every week and took prasadam and heard Bhagavad-gita, but yeah, I don't know. Hard to know how much sank in. So. And you can't argue when people say they are happy. But as mentioned, there are different levels. I mean, if you live in a war-torn place where bombs are raining down and you have nothing to eat and no heat in winter, then maybe you would be happy if you got an apartment with a roof that wasn't being bombed, like. But once you had that, you would realize that it's not enough. And on the heavenly level too, there is very little of this gross suffering that we have, like. Okay, you die, but it takes a huge amount of time before you die, like. You don't get sick. You don't suffer from birth. From what I've understood, when children are born, they are born—they are just there, fully formed. Because that's the type of bodies that function that way. But there you have subtle suffering, that someone gets more respect than me. So the only place where you can put all forms of suffering on the shelf entirely is pure devotional service. Like Prabhupada said: "Come to us! You don't need to work. You can just take prasadam and chant." It doesn't work that way today, we don't invite people in that manner. We don't have that level. But maybe we will come back to it. Maybe we will come back to it. And then we have this mental suffering when you might carry a lot of impressions from before, having a mind that is incapable of being calm and satisfied, or these anarthas that come from devotional service, if you become proud of your position, like. But eventually when you have surrendered to Krsna, you have put that on the shelf. I was a gurukula teacher briefly. Then all the children were supposed to pay obeisances to me in the morning. And it really wasn't that one thought: "Yes indeed! I am grand and fantastic. Everyone bows to me." Rather one thought: "Oh, what fine qualities the children have who can pay obeisances like this." So the more devotional service develops, the more our, what shall we say, our attachment to suffering disappears, like. You have to be attached to something to suffer. You have to identify with the body to experience this pain. It might not happen so fast, but it affects you more and more the more you are attached to Krsna. And that is also something you can experience. What Prabhupada said to people: "How can you prove that this lifestyle works?" "Just come here, participate, and see!"
Thank you everyone. Hare Krsna. Thank you for letting me come and join your class. Hare Krsna.