Today ISKCON in Australia and New Zealand includes four temples and three farms totaling more than 1,200 acres. It has opened four vegetarian restaurants, initiated two drug rehabilitation programs, and established the Ratha-yatra chariot festival.
Prabhupada retired through the rear door, back up to his apartment, his guests would disappear through the front door, back into the city. Don and Raphael would turn out the lights, lock the front door, and go to sleep on the floor in their blankets.
Devotees of Krsna were surprised, therefore, when they recently found a B’nai B’rith pamphlet rife with stereotypes of Krsna devotees as cultists and brainwashed robots. Such caricatures, the devotees thought, had been discredited long ago.
A person is said to be established in self-realization and is called a yogi when he is fully satisfied by virtue of acquired knowledge and realization. Such a person is situated in transcendence and is self-controlled. He sees everything—whether it be pebbles, stones, or gold—as the same.
Full-time devotees number three hundred in Britain and Life Members and other supporters tally in the tens of thousands. They have, for the most part, come in contact with devotees through daily street chanting parties and ISKCON publications.
Srila Bhaktisiddhanta therefore taught that devotees should be eager to use everything possible for one central purpose: to broadcast the glories of Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
When Lord Krsna speaks in the Bhagavad-gita, He clarifies the ultimate purpose of vegetarianism: “If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit, or water, I will accept it.”
The aim of any scripture of any country—not only the Bhagavad-gita, but any scripture—is simply to get us back to Godhead. That is the purpose.
Gurukula, “the school of the guru,” has no equivalent in Western education. It is all at once a place of spiritual formation, character development, academics, and vocational training.
In the early summer of 1966, Srila Prabhupada was sharing a Bowery loft with a young American friend. But when the boy went crazy on drugs and drove him out, suddenly Prabhupada found himself in the street, homeless and alone.
As we began to work on Prabhupada’s home, it began to take on the shape of a palace. This was not the original conception—the original idea was rather modest.
We didn’t have, any kind of professionally drawn architectural plan. It’s not a matter of what inspired the Palace. It’s a matter of who inspired the Palace. That was His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
The pure consciousness, the soul, does not need to have a material body. For instance, when you are dreaming, you forget your present body, but still you remain conscious.
My friend came back for a second visit to our monastery more recently. I was very favorably impressed by the spiritual growth that I witnessed in him. It was quite evident that his serious commitment to the monastic life was bearing fruit.
Thousands of young people were walking the streets, not simply intoxicated or crazy (though they often were), but searching for life’s ultimate answers.
Whoever you are, your body is changing. You once had the body of a child. Now you have the body of a young person or old person. The change is gradual, yet continuous.
The Vedic literatures give information about what the living entity’s eternal relationship with Lord Krsna is, how the living entity can revive this relationship and act accordingly, and how he will live when he has returned home, back to Godhead—which is the ultimate goal of life.
Before I came to Krishna consciousness my life was completely impure. I was confused and indecisive about spiritual life and couldn’t help myself. But after I read that book, I lost my taste for materialistic activities. And now I understand that I was being cheated by maya, illusion.
How have they created anything? They take the sand and mix it with some chemicals and make glass. They have not created the sand or the chemicals, they have taken them from the earth. How have they created anything?
So the first thing is that one should be searching after a spiritual master, just as when you search after some school, you must have at least some preliminary knowledge of what a school is.