Lecture about mythology, irrationality, superstition and Indian chauvinism in ISKCON and the question what is really Vedic, given in New Vrindavan 6-14-02 on SB 4.30.13

 

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kandoh pramlocaya labdha

kanya kamala-locana

tam capaviddham jagrhur

bhuruha nrpa-nandanah

SB 4.30.13

 

TRANSLATION

O sons of King Pracinabarhisat, the heavenly society girl named Pramloca kept the lotus-eyed daughter of Kandu in the care of the forest trees. Then she went back to the heavenly planet. This daughter was born by the coupling of the Apsara named Pramloca with the sage Kandu.

 

Lecture:

One point here is, what is Vedic culture? We often hear of one man marrying several women, but here we have a case of polyandry - one girl marrying marring several men. A more famous case is Draupadi and the Pandavas which startled Draupadi’s father.

There is a crucial distinction in Vedic Culture – and if we don’t make that distinction we are going to often speak and appear in silly ways. That distinction is between basic principles and details. If we confuse these two we will walk and talk like religious fanatics. I don’t mean to say that we should ignore the details. They are often essential for our spiritual wellbeing. We cannot take a frivolous attitude towards the details, especially those details given by Srila Prabhupada. But still, we should know that details are details, they are flexible. They change according to time and place. Sometimes when we say this is Vedic Culture and we are talking about something which is not necessary it is just a detailed application for a specific time and place. We start to become a little pompous and self-righteous and we seem that way to people in general. What we are calling a spiritual science starts to look very ethnic and specific. To give an example, is it Vedic Culture for a man to marry more than one wife or for a woman to marry more than one husband? You can say, in Vedic Culture several men don’t marry one woman, but then you have cases of it. Or in the Mahabharata, which is just a Hindu interpolation of it because Sripad Madhvacarya, the one to whom we trace our lineage, states that the Sanskrit text of the Mahabharata is thoroughly corrupt. Madhvacarya wrote a book on the Mahabharata called the Mahabharata-tatparya-nirnaya, which means figuring out, what the Mahabharata means. In that book he says that the text is corrupt, “sarvasa” – throughout. That doensn’t mean that there weren’t really five Pandavas and that there was no Draupadi. We have the Srimad Bhagavatam which is not corrupt according to Lord Caitanya. In the Bhagavatam we have the basic story of the Mahabharata. So we know that the basic story as we have learnt it, took place. All the details are something else. Madhvacaryas says that there are three types of corruption in the text and which are the three kinds that any scholar would point to, namely interpolation –sticking things in that weren’t there before, extrapolation – taking things out that were there and transposition of text – getting things in the wrong order. If you actually read the entire Mahabharata and not little versions that you get in temple book stores, you know what Madhvacarya is talking about.

 

So if we raise the issue, what is Vedic Culture we can start with the most basic principle of what is Vedic Culture: It is that culture which is meant to know Krishna. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita, vedais ca sarvair aham eva vedyah, by all the Vedas I am alone to be known. If we take seriously this word Veda, which means knowledge and Vedic Culture literally, is a culture which is based on knowledge – knowledge of Krishna. According to the Gita, Krishna is the object of knowledge, the vedya. So in literal sense, Vedic Culture means a culture which is conducive to knowing Krsna. What does that means at different times and places?

