From "Dark Ages America" by Morris Berman

“In Plato’s Cave” Alvin Kernan, who taught English at Yale and Princeton for many years, describes the “tectonic shift” that took place in the academy over the course of his professional career. The old university, prior to postmodernism and political correctness, entertained Enlightenment goals that energized it. All this is gone now says Kernan; postmodernism brought to the table not merely the denial of truth but also the denial of the ideal of truth. Facts are now regarded as a “fetish”, all methodology is “problematic”, and sometimes even the highest forms of culture are despised. When feminists – in this case Susan McClary – can say that Beethoven’s Ninth symphony is filled with “the throttling, murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release,” we see how nakedly sick the deconstructive enterprise finally is. This is not merely intellectual failure; it is moral failure as well.

The corporate consumerism functions as a kind of “skin” that covers everything, like an all-encompassing mantle – a total environment, as it were. (Calvin Coolidge: “The business of America is business.”) This is our ethos, our civilizational essence. “There is barely an empty space in our culture,” writes social critic James Twitchell, “not already carrying commercial messages”. Or, as George Steiner once put it, we live in a “systematic suppression of silence.”

One effect of this commercial domination of our lives is the pervasiveness of kitsch, or hype, as a part of collective spiritual death. In his book “BAD, or the Dumping of America” Paul Fussell defines kitsch as “something phony, clumsy, witless, untalented, vacant, or boring, that many Americans can be persuaded is genuine, graceful, bright, or fascinating”. He cites Lawrence Welk and George Bush as obvious examples, but this is the tip of the iceberg, for the truth is that kitsch is our culture. In the United States, writes Fusell, “nothing will thrive unless inflated by hyperbole gilded with fine coat of fraud.” Content does not really matter, because it is always the same: Slogans work; hype is life. We live in a collective adrenalin rush, a world of endless promotional-commercial bullshit that masks a deep systematic emptiness, the spiritual equivalent of asthma. 

This phenomenon of the “skin” of mass consumerism shows up everywhere, so we have become a nation unable to think except by means of slogans. A few books are published on incest survivors and suddenly overnight, hundreds of thousands of women discover that this is what they are (and some, of course, are). Men go to men’s workshop and cry because they are told they must learn to become sensitive. Joseph Campbell, whose understanding of mythology was woefully inadequate, from an anthropological standpoint, tells TV viewers to “follow your bliss,” and this becomes their life theme, as they remain blissfully unaware of the fact that real spirituality is most often a working against the grain. “Consciousness” gurus declare that we are in the midst of a “paradigm shift,” and millions, who never managed to understand the present paradigm, grunt the phrase like a mantra. Each year (or, sometimes month) there is a new slogan to get jazzed up about, taken to the extreme, and then summarily dropped for the next exciting new slogan that comes along.  “Thinking” now means nothing more than wandering through the latest mental theme park.

The inevitable result of all this is the inability of the American public to distinguish garbage from quality; in fact, as Paul Fusell points out, they identify garbage as quality. Thus, for example, the rise of the huge New Age industry, immensely successful financially, and based on the premise that your rational mind is your worst enemy. The rubbish content of this stuff, such as “Mutant Messages Down Under”, or “The Celestine Prophecy” is phenomenal, and sales are in direct proportion of it. Robert Fulghum, a former Seattle high school teacher who told his readers that history should be replaced by myth and that everything they needed to know in life they learned in kindergarten, was at least completely candid about the source of his success, stating that his books were popular because people were searching for simple answers to complex problems. 

An equivalent phenomenon is Deepak Chopra, who publishes books with titles such as “Escaping the Prison of the Intellect.” On one level, he has a point, in that we can get caught up in cognitive categories, to the detriment of reality. All well and good. The problem is that Chopra seems to be addressing an audience that for the most part hasn’t managed to find its way into the “prison of the intellect” in the first place. It is one thing to see the limits of the Enlightenment tradition after you have studied it for a few decades. It’s another to reject it before you have ever been exposed to it. Some time ago Bruce Barcott, a Seattle writer and reporter, attended one of Chopra’s workshops, which typically draw huge crowds, and took notes for three days. He then wrote an article describing the event, relating how, when he got home and read over his notes, he discovered that they consist of empty platitudes. It is perhaps striking that in a room of several hundred people, this reporter may have been the only individual not sitting there in a state of rapt adoration, regarding the platitudes as profundities.

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Our purported material wealth is, quite clearly, heavily skewed toward the wealthy; but even beyond that, as Mother Teresa said when she visited America, we are poor nation overall in the spiritual sense. America’s poverty is worse than that of India’s, for it is that of a terrible loneliness that come from wanting the wrong things.

I recall, several decades ago, my high school history teacher telling the class that the United States was different from, say, India, because we were not “primitive”. As an example of this “primitiveness” she cited a newspaper article that described people in India getting crushed to death by a stampede of the devoted during some Hindu ritual. Well, I would agree, that’s pretty bad – barbaric, in fact. But before we start shaking our fingers, let’s consider an event that took place on 28 November 2003 in Orange City, Florida. A woman in line at a Wal-Mart store to buy a DVD player (on sale) was literally trampled underfoot by frenzied shoppers, who would not even get out of the way when the ambulance crew came to take her to the hospital. The paramedics found her slumped unconscious over a DVD player, while (the Chicago Tribune reported) “seemingly oblivious shoppers all around her continued to snap up items.” Newspapers labeled the shoppers as “a frothing mob”, and indeed there is nothing  less barbaric or demented about this than there is about the Hindu mob deplored by my history teacher. In fact it’s worse: at least the Hindus were frothing about Shiva or Vishnu; the Americans, about Sony or Panasonic. “What went wrong?”

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The concept of national character is very much out of fashion these days, violating as it does the much more popular notion of multiculturalism. Surely in a land as diverse as ours, containing large percentages of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, for example, it makes no sense to speak of a central net of traits that characterize “the American people”. There are, so the argument goes, many Americas, not just a single (let alone a unified) one. And yet, once we get past the tedious rhetoric of political correctness and identity politics, what do we see? Blacks and Hispanics for all their community and family and (often) religion orientations, essentially want a larger share of the economic pie. That is their “vision” of America, and for themselves in America. A few disaffected white liberals aside, the only people who view the American Dream as a nightmare, are the Native Americans, and then only some of them. In fact, any group or individual that rejects the dominant ethos in this country and sees it as a species of illness is going to pay a very high price. Regardless of race, religion, historical background, or country of origin, everybody in the United States is effectively a Protestant capitalist individualist whose life is grounded in the ideology of an expending market economy. When it comes down to the basis, America is about as diverse as a one-string guitar.

The Gunas

by pandava bandhava das

There is a clear connection between the concept of the three gunas which are constantly fighting for supremacy and the dialectics of Hegel and Aristotle where every reality is seen to contain the seed of its own denial. We could say that the doctrine of the gunas is the core doctrine in this case and that the thesis-antithesis-synthesis theory of Hegel is simply a manifestation of this eternal doctrine. 

The interchanging gunas are the reason why sometimes it seems that the nondevotees can have good qualities. Actually those qualities are manifestations of the gunas which control them for the present moment. Soon however the gunas change and then the nondevotees do not look so nice anymore. That means that they do not posses those good qualities; good qualities can be possessed by devotees only because the devotees are above the gunas and because they attain these good qualities by the mercy of Krishna who is the reservoir of all good qualities. This is made clear in Srimad Bhagavatam:

"All the demigods and their exalted qualities, such as religion, knowledge and renunciation, become manifest in the body of one who has developed unalloyed devotion for the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Väsudeva. On the other hand, a person devoid of devotional service and engaged in material activities has no good qualities. Even if he is adept at the practice of mystic yoga or the honest endeavor of maintaining his family and relatives, he must be driven by his own mental speculations and must engage in the service of the Lord's external energy. How can there be any good qualities in such a man?"

It is so amusing to hear how nonbelievers speak of being objective. In reality every one of them is subjected to the particular combination of gunas he happens to be under at his current birth and at the present moment of his life. Objectivity means that there should be a proper standard way of thinking; in the case of the atheists however, the only standard are their fluctuating thought patterns dictated by the gunas. The state of the gunas predetermines their value system and the value system sets their convictions. This is made clear by Srila Prabhupada in his purport to Bhagavad gita 17.3:

"The word çraddhä, or "faith," is very significant in this verse. Çraddhä, or faith, originally comes out of the mode of goodness. One's faith may be in a demigod or some created God or some mental concoction. One's strong faith is supposed to be productive of works of material goodness. But in material conditional life, no works are completely purified. They are mixed. They are not in pure goodness. Pure goodness is transcendental; in purified goodness one can understand the real nature of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. As long as one's faith is not completely in purified goodness, the faith is subject to contamination by any of the modes of material nature. The contaminated modes of material nature expand to the heart. Therefore according to the position of the heart in contact with a particular mode of material nature, one's faith is established. It should be understood that if one's heart is in the mode of goodness his faith is also in the mode of goodness. If his heart is in the mode of passion, his faith is also in the mode of passion. And if his heart is in the mode of darkness, illusion, his faith is also thus contaminated. Thus we find different types of faith in this world, and there are different types of religions due to different types of faith. The real principle of religious faith is situated in the mode of pure goodness, but because the heart is tainted we find different types of religious principles. Thus according to different types of faith, there are different kinds of worship."

When Srila Prabhupada speaks about “faith” in this purport he means not just adherence to particular belief system or religion. Faith here means any type of conviction about anything, including things usually viewed as purely secular phenomena such as politics, science, philosophy, food, or clothes. Any attraction we have for any object of this world is a result of the combinations of the gunas.

This same attraction defines the nature of our mind. Having material mind means that we like certain things in this material world and the way by which we are attracted and bound to them is through our mind.  That what we know as our material mind in essence is simply the condition of material attraction. It is our state of being attracted to matter, gross or subtle. One who is attracted to matter has a material mind. And one who is attracted only to Krishna has a spiritual mind.

