690330 - Lecture - Hawaii

Lectures by Date, 1969

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Listen to a 'Nectar Drop' created from this lecture

690330LE-HAWAII - March 30, 1969 - 41:32 Minutes

Gaurasundara: . . . parama-guru, Śrī-Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī has discussed that this world is like a museum and you can understand it if you just consider it. If you know so many corridors of the museum, so many displays but one thing that we don't know very well is the curator or the proprietor of the museum. We sometimes become fascinated how intricately things are working but still that's so foolish, as to insult the curator by denying his existence. Anyway there are many observations that we could make to better understand our situation.

So I think I will try and set forward a few of these.

One thing is that we can notice the feature of motion in this existence all around us. So unless we consider motion apart from the even more deluding aspects of time. Motion can be seen in any natural body, for example a ball. A ball has the tendency if it is not in motion to remain at rest and if this contacted by another mover or an entity in motion then that ball can begin to move.

There is a law in physics that was formulated by Newton. That a body at rest will remain at rest in the absence of contact with a body in motion. So some of us this becomes obvious, that we can understand the sequence of mover and the moved. Something that is at rest in order to begin to move it has to be touched by a mover. We can examine everything around us.

For example if we see a ball rolling down the street we can understand that the cause of that ball coming down the street is a bat and that bat is also being moved by a boy. So in this way we can understand the process of mover, the move and the movement like this. Now the sign is the sequence of mover and the mover . . . mover can't go on to infinity.

There has to be a first mover if there is no first mover there can be no first step in motion and this is being plainly false you can see there is motion. The point is there has to be first mover and then there can be subsequent motion and this first mover everybody that can see and understood as God.

Now some people put forward the theory that motion can go on to infinity, mover mover movement movement like that. The confusion which results in from the fact that God is infinite. We could say that motion could go on to the infinite but it can't go on to infinity. There has to be the first mover or the whole thing is simply not being operated.

Anyway there are many analysis that we can put like this and there are many examples which we can give. Just like many years ago I had a friend who was very fond of dominoes and he had a large selection of dominoes. So sometimes children stack these dominoes, they play dominoes with two inches. They stack them one inch apart and make a long, long chain of dominoes.

From one room leading into another, then if you get at the end of that chain simply push on the first domino and that will knock the second domino, third domino. Like this. You can also be in the next room and round the corner and if someone had seen a chain of fallen dominoes.

And this is something children sort of stare at, you know in awe of the impresidence but this is like this process of cause and effect and people if they have any sense of. If they have any intelligence to have some awe when they see this process of motion going on all around it. So much inexplicable motion.

Anyway the point behind all this again is that we should analyse how all this is taking place and not to be bewildered by it because we are caught up in the middle of this process and we have to have some understanding about what our position is. This analysis of motion is similar to another sort of analysis that we can make.

That is in the way that things are ordered and the way that so-called natural body. This natural body is a term that is used in philosophy meaning simply some material entity. Natural body which has no intelligence and acts repeatedly in the same way for achieving the same results.

Like there are many examples here again, for example the large body of water, the ocean. Can be observed and as we see the water is evaporated from the ocean and by evaporation the water becomes pure. It is drawn up into the clouds and the clouds carry the water over the land. Then the clouds have the tendency to distribute this water especially on the high places like mountains and from there the water flows down in rivers and all living and nonliving living entities are nourished by this water.

Then again the dirty water flows into the ocean and is being purified again. So this process is going on everywhere and it goes on in the same sequence over and over and over again.

Now the point is that supposedly something with that intelligence should not act for an intelligent ant. Well that's all right but that means that then these non-intelligent things have to be manipulated by an entity with intelligence.

Again this entity is known everywhere as God. This conception that most people have of God is very shallow but there is really a tremendous subject matter to this. Well it is not that subject very nicely but a tremendous field for investigation. Anyway, this should be the prime interest of the living entity because in the human form, human being is a kind of conscious being distinguished from so many other kinds of conscious beings.

For example we can see that a dog is conscious, he knows that he needs food, he knows that he needs to defend and so many things. Anyway, the human being has consciousness which is obviously very much evolved. Then there in the middle of all this phenomenal museum it makes you wonder how things are being ordered and this is our duty to wonder and to make some positive investigation.