Here we have a case of polyandry, a lot of men (I think 10 000) marrying a girl. This is probably unique in the annuals of marriage. If you look at the Mahabharata after Sukracarya swallowed his own disciple: Sukra had a secret weapon that could bring a person back to life, the demigods were in anxiety about it and send Brhaspati’s own son Kacha to learn to use that weapon. He flirted with Sukras daughter Devayani. She fell in love with him and Sukra was pleased with him . The demons knew what was going on to get this technology, so they killed him and ground him up into powder. They took this Kacha powder and put it into Sukra’s martini. In those days people sometimes would drink, including brahmanas. So Sukra drank his poor disciple. When he became lucid again he felt something rattling around in his stomach. He still had his wits about him and began speaking from inside his stomach.  Kacha convinced Sukra to teach him the sanjivani, to teach him the power to bring people back to life. Sukra says I’d likle to bring you back but then you will burst out of my body and kill me. So they agreed and Kacha faithfully brought him back to life. As soon as he came out he wanted go home and get this knowledge to demigods. Demayani said, “what about me?” And Kacha said, “you mataji?” He pulled the old mataji trick. He said since I have to much respect for my guru and you are my guru’s daughter you are also like my guru. She was so satisfied with his answer that she cursed him. The point I wanted to make here, after this whole episode was over and Sukra realized, “what a mess and it all came from drinking otherwise this wouldn’t have happened. So Sukra stood up and declared that henceforth it shall be a law, dharma, that Brahmans don’t drink. And if they do all kinds of horrible things will happen to them. So here we see the creation of Vedic Culture right before our eyes. And there are other stories even more scandalous.

 

In the Mahabharata when Pandu was trying to convince Kunti that it was no problem for her to call some Brahmin to beget a son since he was cursed not to beget and son and he was desperate, Pandu is telling Kunti, “it is not a big deal. In the olden days women were free to be with many men.” What are we to make with it? Is this part of the corrupt Mahabharata? All I mean to say is that we need to develop a little more careful way about talking about Vedic Culture to the public and quoting. Pandu then said that the Northen Kurus (who live in the mountains and have mystic powers) still practice that custom. Women basically are allowed to satisfy themselves wherever and whenever they need to. Then Pandu – according to this version of the Mahabharata – tells Kunti a story to explain how monogamy came about, whereby a woman should only have one husband. He said that once there was a young Brahmin named Svetaketu.  Another brahmin came along one day and started to lead away this boy’s mother by the hand because he wanted to have a relationship with her. This boy became outraged by this but his father Uddälaka said, “these things are alright.” But the boy who was a very powerful Brahmin declared a dharma, namely that people must be monogamous and that there would be all kinds of terrible punishments visited upon those who are promiscuous. So you have these stories about Brahmins creating new laws and you have Madhvacarya saying that the text is corrupt, so it is a sanatana-dharma that was just brought back?

 

Another example is if we quote the Puranas. If you read the writing of the Goswamis and even of Madhvacary a you’ll find that they quote from the Kurma Purana or the Manu Samhita etc. and then you go to a bookstore and buy that book today and you can’t find that verse. Does it mean that they made it up? Now, it means that the text has been further corrupted, even in the last 400 years. Of course the favorite one is the Bhavisya Purana which by now must have a prediction of the Apple Computer Company. What are we to make out of this?

 

Here is the good news. There is one text with both recognized authorities and even scholars recognize as a text which is not corrupt, and that is the Srimad Bhagavatam. The Srimad Bhagavatam shows all the sign, both spiritually and materially, of being a pure text. Lord Caitanya personally approved it in the version which has been commented upon by Sridhara Swami. Since we still have his commentaries which are not like Prabhupada’s purports were you are actually preaching and have philosophy. Sridhara Swamis commentaries are more like Prabhupada’s synonyms where he simply explains obscure words and syntactical relationships (the proper word order because in Sanskrit there can be ambiguity). So we have the Srimad Bhagavatam, but as far as other texts, Madhvacaryas says Mahabharta is a corrupted text and we know that the Puranas are somewhat flexible.