That gives the mind the fateful role of our chain to this world of despair. The interesting thing is that we are not usually aware of this sinister function of the mind and tend to follow his dictations. Thus we find ourselves in the situation of being its prisoners without even realizing it and this makes the escape almost impossible. For it is one thing to escape a well guarded prison, and another thing to even plan an escape when you are not even aware that you live in a prison. Srila Prabhupada explains this situation in another famous purport from Gita:

"In the material world, the center of all activities is sex, and thus this material world is called maithunya-ägära, or the shackles of sex life. In the ordinary prison house, criminals are kept within bars; similarly, the criminals who are disobedient to the laws of the Lord are shackled by sex life. Advancement of material civilization on the basis of sense gratification means increasing the duration of the material existence of a living entity. Therefore, this lust is the symbol of ignorance by which the living entity is kept within the material world. While one enjoys sense gratification, it may be that there is some feeling of happiness, but actually that so-called feeling of happiness is the ultimate enemy of the sense enjoyer"

The “Factual” Universe: A Reduction to the Absurd

We've glanced at the history of the Western model of the moral universe from its Zoroastrian beginnings to its reductionist “all-is-one” version. The previous chapter noted that the advancement of science contributed much to this so-called progress. The present chapter looks at the scientific search for “facts.” This search can do nothing else than reduce the object of its study—the observable universe—to absurdity.

The dictionary defines reductionism as a “procedure or theory that reduces complex data or phenomena to simple terms.” A critic of this method of understanding the world demands to know:

"Why should the world be simple? Who made that decision? Who imposed it? There is no answer, for nowhere can we find such a guarantee."

To presuppose that all reality is uniformly simple has less to do with proven knowledge and more to do with a belief that whatever was real must be subject to the laws which were observed to operate in the physical world—that it must work, in short, like a machine. As Sir Arthur Eddington has put it,

“...science was disposed, as soon as it scented a piece of mechanism, to exclaim 'here we are getting to bedrock. This is what things should resolve themselves into. This is ultimate reality.'“

Sniffing out the mechanical simplicity underlying nature is nothing other than sniffing out the prediction and control of events in nature. It is less a way of knowing the purpose of nature itself than a way to impose human will upon nature. We must ask ourselves whether manipulation of material nature really raises human knowledge in any fundamental way beyond the level of lower creatures, many of whom manipulate nature more expertly in some respects than we. Half a century ago, an article published in the Atlantic Monthly laid the blame for the death of spiritual vision in the West at the door of the reductionist creed.

"...inquiry into purposes is useless for what science aims at: namely, the prediction and control of events. To predict an eclipse, what you have to know is not its purpose but its causes. Hence science from the seventeenth century onward became an exclusively an inquiry into [mechanistic] causes...It is this which has killed...the essence of the religious vision itself, which is the faith that there is a plan and purpose in the world, that the world is a moral order, that in the end all things are for the best."

The past three hundred years were very good for the reductionists. By their “factual” model of the universe, they managed to capture the popular imagination. That model breaks down to three principles: 1) matter is the only form of reality; 2) the conception of the mechanical is the only kind of law; and 3) evolution is an automatically determined process that, at a certain stage of development, threw up consciousness as an effect of material combination. The old, “merely religious” model of the universe is widely frowned upon. To hold the fundamental cosmic law to be moral and not mechanical is, the reductionists argue, intolerant. This argument gets color and drama by the invocation of The Horrors of the Past: the Inquisition, for example, or the witch trials of Salem. The supposedly “factual” worldview claims to be value-neutral. It consigns moral judgements to the non-scientific sphere of imperfect human opinion. That is a Good Thing because while it leaves people the individual freedom to choose their own moral menus in life, it does not permit them to impose their beliefs on others. Society as a whole is to be governed by principles of factual knowledge. The more society moves away from the religious model of the world to the factual model, the safer we will all be from theocratic fundamentalism imposed by a narrow-minded priesthood.

The word “factual” comes from the Latin facio, “to make or do.” Thus a fact is what has been made or done. It is a product of the work of our senses—our seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. Facts are therefore “practical.” Reductionism reduces the whole world to man-made facts: observations made by human senses and calculations made by human minds. In contrast, scriptural revelation about the purpose of the world is God-made.

From the standpoint of facts, religious values seem less practical and thus less real. Why should a certain kind of food—beef, for example—be judged as sinful? Factually beef, like food of any kind, nourishes the body. And so in the modern world the value of practicality (something that works) takes the lead over the values of faith and morality. “Can” supersedes “should.” So many cows run loose in India, and beef can be eaten—why should poor Hindus go hungry when the rice crop fails? Contraceptives can prevent pregnancy—why should we fear the consequences of sex? Abortions can be performed, women can do the work of men, aerial bombs can be dropped. Whether these things should happen or not are worries outside factual knowledge. Anyway, goes the argument, whether we like them or not, these things are happening now. That, we are told, is progress.

“Progress” translates into the language of facts as a more effective way of doing things. Almost daily more effective solutions arrive for how things can be done, incarnated as man-made machinery. The more effective way to cook incarnated as the microwave oven; the more effective way to reckon incarnated as the computer; the more effective way to travel incarnated as the airplane. The appearance of these mechanical deities is jubilantly hailed by millions of people. But it is as if these deities emanate an opiate fog that deadens inquiry into the purpose of increased effectivity—why is such machinery good. For modern people, “The supreme question,” as Karl Jaspers wrote, “is what 'the time demands'.”** What's the point of asking any other question? Whatever is “factually” needful, time is revealing right now.

"Time...takes on a specific moral dimension. Future time is good, past time bad. We move from this inadequate past into this bright future. Since progress is seen to be happening and is regarded as a virtue, the past comes to be understood as an underdeveloped realm, an impoverished Africa of memory and the imagination, useful only as a staging post for the future."

Most people who believe in an evolving technological future miss the irony that “factual knowledge” can only be knowledge of the past. When we look up at the night sky, we do not see the stars as they are but as they were. It takes time for their light to reach our eyes. According to modern cosmology, the light of many of the stars we see now may be several thousand years old. Some of them may have exploded centuries ago.

Though their light continues to stream to earth, they are no longer really there. The “factual” sun that brightens our eyes is always eight minutes in the past. No one on earth has ever seen the “real” sun. A slight time lag divides us from even the nearest objects of our perception. This “factual” world of human sensory experience is the phenomenal world—a world that has already changed by the time we know it.

Thus the phenomenal world, the world of facts, is a world of secondary, dead information. The world that is, the primary living reality, we never know. Facts, far from being “the whole truth,” are just signals conveyed by the network of our senses.

Compare a human being to a spider. A spider has rather limited powers of sight, hearing and smell. But it is blessed with an acute sense of touch. Thus its knowledge of the world comes largely by way of the network of its web. Just by feeling the movement of something in the network, the spider can judge with great accuracy how far off and how big it is. The web cannot, however, inform the spider about the world beyond the network. Even about things caught within the network, the spider receives only information useful for practical ends. For example, the web does not convey the color of a thing. Similarly, there are limits to the quantity and quality of information the network of human sense perception can convey. The edge of the universe remains totally outside our informational reach, despite sophisticated modern instrumentation. Even about things near at hand, our senses permit only restricted information. For example, a dog whistle is knowable to human senses only in a limited way. Though we can see it and touch it, it emits a sound outside the perceptual dimension of our ears. According to the Vedic scriptures, there is a higher reality, beyond our human awareness, to every object of our perception.

Vaisnava philosophy finds the network of sensory knowledge to be riddled by four defects: imperfection, error, illusion and cheating. Likewise, scientists are forced to admit that our senses are incapable of grasping the reality of the world around us, since the closer we try to get to the objects we perceive, the more unreal our sense data about these objects becomes. I am typing these words on a laptop computer. This computer appears to my senses to be a solid object of definite characteristics. But as I come closer to this computer via the method physicists employ to examine atomic and subatomic structures, I find it to be “an indefinite quantum field” or “a cloud of potentia” or “a random flux of energy.” It remains a scientific mystery why the nebulous state of the computer's micro-elemental existence presents itself moment after moment to my senses as an object of certain shape, size, color and texture. If I take quantum physics as my guide, then the “fact” of this computer I am using right now is just a creation of my senses. It does not really exist.

Now, this does not mean the computer is really a random flux of energy. That notion, like the form of the computer my senses perceive, is “factual” in the sense that it is man-made. The world as a chaos of zips and blips is an idea manufactured in the minds of scientists. Actually, quantum theory says that the only thing we can know about material objects is our attempt to know them. That attempt results in the “facts” of quantum physics, which we cannot determine as having reality.

To summarize this critique of reductionism so far: from the seventeenth century onward, science aimed to reduce the universe to matter, mechanical law and evolution at the expense of the moral and religious sense of life; the reductionist universe is a construct of man-made facts; facts, being practical, are supposedly more real than moral and religious values; the improvement of facts (things made by men) is supposedly progress; because progress comes with time, future time is supposedly good, past time bad; ironically, all facts (facta = that which is made) belong to the past as soon as they are perceived, since with the senses we never perceive things as they are right now; thus facts are not reality but only information that turns out to be far from complete; even science admits that what is known to the human senses and mind is different—perhaps totally different—from reality. The logical conclusion of all this? Since facts cannot bring us in touch with reality, progress in facts is progress in illusion.

In charity to the hard-working men and women of science, we might agree that that they offer a useful account of how some, but certainly not all, phenomena take place. For instance, they reduced a bird's flight down to the laws of physics. Mechanically applying those laws, they invented the airplane. The swift transportation of people and goods over great distances by high-powered winged machines does indeed represent a kind of progress over earlier modes of transport. But that doesn't change the fact that mechanistic reductionism cannot help us progress in knowing why the world exists. However, many modern scientists believe that the purpose of the world taught by religion is obsolete, and that it is left to them to fill the gap. More than fifty years ago, British philosopher C. E. M. Joad observed:

…today scientists trespass into the territory of religion and proceed to make statements about the “why” of things for which their science gives them no authority. For the concern of science is with “hows” not with “whys”.

Now, at the turn of the twenty-first century, many scientists are straggling back out of the desert of mechanistic “whys” to the oasis of spiritual “whys”. By bitter experience, these men and women know that it is no less absurd to seek a convincing purpose for the world in reductionism than it is to seek water in a mirage. But on the whole, science remains doggedly atheistic, though lately less cocksure of itself. Writes physics professor Lee Smolin in a recent issue of Time magazine:

"Reflecting on this [the problem of reducing the “why” of the universe down to a mechanistic cause] has made many scientists turn to mysticism or religion. But I prefer to search for a rational, scientific understanding of this puzzle. The revolution we are engaged in involves throwing out the view that the universe was made by a god—some grand puppeteer or master weaver. Instead, the universe can be understood as having constructed itself according to physical laws..."

