Need another reason to feel guilty about feeding your children that Happy Meal — aside from the fat, the calories and that voice in your head asking why you can’t be bothered to actually cook a well-balanced meal now and then? Rajendra Pachauri would like to offer you one. The head of the U.N.’s Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pachauri on Monday urged people around the world to cut back on meat in order to combat climate change. “Give up meat for one day [per week] at least initially, and decrease it from there,” Pachauri told Britain’s Observer newspaper. “In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity.” So, that addiction to pork and beef isn’t just clogging your arteries; it’s flame-broiling the earth, too.

By the numbers, Pachauri is absolutely right. In a 2006 report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions — by comparison, all the world’s cars, trains, planes and boats account for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of livestock’s contribution to global warming come from deforestation, as the growing demand for meat results in trees being cut down to make space for pasture or farmland to grow animal feed. Livestock takes up a lot of space — nearly one-third of the earth’s entire landmass. In Latin America, the FAO estimates that some 70% of former forest cover has been converted for grazing. Lost forest cover heats the planet, because trees absorb CO2 while they’re alive — and when they’re burned or cut down, the greenhouse gas is released back into the atmosphere.

Then there’s manure — all that animal waste generates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that has 296 times the warming effect of CO2. And of course, there is cow flatulence: as cattle digest grass or grain, they produce methane gas, of which they expel up to 200 L a day. Given that there are 100 million cattle in the U.S. alone, and that methane has 23 times the warming impact of CO2, the gas adds up.

The worrisome news is that as the world economy grows, so does global meat consumption. The average person in the industrialized world eats more than 176 lb. of meat annually, compared with around 66 lb. consumed by the average resident of the developing world. As developing nations get richer, one of the first things citizens spend their extra income on is a more meat-rich diet. Whereas pork would once have been a rare luxury in China, today even the relatively poor in the country’s cities can afford a little meat at almost every meal — so much so that pork imports to China rose more than 900% through the first four months of the year. In 2008, global meat production is expected to top 280 million tons, and that figure could nearly double by 2050.

Producing all that meat will do more than just warm the world; it will also raise pressure on land resources. The FAO estimates that about 20% of the planet’s pastureland has been degraded by grazing animals, and increased demand for meat means increased demand for animal feed — much of the world’s grain production is fed to animals rather than to humans. (The global spike in grain prices over the past year is in large part due to the impact on grain supplies of the growing demand for meat.) The expanded production of meat has been facilitated by industrial feedlots, which bleed antibiotics and other noxious chemicals. And of course, the human health impact of too much meat can be seen in everything from bloated waistlines in America to rising rates of cardiovascular disease in developing nations, where heart attacks were once as rare as a T-bone steak.

So is Pachauri right that going vegetarian can save the planet? (At least the 68-year-old Indian economist practices what he preaches.) It’s true that giving up that average 176 lb. of meat a year is one of the greenest lifestyle changes you can make as an individual. You can drive a more fuel-efficient car, or install compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or improve your insulation, but unless you intend to hunt wild buffalo and boar, there’s really no green way to get meat — although organic, locally farmed beef or chicken is better than its factory-raised equivalents. The geophysicists Gidon Eschel and Pamela Martin have estimated that if every American reduced meat consumption by just 20%, the greenhouse gas savings would be the same as if we all switched from a normal sedan to a hybrid Prius.

Still, Pachauri is just slightly off. It’s a tactical mistake, first of all, to focus global warming action on personal restrictions. The developed world could cut back hugely on its meat consumption, but those gains would be largely swallowed up — sorry — by the developing world, which isn’t likely to give up its newly acquired taste for cheeseburgers and pork. The same goes for energy use, or travel. It’s great for magazines to come up with 51 ways you can save the environment, but relying on individuals to voluntarily change their behavior is nowhere near as effective as political change aimed at speeding the transition to an economy far less carbon-intensive than our current one. So folks, by all means cut back on the burgers. (Taken from www.time.com)

Note:
Besides the health and environmental impact, meat eating is immoral and thus prevents one from objectively seeing reality, let alone the level of sensitivity needed for spiritual cultivation. For one living entity to by force take possession and control over the life of another living entity is a case of colossal audacity. [ by Mahat-tattva Dasa]

Have you have ever seen a goat, a real actual goat?  If you ever have, then you might have noticed that there are some peculiar nipples on the goat’s neck.  What are these nipples for?  In India people say that only a fool will try to milk such nipples as that’s not how you can get milk. Have you ever seen a mirage of water in a desert or on a highway road?  A few times I have seen mirages that were so realistic and looked just like real water. 

The material pursuit of happiness can be likened to both of these phenomena.  Recently a friend of mine called and asked me why he was having so many problems in life.  I answered him by saying, “If you go to the beach, you will find a lot of sand there.  If you want to avoid sand, then do not go to the beach!”  Pursuing pure happiness in the physical realm is like trying to avoid sand at the beach.  Similarly, even though we try to extract milk from the nipples on a goat’s neck, and look for water in the desert, we still wonder why there is no milk or water. Just think of any material circumstance or material situation – no matter how you rearrange it, even the “best” material circumstance does not produce wholehearted happiness.

Another analogy is that of carrot cake.  Carrot cake is a very tasty desert, but if you accidentally drop it in the sand and then try to eat it, the pleasant taste will be spoiled by the unwelcomed grit.  The sandy cake will leave you unsatisfied and you will eventually set out to search for a piece of pure carrot cake.  In the physical realm, with physical interactions and circumstances, happiness is tainted with sadness and frustration much like the cake is tainted with sand. There is only a sporadic appearance of happiness. However, it is a bit foolish to expect to taste pure carrot cake without some sand in it in this physical realm, or to derive pure happiness from the contact of the senses with the sense objects. Whether it is through excessive eating, sleeping, sex, fast cars, vacations, or whatever, happiness will always be tainted with some kind of “sand.”  Many people conclude that that’s just the way life is and choose to accept it as standard. But those who have made at least a little progress on the spiritual path know that this is simply not true. Such a person realizes that carrot cake without sand really does exist and recognizes when they are tasting it.

THE COURAGE TO PURSUE HAPPINESS

The first step in spiritual realization is to see the self as a spirit, a soul in a physical body; not a body that has a soul, rather a soul that has a body.  Sure, since we have physical bodies, we have physical needs. No doubt. But essentially we are spirit souls and therefore our primary needs are spiritual.  When we are unaware of this, we wind up pursuing the unessential, the material semi-happiness.

Krishna Lounge is an attempt to share a few aspects of a tremendously rich spiritual culture that will help people develop spiritual relationships, socialize spiritually, and express themselves spiritually through music, art, and everything else that is associated with spirituality. This spiritual contact is very much needed in this world. The ultimate cause of all suffering in this world is a lack of spiritual identification and a lack of spiritual culture.  If we don’t know how to express ourselves in our true spiritual identity, then we are stuck in material futility.

The Theory of Reincarnation

When Sukla Gupta was a year and a half old and barely able to talk, she used to cradle a pillow or a block of wood in her arms and address it as “Minu.” Minu, she said, was her daughter. And if you believe the story Sukla gradually told over the next three years, Minu actually was her daughter—but in a previous life. Sukla, the daughter of a railway worker in Kampa (a village in West Bengal, India) was one of those rare children whose testimony and behavior give evidence for the theory that your personality survives the death of your body and travels on to live in another body. This is the theory of reincarnation.

For some five hundred million of the world’s people, reincarnation is more than a theory—it is a fact, a given, a part of their everyday understanding. It’s what they’ve learned from their scriptures, and what generations of their forefathers have believed for thousands of years.

Aside from people in the East, Western philosophers at least as far back as Plato have found it reasonable to believe that our souls have lived before in other bodies, and will live again in new ones after this lifetime.

If we have lived other lives, you might ask, why don’t we remember them? Memory is a tricky thing. Given that we are lucky if we retain a few memories from early childhood, it should not surprising that we can’t remember our past lives. However, while this lack of memory exists for most people, there have been a few exceptions like Sukla.

More About Minu

Sukla talked not only about her daughter, Minu, but also about her husband, “the father of Minu” (a customary way for a Hindu wife to refer to her husband). She also talked about his younger brothers, Khetu and Karuna. They all lived, she said, at Rathtala in Bhatpara. Sukla’s family, the Guptas, knew Bhatpara slightly—it was a city about eleven miles south—but they had never heard of a place called Rathtala, nor of the people Sukla had named. Yet Sukla developed a desire to go there, and she insisted that if her parents didn’t take her, she would go alone.