So what is Vedic Culture? If you try this test, read the Sanskrit verses of the Srimad Bhagavatam as a philologist, which means try to find out as much as you can about the material culture of the people in the Bhagavatam. By material culture I don’t mean mundane, it mean what they ate, how they dressed, what their houses looked like, what kind of music they played and listened to. What will be remarkable is how little information you will find. I personally am quite sure that the intention of the Bhagavatam that Krishna has presented through Vyasadeva, is to present a universal spiritual science and not an ethnic tradition. For example, what did people eat in Vedic Culture? It depends – we know that they ate preparation made from milk products and grains and vegetables, and we don’t know so much more. The things are sometimes interpreted as specific preparations such as puris or halava but generally you find a word like payasa which means made from milk. As Prabhupada says, there are millions of preparations which are made from milk. Often in our books we translate it as sweet rice or sandesh or rasa gula, but the word that we often find in the Bhagavatam is payasa, milk product.

 

Or what was architecture, what did buildings look like? The information we have from the Bhagavatam is that at times there were walls around cities which was a custom up until World War- I. (The Germans had new canons by which they  blew away walls in Belgium, which was the end of walled cities.) We know that there were beautiful entry gates, turrets and sometimes domes on buildings. There are some things we know about the building, but did they look exactly like Indian temples? We can’t say – at least from the Bhagavatam.

 

How did people dress? The words dhoti and sari are not Sanskrit words. Therefore they are never mentioned in the Bhagavatam. Obviously people wore something, I am sure they wore something like a robe which for that climate and time of history was very likely, but then again we find statement of renunciates going back millions of years, who didn’t wear dhotis, they just wore a cloth, or nothing. Or they might have worn pants. There are ancient paintings in India which are hundreds of years old where Krishna is wearing pants. So what is Vedic dress? Did people wear kurtas which are exactly the same length as ours with the same pockets which are designed to grab onto door knobs? I am sure back then either people didn’t have kurtas or they didn’t have door knobs, but I am sure they didn’t have both.

 

You can see in our old Bhagavad-gita painting where people are dressed in these Aladin’s Lamp slippers which curl up at the top. So if you talk about dress, we know that women wore a top and a bottom cloth, but there is not a single detailed description about that cloth. According to the Mahabharata, Duhsasana (which literally means ill-advised) tried to strip Draupadi, who had a cloth on. Leaving aside text-critical issues of the Mahabharata, one may say that this proves she wore a sari, but is also says that she was dressed unusually at that time because she was in her menstrual period. Therefore she was staying in her quarters and was only dressed in a single cloth. In other words, Draupadi was not dressed normally when she went into the gambling hall. She had a blood-stained, single garment. However, there are many ISKCON painting where she is wearing a very nice Indian sari and choli.

So how did people dress and what kind of music did they listen to? We know that Narada has that vina, but else played the vina? The scriptures usually simply mention there were horns, trumpets and those kinds of instruments. There were drums and other instruments. Sometimes it is mentioned that there was a band of instruments. So what did it sound like?

So what is Vedic music, Vedic architecture, Vedic dress? There are devotees who are convinced that they way they do things in India is the way they do things in heaven and the spiritual world. And if you go to the spiritual world it is basically just like India in the last few hundred years. So if we deviate how they do things in India then we are deviating from the spiritual world.

There are statements from Prabhuapda that what is appropriate in India may not be appropriate in the West. For example you can read Prabhuapda’s purport to 4.8.54 where he says that we must adjust things so that they are convenient for time and place.

My argument is that we should begin – more than we have – to understand Vedic Culture in terms of principles. For example, what is Vedic dress for women?We can without question that Vedic dress for women is dress which is chaste and clean, appropriate for the occasion. And the same thing for men. Is it Vedic, for a woman to cover her head? Is there any statement anywhere in the Bhagavatam where a woman covers her head? Not that I know of. At the same time, chastity is Vedic, and when a woman covers her head, it often has the effect of creating a chaste environment. So is it Vedic? Yes, as a detail, but not as a basic principle. If we could start to understand what Vedic principles are and how Prabhupada applied them, and how he asked us to also find practical ways to present Krishna Consciousness, we will start to sound much more scientific to people and less ethnic. In this country there is a real danger – to use well-known sociological terms - that we are coming off to people as much more religious than spiritual. That is a common distinction nowadays, religious versus spiritual. In a morally neutral sociological sense you have to say that some of these Muslim fundamentalists are religious, but they are totally unspiritual, in fact they are demoniac. As we know from the Bhagavad-gita, there is religiosity in the mode of ignorance.

