How to be free of prejudice?

Goswami Maharaj: Any questions from anyone? Oh, and what we do is like… maybe already know, I’m the person who’s been a little ill in last two days… a little fever but what we are doing… I’m gonna speak in straight English, like he’s gonna translate in Russian, you’re gonna translate in Chinese. But I’m not gonna do one line… you’re not gonna do Chinese? … [laughter] but I mean like… you understand? Is that okay? Is it difficult?
Audience: Sometimes!
Goswami Maharaj: Oh, okay! So maybe…
Audience: So, Maharaj, what do you mean… when you will talk … and we will whisper, I’m in Russian and he’s in Chinese?
Goswami Maharaj: Yeah!
Audience: Okay!
Goswami Maharaj: It’ll be interesting! Yeah, you go like…
Audience: You just get the gist.
Goswami Maharaj: Yeah, in other words don’t, don’t think that you… like you have to give every particular thing and maybe tonight I’ll try and slow it down. Right. Hare Krishna. Any questions? Jayavati, is there anything, you think, I should speak about?
Audience: Right now we don’t have any questions.
Goswami Maharaj: Okay…, okay. So, from the Russkii section? [laughter].

Because in other word, I can start talking about Mahaprabhu at Advaita Acharya’s house, but I don’t know if I should do that. You know what I mean? There’s one side that says, “Yes! It’s a divine vibration even if you don’t understand all the back story and then there’s another side that says, “Try to keep  on elementary. What is your advice, oh, dear one to the sadhus?
Sadhu Priya: Um… I’m always in favor of the divine sound [laughter].

Goswami Maharaj: That would come from the lightningbeats.com now.[laughter]
Sadhu Priya Prabhu: We also have spent much of the day answering questions.
Goswami Maharaj: Yeah! Yes!
Audience: Jamuna has a question.
Goswami Maharaj: Okay!

Question: Sometimes people would have, you know… pious… it’s like…  bias, prejudice, something you like and something you don’t like… She wants to know how to not be bias, how to not to judge people.
Goswami Maharaj: Yes! Are you talking about my mother? [laughter] my mother… my… it frustrates my elders brother very much. He’ll take her somewhere and then he go, “Would you… what do you like?” And she goes, “Oh, I don’t like that kind of thing…” And he’ll say, “But you never tried it!”

You know so it’s… yeah, this is something… But I would say this that… See, Guru Maharaj talks about this and he calls it that he uses this one expression which he calls ‘acquired prejudice’. Acquired prejudice. And he’s talking about all of us. We are operating on the basis of acquired prejudice. Ok?

So, and Bhaktivinod Thakur says in one place. He makes an interesting observation. He says that when we acquired the prejudice it was without thinking, but when it comes time to give up that acquired prejudice then we have to think about it for a long time. We have so many things we have to consider.

Heard me? Yeah, I think so. So, it’s not gonna be such interesting film. [laughter] So, um… now… they use a word in India in Sanskrit it’s called samskara. And samskara is translated in different ways but it means like mental impressions. Mental impressions. Like in printing machine it’s an impression, right? So, what you mean by samskara is we’ve lived many times and many life forms, reincarnation all of that… and each time you are getting one impression, another impression, another impression, another impression. And this is clouding our consciousness. So when we try to reflect like… ‘who am I’, ‘what is my position in the world’, ‘where I’ve come from’, ‘where am I going’? All these things. It’s being filtered through the clouds of acquired prejudice or impressions.

So, in the first verse of Sikshashtaka, which is Mahaprabhu’s famous eight prayers, in the first line He says,

cheto-darpaṇa-mārjanaṁ bhava-mahā-dāvāgni-nirvāpaṇaṁ
śreyaḥ-kairava-chandrikā-vitaraṇaṁ vidyā-vadhu-jīvanaṁ
ānandāmbudhi-vardhanaṁ prati-padaṁ pūrṇāmṛtāsvādanaṁ
[sarvvātma-snapanaṁ] paraṁ vijayate śrī-kṛṣṇa-saṅkīrttanam
(Śikṣāṣṭakam: 1)

So in the first line it says the mind is like a mirror. We’ve got this mirror right here as a prop, right? So they say, a mirror, like this mirror, if we don’t clean it, it will get a layer of another layer of dust, another layer of dust and when it gets sufficiently covered by different layers of dust you won’t be able to see yourself reflected in the mirror.