Smolin's defense of atheistic science ushers us into the darkness at the heart of the reductionist conception of progress. The goal of life is figured to be the continual invention of more effective ways of doing things because everything started with the invention of the universe by the universe itself. Mankind is but a cog in the great machinery of cosmic invention.

Smolin believes that the physical law compelling this progress of invention is evolution. It is via the “law” (actually just the theory) of evolution that scientists propose to define the why, the moral purpose of existence. What is evolutionary good? The impulse to actions that aid physical survival and social order. What is evolutionary evil? The impulse to actions that end in physical destruction and social disorder. This is termed the naturalistic reduction of value, that there is ultimately nothing more to human morality than a group of compulsions which are basically akin to those of an ant-hill”. Smolin again:

"If this theory [of the self-invented universe] is true, it means that we live in a benign universe, one that is hospitable to life because it shares some characteristics with living things. It also means that we live with each other in a world all of us create. The principles of justice, law and equal rights are not imposed from outside; they are made by us as an evolving system called human society."

Here Smolin tips his hat to the supposed moral dimension of time when he tells us that morality—justice, law and equal rights—evolved out of the works of mankind. To scientists like Smolin, evolution is the cornucopia of all good things, even human virtue. As long as things continue to evolve, they are bound to get better. Thus evolution—time's flow as a blessing—turns out to be the closest thing the reductionists have to a God. For scientists like Smolin, evolution is not only the how of creation, but the why also.

In order to give credence to Smolin's case for evolutionary morality, one must buy into his covert redefinition of science as an atheistic religion. Science, as defined in the seventeenth century, has typically been concerned with showing how events occur in nature by modeling those events mechanically. Take the example of eclipses, mentioned in a previous quotation. We can credit scientists for having constructed models that demonstrate their theory of how the earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the earth. Such models can, on a small scale, mechanically reproduce eclipses. Thus scientists can claim that model to be a fact, because it “makes” eclipses. But there is no model that demonstrates how the universe invented itself. There is no model that demonstrates how life arose from the laws of physics. There is no model that demonstrates how life in the “benign universe” will get better and better in the future. These notions are articles of a quasi-religious faith. They are certainly not articles of facta—“that which is made.” Writing in the same issue of Time as Smolin, Sir John Maddox has this to say about the “facts” at the back of evolutionary theory.

"How did life begin? The natural answer is that living things emerged spontaneously from the chemicals present in warm, shallow waters on the early Earth. But what chemicals? And what more complicated chemicals emerged from that primordial soup with the ability to reproduce themselves and evolve by some kind of Darwinian process? No one yet knows."

No one knows how life appeared from chemicals, nor what these living chemicals were, nor how they evolved as Darwin theorized. To “talk” of how such events happened, science must “walk” the physics that made them happen. As Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the nucleus of the atom, said: “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” Darwin's theory of evolution is supposed to walk with the physics of three hundred years ago—the “classical physics” of Sir Isaac Newton. Newton, as we learn from physics professor Michio Kaku, modeled the universe after the image of a clock.

The Newtonian vision held that the universe was a gigantic clock, wound at the beginning of time and ticking ever since because it obeyed Newton's three laws of motion.

The point I wish to make here is very basic. I feel no need to devise complex arguments against evolutionary theory because that theory cannot walk alone. Either it walks with physics or it doesn't walk as serious science at all. If the physics behind Darwin's theory won't demonstrate evolution “in fact,” then the theory goes nowhere. The Darwinists have not provided us with a small-scale clockwork model of the cosmos out of which species of artificial intelligent life automatically evolve. Furthermore, the Newtonian concept of the universe as a clock has lost its scientific validity. The following quotations sum it up:

"In 1905 Albert Einstein published four papers. All four were revolutionary...Newton was overthrown.
Without question, the new experiments on radiation showed that the foundations of Newtonian physics was crumbling.
Quantum theory demolished, once and for all, the Newtonian dream.
Quantum theory, in fact, turned Einstein on his head. In almost every sense of the word, quantum theory is the opposite of Einstein's theory.... Thus the two theories are hostile opposites."

Newton developed his classical physics in the seventeenth century. Two centuries later, Charles Darwin devised his theory of evolution upon Newtonian foundations. In the early twentieth century, those foundations were overthrown by Einstein's theory of relativity. Relativity was soon followed by quantum physics, which developed out of experiments with radiation. This theory relegated the Newtonian picture of the universe to the status of “a dream.” Leading quantum theoreticians like Werner Heisenberg were openly doubtful of Darwin's ploy of appealing to Newtonian physics to explain life. They were also doubtful of Einstein's theory. And even within the quantum school, rival GUTs (Grand Unified Theories) and TOEs (Theories of Everything) clash.

More and more thinkers now conclude that this “evolution” of physical theory—from classical to relativity to quantum—represents not the progress, but rather the decline, of science.

"Some observers contend that these unconfirmable, far-fetched theories are signs of science's vitality and boundless possibilities. I see them as signs of science's desperation and terminal illness.
The key problem is that, if hugely successful theories can be found to be wrong and “truths” can be found to be false, what can possibly be the real nature of the form of knowledge we call science? Why is it successful and why should we believe it?"

Yet quantum mechanics, relativity and classical physics remain equally important to modern scientists—less because they bring us nearer to how life arose in the universe, more because they work very well within the realm of human affairs. If not for quantum physics, we could not produce television sets, radios, stereo sound systems, computers, nor any modern electronic equipment. Without Einsteinian relativity, we could not harness atomic energy. Without classical physics, we could have no automobiles, trains, airplanes, rockets nor the rest of the machines that hasten our movement through time and space. And that is why the switch from the Western religious model of the universe to the reductionist model is supposed to be good. The reductionist model works. It yields human progress. But again, this is “progress” in nothing other than facta, “that which is made.” The bright shining hope is that what science makes for us 1) expands human powers, 2) brings the materials and laws of nature more under human control, 3) extends the duration of human life and 4) makes that life happier.

These four exceedingly optimistic claims, formulated by a scientist in the eighteenth century, make up the standard definition of progress even today. Fired by these promises of a better future, great minds labored hard to bring nature under human control. Yet, in the final analysis, they were forced by the same nature to admit that the whole enterprise of progress is useless. Charles Darwin wrote in his Autobiography:

"Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued progress."

When Darwin wrote these words in the nineteenth century, people were at least confident that, with the aid of science, the human race would continue to progress as long as the universe could support life. The twentieth century dashed these hopes, showing science to be a clear and present danger to human survival. In the two world wars and the cold war that followed, technology vastly multiplied the killing efficiency of modern weaponry, pushing civilization and, it was feared, all life on Earth to the verge of destruction.
How could a doctrine like reductionism, which leads to such absurd contradictions, be so influential as to shake the religious faith of the West? Well, reductionism did not simply appear out of nowhere. It had three thousand years of momentum behind it. Scholars of our time trace the roots of reductionism back to a change in human consciousness that resulted from social upheaval in the ancient kingdoms of Egypt and the Mesopotamian Near East. These civilizations, like Vedic India, had long been ritual societies. “Ritual” is a word that comes to us from the Vedic term åta (the real), which points to the higher cosmic and moral order, beyond human comprehension. Through ritual, societies of antiquity participated in the great universal sacrifice the demigods offer to the Supreme. With the start of Kali-yuga, five thousand years ago, ritual society gradually stagnated. Around one thousand years BC, a new order emerged in Egypt and Mesopotamia. At that time the stronger independent interests of artisans, craftsmen, farmers and traders wore down the older social norms that had been held together by the knowledge and power of priests and kings, who derived their authority from the divine past.

"Egypt and the Near East...gave rise to a new society which sprang into existence out of the ruined shell of the old. The new society brought with it new technology related to new perceptions of the cosmos. It required new ideas, because it was based on trade and, in part, on free labor. While reliance on authority may suit a priesthood, it is a poor guide for an enterprising trader or craftsman. Instead, the merchant had to learn by observing the world around him—the winds and tides. And the free craftsmen learned by changing nature, by experimenting with new materials and methods."

Why did the priests and kings of these societies lose their power? In the age of Kali, the two varnas of leadership—the brahmaas and the ksatriyas—fall down due to the growth of materialism in the hearts of all men. The same increase of materialism raised the two lower orders—the vaisyas (farmers and merchants) and sudras (craftsmen, artisans and workers) to exaggerated prominence. Sattvic culture declined, opening the way for the ascendance of sinful mleccha culture. This destabilized society and promoted quarrel.

It is thus evident that the trend toward mechanistic reductionism was historically nourished by the social preponderance of the vaiçya and sudra mentality and the social instability of post-varnasrama society. The first Western attempt to philosophically reduce the world to simplicity began in Ionia. In this area of the eastern shore of the Aegean sea, Greeks established cities that embodied Kali-yuga philosophy and social values.

"By 700 BC the Ionian trading cities...had thrown off the earlier subordination to the great landowners of mainland Greece. They established new societies of traders, craftsmen, and freeholding peasants—the first limited attempts at democracies and republics. They needed new ideas to run such new societies—the old gods were outmoded...Around 580 BC Thales, a native of the trading and textile center Miletus, first asserted that the world was formed by natural processes which could be observed in the world... While Bronze Age priests had seen an unchanging society ruled by the unchanging cycles of the seasons, the Ionians saw a society in the midst of convulsive changes as aristocratic landholders, merchants, artisans, and peasants battled for power. Heraclitus concluded that the universe was in constant flux, like a fire, ever changing...Anaxagoras, a native of Ionia and later a friend of the Athenian leader Pericles, derived his theory of origins from close observation of nature...whirlpools, the glowing hot metal of the blacksmith's forge, the distant light of merchants' signal fires."

Ritual society was a sacred tradition revealed to man by demigods and sages. Ritual progress was the fourfold reward of dharma (religiosity), artha (material prosperity), kama (sensual enjoyment) and moksa (liberation from material existence). The early Ionian reductionist society was based not on godly revelation but on human sensory observation of the physical world. Progress was calculated in terms of artha and kama. What became of dharma and moksa, which extend the human mind toward goals beyond sense perception? The vaisya system of values reduced that subject matter to numbers.