 

The basic principle of religion are according to the Gita, yajna, dana, tapa –sacrifice, charity and austerity – and all three can be in the mode of ignorance. Krishna says that faith, sraddha, can be in the mode of ignorance. Worship can be in the mode of ignorance. Taking religion not as real or the highest religions, but just human being engaged in rituals and having certain belief that they think is most important – then there is demonic religion in this world. So in that social science sense, you may be religious and demoniac, but you can’t be spiritual and demoniac. Spiritual means you are actually there.

Prabhupada talked about a spiritual science. To some extent, in certain places and certain times, our movement gets literally buried alive under an avalanche of superstition, irrationality, mythology, etc. which makes the movement unrecognizable as a spiritual science. I’ll give a few examples. There are beautiful Technicolor photographs of Srila Prabhupada chanting Gayatri mantra with his hands exposed to all the evil goblins and fiends that fly around the air invisible to our eyes. And yet in ISKCON it is practically a universal standard to shield your hands from all these malefic influences.

 

To give another example, it is a standard in ISKCON that you cannot wear sewn clothing on the altar. What about the pictures of Prabhupada doing exactly that? I have even heard that this comes from South India because clothes were sewn by women who are polluted. That’s a real winner in the modern world – how to destroy the Hare Krishna movement in 10 easy steps. There are even cases of devotees in places like North Ireland where it is always cold and humid, in some building with no heating on the altar and they are bear feet, catching pneumonia, following some smarta-rules which Prabhupada said we don’t have to follow and which we shouldn’t follow because it comes from South India where it is summer all year.

I was once at our temple in Vrindavan hearing a well-known devotee story teller telling a story and had thrilling hundreds of devotees around the world about some great second or third generation devotee from Lord Caitanya who was engaged in a battle with mystic powers with some non-believer and that person moved a boundary wall with mystic power, and this pure devotee sat on the boundary wall and actually flew around on the boundary wall. The devotees were clapping and cheering, and then I heard that exact same story down to the detail told in a Muslim community about a Sufi saint. I was walking around Govardhan with an ISKCON sannyasi and he said, “this happened here and that happened there” and I said, “how do you know?”  and he said, “well, that’s what the local people say”. “And how do they know?” He didn’t know how they know. So basically this movement is permeated by irrationality, superstition, mythology.

 

Many devotees have more faith in some interpretation of Nostradamus than in geology. You will not find the word “California” in the writings of Nostradamus. There was a prediction by Nostradamus than an earthquake will destroy the “New City” and all these devotees fled in San Francisco. And the earthquake actually happened – in Armenia.

Prabhupada was against scientism. The word scientism mean exaggerated belief in the explanatory powers of material science. Prabhupada was totally in favor of real science. He was delighted to see devotees use the latest technology to publish his books. I him picked up one day from the airport in Los Angeles. In plane landed in very dense fog and when we were coming back in the car, Prabhupada asked, “how did that plane land in the in the fog?” One devotee in the car explained about radar etc. Prabhupada just laughed and said, “Actually in this material world there is no happiness, but if there is a little happiness, it is in America“. There actually is geology.

 

India is a developing country where you find the highest culture and unmistakable third world culture. In North India you find a heavy influence of Muslim culture. Especially in villages you find all kinds of superstition and mythologies. That is typical of those types of culture. There is unlimited superstition and story. We have further corruption of even sacred text within the last 300- 400 years, not to speak of village stories. All this stuff gets brought back and spiritual science gets buried under this mountain of irrationality. What we think is “the highest spiritual science” appears to innocent people to be some kind of superstitious ethnic tradition.