So in Bhagavad-gita Krishna says in this one sloka, “yatholbena… garbhas…” (Bhagavad-gītā: 3.38) He compares, you know we have the modes of ignorance, passion and goodness as different layers or coverings of consciousness. One’s like dust, one’s thicker, different things. So the method to overcome acquired prejudice is to take shelter at the lotus feet of sadhu, sastra, guru and vaisnav.

So in the most primal guru-mantra that says,

oṁ ajñāna-timirāndhasya jñānāñjana-śalākayā
chakṣur unmilitaṁ yena tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ

The disciple is offering respectful obeisances to the guru saying, – my eyes were… like… cataracted. You know cataracts? You know what cataract is? Old people get it very often, like they can’t see properly any more. So in this sloka the disciple is saying, “My eyes, they have like cataracts of what? Acquired prejudice and bias. So through… I’m seeing everything through this bias or acquired prejudice.” Then he’s saying in the prayer, “But you, I’m praying to my guru, you like a surgeon…” You know laser surgery? That’s how they do cataracts surgery in the modern world. So he is saying like, “With pen-point light, with the light of Scriptures and the guru… teachings of the guru-varga you remove the cataracts of bias and prejudice of my eye and now I can see things properly.

And… in the… back into the Siksastaka sloka where they are comparing the mind to a mirror that’s accumulated so many layers of dust. It says ‘cheto-darpaṇa’. Darpaṇa means mirror. And mārjanaṁ… and cheto means consciousness. So we sing,  “The mirror of your mind, your consciousness, your way of seeing will be cleansed by chanting Krishna-nama, under the direction of your guru and vaisnav.

So it’s a question also of faith. So they say… when we talk about faith between guru and disciple or faith in Krishna Consciousness they give some examples what they mean. It’s a very famous example and it’s about a rope and a snake. And they say, “If the guru says the snake is a rope a disciple sees a rope. Rope! Means like what you ties things with… yeah, because it looks like a snake. So he’s saying, “If he says there’s a rope, that’s a snake!” Then you have to like… see a snake. And if there’s a snake and he says, “That’s a rope” – you have to see rope! That level of faith and belief.

And will add this, that  it might be easier to see a rope as a snake, but to see a snake and only think it’s a rope that might be more difficult. [laughter] So, what it means… and there’s a famous verse about it,

yasya deve parā bhaktir
yathā deve tathā gurau
tasyaite kathitā hy arthāḥ
prakāśante mahātmanaḥ
(Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad: 6.23)

Saying, the type of faith you have in God you have to have in guru. Maybe even more. And to that person who can believe that and offer themselves with that type of submission, devotion, faithfulness. It says ‘prakāśante mahātmanaḥ’ – everything will be revealed to them. So… (is that snoring? Anyway… oh, okay. Just see if my ears are working. Yes. [laughter])

And I wanted to say something about that, you know as that… there was one man and I’m just gonna say the straight way… He came to Guru Maharaj and he’s saying, “I have insomnia and I cannot sleep, Swamiji, this is my situation…” And everybody, “Oh…”

And then he goes, “But I want to tell you, he said, “I went to your this ISKCON centre in Bombay for the class and then I got sleep [laughter]. And then there was some discussion about Nidra-devi and again this is one of those puranic legends that… remember, she took shelter of Kumbakarna in Rama-lila. We don’t know so much but she is like sleeping in… and taking shelter of Kumbakarna for … you know how long … like yugas, I mean a long time. But then he finally woke up for his, Rama-lila, I mean, he plays the part of the demon. So then Nidra Devi, the Goddess of sleep, she needed some new place to go. And she said, “I’ve been sheltered there for like… so many thousands of years. Now I need some new place to go. Then they say to her, “All right, wherever there’s a Bhagavatam recitation you can go there. So we always have feel, like, when we are speaking the Bhagavatam, we always go like… [laughter].

