Speaker: HG Kripamoya Dasa
Venue: Mayapur Candrodaya Mandir
Date: 22-FEB-2016
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
Very nice to see everyone today. Very happY to be here. Very nice to see so many blessed Vaisnavas.
SB 7.1.47
vairanubandha-tivrena
dhyanenacyuta-satmatam
nitau punar hareh parsvam
jagmatur visnu-parsadau
Translation
“These two associates of Lord Visnu — Jaya and Vijaya — maintained a feeling of enmity for a very long time. Because of always thinking of Krsna in this way, they regained the shelter of the Lord, having returned home, back to Godhead.”
I have been requested to read the next verse.
SB 7.1.48
sri-yudhisthira uvaca
vidveso dayite putre
katham asin mahatmani
bruhi me bhagavan yena
prahladasyacyutatmata
Translation:
“Maharaja Yudhisthira inquired: O my lord, Narada Muni, why was there such enmity between Hiranyakasipu and his beloved son Prahlada Maharaja? How did Prahlada Maharaja become such a great devotee of Lord Krsna? Kindly explain this to me.”
Taking the dust of the lotus feet of all the Vaisnavas gathered here, I shall try to say something.
Jaya and Vijaya are the last gatekeepers, at the seventh gate of Vaikuntha. In his Sri Vaikuntha Gadya, Ramanujacarya, he gives the names of each set of gatekeepers. There’s two gatekeepers for each gate. If you go to Srirangam, there is the sanctum sanctorum surrounded by the temple, a wall and ultimately seven walls and this makes a Vaisnava city. And at the time of Ramanujacarya there were some 25000 living there. Vaisnavas are very attracted to living in a place of the Lord as you may have noticed if you look around. Vaisnava are very attracted to come to those holy places which are sacred to the Lord.
I first came here in 1977. They were just finishing what we then called the Long Building. The temple as it was, was behind us here and there was Prabhupada’s bhajan kutir. Its a rice field, a rice field, but not just any rice field. It was a rice filed that was dedicated to the Supreme Personality of Godhead by his most trusted, loving servant His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada and now it is so famous that I step out of the aeroplane at the Calcutta airport and what do I see when I come in? I see a picture of the Temple of Vedic Planetarium. I see a large blow up picture of the Gurukula, I see a large blow up picture of Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s associates.
Fame comes from the Supreme Personality of Godhead. When one fixes one’s attention on Him, anything and anyone becomes famous. The devotees of the Lord become famous. The place where the devotees like to gather, that also becomes famous. How we deal with that fame is something else! How we deal with that wealth that comes in response to that fame, that is something else! But the path for those who have set their consciousness on that transcendent goal of Godhead, is a path of success. There is no lack of success for the Vaisnava.
(om) tad visnoh paramam padam sada
pasyanti surayah diviva caksur atatam
tad vipraso vipanyavo jagrvamsah
samindhate visnor yat paramam padam (Rg Veda)
A Vaisnava is one who has fixed his mind on the service of the Lord and who has fixed his mind on that supreme abode of the Lord. The devotee of the Lord, his task is to advertise that abode of the Lord and to say. ‘My dear friends,’ as Prahlada Maharaja did with his friends, ‘My dear friends, I am going to that place. Please come with me.’
‘This is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. My dear friends, we are going there. Please come with us. Sing with us! Dance with us! Eat with us! And if you do it just once, then I guarantee that you will be doing this for the rest of your life!’ What a wonderful thing! But one small ingredient, one very small ingredient, you have to be convinced that happiness lies there and not here. And that may take some time, may take some time. We have to be very very convinced that we are bound up tightly and our freedom has become restricted in order to want to be free.
Everybody wants to be free. People sing about freedom, they write about freedom, they engage in politics in order to be free, they engage in social work in order to feel freedom, to free people from ignorance, to free people from hunger. But we have to know what it means to be bound up. I don’t know if any of you in the course of executing your Krishna consciousness or teaching others about Krishna, have had your freedom curtailed. Have you? You know what its like? To be taken and have your freedom curtailed! To be locked up! And you’ll get a glimpse of the material entanglement, the position of being bound up.
The person who made me free, the person who set me free, who said, ‘I am going back to Vaikuntha. Come with me and I will introduce you to His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, his name, his name I first learned in the middle of a field in pouring rain. He was an Irishman known as Tribhuvanath. Put your hands in the air, ‘Tribhuvanath ki jaya!’ He very mercifully intervened. He very mercifully intervened in my life. I was seventeen. I didn’t know which way to turn. I was experimenting with different religious persuasions and spiritual groups. He came to me and he said, ‘Please come, come with us!’