 

How many ghost stories and stories about evil spirits and the horrific effects of drooling are there in ISKCON? We had experience in one major temple in South America. A young lady joined and and seemed enthusiastic and intelligent. The next day she came to me and had doubts about being in the temple. The reason was that her bhaktin program had started and 90 per cent of it was all kinds of warnings about evil spirits, and fiends and ghosts and what happens if you cut your nails or drool or sleep facing the wrong way. She was about to run out of the temple. She thought she was in some kind of “The Adam’s Family House” or something.

 

Just as the Goswamis had to excavate Vrindavan – it was there, but it was overgrown – I think we have to excavate to some extent the pure spiritual science which Prabhupada gave us. Prabhupada says in his purports that we do not have to follow the Hari-bhakti-vilasa. Sanatana Goswami wrote that book because he had to keep up with the dases, so-to-speak. At that time in India, people were really into all kinds of technical rituals. So keep up and make Gaudiya Vaishnavism respectable he wrote a book with all kinds of technical details. Prabhupada says, we don’t have to follow that, and we have a deity worship handbook which is based on it.

 

If we want to attract the intelligent people, here is a little simple cultural anthropology. Prabhupada said, we have the mass, we have the class. Go to the neighborhood where the mass of people live, go into the supermarkets and see what kinds of foods there are. Go into college towns, go into places where most of the people in the neighborhood college education. Go into the supermarkets and see what kinds of food there are. See where natural food stores are located. Is it where people are educated or uneducated?  There is a myth in ISKCON that Krishna doesn’t like anything unless it triples your cholesterol. Prabhupada said, follow sastra. Everything is in the books. In the Bhagavatam in the Uddhava Gita, Krishna says offer me things in the mode of goodness. In the fourth canto Narada tells Dhruva, when you worship the Deity, offer only pure substances. Explain to me how a commercial dairy product which causes six or eight kinds of cancer is a pure substance. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that food in the mode of goodness prolongs life, ayusam, and it is healthy, arogyam. If you read the Gita, Krishna tells us that attachment to the mode of goodness is itself a cause of bondage. Still, throughout the Gita preference is given always to the mode of goodness. Whenever you find sacrifice, austerity or knowledge in the three modes, the big winner is always the mode of goodness. Krishna says in the Bhagavatam, you must live and offer in the mode of goodness, then it becomes spiritualized. If we talk about visuddha-sattva, purified goodness, it means that there has to be goodness to be purified. Krishna says in His own words in the Bhagavatam and the Gita, offer me food which is healthy and prolongs life. Wouldn’t you be disappointed to find out that your parents knowingly, consciously, are giving you unhealthy foods, just because they like unhealthy things and they don’t care about your health? Krishna is our Supreme Father.

I had some personal experience with Prabhupada one time when I was a young brahmacari. I had some tape on my finger because I played the mrdanga. Prabhupada was walking by and he stopped and asked, “what’s wrong with your finger?” He was very concerned why I had tape on my finger. That’s Prabhupada – not that Prabhupadacouldn’t care less if we destroy our livers, couldn’t care less if we got cancer, not interested – we are transcendental. That’s not the real Prabhupada.

There are all these stories about what Prabhupada said about white sugar. There is more and more information available on these things. Prabhupada depended on us to give him intelligent feedback if we want to attract intelligent people. Don’t we want to establish ourselves as having integrity? Can we really expect people to entrust our lives to us unless we have total integrity, in their minds? Can you, with integrity, give something to someone which you know is harmful to them?

So if we want to attract intelligent people, if we want to be intelligent, if we want to be healthy, we cannot go on with a reputation as a greasy ethnic fundamentalist movement.

I don’t mean changing Prabhupada’s basic teachings and our basic program, I am not coming out tomorrow with an exotic robe or a new philosophy. We are keeping Prabhupada’s same basic teachings. What he says specifically about food, three or four times in one purport: You must offer in the Western countries food that is convenient and appropriate in the Western countries.