What do you do when your child starts speaking that way? Sri K. N. Sen Gupta, Sukla’s father, talked about the matter with some friends. He also mentioned it to one of his railway co-workers, Sri S. C. Pal, an assistant station master. Sri Pal lived near Bhatpara and had two cousins there. Through these cousins he learned that Bhatpara indeed had a district called Rathtala. He also learned of a man there named Khetu. Khetu had had a sister-in-law named Mana who had died several years before, in 1948, leaving behind an infant daughter named Minu.

Sri Sen Gupta decided to investigate further.

Scientific Inquiries

The story of Sukla is one of nearly two thousand in the files of Dr. Ian Stevenson, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia [he passed away in 2007]. Dr. Stevenson gathered reports of people in various parts of the world who demonstrated evidence of remembering a past life. Dr. Stevenson personally investigated about 1,300 of these cases, including the case of Sukla,and documented them in his books Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, (in which the case of Sukla appears) and the multivolume Cases of the Reincarnation Type. Both are published by the University of Virginia Press.

When someone appeared to have truthful memories of a former life, Dr. Stevenson would interview the person, as well as the people around the person claiming to have memories. When possible, he would also interview the relatives and friends associated with the previous life, and look for a more ordinary, mundane way to explain the situation. Additionally, he looked for fraud, stories with holes or lacking credibility, and conflicting reports. But sometimes, as in the case of Sukla, normal explanations just did not fit.

Shukla Visits Her Former Family

After Sri Sen Gupta learned of the family in Rathtala, he decided to yield to Sukla’s desire to go there. With the consent of that family, he arranged for a visit. Sukla said that she could show the way to the house. So in 1959, when Sukla was a little more than five, Sri Sen Gupta and five other members of his family journeyed with her to Bhatpara. When they arrived, Sukla took the lead. Avoiding various possible wrong turns, she brought them straight to the house of Sri Amritalal Chakravarty, allegedly her father-in-law in her past life. As the party approached, Sri Chakravarty happened to be out on the street. When Sukla saw him, she looked down shyly, following the usual custom for a young woman in the presence of an older male relative.

However, when Sukla later went to enter the house she was confused. She didn’t seem to know the right entrance. Her confusion, however, made sense: after the death of Mana, the woman whose life Sukla seemed to remember, the entrance had been moved from the main street to an alley on the side. And the party soon found that Sukla recognized not only the house but also the people in it, including those she said were her mother-in-law, her brothers-in-law, her husband, and her daughter.

Fraud?

Fraud? When some Hollywood movie actress claims to remember a past life as the Queen of Persia, fraud is most likely explanation. But here, we’re dealing with a little village girl that started talking about a past life as soon as she was old enough to speak. She knew private and detailed information about people neither she nor her family had ever met. Careful investigation could not find evidence of fraud nor could it discover an explanation for how the girl could have acquired this information. And her behavior actually fit the story of her previous life.

Inside Amritalal Chakravarty’s house, Sukla found herself in a room with some twenty or thirty people. But when she was asked, “Can you point out your husband?” she correctly indicated Sri Hari-dhana Chakravarty. Following the proper Hindu etiquette, she identified him as “Minu’s father.” Sukla and Haridhana Chakravarty were to meet again several times, and Sukla always looked forward to these meetings. When he was to visit her house, Sukla told her family to make him a meal with prawns and buli. She said that this was his favorite food. Her family did what she said and later found that she had chosen correctly.

Hidden Memories?

To try to account normally for this kind of behavior, another explanation sometimes put forward is what is technically known as cryptomnesia, “hidden memory.”

Psychologists know that our minds record more than we consciously remember. Under hypnosis, an old man may vividly describe his fifth birthday party, an event for which his normal consciousness has lost all the details. Or he may recall exactly what he read in a long-forgotten book some thirty years before. So the hypothesis of cryptomnesia supposes that what appear to be memories of a past life are merely memories of something one has heard or read and consciously forgotten. This may in fact be the best explanation for many of the “past-life regressions” now becoming popular in journeys through hypnosis. Asked by a hypnotist to go back to a past life, a subject obediently searches his forgotten memories and uses them to dramatize an entirely fictitious “former existence.”

In one notable case, back in 1906, a clergyman’s daughter under hypnosis told vividly of a past life in the court of King Richard II. She poured out a wealth of details, nearly all of which proved to be true, even though many of them were so obscure that they sent researchers hunting through scholarly English histories the girl was most unlikely to have read. Finally, however, it came out that all these detailed facts appeared in a novel, Countess Maud, that the girl had read when twelve years old and had entirely forgotten.

But the case of Sukla, remember, is that of a girl less than five years old. And her recollections of a past life took place not under hypnosis but as part of her usual waking consciousness.

Not Just Information But Behavior

We may suppose that she gathered these memories normally, but this is only a supposition—there’s no evidence of any normal channel through which these memories could have come. Moreover, Sukla didn’t just recall information—she actually recognized people, people who in this life were complete strangers. She recognized Mana’s mother-in-law from a group of thirty people. She pointed out Mana’s brother-in-law Kshetranath, and she knew his nickname, “Khetu.” She also recognized another brother-in-law, whose nickname was “Kuti.” But she identified him correctly by his given name, Karuna, which even his neighbors didn’t know. She also said that her first child, a son, had died while still an infant. This was true for the life of Mana. And Sukla tearfully recognized Mana’s daughter, Minu, and showered her with affection.

Super ESP?

If there isn’t a normal way to explain this, maybe there is some other less-than-normal explanation. Perhaps Sukla learned about Mana and her family through extrasensory perception (ESP).

Research strongly suggests that some individuals possess the ability of ESP. In rigidly controlled experiments, the late Dr. J. B. Rhine and other parapsychologists have shown persuasive evidence for telepathy (the ability to read another person’s thoughts) and clairvoyance (the ability to perceive objects and events without using your senses). And experiments have shown that both telepathy and clairvoyance can work over long distances.

Although ESP may seem hard to believe, to use it to explain a case like Sukla’s you’d have to believe in super-ESP. Not only would this five-year-old girl have to have incredible psychic powers, but she would have to use them to zero in on a specific family in an unfamiliar city and learn intimate details of their lives. She’d also have to be selective about what her psychic radar picked out, so that she’d “remember,” for example, the location of her father-in-law’s house but be unaware that the entrance had changed, since that took place after Mana’s death.    And then, for purposes yet unknown, Sukla would have to mold what she’d learned into a drama in which she immersed herself in the role of the departed Mana.

Most dramatic in Sukla’s case were her strong maternal emotions towards Minu. From babyhood Sukla had played at cradling Minu in her arms, and after she learned to talk she spoke of her longing to be with Minu. And Sukla’s meeting with Minu had all the appearances of a tearful reunion between mother and daughter. Once, Mana’s cousin tested Sukla by falsely telling her that Minu, away in Rathtala, was ill with a high fever. Sukla began to weep, and it took a long time for her family to reassure her that Minu was actually well. Minu was twelve and Sukla only five. And Minu had grown taller, so Sukla said, “I am small.” “But within this limitation,” Dr. Stevenson says, “Sukla exactly acted the role of a mother towards a beloved daughter.” And after taking other possibilities into account, Dr. Stevenson cautiously submits that perhaps we can understand this case most suitably by accepting that Sukla was Minu’s mother, just as she thought herself to be.

Reincarnation Revisited: A Puzzle for Science

This brings us back to the idea of reincarnation. Of course, science can never “prove” that reincarnation is a fact. For that matter, science can never actually “prove” anything. Through scienc

e, all we can do is gather data as carefully as possible and then try to explain it in the most objective and reasonable way. And when the body of data grows, our explanations become more detailed. Because of the work of Dr. Stevenson and other researchers, we now find ourselves facing a considerable body of data supporting the conclusion that reincarnation does in fact exist. Yet science has thus far been unable to explain the process of this phenomenon. How does it work? Why does it happen? Who or what is reincarnated? How long do you have to wait between births? Does it happen to all of us, or only a few? Perhaps one day scientific investigation will be able to answer these questions. For now, however, investigators can do little more than gather data and speculate.