And we are saying, “Oh, Nidra-devi…,” you know… when I was in that New-York temple there this one man, it was his job to keep everybody awake. These are early morning classes and you know those things you spray flowers like ‘psh psh psh…’ …one setting is like that ‘pshshshsh’ – spray. And the other one is like long rains and he like a cop, he would patrol like you know, around and few were getting like this and if someone started to go like this, he turned around and go like ‘pshshshsh’ [imitating sound of spraying water]. Watering their face… And he goes like that, “I wasn’t sleeping!” You know. So some he do the spraying another is he’d like think, …you think when I go by, he turned around – ‘pshshsh’ …I’m serious. [laughter] Welcome to the Hare Krishna movement! You too can be a member. [laughter]

And there were some people who shall I go nameless but who would like… well, I’ll tell later about Gurudev, but they would… well who won’t go nameless – Jayadvaita Maharaj, the revered Jayadvaita Maharaj, the great editor of Srila Prabhupada’s books all the B… Prabhupada had hundred thousand percent of faith in him and his editing of his books, but sometimes in the class he would start to go out and who’s giving the class would go, “Jayadvaita, what’s that sloka? And he would,

daivī hy eṣā guṇa-mayī
mama māyā duratyayā
mām eva ye prapadyante
māyām etāṁ taranti te
(Bhagavad-gītā: 7.14)

And they did go, like… ”Uh…”[laughter] So once also, Gurudev… we know Gurudev’s been super affectionate and you know… and it’s true, he’s Love and Affection personified really truly to the extreme, you know… and how he backs his devotees some he’d go through hell with them and all these things. And being with people like myself that’s a likelihood. You know, it’s not just like a saying of flattery, but anyway when his younger… you know, Guru Maharaj could be super affectionate and loving and it’s really true, totally charming and all that… but he’s also very… he could be also very severe. That was his word about himself. ‘Cause when they said sometimes like, “He made some comments about this or that… He once said… he said, “I’m a man who if I was in Vaikuntha I would be a troublemaker, I would cause dissension…” He said, like, if he was in Vaikuntha people going like… “You know, he’s saying something higher than we were actually…” like that would be trouble. He said, again he said that about himself, another time something came up and we were trying, “Oh, no, Maharaj! You are this…,” and he would go, “No, I’m a severe commentator!” That he said.

Once some people came to him and said, when they were trying to find something, they go, “We… there is some letter at the Allahabad Gaudiya Math, that said, you know, ‘you are the troublemaker’. And Guru Maharaj like, you know, like leaning on the wall and this person’s giving this report, “There’s a letter somewhere, that says, you know like… troublemaker and caused dissension. Guru Maharaj when he finally was clear what’s been said, he went, “I accept the challenge!” He said, “Yes! Whenever things are not up to mark I say so, involvedly I say so. Therefore I’m alone.” And then we go like, “But we are happy to be with you, Guru Maharaj…” [laughter]

So, but also he could be severe. Gurudev… one of the reasons Gurudev was so tolerant with everyone… it’s only one reason, there are many but he said and he meant this not as a statement of humility but like… He said, “Guru Maharaj was so tolerant with me, how can I turn around and not be tolerant with you and others? That was a very beautiful way of thinking, he is saying, “I know how much…” and he’s saying that. I mean, you can adjust it in any way you want, right? According to your conception. But he did say this, like. So that’s why he said so. Guru Maharaj is just unlimitedly tolerant and affectionate, so I have to, I feel I should do that with all of you and others and like that…