Many years later he was doing the same thing in the Middle East, he was in Lebanon in Beirut and he was arrested by an organization that is dedicated to freedom. So much dedicated to freedom, but if you do not share there vision of freedom, they will lock you up! (laughter) So Tribhuvanath was arrested by the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Ok. So in exchange for being arrested by them, he was placed in a cell, a prison cell, for months. This was no ordinary prison cell my friends, this was a cell whose ceiling was only 3 feet high. So for one month my dear friend Tribhuvanath did not stand up. Later on he told me, he said, ‘This really gave me an understanding of what it means to be in material bondage.’
Because we think, you know, I am six foot tall, I have a United Kingdom passport, that’s freedom. I can go anywhere I like, I can say what I like, I can vote for whom I like, I am free. Not so! Actually you are trapped in a piece of flesh! It may be British flesh, or German flesh, or Bengali flesh. If you see a piece of flesh at the side of the road you want to get as far away as possible. You don’t want to be squashed up, packed tight inside, as is the condition of the soul but we have to be convinced that we are in bondage.
Many years ago when I was young and single and Prabhupada was talking about the three fold miseries. I just took the three fold miseries, adhiyatkmika, adhidaivika, adhibhautika, and I just ticked them off as a philosophical abstract, just a philosophical abstract along with the five members of the Panca Tattva, the three modes of material nature, the four varna’s and asrama’s, the six Goswamis, the seven rsis, the eight gopi’s, the nine Yogendras and the ten (take your pick) avatara’s. I was just receiving lists. It didn’t really make a great deal of sense to me. I think as you go through life there is one thing that you become absolutely convinced of, is the infinite potential of the human body to suffer. Right! Any gentleman over the age of forty, put your hands up and give me a wave. I am not going to ask the ladies because we never ask the ladies how old they are but gentlemen if you are over forty you know what I talking about. Gentlemen over fifty you can….(laughs)…William Shakespeare said after fifty its all downhill or something like that. He said you lose your senses, you lose your nose, your sense of hearing, you lose your teeth, you lose everything. This is the condition. So its easier, I feel, to understand your frail condition and your vulnerable condition the older you get. And of course when I was 17, old age had no meaning, disease had no meaning and certainly death had no meaning. And now it does have meaning. Yamaraja has come knocking on my door once, coming knocking on my door twice, and the third knock – ‘My dear Lord Yamaraja, let it not be today! Such a nice day! The sun is shining!’ (laughs) But we never know. Yamaraja will come whatever the weather.
Not only are we bound up but we are in a repeat cycle. We are in a repeat cycle, cycle of reincarnation. And this is a very dire situation for us to be in. It has happened many many thousands of times. Even that I wasn’t convinced of but Prabhupada convinced me. Prabhupada came to Bhaktivedanta Manor when I was 20, three years in Krishna consciousness but I still wasn’t convinced of reincarnation. Except when Prabhupada directly told me. At the end of a class he looked at all these young men, from England and Germany I believe. He said, ‘So you’ve had many lives in the past. Many thousand of lives you’ve had. And in the future you can have many many more thousands of lives if you wish. But just this one life, just this one short life, you give this life to Krishna and you won’t regret it.’ And its one of those moments that you always remember. I remember where I was and I thought, ‘Oh! Its a very short life.’ Yes, its nothing! Its nothing when you are 20. (laughs) You give it Krishna. But he said that and I remember receiving great conviction from that. But that conviction has to come either from the sastra or the words from a great devotee or by hard experience. You have to become convinced that this is not the place I live! This is not my home! There is another place for me!
Prabhupada told about the, the football that was being kicked. He said, ‘The football is being kicked by one boy and then it is landing and it is kicked, another boy is kicking and it is going through the sky like this – Kick! Kick! Kick! And when it is here the football is thinking – I am flying! I am free!” He said, “But actually in a few moments he will be kicked again.” So we are kicked at every moment and in between we think I am free.
You know these things and I am hesitating to say anything to you because you have all travelled thousands of miles to be here. This is a Bhagavatam class. You already know these basic things but without the basics sometimes we, we can even forget, we can even forget the basics.