"Anything could be reduced to abstract numbers: the value of a pot, a jar of oil, a plot of land, a slave, could all be expressed by exact numbers of coins, as could the wealth and worth of any citizen. Numbers seemed to have magical powers.... To Pythagoras the pure relationship of numbers in arithmetic and geometry are the changeless reality behind the shifting appearances of the sensible world. In contrast to the Ionians, Pythagoras taught that reality can be known not through sensory observation, but only through pure reason, which can investigate the abstract mathematical forms that rule the world."

Early Greek philosophy, a sort of protophysics, was born in Ionia around 580 BC from observation of phenomena. Soon afterward, Pythagoras of Croton added the abstract dimension of numbers. Then Plato of Athens elaborated upon the moral dimension of Pythagorean idealism. While there is much in Platonic morality a student of Vedic knowledge can agree with, moral values taught by God had no place in Plato's system. His values were discoveries, made (facta again) by the intelligence. They depended upon reason, not revelation.

"Moral truths, thinks Plato, are timeless and beyond the happenstance of human opinion or social structure. They are likeqwise objectively real and like other such truths, such as those of mathematics, are discoverable by the intelligence.... [Moral truths are] not a god, nor [are they] the creation or commandment of a god."

Plato was sure about the eternality of the individual soul, less sure about spiritual personality. At least he believed every soul to be the very form of life itself. As such, the soul belongs to the transcendent realm of eternal pure forms. Souls down in the phenomenal world can sustain purity by reason, the link to the realm of true forms. The reasoning soul exhibits three virtues: wisdom, courage and temperance. An impure, unreasoning soul is deficient in the three virtues. That deficiency is evident in the vices of ignorance, cowardice and intemperance. So although on one hand Plato was reluctant to affix morality to a personal God, on the other he insisted it is fixed in an eternal Good beyond the world of matter.

Aristotle, Plato's most prominent disciple, brought goodness down to earth by dispensing with his teacher's idea of a transcendent realm of forms that projects ideal virtue into the phenomenal world. While more or less agreeing with his teacher that the soul is pure form and excellence of character, Aristotle argued that the soul is inseparable from its body. Goodness, likewise, is inseparable from particular good things. When the body vanishes, so does the soul. When a good thing vanishes, so does its goodness. On one key point Plato and Aristotle agreed: that matter is moved by the soul.

The Christian doctrine that said a soul without a material body cannot act was much closer to Aristotle's soul-concept than Plato's. But unlike Aristotle, the Judaeo-Christian scriptures had almost nothing to say about cosmology and physics. Aristotle's writings elaborately described the universe as a system of fifty-five concentric spheres whose rotation accounted for the movements of the sun, moon, stars and planets.

Translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, his model of the cosmos had a deep impact upon Church scholars, starved as they were for this kind of information. In AD 1266, the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas officially wed Aristotelian philosophy with Catholic theology. The Theory of Everything of its time, this work was an awesome intellectual monument to both the protoscience of the ancient Greeks and the moral authority of Jesus Christ, just as the soaring cathedral of Chartres—completed while Aquinas was alive—was a synthesis of the two in architecture (figures of Pythagoras and Aristotle were carved into the stonework).

But the Thomist model of reality—“Thomist” was the label given to Aquinas's thought—was pregnant with the seeds of its own destruction. One seed was Aquinas's admission that some portions of the Bible are not the literal truth. Another seed was the high degree to which the model depended upon the power of human reason. A third seed was the physicality of the model: Aristotle proposed that the upper spheres of the universe were made of “pure matter”—an immaculate, unchanging crystalline solid. But he rejected the Platonic position that the real form of the world exists in a higher dimension of consciousness. It followed from Aristotle's physics that the higher spheres—for example, “the eternal pearl” of the moon—could be rendered humanly visible just by discovering a way to get close enough to see them. A fourth seed was the humanism of the model: within creation, the earth was positioned at the privileged center, and among earthly creatures, the human race had the only role in God's plan. A fifth seed was the conceit that the model explained all there is to know. Each was a seed of facta—a “truth” made by man, not God.

Even though there were significant features of the Thomist model that echoed Vedic knowledge—for example, that the universe is morally constituted, and that of the many heavenly planets, the moon is the nearest—the seeds of its self-destruction began fructifying in 1604. That was the year Galileo Galilei established the “fact” that a nova (new star) flared into being in the constellation Serpentarius. This contradicted the Thomist model, which said stars are permanent fixtures of an unchanging heaven where nothing new could happen. In 1609 Galileo looked at the moon through a telescope. He found that the Thomist lunar heaven was not a fact: he could not “make it out” in his eyepiece. Fact was, the moon looked very much like earth. Fact was, the surface of the moon reflected earthlight. To Galileo, that meant that the earth, shining like the other planets, is not special.

Looking elsewhere through his eyepiece, Galileo discovered more facts: Jupiter is encircled by moons; the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system; countless stars are invisible to the naked eye. By dropping objects from the Tower of Pisa, Galileo demonstrated mistakes in Thomist physics.
Now, the Aristotelian “facts” of the Thomist model were tied together by Christian logic. The tremendous weight of new facts discovered by Galileo could not be supported by that logic. Thus Galileo set about assembling a new, non-theistic logic for his facts. Suppressed by the Church, Galileo died before he could complete it. Sir Isaac Newton labored through his life to finish the model, which I've termed the mechanistic reductionist model. This model 1) reduced reality to the base concerns of vaisyas and sudras, namely numerical value and physical work, 2) was cool to the belief (shared by Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas) that matter is moved by spirit, 3) was warm to the belief that mechanical forces move matter.

If matter is moved by spirit, it is then fair to say that matter has a moral dimension. Most religions teach that souls are promoted or degraded according to what they do with matter; they also teach that certain kinds of matter are sanctified by God. When they utilize sanctified matter (holy water, for example), souls are blessed. The blessing emanates not from the molecules of the holy water—these being no different from the molecules of sewer water—but from the holy spirit that moves the foundations of the material world: the three modes of creation, maintenance and destruction. God acts through earth, water, fire, air and ether (sound) to deliver people from sinful life, and to inspire their hearts with loving attraction to Him.

On the other hand, if matter is moved only by mechanical forces, it would be fair to say it has no moral quality whatsoever. Newton allowed a role for God only in the beginning, when He set the mechanism of the cosmos into motion. God faded from the scene after that initial divine push, and mechanics just carried on. If this is the case, then water is always just water. The only ethics at play in a mechanistic universe are the ethics of physical survival.

As they worked with Newton's model of the universe, scientists realized it was not really complete. They continued to discover newer and newer facts. To survive, Newton's model had to absorb these facts and grow with them. In the nineteenth century it absorbed the electromagnetic field theory of Faraday and Maxwell. That wasn't easy, as field theory pointed to a level of reality unknown to Newton, beyond mechanical relations. Then, as noted before, the facts of radioactivity, discovered in the early twentieth century, swelled the model to the bursting point. It split, ameba-like, into mutually hostile variants of itself: the classical variant, the Einsteinian variant, and the quantum variant. Because all three work well in terms of vaisya-sudra values, Kali-yuga brains are perplexed as to which variant represents reality as it is.
What the variant models really represent is mäyä, the illusory feature of prakriti. The word prakåti means “abundant activity”—certainly, prakriti works! But it works to hold materialistic living entities fast within the grip of the three modes of nature. Çré Prahläda Mahäräja explains in Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.9.20:

"My dear Lord, everyone in this material world is under the modes of material nature, being influenced by goodness, passion and ignorance. Everyone—from the greatest personality, Lord Brahmä, down to the small ant—works under the influence of these modes. Therefore everyone in this material world is influenced by Your energy. The cause for which they work, the place where they work, the time when they work, the matter due to which they work, the goal of life they have considered final, and the process for obtaining this goal—all are nothing but manifestations of Your energy. Indeed, since the energy and energetic are identical, all of them are but manifestations of You."

His body and mind working puppet-like under the direction of the modes, a living entity is passed from the controlling hand of creation (rajo-guëa) to sustenance (sattva-guëa) to destruction (tamo-guëa). After death he is handed back to creation to receive the next body. This cycle revolves life after life until the whole universe comes to an end. Hopes for progressive evolution to a perfect status of material life are insane. A soul's only real hope is for deliverance from the cycle of the modes, by the Divine Grace emanating through the veil of matter.

Now, there are facts of perception that seem to contradict the Vedic description of the material world. We've seen how the Thomist model of the universe fell by the wayside of history after the telescope “proved” it not factual. Well, truth be told, the Çrémad-Bhägavatam locates the earth, moon and sun in positions very different from the modern astronomical standard. Is this cause to doubt the Bhägavatam? If it is, then it is also cause to doubt the moral dimension of the universe taught by the Bhägavatam. It is cause to neglect the regulative principles and indulge the whims of the senses.

The Vaisnava scriptures tell us the material energy is Lord Krsna's adhara-sakti or all-accommodating energy. She accommodates the lusty desires of the materialistic living entities by presenting herself as exploitable matter. They perceive her as exploitable according to the particular range of their cognitive and motor senses.

Earlier the example of a spider and its web was given. The adhara-sakti accommodates the spider's desires by providing it a “factual world” which the poor creature can perceive and control. If the spider's worldview could be rendered into English, there is little doubt the average person would find it to be bizarre mythology, fiction, or lunacy. Our own world of human facts is no less bizarre to the demigods.

Beyond these worlds of facts populated by creatures lusty for sense gratification, there is the real form of the world. This is the dharmic or moral form, seen by those living entities who know nature's primary purpose. That primary purpose is to accommodate the Lord's plan for the reformation of His wayward parts and parcels. The dharmic form is presented in Srimadd-Bhagavatam, which states:

"Krsna consciousness means constantly associating with the Supreme Personality of Godhead in such a mental state that the devotee can observe the cosmic manifestation exactly as the Supreme Personality of Godhead does. Such observation is not always possible, but it becomes manifest exactly like the dark planet known as Rahu, which is observed in the presence of the full moon."

At Kuruksetra five thousand years ago, Krsna revealed His visvarupa (the form of the entire universe) to His constant companion Arjuna. An opportunity like Arjuna had—to directly observe the universe exactly as Krsna sees it—is very rare. But all of us can take advantage of an indirect method that allies human reason with scriptural revelation. This method is explained by an analogy. During a full lunar eclipse, the halo around the moon allows us an indirect perception of a darkness that blots out the lunar disc. It is indirect because our eyes cannot tell us what is blotting out the moon. At least we can tell from the soft halo that the moon is masked by something passing in front of it. The Vedic scriptures tell us this shadowy mask is Rahu, a demonic planet that otherwise cannot be seen. Similarly, the moonlike light of reason guided by scripture permits us to indirectly perceive the material universe as a mask of the spiritual world.