So then… but that said, Guru Maharaj could be a little severe with him too at times. ‘Cause he’s a young boy and like sometimes Guru Maharaj is giving a class and a talk and … he’s a young boy and he’s falling asleep. And Guru Maharaj thinks, what he is talking is very important and we can assume it probably is, you know. Not that he’s just for some other reason he feels like some fine point has come and the boy’s nodding off. So he would give the same thing, “Gaurendu! That was Gurudev’s brahmachari name. And then Govinda Maharaj would do the same like Jayadvaita… Looked up and then quote the verse or tell the fine point. And Guru Maharaj went like, “Oh! I thought he was sleeping but he didn’t miss the fine point, that’s actually, you know, going in.”

So, once Guru Maharaj accompanied Saraswati Thakur on a program, like sometimes we went with Gurudev invited in somebody’s house for dinner. So Saraswati Thakur that’s also there but you know… Gaudiya Math’s grihasthas… I’ve met some of them. They’re like out of the pages of Charitamrita purports. People with like full temples in their house, Deities, four or five aratis every day, you know. They only take prasadam, they do… they whole program going on in their house.

Like you know grihastha-vaisnava even sometimes are called grihastha-brahmacharis. Yeah, which I told about earlier, when Krishna Kshetra Prabhu… like in Romania sometimes we would visit with this Indian professor was teaching Hindi and through him we could have access to his students, teach Bhagavad-gita, give classes, whatever. But we’ve cooked in his house and he’s very happy. I mean his wife and family were back in India and we’d show up and he’d get all excited. We’ve cooked something for lunch and he showed how to make parathas. And there are different ways to make them, I should show this to Vishakha because it’s like another way when the end up looking like a diamond shape or pyramid. ‘Cause when you take a circle and fold it in half and again it ends up being like that but there are a few things you do along the way.

Anyway he would do this. So he’d make his part… and he was like really happy he’s got some association and everything and we were in saffron as brahmacharis and he could probably pick up some attitude from us like… we are brahmacharis, you know… and he’s a grihastha, or something like that. So he wanted to let us know like I know something about brahmacharya too. You know… ‘maybe more than you, boys!’ So he’s saying, you know, like my wife lives in India and I see her like once a year… And we were like, “Yeah…,” and he said also, he said, “I’ve had three children and I’ve never seen my wife naked.”

At that point we were just like, “Oh Baba…” just like, how do you process that? I know… I mean, I’m not trying to put these images in your mind [laughter] but he said, “I’ve had three children…” and I believed him. He said, “I’ve had three children, I’ve never seen my wife naked…” we just like, “Will you allow us to dress like this in your presence?” He means to say, “I did this, you know… Bhagavad-gita again, “dharmāviruddho… kāmo ’smi…” (Bhagavad-gītā: 7.11) – that’s… and he was for real. He wasn’t… how do you say… what’s the word… my brain is not fully operational, it’s kind of like that light, the two on the side are working but the fore and the center are not. [laughter]. So why was I saying that? That the grihasthas and the house were… where… how did this go? Oh, Saraswati Thakur… so … At least I’m paying attention…

Jayavati, I don’t even know everything I’m gonna say [laughter]. Or when it’s gonna come out, it’s not all planned. Even though I do work on stuff from time to time I like in a shower and stuff… but most of the time I’m like ‘u-u-u’… [laughter]. And I feel bad when I go to sleep, when I think of all people I’ve offended during the day and I promise, “Tomorrow I’m gonna do better [laughter], I’m gonna wake up and be inoffensive, at least try to.

And I’ve heard… someone you have an offensive attitude towards if you have a favorable dream about them then it’s a good sign, ‘cause when you’re subconscious, you know if it was… you were inoffensive in a dream then it means it’s very shallow or superficial. Don’t ask me, how I know that or where… I’m just, you know… I share things from time to time.