Material happiness is followed by material distress. Thats the sequence of events. No matter what we have, we lose it. No matter what we achieve, someone will come along and steal it. I have some prestige, I have some position, somebody will come along and take it. I have some wealth, somebody will spend it. And at the end of life we are left with nothing. We are left with whatever we came in with. And its because of this imminent sense of loss that we aspire for something. But we aspire for something greater, something more free, something more established, something more permanent.
We do it in two ways. We either try to establish through the path of karma-kanda, a happiness that is the most permanent we can possibly imagine in svarga, the higher dimensions of happiness. Or if we are very intelligent we try through the path of jnana-kanda to be free, to be liberated from any material desire and any material enjoyment. Cause let us not forget any material activity results in a reaction.
The old example is in the spring time in India, there is a little musk deer. The musk deer gives very beautiful perfume. Nice musk. But its secreted from a little gland on its inside. But he’s on all fours, he sniffs the air and he can smell this beautiful perfume. He doesn’t know where its from. So he trots over to the other side of the hill in search of this alluring perfume. Meanwhile the little musk deer on the other side, he’s also smelling and he is coming over this side. And a yogi is watching and he is seeing all this musk deer running. They are running to catch this beautiful smell, not knowing that it comes from deep within. He says, this is material civilization. And as we heard the other day everybody is running to go somewhere else, to have some other experience. Not knowing that the real pleasure lies within. And what we are actually searching for is final liberation, final liberation from birth and death.
Of course Srila Rupa Goswami says anyabhilasita sunyam jnana karmady anavrtam anukulyena krsnanu silanam bhaktir uttama (Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu (1.1.11)) that you can do bhakti in order to get some fruitive activity, yes you can serve Krishna in order to get something in this life. You can serve Krishna to get liberation. But the highest form, bhaktir uttama, is without any jnana and karma at all.
There are many people who try for nothing at all in particular other than eating, sleeping, mating and defending. If they get by with food everyday and they can raise their children and they can stay relatively free from political violence or from revolution or from the pains of drought and famine, then they consider their life successful. And there are those who really are civilised who want to attain the higher planets, more civilised want to attain liberation and very very few, vasudevam sarvam iti sa mahatma su-durlabhah (Bg 7.19), very very few aspire for the lotus feet of Govinda.
As the Padma Purana says asitim caturas caiva, 8400000 species of life, we’ve passed through all of them on our way to the human form of life, such a rare birth, laksams tan jiva-jatisu bhramadbhih purusam prapyam manusyam janma-paryayat, manusya janma, very very rare to get a human form. tad apy abhalatam jatah tesam atmabhimaninam varakanam anasritya govinda-carana-dvayam, but very few take shelter of Govinda.
asitim caturas caiva laksams tan jiva-jatisu
bhramadbhih purusaih prapyam manusyam janma-paryayat
tad apy abhalatam jatah tesam atmabhimaninam
varakanam anasritya govinda-carana-dvayam
But when we are ready to take shelter of Govinda what happens? Well this is a very beautiful question posed by Uddhava to Krishna. Now when Arjuna poses the same question, Krishna doesn’t have a great deal of time. He just says, tad viddhi pranipatena, you know the rest, Bg 4.34, this is very brief, ok. You wouldn’t really squeeze much for the ISKCON disciple course out of that one verse. But in the Eleventh Canto, the Uddhava Gita, the Lord explains more. He says, first of all a man’s mind can be his guru. This is in the very beginning when one uses his intellect to see, on one hand there is suffering, on one hand there is happiness. He says then in this world everything and everyone can become guru. And Krishna Himself tells the story of the young man who had 24 gurus. And it seemed as if, to use new age jargon, the universe was telling him! Because as yet its unspecified, you see! Its not Krishna. There’s no person involved. Its just the tree, the lake, the river, a snatch of conversation over here, a magazine article over here, a movie over there. And how many of us who came to Krishna consciousness through this random ‘guru-ness’ of the universe can add up all the different sequences in the chain of events which brought us to Krishna.
But finally Krishna says, finally you have to find a person with these qualities. He describes, in the Uddhava Gita He gives a list of 28 qualities of a sadhu in which all the lessons can be learned. And when you are ready for that person, that person does actually appear. Either that person directly or the messenger of that person or the messenger of that messenger. We have all experienced that. That’s why the Navayogendras say tasmad gurum prapadyeta (SB 11.3.21) when you have understood that everything in this world is suffering, jijnasu sreya uttamam (SB 11.3.21) go for something that is ultimate.