A Foundation for Understanding

Faced with an unfamiliar but complex machine, you can observe it and try to figure out how it works. You can monkey with the thing and see what happens. You can call in friends and get their ideas of what the pulleys, gears, and wires are supposed to do. And maybe you’ll figure it out. Maybe. But the sure way to understand the machine is to learn about it from the person who built it. So the direct way to understand the machinery of the universe—including the subtle machinery of reincarnation—is to learn about it from the person behind it.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON) believes that there is a personal creator behind our universal machinery. While this conclusion is reached by some people through pure devotional faith, others require a more logical explanation before they can embrace the idea of a personal God.
One can say that things “just happen” to work, and that everything in the universe “just happens” to fit together, without any intelligence behind it. This type of reasoning is illogical and childlike in nature.  No one believes that a car “just happens”.  Even though one may not know how to design or construct a car, or one may not see another person designing and constructing the car, people generally acknowledge that someone designed and constructed the car.  A person believing that a car magically and spontaneously came into existence would have his sanity questioned.

One can say that everything happens “by chance.” But a mathematical representation of all those “chances” transpiring would only prove the world’s existence to be astronomically statistically improbable, thereby negating the theory that “things happen by chance” and supporting the idea of an ultimate creator.

One can ascribe everything to some ultimate impersonal force that, without intelligence or volition, gets everything to work. But getting everything to work by definition would inherently require an intentional act and some sort of structural design. This explanation directly contradicts itself.

Some people try to sidestep the problem by saying that everything we see is merely an illusion: “The machine doesn’t even exist.” But this assertion begs the questions: Where does the illusion originate? Who created the illusion? Why? If this is an illusion, then what is reality?  How does one escape this illusion?  And on and on.until you are right back where you started.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that behind the workings of the cosmic machine exists a supreme intelligence, a supreme personality, God. When we speak of Krishna, we are referring to the Supreme Personality of God as described in the Bhagavad-gita. The Bhagavad-gita explains that this creator, Krishna, has repeatedly been born into human form on Earth to guide and teach people how to live spiritually within the different ages of this material world.  In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna also explains the process of reincarnation and the transcendental journey of the soul.

Changing From One Body to the Next

For many different reasons members of ISKON accept that the Bhagavad-gita conveys the words of Krishna Himself. (But don’t take our word for it.  Read the Bhagavad-gita and decide for yourself!) So practitioners of Krishna Consciousness, like millions of devotees of Krishna over the past several thousand years, learn about reincarnation from the divine prose of the Bhagavad-gita.

In the Bhagavad-gita Krishna tells us that reincarnation happens to everyone. “For one who is born,” Krishna says, “death is certain. And after death one is sure to be born again.” Krishna compares this journey through a succession of lives to the changing of clothing. Your true self—your “soul”—is eternal, but it goes through temporary bodies, one after another.

So you do not “become a different person” when you cha

nge from one body to the next, any more than you become a different person when you change your clothes from one day to the next, or when your body changes as it grows from a child to an adult. You are always the same you: Your mind remains fixed during the physical transformations of your body’s appearance. Similarly, Krishna says, the soul is eternal and remains fixed as it exchanges one body for another through the process of death and rebirth.

Still, death is like nothing else under the sun. It’s the biggest jolt there is. And when we get to the other side, we forget all about what we were doing in the life before, just as a person who falls asleep forgets what he was doing during the day and then wakes up and forgets about his dreams.

Liberation From Unending Lifetimes

In rare cases, though, memories may persist, as they apparently did with Sukla Gupta. Sukla remembered her home, her family, and her clothing from the previous life. She talked about the three saris she used to wear, especially the two made of fine Benares silk. And when she visited what she said was her former ho

me, she found the saris stored in a trunk, jumbled in with clothing that belonged to others. She picked out the three saris she said

But even when we forget our previous lives, they influence our present one nonetheless. The Bhagavad-gita says that it’s what we’ve done and thought in our past lives that determines what kind of body we start out with in this one. And by what we do in this life, we’re paving our way to the next.. According to the Bhagavad-gita, we’ve already been through many millions of lifetimes, and it’s possible we’ll have to go through many millions more. Some of them may be in human bodies and some in the bodies of lower forms like animals and trees.

But by spiritual realization, the Gita says, we can free ourselves from spinning through this endless cycle of incarnations. We can transcend material existence altogether and return to our eternal home, in the spiritual world with Krishna. The Gita points out that each of us is eternal and Krishna is also eternal. And our real existence is our eternal life with Krishna.

Before It All Fades

By the time Sukla was seven, her memories of her former life had begun to fade. Yet even before the memories left her, that life was already gone. Sukla had mentioned that in her former life, as Mana, she’d had two cows and a parrot. But after Mana’s death the cows had died, and the parrot had flown away. As we travel from lifetime to lifetime, we can’t hold on to anything, for everything in the material world is temporary. Everything material fades away and ultimately loses meaning. The Bhagavad-gita therefore advises that now, in this present human life, we should fully use our energy and time for spiritual realization.

The divine wisdom of the Vedas offers us a valuable insight into a vision of society based on selflessness and simplicity. It’s a tonic badly needed as we deal with the effects of economic beliefs and actions gone haywire.
In the following article, spiritual scholar Stephen Knapp gives us practical and enlightening perspectives on “Economics According To The Vedic Way”

The Dharma of Business

The point is that there must be integrity in all transactions and business relations. If we use the above mentioned principle, then by seeing the Divine in all living beings we must realize we are not merely doing business with another person, but we are also doing business with the Divine within that person. This means that the Supreme is also observing our every act, not only from within us but from within the person with whom we are dealing. If the relationship has integrity, then that is fine. We will continue in our spiritual development even while doing our business.

But if there is dishonesty and cheating in our involvement, then the quick profits we make will only pave our way downward. This will not be helpful. So we must conduct ourselves, even in business, with the foundation of the Dharmic principles.

We have easily seen that companies with power may produce various foods, drugs, beverages or devices that are said to be of great benefit or are healthy for us, or help us solve our problems with no side effects or unexpected problems. Yet time and time again we learn that different kinds of products have indeed been pushed on the public and have caused harmful side effects, much to the dismay, suffering and frustration of the people. However, the company or even government may deny any such possibility of injury. However, you must always bear in mind that a story presented as factual from an entity or company whose purpose is power, control or profits is often a story not to be trusted.

THE GOLD STANDARD

The fluctuating character of this type of currency also helps separate society from nature. Nature requires balance in the environment to operate properly, while currency that only represents what is supposed to be tangible values is more easily manipulated. It is the adjustments in currency and interest values which often create stressful fluctuations for the ordinary consumers and for the general mass of people. People who are most implicated in these fluctuations are less likely to advance economically as those who are in positions to claim profits from the same adjustments or manipulations in the markets and economy. This is the difference between those involved in the global monopoly game, which is artificially propped up, and those that depend on real value, such as the gold standard or genuine real estate values.

In this way, the gold-standard currency is based on falsehood because the currency does not accurately represent the reserved gold. Because the money value is inflated, prices on commodities rise. The only way to reduce inflation and have an honest currency is to use that which has intrinsic value, such as when trading something of equal value as in bartering or using real currency like gold and silver coins. That is an honest system.

REAL WEALTH IS A REAL NATURAL RESOURCE

Industry produces so many items that are in demand only because of the advertising they show to convince people that they need to purchase the item in order to be happy. Essentially, the more society depends on artificial necessities, the more vulnerable it becomes to artificial crises. Thus, civilization suffers and the economy slows whenever there is not enough oil, gas, electricity, or when the prices of such modern commodities become too high. When there is a loss of oil, gas, and other such necessities, or when there is an electrical blackout, so many activities are forced to stop. So many machines and appliances are but recent inventions, but now we have become so dependent on them that without them we think we can no longer function. Thus, people become trapped ever more deeply in the struggle to earn more money to buy more things that they are convinced they require to live happily and comfortably. In this way, they are tied and enslaved to a system whose goal is profits rather than really benefiting society. In such a system, humanity loses its sensitivity for their finer intellectual development and has no time and no taste for any spiritual pursuits, except possibly for the most elementary levels of moral standards.

In the natural form of economy, which is the Vedic system, the basic principle of economic development is land and its produce. Whoever controls land controls food. Whosoever controls food and fuel controls the world. This is why land should always be in the hands of local farmers, so everything is shared and all people can prosper. Once large industrial or national complexes take it, such large tracts of land are no longer in the hands of a local economy, but are controlled by large companies who have their own concerns and plans. Then land becomes another element to manipulate profits, resources, people, and even other communities and global markets. History has also shown that such companies are often connected with crooked politicians, or their networks that want more and more power.

By developing the land properly for vegetable and grain production, society can solve its eating problems. By producing enough cotton, wood, minerals, and additional resources from the land, humanity can work out its economic problems without depending on an artificial economic or political system.

