back to London 2007

 

Understanding God and His Reciprocity, Camden Center, London

 

 

A discourse about Love & Hatred, Attachment, Reciprocation, Religion and Krsna Consciousness

 

Listen

 

 

The first point is in regards to hatred:

 

 

1. If you hate someone you take this world too seriously!

 

2.  If I initiate something I am responsible for it, but if something happens to me, if someone does something to me he acts as an agent of a higher power (karma), so ultimately I hate God if I hate the person. To hate God places us in a dark world with lots of vanity.

 

3. If we hate somebody there are implications of us. Everyone is a pure soul in their original state. If we are doing God’s work we have to have a professional clinical approach.

 

Some people say whatever you do you get the same result. This is a denial of free will. People’s choices would be meaningless if everybody got the same result, e.g. people who pray for money and other who try to serve and love God must get a different result. Otherwise there would be no reason to do anything or be a good person. There would be no justice. In that sense it is not true that all paths lead to the same goal.

 

The principle that we gravitate towards people who love us in not wrong, but our love should be perfect. It is perfect in Krsna. If no matter what people do to me I treat them equally, I am not entering into a relationship with them. When we reciprocate with people we take them more seriously. Fair reciprocation is the real meaning of being equal. (Krsna says in BG that He is equal to everyone and that He rewards everyone according to how they approach Him).

 

Love and attachment are two opposites: Love means to give something and attachment means to take, to try to possess someone. (“This is MY family”). In societies where have strong, tribal family attachments even if some member of the family is doing something wrong they will still be attached to that person, which is collective egotism. That was not the case in Vedic times. A Vedic king would punish his own family members if they acted improperly. (In ancient India there was also freedom of speech.)

 

Krsna is the father of the whole universe, so why restrict our love? Real love is enlightening and doesn’t twist our vision of the world. There is no vanity in it.

 

Religious extremism and cultural extremism just like the law of physics produce an equal and opposite reaction.

 

Religious history in the West was very violent, slight differences lead to war. It is not the religion that caused the war, but the mentality of the people. Not so in ancient India. People of different beliefs lived together in harmony. The battle of Kurukshetra was not a religious war in that sense, but a war on moral principles.

 

The fanatical irrational claim of religious leader like Paul that theirs in the only religion are not based on the study of world religion. (Paul never travelled the whole world and didn’t even know all the other religions.) The claim that religion is bad because it leads to war also shows that the person didn’t study religions.

 

Saying that all religions lead to the same goal would include even such obviously bad things as e.g. baby-killing in the name of religion (to be offered to an ocean-godess).

 

There is a tendency in this world to equate psychology and philosophy.

 

“The reason why I chose Krsna Consciousness is because I believe it gives the most reasonable and complete explanation for the most important thing”

 

Krsna Consciousness is inclusive because we see that God is in other religions and many of the elements are also in other religions.

 

Some points from questions & answers:

 

- By facilitating somebody’s misbehavior we facilitate their own suffering. So by appropriate means we should prevent people from abusing us.

- The term “Vedic culture” is not found in Vedic literature.

- We need a distinction between dogmatic and philosophical claims which are by nature inclusive.