So in this sense everyone who has seen Vaikuntha and, I am talking about anyone who has had a wonderful day of book distribution, everyone who has ever really really become transported during a kirtana, everyone who has really glimpsed something during a class, anyone who has had an experience which is not occasioned by one of these instruments but you have glimpsed something above and beyond yourself, you then become not only charged with the responsibility of continuing on that path yourself but of taking other people with you. You become guru.
The Vedas describe a guru as someone who repeats one sentence of the Vedas to another human being. That means that every single member of the Krishna consciousness movement is guru. In 1975 right here, right over there, Prabhupada concluded a class and he said, he was talking about acharya, he said, ‘So now we are 5000 or 10000. So soon we will become 100000.’ And the devotees get excited with the idea of 100000 devotees in the world and they go ‘Jaya Prabhupada!’ He said, ‘Then we will become a million!’ ‘Jaya Prabhupada! He said, ‘Then we will become 10 million!’ He said, ’10 million acharyas. There will be no scarcity!” You can look it up! Vanipedia 001, the first quote, 10 million acharyas.
So this means that those who have seen Vaikuntha in their life, those who have had that experience of Krishna in their life, they become duty bound not only to perfect their own existence and to become purified but to bring others along with them. Its a grave responsibility. Our movement is that movement. Its a missionary movement. Missionary movements are to save souls. Its very easy for instance in the gentle art of book distribution to conceive that there are something called book distributors in ISKCON and then there are people who are non book distributor. Ok. Its very simple. That is like Amish people with beards and Amish men who don’t have beards. I am sorry but the concept of Amish and beard go along together, like Muslim and beard. You’ve got to have one. Its part of the package. So being part of the International Society for Krishna consciousness, reading the books and distributing them, distributing them is called, apparently there are no such species of life called book distributor into which category you do not fit. Its like if you are Jehovah’s witness. You cant be a Jehovah’s witness – Well I believe in Jehovah but you know I am not really much into this witnessing stuff! I don’t want to go out with the books, ok! The whole point is that everybody either buys them or buys them and gives them to others. I just thought I’d mention that.
Preaching means to exhort. The English definition of the word preaching means ‘to exhort’. Its not just teaching but it means to by a passionate explanation to bring people up to a higher level of understanding, higher level of participation. Prabhupada did that of course. Prabhupada was not passive. One time he said, ‘I was not passive.’ He said, ‘If I was passive I would not have come to America.’ He said, ‘I had to be aggressive.’ It was because, what was her name, lady distributor, she had gone to Prabhupada and she’d asked, ‘Prabhupada how can I be quiet and shy in the temple and yet when I get to the airport to distribute your books! I am just talking to strange men all day long!’ Huh? Lavangalatika! So he said, ‘No, you have to be aggressive!’ Doesn’t mean violent but aggressive means you don’t wait for people to come to you to buy books. Thats called a shopkeeper! A sales person is different from a shopkeeper. A sales person goes out. So this is, Prabhupada said, “I am practically whipping you to do this. I am practically whipping you – sell books! sell books! sell books!’
This was all the time when I was a boy, I spent just three days in the temple and they said, “Well you have done three days in the temple. Now would you like to go travelling?’ (laughter) And I was travelling for six years and I just thought thats what you do, thats what you do. You live in a ice cold box and you travel around the country. Prabhupada said that, “You boys and girls, you are travelling around England.’ He said, ‘You are living like yogis in the Himalayas. You are, its so cold. But you are thinking what is this thing on my skin.’
So he pushed everybody but he also thanked everybody. And this is sometimes the element that may be missing. There are sort of not two Prabhupada’s but two halves if you like. One is the person that was constantly pushing us to take part in the sankirtana movement. But the other person was the person who was constantly thanking his devotees for doing it.