Those who do become wealthy by honest means can more easily acknowledge his or her opulence as gifts from God. Thus, one’s business, if done morally, can be a way of invoking the principle of Dharma. Such gifts or blessings also come in the form of one’s own intelligence and ingenuity for devising wholesome ideas and needed products for the benefit of others, and from which one’s business will expand. Thus, without the blessings of God in every way, we cannot progress or be happy. All things, from wealth, health, good birth, beauty, good education, etc., are all examples of gifts from God. Therefore, we all must acknowledge our gratefulness, especially those who have become more successful. When a family or society offers such acknowledgment, their success and happiness can increase in a balanced and moral way.

AN ECONOMY THAT THRIVES ON COMPETITION

Because we have forgotten our true spiritual nature, we are stressed and crying over small and unimportant problems that have little to do with our real identity as spiritual beings. Because such difficulties are not connected to who we really are, they actually have little relevancy to our spiritual nature. But because we are so attached to our temporary and bodily identity, we are affected so much by these ephemeral and superficial troubles. This is not how we are meant to proceed through life. We should not get entangled in such a way to this illusion. It wastes our time and distracts us from the things that matter most.

We may have made so much tech¬nological progress and have numerous facilities added to our comforts of life, yet we can still see so many people suffering in this world. This is primar¬ily because money, and people who are greedy for money, rule the world. Not everyone is cruel, but who cannot see how the misery of many people in this world is caused by the greediness of others? The perverted politicians and rulers in various countries have created so much trouble that most all of the torment of people who are poor, starving, or even being slaughtered or enslaved into prostitution to do the wicked bidding of others, has been due to the unending selfishness and greed for money and power. Do you think this is the way of a truly progressive world? We can plainly see that it is increasingly becoming more godless and more hellish. If this trend continues, society will lose its moral values and respect for life. People will become progres¬sively more desperate and the world ever more lost.

A new influence must rise to purify this world from the rulership of money, dirty politics, and a false and misguided economic system. We must feel the influence of spiritual knowledge, for only then can society know what is real peace and happiness, and live together cooperatively. It is knowledge and awareness of our spiritual identity and our connection with the Supreme Spirit that will fill our hearts with the deep inner peace and contentment that we are looking for. If we can progress in this way, our own happiness and peace can spread to others. That’s how we can become the peacemakers and help fill society with the tranquility of such self-sufficient happiness and contentment. Then our only concern will be how to relieve the suffering of others. The more people reach this state of conscious¬ness, the more society will be beautiful and the world will be wonderful. Then the tendency for war and the manipula¬tion over others because of greed for money and power will cease, and the world will live in peace. We have to be strong enough to make such a change.

Stephen Knapp is an esteemed author and scholar of Vedic culture and its relevance to our contemporary society

Irwin Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) was an American poet. Ginsberg is best known for the poem “Howl” (1956), celebrating his friends who were members of the Beat Generation and attacking what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States. –Wikipedia

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) was a Vaishnava Hindu teacher and the founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), or more commonly known as the “Hare Krishna Movement”. –Wikipedia

A conversation between Allen Ginsberg and His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Allen Ginsberg: Your Divine Grace, I’m trying to imagine ways by which this spiritual movement of yours can become more and more widespread and more and more acceptable to people. I don’t know how. It’s difficult for me to conceive that everybody in America will …

Srila Prabhupada: Nothing is accepted by everybody.

Allen Ginsberg: Your Divine Grace, I’m trying to imagine ways by which this spiritual movement of yours can become more and more widespread and more and more acceptable to people. I don’t know how. It’s difficult for me to conceive that everybody in America will …

Srila Prabhupada: Nothing is accepted by everybody.

Allen Ginsberg: I mean, it’s hard to imagine a vast number of modern Americans living a life based on ancient Sanskrit yoga scriptures, totally vegetarian food, and many other regulations. Many of us have been thinking, what form of a spiritual practice, what form of simple meditation exercises, could be set forth in America that could be adopted by a great, great, great, great many people on a large scale? We haven’t solved the problem.
One thing I’ve noticed is that your Krishna temples have spread quite a bit and are firmly rooted and solidly based. There are a number of them now. So that really is a very solid root. And I think that will continue.

Srila Prabhupada: Yes.

Allen Ginsberg: But I’m wondering, what’s the future of a religious observance so technical as this, so complicated as this? For instance, your movement requires so much sophistication in terms of diet. I mean, no flesh-eating, plus the fasting twice a month. And so much sophistication in terms of daily ritual. The whole thing that you’ve been teaching—how far can that spread by its very complexity?

Srila Prabhupada: Yes. These practices are a little complex. The whole idea is to keep the devotees always engaged in Krishna consciousness. That is the program. Gradually, we shall introduce more and more of this Krishna culture, so that the devotees feel the richness and no need to go outside Krishna consciousness.

First of all, you have to understand that we are trying to make people Krishna conscious. So how can a person remain Krishna conscious twenty-four hours a day? That is the program.

Allen Ginsberg: Well, the orthodox Jews have a very heavy, complicated, moment-by-moment ritual daily existence for that same purpose. It is to keep them conscious of their religious nature. And that has maintained a small group of Jews over the centuries as an integral unit, but has tended to disappear in the later generations now, because modern life does not allow that much Krishna consciousness or Jewish consciousness or religious consciousness and attention, act by act throughout the day. So my question is, how far can total Krishna devotion—act by act, all day—spread? How many people can that encompass in a place like America? Or are you intending only to get a few devotees, like several hundred or a thousand who will be solid and permanent?

Srila Prabhupada: Yes, that is my program, because Krishna consciousness is not possible for everyone. In the Bhagavad-gita we learn, bahunam janmanam ante: Only after many, many births can a person come to this full understanding. So at any one point in time, it is not possible that a mass of people, a large number of people, will be able to fully grasp it. You see? Bahu-nam janmanam ante jnanavan mam prapadyate: “After many births, one who is at last in knowledge comes to Me.” Elsewhere in the Bhagavad-gita we find manushyanam sahasreshu: Out of millions of people, just one may be inquiring how to liberate himself from this material world. And out of millions of such liberated persons, just one may actually understand Krishna.

So ordinarily, understanding Krishna is not a very easy thing. That is why, when Krishna incarnated as Caitanya Mahaprabhu, five hundred years ago, He was so munificent that He gave us an easy process, the chanting of Krishna’s names. Otherwise, Krishna consciousness is not easy, because insofar as the Absolute Truth is concerned, Krishna is the last word, and generally, people are just like animals, absorbed in this temporary material world in terms of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending.

Out of many such materially illusioned persons, one becomes interested in spiritual teachings. Now, most persons—if they’re at all attracted to the teachings—are attracted to the ritualistic ceremonies recommended there for improving their economic condition. You see? People take up religion, or dharma, with the motive of artha—improving their economic position. Artha means money, material prosperity.

Why artha? Why do you want money? For kama, your futile attempt to satisfy these temporary, illusory senses. And when you become frustrated in sense gratification, then you seek moksha, or liberation, supposedly merging with the Absolute. These four are going on: dharma, artha, kama, moksha – materialistic religiosity, material prosperity, sensual gratification, and liberation.

But the Vedic texts, such as Srimad-Bhagavatam, say that dharma is not meant for acquiring money, and that money is not meant for satisfying the senses, and that sense gratification should be accepted simply to maintain the body. That’s all.

The real business of human life is understanding the Absolute Truth. There is no need to increase the volume of sense gratification. No. You have to accept sense gratification only insofar as you need it for living peacefully. The real business of human life is understanding the Absolute Truth. Every human being should be inquisitive about the Absolute Truth. But you won’t find the mass of people trying to come to this point. It is not possible. Don’t expect it.

Allen Ginsberg: Your plan in America, then, is to set up centers so that those who are that concerned can pursue their studies and devote themselves to the practice?

Srila Prabhupada: Personally, I have no ambition. But it is the mission of human life to come to this point. So there must at least be some center or institution that gives people this idea.

Of course, it is not that everyone will come. For instance, during my studies, at the University of Calcutta a professor’s salary was thirteen or fourteen hundred dollars a month. And yet there were comparatively few students, and the fees collected from each student were at most thirty-six dollars per month. You see? But still, the classes had to be maintained, because the ideal must be there.

So our mission is the intelligent persons of the world must know that the aim of human life is not simply seeking after sensual gratification. As the Srimad-Bhagavatam says, jivasya tattva-jijnasa: Human life is meant for inquiring about the ultimate truth. That is the same thing that Vedanta had said before, because the Srimad- Bhagavatam is nothing but the explanation of Vedanta. So Vedanta says, athato brahma-jijnasa: This human form of life is meant for inquiring about Brahman, the Supreme Spirit. Atha means “now,” and atha means “after,” signifying that now, after passing through untold lower species of life, when the soul at last rises to the level of civilized human life, at that time his business is to inquire about the Absolute Truth.