There is one particular display that I certainly. The other day. a few years ago I was involved in some sport called skin diving. So probably everybody knows in skin diving there is an apparatus called a scuba gear. Maybe you can picture some little so-called frog man blowing bubbles from down deep under the water.

The only link that he has with the living world at least his world is this little bottle of air and there are so many dangers and so many fearful aquatic animals. So many things which could finish him at any moment. Anyway this scuba means self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.

Now the analogy here is that just like this breathing apparatus can keep a little man alive deep in the ocean similarly the process of Kṛṣṇa consciousness can keep a living entity alive deep in this ocean of ignorance because the whole world is sitting at the bottom of an ocean of forgetfulness and nescience. People don't have the consciousness to even wonder at what they are and what sort of situation this is.

So practically they are now dead people, they are sort of swimming around, their lungs are filled with water and they can never rise to the surface in that condition. So this self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. The idea struck me. I was thinking. I can pick up my. at least monitor so I thought, "Oh let me pick up my scuba gear and swim back to the temple."

The analogy is that people who are just living for Kṛṣṇa consciousness they can get the water out of their lungs and they can revive their consciousness and then they have every facility for rising to the surface of the ocean of ignorance and the material existence. The material existence is called ignorance because people are in the most precarious conditions and they take no note of it. For example we can see that any kind of thoughtlessness that at any moment this body which has been called by.

Again by Bhaktisiddhānta as a fleshing by the naturalist entity. It can be mutilated at any moment by so many forces in nature. Some other living entity can have some malicious whim and put a bullet in it. So many things can cause and start. This sum which is death is a tsunami which we all are awaiting and as long as we are waiting we should be very anxious to find out why we are associating with this condition.

This is a feature which we are respecting in this teaching of Kṛṣṇa consciousness because we are trying to get people to be serious about this opportunity of understanding this spiritual knowledge. So spiritual knowledge is substantial knowledge which can explain everything.

Spiritual knowledge is sometimes called the science of God especially this Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy is a very complete science of the absolute truth. If you ever say that the absolute truth is the source from which everything is emanating then we can. Going back to the authority of first God, we can at least try and understand that the absolute truth is the self-sufficient source from which everything is coming.

That means this material world is coming from the absolute truth. The material world is pictured as a perverted reflection, just like if I go to a riverbank you can see a tree which is upside down. That tree, looking in the river, you can see the reflection but that's not the real tree. The real tree is standing above that reflection.

So similarly this material world which is limited by this condition of time which brings with it birth, disease, old age and death. The material world is compared to this downward tree with its roots upwards and the bank is down. The real tree this spiritual manifestation or the transcendental museum. Right now we are in this nasty old tsunami museum.

So by understanding very clearly the comparison of the description of this material nature and the spiritual nature then our original consciousness can be revived. This Kṛṣṇa consciousness is very practical because Kṛṣṇa is the actual eternal nomenclature of the absolute truth. Kṛṣṇa means all attractive and the absolute.

He is emanating everything, naturally He is attracting everything at the same time. He is the source of everything but He is full.

So sometimes we say that absolute mathematics is like this: 1+1=1 and 1-1=1. That means in the absolute sphere Kṛṣṇa is so full that it's inconceivable there is no limit to His potency. So He can emanate things like billions and billions of living entities, time and space, cause and effect.

All these things can be practically understood by a process descending from above. In other words, like we could be rescued from the bottom of the ocean by some man coming downwards with a breathing apparatus but we can't rise from the bottom of the ocean with our lungs filled with water.

Similarly when we completely forgotten what we are, when we have almost no consciousness for understanding of the absolute truth then the process of understanding is to accept the help of someone who is coming down. Who is bringing knowledge down to our level on the platform of absolute knowledge.

So we have all been very much favoured by our spirit . . . (indistinct) . . . His Divine Grace Swāmī Bhaktivedanta. Now it is our business to try present this process of Kṛṣṇa consciousness to everyone. That would be doing to the best of our ability.

By now the mantra has become very famous but it is not always very well understood. For so many people know, "Yes, Hare Krishna I know that." But they don't actually know it. There is so much to the teachings of Krishna Consciousness that it takes a very careful study with using . . . not using but trying to explain the Bhagavad-gītā which was spoken by Kṛṣṇa to Arjuna.