Is the sanatana dharma that you have to offer milk sweets to the deities in the morning? Now, if you think it is, prove it! You can, there is nothing wrong with offering milk sweets, but if the only way you can do it is to offer the deities carcinogenic bhoga, because that is all you can afford, maybe you should think about it.

And New Vrindavan of all places is specifically here to teach the world – at least America - how to live in a proper, appropriate way – to live off the land, to be healthy.

If we understand Vedic in an extremely detailed, ethnic sense, this movement is going to go nowhere in this country. If you are waiting to American to become Indians, don’t hold your breath, cause you’ll die young.

Prabhupada said when he first went back to Vrindavan in 1970 on his triumphant return after conquering America. The major of the city was there, all the dignitaries. There was a big formal reception. Prabhupada had left Vrindavan, gone to the West and done what no one could do – spread Krishna Consciousness in America. Prabhupada didn’t simply accept all the congratualations, he spoke boldly: He told the people, “Do not think that I have gone to America and made Americans, Christians, into Hindus. Why should they become Hindu? They already have their religion.” And there are, by the way, some vegetarian Christians and there are a lot of meat-eating Hindus.

Jews and Christians in general have a much clearer understanding than most Hindus I have met of monotheism. Frankly, you could make a strong argument – I think one that would convince me: that monotheism is a great divide between religions that gets it and religion that doesn’t get it. Huston Smith, who is one of the most famous professors of religion in America who is very favorable of our movement and comes and speaks at some of our programs, wrote a book in which he says that polytheism is characteristic of primitive societies. And that is well-known among scholars. Polytheism is considered to be a primitive state of religiosity.

I am not Hindu-basing here. I just want to make some points about our hostility towards the West and our chauvinism about India. That’s what it is in many cases – irrational chauvinism. I just completed an American tour and I had many conversations with intelligent, educated Indians. I tried to pin them down on the point of monotheism and they kept squirming out of it. They kept avoiding it.

So Prabhupada said, why should they become Hindus, they already have their religion. You may be surprised to learn, there are Jewish and Christian mystic traditions that talk about the body of God. There is a ancient Christian prayer called Membra Jesu Nostri  put to music by the famous baroque composer Buxtehude who is a generation before Bach and Händel. Just like the Bhagavatam, it is a meditation on the spiritual body of Christ, beginning at the feet, moving up to the knees, to the thighs.

I am not saying there is nothing unique about Krishna Consciousness. This is the highest philosophy, the highest practice. I plan to do this eternally. ISKCON is the greatest spiritual movement, but our exaggerated sense of our uniqueness is irrational.

Is the statement “The blind lead the blind and they all fall into the ditch” a Vedic statement? No, Jesus said it and Prabhupada quoted it. “The blind leading the blind” is in the Bhagavatam, “falling in the ditch” comes from Jesus, and Prabhupada was happy to quote it.

So Prabhupada said, why should they become Hindus, they already have their religion, and frankly, they are much more serious about monotheism. They are much more serious about a single, personal God. They may not know exactly who that God is, but they know that there is one Supreme personal God. There is clarity on that profoundly important point, much more clarity than we find in the East. So finally Prabhupada concluded his remark but saying, “if you go to America and tell a Christian or American to become a Hindu, he will kick on your face!” And Prabhupada said it a lot louder than I just said it.

Are we telling the American public to become Hindu? We often say that we are Hindus, it is now the official policy of ISKCON to identify itself with the theistic branch of Hinduism. And our programs are often strongly tilted or arranged to be appealing not to the people that Prabhupada mostly came to this country to safe, but to the people who are more likely in the near future to give a donation. We are supposed to be Brahmins. Surely ISKCON isn’t so far off that we cannot have honest talks among ourselves.  We need to get over our hostility towards Western culture (that Indian dress is intrinsically spiritual, Western dress in intrinsically material, we even say karmi clothes, as if a pair of clothes is intrinsically fruitive.) And then we give these lame explanations, simple living and high thinking: It is much simpler to wear a dhoti. Do you want to bed? Let’s have race. You put on a dhoti, I’ll put on a pair of pants, let’s see who is dressed faster. Let’s see what takes more cloth to make, a pair of pants or a dhoti. Let’s try to do some practical works and see who ends up tripping and having his clothes fall off. And frankly. let’s see who ends up involuntarily kind of flashing in public.

