I have just gone through BACK TO GODHEAD Vol. 19, No. 9, and as I went through the magazine—beginning with Srila Prabhupada’s lecture, which was No. 9. and feel compelled to congratulate you on what a fine issue it is.
We want to teach from the vantage point that we are not our bodies, we are spirit souls, there is a God, He has a personality, a form, and we have a relationship with Him. All this is taught along with academics. This is the foundation of a gurukula education.
I have become very much interested in the spiritual philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita. But my main problem is the existence of the soul: I still think that after I die there will be a complete end to all my consciousness.
Devotees seem to be antiscientific. Two articles in the July issue (“Srila Prabhupada Speaks Out” and “Science or Skullduggery?”) are critical of the theory of evolution.
While reading your recent article dealing with cows, I was shocked and hurt to learn that ISKCON castrates their bulls. I feel that this is a horrible thing to do and also unnecessary. Somehow it is hard for me to see how Krsna could sanction this, since He loves cows.
If both plants and animals have souls, then why is it that we cannot offer meat to Krsna? Why is one sinful and the other not?
After becoming friends with the devotees, my whole outlook on life has changed for the better. If people would just try to become friends with the devotees there would be a drastic change for the good of society.
I was raised an orthodox Jew. Throughout my life, I have searched to find the truth. I have a master’s degree in theology. I’ve tried Judaism and Born-Again Christianity. But the only thing I found that was true was Krsna consciousness.
Hare Krishna’s not practicing what you preach. You print magazines, use building materials for temples all over the world, use cars, trucks and other means of transportation to spread your gospel.
In the face of perhaps a global nuclear holocaust, is there any scope within Krsna consciousness for practical action—say as in the realm of politics?
I was born and brought up in a Vaisnava family. From my early childhood, I had the privilege to learn about Krsna and worship Him. So when I came to this country, I was very much disturbed and disgusted with the Western concept of God as a bush of fire.
In “The Vedic Observer” section of your October issue you say that since everything belongs to the Supreme Person, we’re thieves if we claim anything belongs to us. Does that mean that the house I’ve lived in for the past twenty-five years isn’t mine?
Do I have to be initiated and live at a temple in order to become a pure devotee, in order to see Krsna face to face and become His eternal servant? Or do I just keep chanting?
I was advised to have my daughter deprogrammed. I read up on deprogramming and its ramifications. I also felt my daughter had and has freedom of choice, freedom of religious beliefs. I decided to do nothing. My philosophy is “live and let live.”
I am a bit sad to hear how Srila Prabhupada and many of his disciples say that modern scientists are atheistic fools. I myself am a scientist and have studied seismology, plate tectonics, volcanism, etc., but I don’t think that this has made me atheistic.
I went to a rock ‘n roll dance in London. I knew that the advertised “Radha Krishna Temple” was 6 devotees from the Temple in San Francisco. I saw the devotees chanting HARE KRISHNA! I joined them. It felt good afterwards.
I studied electricity. By the time I was finished, I felt I was very much in contact with a phenomenon that lacked sensible understanding. I mean, what really is a volt, an amp, an ohm?
Your Holiness is the head of a great religious sect, I think we should meet together and chalk out a program for cooperation. Human society cannot any longer be allowed to continue a Godless civilization.
Since we are part and parcel of the Divine, we must have been in the divine, eternal, spiritual world at one time. Also, in the Bhagavad-gita Lord Krishna proclaims, “Those who come to My supreme abode will never return to the material world.” So why did we come to this material world?
Prabhupada argues science is not scientific because it is upheld by belief rather than fact. The justification he cites is that science cannot prove that life originates from chemicals. Yet in 1953 Stanley Miller synthesized amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins and hence life.