So anyway, so… I think it’s nice to hear like… Gurudev, Guru Maharaj, he’s going on a program with his guru. I think it’s a very sweet thing, you know… Saraswati Thakur’s going and it’s only the two of them. It’s not like a big group and that sets it up. So when they get there, Saraswati Thakur back to the original question of… he picks a sloka from the Bhagavatam that he’s excited to speak about and I also… I like that I think you got it mixed up a little bit, but when you genuinely enthusiastic about something that’s the… and this is the little preaching thing here everybody is …’what’s… how should we preach, what should we do?’ Vaidehi always ask this question? Regularly. Each time…

I say that because she might watch that some day [laughter]. Kid. But and I almost say the same thing all the time although yes… atma-jnana, we start with certain things about the soul, transmigration that’s true we do that but in addition to that if you want to stay vital yourself you tell people… vital means life, keep your vitality, like in not get bored: ‘Oh, I said the same thing over and over and over again…’ If you will share what you’re appreciating, what you like… Just like when we eat something and this if funny too. Like mayavadis or impersonalists, they will say, “When you eat something very nice you become silent.” You get it? That’s what they say.

We don’t say that. And it’s not our experience. My experience is if you eat something very nice, you’re going ‘wow!’ You know like… did you… did you have this? Did you get the sabji yet? Or did you get the sweet? You’ve got to try… Gurudev called Paramananda once on the telephone. Paramananda’s like driving in down town and it’s when Gurudev’s health is not good and he gets this call from Gurudev. He’s going like, “What’s wrong? You gotta come back immediately!” He’s going, “All right, I’m coming!” He thinks, Gurudev is like in trouble health-wise… And when he gets back he says, “Did you taste the sweet rice [laughter] that Manasa Krishna made?” He says, “Did you taste this? This is unbelievable! He called him like on the phone… he’s racing back like you know… killed a couple of people on the way, but they were run over in the service and got sukriti, they’re now in heaven [laughter].

So when you taste something, anything on any level about Krishna Consciousness that what you share with… They are going, “What should I say first? Should I start talking,…” you know… No, no! what you like?

When Bon Maharaj of Italy Bhakti Madhur Bon he came to the Math. He was actually a catholic priest previously. Would you like an interesting story? But he comes to the Math and his first meeting with Guru Maharaj, he starting telling, “Oh, I’ve read some Bhagavad-gita,…” you know… and it was interesting seeing how Guru Maharaj is dealing with someone for the first time he goes, “Oh, you’ve read Bhagavad-gita?” he goes, “Which part did you like?” That’s what he said to him. “Which part of the book you liked? And this is how he scored a lot of points quickly – he said, “You know, he talk like this because I’ve got a bit of Italian accent a little from mridanga plays. So I like the part and …where He says Surrender everything to Me, become My devotee! [laughter] Give up everything and become My devotee! [laughter]. And like you could hear like a bell goes ‘ding!’ You know like and Guru Maharaj, “Bless you, my child!”

So it’s like in the 18th chapter where Krishna says, “Give up everything and surrender to Me,” – he goes, “I really like that part...” So Guru Maharaj’s saying, “Hm… interesting man!

So, there are two things. One thing is to consider who you’re talking to. That is true. You know, we are talking to a child you won’t go into… talk about Vedanta-sutra, you know. There’ll be another way. So, what we call adhikar, means the capacity of the speaker and the audience. And we are even told, “If the speaker… on certain things, on confidential subject matters exceeds the rasa-siksa more specifically.

Saraswati Thakur wrote a hundred verses, saying, “No, don’t do that, no, never! Cannot be! So he’s said, “A qualified guru, you know, rasik will never give rasa-siksa to an unqualified disciple, at least one who is in Rupanuga line. It’s right there in black and white. And he inverses is, “If you do this, then you’re violating the principles of Rupanuga line by giving confidential instructions that’s beyond the adhikar or capacity or eligibility of a particular person. It makes perfect sense. So in the case of Gurudev, some of these slokas that he relishes… he at most in a particular good mood he might say them before us in Sanskrit but not explain them. That was his way around certain things. If he was in the mood he quoted something from the Gita Govinda, he did that. And as Manasa Krishna Prabhhu said last night here that… he once said about us like, “Good for… (what did he say?)… good for hearing, but not for telling. So that’s I realized I’ll say it in Sanskrit, you won’t know what it means and as you told me but on some vibrational level that substance is there and there’ll be some benefit from that.