If there is music in Indian style, composed by and played by a Muslim, that is spiritual. If there is Western music written in a selfless spirit to glorify God it is maya.

What I am suggesting is not that we change our basic program and our basic teachings. I think that the hostility which so many American feel towards this movement is an act of reciprocation. Hostility begets hostility. Dismissiveness begets dismissiveness. Often we have a dismissive attitude towards Western culture and they have a dismissive attitude towards us. If we can learn to respect and appreciate that which is respectable, to admire that which is admirable – and there is much that is admirable in Western culture. For example civil order: In Vedic Culture, people – so to speak – mow their lawns and paint their houses. In Vedic Culture there is a very high sense of public civic responsibility. That is eminently Vedic, and that is much more highly developed in the West than in India. The rule of law is Vedic, the opposite of the rule of law is the rule of passion. To be ruled by the whims of passionate human beings. America is much more governed by law than India. India basically is governed by bribes and cronyism.

I don’t want to appear simply negative about India. India in many ways is the most wonderful country in the world, but often we have an attitude which I can only call chauvinism. And it is further reinforced by our keen instincts for fund raising as opposed to preaching. Prabhupada said, preach and money will come. The American Vaishnava version of that is, get money and preaching will come.

I have no doubt whatsoever that ISKCON is the greatest spiritual movement in the world, that Prabhupada’s books are perfect knowledge and that the process we present is perfect. I just want a more universal wise understanding of what we are trying to do. I have no doubt that the devotees in ISKCON are the greatest people in the world. In fact, I think that is true more than ever.

Precisely because to be in ISKCON today you have to make more choices than members of ISKCON ever had to make. It is not only the old choice to give up all your respectability in society, it is now specifically choosing this proper understanding of Prabhupada and Lord Caitanya’s mission. The devotees, I have no doubt, are the best people in the world. The whole thrust of my remarks is I am trying to encourage ISKCON to try to create a situation in which the devotees’ virtues become visible instead of being buried and covered under all this ethnicity, superstition and blind tradition – of course we have a lot of traditions which aren’t blind, which are important like chanting 16 rounds, following the principles, worshipping the deities, following Prabhupada. If we can somehow get out from under all this irrational debris so the world can actually see how great devotees are, then I am sure the movement will spread very quickly.

 

One more thing on what Bhakti Tirtha Swami said: that the most powerful culture can become the most oppressive. Vedic Culture is a combination of two things: externally materially, hierarchy. At the same time spiritually all souls are seen as one. That’s why animals are protected. As a society starts to lose its spirituality, the oneness is forgotten, but the material hierarchy remains. There is a balance between spiritual equality and material hierarchy. An external hierarchy (a cast, political, social etc.) can only be as steep, vertical, as the equality is horizontal. In other words, the more powerful the sense of our spiritual oneness, the safer it is to give power to someone. The less we understand how we are all one, the more dangerous it is to erect these hierarchies. What happened in Indian history and what happened in ISKCON history in certain places and times is that you have the understanding of spiritual oneness and the package is a material hierarchy. The spiritual part evaporates, is forgotten and debilitated. The hierarchy remains and you have full-fledged oppression. Therefore as soon as this balance is disturbed where you have more hierarchy than you have true spiritual understanding of equality, when the hierarchy exceeds the equality, the society is in trouble. So we can only have hierarchy to the extent that we understand at a deeper level that we are all spiritually one. This is certainly also true in gender relationships.

 

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