That happened in my life in 1975 in January. Prabhupada came to Bhaktivedanta Manor and they asked Prabhupada could he give a sankirtana class to the sankirtana devotees. So at that time there was 15-20 devotees. We went into Prabhupada’s room and he gave us a sankirtana class about the importance of book distribution. But at one point he just looked at us, he looked at everybody in the eye and he said, ‘Thank you for helping me push on this moment. Thank you for helping me.’ And I remember, its just clear as day, how I felt. Here is Prabhupada who I owe my life too, I owe everything to him, everything that Prabhupada has given me. And he is thanking me for helping him push on the movement. So I think that is a very important element. If you are going to extend yourself as a preacher in the sankirtana mission, make sure that at the end of the day or the week or the month there’s someone saying Thank you! Thank you very much for doing what you have done! Sometimes we are very eager to push each other to do the right thing but not so eager to thank each other. I wont be over presumptuous but may I thank at least those younger devotees on behalf of Prabhupada – Thank you for helping Srila Prabhupada push on this Krishna consciousness movement! Hare Krishna! (applause)
Thats not the end! I like the applause but its not the end! (laughter)
Prabhupada said, “Krishna is not a poor man and a rich man will always pay good wages to his advertising executive.’ So if you advertise Krishna, you will always..You see what we are talking about is Jaya and Vijaya had it sort of arranged, it was pre planned, it was a pre booked taxi back to Vaikuntha. It was all arranged. They knew where they were going. The Lord had made that arrangement for them. We, we are not so sure, what is my destiny. Its hanging on our faith. Somedays we are very convinced and some days we may not be so convinced. Prabhupada told Mother Yamuna, he said, ‘I said that if you chanted these sixteen rounds and follow the four regulative principles, you will go back to Godhead at the end of your life. I would not lie to you! I would not lie to you!’ So Prabhupada would not lie to us. This is the formula. But we want to bring in as many people to that formula because its a remarkably, a relatively easy formula to do.
In England we have a slightly different legacy. Prabhupada wrote to us, or wrote to the devotees who are my seniors in 1973 and he said that, he described, you stay for some time in some place, you do harinama sankirtana, distribute books, you give free information, give some prasadam, answer their questions,(ok) answer their questions (I’ll come back to that in a second) answer their questions and arrange for a program in a school, a hall or a home, like that. In this way be free from anxiety, travel everywhere and give Krishna consciousness to others.’
And its interesting that to some people the idea of speaking to someone about Krishna is something that is far too involved. But the function of a guru, function of a acharya is certainly one of being one of 10 million. Prabhupada predicted that this place would be filled with all of you coming from different parts of the world. Bhaktivinoda Thakura predicted that all of you would come and sing and chant together. Prabhupada called you 10 million acharyas. We haven’t quite reached the 10 million mark. But acharya means acinoti iti sastrartham, he teaches, he practices, he knows and to be an acharya the followers who are taught by him also teach others. So to make Prabhupada the founder acharya we also have to teach others and bring them along and then you have to bring them along. The power of the acharya is that, many generations from his earthly appearance people are still following his teachings. That means to actively, dynamically engage them.
So Prabhupada talked to about those six steps. To us in England he did not say ‘What will your three minutes do?’ Thats a very famous quote, we’ve made that famous, haven’t we? The book distribution has made that famous. Sell books, what will your three minutes do. But to the devotees in England he said, no, stop for some time, give something free, give some prasadam, answer their questions. It takes at least three minutes to do that. If we do that sankirtana will transform all over the world, people will make friends.
Another aspect is if you make a pledge just to bring 10 people, 10 people back to Vaikuntha with you, 10 people back to Godhead. Don’t leave it all as a burden for those people who are ISKCON guru’s. Its an impossible burden for any one single person to do. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, he was one person. He had his 18 sannyasis. They had maha upadesikas underneath them. Every maha upadesika was looking after a upadesika. Every upadesika was looking after 10 disciples. It was a pyramid system. It didn’t run for too long before his passing away. If ISKCON runs like that, then everybody is looking after someone. Because we want to be known not just as a preaching movement but also as a caring movement. A movement that speaks to people and is friendly because thats what Prabhupada did.
Prabhupada gave in his Srimad Bhagavatam classes but also his morning walks, also his room conversations and his one to one conversations. There are 4 different components of Prabhupada’s ministry to others. We have to also as well as giving classes give that other 3 components to others.
Prabhupada talked about how kind Krishna is. It didn’t mean a great deal of sense to me until you actually experience Krishna’s kindness in some very incontrovertible way. In 1977 Prabhupada had just translated this book the 7th Canto. I was here in March 1977 for the Gaura Purnima festival. Prabhupada was giving classes everyday until he stopped due to ill health. He was talking about Prahlada and he was talking about Lord Nrsimhadeva. And one day because I had had enough of sitting at the back, it was usually, you know, Mayapur is always a place where you know queuing goes out of the window. You always have to be slightly aggressive to get to the front, whether it is caranamrta, prasadam, kirtana leading, Bhagavatam, whatever it is, you have to be a little just determined. You will have to have utsahan and drdha vratah to get to the front. And so one day I managed to have that. So I was sitting right up close to Prabhupada. He held his hand up like this. He was making this gesture with his right hand, like this. He said, so Lord Nrsimhadeva, he said, “His palms are very soft like lotus but His nails are very hard like a chisel.’ He said, ‘This is adbhuta. This is wonderful!’