In the Bhagavad-gītā is a perfect condensed form, a dictionary for looking up the information on everything. On all the material existence, for understanding exactly what it is and why it is here.

So this process of chanting is one of the means recommended for making. it is essentially for making spiritual advancement. So we invite everybody to participate in this process by associating with us. With a Kṛṣṇa consciousness person by chanting, by trying to understand the philosophy, by taking prasādam and by being a little thoughtful, a little serious.

A little bit anxious about making perfection of life. We cannot accept the rather foolish speculative theories that when this body is finished then we will also be. The 'I' of the identity within the body will be finished. Nobody is very much eager to die in fact people are often especially hankering that they could live forever but the mistake is in thinking that they should want to live forever in this sort of existence. Like if you don't know how.

But the main concentration of it is with this body, this material body. We tend to think this body is our self but with a little investigation we can see that the body is not ourselves. It is an extension but it is a temporary extension. Like when we were first born we didn't have a very developed mind still we can understand that I was there within this very tiny body.

Gradually the body evolved and the mind evolved but the central fact is that the 'I' which remained and now were hankering for some way to live eternally but we are forced to adopt this rather reckless attitude of saying that we don't really care whether I die or not.

This death is miserable, everybody knows it, sometimes people will come in and say: "Why don't you prove that there is such a thing as the soul?" Well there are two alternatives at this point: 1) if somebody says that to me I could kill him out right then he would know, "Yes I have a soul."

He would feel a little bit sick, you know, about having to go through all this miserable thing again but the practical process is for him to sit down and rationally try and understand what he is. Everything is completely explained and simply by attentive listening we can revive our consciousness enough to understand it.

Anyway this current theory which is very popular is that consciousness is a option of material combination and with the dissolution of this body this 'I' will also be dissolved. But usually in the beginning this doesn't answer anything because it is still a material combination that made this 'I'. Still at that point when the 'I' is formulated it is should be obvious that it is completely different from the material body.

So the 'I' that maybe appear to have been formulated but actually it appeared from some other dimension. It is just not there before and suddenly it is there so somebody is claiming 'I' this. 'I' think like this. So people are currently putting forward the theory that 'I' have come out of a material combination. There is no explanation for how the matter has combined or why even after estimating my defects. There is actually no answer to any question that anybody can ask the only reason that this sort of theory goes unchallenged is that people's brains are so dull by this actual brainwashing process.

It's just deputed their whole lives because the people in the material world are understood to be here because they have made a big mistake because they have chosen to miss-use their independence. Therefore from this understanding it should be clear that nobody should expect that you can be born into a society which full of all blissful knowledge.

Like people are born and go to school here in America and they then think, "Oh I understand everything and if I am miserable then I will have to go a psychiatrist who will, you know beat me on the head and tell me I am happy, when I am miserable." Then ultimately I'll be going for shock treatment or something like that or commit suicide.

Anybody who is really thinking over these crazy . . . (indistinct) . . . which they had even though they have a dream like all of them they haven't got enough reality just now but still they happen. In this other tribe of mystics so many miserable things happen. So many miserable people that we couldn't help they didn't know what to do. They just. So worries, suffering by now dead we don't know what happens to them.

At this point everybody should please be serious or make some profit out of this particular meeting to understand this very serious subject matter in which there is every possibility for getting some enlightenment. This should be the most coveted item, everybody wants some knowledge. Indirectly you can see that everybody wants to talk, talking is a most enjoyable thing, we always want to talk to someone, gossip, read newspapers, go to movies.

All this is they want to witness some kind of communication because the latent idea is they want to get some knowledge. They have a hankering for understanding what they are but their minds are so dull by this bad habits which have been impressed on them that they just can't make it.

So obviously the process of spiritual understanding, although anybody can pick it up. It will be a gradual process, in the beginning a person has to be a sincere . . . to desire to do something, to actually do something to contact reality to establish that reference point. First of all to understand what I am, just like there is a process of meditation described where the recommendation is that you think that 'I' am this hand.