Yet nowadays, thanks to so-called educators and leaders, people are being misled. Instead of taking people to the highest, topmost stage—to the platform of inquiring about the Absolute—these misleaders are merely giving facilities for how you can satisfy your senses nicely: eat, sleep, mate, and defend.

Allen Ginsberg: Now in America there is a feeling of spiritual bankruptcy, due to our overemphasis of sense satisfaction.

Many agree that our civilization has come to the end of its possibilities materially. Many, then, seem to be looking for an alternative to material extension.

Srila Prabhupada: Yes, they should inquire about the Absolute Truth.

Doubt is the motor of the modern mentality, the indefatigable engine that drives the spirit of our age. Such doubt was honored with an early recognition in the essays of the Renaissance courtier Michel de Montaigne: “We are, I know not how, double within ourselves, with the result that we do not believe what we believe, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

During Montaigne’s time, religious wars of unbearable cruelty flood Europe. The absolute certainty of the raging antagonists began to taint conviction itself with bad odor. But Montaigne saw deeper. He describes two sides within the very certitude of the religious partisans. He recognized their zeal as a kind of cover up, overcompensation for a hidden, an unacknowledged, lack of faith: “We do not believe what we believe.”

In modern times, disbelief has so far entered into the essence of our existence, that both faithlessness and faith have become fundamentally two varieties of faithlessness.
It is the secret disbelief of true believers that energizes the armies of the night in Mathew Arnold’s poem of 1867:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
William Butler Yeats delivers the ominous news in his prophetic, apocalyptic 1919 poem “The Second Coming”:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Others, of course, celebrated unbelief—it bestows liberation—and proselytized it. Leave it to Friedrich Nietzsche to push it as a jagged little pill: “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” (Aphorism 483, Human, All Too Human: 1878 )

So it happened that, as a child of the times, and all too human, I swallowed the pill. I served at the altar of doubt. Unbelief became my credo.

It took half a dozen years in academia for me to recognize that disbelief—skepticism, relativism, nihilism—had itself become dogma. Departments of religion were pledging themselves en masse to the hermeneutics of suspicion. To confess any conviction other than mistrust of all convictions was to court anathema.

All joined in choir to hymn unwavering faith in faithlessness. This dogmatism began to rankle me. Something was wrong. I brooded, irritably.

And then, my breakthrough: We doubters were failing at doubt. We had failed to take our doubt far enough. If we are going to be thoroughly skeptical, then we must be also skeptical about our own skepticism. If all things are relative, then so must be our relativism itself.

I stated my case at an informal religion department gathering.

“You must feel like you’re walking a tightrope over an abyss,” responded a fellow grad student, only recently a nun.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure there’s a rope either,” I said. Everyone laughed.

Let us be bold enough to remove the very ground we stand on and miraculously levitate on nothing.
And so we come full circle. Doubting our own doubting, we find a surprise awaiting us: a tiny crack opens for the possibility of faith.

Just the possibility. Even less—just the openness to the possibility.

This becomes the crack that even God can squeeze through.

One thing led to another. Several years after the manifestation of the crack, I joined—to my permanent amazement—a high-demand “organized religion.” A religion committed to preaching. Labeled by one academic as “evangelical Hinduism.” (For a systematically misleading expression, this is spot on.)

Then came a time, fifteen or twenty years later, that I realized that I was utterly and completely certain that, as they say, “God exists.” I did not merely hold that a feasible case for divine existence could be made. Not at all. I was absolutely, totally certain.

This upset me.

I’m still a modern person. I assailed my own conviction: How could I be so sure? What right did I have to be so certain? How was it possible? How was I entitled to such a degree of certitude? What was wrong with me?

I attacked my own faith, and it repelled my assaults. I couldn’t shake it. It was as if it were simply there of its own accord, an irrevocable fact; it really didn’t depend upon me.

I put the matter before some judicious devotees. “It’s Krsna’s causeless mercy,” said one. “It’s a gift,” said another. A Ph.D. who once taught Christian theology to divinity students, she cited the distinction between certainty and certitude.

These conversations relieved me of my anxiety and allowed me to accept the gift wholeheartedly.

And yet—not to look the gift horse in the mouth—I found myself still impelled to understand better what I had been given.

I began my inquiry with this question: Is there anything at all that every person can be absolutely certain of? The question, of course, summoned me back to the origins of modernity, to the very “father of modern philosophy,” Rene Descartes, who turned Montaigne’s doubt into a methodology. Sweeping away, in his Discourse on Method, everything dubitable, he was left with only his own indubitable existence as a cognizant being. He could doubt everything except that he was doubting. Cogito, ergo sum, he famously wrote: “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes explained that by “thought” he meant “what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it.” His own existence as a conscious subject was absolutely certain.

Here I got my own clue and cue: Start, like Descartes, with myself.

But in this, it seemed to me, I was able to be more clear that Descartes. To “start with myself” means, to be precise, to start with ātman, the conscious self.

We commonly use the English “soul” or “spirit soul” to denote the same entity, but without the same clear meaning. The Sanskrit word ātman (in the root form) or ātmā (in the nominative singular), is a noun meaning “the self.” (The same word also serves as the reflexive pronoun, the “-self” in words denoting myself, yourself, herself, etc.)

When I take note, as Descartes did, of my own consciousness, I understand that I am aware, at least to some degree, of the ātman, of myself as a conscious, experiencing living being, now bearing and animating a certain material body and mind.

For two decades preceding my own Cartesian investigation, I’d been engaged in spiritual practices amounting to researching of ātman. To try to understand my own certitude about God, I began to reflect upon those practices.

Ātma-tattva, the science of the self, like any science, presents itself first as a theory, as kind of picture, or conceptual map, of spiritual reality. A theory, like a map, is the fruit of the experience of previous researchers, prepared as a guide for later explorers. The only purpose of theory is to guide practice, just as a road map is drawn up to facilitate a successful automobile journey.

Ātma-tattva also includes practical instructions on how to undertake the spiritual journey, how to use the map correctly. It is, in this way, an applied science dedicated to the clarification and expansion of consciousness.
We do not find any enterprise like this in modern Western philosophy. Modern philosophy certainly speculates endlessly about consciousness and experience, about knowledge and the knower and the known, but it has lost the applied element so prominent in the ancient classical traditions of Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Plato. There is now no distinctive “philosophical way of life.” It’s just another job.

I had taken up a tradition from India, yet it returned me to the very foundations of Western philosophy. When I recognized this, I felt that I’d come back home.
The applied knowledge, the spiritual way of life, requires a commitment to a relatively rigorous and demanding discipline. This is called yoga. The discipline is required to remove the material veil so that one can attain direct experience of spiritual reality: of the ātmā, the self, and of paramātmā, the superself or God.

The necessity for such a disciplined life is stated succinctly in Bhagavad-gītā (14.17): spiritual knowledge depends on goodness, on sattva. If our awareness is covered by the material modes of passion (raja-guna) and ignorance (tamo-guna) we will not be capable of direct perception of ātmā andparamātmā. Therefore, we who undertake this project live a regulated and radically simple life designed to minimize the demands of the senses, to decrease lust, anger, greed, and so on.

Modern materialistic culture fosters values and activities that expand the modes of passion and of ignorance, so it is necessary to insulate oneself from its influence. Spiritual culture has the contrary aim of developing goodness and reducing passion and ignorance.

After several decades of practice in ātma-tattva, the science of the self, my own consciousness had become somewhat clarified and expanded. I had gained at least some awareness of my own spiritual identity, and, along with that, of God.

A master of yoga named Kavi has stated (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 11.2.42) that for one practicing properly, three things develop simultaneously: devotion, direct perception of God, and detachment from everything else. This happens in the same natural way that for a person who is eating, satisfaction, nourishment, and relief from hunger increase together with every bite.

In the yoga discipline, the practitioner realizes his or her own identity as ātmā and also encounters God initially as paramātmā, as the interior, guiding superself, the self of all selves. In this experience we find the Cartesian key. For knowing God, the paramātmā, is something like knowing our own self. Thus the experience engendered total certitude in the one experiencing it. As one cannot doubt one’s own consciousness, when that same consciousness has expanded somewhat, God becomes known as we know ourselves, for God is the very self of our self. At this time, we can no longer doubt God’s existence anymore than we can our own.