So these two things are there. On the one hand the chisel for attacking and destroying and vanquishing and finishing off completely. You cannot get any more finished. But on the one hand the caring and the soft delicate. There was one Sri Vaisnava Acharya, he says rather playfully, he says that the pillar Lord Nrsimhadeva came out of, it wasn’t just any pillar. He said, it was Hiranyakasipu’s vijaya sthamba, his vijaya sthamba, it was his victory pillar into which had been carved all the heads of the demigods that he had defeated. That was his favourite piece of architecture in the whole wall. And it was that the Lord came out of. He said when He came out, Lord Nrsimhadeva, he said, no one, no one has the ability to have two different emotions in their two eyes except the Lord Himself. On the one hand He was looking at Prahlada with great affection with this side and the other eye He was looking at Hiranyakasipu with great anger. So two eyes, two distinctive emotions. Only the Lord can have that. And finally he says, when Hiranyakasipu is on the lap of the Lord, Lord Nrsimhadeva takes out His right hand about to disembowel him, and He touches his chest just to feel whether there is any good there. Just to see whether there is any…but of course Jaya and Vijaya they are perfecting their relationship of enmity with the Lord there is nothing there, not a scrap. So in a split second..(makes a tearing sound)…and that was the end.
The Lord comes for Prahlada Maharaja in his moment of need, He came for Draupadi in her moment of need, in just the time that she needed, in just the way that she needed, to confirm for her His presence in her life. He came for Gajendra at just the moment of surrender, just the moment of surrender. Thats why this phrase of saranagati is so much praised by the Vaisnava acharya’s. He came for Dhruva and He also came for you. He came for you in your different situations. There was a time in your life when you really needed the Lord’s presence. You didn’t even know.
I had a friend who was a Buddhist. He had been engaged in Buddhist meditation for eighteen months. He went all the way to Japan, so that just to make sure he was very serious. He was in Japan and it wasn’t working for him, just wasn’t working. He came back to England and one night he looked at the stars and he got down on his knees. And he said, ‘Dear God, You know I don’t believe in You, You know I don’t believe in You, but if You are there (imagine that prayer, I am speaking to someone I don’t believe in) but if You are there please give me a sign. Give me a sign. Tell me something that there is a connection.’ And the next day he met 3 Buddhist monks on the street who for some strange reason took him to the Radha Krishna temple. (laughter) And of course they weren’t Buddhist monks, they weren’t Buddhist monks.
This way of life is for everybody. Its not just for an exclusive few. A lady from Dublin, Ireland which is if you are Australian its like New Zealand, only shorter away. She rang up the Hare Krishna temple and she said, ‘I heard you do funerals. You are the priest there!’ I said, Yes. ‘You do funerals?’ ‘Well sometimes.’ She said, ‘Well I am Catholic but I’d like you to come and do my sister’s funeral.’ And I said, ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right place! This is the Hare Krishna temple. I don’t do Catholic funerals.’ She says, ‘No, no I want you to do it and there is a reason.’ So I said ok.
So in the chapel, the crematorium there was 80 people all dressed in black. One man, me, dressed in white. All Catholics. They all had come from Dublin that morning. And I looked out and as I do when I am faced with a big group of people I wonder what the heck am I going to say! So I said what am I going to say! Shall I tell a story from sastra, what am I going to say. So the body of the sister was lying there as you do and I said, I thought I’d tell an English story, an old English story about the Vikings. You know the Vikings, with the horns on their head like this, arghhh like this! So they came to attack England in 900.
Anyway so there is a story about a Viking king and he asks his minister, ‘Can you please tell me what lies after death?’ The minister was thinking for a moment and at that moment in a room full of Viking warriors all drinking and back slapping, there was a little bird that came in the far window and it just flew through the room and it flew out the far window and the minister turned to the king and said ‘Did you see that?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Thats your answer. Thats life.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well the bird is the self. And all of this is life and this is death. That is birth, that is death.’ He said, ‘oh! That is remarkable. So the bird flies through life but remains the same.’ ‘Yes. Any more.’ ‘Yes’ He said, ‘When the bird flies out of that window into the night sky does it stop existing?’ He said, ‘No of course not.’ He said, ’Before the bird came in this window, was it existing?’ He said, ‘of course.’ He said so ‘In the same way you fly into this body, you remain for some years and you fly off again.’ He said, ‘Thank You.’