So you think, "Yes I am this hand." So if I cut my hand off where would 'I' be? 'I' wouldn't be in the hand any more the hand is not useful therefore I am not that hand. The hand is 'my' hand and 'my' distinction so if we consider like that. My foot, my leg, my. and . . . (indistinct)

So there are some interesting statistics. there is enough statistic stuff. fact from the study of the brain trying to locate where is the mind and the conclusion is that the mind is not even contained in the brain and the theory was that the brain was generating some electricity and that's the mind and the mind was identical with the soul but there are so many cases.

For example of people who had brain surgery where they had huge portions of their brain removed and their consciousness was certainly not impaired at all. They had full memory and they proved normal just as before and even one sort of notable incident where one workman got a crowbar. They put right through his head but he was still living and he had the crowbar in his head and he went to the doctors and had it removed and a huge slice of a really cylinder of this fleshy stuff was taken out of his head and after that he was patched up and he still was living and everybody thought, "Well he is still the same as before."

But these are freaks of nature but the point is that the soul is so potent that even in spite of so many damages inflicted on the material machinery of the body the soul can manage things. So we know so many stories like that, so we don't want to dwell on that, the point is that material science hasn't accepted what life is and where it's coming from, where it's centred. Even the greatest scientists have to go to the funeral parlour and see their friends lying there. The body is lying there but the friend has gone. So the deceased is laughing in the face of the scientists and he has to go back to his unreal ivory tower where he undergoes his science and investigates some more.

This process can go on endlessly and if anybody accepts this idea which is so popular that, "I'll just go on doing whatever work I want and enjoy myself and that automatically everything will be solved. All the problems of life will be solved for me. I will be relieved of all trouble of making the effort."

That's not really a very good idea.

So please take this Krishna Consciousness Movement very seriously no matter what misrepresentations are circulating. That some people are very unchosen . . . (indistinct) . . . and that they are sincere talking a great deal. So the point is that so much talk from (indistinct) going on that everybody who is sincere themselves they have to be looking out for themselves to understand what is actually the truth.

So we are offering therefore an opportunity so everybody can come and observe us very scientifically and experiment with us and try and get this benefit of Kṛṣṇa consciousness from us and enjoy it. At least make a solution to so many problems.

So are there any questions?

Prabhupāda: Yes you can put them above the . . . (indistinct)

Gaurasundara: So are there any questions?

Prabhupāda: Yes, you can question about the speaking.

Guest: Could you elaborate a little bit on the point of debate of Kṛṣṇa manifesting everything, and therefore He's attractive?

Gaurasundara: Well, the point is, Kṛṣṇa is the fountainhead of everything—everything, what you can conceive and what you can't conceive. And that relationships stands for every entity. Therefore He is all-attractive, because He has everything.

Guest: He's all-attractive because He is the source?

Gaurasundara: Yes. Any desirable quality is perfect in Him; therefore He is all-attractive.

Prabhupāda: How a man becomes attractive? First of all we have to understand that. Suppose a very rich man is attractive, a very intelligent man is attractive, a beautiful man is attractive, a famous man is attractive, a wise man is attractive, a renounced man is also attractive. These are attractive features. So if we analyze Kṛṣṇa, we find all these six opulences of attractive men fully present in Kṛṣṇa.

So even from historical references, there is not a single person who can be compared with Kṛṣṇa. Therefore He is all-attractive. And everything that we experience, that is the manifestation of Kṛṣṇa's energy. Parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śruyate (Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 6.8, CC Madhya 13.65, purport).

His energies are differently manifested. Similarly, in Viṣṇu Purāṇa also, it is said, parasya brahmaṇaḥ śaktis tathaiva akhilaṁ jagat (Viṣṇu Purāṇa 1.22.56).

Akhilaṁ jagat means the whole cosmic manifestation is a display of the multi-energies of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So because He is fully energetic, therefore He is attractive and cause of all causes. These are the evidences of Vedic literatures.

And when He was actually present, He was attractive in so many features. In the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra, when He was speaking the Bhagavad-gītā, the speech which He delivered, although He is not present now in our vision, you cannot find in the whole world such attractive speech of wisdom. Nobody can say.

