Soon after “transcendental meditation” first caught the fancy of people in America, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, gave this talk at Boston’s Northeastern University.
Your charge is that they have forgotten God. They will answer, “We have not forgotten God. We are going to church. How have we forgotten God?”
Prove that chemicals make life. Your belief is that life is made from chemicals. So prove it; then it is science. But you cannot prove it; therefore it remains a belief.
Chanting the holy names of God in congregation raises us to the state of pure spiritual consciousness–a state of joyful awareness of God that transcends all petty prejudices and material distinctions.
Here it is clearly stated that out of all the different kinds of yogis-—the astanga-yogi, the hatha-yogi, the jnana-yogi, the karma-yogi, and the bhakti-yogi—the bhakti-yogi is on the highest platform of yoga.
From your childhood body to your boyhood body to your youthful body, your consciousness continues. Similarly, your consciousness will carry you into another body, and that transmigration from one body to another is called death.
When you understand what spiritual life is, you will see that in the spiritual sense also you are subordinate, because your nature is to be subordinate.
We understand business to mean “occupational duty.” According to our Vedic culture, there are different types of business. The four divisions of the social system, based on people’s qualities and types of work.
The perfect socio-religious system is explained by Lord Krsna in Bhagavad-gita. (This system differs from the prejudicial system of caste by birth.)
Vedic culture teaches the culmination of education is to understand God. That is education. Otherwise, the education for learning how to eat nicely; how to sleep nicely, how to have sex and defend nicely—this education is there even among the animals.
Our program is to worship Govinda, the original person, with love and devotion. This is Krsna consciousness. We are teaching people to love Krsna. That’s all.
The soul transmigrates at every moment as our body changes from childhood, to youth, and then to old age. When the body disintegrates at death, the soul starts another round of transmigration in a new body.
Sex is the main happiness in this material world. That is the main happiness, and it is very abominable. What is this happiness? It is like the rubbing of two hands together to relieve an itch.
By speculation Aristotle may have known something about God, but our point is that we can know everything about God from God Himself. This is not a question of “religion.” It is simply a matter of the best process to know God.
Pregnancy means the child is already born. How can they say there is no child? What is this nonsense? When a woman is pregnant, why do we say she is “with child”? This means the child is already born.
“Those who worship the demigods will take birth among the demigods, those who worship ghosts and spirits will take birth among such beings, and those who worship Me will live with Me”
The atom bomb manufacturer is thinking he is successful in his life by building an atom bomb, but he does not know how to save himself from death. Nothing he has done can save him from death.
Maharaja Pariksit, the great king of the entire world, was cursed by a brahmana to meet death from the bite of a serpent within seven days. When he was informed of the curse he at once left his palatial home and went to the bank of the Ganges to prepare for his impending death.
In India many men are already unemployed, so to introduce more machinery there is a not a very good proposal. One hundred men’s work can be done by one man working a machine. But why should there be so many men unemployed?
In our temples there are regular Krsna conscious programs so that one may be purified internally and externally. If you constantly remember the lotus-eyed Supreme Lord, you automatically become purified.