So anyway Srila Guru Maharaj is accompanying Saraswati Thakur to a house program and in that house Saraswati Thakur speaks on the sloka from the tenth canto, the prayers of the devattas, right? And it’s when Krishna’s already in the womb of Devaki and… I’m not hundred percent clear on that but it’s in that section, the prayers from the Demigods. I believe, Devaki’s like this Krishna’s in her and she’s effulgents… and gods and goddesses come and they’re offering prayers to her and there’s this one, that has the word satya in it,

satya-vrataṁ satya-paraṁ tri-satyaṁ
satyasya yoniṁ nihitaṁ cha satye…
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: 10.2.26)

It uses the word satya around ten times. And each way it’s… then he … So Saraswati Thakur gives some …and satya means in its most basic sense truth, but… he’s starting give many different deep explanations of what is truth. So he gave that extraordinary talk and Guru Maharaj is thinking, “This is incredible!” But then he has a dilemma, because he forgot to bring… like he has pen and paper. He didn’t bring any pen or paper. So then he’s thinking, “Do I leave?... and I’m the the only person… do I leave and go and get pen and paper? But then I’m gonna miss something while he’s speaking or do I stay…” and he was so hypnotized by what was being said he couldn’t leave.

So the talk finishes, the program finishes and then later Prabhupad Saraswati Thakur says to him like, “So did you get that?” And Guru Maharaja’s like, “Oh, no!” And he’s saying, “No!…”  explaining the problem and he said it was so extraordinary, you know. And then Saraswati Thakur made a joke to him, he said, “Then you are a govar Ganesh!” I will now explain.

Like, you know who Ganesh is, the elephant? You noticed he has one tusk like this and one that’s shortened? One’s not full. Because he writes all the books, Mahabharat and the Vedas and he and Vedavyas, the speaker had an agreement. Ganesh said… Vyasa said, “You have to just write, you can never stop. I’m gonna speak and you have to write everything. If you pause I’ll stop.” And he’s like, “When do we have to start?” “Now!” He had no pen, Ganesh, or paper. So he broke off his tusk… he has one like that and a shorter one, if you see any picture of Ganesh. So he broke it off and he starts writing with that and Vedavyasa is speaking everything.

So, Prabhupada Saraswati Thakur says to Guru Maharaj, “You are govar Ganesh! Govar, I will explain, means cow dung. Cow dung. So he’s thinking like, “A real… and it means like… you know cows, you know like the paddies from the cows [laughter] Yes! So he says, “A real Ganesh would write it all down.” This shows Saraswati Thakur had sense of humor too, because, “You are govar Ganesh!” Like you made out of cow dung. It’s like a low insulting but in a sweet way. Especially if it’s Saraswati Thakur and a person as Guru Maharaj [laughter].

So then Guru Maharaj started talking to Saraswati Thakur, “But the talk was so extraordinary I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t just… it was so incredible what you were saying. I couldn’t leave!” So then and … then Saraswati Thakur said to him, “You thought it was extraordinary.” So then Guru Maharaj said to Saraswati Thakur, “It was such a wonderful talk I couldn’t leave to go get a pen and paper. I was like hypnotized.” And Saraswati Thakur says, “You thought it was extraordinary, I thought it was extraordinary and I would like to hear it again even though I said it, something divine was passing through me, so I want to hear it again,” as if it was so… like it wasn’t his. Some divine power came down and spoke all these things.