I could, of course, doubt my experience of objects perceived in this world. It is possible, Descartes noted, that one is being deceived by some evil demon. (Here he anticipated the premise of The Matrix by some four centuries.) Even so, one still cannot be deceived about one’s own consciousness.
Knowledge of God is not like knowledge of the external world. Of this table where I write, of the garden outside my window, of the people relaxing there. In every case, I am spirit knowing matter. But when you can realize your true position, there becomes a far more intimate connection between yourself and God. Not only are ātmā and paramātmā of the same spiritual nature, but ātmā is part and parcel of paramātmā. For this reason, once there is experience of paramātmā, doubting God becomes impossible. After that expansion of consciousness, God remains part of the content of every experience we have. We experience our own being as part of God’s being.

It is not that in this experience, we perceiving something novel, like a new next-door neighbor or the latest cool thing from Apple. Rather, with consciousness purified and expanded, we now perceive what had always be there, merely unnoticed, unrecognized, unacknowledged.

In this state of expanded consciousness, we become aware that we cannot see anything without God’s seeing it first, hear anything without God’s first hearing it, and so on. We lose all doubt of God’s seeing and hearing more than our own.

The experience of ātmā-paramātmā, which renders doubting God’s existence as impossible. As doubting one’s own is evidently not exclusive to our own or historically related traditions. A natural and unwavering certitude concerning God has appeared in advanced practitioners in many theistic traditions. Those traditions may have various theories (theological doctrines) about God and the worshipper, but, so far as I can see, the simplest and soundest explanation for the experienced certitude of advanced practitioners everywhere is found in the understanding of ātmā-paramātmā.

We can also conclude that we are made for belief, for conviction. There is no way around it.

Herein lies the foundation, I propose, for authentic conviction, for conviction arising from the opening up of the self. Without that, we seem condemned to verify Montaigne’s observation: “We are, I know not how, double within ourselves.” Authentic conviction may serve as antidote to the current global wars between modes of duality: Militant belief born from despair and its own disbelief is clashing with militant unbelief born in denial of its own belief.

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the world’s foremost teacher and guide to the practice of Vedic spirituality, gives a take on the virtues and happiness to be found in a simple life based on local farming and spiritual focus.

In the material world, there is nothing fully enjoyable for the spirit soul. Just like a fish, which is an animal of water, it has nothing to enjoy on the land. If, by mistake, a fish thinks that “I shall be like an elephant and enjoy on the land,” that is not possible. Similarly, we are spirit soul, or Brahman, to use a Vedic term, and we have nothing to do with this material world. Brahman means seeking happiness. The Supreme Brahman is eternal, blissful, and full of knowledge. Since we are part and parcel of the Supreme Brahman we are also intrinsically eternal, blissful, and full of knowledge.

In the Bhagavad-gita it is said, “In the stage of perfection called trance, or samadhi, one’s mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This perfection is characterized by one’s ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness, realized through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.”

Krishna consciousness, our original spiritual consciousness, is so nice that if one is perfectly situated in it, then one’s condition will be like as it is described above. Achieving this stage, one will forget about any other profit. We are hankering after profit, profit after profit. “I have got so much money, I want to make it double. When it is double I want to increase it by tenfold. When it is tenfold, I’ll make it hundredfold.” Our civilization goes on increasing like that.

SIMPLICITY IS HAPPINESS

Fortunately for us, some of our students have taken very large tracts of land in various places in the world to develop a society based on Vedic knowledge. It is a simple life, eating simple things, grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, and they are saving their time for advancing in spiritual life and self-realization. Modern civilization is implicated in ugra-karma, or intense, painful activities – everything is so complicated. The government is complicated, the society is complicated, the economics rules are complicated, foreign exchange is complicated – everything has become so complicated.

Because we have given up our original spiritual consciousness we have become entangled in the different varieties of materialistic activities. Now we need to simplify it. The Krishna consciousness movement’s aim is to simplify, to save our valuable life, to save the valuable time. This human form of life is very valuable. The Bhagavad-gita says that only after many, many births we have got this important life, the human form of life. Now we have to save our time to utilize it for spiritual development. So far as we have got this material body we want to maintain it. For that Krishna has given us every chance. Anywhere you can get some land and a cow. You can grow grains and vegetables, and have fresh cow’s milk. That is sufficient for our maintenance.
People need to give protection to animals, have sufficient milk and produce butter, yogurt, grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables. This is possible for everyone. Thus we find in the Bhagavad-gita that Krishna advises protection of cows. This is essential because if cows are cared for properly they will surely supply sufficient milk. We have practical experience that in the various farms in our society we are giving proper protection to the cows and receiving more than enough milk. In other farms the cows do not deliver as much milk as in our farms. Our cows know very well that we are not going to kill them, they are happy, and they give ample milk. Therefore this instruction given by Krishna—cow protection—is extremely meaningful. The whole world can learn from Krishna how to live happily without scarcity simply by producing food grains and keeping cows. The meat-eaters may protest. In answer to them we may say that killing animals for food is immoral and destructive to the spiritual advancement of human society.

So let us try to make an attempt to organize a “simple living, high thinking” scheme based on the Vedic knowledge. I am requesting all my students to develop this idea and show a good example to this Western part of the world, where people are always engaged in ugra-karma, or intense and harmful acts. Things are becoming very implicated and very complicated. We really need to simplify our lives by the guidance of proper knowledge, spiritual knowledge. Human life is meant for simple living and high thinking; not other way around.

The basic principle of the living condition is that we have a general propensity to love someone. No one can live without loving someone else. This propensity is present in every living being. Even an animal like a tiger has this loving propensity at least in a dormant stage, and it is certainly present in the human beings. The missing point, however, is where to repose our love so that everyone can become happy.

People become frustrated looking for the perfect object of love. We may love our brother and sister, our mother and father, our wife or husband, our friends, our community, our nation, the international community, or even all human beings, yet still our love will remain imperfect. That is because it is not all-inclusive. For example, every country considers the human beings residing there to be nationals, but not the animals. But “national” means anyone who takes birth in that country. In Sanskrit the word is praja, “those who take birth.” So it is the duty of the leader of a country to protect all praja residing there. Not that only human beings should be protected, while the animals — the cows, pigs, chickens, and so on — are slaughtered. They are also praja.

When one becomes Krishna conscious, however, he loves every living being because of its connection with Krishna. As Krishna says, “Material nature is the mother of all forms of life, and I am the seed-giving father” [Bhagavad-gita. 14.4]. Real equality and brotherhood come when we see all living entities as equal, as children of God. A person with such vision is called a pandita, or wise man. A pandita does not say, “Only my father and brother are good, and all others are bad.” That is sectarianism. At present lots of the leaders are fools and rascals because they are simply sectarian, thinking, “I am good, my brother is good, my father is good, my countrymen are good, and all others are bad.” That is the sum and substance of nationalism.

We have a propensity to love, but we do not know how to make our love perfect. That perfection is possible when we love Krishna. Now, in my old age, I am wandering all over the world teaching that everyone can become happy by practicing Krishna consciousness. It is not that I love only my countrymen, only Hindus. I love everyone, including the animals. But because human beings can understand the Krishna consciousness philosophy, I hold meetings for them.

The perfection of love of Krishna is already there within everyone. As it is stated in a book called Caitanya Caritamrita, “Pure love for Krishna is eternally established in the hearts of all living entities. It is not something to be gained from another source. When one purifies one’s heart by hearing and chanting about Krishna, that pure love naturally awakens.”

UNCOVERING THE TREASURE

So, we have a propensity to love, but we do not know how to love or where our loving propensity should be reposed so that we and everyone else will be happy. The proper object of love is revealed in the Srimad-Bhagavatam [4.31.14]: “If you water the root of tree, the water is distributed to the branches, leaves, twigs, fruits, flowers — everywhere. If you put food into the stomach, the energy is distributed all over the body. Similarly, if you love Krishna, then everyone becomes satisfied.”

Krishna is the root of all existence and we are neglecting to water the root. Instead we are pouring water on the leaves and branches. That’s why the leaves and branches are drying up, and we are becoming frustrated. In other words, so-called humanitarian service or social service without any touch of Krishna consciousness is just like watering the leaves and branches of a tree without watering the root: it is all useless labor. You may perform whatever loving service you can for your society, community, and nation, but you must do it in Krishna consciousness, for the love of Krishna. Then your loving service will be perfect. Otherwise it will remain imperfect. The persons whom you are serving will ultimately not be happy, nor will you be happy.