A mechanistic reductionist will argue that what eclipses the moon is not a mysterious demonic planet but the shadow of the earth. The difference between the mechanistic view and the Vedic is a question of what is known as “the scale of observation.” For example, if we are asked to say with the unaided eye what we see when we look at an even mix of two powders—white flour and finely-ground charcoal—we will say we see a gray powder. But if we are able to observe that gray powder through a microscope, we will suddenly understand it does not exist. The microscopic scale of observation reveals countless white and black particles.

On the mechanist's “factual” (man-made) scale of observation, it is certainly logical to say the darkness eclipsing the moon is just the shadow of the earth. But on the Vedic scale, the scale of God-made observation, mechanistic facts vanish, just as the fact of the gray powder vanishes when it is observed through a microscope. On the Vedic scale, cosmic events are seen to be the interrelation of two potencies (spirit and matter) of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krsna all dimension is defined by the three qualities of that interrelation: goodness, passion, and ignorance.

The moral dimension of the cosmos is determinable by purification of consciousness, not by sensory inspection or mental speculation. Purification entails detaching consciousness from the exploitation of matter aimed at physical sense pleasure, and attaching consciousness to the employment of matter in Krsna's service.

Vedanta Psychology - 6

Maharaja:  Continuing from yesterday, page 41:

Although thus not existing in reality, this manifestation of transformations created from the mode of passion appears real because the self-manifested, self-luminous Absolute Truth exhibits Himself in the form of the material variety of the senses, the sense objects, the mind and the elements of physical nature. (Srimad-Bhagavatam 11.28.22)

So the whole means the point, summary from here, these manifestations that we see here in this world technically even though they are existing, they are not real. The lack of reality is because we are not actually seeing them for what they actually are. The reality is they are Krsna. So because of that they appear to us to be real. But in reality they are not real. Because reality is you see it as Krsna. You don’t see it as Krsna, you are seeing illusion. You see Krsna, you are actually seeing reality. But even you don’t see Krsna, the reason the illusion seems real because Krsna He is the manifestation of that illusion.

So the whole point is it’s just Krsna. If you are Krsna conscious, you recognize it’s Krsna, so you are very happy being absorbed in Krsna. If you are not Krsna conscious, you are still seeing Krsna, that’s why you think it’s something nice. But you don’t know it’s Krsna, so that’s the illusion. You think it’s the material energy that’s attractive.

So in any case, the devotee, the materialist, they are dealing with Krsna. Of course, this completely blows out off the water that we are a bunch of little band of madmen and we are just sitting in this little corner and we are just cowering, because the karmis may not think what we are doing is very nice.

The whole point is it’s all Krsna anyway. That’s all there is. So this fear means we are not identifying ourself as servant of Krsna. Because if you identify yourself as servant of Krsna there is no fear. The term that one must become fearless. Fearless means you identify yourself as servant of Krsna, that’s what it means. Because if you identify you are fearless.

You are identifying with the field of activities and therefore thinking that you are a funny little part of it. I am sitting here in this field of activities, walking through this mall here around the corner from Alachua and therefore I look weird, because other people in the field think I look weird. So you have identified as matter, that’s why you are afraid. If you identify I am servant of Krsna, what’s there to be afraid of?

Everything everybody is looking at is Krsna anyway. They think, the guy is sitting over there with shades on act being really cool is something attractive, but that is Krsna. That coolness is Krsna, that togetherness, that not being needy, is Krsna. But they don’t know it’s Krsna. They think it’s the guy there with his Rayband’s sunglasses, but it’s not. It’s Krsna’s potency.

So that’s the thing. That’s how Prabhupada can go anywhere with confidence, because Krsna is everywhere. It’s not that He is just sitting there in the temple, and when you go out then it’s maya’s place and she is in charge. No, it’s still Krsna’s place. Just in the temple we are allowed to take part in running it, Laksmiji runs the place, we can assist, and outside maya runs the place, because no one is interested in serving Krsna through Laksmi, so therefore then maya runs it. But all it is is Krsna, there is nothing else. That’s reality, anything other than that is illusion. It’s that simple.

So then taking this then a step further, because we have the element, the non-different between Krsna and His energy. Just like we have this rock. What is this?

Devotee (1): A rock.

Maharaja:  A rock. Ok, now let us turn it around, what is this?

Devotee (1): The back of the rock.

Maharaja:  Yes, but is it the same rock?

Devotees: Yes.

Maharaja:  So it’s a rock. So that means the Lord and His energies are non-different. So now we are going to see the other side. So we thought that one was weird, now it gets more fun. Now this is Bhagavatam 6.19.13:

Mother Lakñmé, who is here, is the reservoir of all spiritual qualities, whereas You manifest and enjoy all these qualities. Indeed, You are actually the enjoyer of everything. You live as the Supersoul of all living entities, and the goddess of fortune is the form of their bodies, senses and minds. She also has a holy name and form, whereas You are the support of all such names and forms and the cause for their manifestation.

So now we are taking it a step further. Ok, now we were dealing with the Brahman aspect, that Krsna has entered everything, it’s all His, whatever manifestation you see is Him. That’s the Brahman aspect. You don’t see really the interaction. It’s just these energies are interacting with each other.

So now we take it a step further, actually all the forms and everything that you are dealing with, the manifestation here, that’s Laksmi. Krsna is the support of that. That’s how He is the creator, He is the support of the created, but it’s Laksmi. And so therefore then He is the enjoyer of everything, because it’s Laksmi. So He doesn’t deal with material energy. Because material energy is our concept. It’s just Laksmi. There is superior manifestations of Laksmi, there is inferior manifestations. So this is inferior. In the spiritual world, that’s superior.

Because it’s all there, Radharani is there, she expands, her sister is Ananga-manjari, and Ananga-manjari is Vrndavana, she is the dhama. They are people. So she is there doing her pastimes, but at the same time, everything that you see is also her expansion. So in the same way, everything that you see here, all the inanimate forms, all the animate forms, all the minds, the senses, everything that you see and interact with, that is all her expansion. And just as in the spiritual world, the spiritual world has expanded, created an environment for the Lord’s pastimes, this place is also the same way. So just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean that’s what’s not going on. And to not be able to understand this or appreciate this, means you understand it, appreciate this, this is deism, that God is something else and this is something else separate from God. So it is atheism.

So that’s the whole point, it is Him. That’s where it gets grungy. It’s not grungy that God is this, it’s grungy that you are trying to enjoy this. The problem is not that God has come as everything you see here, the problem is you are trying to enjoy that. That’s the reality. That’s the stark reality. The living entity is trying to enjoy what is the interaction between Laksmi and Narayana, and not see Laksmi-Narayana and claim I am Narayana and I am the controller and enjoyer and all this is mine. So Laksmi is mine and I am Visnu. This is the problem, not that Krsna has become everything, He is everything in the spiritual world.

Krsna is there playing in the…all the different things are there. Lord Caitanya has a pastime that He is the old pots. From eating all the clay pots are thrown in the garbage pile, and then He has somehow or another come to the conclusion that everything is all one, so He is sitting in the garbage pile. And Saci mata is saying, why are you sitting there? Because it’s all the same, it’s all manifestations of the same thing, so what does it matter whether you are sitting here or there? The pot inside, the pot outside it’s all the same thing. You break the pot, it all becomes one. So she then says, yes, but there is a difference in manifestation, and therefore they have their effects. Because eternally there is this relationship of God and His creation.

So to have that pastime means there has to be pots. So how are those pots manifested? Are those pots maya? Or are those pots Laksmi? He is having His pastime in His dhama in the spiritual world, what are those pots?

Devotees: Laksmi.

Maharaja:  Yes, it’s part of His pastime. It’s not Dhenukasura who thinks he is separate from the Lord, that’s maya. That’s Laksmi in the form of the external potency. He is pots, garbage. So don’t think all the garbage in your house isn’t still Krsna’s potency. That’s the idea.

So here this is how any time, any place anything can be connected to Krsna. So we see all this thing of being real prabhu and just being practical and getting into our puritanical moralism and all these different kind of things, they are just all 100% just atheistic nonsense. That’s all. Because you think it’s separate from Krsna. That’s the whole point. You think it’s separate from Krsna.

This concept of eternal damnation, that means you are thinking that there is something separate from Krsna. Otherwise how to you come to this point? The point is someone is in maya, put him back in the fire of Krsna consciousness, they are fire. But eternal damnation means it doesn’t matter how much you put him in the fire and throw some extra petrol on top they will never become fire again, because they are something separate from God. And I can perceive that, and I am in control of that. In other words, what’s separate from God I am in control of. So if we actually look at this, what is separate from God in this Western religion? That’s Satan. And who is in control of this hell? Satan. So therefore if you see something separate and you are in control of that, what does that make you? 

Devotees: Satan.

Maharaja:  Right, so that’s the point, if you don’t see it in this way you are not using your brains. And if you don’t use your brains you put yourself in a really foolish position. And this foolish position even though we are very proud of it you are still being an idiot. Suhotra Maharaja used to quote from…, does it matter who you are or who you think you are? It’s still the reality.

So that’s what’s going on here, we may not be able to maintain this. At this moment we are hearing this, we are able to see this. So as soon as the class is over, when we go, ok haribol and walk out of here, then everything turns back into its regular dirt and trees and everything else sitting like that. But the whole idea is being able to see this and being able to understand this, then it puts the mentality more proper, so that we make less mistakes, we are more open to when Krsna consciousness comes to us in whatever form that we are able to take it and use it.

So these are very, very important elements, because we can see this is where the mind is tricking us. This is where the craziness comes in. Because the craziness means it’s a different philosophy. Craziness doesn’t mean we are in pure Vaisnava philosophy of pure Vaisnava understanding and things are going wrong. No. It means we are seeing it differently than pure Krsna consciousness.

So now we have given the Brahman level. This one where we see Laksmiji we are dealing with the, means basically there is an element of the Paramatma but also the Bhagavan it just depends upon whether you are just seeing the Lord, His creation, Laksmi like this, then it’s taking that. But if you are seeing their interaction then the…

Devotee (2): …nearer to you because the mosquitoes?