So then Guru Maharaj said interestingly in retrospect. He said, “I had mixed feelings about that. He said, “On one hand I felt bad because I didn’t write it down and disappointed Prabhupad in that way. He said, “But in my heart I was very happy actually because I knew when he was in that special zone giving this certain quality of substance I knew it. I could recognize it. It wasn’t you know like that I didn’t appreciate it, but what I appreciated and thought was extraordinary he also appreciated and thought was extraordinary. So he said, “In my heart I was happy. I felt bad that I didn’t write it down but in my heart I felt oh what I thought was really good he also thinks is very good.”

And again if we were to look at that sloka… I’ve looked at it at different times… you know, it’s you just can’t understand hundred percent what’s been said there I’ll say that. You’ll just have to look at it… then you see… like… and realize it would have been nice if Guru Maharaj wrote it down [laughter].

But again we can think, why did he pick that? It’s not like a simple one, it’s famous within the higher circle of the guru-varga it’s famous in their world. Then I understand. And it’s the point. So, we can say, “Well, when he’s speaking in the higher world  they’re appreciating. His audience is not limited to the people who sit before him. We could say that. So it’s all good. Any talk about Krishna is good. When Mahaprabhu left and took sannyas, the last instruction he tells to everybody, “Talk about Krishna! You know, worship Krishna, what… you know, “bhajo kṛṣṇa, bolo ‘kṛṣṇa’…,” what’s the other one? …“kṛṣṇa-śikṣā…” (Ājñā-Ṭahal 2) Yeah, that’s in that song… but in other places he says, “Look, just talk about Krishna, take Krishna’s name and worship Krishna, just do that!” He says, “24 hours, never stop, never… enough.” I mean, as much as you can. And we’ve heard in the beginning that Srila Prabhupada Swami Maharaj, he told that sometimes Saraswati Thakur would be examining a magazine article and I’m not saying we have to adopt the same standard. I’m just telling the story …that so he would not read the whole thing, he would say, “How many times did they mention the name Krishna? I just want to know that.” They go, “Oh… 50 times…” “Good! It’s good article!” Didn’t look at everything else, he would like, “That’s a good one! They are gonna hear again, again and again Krishna Krishna.

Someone said, there is a place called Krishna Copy Center in San-Francisco, owned by a man, a Mr. Krishna. There’s the place where people go to make like due desktop publishing and Xeroxing, and all that kind of stuff. And some man on this street asking me for directions, he goes, “Where is Krishna? Where is Krishna?” And I think, “You are so fortunate!” He’s going, “Where is Krishna?” And I think, “You are so fortunate to be saying this…” He says, “But they told me, it’s on the corner of like… Third and Market Street. [laughter].

kāhāṅ mora prāṇa-nātha muralī-vadana
kāhāṅ karoṅ kāhāṅ pāṅ vrajendra-nandana
(Chaitanya-charitāmṛta: Madhya 2.15)

So Guru Maharaj called the first book Search for Sri Krishna – Reality the Beautiful. Saying, Krishna Consciousness is about the Search. Finding is static. To find – you’re done! You’ve got that thing. “Oh, and I have that. And I’ve heard that story, I’ve read that book, I read that section, I’ve heard that before.” That’s dead. It’s actually living substance, you can approach it again and again, hear it, extract something new – it’s there for the…, you know, asking, the taking if they are pleased to allow some divine substance to descend. It’s not in our prowess. But if respectfully,

vikrīḍitaṁ vraja-vadhūbhir idaṁ cha viṣṇoḥ
śraddhānvito ’nuśṛṇuyād atha varṇayed yaḥ
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: 10.33.39)

With faith you approach – again and again some new light will come.

Srila Gurudev is saying, he’s reading Bhagavad-gita for his whole life and still like excited – reading it and finding something new. Even in the last couple of years of his life he picked up the Gita and go through it again and find something and you could see visibly – very happy, something… some new substance is coming to him. Like that. It’s not as Guru Maharaj said, “A dead thing in a laboratory that were analyzing, a dead body in a laboratory. But something living, dynamic, growing, developing.”