The mission of the Krishna consciousness movement is to teach people how to love Krishna because then they will be fully satisfied. As it is said in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, “The supreme occupation for all humanity is that which awakens loving devotional service to Krishna. When such devotional service is uninterrupted and free of selfish motives, it completely satisfies the self.” Teaching this truth is the mission of the Krishna consciousness movement and the ultimate form of philanthropy. If people accept it, all their problems will be solved, and they will be very happy.

Trillions of dollars in economic stimulus dominate the world headlines, and the anxious minds of rich and poor alike. To ease this anxiety, we need much more than just external, temporary attempts at relief.

Rasanath Dasa, our good friend and spiritual guide from The East Village, New York, Temple community, explains from his own unique perspective, as a former member of the Wall Street elite , that we need to look into our hearts and find a place for A Spiritual Stimulus.

August 2nd, 2007. There was excitement in the air. The décor in the ballroom at the Times Square Hilton was exquisite. The crowd dressed in crisp business suits were busily shaking hands and introducing themselves as right on the center of the far wall the projector screen proudly displayed “Bank of America. Higher Standards.” As the fresh batch of MBAs from top business schools walked into the room, the mood was clear. The long-cherished dream of working on The Street (also known as Wall Street) had finally come true for the many aspiring bankers and traders.

As we settled down, my mind flashed back to the yesteryears. As a 9th grader, I was an ardent fan of Charlie Sheen in the 1987 film Wall Street. The momentum that was generated 14 years ago had finally met with success when I was later to become one of 13 associates about to start an exciting career in Investment Banking (oh, those big bonuses!) with the Technology and Media group of Bank of America. The Global Head of Investment Banking, Mr. Brian Brille, opened his address to my class with the statement, “You are all starting here at a very historic time….” Exhilarating!

Flash ahead -past the crowded ballroom and beyond the celebratory speeches. Flash ahead -to a day when the saxophone loudly played the title music of “The Titanic”. The faces of the people walking out of the building with card board boxes told the story. The moment was historic. September 8th, 2008 – I stood outside the Lehman Brothers building at 745 7th Avenue, as the street artist waved dry erase markers at passers-by, urging them to express “words of gratitude” on his painting of the Lehman Brothers CEO, Mr. Richard Fuld. The excitement was over, the bonuses had evaporated, and two Wall Street giants – Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers – had met their end. Those remaining had been severely battered.

It all seemed like a dream. Emotions ran high through my head as I walked past Times Square– disappointment, anger and embarrassment. As the newspapers played into the blame game voicing the opinions of the general public about the people working Wall Street, The Street had become something like a criminal’s haven overnight.

I felt it when I introduced myself to my neighbor on the Amtrak train, “Oh! You are one of the guys responsible for this mess,” he said with a wry smile. I had my own blame list too, which I used to defend myself. But something did not reconcile. I mean, I worked with many of these very people. They were good people, inspiring, driven to succeed, hard working and charitable too. What went wrong?

Over the last few months, some deep thinking, as well as some sobering and heart-felt conversations with empowerment gurus have seemed to provide the much needed answer. Consider it a long-term solution to a problem that had always existed through history and now had manifested itself in a different form – the problem of collective greed. Or more simply put, greed itself.

It seems like a regular Bible lesson – something that I had learned about as a 4 year old kid. Only it took me another 24 years to realize the unfathomable power of greed. Most of us seem unwilling to recognize the influence greed can have on us as individuals. When my cousin ardently pointed out that greed motivated my decision to take a job on The Street, I made light out of it. “Well, a little greed doesn’t matter much. After all, there are so many people out there who are doing the same. The world will come to a stop if we start thinking so idealistically!”

Greed, however, is an addiction – it starts out as an innocent desire to be comfortable and live comfortably. But somewhere along the way, instead of us controlling money and position, they begin to control and dictate our lives. As my ethics professor at Cornell University once put it, “Watch out when you tell yourself ‘I deserve it’!” And unfortunately there are hundreds of ways to justify self-indulgence– after all, logical rationalization seems to be the biggest gift that a college education gives to its graduates. But as greed grows stronger by the day, fed by our own justifications and inattention, it no longer remains as a guiding motivation in life. Greed becomes a way of life.

And when things are going good, greed is like a beautiful and lulling tune playing in the background of our lives, a song that seems too trivial to notice, as was my case during my brief stint on The Street. I unconsciously became part of a system that had been built on collective greed (after all the first “commodities” to trade on Wall Street in the early 17th century were human slaves!) A system I inadvertently helped glorify as I hummed along to greed’s sweet melody.

But when the music stops, reality dawns. Of course, it is only after all of the anger and frustration has been released that we are ready to honestly look inside our own selves. True, our individual contribution to this crisis may have been insignificant, but if we are not honestly spending time cleansing our own hearts of greed, we might as well just mentally prepare ourselves for much more of the same. As we vent our frustrations on the Thains, Fulds, and Madoffs during this crisis, it is also important to realize that they were just reflections of the very same greed within our hearts- perhaps only nurtured by more sophisticated and favorable education, power and circumstances than what we may have had. Really, it could have been any of us.

What may be needed in this time of crisis, along with a monetary solution to bail us out of it, is a program to help us monitor, take personal responsibility for, and possibly eliminate greed from our hearts– a Spiritual Stimulus, if I may call it. We all want to see this situation change, but to prevent this situation from reoccurring, we need a deeper change. As Mahatma Gandhi wonderfully said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world!” How we do it, time will tell. But let us use this time to at least resolve to rid our hearts of the pollution of greed. It can be a big step in creating a better world for our children.

BOOK REVIEW of: Autobiography of an American Swami
By Radhanath Swami (San Rafael, CA: Mandala Publishing, 2008)

Every now and then a book is released which becomes a spiritual classic–a book that brings people in touch with a distant world, opens minds to new possibilities and becomes standard reading for spiritual seekers. Autobiography of a Yogi and Be Here Now come to mind. With the release of The Journey Home – Autobiography of an American Swami, I believe Radhanath Swami has given the world a new spiritual classic, one destined to both fascinate minds and touch the hearts of thousands. In recent memory, most presentations of bhakti that have arisen in the mainstream have been done by those not thoroughly seasoned in the practice itself. For instance, Deepa Mehta’s film Water and Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love both have something interesting to offer, but neither can provide the appreciation of an insider. Therefore, I’m particularly delighted to see a presentation of bhakti-yoga enter the mainstream from a such a worthy practitioner.

The Journey Home is a spiritual memoir—the real-life, autobiographical account of an exceptional countercultural youth who leaves America in search of himself. Trying desperately to access the continent within, he sets out first for Europe, visiting cathedrals, holy places, and hippie hotspots. With little more than a seeker’s heart and a blues harmonica, he leaves few avenues unexamined, as his overland journey takes him through the Middle East and beyond. Western religious ideals and the models who exemplify them are his first natural guideposts and ports of call. He is open, nonsectarian and, most of all, earnest.

Ultimately, he arrives in India by the end of 1970, where he finds himself living the life of a wandering sadhu, a mendicant, with little money and fewer resources. His travels lead him in many directions, both geographically and philosophically, and the reader watches him age with the wisdom of centuries. In a few months, his young world is augmented by experience and realization. We accompany him into a magical land of yoga, meditation, and soul-stirring revelations. At various points in his journey, he meets deformed lepers and frightening Naga Babas, contemplative Buddhists and mystic yogis—even old friends from the West and angelic devotees.

Through the author’s personal encounters, the reader is introduced to many of the prominent yogis, monks, and gurus of the era—Swami Shivananda, Swami Rama, Swami Satchidananda, Swami Chidananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Ananda Mayi Ma, Neem Karoli Baba, Muktananda, even the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa—either directly or through their legends and teachings. We meet many nameless luminaries as well, and those whose names, if not for Radhanath Swami, we would have never heard. Our blossoming seeker meditates under the original Bodhi Tree—the Buddha himself meditated and achieved enlightenment here!—and studies with masters and saints.

Each experience inches him closer to his goal. We witness, with him, the burning of dead bodies in Benares and fascinating pilgrimages to ancient cities (and inner worlds) where life takes on new meaning, high in the Himalayas, Tibet, and in holylands innumerable. He lives in caves, deep in forests, under trees, and moves throughout the subcontinent with a thirst for “the truth” that is rarely seen—anywhere.

The book is replete with touching, heartwarming (and sometimes heart-rending) episodes—like when he rejects the advances of a beautiful woman for the sake of his quest, or when he feelingly and with tears bids his harp goodbye, throwing it, once and for all, in the River Ganges, or when he meets his eternal guru. All such scenes are recreated for the reader with deep emotion and storytelling expertise. Both descriptive writing and perceptive analysis are plentiful in this book, making it a precious gem that will enrich the reader with its shining brilliance.