Maharaja:  Oh no, I am ok. No, I am waving my arms just out of being, it’s just something to do. Thank you very much though, it wasn’t mosquitoes. Sometimes it’s mosquitoes. In other words, if the emotional level is low and we are waving our arms, that’s mosquitoes. Thank you.

So these levels that are open to us this is what’s being offered to us. So the only thing that gets in the way of us seeing like this and making this progression from impiety to piety to Brahman understanding to Paramatma to Bhagavan is our own doubts and misgivings.

Oh, Krsna couldn’t be that. Somebody got divorced, so they are eternally damned. They can’t hold any position or service in the society forever. So what does that mean? That means the holy name can’t purify it. Before you joined you ate cows, you are not going to get rid of that for 2½ generations in your genes, but somehow or another that’s just puff, gone, because we chanted Hare Krsna. But if you join the movement and you make any mistake ever again, you are finished. Where does this come from? Where does this concept come from? It’s not Vaisnava, it’s not devotional, it’s not our philosophy, where is it? It’s Christianity.

Even the Jews are a little bit more broad than this. The Old Testament everybody did something wrong, I think except maybe Abraham. But I think other than him everybody did some really bad thing. The Wailing Wall, the most sacred place for the Jews that’s the Temple of Salomon, and then he gets off on somebody else’s wife. Somebody got drunk, somebody did this, somebody did that. Moses he didn’t have faith in the holy name. They still worship Moses even though he didn’t go into Israel. But in the New Testament squeaky clean, squeaky clean, everything immaculate, everything perfect, if anything went wrong then they can’t handle it. Why? Because they are more impersonal. Then you bring it further forward into the Protestant, they throw out all the sadhus, all culture, all everything. So it’s just you and God, that’s it. You and your money, you and your sense gratification. This is why we make rules like this, because we don’t believe in the power of the holy name.

Because the point is here, everything being Krsna that means everything is already in Krsna consciousness, it’s a matter of us seeing it, that’s all, it’s just a matter of us seeing it. Nothing else. So we go on in all these other illusory things and we come up with all these weird cultural phenomenas that we take as normal. Normal for what? For a Westerner. It’s not normal for the Asians, it’s not normal for those from Africa, South-America, anywhere else other than the First World. And therefore we think our imperialistic view is the view. That’s the problem.

So we bring our own non-Krsna conscious baggage into Krsna consciousness, we don’t take up the Krsna conscious culture, then we’ll be tricked. And who is tricking us? The mind. So that’s the whole point of this, it’s the key how to get from non-Krsna consciousness to Krsna consciousness, it’s the mind. But you have to be able to see what the mind is doing, what it’s actually accepting and not accepting, what it’s accepting and rejecting.

So it’s not accepting Krsna is everywhere, because we have our idea, it’s contaminated therefore Krsna can’t enter it. That’s the whole point, Krsna can’t enter it. How many temples that those in the temple they are the Krsna conscious people and those living outside the temple are something less? Ambarisa, he was a strict brahmacari, right? What about Yudhisthira and his brothers? What about any of the great devotees? Narada Muni is a brahmacari, Kumaras are brahmacaris. But this idea is quite universal. You go around our 400 temples how many hundreds of them will think like this? And how many one or two won’t? Why? Because we think that this Krsna can’t enter into that, that Krsna is not all those different things. So this is the problem.

So it’s not just some theoretical philosophy as some will try to make it out to be and that their bourgeois economics is the reality. No. This is the reality and all that is illusion. It’s the illusion you have to deal with, that’s the reality. But the point is you don’t deal with it then you come back and take birth again. That simple. So one has to be able to take these things. It’s not like there is an alternative. It’s God’s creation, it’s God’s laws, you have to follow His laws with an idea to please Him.

So that’s these things are here and are being pointed out to us. That’s His kindness. Because for Krsna it doesn’t matter, we have been here how long? We have done what? I have heard it said that the devotee, someone becomes a devotee after he has already been through all the 8.400.000 species, so that means you have done a lot of nonsense, and somehow or another that can all be purified by the holy name. So the process still goes on even as a devotee, unless, of course, you are a puritan, then it doesn’t go on.

The point is why is the example given of iron and fire? This is not just an arbitrary example. And what is this example of? The example of the absolute. Because we’ll take absolute, it has to be one thing, it can never be anything else. But absolute means it’s in contact with the absolute. So that means everything is in contact. Now it’s a matter of are you aware of that or not. You are aware you are in the fire of the absolute, you are not aware then you are separate.

Because to say you are eternally damned means that you have a situation that is not connected to Krsna, and so what philosophy is that? It has to be Christianity. There is no such thing in Vaisnavism. Jagai and Madhai could be redeemed and they were great brahmanas, high-grade brahmanas that were degraded.

Devotee (3): When you talk about motherness and childness and coolness like that, it seems that these are stripping the jiva of any kind of personality by virtue of fact that all these energies are some kind of abstract metaphysical ideals that are just manifesting through us in some sense.

Maharaja:  Is that a problem? Your blender in your house, is it that plastic and little metal things that is making everything happen or is it the current that is moving through it? You can have a blender sitting there all day, if it’s not plugged in nothing gets blended. So the point is why do you call it a blender? Electricity also goes through the refrigerator, it goes through the iron, it goes through your toothbrush. So why do you call it what you call it?

Devotee (3): Because of its function or its…

Maharaja:  Yes, function or form. So just because the Lord’s potency is making something work doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have that particular flavors and identities. But even that is that the jiva? Was the jiva born in Manhattan? So then what’s the problem of it being stripped of that? So that’s the thing, we can strip it of it and work with it at the same time. The modern concept either you are stripped of it or you have it, and they can’t deal with anything else. They can’t deal with oxymoron, that you have two things that don’t make any sense that match. It’s like saying a romantic Greek drama. They don’t go together. Somebody has to die. There has to be some kind of tragedy.

But the point is the material world is that, you have the soul which is transcendental, you have the Lord and His energies which are transcendental, and all this is being manifest through dead matter, but the forms and everything are created because of the desire of the jiva who is transcendental and through Laksmi which is transcendental. But because the living entity doesn’t see that he thinks it’s something separate from God, therefore he thinks he can enjoy it. Because if it’s God how do you enjoy it?

So it’s very personal the whole thing. That the jiva himself is in this illusion by his own desire. And what is manifesting now is his particular conditioned nature. And it’s just a matter of he can even take that conditioned nature through the material energy and still connect it all to Krsna and see Krsna, and be just as Krsna conscious as if he was taking the spiritual nature and a spiritual form and engaging that in the Lord’s service. Because for Krsna there is no difference.

Is this me? But this isn’t, right? So the hands might see some big difference, but the person who owns the hands doesn’t. My hand is superior, my foot is not, therefore you can step on my foot? No, it’s still me.

So for Krsna His internal potency, external potency it’s all Him. So He can be manifest and interact and experience rasa anywhere in any manifestation. But within that there is superior and inferior.

Someone comes up and a friend goes, pats you on the back, then that has one feeling. If he comes up and pats you let’s say on your chin, it works, ok, but it’s not as good as patting you on the back.

So the material energy, the rasa in the material world between Laksmi and Narayana and their manifestations here it’s their interaction, but it’s only a spark of their real full form in the spiritual world. So it’s rasa, but it is very, very minimal. But for us, we think it’s something very, very special. Because we identify with dead matter so any movement is better than nothing.

If you are sitting there and there is nothing, you can’t see any form of life and that’s it, and suddenly you see a spider walking by, man, you are best friends, wow, hey, they’ll have a whole.

So that’s what’s going on, we have taken the material world, identified with it, therefore any movement in it that’s created by this verse, by the Lord and His potencies, by Laksmiji, then we take that as something special and immediately we are enthused by it. But we are enthused because we are people, and we are enthused by people. The dead matter isn’t enthusing us. That’s the illusion. That’s why we suffer because we think it’s there. And the material energy is temporary, so it’s always going to have a creation, manifestation and a dissolution. So everything that we think is special goes away. But it hasn’t. Because that potency is still there, that interaction between the Lord and His potencies is still going on. So if we recognize that, then we move into the eternal realm. But as long as we think it’s not that, then we think it’s this temporary realm, therefore everything is temporary. It’s very personal.

Like sometimes, there was one letter I read where one devotee is complaining to Srila Prabhupada about another devotee that they are so impersonal, that they are dealing in this way and that way. And Prabhupada says no, it’s because it’s personal that’s why they are dealing that way. Because they are people they are dealing like that, maybe in an unpurified state, so they are being selfish, but it’s because they are a person that they are dealing in this way. Impersonal means what do you care, it doesn’t matter.

So the whole thing is everything is personal. But the problem is it’s all self-centered, that’s what’s unnatural for the jiva. The jiva its nature is not to be self-centered. Its nature is to assist in others’ relationship. So that sense of sacrifice that’s the eternal nature of the jiva. So when that’s accepted then the jiva becomes happy. But we don’t have faith that we’ll be happy by doing that. We feel unless I do something for myself I can’t be happy. But that’s our idea, but that’s not the way we are. We are happy when we are assisting someone else in their happiness.

Otherwise why is it movies and all this is so popular? It’s someone else, it’s not you. So that’s the whole thing, it’s other people, and you get so involved. You read a book, you get so involved. You hear a story, gossip, why do we get into gossip? Because it’s someone else and their feelings and relations. So that’s the whole thing. So it’s all in relationship to others. It’s been misguided, because that’s where the illusion comes in, because we don’t actually understand what we are dealing with. We are handed a cauliflower, we think it’s a lawnmower, that’s the illusion.

Devotee (4): This phenomena of devotees in the Western world, we are feeling insecure and not confident and comfortable wearing devotional dress, because they feel people think they are weird, people think that…, what is this energy?

Maharaja:  That’s maya, because we are not identifying actually as servant of Krsna and what’s going on.

Because if you think you are weird wearing bed sheets, you ask all the parents they think their kids or teenagers are weird for what they wear. And one group of teenagers thinks the other group of teenagers is weird. So everybody thinks everybody else is weird. All it is some are good at keeping it quiet and some are not so good at keeping it quiet. But everybody thinks everybody else is weird. Except for your two or three friends everybody else is weird. It’s just the way it is.