And sometimes we would be with Srila Guru Maharaj and he would say very excited, almost childlike, “Oh, this just came to me two days back! Not like, “Oh, here’s something I’ve been preaching for fifty years! He’s just said, “This just came to me two days ago. Listen to this! And then gives some explanation, something new, some new light that you’d never heard before.

“Nityaṁ nava-navāya-mānam,” that’s what Parikshit Maharaj and Shukadev Goswami. 7 days he’s fasting and Shukadev’s talking about Krishna and Maharaj Parikshit’s saying like, “I’m not thirsty, I’m not hungry and I’m not tired. You’re nourishing me, you’re talking about Krishna. I’m so filled with nectar, I’m totally enlivened. Just go on speaking.”

“Hlādinī-śakti-karaṇā, puṣṭi-karaṇā,” we were told, Krishna, we can say, like we alway say, “Krishna is ‘akhila-rasāmṛta-mūrti’. He is beauty personified, rasa-rāj, ecstasy personified. So this means there’s all this nectarine juice in Krishna. Who can extract it? Krishna’s ecstasy… who can take that out? Jiva-soul… little bit, other souls, something, but Radharani, Her name mahābhāv. She can draw infinite rasa from Krishna and then nourish everyone. That’s what Krishna Consciousness is and those who assist Her in that service She is nourishing them with some extraordinary substance we cannot even properly estimate. But we can understand that’s the outcome of Krishna Consciousness.

And as Guru Maharaj would say on this theme of Mahaprabhu and His separation, “To the degree that the separation is painful, to the corresponding degree, the ecstasy is deep. That’s the way of measuring. Just like the hungry person is relishing every morsel. Every little bit they’re relishing… Really they are. Because of their intense hunger they take a little bit, they’re tasting that, they’re really appreciating that. So those who really feel something when they approach these slokas they are getting some substance that… you know, is … what shall we say?

bāhya viṣa-jvālā haya, bhitare ānanda-maya,
kṛṣṇa-premāra adbhuta charita
(Chaitanya-charitāmṛta: Madhya 2.50)

It has some wonderful extraordinary quality characteristic and as Guru Maharaj said, “Once you taste that, everything else becomes tasteless. Say, “rasa-varjaṁ raso ’py asya paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate.” (Bhagavad-gītā: 2.59) That’s the Gita sloka but once Guru Maharaj went as so far as to say that Gaura-lila is the higher taste. That’s the ‘paraṁ dṛṣṭvā’ is Gaura-lila. There’s some mysterious couching there and through that then the Krishna-lila becomes very sweet and appreciable.

Because Gaura-lila… what is the basis of Gaura-lila? Viraha –Separation. That means the greatest hunger. So everything he says is perfect, it’s inconsistent. It’s not that he said one thing somewhere, another thing somewhere else. And then you can’t put it all together and find some… it’s all extremely consistent. They all fit… anything… you put the piece together, if fits the other one.

So they saying, “So how can he say that?” As he once told me… he said, “My Godbrothers…” it was in the afternoon, again like relaxing he goes, (first we were shocked), he goes, “My Godbrothers, they say, that I say things that were not said by the previous acharyas.” And there’s like a dramatic pause… like… “They do?…” He said, “But they accept them because they’re in line with what the predecessor acharya say.

So when Guru Maharaj says something, you think it’s simple, this is provoke. He is saying the, ‘paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate’ sloka in the Bhagavad-gita indicates that Gaura-lila is higher than Krishna-lila, it’s the superior taste. And then he can prove it through explanation and you know… what do you say… cross referencing other places. And then you’ll find something like that in his poetry somewhere.

So that’s why he said, “I prefer to speak in a small circle, something of a higher…” you know… and that’s really, you know… we’re glad he did that. And that’s the real true and lasting wealth of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math which distinguishes it from any other math, from any other religious institution, from any other religious organization. It’s the magnitude of original substance.

Hare Krishna