The meeting with his eternal guru is, in many ways, the pivotal episode in the book. It was on this momentous occasion that all he had learned would suddenly gel for him. The Indian print of Lord Krishna our young seeker had carried with him for numerous months, uncontrollably attracted to it, now had personality, definition—it was the Supreme Lord as evoked in the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra. This sacred chant, too, was something he had carried around for many moons, having mystically received it through the grace of the Ganges River. But now, by his guru’s grace, he was able to connect the form with the mantra, the Godhead with His spiritual sound vibration. It all came together, like the three rivers—the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the Sarasvati—in Prayaga. Still, his quest continued, even after meeting his master, just so he could be sure that he had left no stones unturned.

But it was in his master’s eyes that he found his way home. This is where he discovered the true depth of the Ganges and the ultimate meaning of the Himalayan masters; the value of lineage holders and the wisdom of the Vedas; the secrets of mysticism and the heart of devotion. His master’s very being spoke of purpose, mission, and unending love. Home, too, was in Vrindavan, Lord Krishna’s holy playground, which embodied his master’s essence.

Throughout this work, we find the author’s culminating realizations, as well as correspondence written to family from distant lands, set apart from the rest of the text, both with italics and with inset block quotes. These are often pithy and rich, thought-provoking and even profound. In fact, the block quotes, along with the book’s picture sections, showing the author as a youth, with family and friends—so one can visualize the main players in his life—and with spiritual “celebrities,” such as the Dalai Lama and others, add immeasurably to the book’s overall effect.

After trekking for months through hostile lands, often barely escaping with his life, he approaches the threshold of an eternal and magical realm where, realizing that he has at last reached the precipice of his spiritual goals, of Bhakti, or devotional mysticism, he makes the astonishing and almost anticlimactic decision to leave. He returns back to the world from which he came in order to share what he has learned.

It is an extraordinary choice, given what he survived to get there: a journey filled with bizarre and often dangerous characters; mystical, life-altering experiences; treacherous encounters that left permanent marks on him and on those around him. The narrative of that journey unfolds as an engaging tale, a love story, and an education in spiritual reality in all its forms. We are with him through solitude; when he stumbles upon saintly and accomplished teachers; and as he experiences moments of splendor and enlightenment. The fact that he graphically and effectively conveys all this is quite an achievement for a first-time author.

The act of turning back, of potentially denying one’s own salvation so that the world may benefit, holds a revered place in most wisdom cultures. Bodhisattvas, the “enlightened beings” of Buddhism, are motivated by such a wish and forego their own entrance into nirvana, the state of enlightenment, in order to work for the progress of society. In the Jewish faith, the tzaddikim or “righteous” men and women (tzidkanit) are great souls who strive to uplift the oppressed and establish justice. The history of Christianity bears testimony to the price paid by Christian mystics, apostles and martyrs who served as conduits for the spirit of God in the world. And in India the title sadhu is awarded to learned spiritualists who embody the holy life and serve as teachers and guides.

Not all sadhus risk their spiritual attainment to help others.

In traditional India, there are basically two types of sadhus. One type is called bhajananandi. These are sadhus who shun society and live in forests or caves, where they devote all their days to intense penance, rigid study, and sing bhajans, sacred hymns. They remain aloof from money matters, their diet is austere, and for most seekers of enlightenment their path is impossible to follow. The other sadhus are known as goshtananandi. These sadhus travel to populated cities to give everyone a chance to hear about God and the principles of a holy life. Their path requires them to confront one of the greatest challenges of the divine call, namely how to live a holy life in utterly unholy surroundings. They show it is possible to remain egoless in an ego-driven environment. Simply put, their teaching is as follows: how to be both in the world and yet not of it.

According to a brief Author’s Note at the back of his book, Radhanath Swami emerged from his years of travel wanting to explain for others the beauty and mystery of what he had discovered, and therein lay a dilemma. Judging by this very intimate account, he is a shy soul who finds it uncomfortable when a spotlight is focused on him. Writing an autobiography was just not his style, but he undertook the exercise in response to appeals made by a number of his admirers. One friend in particular, Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005), was an African-American guru who had risen from an impoverished childhood to become a Princeton graduate, civil rights activist, High Chief in the Warri kingdom of Nigeria, and a spiritual leader with students on five continents. He was also one of the few people in the world who knew the full scope of Radhanath’s odyssey. In 2005 as Bhakti Tirtha Swami lay dying from cancer, he made a request. He asked Radhanath to set aside his reservations and write the story of his journey to God. At first Radhanath refused, saying that writing about his own life would be “sheer arrogance.”

“Don’t be miserly,” Bhakti Tirtha told him. “Share what has been given to you.” He passed away two days later.

In some ways, Radhanath Swami’s hesitation over coming back into the world after his discovery of Bhakti was justified. After all, having gone through the numerous experiences related in this book, his was now the peaceful and fulfilling life of an accomplished recluse; why take backsteps into the drudgery of material life? Associating with those focused on sense gratification, he knew, would engender the worst of risks. But his ultimate choice, in terms of path and teacher, tells the story. At this point, we can let the name be known: By selecting Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977), a pure devotee—an activist, who lived only to help others—as his guru (after declining offers of initiation from several yogis and other adepts in the Himalayas and elsewhere), Radhanath Swami cast his fate to the wind, cut his matted locks, and bought a ticket back to America. More than a symbolic gesture of moving away from the mindset of physically renouncing the world, these were first steps toward an “engaged” form of devotion. This contemporary strain of the Bhakti tradition maintains that people who are aware of their spiritual identity must help to reduce suffering in the world around them. They must share what they’ve been given.

Every recent generation has had its best selling mystic guidebook, often focusing on the life of an exemplary seeker. The 1940s gave us works on the lives of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda as well as Paramahansa Yogananda’s now classic Autobiography of a Yogi. Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, detailing the Trappist monk’s quest and accomplishment, came soon after that. The following decades produced a slew of mystic accounts, prominent among them are Carlos Castaneda’s series on Yaqui shaman Don Juan Matus and the cult classic Miracle of Love: Stories About Neem Karoli Baba. The Ochre Robe, an autobiography written by Agehananda Bharati, dominated the genre in the ‘80s, but there were others.

These first autobiographical books, as listed above, focused on Shaktas or the neo-Hinduism associated with Advaita Vedanta, or on yogis, as in the case of Yogananda. For a Christian hagiography, Merton was decidedly more modern in his approach.

Biographical tales of Yaqui shaman mysticism and of Neem Karoli Baba, both, were tinged by the psychedelic mode of the ‘60s and by generic Hinduism. Agehananda was a Dasanami sannyasi, following the philosophical conclusions of Shankara.

The next generation belongs to The Journey Home. Like its predecessors, it offers readers an intimate look into a true seeker’s life, and into the tradition he ultimately chose to follow. But what is unique here is that the tradition of choice is Vaishnavism. The books mentioned above, and so many others like them, invariably sidestep the Vaishnava tradition. There may, of course, be many reasons for this: Those focusing on Western spirituality need not look at the Vaishnava sages and their theological background at all. It simply doesn’t figure into their survey. But the Eastern texts are another story. With Vaishnavism accounting for the vast majority of “Hindu” practitioners in the world today—a statistic that was initially brought to light by Agehananda Bharati himself—its omission in the pages of the world’s spiritual biographies is inexcusable.

That being said, the time has finally come for Vaishnavism to be given its due, and there is hardly a more worthy representative than Radhanath Swami. Indeed, he has learned from and appreciated every single religious leader and tradition that has crossed his path. He views reality in an unabashedly pluralistic way, never discounting the value and merits of any genuine form of esoteric spirituality. He is nonjudgmental in the best, most enlightened way—as a Saragrahi Vaishnava, one who looks to the essence, seeing all religion as just so many roads to the same goal, which is, of course, God. This makes him a superlative Vaishnava, indeed. Thus, The Journey Home stands tall in the long line of spiritual classics mentioned above—and it richly deserves to be there. It, too, has found a home.

Steven Rosen (Satyaraja Dasa) is an initiated disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He is also founding editor of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies and associate editor for Back to Godhead. He has published twenty-one books in numerous languages, including the recent Essential Hinduism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) and the Yoga of Kirtan: Conversations on the Sacred Art of Chanting (FOLK Books, 2008).

The Journey Home can be ordered from Mandala Publishing.