So the point is if you are confident, this is what we wear, what do we care? After a while people accept it. If a priest walks down the street in America wearing his big black whatever it is with his little white collar, does anybody complain, laugh, roll on the ground? No, nobody. The nuns go out looking weirder than our ladies. Funny little skirts and the little things in the hair trying to keep their hair covered and all that kind of stuff. And everybody accepts them for who they are. They have a nice conversation, even respect them. So they respect that order, so they are respected. We don’t respect it, we think it’s something less, therefore no one respects.

Just like if you walk down the street and a dog comes up and growls at you, you just look at him and keep walking. But if you start to run, he will chase you.

So in the same way, you think you look stupid, then everybody thinks you look stupid. It’s just a point. If you are comfortable with yourself, no one else will be uncomfortable.

Prabhupada was comfortable, everybody else was comfortable. No one said, Prabhupada, who is the guy with the funny bed sheets? They only say we are in funny bed sheets, why? Because we think we are in funny bed sheets. And then they do this, then devotees come up with these things, well, it’s Indian, nowhere in the sastra does it say dhoti and all that. We got such great scholars in our movement. We got fabulous scholars in our movement. Prabhupada talks about dhoti where did it come from. Prabhupada doesn’t know what he is talking about? So if the word dhoti is not used, there is only one word for that? There is only one word for this tin can with four rubber tires on it and a steering wheel? There is so many words for it. So there is not words for these?

Have you ever heard of the thing trikaca? Trikaca is another name for a dhoti. Means it has three different sets of folds. So I mean there is so many things there. Oh the sari is not, that’s Moslem thing. The Moslem took up Indian dress when they came here. You go to Mongolia, look at what they wear. You go to Kazakhstan, look what they wear. You go over to Turkey, you look at what they wear. Do they wear what they wear here? No. So when the Moguls came to India they took up the India dress. They modified it how they liked it. They liked the kurtas, they made them a little longer. They liked the collar on the bagal bundi thing, but they didn’t like the bundi aspect of it, they did it for a while, so they kept the collar and then dropped the rest of it, then we call it a Chinese collar. So all these things, they just took what was here and they adjusted it. The music is the same, they just didn’t like all the words about Krsna, so they took that out, so all you hear is aaaahhhh. It’s the same thing.

And then these foolish indologists then they say it’s something else. They are idiots. That’s the whole thing. Means a person who is the head of a department or a scholar in Judaism is Jewish and what they say is in line with their scriptures and in support of it. Someone who is head of Moslem studies is the same. Buddhist studies is the same. Only in indology is atheist of something else and we take it up and sit there licking their shoes and thinking that is special. It’s just nonsense. And then we talk like them. So this is the problem.

They are too intelligent. This is what Prabhupada meant about too intelligent. They are so smart they go into the realm of stupidity. But they don’t understand that stupidity in our terminology is called atheism. So when they profess all this stuff they are professing atheism. And we are not coming in here from the hellfire and brimstone thing, we are coming in here from straight philosophy, straight metaphysics. You can pick it apart and show exactly how it is. So we are just talking fact. It’s not sentiment. So that’s the difficulty.

If there is a need, if it will help the preaching to wear karmi clothes, we are happy to wear them, we couldn’t care less. But to say you can only wear these and no one else, that’s nonsense. Our devotees will go in karmi clothes to one of these, what do you call it, all the religions get together?

Devotees: Interfaith.

Maharaja:  Interfaith thing. And the Buddhists are wearing their Buddhist dress, and the nuns and the priests are in their dress, and we are in karmi clothes. It’s like, that’s just pure unalloyed attachment to their own conditioned nature. That’s all it is. It’s nothing to do with preaching, Krsna conscious, nothing. He just found a nice out for it, that’s all. That’s all.

You stick to your faith, people join. You don’t stick to your faith, who wants to join somebody who is faithless? That’s the thing. People are looking for something in their life. They are not looking for insecurity, they already have that.

So this whole point, Krsna is there in everything everywhere, and there is nothing that’s not Him. So there is not any problem. Why is it you pay, means I have said this so many times, why is it you pay so much money for a model? Just get some guy or girl and they walk down this runway and then they pay them so much. Why? Because they look so fabulous? Some of them look pretty bad. There is nothing there, they say it’s a girl, but it would be really hard to figure out anatomically if it is. Or they say it’s a guy, but that would also be hard to figure out. Why do they pay them? Because they got panache, they got attitude. They put on the most ridiculous outfits that there are and walk down there like this is like perfectly normal. And the people on the side sit there and go, I’ll take ten of those, a hundred of those, a thousand of these. If they just took an ordinary person off the street walk down, they wouldn’t buy anything.

So that’s the whole thing, who wears what they are wearing with confidence that’s what people notice. That’s all. So there is no such thing as really in fashion or out of fashion, it’s a matter of what people wear with confidence. You think it’s in fashion, I wear it with confidence. And I am wearing it every day until the fashion changes and then when others are wearing something else then I feel insecure, then it goes out of fashion. But some people like it, they wear it every day, no one says anything. They are still wearing their old 1940s pleats and their pant stuff and nobody says anything. Why? Because they feel comfortable in it. That’s all it is.

Because they identify, I am these pants, so therefore like that. We can’t do that very good, we are kind of stuck on the middle. But we can identify, I am servant of Krsna, and it will generate more confidence than this other thing.

So these things, the philosophy and the culture you can’t separate them. Because if it’s philosophy without culture it will be speculation. And if it’s culture without philosophy it will just be sentiment.

Devotee (4): Would it be also wearing devotional dresses, just like a police officer he is wearing this uniform he is not going to do something that is against the law.

Maharaja:  Yes, that’s there.

Devotee (4): So similarly a devotee wearing his devotional clothes he is going to be a little bit more…

Maharaja:  He has to be more careful, yes.

Devotee (4): More careful with the material energy and he won’t be going into movies with that dhoti.

Maharaja:  Yes, like that, unless there is a bunch of other devotees going. What is it, Star Wars had so many Krsna conscious elements that the devotees were going to see that.

Devotee (5): The first week in our bhakta program all the bhaktas went to Gandhi.

Maharaja:  Gandhi, ok.

Devotee (4): So what you say is that clothes they are important?

Maharaja:  Clothes are not very important. What’s important is the mentality. That’s what we are trying to get at here. But the point is, it’s a matter of identity. This is a very, very fine point, I have spoken so strongly on this about it, but I am speaking actually not about the clothes, I am speaking about the mentality with which they are worn. That’s the whole point.

In other words, the devotee is wearing a dhoti. Why is he wearing it? What’s his mentality? If he is not wearing it, what’s his mentality? His wearing karmi clothes, what’s his mentality? So that’s what we are talking about. Because we are dealing here with the mind. These others are external manifestations. That’s why it’s difficult many times to catch the points because of this seeing the difference between the subtle and the gross. Means technically the spiritual, the metaphysical, and the physical are all connected. But we tend to see them all very differently.

So it’s like this, the devotee is wearing his dhoti, and because we are devotees of Krsna, but we are special and all these other nonsense rascal dirty filthy scumbags are out here, then that’s nice he has faith, but his faith is polluted by pride. So therefore the karmis won’t appreciate. Or he is wearing his karmi clothes and he is thinking that it’s because you can’t wear devotee clothes and this and that and so we have to wear this, people will see him as insecure, as weak. Or the karmi is identifying, yes, I am this clothes, I look great, this guy brand name stuff, so I am looking good, but they identify with the clothes. So people notice the clothes, but it’s not necessarily they notice the person other than his attitude. If he is able to project enough attitude they’ll notice that. But when they see him they don’t go necessarily, you look great, they’ll say, wow, nice shirt. If he is projecting enough energy and looking comfortable, then they’ll say, you look great. So even the karmis are unknowingly making a differentiation.

So the devotee is wearing this because this is our tradition, this is what we wear. Or he is wearing the karmi clothes because this is what’s going to work for this preaching, so therefore I should look my best at it, but I still don’t identify with it. That’s then what this affords us. Because it’s the Lord’s potencies that are working.  

In other words, clothes are worn by human beings, it’s just part of the human culture. In that it has it looks aesthetic, there is some aspect of practicalness and aesthstics that’s there. So those are potencies. Practicalness is a potency. That it looks good is a potency. Now that is the principle on what it is. So it’s not what you wear.

So the ideal is what they wear in the spiritual world, so that will be your dhotis, saris and all that. You have the opportunity, why one wouldn’t want to wear? Krsna wears, you like to be like who you have appreciation for. But if the situation doesn’t afford that, you wear whatever works.

But the main principle is that it works and it looks good. That’s the bottom line. You have to look like a cultured person. So even you are wearing non-devotional clothes it should be nice non-devotional clothes that reflect the environment you are in. You got an in, you are going to the academy, you wear a tuxedo. That’s what fits the situation. And you better wear a good one, otherwise they think you are an idiot.

So it’s more the mentality of wearing it and how it’s worn that’s more important than what’s being worn. So those who speak that you are wearing a dhoti that’s Krsna consciousness, they have missed the point, but at least they are trying to follow some tradition. Those that say, it doesn’t matter, you can wear whatever you want, we are not from India so we don’t wear Indian clothes. But then you define what’s American clothes? A lot of Americans wear a big huge chain like this. So why aren’t our devotees wearing that? They wear shades at night. I don’t see the devotees wearing that. A couple of them of course. So what’s American? What’s English? What’s French? How is it defined?

So therefore it’s a matter of what is cultured for the situation. So the thing is basically unless the other person has some kind of attitude problem with devotional clothes, devotional clothes work anywhere. They are the most universal of anything. But if the other persons are having a problem.

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Maharaja had a group of persons, or two groups. One group that wore 3P suits with spats, and another group that dressed up, they wore these black turbans, black kind of real puffy kind of like cape things with a little white collar and these, what do they call those, those pants, they are puffy up here and then they are super tight on the legs?

Devotee (5): Jumpers.

Maharaja:  Jumpers, but.

Devotee (6): Plus-fours. 

Maharaja:  Plus-fours, ok, like that. I think they also call it, they may call them chudidars I think, I am not sure. It’s a kind of pants and they are really tight along here, with black shoes. And they would go out presenting things, they would be going. In other words, the guys in suits would go out for getting work done. The guys in the other thing would go out to preach to the British because they would accept that they are the priests. So it was because of the mentality of the British then he used that.