So I told that story and I went on to do some other prayers, some Isopanishad slokas and various things. And the lady came up to me afterwards. She was about 76 and she had 50 of her black dressed relatives from Dublin with her. None of whom were smiling. And I thought ‘Oh dear! I’ve really done it this time!’ And she said, ‘You know that story you told.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘That was true!’ I said, ‘What do you mean, that was true?’ She said, ‘That was true. You are speaking the truth!’ I said, ‘How do you know?’ She said, ‘Because that happened to me.” I said, ‘What, you are a Viking?’ (laughter) She said, ‘No! I was in the hospital having an operation and my heart stopped. And I just like a bird flew out of my body. And she said, ‘I went like this ..ooooo…like that.’ And the doctor came in and was trying to get my heart started and he was swearing and he was cursing. He couldn’t get the heart started. She said, ‘I had to listen to his foul mouth.’ Old lady, Catholic, good Catholic lady. She said, ‘Anyway then they got my heart started and I went…ooooo….like that.’ And this was all while the body of her sister was just lying here.
And she said, ‘Afterwards I said to the doctor you know when you had difficulty during the operation, you shouldn’t have sworn so much! Very bad for a doctor!’ And he said, ‘No no no! I can assure you I am a professional! I am a professional!’ In England when you say I am a professional that means trust me, I am professional, I would never do that. She said, ‘No, you did!’ He said, ‘How do you know, you were fully under anaesthetic!’ She said, ‘Oh no I wasn’t! I was on top of the ceiling listening to you!’ So she had had an experience whereby she left her body.
And its very interesting that many people are now coming to me in England and their children have started telling them stories of their previous life. Now in the past mummy and daddy would simply say – You never had another mummy! You never had another daddy! Its just us! But now they are thinking maybe there is a possibility because 40 years later, 40 years of book distribution and so many, we have stimulated the environment. And so people are coming and they say, ‘My son says that he’s lived before. Can you help us?’ One lady the other day she came to me and she said ‘I just had a vision of my past life. And it was so shocking. I knew that this was the only place the Hare Krishna temple was the only place I could come to talk about it.’
And so people are suffering, they are curious and the world is a different place than it was 50 years ago. There is a basic philosophical foundation that book distribution and the preaching of this movement has created. Maybe only wisps of an idea but I tell you this, this wisps of an idea are like means, they are like little ideas and they are populating the intellectual discourse of people. And people they are wanting to know ‘What do you people believe?’ And when they come to us they are expecting two things, not only information but also some friendship. And this movement practically speaking is there only hope in an ocean, in an ocean of false gurus and false swamis and false hopes. This is the one movement that can actually help them. And I really feel that in the case of Jaya and Vijay their deliverance was assured and in order to help someone we have to take them by their hand and help them as a father or mother would help a child. In a dangerous situation you don’t let go of your child. Or in sports. In England we have a game called cricket. Anybody here in India know the game cricket? Ok its an unusual game. I am finishing now. We don’t play it very well. But in cricket to make the team, if the ball comes to you, you have to catch the ball. If you don’t catch the ball once, twice, three time you get the name butter fingers. Your fingers are made of butter, you couldn’t catch the ball and you don’t make the team.
So in this team, ISKCON team we cannot be butter fingers. We have to catch those souls when they come to us and hold on. Catch them and hold on. P;ant the seeds grow and offer the fruits. Its very important. Otherwise we are spending more man hours in meeting the public than any other organization on the surface of this planet. If you look at the number of man hours spent by ISCKON touching the hearts and lives of the people, day after day after day, we need to be able to transfer that huge amount of human energy into people who have been saved and who have been gradually delivered.
So please fix your mind on the spiritual home of everyone, that home which is your home, become very determined to go there in this very lifetime and take people with you, take them with you. Every one of you, be acharya and take 10, 20,30.50,a 100 with you. Why not? They have no one else except you. No one else is going to do it. But you do it.
Hare Krishna. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Granthraj Srimad Bhagavatam ki jaya!