What we have got practical experience about His speech, which is still going on, still we are trying to understand. The greatest scholars of the world, the philosophers, they are trying to understand Bhagavad-gītā. There were many, many great scholars and saintly persons all over India, but each and every one of them have tried to understand Bhagavad-gītā. Even Professor Einstein, he was reading Bhagavad-gītā.

So His attractiveness is evidently presented by the wisdom of Bhagavad-gītā. So He is all-attractive. There is no doubt about it. And in the Vedic literature we also understand, tasmin vijñāte sarvam evaṁ vijñātaṁ bhavati (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.3):

"If you can understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead, or the Absolute Truth, then sarvam evaṁ vijñātaṁ bhavati: you can understand everything, how it is working." Because everything is display of His energy. So if you can understand how His energy is acting, then you can understand the whole cosmic manifestation. That is explained in the Vedic literature.

Just like in our presence we have got practical experience, the sun. The whole material world is maintained by sunlight. The planets are rotating by the heat of sunlight, the vegetation, the water, everything is being conducted by the sunlight. It is by scorching sunlight the water is evaporated from the sea.

It is formed into gas, cloud, and it is distributing all over the land. Then vegetation is coming, and it is becoming green, yellow, many colorful. So actually, the sun is the cause of all material manifestations. So if anyone can study what is sun, then he can understand how everything is appearing. That is practical. Similarly, sun is also not ultimate cause. The ultimate cause is Kṛṣṇa.

īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ

sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ

anādir ādir govindaḥ

sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam

(Bs. 5.1)

Sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam means the cause of all causes. And the sun is described as the eye of Kṛṣṇa. Yac-cakṣur eṣa savitā sakala-grahāṇām.

yac-cakṣur eṣa savitā sakala-grahāṇāṁ

rājā samasta (sura-mūrtir) aśeṣa-tejaḥ

yasyājñayā bhramati sambhṛta-kāla-cakro

(Bs. 5.52)

The sun is so powerful that it is the life of every planet. Without sunlight, nobody can see anything. We are very much proud of testing everything by seeing, "I want to see." Now that seeing power is resting on the sunlight.

Without sunlight, your eyes are useless. Therefore sun is the eyes for all planets. All planets means all the residents of each and every planet. Yac-cakṣur eṣa savitā sakala-grahāṇāṁ rājā samasta-sura-mūrtiḥ. Therefore he is the king of all planets. These are described in Brahma-saṁhitā.

Aśeṣa-tejaḥ, unlimited potencies, or unlimited heat. There is no limit how much heat is there in the sun globe. So that sun also rotating. Yasyājñayā bhramati sambhṛta-kāla-cakro. That sun is also rotating under the guidance of Kṛṣṇa. Therefore Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme. Govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi.

The sun is rotating; it has got its orbit. It is rotating sixteen thousand miles per second. It is rotating. That you cannot deny. These are facts described. So somebody has arranged how the sun is rotating. Just like your sputnik rotates in the space by the scientist who is playing on the electronic machines in the laboratory, and the sputnik is rotating.

So why don't you think that the sun is also rotating under some guidance? How you can deny it? So that is explained in the Brahma-saṁhitā: yasyājñayā bhramati sambhṛta-kāla-cakro. It has also a lifetime duration. As soon as that lifetime duration is finished . . .

Now, now, who gave him this lifetime duration, this movement? Just like Śrīman Gaurasundara began his speech that without pushing on, without being moved by somebody else, nothing can move. So He is also moving.

Yasyājñayā bhramati sambhṛta-kāla-cakro

govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

(Bs. 5.52)

Therefore He is . . . (indistinct) . . . we must know how He is acting. Simply by understanding the word "Kṛṣṇa," you do not . . . we must know thoroughly how Kṛṣṇa is acting.

That is all explained in the Bhagavad-gītā. If we study Bhagavad-gītā very carefully, as it is, we can understand. Tasmin vijñāte sarvam eva vijñātaṁ bhavati (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.3).

If you can simply understand the Kṛṣṇa and Kṛṣṇa philosophy, then you understand everything. It is so perfect.

(break) . . . question you can put. (break) Now, modern-days people are very much attracted by scientific knowledge. Oh, there is complete scientific knowledge in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. So if you want to understand, even from scientific point of view, these boys will be able to answer you.

(break) . . . question, then chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. (kīrtana) (break) (end)