So we don’t have any problem with it. But they never thought that this is ok and devotional clothes are stupid or unnecessary. No, when they needed that they wore that. Just like you take a bath, you put on a gamsha. So if the pants and the polo t-shirt are so important, why are they not wearing them in the shower? Because it doesn’t match. So that’s the thing. So you wear what’s appropriate. So it’s a mentality.

So in other words, this stuff here then is taken into the Lord’s potencies. Because how do you choose what looks good or not? So you take something more towards the sattvika. Otherwise you can go out in your stressed jeans and this and that and look just like something off the street. The reason it’s stressed is because somebody picked you up and rubbed the sidewalk with you that made it clean and stood you back up again, then you go fashion.

So that’s the thing, you don’t look like someone off the street. And if you check, you go to most every temple, when a devotee leaves the temple, goes out on sankirtana, a lot of them look like they are off the street, or they look like they belong in an insane asylum, or they have to be a complete total nerd down the university that doesn’t even notice their clothing. So you tell me how any of those actually fit in? So it’s very few that actually dress that would fit in. I have only seen a couple that really dress good, Balarama, you remember, he used to dress good, Bhavananda, he is…, he looks good. So many people they look good, but very few. Most of them look like you wouldn’t want to be like them because they dress so badly, or they are right off the street so if you were a gentleman you wouldn’t even want to talk to them.

So it’s they are not even catching the potencies that are working here. So that’s the point, you catch the potencies you understand what’s going, so then you dress appropriately. So this philosophy is very, very practical, very practical.

Devotee (7): So you are speaking about the dress should be practical. So while traveling like in an airplane for ten, twelve hours a tri-kaca is not exactly the most…

Maharaja:  Depends on your practice, I wouldn’t go there not with me. I have worn a dhoti everywhere, done everything, and I don’t really…

Devotee (7): A lungi or a dhoti?

Maharaja:  A dhoti, I wear a dhoti for such a long time and I wore it good. I have never seen any reason to not.

Devotee (7): Maybe we need courses on how to travel with devotional clothes.

Maharaja:  That’s the whole…, you need courses on how to wear them and different ways to wear them and stuff like that. It’s a matter you know how to wear it, it works.

Most of the stuff that one would wear in the West is really unpractical for doing. They are always having to pull it up so that the crack in their bum doesn’t stick out, pull it up so the nipples don’t come out and this and that kind of stuff. Very impractical stuff, but they claim it’s so practical. No, it is. It’s practical means people can see your body, they get maybe attracted, maybe you got a shot at finding somebody to live with for the rest of your life.

Devotee (7): If you are moving in and out of a seat, then it’s got these…

Maharaja:  Yes, so therefore it’s called a hand, and when you get up you move your hand like this. When women sit down with skirts they do it all the time.

Devotee (7): Question of practice.

Maharaja:  It’s a question of practice. Everything is a question of practice.

You got a gun in the holster under your arm, it’s a matter of practice to get it through the suit into there, pull it out in a nanosecond and blow the guy’s head off. That’s more practical would be to have it slung across here with a whole thing like that and all the bullets right there, like that. But then that’s a little obvious.

Devotee (7): That went out of style.

Maharaja:  Yes, so it’s not so fashionable these days.

So it’s a matter of practice. Means if you value it, you will practice it where it works. You get on the bicycle, the first thing you do is notice every tree there is between you and wherever you are going and bump into them. But with practice you can do anything. So it’s a matter of clothes or practice. Otherwise Krsna is not so stupid that He’d take a bunch of cows out into a field with a dhoti on if it wasn’t practical, it didn’t look good in practical. So it’s just a matter of practice. You just know that the arm is there, the folds in the back get caught in that, so you know how to deal with it. So it’s just practice.

Devotee (7): Did He also wear pants sometimes? I mean sometimes we dress the deity in dhoti, sometimes the deity is dressed in pants.

Maharaja:  But those pants generally if they are done traditionally they are generally done out of a dhoti. But if are going to wear pants, go ahead, wear those kind of pants. Great. You also have to wear one of those shirts also.

Devotee (7): And the turban.

Maharaja:  Yes, and the turban.

Devotee (7): So you are saying about the devotees who just don’t wear right, no matter whether they are wearing Western dress or they are wearing Indian or Vedic dress or whatever. So it’s a question of being respectable of carrying it with style. So that just really boils down to the personality, because the person’s taste, you cannot argue about taste, you cannot educate people on taste in the same way of dressing. Ok, you can say this is the what we understand as taste or sanity and you should be inside this box otherwise you are not fit for public consumption. But then again everybody has their own choice on how they…

Maharaja:  Their choice, but it’s still is how they wear their choice. Because it’s a matter of how it’s worn and presented. Because in other words, it’s still the mentality. In other words, you are dealing with higher elements here, higher potencies.

The whole idea is, you have your dress, but then there is something behind that. Because the point is, if we simply deal with the physical, what is elevating us? So the physical is based on the metaphysical, and that metaphysical is going in the direction of spiritual. So the whole idea is, you become conscious of what you are dressing, what you are wearing, how you are wearing it, the situation you are in when you are wearing in, then it starts to make sense.

Like you walk along and there is a puddle, you have these nice pants, it’s hard to pull them up, but dhoti you just grab it and it’s up. You can walk through water, no problem. I mean if you can walk on water, that’s even better.

So the whole idea is, it’s creating consciousness, that’s what you are trying to create. Because if you can become conscious of what you are wearing and how you are wearing it, you could become conscious that those principle of what you are wearing and how you are wearing is Krsna, that’s the next step. But unless you are conscious of what you are wearing other than your own personal identity, then how are you going to see Krsna in it? That’s what you are trying to get at, that’s why any aspect can be used. Even if they are wearing some fashionable things that are maybe very strange, but still they have to wear it properly according to the fashion to get that aesthetic potency to flow through it, then it becomes useful. Otherwise it didn’t.

So that’s the point, you are trying to invoke consciousness wherever is your attachments, because that’s what this section is about. This section is about who is behind passion and attraction. So the thing is why we are attracted to wear that kind of pants or that shoe or that shirt or have this kind of couch or that picture on the wall or this kind of treating of our floor or curtains or our bed covers or our pillows, is because of Krsna’s potency of attraction here. It’s actually Krsna, but we don’t realize. So if it’s Krsna, then it’s either I am keeping all these twenty pillows on my bed nicely because I like the look of these pillows, or I just like pillows.

But the point is, what is it what we are dealing with? If Krsna is those pillows, then it’s not I like them looking like this, therefore I keep them nice, that Krsna has come in the form of these pillows and with the potency of Laksmi is that attractiveness or whatever it is and also that form, therefore I need to keep these pillows nicely and looking nice because it’s service to Krsna. So therefore all your twenty little fancy throw pillows have become connected to Krsna. Otherwise they are just being practical and just keeping a nice house like anybody else does, and it has therefore no Krsna conscious content. But the other one is there, and after a while, if it’s Krsna, then it’s like why do I need twenty of them? If it’s my nature, I got to have twenty, then I have twenty. But if it’s not, I simply picked it up, because I saw someone else with twenty of them, then actually it looks nice with only five. So I start reducing my attachments, because I am increasing the quality of how I am dealing.

So you can start with anything, you are going up the stair, in that little landing there is a little triangle table in the corner and on it it’s a little dinky little vase thing and inside is a few little dried flowers. But those flowers should be looking proper, it should be in the vase, the vase should be properly on the table, the table is not sticking out from the corner, it’s sitting there properly. Why? Because it’s Krsna’s potencies. It’s there, because you wanted it. So it’s starting from yourself, but since it’s there, work with it properly, it’s Krsna.

Devotee (7): But to get it there in that shape and style took a lot of effort, a lot of trouble, and a lot of disturbance. So the so-called harmony and peace which is now present which you say one can appreciate as Krsna has cost a lot of effort and headache, so the question is always, what is greater, like in association, the pain or the pleasure which is perceived from it?

Maharaja:  So then that will…it will start to make you conscious, so you’ll start to think about that, and then you’ll start to be more wary about going into boutiques that are in buildings that are leaning more than Pisa to buy stuff, because it might fall over at any time. So then, like you are saying, the trouble it takes, is it really worth it? Because if you are looking at Krsna as aesthetics, do I actually need Krsna in that form of that aesthetic? So then I might not need it, so therefore I don’t have to get the car, go to Calcutta, run around, and do all the different things and all that kind of thing. And then to do that you have to have the money, to do that you have to, all these different things. So it may be seen, I can appreciate Krsna in aesthetics in much less or more simple or more refined or seomthing, and then slowly, slowly it reduces the need, because you are connecting it.

Devotee (7): The reductionist might also tend to some tinge of Mayavada if you are taking out the elaborateness and just making it…

Maharaja:  No, because the thing is, fineness…

Devotee (7): Clear cut.

Maharaja:  It’s not a matter of clear cut is meaning that. It’s a matter of because it’s Krsna, therefore it’s refined.

 Because it’s like you see in, what do you call it, this is really stretching, do you understand where this is going? We are still dealing with this same point, but we are trying to bring it into your house. Because we’ll say, ok, great philosophy and I talk about the pillar, but I haven’t got a pillar in my house, so it doesn’t work. So the whole thing is there, it is going in, you have take Versailles, no one will say it’s stark or Mayavada, but it’s got one room and inside is one pillar and on it is one clock, but it perfectly matches. So you look in an architectural magazine, Better Home & Garden, it says you generally have two kinds of houses, very clean and very few things that are there nicely, but well balanced, or you name it it’s there, millions of things, but they are all nicely placed. In either case it’s one aspect of Krsna, simplicity is a form of beauty, at the same time, the very things are very complex. You take the cauliflower, you steam it, you put some butter and salt and pepper on it, it tastes nice, it’s very simple, but it’s balanced. You take that same cauliflower, cook it with twenty different spices in a nice gravy, and it tastes nice, because it’s balanced.

But the main point is according to your conditioned nature however complex or simple is required, that’s what you use. But the point is, it’s Krsna. It’s not something else. The reason you like it is because it’s Krsna. So therefore since it’s Krsna, start to deal with it properly, you can’t not deal with it… You can’t just throw the pillow in the corner, because if that’s Krsna or Laksmi you don’t do that. You have to respect that pillow and put it properly. So that means everything in your house you have to actually deal with it respected, not it’s mine, I deal with it however I like. No, it’s Krsna, therefore you have to deal with it according to how He likes.